fbpx

The Kitchen Table #296 – Shandalar Allied Multicolor Decks

Read Abe Sargent every week... at StarCityGames.com!
Thursday, July 30th – Today is the 6th iteration of a series of articles that goes back to Shandalar decks, updates them once, then again, and gives various rules for each. These are some classic decks and ideas, made modern with a few new touches. With M10 a mixture of new and old, it felt like time to continue this series.

A happy day to you! Welcome, welcome. Today is the 6th iteration of a series of articles that goes back to Shandalar decks, updates them once, then again, and gives various rules for each. These are some classic decks and ideas, made modern with a few new touches. With M10 a mixture of new and old, it felt like time to continue this series.

Shandalar… What is it, and why should you care? Excellent question! Shandalar is an old PC game designed in part by Sid Meier and MicroProse that took the concept of Magic and added it to a plane called Shandalar. In the game, you duel foes with Magic decks you build from cards you find as you journey. The game is unique, different, and a total blast to play.

The game used 4th Edition cards, and then released expansions that put in all of the cards from Beta, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and some from The Dark, Legends, and the promo cards. However, over the course of several expansions, the cards and decks got all fuddled, so you don’t have the best decks available to the enemy.

In five previous articles, I had decks that served the various archmagi in Shandalar, who are your enemy. Each of these decks is built around a theme. What I would do is give you the initial Shandalar deck, then fix the deck using cards available at the time for Shandalar, then finally finish by updating the deck idea for modern times.

The interesting thing is that these are the decks and ideas from the original cards and sets. You see some of the classic combos and ideas from the early days of Magic. We’ve seen classics like Thicket Basilisk + Lure and Hurricane + Circle of Protection: Green. This also gives me a chance to stretch my deck building muscles.

Today I want to explore those decks played by servants of the archmagi that are of two allied colors. Each of these is another take on the earliest cards running. Without further ado, here we go…

Tusk Guardian

This was one of the weaker two color foes you face in the game.

Original Deck List:


As you can see, the original deck rocked a lot of animals, plus War Mammoths. There are no intelligent creatures here, like Elvish Archers or Benalish Hero. This should be an easy fix.

Modified Deck List:


I began my changes by cutting 2 Colossus, 2 Force of Nature for 4 War Elephant. I also added dual lands and Elephant Graveyards. I also swapped the Elder Land Wurms for basic Craw Wurms. Both are wurms, but the Craw Wurm is much better for this deck, which needs to attack.

Now let’s spin it into a modern elephant tribal deck.

Updated Deck List:


I chose to steer clear of the Loxodon for this deck. This is not a Loxodon deck, but an elephant, mammoth and armodon deck. Your Elephant Graveyard can tap to regenerate one, and the Graveyard isn’t even legendary, so you can have multiple out. Enjoy the Graveyarding.

The deck is simple. Play beef, and lots of it. We have 24 elephants with costs ranging from 3 to 6, and I chose to play no accelerants. Although the original deck rocked Birds of Paradise, I decided to cut them, and stick with cards that have and help beef.

Overrun is great at getting your message of elephant goodness across. Path to Exile and Wing Shards can help to clean the opposing force of nasty creatures that get in your way. Finally, I included a pair of Nature’s Resurgence, which will usually draw you a bunch of cards, especially since many decks can out removal you.

I hope you enjoyed the elephant deck. Let’s see what’s next on the agenda.

Ape Lord

The Ape Lord is a Red/Green foe you face in the mountains and forests of Shandalar. As you can see, it has some issues to work through.

Original Ape Lord Decklist:


This deck is one of several that I think anticipates the later expansions. If you play with just Spells of the Ancients, the first expansion, this deck is fixed with the new cards, but after you add Duels of the Planeswalkers to the mix, that deck goes away and you are left with this lousy mix.

We need to severely modify it.

Modified Ape Lord Deck:


The first and obvious thing was to pull some lands for Taigas. The next thing is to add a certain card that makes this deck’s theme make sense. I pull 4 Firebreathing for 4 Kird Ape.

I’m not sure why this deck has such a severe X spell and pumping theme and yet avoids Earthquake and Hurricane (note the 22 lands). Birds, Elves and Mana Vaults are not enough, especially since the AI plays Mana Vaults very poorly. I pull them, Dragon Engine and the Detonate to make space for:

4 Barbary Apes
1 Lightning Bolt

The Apes gives you more theme. I’m going to retain the deck’s funky mana and flavor, but pulling out the worst of the lot and replacing it with some early creatures really helps the deck out a lot.

Updated Ape Lord Deck:


Alright, let’s take a look at the deck and how it broke down. I retained the weird X theme with 10 X spells, Torch, Fireball, and Hurricane. You can use these to really go after someone’s head.

I also pushed the Ape theme with Kird Ape, Uktabi Kong, Uktabi Orangutan, Ravenous Baboons, and Simian Grunts.

Finally, I added more Lightning Bolts to bring the deck up to 4.

Ravenous Baboons and the Uktabis are great at taking out some permanents you may not want in play. Uktabi Kong ‘s Shatterstorm is quite powerful, plus it can spit out apes like crazy.

I tried to find a common ground for Apes and X spells, and it was not easy, but I hope this deck walked the line well enough. Enjoy!

The Sedge Beast

This B/R deck is another deck idea that implies a missing card; in this case, the missing card is Sedge Troll. In fact, all three of these decks predicted a new card to be added later. Why make Tusk Elephant White unless you knew about War Elephant coming down the road in the first expansion? Then Kird Ape and Sedge Troll are obviously inspirations for the last two enemies.

The Sedge Beast Original Deck:


This is, flat out, one of the best decks you’ll face naked. Land destruction meets cheap creatures for a difficult foe. We’re going to make it even more difficult.

The Sedge Beast Modified Deck:


Badlands are an obvious addition. I pulled the four artifact creatures for 4 Sedge Trolls. I then pulled 2 Weaknesses and two Cyclopean Mummy for 4 Sinkholes. Ouch. More land destruction is hot. I wanted Lightning Bolt, but I can’t add them to every deck around. This deck chose not to run them, and I have to respect that.

The Sedge Beast Updated:


This is just a quick LD and beats deck featuring cards like Jackal Pup, Carnophage, Stone Rain and more. Sedge Troll, of course, makes the requisite appearance.

Anyway, the deck is easy enough to build, and I added Bolts this time to the deck. I felt they were needed. I dropped the more expensive stuff, like Fissure. You could also add Land LD in the form of Wasteland or Strip Mine to suit your format.

I hope you like.

The Mind Stealer

This U/B deck was another powerful foe because it ran, not only some of the best cards in its colors, but also in the format. It was not at the level of Sedge beast or Blue’s Shapeshifter, but it was strong.

Original Mind Stealer Deck:


As you can see, the deck features some different cards. There is no question this is a control deck. Yet, it appears to prefer to steal resources rather than destroy them. There is no Terror here, or anything similar like Weakness. Instead, it is all about taking other cards. Animate Dead takes them from the graveyard, Steal Artifact and Control Magic from in play.

Modified Mind Stealer Deck:


The first addition is the ubiquitous change to dual land. I pull the 2 Junun Efreet for 2 Amnesia, which is much more flavorful.

Call to the Grave is an Astral card in the game that costs 2B, a sorcery: Put a random creature from a random graveyard into play under your control and take damage equal to its casting cost.

That makes it worse than Animate Dead by my accounting. You can prevent the damage with something like a CoP: Black. The randomness is too random for the cost.

I pull the Siren’s Calls. They don’t fit the deck thematically all that well, and they don’t fit mechanically. It’s not like the deck features Royal Assassins to kill the attackers or anything. I add two Doppelgangers, which seem to fit the deck pretty well all things considered.

Finally I pull one Unholy Strength for an Old Man of the Sea, who steals things, so he fits. And there we have the modified deck.

Updated Mind Stealer Deck:


Here is an Updated version of the original deck, but frankly, just about any U/R control deck will fit the theme. This one is rocking the new Mind Control over other steal effects because of flavor, although I also toss in a pair of Confiscate to supplement the stylings of Mind Control.

Animate Dead stayed and Terror seems like a flavorful way for a Mind Stealer to kill things (over my normal options like Eyeblight’s Ending, Rend Flesh, Expunge, etc).

I wanted some basic countermagic, so I included 4 Counterspell and 2 Forbid. You can get a nice Forbid buyback thing going with a big Mind Spring. Mind Spring and Shatter seemed like perfect fits here as Mind oriented cards that really help the deck out.

Mindless Automation, was, I thought, a nice touch. What kind of minion does the Mind Stealer play? Well, it’s gotta be one that has no mind to steal back. It’s Mindless! Similarly, the Phantom Monster seems like a nice fit.

It’s not a very interesting U/B deck, but then again, it doesn’t have a really interesting father to be the descendant of. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this deck, and now let’s move to the fifth and final allied color deck from Shandalar.

Winged Stallion

Original Winged Stallion Deck:


Karma, Magical Hack, Lifetap, Segovian Leviathan — this deck obviously is playing with Magical Hack. Then Island Sanctuary and Howling Mine to give you a way of preventing attack. It’s a little weird, but we can manage.

Modified Winged Stallion Deck:


The first thing I want to do, other than dropping in Tundra, is to add Moat. Moat does what this deck wants to do, and then we can pull the handful of ground creature to make way. The result would be a much more streamlined and stronger deck, but there is a problem.

I’ve read on other sites that the AI refuses to play Moat. They will add Moat to decks with no non-flyers, and it won’t play it. They’ll have no creatures at all, and it won’t play it. The AI refuses to play Moat, so there’s no sense going in that direction.

Why is Psionic Entity in this deck? It’s not a tim deck, it’s not a deck that is concepted as a psychic or mind deck. What’s it doing in here, besides sucking? Mesa Pegasus is in here because it’s the Winged Stallion deck, so I get that. But the Entity is nothing. I suppose the deck wants to play Holy Strength or Holy Armor on the Entity and then tim away, but that is sucktastic.

-4 Psionic Entity
+2 Angry Mob
+1 Disenchant
+1 Ivory Tower

The Angry Mob actually fits the theme. The Tower is great in this Howling Mine laden deck. The extra Disenchant is nice too.

-1 Holy Strength
-1 Holy Armor
+2 Swords to Plowshares

This is for obvious reasons. Now the deck looks much better.

Updated Winged Stallion Deck


This deck uses the same principle as above — Magical Hack + a few cards that can use it, and Island Sanctuary + Howling Mine. These are cute, and I kept them.

I replaced the Hack with mind Bend, and then added some color hosers instead of just the land hosers. Both Wrath of Marit Lage and Light of Day are nice adjuncts to the Karma replacement of Stern Judge. Use them and abuse them.

For flying defense, my first thought was of Commander Eesha and Lieutenant Kirtar. Then I decided to add Dawn Elemental, despite the casting cost, because I don’t think you’ll mind dropping them on turn 6 or 7 or 8 because they are that good in this deck.

Maze of Ith and Kor Haven are ideal choices for this deck, since your opponent may not have many cards that are attackable anyway. Mystic Decree is tech, and there’s just one. No one expects Mystic Decree to get played on them from a U/W deck. Who expects U/W to play a Gravity Sphere? It’s awesome! With a Mystic Decree out, you cannot be attacked by creatures dodging an Island Sanctuary. When you activate the Sanctuary, that’s it.

Against a monocolored deck, Mind Bend + Light of Day shuts down all attackers and blockers. Island Sanctuary + Mystic Decree shuts down all attackers against you too. This deck really does not want to get hit. I added a few emergency Swords in case of things unexpected happening. For example, Kamahl, Pit Fighter would really suck if you didn’t draw Wrath of Marit Lage.

I added a pair of Ivory Masks because I wanted you to be able to sit back and enjoy. Now Kamahl won’t be so much of a problem. Players with cards like Fireball and Mind Twist and Psychic Drain won’t be a problem.

Your deck does not want to get decked, so I tossed in Thran Foundry to reset your deck. Now you have an emergency reload button in case you are in danger of deckedness. Your deck does not like sweepers. I couldn’t find space for countermagic, but if you find room for a few counters, I’d hold them just for sweepers like Akroma’s Vengeance and such.

You can win by using Stern Judge and tapping it over and over again to cause a loss of life against anybody with a Mind Bend. However, you lose life too. If your opponent is Mono-Blue, Mono-White, or Blue/White, then you cannot use Stern Judge easily for a win. Instead, Commander Eesha can nip over for two turn after turn after turn, and you have a spare in case she get’s axed. I added a single Azorius Herald to your deck to give you an unblockable creature, just in case Eesha doesn’t work out because she gets killed too much. I considered a Deep-Sea Kraken but thought it would be killed off too much in multiplayer.

You can always Light of Day your foe and swing with your creatures. Even Stern Judge makes a decent clock.

Finally, you can win by decking your opponent with Howling Mines while you activate your Island Sanctuary to keep alive.

And that brings us to the conclusion of another article, and another article in this series. I hope you had fun today and found something in here to take with you. We’ll catch you next week!

Until later…

Abe Sargent