Of Dentistry & Manucures...

Opponent #1: Em, nothing else, go! [Thinks: His board is empty, I should be safe on 33 life.]

Me: End of your turn: Vampiric Tutor [pays life, searchy, searchy, puts card aside, shuffles, puts card on top] Draw, Entwined Tooth and Nail. Anyone have any responses?

All opponent's: [Thinks: I hope the next guy has something!] They don't: [thinks: D'oh!]

Me: [searchy, searchy] Ok, Avenger of Zendikar aaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnd, em........ Flame-Kin Zealot? Sure, why not?! So, I have 8 lands so I get 8 little 0/1 plant token guys. This Flooded Strand should give all the plants +1/+1, that ok? No Stifle on the Landfall trigger? Ok, activate, Flooded Strand, pay 1 life, any responses? [fetchey, fetchey] And another landfall trigger gets me more +1/+1 counters on my guys. That's, let me do a quick count,....eh, 33 power of hasty attacking. Anyone on exactly 33 life?

Opponent #1: [groans]

Me: [evil laugh!]

When the itch gets you to build a particular deck, you just have to go out and build it. While reading over in the strategy forum about everybody's favourite Tooth and Nail targets, I decided to get it going on and have come up with a deck to make a very Rare-heavy change from our current decks (Balthor/Zombies and Ashling/Burn Peasant decks) This may just be the most expensive deck I've ever sleeved!!

Right, the idea is simple. Comb through everyone else's ideas over on the other thread (thanks guys!), add a couple of my own, mix in some land and it's insta-deck time. So that's what I did.
 
There's a couple of cards I don't actually own that were listed in the thread, like Mephidross Vampire, so I excluded the Triskelion combo. The idea of the deck is to repeatedly hit Tooth and Nail for shennanigans either from your graveyard with Eternal Witness or back from your deck via Wheel of Sun and Moon with tutors.

There are a few caveats with the deck: You're totally running for the multiple Tooth and Nail plan, thus you have to forget about things like counterspells and boardwipes outside of what the combo can get you. You're also completely dependant on your manabase panning out so, if someone decides to Dust Bowl-lock you at 6 lands, you just have to accept that until you or some other nice soul finds a way past that.

I'm not suggesting this deck as anything competitive or complete, the obvious exclusions are testament to that. You're trying to TandN an Emrakul and Iona to semi lock a board or even some Flame-kin Zealot/Avenger of Zendikar/Fetchland goodness (damage easily into the 30's on this one!) out onto the battlefield so it's only fair that you leave a door open for your opponents to have some fun. No Wraths, No counters, nothing that's not already on a creature.

Here's the list:
Progentius - General

Creatures
Admonition Angel
Avenger of Zendikar
Butcher of Malakir
Clone
Crater Hellion
Duplicant
Empyrial Archangel
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
Eternal Witness
Flame-kin Zealot
Fleshbag Marauder
Grave Titan
Iona, Shield of Emeria
It that Betrays
Karmic Guide
Keiga
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Primeval Titan
Rafiq
Realm Razer
Seedborn Muse
Solemn Simulacrum
STE
Sundering Titan
Sylvan Ranger
Teferi
Terastodon
Thrashing Wumpus
Vigor
Wood Elves
Woodfall Primus
Yavimaya Elder

Artifacts
Basilisk Collar
Brittle Effigy
Coalition Relic
Crystal Ball
Darksteel Ingot
Mind Stone
SDT
Skullclamp
Sol Ring

Spells
Beseech the Queen
Cultivate
Demonic Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Idyllic Tutor
Intuition
Kodama’s Reach
Harmonize
Mystical Tutor
Harrow
Tooth and Nail
Tunnel Vision
Vampiric Tutor
Wargate

Enchantments
Greater Good
Wheel of Sun and Moon
Survival of the Fittest
Wild Pair

Lands
Exotic Orchard
Fetch x10
Flagstones of Trokair
Forest x3
Gaea's Cradle
Island x3
Mosswort Bridge
Mountain x3
Plains x2
Shockland x10
Swamp x2
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Murmuring Bosk
Maze of Ith

Well, let's have a look then, shall we? There's a small group of players who exist only to work your mana base: Solemn Simulacrum, STE, Wood Elves, Yavimaya Elder and Sylvan Ranger are pretty much the bare minimum you can run without just hoping that your mana will sort itself out. Of course they have some support from the spell section but these guys run the double duty of chump blocking like champions.


After that we have the combos:

• Emrakul, the Aeons Torn with Rafiq or Iona, Shield of Emeria

Emrakul is pretty much the accepted archetype bad guy/gal at the moment. If you have something that can give her haste in play (like an untapped Kiki-Jiki and a Flame-Kin Zealot) you're pretty much bringing a bigger gun than most to the gun fight. With Rafiq of the Many, it's a gun that can upgrade or become very hard to deal with should you have chosen Iona instead. Of course you could just choose Flame-Kin Zealot and have her attack directly for 16.

• Flame-kin Zealot with Avenger of Zendikar or Terastodon

Speaking of Flame-Kin Zealot, these are two moves that can pull out huge damage very quickly. Presuming that you're running the Tooth and Nail off 7 lands and 1-2 artifact mana sources, you're getting 17 points of attack by dropping Avenger/Zealot. However you're not going to do this unless you have the land or fetch in hand for the additional 7 or 14 points on your plants so realistically you're looking at 24-31 attack for this move. There's a few advantages to the Avenger over the Terastodon here: Firstly, you're scaleable so you can decide based on your land count if your potential damage is worth getting one or the other and secondly, you have a lot more targets that need to be removed to reduce the damage and thirdly, you can combo with other cards that you may have on the table such as Kiki Jiki (copying the Avenger with the Zealot's CIP ability still on the stack will double your tokens and double any +1/+1 counters any subsequent landfall triggers give you) or Primeval Titan (which will give all your plants +2/+2 if everything attacks together). You can see that going this route is really only a question of how far you can push the boundaries.

Choosing the Terastodon allows for slightly chunkier beaters and a set attack value but at the cost of  three non-creature permanents which in turn may reduce your ability to repeat the Tooth and Nail any time soon if those three permanents were mana sources. What it lacks in scaleability, it makes up for in utility as the decks' main threat against opponent's non-creature permanents. Whatever Elephants you spread around the table will be smaller than your own as yours will benefit from the Zealot's +1/+1 until EOT ability. It's likely that they will throw their elephant under the bus anyway as the moma elephant, Terastodon, inexplicably for an elephant, doesn't trample. Major flavour fail Wizards!!

• It that Betrays with Fleshbag Marauder or Butcher of Malakir

This is a nasty little trick at a certain point in a game when all the chumps have been cleared away and all that's left are the big hitters. Drop It that Betrays and Fleshbag Marauder and collect a free creature from each of your opponents. If you have times it right, it will be something that was worth getting from each and every one. For a more long-lasting effect, go for the Butcher. This is especially good against larger armies if you control a means to kill off some of your own smaller guys, say, an Avenger of Zendikar with some tokens and a Thrashing Wumpus. Unless the potential return is apt to be a stunning sweep of unbeatable creatures, you're probably best advised to do this later on when you have ways to trigger the Butcher repeatedly. Oh, you also have a Skullclamp if you haven't already boosted your Plants past 0/1 for +2 cards and +X free creatures, a great way to spend some mana.

• Keiga, the Tide Star with Clone

What happens when Keiga and Clone both come onto the battlefield at the same time? You steal two target creatures! If it's legendary and you don't want it to go to the graveyard, or in the case of the Eldrazi back into their library, you only need to find a way to off your own Keiga to profit. That way is targetting it with your own Clone and killing both Keigas through the legendary rule. You then get two creatures from across the table.

If the creature concerned is not a legend, you can simply copy it with Clone and use the Keiga as a threat to steal the original. Obviously Clone is the perfect companion to a lot of other creatures in your deck, I think it goes without saying that 2 Avengers of Zendikar is better than one!

• Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker with Woodfall Primus or Grave Titan or Primeval Titan or Duplicant or Karmic Guide or Eternal Witness

Kiki Jiki, Mirror Breaker, what a stunning creature! It's simple and yet so powerful at the same time. I've included some of the options here but really it can go with anything non-legendary in the deck.  One of my favourite plays was having it in play, playing a Tooth and Nail for Clone and Karmic Guide and having the Clone copy the Guide as well as Kiki Jiki. I went from just having the Kiki Jiki to having 3 Karmic Guides, a Flame-Kin Zealot, It that Betrays and a Fleshbag Maurader that had appeared, and were dealt with, in the early game. The Fleshbag/ItB combo brought me another 3 guys from the other players: Omnath, a 1/1 dork and a Bird of Paradise. Of course, I put the Flame-kin Zealot trigger on the bottom!

I'm fairly sure the combinations with Woodfall Primus, the Titans, Duplicant or EWit don't need to be gone into. They are all board or hand advantage doubled by Kiki Jiki.

• Realm Razer with Admonition Angel

This nasty little combo came straight off the EDH boards. Tooth and Nail for both parts and remove all lands from the game. Find a Landfall trigger and use the trigger to remove the Razer from the game with the Angel's ability. All the lands come back into play tapped but also giving you a pile of landfall triggers. You use these triggers to remove your opponent's threats. Now they have the dilema: Do I kill the Angel knowing that I will also lose my lands?

• Teferi with Seedborn Muse

A variant on the Vedalken Orrery/Seedborn Muse combo, Teferi grants a little more protection by slowing your opponent's spells down to sorcery speed and allowing you to "EOT: drop a creature, untap" at every end of turn.

• Vigor with Thrashing Wumpus or Crater Hellion or Empyrial Archangel

This one is my personal favourite. Vigor is a 6/6 Elemental that makes your other creatures impervious to damage. Better still, for each damage they take, they grow that much instead. If you already have some creatures out, go and fetch Vigor with Crater Hellion to give everyone a permanent +4/+4 while destroying a large part of your opponent's board at the same time. For a more lasting effect, you can use Thrashing Wumpus, itself a good friend of Seedborn Muse. The ultimate defense pairs Vigor with the untargettable Empyrial Archangel to prevent all damage to you and turning the Archangel into a flying monster at the same time.

Vigor - Likes Birds.

That's a quick tour of the deck and some of the possibilities involved though you can always mix and match between the given options. If you decide to run the deck, have a blast and don't be afraid to come back and leave some comments!

Hi Tom, it's Bob from the office down the hall.....

Hey Tom, my man!

You know sometimes you come across obstacles in life that you just have to work around somehow? You can chew your way through them, or lurch about in the vain hope that, you know, something will just come up. There are times, however, that getting some quality face time and having a good chat works wonders. I find that, when I'm feeling ravenous and just have to nip out a get a bit to eat, just talking about it generally solves the problem a lot of the time. Of course, this isn't universally true. Some people just don't have the stomach, or brains (and it's always wise to avoid those sorts!), for a good heart to heart. Others, sadly, feel that talking is overrated and would prefer a more pro-active approach to dining.

Me, I'm a talker. Sure, I could just follow the trend, just take what I need and hope not to lose too many limbs in the process, but I feel it's important to cultivate the old brain functions, especially now, as, well, I'm in an advancing state of decay. Being a Zombie isn't all the fun lurching and groaning that it's cracked up to be and, to be very honest with you, I kinda miss mobility in my knees. You just don't appreciate the little things you've got until you dont have them any more, right!?

Hey, do you remember the fun we used to have chasing Cheryl and Bonnie from the secretary pool into the broom cupboards after late meetings? Man, that was a hoot! I don't get those urges any more, all interest in that kinda "dropped off" a couple of weeks back, if you get my drift. Still, I did get to chase Cheryl and Bonnie from the secretary pool into the broom cupboards again a few days ago, so it being a Zombie's not all bad. Cheryl is around here somewhere.... oh yes, she's over there, chewing on the doors.

Look Tom, I'm not going to lie to you: this is probably going to end badly. At some point, some intelligent life-challenged being with a few more remaining appendages than most is going to mention that the doors to the mall are not edible and we can still drive a truck through them. I'm sure we can find a few desperate, brain-starved fellows to soak up whatever resistance you've all got waiting for us inside that mall. No matter how you cut it, you're all going to die screaming.

We're at an impasse here, maybe we should compromise: If you open up the doors, we'll all come inside and eat your brains..........

 
 

Yesterday Balthor Bob turned up in my mailbox.

Since then I've been riffing on Zombies and surprising myself at the number of common and uncommon Zombies I don't own. I'm positive I had a fistful of Gempalm Polluters and Nantuko Husks but, as it turns out, I had neither. I'm even thankful for the Phyrexia Vs Coalition duel decks for the sole copy of Carrion Feeder in my collection. Don't ask me what a Scourge common has to do with Phyrexia (apart from it being the last set based on Dominaria until Time Spiral though long after the Phyrexian timeline was supposed to have ended) but I'm glad they included one anyway. Right now, I have a full Peasant EDH deck and a pile of cards that still need to go into the deck about this high:

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You see, it's not easy trying to decide which of Exhume or Stitch Together is more "Zombie". Scathe Zombies, as the Ur-Zombie [that's first ever zombie creature in this here game here] is in there with a pile of other lurchers but, in reality, they are all just filler because being a Zombie isn't just about lurching across the table for some brain-munching goodness while whistling a tuneful little ditty by Jonathan Coulton, no siiiirrrr-E, Zombies gotta be clever now, and part of "clever" is knowing how to work together. That takes organisation which, let's be honest, is not a department your average horde of zombies is generally overabundantly blessed in.

Luckily for us, our lurching legions of vitally challenged have two big hitters in Noxious Ghoul and Vengeful Dead. These guys are the real deal. They are the ones we wheel out at the end of the movies when the hero looks like he's going to get one-up on the home team and all hope seems lost. I am, of course, talking about Zombie movies, not "zombie" movies here. Hell, we even grafted a few extra limbs to these guys so that, when stuff starts falling off, they just keep on truckin'! 

Nox and VD are like the one-two punch, the jab and the round-house, get's them coming and going, the proverbial ripping-your-arm-off and thrashing-you-around-the-head-with-it. Whenever Nox or any fellow crumbly (I gotta stop calling everyone a crumbly, it gets them all riled up!) comes on the battlefield, a little bit of shock and awe gets spread around. Sometimes you get smaller critters falling outta trees or suchlike when it's only 1 or two but with a whole crowd, everyone else just pretty much gets the Thriller treatment.

An aside on Michael J, Mr. Thriller Killer himself, that dude is so lucky he didn't join the legions. Just last week I walked past a TV store, they had left Thriller on repeat: I almost didn't get away. That damn tune must have dragged hundreds of vitally challenged into it's trap. Dancing & losely attached body parts is not a good combination, I can tell you! There were crumbly bits everywhere! Luckily someone finally, but inadvertantly, put a femur through the screen from 20 yards away. Bob only knows what the carnage would have been like had it gone on much longer. Still, got myself a couple of spares of important appendages so it wasn't a total loss.....

Vengeful Dead is pretty much the incarnation of getting pissed at livings trying to put us down. You can do it I suppose, but you're sure as hell going to pay for it! Put Nox up front and VD at the back, you've got a team! Bob says he can bring them both back whenever so all they have to do is bring friends and make sure they don't get caught in the open. Luckily, Bob was able to put us in touch with Phyrexian Ghoul, Carrion Feeder and Nantuko Husk. These guys are the business when it comes to duck and cover and the inconvenient "dying" part? Well, what do we care, we're Zombies! Another advantage of the sacrifice trio is that they pull a bit of the heat away from everyone else, VD and Nox excepted, because they have to be blocked or everyone's going to take a quick dirt nap to beef them up. Bring in Bob and place your setting in a lot of swampland and you've got the makings of a Zombiewood classic: "Bob may be a Zombie Dwarf but he doesn't need a step-ladder to kick your ass!" As a movie title, it probably could be a little sharper, but it communicates the theme pretty well.

That's pretty much the main thrust of our plan to eat your brains. Other Zombies are involved at different levels of the organisation.

But they're just crumblies, not real Zombies! 

Peasant Ashling - A Burning Vision

I hail from the land of Leprechauns, blarney, pots of gold at the end of rainbows and good beer. While it can be a bit tiring to be repeatedly assailed with the usual misconceptions about Ireland and the Irish, (I’m not a red-head, don’t live in a white-washed thatched cottage surrounded by sheep and I have more normal blood than Guiness running through my veins) sometimes you just get some things that others may have missed. This is the same for every culture of course, but, as I’m Irish and not, say, Brazilian, I only get our stuff: The cupla focail, GAA, Fr. Dougal and a lot of the phrases and legends that have made their way into modern life from old Irish culture and the Irish language. You may not have realised it at the time, but the Lorwyn block was an Irish/Celtic block. A lot of the feel was taken from Breton, Welsh, Scots & Irish origins from the monsters to the visuals to the names of the cards themselves.

I suppose you’ve never asked yourself why Ashling (the Pilgrim/the Extinguisher) is female. It just fits maybe? Or you know a girl called that or similar so you never thought to question it? Or maybe you don’t really care because she wasn’t tournament worthy and you just traded her away. :o) Well, Ashling is named after the a poetic genre that developed in the late 17th Century and continued into the 18th Century. It revolved around a female character know as “Aisling” who appeared either in dreams and visions as a young and beautiful woman or an old and haggard crone, and either represented something or entreated the readers in a roundabout way to do some task. In short, this character represented the nation of Ireland and either bemoaned the presence of the occupying English landlords and soldiers or entreated the Irish to rise up and free itself from the servitude and oppression of the occupying English. The genre was necessary as any open rebellion against the English or incitation to revolt was quickly quashed, violently and efficiently. The name is still quite popular however and Aislings are seen in Ireland and in Irish communities around the world.

Ashling the Pilgrim is both a more-pronounceable form of the original Aisling and a convenient play on Lorwyn’s elemental tribe’s link with fire: “Ash”-ling. I’m sure they giggled when they thought that one up. The trouble with the obvious nomenclature is that neither Ashling the Pilgrim nor Ashling the Extinguisher are “Aislings” in the truest sense of the word. One was a patsy for the Sapling and what she grew into was hell-bent on destroying the plane rather than a dream woman encouraging a people to reclaim what was rightfully theirs. I got the pun, I picked up on the reference straight away but, man, did they get that one wrong. Anyway.

Ok, so now we’ve done the irrelevant back-story, why am I even bringing this up? If you answered “You’re making an EDH deck maybe?” then go to the top of the class!! Yes, I’m making an Ashling deck but, wait!, it’s not any old EDH deck we’ve got here, today kids we’re making a Peasant deck.


Our little group decided to mix things up a little and set the challenge of a Peasant EDH deck, that is to say, only commons & uncommons are allowed. As most Legends are rare and our newer members are all post Shards of Alara, we allowed that the general could be rare. Very quickly we added Uril to the banned-list as most of the best solutions to troll-shrouded generals are at Rare or in Black which would put significant restrictions on anyone not playing Uril. Rather than warp the meta-game before we even got started, Uril was banned. We’ve seen a few versions of Peasant EDH, notably over at MTG-color-pie and 99 Things that suggested that any non-rare creature could be used as a general however we felt that, for flavour reasons, we would prefer to allow one single rare as general than to move outside Legendary. For those with a collection adequately large to choose a non-rare Legend, there is no drop-down for the single permitted rare: It’s your general or you don’t get one. And so everyone went their own way to build their Peasant deck.


An aside on Zombies:

I’ve been looking to build a Zombie deck for a long time now but haven’t for the lack of a number of what I consider to be key cards. I’m pretty picky when it comes it deck-building, I’ll build if I’m missing 2-3 cards but not 10 or 15. This was always the case when I started putting cards aside for a Zombie deck. Now that we’ve suggested a peasant format I could disregard any of the rare cards I was missing and plug the gaps with random brain munchers. I went to my binders and pulled everything out and found that I had 98 cards of the hundred I needed. One of the missing cards, Vengeful Dead, is pretty key in any mass recursion Zombie deck and up until this morning I couldn’t find this common. Now I have it and I’m only left needing to track down the last card which, unfortunatly, is my General: Balthor the Defiled. I know that some players have no problem with proxies or photocopies but I do. If you can’t play an exact card you should generally speaking be able to find a replacement. If you’re not willing or able to, you need to make the hard choice of changing your deck as a result. Here I’m faced with not playing Zombies until I find a Balthor but my mind is bent on the task. I will find one and I will be making a gap in my schedule to accommodate my playgroup RE: their brains.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm, Brrrraaaaaiiiinnnnnnssss!!!

End aside.

So temporarily thwarted with my first deck idea, I turned to Ashling & 99 Mountains.dec. Yeah, we laughed. Once. Maybe twice. Then it got old. This may have been about turn 5. I went into the tank (i.e.: the internet) to get some more out of the possibilities that peasant Ashling could offer. There’re lists and lists galore out there but they generally go for either very heavy mountain representation or a very heavy burn suite. The issue with both these approaches is that if you cut all the rare & mythic cards out of the lists, well, you’re generally left with Ashling & 99 Mountains again. Have a look at this list that was sent to Bennie Smith over on Star City Games to deck clinic:

1 Ashling the Pilgrim (general)

1 Akroma's Memorial
1 Gauntlet of Power
1 Magebane Armor
1 Mana Flare
1 Shield of Kaldra
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 That Which Was Taken
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Smoldering Spires
1 Teetering Peaks
1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
88 Mountain


Here’s the same list without the rares:
1 Ashling the Pilgrim (general)
1 Smoldering Spires
1 Teetering Peaks
88 Mountain


Ashling and some land. We’re not getting much help here. The deck clinic went on to suggest: Urza’s Blueprints, Warp World, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, Gamble; Sword of Fire and Ice, Apocalypse; Mindslaver; Godo, Bandit Warlord; Loxodon Warhammer; Countryside Crusher Shinka the Bloodsoaked Keep, and Miren the Moaning Well. None of these, bar Loxodon Warhammer, can help us with the additional restrictions we have placed on the deck.

So I decided to break Ashling down to see what lines I could follow to fill out a deck. Ashling needs to use her +1/+1 ability to burn things and she needs to gain +1/+1 counters so that, when she burns things, she burns them for a lot. While one is a means to the other, these two are not necessarily connected. Ashling can gain +1/+1 counters independent of her built-in ability to add them. If we can add counters outside of her own ability, it won’t count towards the number of activations per turn though it will make the fires burn all the brighter when she does flame on. I first thought of a silly little card called Ashnod’s Transmogrant which, in addition to adding a single +1/+1 counter, turns a creature into an artefact. As I’m sure anyone playing for any length of time is aware, there’s an excellent mechanic that allows for +1/+1 counters to pass from one artefact creature to another: Modular. Unfortunatly Ashling is totally dependant on the Transmogrant to become an artefact and we have no way to find or recur it within our rarity restrictions. So while it maybe a cheap & easy additional +1/+1, it’s not the key to an Ashling – Modular deck. Heck! Back to the drawing board!


There are loads of cards that give +1/+1 counters. Unfortunatly most of these are Rare or non-red. We have the aforementioned modular mechanic, there’s Dragon’s Blood, that’s good. Energy Chamber will help us as much as Modular would: a lot if we can be sure to be able to change Ashling into an artefact with any regularity but very little if we can’t. Power Conduit is an option but we’ll need some permanents with counters.


Let’s leave that there for now and take a look at the other side of Ashling: She needs to activate her ability 3 times per turn to explode. In a multiplayer game Ashling can activate her ability twice on any player’s turn and gain two +1/+1 counters without exploding. Essentially she can grow by +2*X/+2*X for each trip around the table where X is the number of players provided you have enough mana to fuel her. Man is the second key element to making an effective Ashling explosion. You need a lot of mana all throughout the game including the first few turns. This is the only way to ensure not only that you’ll be able to set her off at will but also that you’ll have no problems replaying her again and again. After all her ability is pretty self-destructive, the usual suspects used to protect her from herself are rare and, thus, not available to us.

We are going to need pretty much every non-rare colourless or red permanent source of mana acceleration. This may look boring, it is, however the mana investment Ashling requires is huge and she’s likely to need it all. Excepting all but two of the creature based mana sources, we have Fire Diamond, Mind Stone, Foriysian Totem, Grinning Ingus, Coldsteel Heart, Dreamstone Hedron, Everflowing Chalice, Thran Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, Soulbright Flamekin, Sisay’s Ring, Star Compass, Sol Ring, Temple of the False Gods, Thran Turbine, Red Mana Battery, Ur-Golem’s Eye & Basalt Monolith. The reason we want to avoid creatures is simply that they will likely die when Ashling does her thing. Grinning Ingus allows us to occasionally pay now to benefit the next turn. On the off-chance that this could be useful, as well as having a warm body to throw under the bus occasionally, I’m willing to give him the nod. Coming at it from the other side, Heartstone will allow us to pay less for her ability so I’ll add that in too.

On the land front we have some Mountains and the possibility of Dormant Volcano and the underwhelming Mercadian Bazar. A Terrain Generator is essential of course which will prompt the inclusion of an Expedition Map. Ramping up your land count in this way, and with Wayfarer's Bauble, is where we want to be going.

We mentioned Power Conduit before and the cards that we can use to use it to add (or subtract) counters from Ashling. Mercadian Bazar, Everflowing Chalice, & Red Mana Battery will all turn 1 counter into an extra +1/+1. With the help of a Voltaic Key, it will turn 2 of these counters into extra +1/+1 counters. It can also work in reverse if we want to change +1/+1 tokens into mana for any reason. It allows us to use Coalition Relic counters to stockpile on our Everflowing Chalice or even gain some probably much needed life with Sun Droplet.

Life is going to be a bit of an issue as we’re low on defence and high on throwing fire about. Unfortunatly Red is a little under-stocked with life-gain and equipment that gain life are generally rare. Fortunatly Loxodon Warhammer saw print as an uncommon so that’s an easy inclusion. That’s pretty much all we can allow for in the deck though, hardly more than a nod in the direction of hopefully not dying too quickly! In other equipment Lightning Greaves and Whispersilk Cloak can protect Ashling long enough to go nova and occasionally surprise a player with a quick beating. The only remaining idea I have is Slagwurm Armor. Its +0/+6 gives Ashling some room to explode and still stick about. Unfortunately when you activate her ability for the third time in a single turn, you also remove all the counters. Any damage is likely to destroy the Legend without some help and our “Protection from Red’ equipment is all rare. The Slagwurm Armour gives you a little lee-way in clearing the board without needing to recast your general.


So we have looked at a few of common and uncommon ways to try to maximise both the token and mana production needed to really turn up the heat, what are we going to do with all this mana bar pumping it into Ashling? We could pump it into X-spells, surely there’s a couple at our rarity that are playable:

Blaze, Fireball, Flaming Gambit, Kaervek's Torch, Fanning the Flames, Jaws of Stone, Spire Barrage, Lava Burst, Volcanic Geyser and I may have The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service lying about somewhere. It’s worth a laugh if nothing else. As a sop to killing off the inevitable elf deck that Marc is going to build, I’m including Breath of Darigaaz, Pyroclasm & Sulfurous Blast. That may or may not be enough but it is a lot of potential fire.

That leaves us with the following list:


General:
Ashling the Pilgrim

Creatures:
Grinning Ingus
Brighthearth Banneret

Artifacts:
Ashnod's Transmogrant
Dragon’s Blood
Power Conduit
Fire Diamond
Mind Stone
Foriysian Totem
Darksteel Ingot
Coldsteel Heart
Dreamstone Hedron

Everflowing Chalice
Thran Dynamo
Worn Powerstone
Sisay’s Ring
Star Compass
Sol Ring
Thran Turbine
Red Mana Battery
Ur-Golem’s Eye
Basalt Monolith
Heartstone
Expedition Map
Wayfarer's Bauble
Voltaic Key
Sun Droplet
Loxodon Warhammer
Lightning Greaves
Whispersilk Cloak
Slagwurm Armor
Fireshrieker

O-Naginata
Vorrac Battlehorns
Tenza, Godo's Maul
Explorer's Scope
Adventuring Gear
Sensei's Diving Top
Crystal Ball
Darksteel Pendant

Spells:
Blaze
Fireball
Flaming Gambit
Kaervek's Torch
Fanning the Flames
Jaws of Stone
Spire Barrage
Lava Burst
Volcanic Geyser
The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizards of the Coast® Customer Service
Breath of Darigaaz

Pyroclasm
Sulfurous Blast

Lands:
43x Mountains
Dormant Volcano
Temple of the False Gods
Mercadian Bazar
Terrain Generator

Now we have a list that is a very good starting point for a more solid deck. There are obvious flaws: the lack of creatures, the lack of more pinpoint removal and the fact that we’re totally ignoring any artefacts that may appear on the other side of the table. With 56 land and another 16 mana sources, there’s always going to be space for any changes that need to be made. Feel free to chime in the comments section for any obvious omissions.


Edit:
Now with a lot more games under my belt, I've made the obvious change of taking out the illegal Coalition Relic for Darksteel Ingot and have added a few more goodies. Sensei's Diving Top and Crystal Ball are a good place to start. These are obvious to filter off the lands polluting the top of your deck. While I find you can generally accellerate quickly up to a critical mana point, there's a time that you need to be drawing spells. I may even bring Darksteel Pendant in here such is the need to filted down through your deck. There is next to no drawing in the entire deck so we'll filter instead.

Brighthearth Banneret has taken the place of Soulbright Flamekinas the latter's ability was never relevant and the former has been useful in both reducing the cost of and boosting Ashling with it's reinforce ability.

Finally, as you're building Ashling up to be a huge furnace for the rest of the table, we must remember that she's also a big beater. The biggest issue then becomes the lack of trample so O-Naginata, Vorrac Battlehorns & Tenza, Godo's Maul all join Loxodon Warhammer in turning her into an offensive threat. In the same vein Fireshrieker's double strike is a huge bonus if she can also have trample from elsewhere. Interesting to keep in mind that, as with the Slagwurm Armor, Tenza, Godo's Maul will allow Ashling to survive an activation at 3 counters as it will give her a permanent +3/+3.

Finally, another two equipment round out the Voltron that Ashling seems to be becoming: Explorer's Scope and Adventuring Gear. With the large % of lands in the deck we have a higher chance than usual to hit with the Scope and benefit with the Gear as well as accellerating your land. These last two are more or "we'll see how it goes" rather than "this is what the deck needs" so further testing will decide. The updated decklist is above.

Curious Broccoli - Mono Green Combo beats

Sorry for the brief hiatus, I've been camping!

So far I've introduced Thada-Adel & Rafiq; Group Hug doesn't need much of a mention (apart from re-stating my belief that Hive Mind is NOT a card you should include!); I'm not finished building Toshiro Umezawa to the point where he can be presented to the reading mill... eh, handfuls so that leaves me to introduce you to one of my favourite ladies in Magic: Azusa. (Maybe one day I'll get to bring you Michiko Konda, my #1 lady, in her own deck but not yet!)

What's the deal with Azusa? She's a 3 mana 1/2 that gives you a couple of extra land drops. That's not very..... Legendary. Her backstory isn't really much to go on if you want to base a deck on her especially as her goal of "uniting the peoples of Kamigawa" would by necessity involve other colours and EDH will restrict us to Mono Green. Here is her Wiki entry:

Legendary monk of the sacred order of Jukai Forest, disciple of Rokuan and best friend of Iwamori. A master tracker, she started a quest from Jukai all across Kamigawa, and learned from all the cultures of the world in order to join together the peoples of Kamigawa. Her ultimate fate is unknown.

Meh, that's not going to encourage me to build a deck. Azusa accellerates your lands but then again so did the recently banned Roffellos and he was never a candidate to head up this army even when he was legal. So why choose Azusa over any other mono Green legend? It all goes back to infinite land drops in an Enchantress deck I played years ago. You see, when you have an Exploration in play you get an extra land drop. You play that extra land and somehow return the Exploration to your hand. If you tap the additional land to replay the Exploration, the game doesn't remember your initial extra land and treats the replayed Exploration as giving another additional land drop. If you could find a way to repeat this process multiple times you could conceiveably play all the land in your deck.

Taking this a step further, if an effect allowed you to return a land to your hand during this loop, you could re-play and re-bounce lands for as many times as you desired. Essentially the loop would be self-perpetuating until you want to stop it. In the Enchantress decks of old, the bounce mechanism for both the lands and the Exploration was Words of Wind which had the advantage of forcing your opponent(s) to return their board to their hand in addition to your loop. In the Enchantress deck, you were drawing cards off the loop with the traditional Enchantress effects in addition so, once the engine got going, you essentially neutered your opponent and found your win condition in a single turn.

Moving back to EDH, our first issue is that any such shennanigans need to conform to the formats' strict deckbuilding restrictions, to wit: Either we change our General or we omit the traditional motor and find a replacement. Luckily to achieve multiple or infinite land drops in mono-green we can ignore the Enchantress engine entirely (and thus blue) and simply add Cloudstone Curio.

Ah, jank rares that look great in design but struggle to find their niche out in the real world! I'm of the opinion that this little bauble is potentially one of the most degenerate motors in Magic. Had R&D not included that little "non-artifact" caveat, I'm sure we would have seen quite a lot of broken plays including (old) extended turn 2 infinite storm count into Brain Freeze. Unfortunatly the requirement to actually pay mana to put a non-artifact permanent into play pushed the Curio from easily breakable into very powerful in a very niche set of decks. (Old) Extended Elves ran this in some of the Glimpse/Elf decks as an additional meant not to run out of steam. It allowed the deck to "go off" on a single Glimpse as long as a pair of 1cc elves could continuously trade places netting 2 cards for each full loop. With Nettle Sentinels & Heritige Druid, this little combo pretty much meant you could draw your entire deck if needed.

That's not our goal here though (actually it is but not with elves!) So we have a means to recur lands in the Curio and, in our general, a means to play multiple lands, how do we take this to the next step and make it so we can play infinite lands? If we were to add another creature to the mix we could bounce Azusa off the Curio when we played that second creature and re-play her for 2 addional land drops much like we did with the Exploration in the Enchantress decks of old. There's four options here:

• We could pay G for a Bird of Paradise or similiar. This is a solid option because the Bird/Llanowar or Fyndhorn elf is a useful enough accellerator outside of this interaction. The downside is that it brings the mana cost of the loop to 2GG and we have only 2 additional land drops. We'd run out of mana pretty quickly.
• We could use Dryad Arbor (conveniently a "forest" as well as a creature), making the loop cost only 2G, though, being a creature, the Dryad Arbor couldn't be tapped for mana the turn it arrived. We're still where we were with the 1cc guys, needing 2 extra mana.
• We could use an automatic Token generator like Genesis Chamber though these effects are generally for all players (and you don’t want to give your opponents more resources than strictly necessary) and there are timing issues. When you play Azusa, you generate the token. When the token comes onto the battlefield it triggers the Curio. You won’t have time to play your two additional lands before you resolve the trigger and return Azusa to your hand. If you have a third creature, you could, but this negates the entire point of the exercise.
• Just don’t pay for your creatures at all. As long as you’re willing to share and you restrict yourself to a certain group of creatures, this is possible with Aluren. This 4cc enchantment allows all players to play any creature costing 3cc or less at instant speed without paying its mana cost. Ok, you’re helping your opponents quite a lot here because most decks will have creatures that fall into this category however in EDH the trend is generally towards utility in smaller creatures rather than splashy effects and they must have the creature in hand in order to benefit. These are slim safety-lines to be clinging on to but you can generally profit during important turns enough that the drawback doesn’t really matter.

So we have Aluren and Cloudstone Curio: one allows us to play our creatures for free and the other allows us to bounce a creature once we play another. At this point we can play Azusa and any other cheap creature for free generating multiple instances of two additional land drops. As the Curio will also allow us to bounce lands, we also have our means to generate infinite land drops. If we play a land and bounce a land that has been tapped for mana, we can thus generate infinite mana. If the second creature also has an effect that triggers on entering the battlefield, we have more possibilities. A very basic package could look like this:

- Elvish Visionary & Wall of Blossoms to draw as much of your deck as you need.
- Eternal Witness to recur useful cards from your graveyard.
- Sylvan Ranger & Wood Elves to purge your deck of lands into either your hand or into play.

So the theory is sound and the deck can be built around this interaction. After all, so far we’ve only listed about 15 cards including land to fuel a degenerate engine, however I’m not all that much about the degenerate combo engines and I needed a hook that would make this idea into a deck I’d actually enjoy playing. After all, we don’t really want to combo out in every single game. If that was the aim, I would have just played Rof/Staff and whined when he got the general ban. One of the requirements of having a general that focuses on getting a lot of land into play is that you must get a lot of land into your hand. This in turn requires you to dedicate deck slots to getting those lands into your hand. We have 3 windows of opportunity here:
- Landfall
- “Lands in play matter”, or in our case “Forests matter”
- Lots of mana is good for “stuff”

One of my first ideas was Baru, Fist of Krosa. His “Forestfall” ability was huge when you had a head of creatures in play that you wanted to beef up. In application however he was never a go to guy and generally ended up being a little more kill rather than the means to kill. If I can find a way to get him back on board, he may make it, but sitting waiting for an army was not his bag. Other “Forest matters” cards that made it were Beacon of Creation & Howl of the Night Pack. Both are capable of generating huge armies out of an empty board state. In the case of Beacon of Creation, combined with Planar Portal, it’s an insect army each and every turn until one or both effects are dealt with. This allows you to sandbag other cards in your hand for when your opponents finally do kill your Portal or Beacon.

Speaking of huge armies, when you have a board empty except for 15 lands, Rude Awakening can provide a, well, rude awakening and deal lethal out of nowhere. It’s a risky move but generally one that slips under the radar. Other cards that generally love having lots of land on the table and multiple land drops or boat loads of mana are Ant Queen, Avenger of Zendikar,

Chamelion Colossus, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, Rampaging Baloths and Wolfbriar Elemental. The last, Wolfbriar Elemental, is worth singling out here as another cute 2 card combo. With Cloudstone Curio in play, you can use one of the Curio triggers from the wolves to bounce the Elemental back to your hand. The following turn you can rinse and repeat until the Curio or Elemental is dealt with (with the trigger on the stack or an old fashioned Counterspell). Your army becomes “X 2/2” wolves where X is “your total available mana -4”. In a deck that likes to vomit its mana base onto the table you can see that repeated large wolf armies is a distinct possibility.

The rest of the deck is a large dose of finding lands and getting them into hand or play through increased land drops: (Krosan Tusker, Oracle of Mul Daya, Primeval Titan, Sakura Tribe Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Yavimaya Elder, Rites of Flourishing, Exploration, Gaea's Touch, Seek the Horizon, Skyshroud Claim, Crop Rotation, Cultivate, Gaea's Bounty, Harrow, Kodama's Reach) The need for some defence in the deck has trimmed this down to what we have here. The less you want the deck to be a combo deck the less you need these slots dedicated to thinning your deck out.

There are also a few cards that will increase your mana count as opposed to your land count: (Lotus Cobra, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary, Vernal Bloom) Interesting to note that I have not included the mana elves or BoP mentioned at the very start of the article. In playing the advantage they give you of getting a second turn Curio or Azusa is largely negated by their general uselessness later on in the game.

Some graveyard recursion: (Genesis, Regrowth, Eternal Witness) Notable exceptions are Nature’s Spiral, Restock and Recollect but cut had to be made somewhere and these fell by the wayside.

A pinch of disruption: (Acidic Slime, Terastdon, Woodfall Primus, Krosian Grip) This is no-where near enough of course. No Desert Twister, no Creeping Mold? No Lignify? At a certain point in the deck-building and testing process I had to make a decision as to whether the deck was to be a proactive or reactive deck. Given the fight for places there was little choice but to be the aggressor where possible and thus a lot of solutions are left out. Actually we have a lot of solutions, just not the ones you’d normally associate with green control. One of the most elegant, I always find, is attacking with big monsters for the win. It tends to solve a lot of problems.

Cards that draw or filter cards: (Wall of Roots, Elvish Visionary, Greater Good, Sylvan Library, Scroll Rack, Seer's Sundial, Skullclamp, Harmonize) Green has precious little card drawing so anything that allows you to draw cards is obviously golden. The exception is Horn of Greed. My land drops far outstrip all my opponents however in certain situations, as with Rites of Flourishing and especially Storm Cauldron, the advantage slips more and more against you. The calculation you need to make is not your # of card draws again 1 other opponent but your card draws against the total of all your opponents. You need to be out-drawing them each x3 or x4 in order to benefit from the Horn. For this reason a card that would be an auto-include in a 1v1 deck is marginal here. It simply gives too much advantage to your opponents collectively to be blithely thrown into the deck.

The rest of the deck is a mish-mash of like-type redundancies, cards that will make your army more threatening and ways to stay alive.

Seedborn Muse – With Ant Queen, Kamahl & Planar Portal, the Muse is a terrible weapon that announces your victory next turn.

Haste is not something that people expect from a mono-G deck. Who cares if you make 20 wolves when they can wrath them away on their own turn? Akroma's Memorial & Concordant Crossroads punish players for not dealing with you sooner by deciding the game there and then.

Storm Cauldron is a replacement Cloudstone Curio for lands granting you an additional land drop and punishing your opponents for playing spells that don’t directly remove it. Lifegift is to gain some (ok, quite a lot of) life during the game. When you’re constantly taking 4-8 from your Sylvan Library, you want to stay in the game and this helps you do that.

Two final notes on card inclusions/exclusions: I’ve brought in Crucible of Worlds & Zuran Orb. With Multiple land drops this is essentially the same landfall combo however it goes through your graveyard rather than through your hand, gaining you life as you do so. Don’t be a dick and Strip Mine everyone!

Cards I don’t have that I really need to find a place: The overriding one at the moment is Burgeoning. I think you can see the potential applications!

Enjoy playing Broccoli!

Azusa, Lost but Seeking

25 Forest
Windswept Heath
Misty Rainforest
Wooded Foothills
Dryad Arbor
Sapseep Forest
Terramorphic Expanse
Evolving Wilds
Stripmine
Wasteland
Gaea's Cradle
Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
Khalni Garden

Acidic Slime
Ant Queen
Avenger of Zendikar
Chamelion Colossus
Elvish Visionary
Eternal Witness
Genesis
Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
Krosan Tusker
Lotus Cobra
Oracle of Mul Daya
Primeval Titan
Rampaging Baloths
Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
Sakura Tribe Elder
Seedborn Muse
Solemn Simulacrum
Sylvan Ranger
Terastdon
Wall of Blossoms
Wolfbriar Elemental
Wood Elves
Woodfall Primus
Yavimaya Elder

Akroma's Memorial
Cloudstone Curio
Crucible of Worlds
Eldrazi Monument
Planar Portal
Scroll Rack
Seer's Sundial
Skullclamp
Storm Cauldron
Zuran Orb

Aluren
Beastmage Ascension
Concordant Crossroads
Doubling Season
Exploration
Gaea's Touch
Greater Good
Lifegift
Rites of Flourishing
Sylvan Library
Vernal Bloom

Beacon of Creation
Crop Rotation
Cultivate
Gaea's Bounty
Garruk Wildspeaker
Harmonize
Harrow
Howl of the Night Pack
Kodama's Reach
Krosian Grip
Life from the Loam
Overrun
Recycle
Regrowth
Rude Awakening
Seek the Horizon
Skyshroud Claim

Archenemy - The "Deckbuilder's Toolbox" for EDH players?

Take a look around you. Do you see all those guys (and some girls) grouped together? They're playing multiplayer. How do you know? Well, because it's the "Summer of Multiplayer", of course! What else would they be doing? Wizards have decided to regale us with a continuous stream of additional product since the beginning of last year. We've had Duel Decks (Goblins & Elves, Jace & Chandra, Garruk & Liliana, Phyrexia & the Coalition and soon Elsbeth & Tezzeret), we've had From the Vaults (Exiled & Dragons with Relics following this summer), we've had foil boosters (mixed Alara Block), Premium Decks (Slivers) and, of course, Planechase. That's a lot of additional product on top of the usual 4 set releases. Why are we getting all of this extra stuff?

The basic idea behind it is to generate interest in the game above and beyond the release of a new set. All products are not going to appeal to all players equally so, while you may not care about Slivers, you may be really excited about Relics. And, if neither of those interests you, there's surely another product in addition to the base set and the current block that you can go into your shop and order or pre-order. And the best thing about all of this stuff?

Each product is mostly produced with existing ideas with an added hook: In Planechase it was a Multiplayer concept, in the Duel decks it's foil Planeswalkers or other interesting cards married with iconic rares from previous sets. In FTV we've seen product that's generally hard to get your hands on repackaged, foiled and sometimes furnished with new art all sold together at a very attractive MSRP. For the summer of 2010 and riding the huge popularity wave that EDH has generated for multiplayer games, Wizards have come up with an exciting concept to follow on from the chaos-filled Planechase and that is Archenemy.



What is Archenemy? It's a set of 4 different boxes with a 4 different 60 card decks each built to a theme and accompanied by 20 "Scheme" cards. The idea is simple: You take the deck provided, gather a few friends and they work together, as a team, to try to kill you. You have the advantage of starting with 40 life rather than the usual 20 and you go first, drawing on your first turn. In addition, at the start of each of your turns, you turn over a Scheme card from the top of the Scheme pile and carry out the instructions on it. You draw extra cards, you deal damage, there's lots of fun things you can do that your team of opponents need to find a way around.

Now, I can see a couple of you scratching your heads as if you've seen all this before. Well, it should if you're ever dabbled in either the DC/Marvel Vs System or WOW TCGs, this product is a very close clone of their "Raid" deck: One Vs Many with oversized action cards that benefit the "One" to be turned over at the start of each turn. The fact that Wizards are bringing out 4 versions at once suggests that the product they are providing, while not necessarily a walk in the park, may be less Machiavellian than the twisted Raids that UDE served up. Then again, I may be wrong and we're in for a torrid season of trying and failing to beat the Undead Apocalypse, Doomsday Machine or whatever.

What's our interest as EDH players in this, or any, additional product aside from simply playing it out of the box? Well, it reminds me strikingly of another additional products that Wizards released not too long ago called "The Deckbuilder's Toolbox". This is an expert level product designed to provide beginners with a card base wide and relevant enough to construct the bones of a Standard/Type 2 deck. It's not something that I would suggest to someone starting out in EDH and looking for EDH staples, the random nature of the contents and the very nature of EDH decks spanning the history of Magic doesn't suggest that, unless you are very, very lucky, you're not going to be using it as a base to start your EDH decks.

Archenemy, however, is an entirely different affair. You know what you're getting for a start so you can purchase your product tailored to your particular deck needs, but, more importantly, the quality of the content all the way down from Rare to Common is so high for a player with a limited collection trying to get into EDH that the entire Archenemy set, all 4 decks, is something that I would recommend collection impoverished EDH hopefuls to consider acquiring very seriously. The number of playable EDH cards is extremely high. Let's have a look at what I consider the weakest of the decks EDH-wise and see how it measures up.

Scorch The World With Dragonfire



CREATURES (19)
1 Skirk Marauder
1 Taurean Mauler
1 Fierce Empath
2 Dragonspeaker Shaman
1 Skirk Commando
1 Battering Craghorn
2 Dragon Whelp
2 Furnace Whelp
1 Chameleon Colossus
1 Gathan Raiders
1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Two-Headed Dragon
1 Imperial Hellkite
1 Kilnmouth Dragon

OTHER SPELLS (17)
2 Gruul Signet
1 Breath of Darigaaz
1 Dragon Breath
2 Dragon Fodder
1 Colossal Might
2 Seething Song
1 Volcanic Fallout
2 Branching Bolt
1 Fires of Yavimaya
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Chandra’s Outrage
1 Fireball
1 Savage Twister

LANDS (24)
17 Mountain
5 Forest
2 Kazandu Refuge

Ok, we have a Dragon theme happening here. This is the weakest deck for me because, if your thing is not Dragons, there's less outside of the flappy, scaled, fire-breathing reptiles in this deck that you'll want to put into your EDH decks. If Dragon's are your thing, then there's a lot of good happening here. Let's look at them and their related cards first:

2 Dragonspeaker Shaman
2 Dragon Whelp
2 Furnace Whelp
1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Two-Headed Dragon
1 Imperial Hellkite
1 Kilnmouth Dragon

Little Dragons, Big Dragons, guys that make your dragons cheaper; we're pretty happy with this lot. There's even a potential general in there, the Legendary Ryusei making an appearance. In a dedicated EDH Dragon deck, I could see cutting the Whelps but I wouldn't fault anyone for including all the other 7 cards.

1 Skirk Marauder
1 Gathan Raiders
1 Skirk Commando
1 Battering Craghorn

Next we have a confusing sub-theme of morph dudes. I'm sure you could get a Gathan Raiders into a dedicated aggro deck but the rest aren't great (neither in EDH nor any other multiplayer deck to be honest)

1 Taurean Mauler
1 Fierce Empath
1 Chameleon Colossus

Rounding out the creatures are 3 multiplayer all-stars: Taurean Mauler is a dumb beast but he's also a dumb Dragon, dumb Goblin, dumb Elf or whatever you want him to be, Sailor! [insert inappropriate joke here. Oh, I already did!] He grows with each spell cast and, if he's not dealt with early, can become quite the monster. Sure, he was in Planechase so the reprint is not as exciting as it could be, but that doesn't change his usefullness. If you're playing red and have a creature slot free, the Mauler is a real threat.

Fierce Empath is a 1/1 for 3, not a good deal by any means, but he is also a tutor for fat dudes which explains his presence beside the Dragon Hordes here. If you're suing him elsewhere, he also finds Beasts, Elementals or any other fat thing you need; he's not biased, he just loves the fat.


And Chamelion Colossus? Wow! A chase rare from Lorwyn and holder of the largest single recorded EDH creature win of all time? Yes! I'll have one of those. He's got Pro-black, that's very relevant. He's a Changeling, which means he's everything else as well. And finally he doubles his P/T for 2GG as many times as you want, what's not to like?

Just a note on the price, the MSRP for this product is $19.99. I've seen sites offer this on pre-order for as low as $15.00. I took a random popular game site and checked out the prices on these singles. Excluding the little morph suite and taking the worst condition/lowest price on just the other 15 cards we've seen so far, my best price is €21.65 so, even before you leave the creatures section of this deck and obv. excluding the Scheme cards, you are up on what the originals of these cards are available for. From this point on, each card you see in this deck is essentially free. Sure, you'd have to have wanted to buy exactly these cards in the first place to gain full value, but the point stands that what you're getting is well below the current market value.

The rest of the deck is not terribly exciting from an EDH pov., thus the "worst of the lot" moniker I'm giving plastering on but you do get Gruul Signet, Volcanic Fallout, Fires of Yavimaya, Thran Dynamo (a $3 uncommon) & Savage Twister all of which are very playable in EDH.

Overall, if you're a fan of Dragons and want to add some + benefits to your EDH deck for very little, this is a product you will get a lot of milage out of. Personally, I'm not a fan of Dragons but, I'll happily add them to my collection as trade fodder while creaming off Thran Dynamo, Chameleon Colossus, Fierce Empath for EDH and a Skirk Marauder for my C/U Cube.

Why don't we work ourselves upwards in terms of power? Next on the list is our plans to Trample Civilisation Underfoot:


CREATURES (23)
1 Leaf Gilder
2 Sakura Tribe Elder
1 Shinen of Life's Roar
2 Wall of Roots
1 Watchwolf
1 Selesnya Guildmage
2 Fertilid
1 Hunting Moa
2 Yavimaya Dryad
1 Forgotten Ancient
1 Thelonite Hermit
2 Wickerbough Elder
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Verdeloth the Ancient
1 Pale Recluse
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer
1 Feral Hydra

OTHER SPELLS (13)
1 Fog
1 Rancor
1 Spider Umbra
1 Path to Exile
1 Gleeful Sabotage
1 Plummet
1 Heroes' Reunion
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Armadillo Cloak
1 Harmonize
1 Primal Command
1 Wax/Wane

LANDS (24)
10 Forest
5 Plains
1 Graypelt Refuge
1 Khalni Garden
1 Krosan Verge
1 Llanowar Reborn
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Nantuko Monastery
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree

Of the 38 non-basic land cards listed here that have already been released, I currently play 23 of them in various EDH decks. That's 60% of this deck. There's a good handful of G & W staples from Path to Exile (now a ridiculous $6 online) to Sakura Tribe Elder, Wall of Roots, Krosan Tusker, Harmonize (another $2) and Rancor and this is before you get anywhere near more theme-driven cards like the Saproling generators, specialist lands or even the rares. Yes, I haven't mentioned a single rare from this deck yet and already you have a ton of playables!

Forgotten Ancient is another excellent multiplayer card (though again, like the Taurean Mauler, less exciting for being a Planechase reprint), Kamahl, Fist of Krosa is a house for any sort of token- or high creature-count deck like Elves and he even doubles as a rattlesnake against Wrath effects (if you keep a number of green mana open, you can respond to a Wrath of God effect by turning an opponent's lands into 1/1 creatures thus sealing their doom when the Wrath of God resolves.) Oh, he's a potential General too as he is Legendary.

Once again, this deck is for players who weren't about for all of these sets and really want to find a bunch of solid G/W staples for EDH without selling the rest of their collection. Just the Path to Exile pushes the market value of this deck well above the MSRP and the unamed commons and uncommons aren't slouches either. There's really very little that you can't play in EDH from this deck and that's a pretty big stamp of approval.

We've had a Dragon-themed deck packed full of value and a Saproling-themed deck packed full of solid G/W EDH staples, what does the Undead Apocalypse have in store for us apart from, you know, BbbrrrAAAAiiinnnsss!?



Creatures:
1 Festering Goblin
1 Dregscape Zombie
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Rakdos Guildmage
1 Bog Witch
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Cemetery Reaper
1 Avatar of Discord
2 Infectious Horror
1 Corpse Connoisseur
1 Shriekmaw
2 Twisted Abomination
1 Extractor Demon
1 Kaervek the Merciless
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Vampiric Dragon
1 Scion of Darkness
1 Artisan of Kozilek

Spells:

1 Reanimate
2 Rakdos Signet
1 Zombie Infestation
2 Sign in Blood
2 Terminate
1 Infest
1 Makeshift Mannequin
1 Zombify
1 Inferno Trap
1 Torrent of Souls
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Incremental Blight
1 Bituminous Blast

Lands:

13 Swamp
7 Mountain
2 Barren Moor
2 Rakdos Carnarium

Ok, a little aside before I dive into this decklist; one card that you won't have recognised here is Reassembling Skeleton and, if you were paying attention, you should have noticed Plummet and Chandra's Outrage from the first two decks. Add in the Sorcerer's Strongbox from the last list and you have a couple of spoilers for a future set. We're pretty sure that these are all in M11 so watch out for them. The reason I didn't go into this for teh first two cards is that, really, they are not too exciting:

Plummet 1G Instant
Destroy target creature with flying

Chandra's Outrage 2RR Instant
~ deals 4 damage to target creature and 2 damage to that creatures controller

Sorcerer's Strongbox 4 Artifact
2,T: Flip a coin. If you win the flip, sacrifice ~ and draw three cards.

However, it's Reassembling Skeleton that's capturing the imagination on the forums:

Reassembling Skeleton 1B
Creature - Skeleton Warrior 1/1
1B: Return ~ from your Graveyard to the battlefield tapped.

A 1/1 for 1B is not all that exciting but at any time it's in your graveyard, for an additional 1B, you can bring it back into play tapped. At the end of your opponent's turn is usually a good time. What really has the creative juices flowing, however, is that this little monster has built in reanimation reducing the need for a cog in a combo that revolves creatures rotating out of the graveyard and onto the battlefield multiple times. Less cards means more efficiency and generally more deck-space for protection or redundancy. We'll see what this guy ends up becomming. Back to the deck we have a cornucoppia of black and red reanimation, huge beasts and generally good multiplayer cards:

The ability on Urborg Syphon-Mage, like Avatar of Discord's additinal cost, requires a discard to work. Generally the discard is a disadvantage but when you're discarding a monster to be reanimated by Artisan of Kozilek, Reanimate, Makeshift Mannequin, Zombify, Torrent of Souls or Beacon of Unrest or the damage trigger on Scion of Darkness, well, you can probably live with that kind of "disadvantage". And when the card you're discarding is a Shriekmaw, Twisted Abomination, Extractor Demon, Kaervek the Merciless, Avatar of Woe, Vampiric Dragon or Scion of Darkness, well all the more reason to take advantage of and dump those guys right in there. If you don't have them in hand Corpse Connoisseur gets them directly into the graveyard for you.

Need more discard outlets? How about Zombie Infestation? Your Cemetery Reaper boosts the Zombies you make and can scavenge the various graveyards around the table to deny opponents graveyard resouces while building your own army. Oh and you also have some very playable utility in Rakdos Signet, Sign in Blood, Terminate, Infest & Bituminous Blast. That's easily 23 EDH playable cards, some in multiples, that feature here. It's a beast as it stands and cannibalised for B/r EDH decks it's easy to see a huge number of very playable cards. You're getting reanimation, control, zombies, beaters, this is just an excellent product. There's even a Dragon, if that's your thing!


In terms of monetary value? Just the uncommon Reanimate alone is worth $7. Avatar of Woe (I still can't believe she's in here, this is so excellent!!) brings our total to $15 and almost any one of the remaining rares brings us to within touching distance of the MSRP. That's 3-4 out of 40 non basic-land cards in this deck. This is the skeleton that an excellent B/r (or mono-B) EDH deck will be built and, guess what, there's an extra bonus round: We get a free general! Kaervek the Merciless!

Wow, how can Assembling the Doomsday Machine even hope to follow that? So far we've had R/G Dragons, G/W tokens, B/R Reanimator, now it's the turn of BLUE!! Or, maybe I should whisper "blue" because that's one colour that is not getting the love in Archenemy [strange as Blue seems to be the colour that everyone hates and loves to beat up on!] Assembling the Doomsday Machine is a WUB deck with a very strong artifact theme:


CREATURES
1 Metallurgeon
1 Ethersworn Shieldmage
1 Juggernaut
1 Lodestone Golem
1 Synod Centurion
1 Leonin Abunas
2 Sanctum Gargoyle
1 Master Transmuter
1 Architects of Will
1 Duplicant
1 Magister Sphinx
1 Memnarch
1 Sundering Titan

SPELLS
1 Everflowing Chalice
2 AEther Spellbomb
1 Synod Sanctum
1 Azorius Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Sun Droplet
1 Batwing Brume
2 Agony Warp
1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Thunderstaff
1 Fieldmist Borderpost
1 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Unmake
1 Skullcage
1 Sorcerer's Strongbox
1 March of the Machine
1 Unbender Tine
1 Spin into Myth
1 Dreamstone Hedron

LANDS
7 Plains
10 Island
5 Swamp
2 Terramorphic Expanse

Em, wow much? What this deck lacks in Archenemy synergy in comparison to the Reanimator deck (I'd put this on par with the first two above) it more than makes up in power-artifact rares. If you've not been keeping count, each deck had 8 rares, generally creatures (the G/W has a rare land and the reanimator has the rare and excellent Beacon of Unrest) this is the case again here with 7 of the 8 sporting a P/T:

1 Lodestone Golem
1 Leonin Abunas
1 Master Transmuter
1 Duplicant
1 Magister Sphinx
1 Memnarch
1 Sundering Titan
1 March of the Machines

Now, when I say "power-artifact rares", for once I'm not talking about their monetary value because this deck actually lags behind in the value stakes: the 8 rares don't meet the MSRP and the uncommons & commons, while decent enough in this deck, aren't going to empty the pocket. This is one product where you get only a little more than what you're paying for and adding the packaging and Scheme cards. What this deck does offer you is the chance to buy everything together in one packet rather than shopping about to find individual cards. Another thing about this deck is that it pulls from the latest two blocks quite heavily, so new players who have been playing since the beginning of Shards of Alara, may even have some of these cards, slightly less incentive again.


What you do get however, you can play in EDH, from the rares at least and a few of the remaining cards too. In fact, two of these cards are at the centre of numerous complaints about their power level (Sundering Titan & Magister Sphinx) and a third, Memnarch is the subject or repeated petitions to be allowed as a general, currently to no avail. His exclusion from the ranks of general don't decrease his potency, he can completely dominate a table given enough support. All in all the deck has great cards but is not in the same league as Bring about the Undead Apocalypse.

All in all, each of these deck has something for EDH players looking for specific cards to fill out their decks and a whole lot more for newer players who don't have a huge collection and are seriously looking into getting into EDH without spending a fortune. Quite apart from their value to me personally, I've a decent sized collection, one or two newer players in my group will be looking to pick up one or more of these "EDH base packs" as the bones of their first steps into EDH deckbuilding. To date only the "Premium Deck: Slivers" has offered this step up into EDH though in a much more restricted manner (you have to like Slivers!) Not being able to choose Memnarch as your general tarnishes the obvious desire by Wizards to include a playable Legend in each deck, but he is playable (and strong!) and the other 3 are very valid candidates to lead your EDH army.

Product rating: Top Banana!! Even if the "Scheme"/Archenemy side of the product flops totally (and I don't think it will) this is a quality, value-for-money product that casual players everywhere will appreciate. Good job!

So that's the decks. What about the actual product Archenemy and it's relation to EDH? I touched briefly on the possibility of making my "Ta-Daa!!" (Thada Adel) deck into a dedicated EDH Archenemy deck. Like Planechance, I can really see the possibilities that Archenemy can bring to eth EDH experience but, as yet, that only the theory. I look forward to the practise!

NPEs - Scraping the Gloss off with a Wire Brush

This is a tale of two decks.

This is a tale of two games.

And this is also a tale of two games that someone found to be very NPE (Negative Play Experiences)

Tuesday evening I got a baby-sitting pass as the good lady went out to a concert with her lady friends. Once the fatherly duties were finished, I was free to sling some cardboard with 4 other guys invited expressly for that purpose. Benoit & Arnaud#2 showed up first sporting Major Teroh/Soldiers and GAAIV/Control respectively and there were quickly followed by Antoine playing Thraximundar/Annoyances and Marc with his new "Vampire!" deck. There was some quick re-sleeving to get Anowon, the Ruin Sage into place at the head of Marc's army (though, in retrospect the Ascendant Evincar he had originally would have much more of an impact across more games than Anowon. We pointed this out afterwards and he'll probably change it. ROWR! Go Vamps!)

Facing this onslaught, I played my mono-blue artifact monstrousity "TA-DAA!!" (Thada Adel). A quick note on the deck: I've made changes to it recently, the most notible being the inclusion of Spawnsire of Ulamog. The intention was to eventually go for the 20 point shot and bring out a swarm of Eldrazi. Unfortunatly, with the recent rules change disallowing this, I have integrated the 3 legendary Eldrazi & It That Betrays to the deck. I had intended to cut the Spawnsire itself but forgot to do so before playing, something which I intend to do soon, adding it in most likely for Gather Specimens as a foil to Grave Pact.

You can see our merry group of player's here (From the left: Marc playing "Vampires!", Benoit in red playing Major Teroh/Soldiers, Arnaud top left playing GAAIV and the back of Antoine's head (he of card alter fame), bottom right of the pic. Antoine was playing Thraximundar/Annoyances.)

I had a decent opening hand into a turn 3 Vedalken Archmage. The additional draws got me an Expedition Map which got me a Tolarian Academy. With Darksteel Forge protecting my artifacts and no Wastelands in sight, a couple of turns and some artifacts later, the legendary land and Minamo, School at Water's Edge got me enough mana to drop Eye of Ugin, tutor for Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and play her even working around the in-play Grand Arbiter Augustin IV. It was about turn 7 and the game had taken an hour to get to that point. An hour of saying "TA-DAA!!" every time you play a spell can get a little old. ;o)

Here's a quick shot of my board coming up to the end of the game.

GAAIV has a Mystical Tutor that he has flashed but not played so he's an obvious candidate to be Annihilated as he can just fetch a Wrath of God effect. Major Teroh is also sporting some annoying Wrath effects and "Vampires!" has an Icy Manipulator on the table, though it's effectiveness is restricted by Minamo, School at Water's Edge being able to untap Emrakul. I decide to work counter-clockwise around the table and hit GAAIV to destroy his board. He is left with no permanents and essentialy ends the game as an observer. I can see he's not too happy about it and I offer that we go to game 2 but the table thinks it can deal with Emrakul and play continues.

I attack Major Teroh next and, after a few turns wearing him down, he's next to leave. In the same turn I kill him I play back-to-back Ulamog & Kozilek with It that Betrays already in play. One is countered but now there's a critical mass of Eldrazi and a lot less in the way of allies to help fight against them and the game disolves. One of the last few plays from Marc, the "Vampires!" player, is exiling Emrakul with an Oubliette, just to show that he could and, I have to say, Journey to Nowhere in black is generally not what you expect and is an excellent anti-Emrakul card. Cudeos for the cool play!

So, the outcome of the game was a win for the Eldrazi but a loss for fun, because one player was pretty much iced on turn 6-7, another scrabbled in vain not to be overrun and there was little that could be done by the remaining players to stem the tide. Despite being a couple of cards short of where I'd eventually like it to end up, the deck still man-handled the table playing loosely. Sure, everyone enjoyed playing Magic but there was a feeling of enevitability about the outcome from very early on and the game culminated in the sum of all it's fears as player after player fell powerless before it. (Sorry for the flowery rhetoric, I'm building up to something. Work with me!)

What am I going to do with this monster?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky: TRY AND TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!



Wizards are releasing a new product this month in support of their "Summer of Multiplayer" called Archenemy. In a twist on the traditional multiplayer teams, attack left, pentagon, chaos or any of the other popular variants, this product supports a Hero (or Evil Genius) going up against a host of enemies. One of the decks on offer is "Assembling the Doomsday Machine" which, during the game last night, I felt I was doing already. Now that's a concept I can get behind: Eldrazi making you weaker, making me stronger! Taking over the world!! MMMWWWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ahem.

I have no idea if it will work but I'm willing to give it a try. Just even announcing the flavour texts on the Scheme cards while doing my best "Brain - Evil Genius" impression is definitely a dream to be lived at least once and, if I get to trample the weak & meek with huge Eldrazi, well, what of it? I'm an evil genius! I'm going to talk more about Archenemy once the last deck is spoiled, but it looks like it's a set made with EDH players firmly in mind.

Shuffling up for the second game, I wanted to diffuse some of the ill-will and rather than re-playing "TA-DAA!!" or bringing out Rafiq, I had a rummage and found I had a full Phelddagrif deck so I pulled it out. If I can help some people do some fun and extravigant stuff, then everyone will appreciate it, right?

Em, maybe.

Seats and decks around the rest of the table remained as they were and we got underway for round two.

Major Teroh didn't buy the whole "I have a Group Hug deck, I'm nice, don't attack me" line and started out attacking yours truely. At this point I predicted that Major Teroh would turn out to be the eventual victor, he has a way of just pulling games out of the fire and defeating opponents in one fell swoop and I didn't fancy my chances of stopping him. The others were understandibly happy to let him have is way. My slow land start eventually developped into an Iwamori of the Open Fist (which netted zero other legends) and a Wall of Denial which I then hid behind for a few turns. My next significant play was Hive Mind which stayed until the end and ultimately resulted in the game ending play.



Now, I don't know if you have any personal experience with Hive Mind, but it's not the huggy-touchy-feely card it makes itself out to be. Probably the worst interaction is the win condition of Hive Mind + Pact: All of the pacts are free to cast so once you have Hive Mind in play you're free to throw any one, or multiples, of them out. Hive Mind's copy effect is not optional, it's obligatory, so everyone gets a Pact to put onto the stack. The Pacts cause you to lose the game if you don't pay their upkeep cost however, if your general is not in that colour, you can't generate the mana to pay the cost and you lose the game. That's a pretty low play and obviously not what a Group Hug deck runs. Only thing is, when you have Hive Mind in play, it doesn't account for other players running Pacts. Even if one player pays for the pact, the chances are that you've thinned the field enough to win in some other way quite quickly.

Luckily enough, this wasn't the case for us, our problem was more one of scale.

The second issue with Hive Mind is that every effect is magnified, causing a huge imbalance towards board control effects. Wrath of God is still Wrath of God even if it's copied 4 times however, a creature like Reveillark, which would usually net you a creature or two after a Wrath of God effect, now nets you a creature or two after the last copy on the stack resolves and you subsequently lose them both when the second-to-last copy resolves. No, the bigger problem is more the smaller spells. Doom Blade now kills up to 5 non-black creatures ("up to" because two players can target the same creature with their copy and the second will fizzle), Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile now exile up to 5 creatures, Innocent Blood becomes a Wrath of God for {B} and so on. And very soon the game dissolves into ways of trying to keep creatures in play or winning through other means.

Hive Mind is also not a good card for decks that like to counter things as all the counterspells get copied too and the chances are that one of the original spells will slip through the blanket of Counterspell flak that Hive Mind automatically generates. Obviously the player playing the original spell wants it to resolve so it's more than likely that he will direct his own copy of the counterspell towards another copy of the counterspell, thus ensuring that their spell resolves.

The Group Hug concept is to help other players: Give target player some life, give another target player some cards, everyone puts one or multiple permanents into play for free (though the deck should probably be called "escalation" rather than "Group Hug"!), but it's also true that "you can get too much of a good thing" and with Hive Mind, giving someone else too much of a good thing can kill you, and everyone else, just as easily.

Now, I have to take a moment to slap the Major Teroh player on the wrist because he had the foresight to pack a Seal of Cleansing and run it out early enough. He could have stopped the madness at any time. He didn't. He chose to kill an Underworld Dreams so he could keep drawing cards painlessly and this is the sort of action that could lead to you winning the game but not necessarily very many friends!

Bad boy!

Thraximundar thought it would be a good idea to play a Mind Funeral and everyone got targetted by the copies losing anywhere up to 20 cards into their graveyards. Vision Skeins and Truce got played, Hive Mind copying them both, filling up hands and, at EOT, graveyards. "Vampires!" then decided that he preferred the creatures in his graveyard to those he had in play and played a Living Death (though, to be fair to him, Thraximundar was about to do the same thing).

You know the moment at the top of the fairground ride where everything pauses for a moment and you have this peacefull pause before you start the terrifying downhill descent which either ends up in shrieks of excitement or the guy in the front seat regurgitating his burger and fries all over the passengers in the cars behind him? Well, Living Death on the stack with a Hive Mind in play is one of those moments.

Just resolving the 4 copies and 1 original Living Death took the best part of 45 minutes, some time during which there was a debate about the comes into play interaction of Kor Skyfisher and a Parallax Wave and how the triggers could be stacked to permanently remove creatures from the game (just fyi: in this situation they can't), Tempting Wurm was dumping hands into play and we had additional CIP triggers from 7 or 8 creatures, leaves play triggers from Reveillark and goes to grave graveyard triggers from Noble Benefactor, Veteran Explorer and Deathgreeter. And when we were done resolving the first, it was time to start again and repeat everything another 4 times.

Somewhere in the middle of it all we lost our Grand Arbiter player to complete incomprehension and confusion. I can't blame him.

When the dust finally settled, "Vampires!" passed the turn to Major Teroh who played a Reverent Mantra for black on his army and took the "Vampires!" out of the game. Not sure if it was in revenge for the Living Death turn but it was pretty final! He passed the turn to GAAIV, who simply drew and passed, completely disenchanted by the complexity of the previous 45 minutes.

With a hand of 14 cards hand and a Windfall, I was in a position to finish the game and, given the potential for everything to drag out significantly, I decided to do so. The game ended though, due to a slight oversight on my part, I managed to give the victory to Major Teroh. You see Hive Mind copied Windfall 3 times. GAAIV's copy resolved first and we discarded and drew 14 each. Major Teroh's copy then resolved with the same effect. We then resolved Thraximunder's copy resulting in GAAIV, Thraximundar and myself being decked. At this point each of our spells are removed from the stack and Major Teroh is the only one left standing with a mere 3 cards left in his library. My prediction that he would pull out an unlikely victory turned out to be accurate after all!

So, some fun was had, that's for sure. Brains aren't designed for 5 Living Deaths at midnight after a long day of work and this left everyone with a pretty dazed impression of the game and, in one case, complete bewilderment. Between being on the receiving end of an Emrakul in game 1 and having "the turn of the 5 Living Deaths" inflicted upon him in game 2, I think that GAAIV ended up not fully enjoying his evening of Magic.

So what do we take from this and where do we go from here?

Of course big plays should still be actively rewarded and attempted and generally those plays mean that someone (everyone?) is going to be on the receiving end of a lot of magical hurt. I think I'll re-align "TA-DAA!!" into my Archenemy deck as I said and try to avoid inflicting it on the unprepared.

What about Hive Mind in my Group Torture deck? I may leave it in. There's a possibility that it will draw enough hate to nullify the worst ravages or players will be a little more careful running out huge spells if they are aware that everything will happen multiple times.

As for our GAAIV player, I think he needs a deck that he has built himself, where he knows what everything does and where he can best influence the game. We've told him as much and I think he sees how he can feel more implicated. As to being crushed by the Eldrazi?

Well, there's only so much I can do about that!