I won a 9th Edition prerelease. It was my first tournament win, and it was really nice.... As was the twenty-booster prize. Being a student* and all, I'd never had so many boosters in my hands. "Oooh! I'll get some painlands, one or two Wrath of Gods, maybe some Hypnotic Specters or Rathi Dragons...".

You can all guess where this is going.

Some Winston Drafts with my girlfriend later, I was left with a pile. Well, I did get a couple of Blinding Angels, and a Sacred Ground, Polymorph, Mahamoti Djinn, Teferi's Puzzle Box and some other crap** I don't want to bother you with right now.

Now, I have a psychological condition: the only way I can avoid being depressed by this craptastic crop of rares is to use them in my decks. Parsing through my binders looking for neat interactions, I found this little gem called Moonring Mirror. No prizes for spotting the combo with one of the aforementioned superstars.

Moonring Mirror is an interesting, if weak, card drawer. For five mana, you get a personal Howling Mine... that's only going to pay off in four or five turns. On its own, that is. Play with some sort of card cycling, and it becomes a monster card advantage engine. And what better way to cycle cards that Teferi's Puzzle Box? Every turn, you put as many cards under the Mirror as you have in your hand during your upkeep... Plus one for the draw phase. Soon, you'll swap for ten cards at the beginning of your upkeep, put eleven under the Mirror (or should I say behind the Mirror?), play some stuff, swap again, lather, rinse, repeat.

So what do you do with all those cards? Man, do all my decks revolve around drawing obscene amounts of cards? I used Bulwark in my last article; now we have better. Immediate. Cheaper. Splashable. Common. Ladies and gentlemen... Spiraling Embers! Basically, this deck is all about stacking twenty behind the Mirror and throwing Spiraling Embers to the dome. It could even work for Two-Headed Giant (though I haven't tried it yet).

What we're looking for is a deck that sees a lot of cards. How convenient, since it is a combo deck. To the cards, then!

Whirlpool Warrior, Whirlpool Drake, and Whirlpool Rider
These are tailor-made for the deck. Since decking can be a serious problem, some search cards don't quite fit - notably, the ones that send stuff to the graveyard, like Tolarian Winds. The Whirlpool gang, however, provides the necessary card movements without shrinking your library, and give you some chump blockers to keep the life total above that nasty zero total. And the Warrior even has a red activation. Wizards is building decks for us!

Floating-Dream Zubera
Same here. Not as efficient a searcher, but it does net a card.

Fabricate
Real tech here; use it to search for artifacts. Like the ones in the combo, maybe?

Evacuation
One more staller, letting your Whirlpool crew do double-duty.

Counterspell
Real combos need protection. Stupid combos need a lot of protection.

Wayfarer's Bauble
Much-needed mana acceleration and fixing.

The rest of the slots are pretty obvious; just fill with defence and card drawing/cycling. Card "drawers" like Fact or Fiction and Impulse that don't actually say "draw a card" are a no-no here, since they don't trigger the Mirror. Try this on for size:

Behind the Mirror
1 Teferi's Puzzle Box
1 Moonring Mirror
1 Spiraling Embers
3 Fabricate
3 Whirlpool Rider
1 Whirlpool Warrior
4 Floating-Dream Zubera
4 Merfolk Looter
2 Tolarian Winds (I had to use them after all...)
2 Wall of Tears
1 Evacuation
4 Counterspell
2 Counsel of the Soratami
1 Brainstorm
4 Words of Wisdom
4 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Shivan Reef
16 Island
5 Mountain

Yes it's a pile. Yes I have one copy each of a three-card combo. Yes, I have some sub-par stuff. Sorry, but these are the cards I have, and the deck did go off the first time I played it. (Okay, so I asked my girl to build a deck that was not incredibly tough for me to play against, but it still withstood a good amount of offense and went off relatively easily.)

The thing is, with all those cards moving around, it's pretty easy to find the one-ofs. Once the combo is out and you have twenty-plus cards behind the Mirror, just swap, put them at the bottom of the deck (with Embers on top if it was in your hand so you'll draw it again), draw everything back, and win.

Anyway, now I have more Spiraling Embers, and Ravnica brings a real goodie to this deck, so let's update it for high performance. The card? Mindmoil. I mean, Teferi's Puzzle Box on steroids? Sign me in! This allows you to go off much faster, so it kicks Puzzle Box out of the deck - so damn! What am I going to do with it now?

Mindmoil Featured by Luis Almeida on 2005-10-02 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10555.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 4 Chrome Mox 4 Howling Mine 4 Moonring Mirror Creatures 4 Whirlpool Rider 2 Whirlpool Warrior Enchantments 3 Mindmoil	Instants 4 Accumulated Knowledge 4 Brainstorm 4 Counterspell 4 Words of Wisdom Legendary Creatures 2 Kami of the Crescent Moon Sorceries 3 Spiraling Embers Basic Lands 12 Island 2 Mountain Lands 4 Shivan Reef	Stats: Average mana: 1.68 Average creature mana cost: 2.25 Average creature power: 1.25 Average creature toughness: 1.75 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 23.33% Instants: 26.67% Artifacts: 20.00% Creatures: 10.00% Lands: 6.67% Enchantments: 5.00% Legendary Creatures: 3.33% Sorceries: 5.00%
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

This deck is, of course, much more consistent than my real one. Cheap card drawing is really important, and there's plenty of that. The key here is to play Howling Mines and Kamis early, use Moxen to accelerate into a turn 4 Moonring Mirror, then play Mindmoil on turn 5, go crazy with cantrips and Whirlpool guys on turn 6, then win on turn 7.

The Chrome Moxen work wonders here because they are a spell and activate Mindmoil, and also keep your mana going so you can play more cantrips. You can go off on turn 6 if you manage to play Howling Mines on turns 1 and 2. From there, it's not too hard to play another on turn 3 (remember, the Whirlpool Warrior is a great searcher). If after this you manage to play Moonring Mirror on turn 4, you don't even need Mindmoil - just go cantripping and Whirlpooling on turn 5 and you'll have the necessary cards on turn 6, ready to burn your opponent out of the game entirely. And after goldfishing a lot on Apprentice, I can tell you this is not that uncommon.

There are a few pitfalls in the deck - you have to be extremely cautious not to deck yourself. It's easy to be tempted into playing a lot of spells the turn before you go for the kill. Since you never know what you'll get back with Mindmoil in play, you'll have a tendency to go "Whirlpool Rider, Brainstorm in response, Words of Wisdom in response..."

Don't do that before counting the cards - you don't really need more than twenty cards behind the Mirror (remember, after swapping you'll draw another, making the twenty-one needed to do twenty damage). This kind of play can remove something like thirty cards, depending on your hand size when you start doing it. Then you're left with two cards in the library and you have two Howling Mines in play... Hey, look, Spiraling Embers is a sorcery! You're dead!

Instead, just know that the number of cards you need removed the turn before the kill is: Opponent's Life Total - Number of Howling Mine effects in play. And that's not counting the card-drawing you can play before Spiraling Embers.

Another thing to remember is that with Brainstorm, you can guarantee there is a Spiraling Embers behind the Mirror. You play it and draw three, triggering the Mirror. If you have a Spiraling Embers in your hand, just put it back on the library. The Mirror ability resolves, and Spiraling Embers gets removed along with two other cards (and if the other one is a Counterspell, you have your combo protected for sure!). This also mans that if you need red mana, you can throw an Embers into a Mox without worrying that there'll be none in the removed cards.

Yes, the combo is still fragile - one artifact destruction spell and you're history, and because of all the card swapping going on you can't count on having a Counterspell at hand - those are in the deck only to backup Spiraling Embers. But hey - we're talking Moonring Mirror here!

Well, that's it for now. I have some more Ravnica combos in mind, but this article's going long already, and I have to save something for the future. I hope you enjoyed it! If only that Teferi's Puzzle box would stop mocking me...

Luís Almeida

* - This is about to change, though. Soon I'll start working and have the money to buy all the cards I want! Mwahahahaha! Of course, I won't have much time to play; life sucks, doesn't it? Enjoy your school years, guys - they are awesome and don't last forever!

** - Don't get me wrong, I know these cards are interesting. I'm a casual player, not a tournament shark. I never even played a constructed tournament in my life. However, when I crack boosters, I hope for the good stuff. I want the $20 rares. When I want to build a deck around Polymorph, I'll trade for it or buy it from the crap bin.