Welcome to another Casual Challenge week. This week, the Ferrett has assigned the challenged to build an April Fools deck. What is an April Fools deck? It is a deck that looks like one deck, and then becomes another deck or does something unexpected. An obvious example would be if a player is playing artifact lands and dropping things like Frogmite, Myr Enforcer, and Disciple of the Vault. It would look like they're playing Affinity right? What if that player then laid down a Krark-Clan Ironworks and sacrificed all their artifacts to fuel a lethal Fireball, then the Affinity deck you had just seen unexpectedly morphed into an Ironworks deck right before your eyes.

This example is an easy April Fools deck... But it's not the only definition of an April Fools deck. So I will be giving you two decks that will totally freak your opponents out with the changes they will make mid game. Heck, I'll do one better; I'll give you the April Fools decks with the addition of several past references to decks that I made that already do this sort of thing, plus the addition of touching up those decks. I think this is rather generous of me.

To begin, let us have a look at my very first casual deck challenge article, Attacking for Arbitrarily-Large Damage. In the article, I mentioned that combo decks should look like another deck, not only to disguise the combo but also to give you an alternate win. The deck I choose was a Myr beatdown/ Mana Echoes deck that looked something like:

Lands (24)
4 Great Furnace
4 Ancient Den
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Glimmervoid
4 Battlefield Forge
4 Tendo Ice Bridge

Creatures (23)
3 Goblin Welder
4 Iron Myr
4 Gold Myr
3 Triskelion
4 Myr Enforcer
2 Myr Retriever
3 Flametongue Kavu

Other (13)
3 Myr Matrix
2 Mana Echoes
3 Fireball (or Rolling Thunder)
4 Golden Wish
1 Enlightened Tutor

+Tool Box

The deck is a lot of fun to play, and it does its job quite well... Almost. There was one problem that would keep on occurring when I played the deck; whenever I played Goblin Welder, everyone's first thought was recurring Sundering Titans and Mindslavers and I became public enemy number one. Not to say I didn't win some of those games; it's just the deck seemed to have both the disguise of Myr beatdown and a Welder deck. In order to improve on the deck's stealth capabilities, I decided to make some slight alterations:

Lands (24)
4 Great Furnace
4 Ancient Den
4 Darksteel Citadel
4 Glimmervoid
4 Battlefield Forge
4 Tendo Ice Bridge

Creatures (22)
4 Iron Myr
4 Gold Myr
3 Triskelion
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Myr Retriever
2 Duplicant
1 Bottle Gnomes

Other (14)
3 Myr Matrix
2 Mana Echoes
3 Fireball (or Rolling Thunder)
4 Golden Wish
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Skeleton Shard

+Tool Box
(Mana Echoes, the last Myr Matrix, Duplicant, and Oblivion Stone might all be options, plus whatever enchantments you want)

This deck is a more artifact-based version of the original. Skeleton Shard serves as your recurring mechanism instead of Goblin Welder, and the Kavus have been replaced with Duplicants and a Bottle Gnomes since they can be recurred if they die. The deck also doesn't immediately attract attention, as it only looks like a Myr/Artifact beat down deck. This allows the deck to use its devastating combo in relative safety: Myr Matrix and Mana Echoes. For further information on this deck, you can read my previous article.

With that deck in mind, let's do something different with artifacts. In particular, I wish to experiment with milling...

Lands (24)
4 Seat of the Synod
4 Ancient Den
4 Glimmervoid
4 Vault of Whispers
1 Scrubland
2 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
3 Polluted Delta

Creatures (24)
4 Aphetto Alchemist
1 Leveler
1 Colossus of Sardia
1 Phyrexian Colossus
1 Sundering Titan
3 Triskelion
1 Pentavus
2 Silver Myr
2 Gold Myr
2 Leaden Myr
3 Bottle Gnomes
3 Dreamborn Muse

Spells (12)
4 Mesmeric Orb
1 Forbidden Crypt
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Death Wish
1 Roar of Reclamation
1 Golden Wish

Sideboard (15)
1 Forbidden Crypt
1 Roar of Reclamation
13 Other cards that might help you

The deck fools your opponent by looking like some bizarre contraption that is good at milling. The truth of the matter is, the deck mainly wants to get its whole library into its graveyard and then either use Forbidden Crypt as a broken tutor, or revive an artifact army and smash your opponent. The deck can put its whole library into its graveyard simply by using Aphetto Alchemist and Mesmeric Orb. Other than that, the deck uses the mana Myr to stall and to help fuel out your big guys. The Trikes serve as removal, the Bottle Gnomes serve as stallers, and the Dreamborn Muse serve as part of your disguise.

The deck can be a ton of fun to play, and it can easily catch an opponent off guard by making them think they're going to lose by milling and then surprising the crap out of them with the artifact beaters. When playing the deck, I suggest you be careful when playing Death Wish. If you have either of the two Colossuses in play, you should untap them using the Aphetto Alchemists. One last thing: be careful about when you play the Titan or the Leveler, as one could ruin the rest of your deck and the other could accidentally destroy some of your own lands.

Moving away from artifacts, I would like to explore another art of fooling someone: getting your opponent to make a big play error. I have already made two such decks, and one of them looked something like the following:

Lands (24)
4 Windswept Heath
8 Forest
8 Plains
4 Savannah

Creatures (20)
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Tempting Wurm
2 Viridian Zealot
2 Solemn Simulacrum
2 Genesis
2 Eternal Witness

Spells (16)
4 Akroma's Vengeance
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Wrath of God
4 Wayfarer's Bauble

(You can see the other decks in my previous article, The Three Most Annoying Cards To Pull Out Of A Booster Pack.)

Ideally, when you play against someone for the first time with the deck, you will play a Tempting Wurm and your opponent will lay down a ton of creatures, enchantments, and artifacts - and then you Wrath away all your opponent's hard work. This would be an example of a deck that tricks your opponent into a mistake. Unlike my Myr deck, this one doesn't really need all that much adjustment; you might want to throw in some Bottle Gnomes, Teroh's Faithful, or some other life gaining/stalling creature to help you deal with the possible beatings you may get after the Wurm hits play (if you don't Wrath right away). Also, you might want to use Oblivion Stone over Nevinyrral's Disk since it can go off the turn you play it, which could be vital at some points during the game.

To fool your opponent into a mistake is a very difficult task, though it can be done. Ways of fooling someone include pulling some weird combat trick or allowing them to do something. In my Tempting Wurm deck, you allow the opponent to play a ton of permanents and then show them it was a trick by Wrathing it all away. This deck, however, will use a bit of the two aforementioned ideas.

Land (24)
4 Grand Coliseum
3 Forbidden Orchard
1 Taiga
1 Savannah
1 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
1 Scrubland
4 Windswept Heath
7 Forests

Creatures (21)
3 Charmed Griffin
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Utopia Tree
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
3 Hunted Wumpus
3 Leery Fogbeast
1 Viridian Zealot
2 Eternal Witness

Spells (15)
2 Death Wish
4 Cunning Wish
4 Living Wish
1 Flaring Pain
1 Legacy Weapon
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Congregate

Possible Suggestions for Wish Targets
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Artifact Mutation
1 Aura Mutation
1 Viridian Zealot
1 Genesis
1 Congregate
Whatever the heck you damn please

As the deck's name implies, it does a lot of stuff that raises the question "What is this deck trying to do?" The real answer behind this is that the deck wants to do a ton of different crazy things and confuse your opponent. The mana base is as clunky as it is so that you can make the deck seem like a mono green/green and another color deck. You can add to this illusion by reserving your other lands for another time and using Birds of Paradise and Utopia Tree as your surprise color fixers.

The deck has not one, not two, but three built-in April Fools mechanisms. The first I will point out is that people might think you're playing some crazy Intruder Alarm deck using an animated Forbidden Orchard (if you play your cards just right), in reality, you use those spirit tokens with Congregate to gain a lot of life; this feature really isn't all that April Foolish, but I guess it could be if you use Stronghold Discipline to kill your opponent.

The second is that Charmed Griffin and Hunted Wumpus can trick your opponent into laying down a permanent - and then you destroy it/remove it from the game using either the spells in the deck or your wishes to get you these sorts of spells.

The last April Foolish thing about the deck (other than searching for wacky sorts of things with the wishes) is that you can alpha strike using a card that's not even rare: Leery Fogbeast. How can you alpha strike with the Fogbeast?, you might ask; well, that's where Flaring Pain comes in. The way the trick works is that you run in with all your creatures, preferably after they've all been pumped by Kamahl. Your opponent realizes that they can just block the Fogbeast and that your attack will be a waste. Your opponent then commits the fatal mistake, they only block the Fogbeast. At that moment, you cast Flaring Pain and make your strike lethal.

The deck has a few issues to work out, and I have still been toying around with different versions, but the main idea is to have fun.

Until next casual challenge, have a happy...err, April Fools' day?

Matthew Lubich