There's a corollary to Abe Sargent's Best Player Syndrome that I'd like to talk about: MAPS, or "Most Annoying Player Syndrome." I'm somewhat of an expert on this, since I enjoy playing annoying decks. Sure, I can play a beatdown deck, but where's the fun in that? What is best in life is "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!" Or, at least, to make your opponents curl up into a fetal position and whimper like a girl.

Either way, it's good.

Abe's point that you must be prepared to take on everyone is still valid. If you're the person out with the game-altering permanent, people will get upset. These game-breakers all have one thing in common: You become Target Boy the instant you play any of them. The sad thing is that even if you are playing a simple White Weenie deck with no tricks at all, you will still be Target Boy because of your reputation in your playgroup. Since you're going to get beaten up anyway, you may as well design your deck to take as many people out as you can.

There are two ways you can go about being Mr. Annoying. The first is to say, "Bring it on, chumps!" - play pieces of your combo when you get them, and hope for the best. With a smaller playgroup, this could work. The more people there are, the less likely this strategy is to work.

With a larger group, you'll generally have to go about using strategy #2: Play what seems to be a relatively harmless deck until you drop your comboriffic pieces. Cackle your best evil laugh, and leave your opponents wondering what just took place.

Deck #1 - Masknaught
No, not that Masknaught. I'm talking about the other mask; the Uba Mask. It replaces the draw step - so once the Mask goes down, hand sizes will never increase until the Mask goes away. Cards like The Rack become quite useful... But the Rack can only target one opponent, which leaves everyone else at the table free to pummel the heck out of you.

Fixing this in a multiplayer game requires something a bit more fragile, but far more useful: a Rackling. This damages all of your opponents during their upkeeps, rather than just a measly "target opponent." You may also want something somewhat less fragile that you can use as a bigger beatstick. Avatar of Will is a wonderful choice. Eventually, someone will use up all the cards in their hand, no matter how many they draw under the Mask. (Their hand size will become zero.... or naught. Get the clever deck title now?) When that happens, your Avatar will go from 6UU to UU to cast. You like that, don't you?

To make the Rackling more effective requires a card that I was told was "the most useless card ever printed:" Wheel and Deal. (This comment was made before One With Nothing came out.) With the Mask out, Wheel and Deal essentially reads, "All opponents discard their hands. Remove the top seven cards of their library from the game. Draw a card." Now everyone has a hand size of zero. Suddenly, each Rackling you have is hitting everyone for three points during their upkeep. Multiple Racklings make it extra good. If you're still looking for a Mask, just cast it and don't target any of your opponents; at least you still get to draw a card.

Because you will be target boy once Uba Mask hits, you'll need some protection for your guys. The first time I played this deck, the Mask was immediately Shattered by one of my opponents who very wisely said, "I don't know why that's in there, but there must be a reason. Get rid of it." With the Uba Mask out, you won't have much use for normal counterspells, since they'll be gone by the time your next turn comes around. However, blue can also take care of this with both Daring Apprentice and Willbender. Nothing says "Screw You" more than unmorphing the Willbender to deflect a game-ending fireball back to its caster. In case something does get out, use Temporal Adept to bounce it.

Now to get all of this stuff out, you will need some good defense. Blue has this in Fog Bank and Propaganda. With one of each of these out, your opponents will have to pay four to sneak one of their creatures through. With multiples of either, things get very ugly, very fast.

Ensnaring Bridge will also work here. Once your hand is empty, creatures with a power of greater than zero can't attack you. Unless your opponent is playing with Carrion Ants or a Firebreathing Ornithopter, you should be safe from critters.

Finally, to get all of this stuff in your hand will require some library manipulation. Portent, Brainstorm, and Impulse are all good here. They're cheap. Brainstorm followed by either one of the others is gravy. Impulse puts a card directly into your hand. Portent replaces itself and lets you dig three cards down in your library. If you've already got everything you need, just go ahead and check out what your opponent is getting and mess with their next draws.

Here's the final version:

Uba Mask Featured by James Sambrook on 2005-10-23 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10730.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 4 Uba Mask Artifact Creatures 3 Rackling Creatures 3 Avatar of Will 4 Daring Apprentice 4 Fog Bank 4 Willbender	Enchantments 4 Propaganda Instants 3 Brainstorm 3 Impulse 4 Wheel and Deal Sorceries 3 Portent Basic Lands 21 Island	Stats: Average mana: 2.00 Average creature mana cost: 3.56 Average creature power: 1.28 Average creature toughness: 2.11 Deck Composition: Creatures: 25.00% Basic Lands: 35.00% Artifacts: 6.67% Sorceries: 5.00% Instants: 16.67% Artifact Creatures: 5.00% Enchantments: 6.67%
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

The key card in the deck, without question, is the Uba Mask. With library manipulation, you should be able to get one of them out relatively soon. Once it is out, protecting it becomes the key. Apprentices and Willbenders should be used to protect your Mask 99% of the time.

Deck #2 - RG Geddon
This deck is a sneaky one; at first, it appears to be a normal R/G deck, if a little slower than normal. Then you wipe out every single land on the board that you don't control.

The first time I saw the Goblin Sharpshooter, I was playing my own blue Tim Deck against a red deck. My opponent went first, and got one of them out before my any of my little 1/1 guys showed up. Fortunately, I topdecked a Suq'ata Firewalker. My opponent hadn't seen that card before, and was not happy about it at all. I filed away the Goblin Sharpshooter as "A card that I must somehow abuse."

Eventually, I ran across the perfect counterpoint to the Sharpshooter: Natural Affinity. The trick, obviously, is that you need two Sharpshooters to be useful in this situation. Worldly Tutor brings up Sharpshooter #1, while Pack Hunt summons the rest of them into your hand.

Getting these guys out early is imperative, so extra mana sources are good. Birds of Paradise are an excellent choice as always, as are Llanowar Elves.

In case there's something out there that's a bit too big for one of the Sharpshooters to take out, use his friends: Orcish Artillery and Karplusan Yeti. Between these guys, weenie hordes don't stand much of a chance.

Silklash Spiders go very well in this deck - and not just because Abe mentioned them as the banner creature for BPS. Assuming they survive (a big assumption, if your playgroup knows what these bad boys can do) they really are amazing. Get them out on the third turn with a good draw, and watch flyers just disappear. With a Loxodon Warhammer on them, suddenly you've got a 5/7 Spirit Linked, Hurricaning beatstick that will wipe out most critters.

Natural Affinity Featured by James Sambrook on 2005-10-23 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10730.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 2 Loxodon Warhammer Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Goblin Sharpshooter 2 Karplusan Yeti 2 Llanowar Elves 4 Orcish Artillery 3 Seedborn Muse 3 Silklash Spider	Instants 4 Natural Affinity 4 Naturalize 3 Worldly Tutor Sorceries 3 Pack Hunt Basic Lands 12 Forest 10 Mountain	Stats: Average mana: 1.85 Average creature mana cost: 3.18 Average creature power: 1.27 Average creature toughness: 2.77 Deck Composition: Creatures: 36.67% Basic Lands: 36.67% Instants: 18.33% Artifacts: 3.33% Sorceries: 5.00%
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Use the Sharpshooters and Orcish Artillery to keep the weenies down. The Silklash Spider will serve as a big boy blocker until you can get out two of the Sharpshooters. Once that happens, cast Natural Affinity and watch the carnage begin.

Deck #3 - Elemental Millstones
Slivers and Hondens are the two most common types of five-color decks you'll see out there. I wanted a challenge to make a five-color deck that didn't use either one of them. I'd always had a soft spot for the Elemental Augury/Millstone combination, so I decided to start there. The first few times I tried it, it was short on mana to both cast something and use the Millstone or Augury. Then I thought of trying the Urzatron. The mana shortages vanished, and the deck took off.

I was later challenged to make this a creatureless deck, which meant I had to get rid of a couple of Legends that shared their colors with Augury (Farewell, Sol'kanar! Adios, Crosis!) and some other creature control I was using (Bane of the Living). The deck became pure Johnny.

To smooth out the colored mana issues, Chromatic Spheres and Darksteel Ingots get included right away. The Sphere replaces itself when you use it, so it's never a dead card, and Darksteel Ingots are one of my favorite commons. Millstone is a key part of the deck. Icy Manipulators work as single-point creature control, and they'll make people play more than one creature - which allows your Wrath of God effects to be that much more effective.

Because of the color requirements for the deck, the green spell that's going in here is Sylvan Scrying, which will get you the Urza land you need to complete the set, or get you that color-producing land that you need. Since the deck is now critterless, an obvious choice for the main White spell is Wrath of God. Blue, surprisingly, does not need counterspells of any sort. Instead, I went with the library-searching ability of Soothsaying and the critter protection of either Propaganda or War Tax. (If this deck's in a duel, War Tax is better. Otherwise, stick with Propaganda.) With the Urzatron out, Soothsaying is very close to a Vampiric Tutor minus the two-life penalty.

Red and Black spells were difficult choices. In the end, I cheated a bit and called Elemental Augury my Red spell. Demonic Tutor and No Mercy round the deck out.

The strategy behind this deck is pretty simple: Go after the guy who has the biggest critters and looks to be the largest threat. Muck with their deck, making sure that they draw crap for as many turns as possible. If you do this, the rest of the players may back off you a bit. If people start attacking you, remind them that you are in the position to best handle Big Threat Guy... And with No Mercy out, people will be loathe to attack you no matter what you are doing. Wrath if things start to get out of hand.

Other than the Urzatron, I needed land that was able to generate multiple colors of mana. With the number of artifacts in the deck, Glimmervoid was an easy choice. City of Brass would also fit the bill, but Grand Coliseum works better in that you can tap it for colorless mana without a point of damage. Finally, Reflecting Pool works very well with either of these cards. Because of the heavy mana requirements, there are a lot of mana sources in the deck. It's an expensive casual deck, to be sure, but it is a fun one to play if it gets working.

Elemental Augury Featured by James Sambrook on 2005-10-23 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10730.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 4 Chromatic Sphere 4 Darksteel Ingot 4 Icy Manipulator 4 Millstone	Enchantments 3 Elemental Augury 2 No Mercy 3 Soothsaying 3 War Tax Sorceries 1 Demonic Tutor 4 Sylvan Scrying 4 Wrath of God Lands 4 Glimmervoid 4 Grand Coliseum 4 Reflecting Pool 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 4 Urza's Tower	Stats: Average mana: 1.58 Average creature mana cost: 0.00 Average creature power: 0.00 Average creature toughness: 0.00 Deck Composition: Lands: 40.00% Sorceries: 15.00% Artifacts: 26.67% Enchantments: 18.33%
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This was done before Ravnica came out, so I haven't had a chance to put Glimpse the Unthinkable into the deck. I'm not quite sure what I would take out, but it definitely fits the theme of the deck.

If you play any of these decks, just make sure that you are wearing some sort of protection. Your shins will "accidentally" get kicked numerous times once these decks get on a roll.