Here's another issue of the Genesis articles. I hope you enjoyed my first try (Genesis of a Combo Deck) and Cathy Nicoloff's (Genesis of a Fatty Deck). This wasn't intended to be a series in the first place. Cathy basically was mocking my pompuous title. However, we got some good feedback and decided to keep on going with our deckbuilding stories.

I have always been fascinated by the thought process behind deckbuilding. Cards are like little pieces of a puzzle. They go together well or not, forming synergies and marriages, sometimes contradictory in theory but great in practice. Sometimes three cards together produce a game winning-effect that two of these cards only wouldn't. It's part of the beauty of Magic. The cards are mysteries, challenges to the adventurous deckbuilder. They invite us to journey through our own brain searching relentlessly for our next deck idea.

For me, deckbuilding almost always starts with one card. The glimpse of a playable idea often occurs when flipping through my collection and looking at stuff I had forgotten or denied existence in a while. The other day, my thoughts rested on Diminishing Returns.

« Diminishing Returns– 2UU– Sorcery
Each player shuffles his or her hand and graveyard into his or her library. Remove the top ten cards of your library from the game. Each player draws up to seven cards. »

« Draw seven cards ». Last time we saw cards like that, they were Memory Jar and Time Spiral. It's been said many times that « draw seven » cards should never be reprinted again. They're too abusable. Other cards that would produce the same kind of effect, like Windfall, Wheel of Fortune and Timetwister, have been banned or restricted in tournament play. There's something wrong with them.

This one is still around.

I remembered playing Diminishing Returns at 1999 French Nationals. It had struck me then how powerful the card was. I was playing a monoblue Mind Over Matter combo deck, whose kill cards (and engine cards) were 4 Strokes of Genius. The remove from the game effect, which is supposed to be the card's downside, was never, ever hurtful, in testing or during the tournament. The chances to actually remove all Strokes from my deck were extremely slim. The boost of a fresh hand was simply a game winner for this deck who used Mind Over Matter and cards in hand to create mana for a big game-ending Stroke.

4 Grim Monolith
4 Mind Over Matter
4 Show And Tell
4 Intuition
4 Meditate
3 Diminishing Returns
4 Prosperity
3 Stroke of Genius (1 in sideboard)
3 Power Sink
1 Counterspell
2 Memory Lapse
1 Rescind

3 City of Traitors
2 Ancient Tomb
4 Svuylenite Temple
14 Island

No real fun, though. The deck was of course designed to abuse Mind Over Matter, whose banning was impending.

But that was a long time ago...

And that was another of these boring tournament combo decks tyring to Stroke you for seventy on turn two. Sigh.

So I'm sitting here with four Diminishing Returns staring at me. Time for a new deck! Nowadays, I scare myself thinking that all I try to build at first are combo decks. Combo decks may be boring to play against and a problem for tournament balance, but on the other hand they do possess a certain inner beauty that makes them fascinating. At least to me. A combo deck is like a masterful plan. It's a brand new mechanical engine. It's a devious world-domination scheme.

Alright, they're ruining the fun of tournaments. But they're fun to build!

Another card I had been dying to use was Helm of Awakening. I mean, seriously, look at it. Don't tell me it's got no potential!

« Helm of Awakening (VI-U), color: A, cost: {2}, Artifact; All spells cost one generic mana less to play. »

So I'll draw lots of cards, play a lot of cheap spells and win somehow. Yeah, good start. Now the winning mechanic had to be something else than a single cards or two, just because of Diminishing Return's drawback (remove ten cards). I need something with quite a synergy with the Helms…

Untap creatures? Timewarp? Draw spells? I GOT IT! This would make Anthony Alongi proud!

Birth of a silly deck :

GoDrakes.dec

4 Diminishing Returns
4 Time Warp
4 Opportunity
4 Frantic Search

4 Peregrine Drake
3 Palinchron
3 Scrivener

4 Force of Will

4 Sapphire Medallion
4 Helm of Awakening

22 Island

How does it work ? Just play Medallions and Helms, generate mana with Frantics and Drakes, draw into a new hand of cards with Opportunity and Diminishing Returns. Then play the extra medallions you drew. Play more creatures. Warp. Attack.

Repeat.

It's a lot of fun. I actually got some kind of turn three attack-for-twenty kill. Four of Drakes and Palinchron makes 4*2 + 3*4 = 20 potential flying damage one on turn. Add the Scriveners, and the fact that you can warp several times and attack that much… Well, it works. :)

The only defense in the deck is Four Forces of Will. I guess I didn't have much space. I also picked Opportunity over Stroke of Genius, for the early start (and also because I have that foil japanese Opportunity I have wanted to use for a long time…). I wanted no Prosperity so that opponent wouldn't draw into their FoW too often. Not that it wouldn't happen with Returns anyway, but I mean, it's a fun deck, right?

That reminds me of another aspect of the inspiration for deckbuilding: aesthetics. If you build a deck that looks amazingly pretty when laid out on the table, then you always get the impression that it's going to work better than with ugly art. Black bordered, original editions stuff, shiny foil stuff… I suppose this is some kind of Magic player fetish. I also often start a craving for a card because its art looks beautiful to me. That happened with Early Harvest. I had a great Early Harvest deck that abused Well of Knowledge and Abeyance in the Mirage/Visions/Weatherlight format. The whole starting idea for this deck was the nice art, with the women collecting fruits in the summer.

Aesthetics of deckbuilding… that's a promising name for a future article. In the meantime, if you're bored, try out GoDrakes.dec. It's almost as fun as tearing up Necropotences and Illusions of Grandeur after another unlucky PTQ.

Manuel Bevand