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Many years ago, back when Ice Age was still the latest thing and the whole Urza cycle was just a gleam in some game designer's eye, I came up with a deck that combined the seldom-seen rare Ritual of Subdual with the Urzatron and mana-producing elves. The goal of the deck was to accelerate into a lock as quickly as possible by turning the mana from all lands colorless with my enchant world and then killing them with artifact creatures.
Unfortunately, this rarely happened back, even back then. The problem was two fold: back in a time before Sylvan Scrying, the various Wishes, or any of the other land fetching that has become such a part of green, the Urza's Lands were too inconsistent. Also, the available artifact finishers simply wasn't that good. Neither Amulet of Unmaking or Rod of Ruin were much help and my finishers, in the form of Xanthic Statue and Colossus of Sardia, left much to be desired.
After a long hiatus I recently returned to Magic - and along the way, discovered how much better artifacts had become in my absence. It then occurred to me that with all the new artifacts, it might be possible to make a Ritual of Subdual deck that would not only work... but win.
4 Llanowar Elves or Fyndhorn Elves (or heck, Birds of Paradise work equally well for the wealthy)
4 Copper Myr
2 Serrated Biskelion
2 Elf Replica
1 Primal Clay
4 Juggernaut
1 Basalt Golem
1 Pentavus
1 Brass Secretary
1 Cathodion
1 Teeka's Dragon
1 Death-Mask Duplicant
1 Staff of Domination
1 Sun Droplet
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Spellbook
1 Darksteel Pendant
1 Icy Manipulator
1 Jayemdae Tome
2 Planar Portal
1 Magma Mine
1 Chimeric Egg
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Ritual of Subdual
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
8 Forest
It seems to be a pretty random assortment - but the cards have a rather fearful symmetry. With the amount of mana that this deck generates, Pentavus turns into a near-unkillable combat force as +1/+1 counters start cycling on and off it in response to just about everything. Do you need to block five creatures? Then just pay your mana and sacrifice the new 1/1s while damage is on the stack, and you have one blocked creature and a still very healthy Pentavus.
Basalt Golem and Juggernauts also work well together. The Golem can turn virtually any blocking creature into a wall that the Juggernauts then ignore on their way to the opposing player's head. The Planar Portal ensures that you draw the needed Ritual of Subdual - or anything else you might happen to need - and the Staff of Domination is just fun and easy to use with this much mana.
Even before I put in the Sylvan Scrying, the deck showed a high level of effectiveness. So far in play testing it has managed to beat a Standard-legal White Weenie deck that relied on cheap flyers, Razor Golems, and Leonin Sun Standard in two out of three games - and, more interestingly, held its own in two games against another more conventional White Weenie build with Samurai of the Pale Curtain and Eight-and-a-Half-Tails until it just ran out of removal. It also managed to twice defeat what I can only guess was an attempt at Red Deck wins in Standard with Ronin Houndmasters, Pyrite Spellbombs, and hasty goblins.
The deck plays very simply: Assemble the Urzatron and two green mana, then cast the Ritual of Subdual, drop your hand and kill your opponent as they sit unable to do anything with all their colorless mana. With Sylvan Scrying, you should be able to assemble everything by turn 4 at the latest. In a multiplayer game, this is the kind of deck that requires you to lay low and slowly assemble everything - because when the entire table suddenly has colorless mana (and only colorless mana), you will become the target of the table's wrath.
In its current form the deck is not as effective as it could be, since one of my goals with it was to play cards that would otherwise just be taking up space in my boxes. If I were truly trying to make it competitive, I would take out the Spellbook, Death-Mask Duplicant, and Sun Droplet and replace them with more removal like Duplicant, Oblivion Stone, or even Nevinyrral's Disk - and I'd add the greatest colossus of them all, Darksteel Colossus. The deck could be made even faster with things like Journey of Discovery and Reap and Sow, and you might put in a Boseiju, Who Shelters All to deal with countermagic.
If you happen to own a mint Forcefield would be a great improvement over the Sun Droplet. But then again, Urza's Armor would be a great improvement over the Sun Droplet. (Not as much as you might think, even in this deck - T.F.)
While not appreciated in its time the Ritual, when combined with the Urzatron, becomes a powerful soft lock that will give you plenty of time to deal with your now-colorless (and helpless) enemy.
Eric Wright
Ewright54@hotmail.com
