Archenemy Sidebar

Someone in work mentioned breaking out the Archenemy cards next week for a return to that brief period last year when we rocked them for about 3 weeks solid before a new release dragged out eyes away from them like a cat following a laser dot.

Since then, I've been thinking about whether to break out existing EDH decks and just pick the relevant schemes to go with that deck (which I'll proabably do for at least 2 decks) or whether to re-build an old, dismantled deck just to maximize on the effect of "Perhaps You've Met My cohort." There's nothing quite like the roulette of seeing which scheme you're getting and have it show up All Aces on Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker, especially in the early game. Now our Nicol has a new friend to make that early choice just that little bit more interesting. I think the right choice is always going to be Bolas then Karn, but having the two allows you to draw one and not need to find your Jace or Scroll Rack to get in back in before a Scheme hits, especially if you're slow on mana.

The main reason why the deck got taken apart and the main block to rebuilding it is the toll it takes on the mana bases in my other decks. Removing duels and shocks from multiple decks just to fuel a single deck, is a huge pain.

I suppose I could get away with a full set of Fetch lands, Alara Shard fetches and a lot of land searching in Green to get over this but I wonder inflicting that restriction won't water the deck down so much that it would become unwieldy. As I've been itching to make a proliferate deck as well, I'm leaning towards actually getting this done. It's just a pity that there's not a proliferate scheme. As a "Super-Friends" deck goes, it's got potential to be a huge headache for my opponents.


Irregardless of how I build the deck, which deck I build or whether the world is due to end tomorrow, there's a scheme that will always be included in any scheme pile I make as a 2-of: Plots That Span Centuries. This is the Twincasted Time Warp of Archenemy Schemes. You get to trade this turn's scheme doing basically nothing into a turbo-fuelled scheme turn the following turn. If your opponents are unfortunate enough to have you flip into the second copy on your next turn as one of the first 2 schemes, you'll end up getting 4 schemes in one turn.

Just as bad, if you flip it as your third scheme on that turn, you'll get 2 active schemes this turn and 3 guarenteed hits next turn (as both your "Plots" will be tucked under the scheme pile).

About the only downside to having multiple schemes flip on a single turn is that you have to be very careful how many X schemes you've included in your pile. It's all well and good to flip a "Plots....." early on only to subsequently flip 2x "Every Last Vestige Shall Rot" and 1x "My Genius Knows No Bounds" on a paltry 1 or 2 mana. That said, it's kinda hard not to include both as they are pretty crushing at the right moment given enough mana.

You are either drawing a lot of cards and gaining a lot of life, or you're wiping away the entire non-land board that someone has developed over subsequent turns but giving them nothing in return. Resolving multiples of either with sufficient mana during a game is essentially game over for those players as the nature of the Archenemy set-up invariably requires one player to over-extend. Wiping one away and repeating it on a second player is just a horrific amount of card advantage.

Back to setting up for next week, I have a set of schemes chosen for what was my Thada Adel deck, now Memnarch, and I think I'll run them as chosen:

2x Every Hope Shall Vanish
2x Surrender Your Thoughts
2x Only Blood Ends your Nightmares

2x I Delight in Your Convulsions
2x Realms Befitting My Majesty
2x Every Last Vestige Shall Rot

2x Your Puny Minds Cannot Fathom
2x Plots that Span Centuries
1x My Undead Horde Awekens
1x I Bask in your Silent Awe
1x Tooth, Claw & Tail
1x Behold the Power of Destruction

This is pretty much my basic package for any deck with about 5-10 of the slots being mutable for flavour reasons. For example, while I'm quite likely to build a Scheme stack for my Balthor deck, I'll be pretty much obliged to start two copies each of "My Undead Hoard Awakens", "Mortal Flesh is Weak" (though nothing is mentioned about Undead flesh, so that's acceptable) and "The Dead Shall Serve".

So that's my Archenemy sidebar, I'm looking at playing Memnarch, Balthor and, if I have the patience and time to build it, a 5 colour Planeswalker/proliferate deck. If anyone else out there is still rocking Archenemy or has favourite individual Schemes or even a favourite full 20, let me know in the comments. I'll be back in about 2 weeks with a follow-up to tell you all how it went.