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The Kitchen Table #174 – The Compendium of Alternate Formats, Entry Seven: Just One Star

Today’s article investigates a format where you are required to play only those cards with a one-star rating, based on the most current Inquest magazine. I found this format on a website with several alternate formats listed, and it sounded like fun to try. I love alternate formats, as long as they are deckbuilding formats.

Before I begin today, allow me to apologize for the length of today’s title. The ongoing series “The Compendium of Alternate Formats” began before my column has a regular title, namely, “The Kitchen Table.” Combining the name of my normal column with the name of this particular series and then tacking the actual name of the format on the end creates a title that looks like an 80’s Pet Shop Boys song (Such as, “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money),” or “This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave,” or even a more modern title like “I Don’t Know What You Want but I Can’t Give it Anymore.”)

Anyway, today’s article is based around an old concept. Inquest is a gaming magazine that is infamous for not taking things too seriously and lampooning the genre, in addition to producing a price guide. They also release ratings of the cards. Whether it is true or not, Magic Lore is steeping with legends about early Inquest ratings.

One legend has that Inquest once rated Necropotence as a one-star card (out of a possible five), and even went so far as to say it was one of the worst cards ever printed. Again, true or not, who knows… but that’s the legend. I remember Ice Age coming out, and feeling much better about Oath of Lim-Dul’s ability to fuel a combo deck than Necropotence (which finally happened, ironically enough, in Five Color, where it became a minor footnote although a pretty good deck in the Crazy Combo Man genre of the Framework).

To bring the point back to the article that I am writing, Inquest releases ratings for their cards, and these ratings have become legend in the Magic community.

Today’s article investigates a format where you are required to play only those cards with a one-star rating, based on the most current Inquest magazine. I found this format on a website with several alternate formats listed, and it sounded like fun to try. I love alternate formats as long as they are deckbuilding formats.

See, I don’t like writing many articles about formats like Secret Alliances because they aren’t that interesting to me. I had to play Secret Alliances for years before I finally wrote one article about it. I just am not attracted to alternate formats that are just different ways of attacking. Attack to the Left, Emperor, Assassin, Random Enchantment Box, Vanguard, Star Magic, Secret Alliances. Sure, they are a nice change of pace from normal, everyday multiplayer. However, I prefer alternate formats to be alternate formats, not alternate ways of playing.

Format, to me, is a term of art that designates a deckbuilding format, like Vintage format, Peasant format, Standard format, Block format, Highlander format, Anaconda Draft format, Tribal format, etc. It has deckbuilding rules and instructions that differentiate it from other formats. If I can play the same deck in every alternate format you play at your kitchen table, then it’s not a format, it’s just a different way of playing, and that’s a key difference to me.

So when I go to your alternate format website, and I don’t see a deckbuilding format for me in the first few selections, then I’ll likely leave and stop wasting my time.

That’s why every entry in the Compendium is a deckbuilding format (Chess Magic, St. Patrick’s Day, Scavenger Hunt, Rainbow Stairwell, New York, and Tribal Wars) and you don’t see articles like the Secret Alliances one in the Compendium.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at the Just One Star format.

I looked online for a recent ratings page of Inquest. However, I couldn’t find any that were in recent memory. (I found one from the June 2002 magazine, but I don’t think you want to go back that far).

In last week’s article I mentioned that I needed to do more research before I finished writing this article. That research was to go out and get an Inquest, because I couldn’t find the ratings online. Last week, I hit the shops, grabbed Inquest #144 and began reading. Since it talked about HeroClix for a while (I’m a level 2 HeroClix judge), I read it for a bit before turning to the section with the card ratings and price guide.

I believe the next words out of my mouth were something along the lines of, “What… not… <expletive deleted>”

You see, I don’t read much Inquest. In fact, I haven’t bought or read an Inquest in a very long time. A very long time is years and years. It could have been as long ago as Tempest Block, maybe Urza’s Block if I was feeling a bit peckish.

Apparently, at some point in the undetermined past, Inquest removed their ratings from their magazine. This could have been last month or five years ago for all I know. Therefore, I have been writing an article about a format that can no longer exist!

Now, imagine that you are an Internet writer for a moment. You have a Masters degree and make more money in two hours of pay at your normal job than you do writing an article, which often takes 4-5 hours, sometimes as little as 2.5-3 on a day in which you know the topic and have to do little research. Suppose you spent a couple of hours already brainstorming ideas, searching the Internet, going to buy a magazine, writing the first few pages, and reading the magazine. You are so excited about the topic that you write about it in the previous week’s article. What would you do when you find out that article is no longer possible to write?

Here is what you would not do. You would not scrap the article and begin again with a new topic. Too much time and effort has been put into the article. Besides, this would not be the first time I’ve raised old formats out of the trash heap of the past (see here or here for proof).

I am the Necromancer of alternate formats.

Therefore, I see two ways to resolve this issue. Why not talk about both?

Use the Only List I Have Access To

One plan is to use the list that I did find online, and use those cards to build a deck around. I found that list here. You’ll note this list is about as recent as Odyssey Block. Therefore, you can’t use modern stinkers, like Chimney Imp in your decks. You do, however, have a lot of cards to choose from. (I would personally ban Cabal Coffers).

Please note that a few of these card names are in error. Chaoslace is entitled Chaos Lance, for example. Another example, Deadfall is written as Deafall. You can usually figure these out with no problem.

Using this list, you can probably already see ideas boil around in your head. Therefore you comb over the list, looking for buried treasure. When you find a card that you can use, you shiver in glee like a little kid. It’s fun!

The list is not consistent, but that’s part of the fun. For example, you might realize that Knight Errant is on the list, which is a good Grizzly Bear. On the other hand, Grizzly Bear itself is not on the list.

That’s the beauty of this format. You try to find an archetype or two in here. For example, with Cyclopean Mummy, Whipstitched Zombie and Python, can you build a meaningful Black aggro deck? Another aggro selection might look at Green with its Trained Armodon, Gorilla Warrior, Savean Elves (it’s a one drop 1/1!), and Willow Faerie (it flies and its better than Bog Imp!).

Want to play a traditional control deck? Don’t worry. We have bounce (Barrin’s Unmaking) for you to send cards back to people’s hands. We have a modest amount of countermagic (Abjure, Force Void) and of course every deck needs card drawing (Ray of Erasure, Infuse, Mental Discipline). You have removal (Ovinomancer, Coral Net). Also, every control deck needs a big creature to build up to and drop when they feel they’ve won the game. You have Vizzerdrix. I’ve seen worse.

For combo decks, you have an abusive card drawing engine – Unfulfilled Desires. There’s also a much less abusive card drawing engine – Armistice. Or maybe Book of Rass.

Tempo decks might find ways to build around Temporal Distortion or Embargo. Look at cards like In the Eye of Chaos or Invoke Prejudice for your decks. Erosion would fit in here as well. Essence Leak or Power Leak also works here. For secret tech, see Feroz’s Ban. Green might try out Freylise’s Winds.

With all of these options, allow me to build a deck for you using just cards on this list.


Okay, this deck is, um… not that great. That’s what you get when you go Just One Star, baby!

This deck uses Deathlaces to permanently turn an opposing player’s permanents Black. (And it can turn all of their creatures Black for one turn with Touch of Darkness). Then you use Reap to break open the game.

Reap is a Regrowth that gets you one card for every Black permanent your opponent controls. That’s why you need the Laces and Touches.

In order to win, you need two Reaps, and the other can be in your graveyard. You then cast a Reap, and get back some stuff, including the other Reap. While this first Reap is on the stack, sack all of your LEDs. Reap resolves and you have mana in your pool. You get back the cards you Reaped (or is it Rept? Actually, I kinda like Rept now that I think about it). You should now have in your hand a Reap and some other stuff, with some mana in your pool. Now, cast the Reap in your hand, getting any and all used LEDs and that Reap you just played. Drop your LEDs, cast Reap a third time, sack the LEDs, etc.

You make a bunch of mana. Then you play Goblin Festival with the LED mana. You get it back in your hand after a successful Reap. Then you can play it. Once you have a bunch of mana – say, 100 – then you put fifty direct damages on the stack and kill your opponent in one great go. No matter under whose control the Goblin Festival goes, the damage is on the stack to your opponent, and that cannot be changed simple by changing possession of the Festival.

Beware that when you go off, your opponent might have enough mana to kill you if they take control of the Festival. Suppose that you are at four when you go off, and your opponent is at twenty and has eight mana available. If you put all of your Goblin Festival triggers on the stack at once, they’ll take damage until it switches, then put four triggers on top of the stack and kill you.

Therefore, you need to plan ahead. Make a bunch more mana than you need – say, 500. Then put enough triggers on the stack to kill your opponent. Then when they get control of the Festival and put triggers on the stack targeting you, allow them to resolve until you get the Festival back, and then shoot them for a bunch more all at once.

Obviously, for this deck to work, you need to get the right cards. Therefore I have included several ways of drawing cards in this deck. Armistice comes down after you have LEDs and Reaps going off but when you need to find more combo pieces. You don’t care about giving your opponent life, since you will combo kill them. I included a handful of Plains, just in case you can cast one early and use it to search your way through your deck.

We also have a pair of Book of Rass. Use this card sparingly. Against beatdown decks, it’s worthless. Against other combo decks or control decks it can get you a bunch of cards at a cheap price.

The deck also features a set of one of the older slowtrips. Foxfire, in addition to keeping a big nasty from hitting you while you set up, also yields you a card for your trouble, thereby allowing you to speed your way through the deck (well, speed as much as possible with a three-mana spell that nets you all of one card on the following turn).

Conch Horn is a pretty acceptable card in this format. You can recur it with Reap to try and find combo cards. Since it’s colorless, all of your lands allow you to use it, so you can try to fix a poor manabase in the early game. One great thing about the Horn in this deck is that you can use it to hide a card from your hand to the top of your library right before you use a LED.

Finally, the deck features some defense. Phyrexian Walkers and Wall of Wood are provided for cheap and quick defense. They are so cheap that playing them does not interfere with the later card drawing and combo playing that you will be doing.

Obviously, the deck includes the LEDs or Lion’s Eye Diamonds. This is not a card I use very often in my decks (This is first time in all of the hundreds of decks I’ve created for SCG over the years).

Alright, let’s take a look at another deck you can make from this list.


This deck wins by using Gaea’s Balance to get one of each basic land, which are then used to play Atogatog and Coalition Victory. That’s the goal of the deck. Normally Gaea’s Balance is a gamble, but with little countermagic, it’s a safer play in this format.

To find your combo cards, like the deck above, there are drawing spells. Both decks used Conch Horn, which may become one of the sleeper hits of the format. Drawing two cards in order to get to your good stuff is pretty saucy.

Foxfire is included here as well. Fogging a creature and drawing a card is highly valuable. Pyknite is almost the same thing – chump blocking an attacker and drawing you a card.

For defense, this deck packs the aforementioned Phyrexian Walker. I think those are also really strong in this environment. Aggro decks are probably the first thing many players think of, and they are easy to build from this card pool. It not until the fourth turn that you have to worry about being attacked by a creature with enough power to take out the Walker.

Root Spider is a solid defensive creature, since it becomes a 3/2 first striker in defense. There aren’t that many creatures that will get through that without evasion or a lot of mana. Durkwood Boars can get through that. Ironroot Treefolk is getting through it. Tolarian Serpent is getting through. That’s about it in the playables.

I love Spore Flower in this format. Fogging every third turn is actually pretty good when you have chump blockers and Foxfires for the other turns. Having multiples in play simultaneously is solid.

Other than that, this is a pretty straightforward deck. Failing to find a Coalition Victory, you might win by attacking with an Atogatog.

And that brings us to the close of this deck, and this style of Just One Star. Sure, the card list is old, but it definitely includes many cards that feel like one-star cards (except for that Cabal Coffers. That’s just massively out of place. It’s the Tolarian Academy of this format, and I think you should definitely ban the thing.)

Just Play “The Worst Cards Ever Format”

Another option is to just build a deck of the worst cards ever printed. This time, your evaluation is subjective and objective. You need to get your buddies to agree that your cards are true one-star cards. Although you lose the usefulness of list, you gain all of the cool arguments you get to have about whether or not a given card should qualify.

However, because there is no definitive list, there is no way I could build a deck in this option. Each group’s view of what is and is not one star would change. I’d pick bones with the previous list, including cards like Lion’s Eye Diamond, Knight Errant, Reap and so forth. Still, the list is pretty close to what you would get if you sat ten Magic players around a spoiler of all the cards of all time and polled them for their personal rankings.

I suspect that under this format, you would need some way of clearing cards prior to building a deck. You probably wouldn’t want to build a deck of crappy cards only to discover that the crappy card you thought some card would be classified as was a key component in some nasty deck in some format. For example, looking at the one-star list, you’ll note the lack of Donate. Why? Donate is a bad card. However, it was also the key component to a massive tournament level combo deck. As such, its ability to be amazing in a certain environment bumped it up, but as a card, it’s still a one-star card in my mind. I might bring a deck with Donate and you’d call me on it because it was a major tournament card.

The same is true of other cards like Reap (part of ReapLace, a Vintage level deck), or Mana Severance (Part of a Charbelcher combo deck) and so forth. There are numerous bad cards that have a lot of power in certain decks. That’s why I think your group needs to decide on what cards would be allowed. I recommend a nomination process.

Get on your group’s forum, or e-mail list, or myspace account, or newsgroup, and nominate cards. Then, you can find out if you can include the card or not.

One subjective area for your group to consider is the presence of hosers. The one star list from Inquest featured a lot of hosers. These are good in some circumstances, and you’ll need to decide in what cases are hosers lousy cards versus normal cards.

And with that, we bring to close another alternate format article. I hope that you enjoyed today’s addition to the Compendium. It’s too bad I couldn’t find an up to date Inquest rating list.

However, if you know when the last list was published, or even what magazine it was in, I’d love to hear from you in the forums. I have another idea brewing in my head, and I’d like that information if it is available. Thanks!

Until later,

Abe Sargent