Hello my friends. I wish you a fond welcome back to the column that searches for signs of casual life. I am your federal agent, investigating the underside of Magic for fun casual-oriented fare.
A few months ago, I wrote and published an article in which I created some decks built around cards I randomly selected. That, in and of itself, is nothing new. I’ve been building decks around random elements for years, going all the way back to a lot of my daily articles.
The catch with this article was that each deck had to be built using the previously selected card. Therefore, each deck had to be a little more bizarre than the last. Through five decks, I flipped, in order, Monkey Cage, Lumengrid Augur, Anaconda, Martyrs of Korlis, and then finally, Eater of the Dead. The decks got progressively crazier and zanier, and it was fun to build them.
It was fun for me to build these decks, and it appeared to be fun for you to read. Let’s do it again!
I will determine a card from any non-silver bordered set, and then build around it. Then this card will be in every deck from here on out. Here we go!
Card the First: Divergent Growth
What a boring card to select. Ah well, I’ve gotta follow directions.
The beauty of this card is that it sets me up for later decks by helping me make crazy colors for other random pulls.
Alright, let’s build a Divergent Growth deck.
Creatures (20)
- 2 Singing Tree
- 4 Thornscape Battlemage
- 4 Utopia Tree
- 2 Doran, the Siege Tower
- 4 Timber Protector
- 4 Treefolk Harbinger
Lands (24)
- 24 Forest
Spells (16)
As you can tell, this deck has a plant theme, with some treefolk, a plant-themed wizard, and then some other cards that support the theme through mold or growth.
Despite the mono-Green nature of this deck, the Thornscape Battlemagi and Doran need other colors of mana, which you can get from Utopia Trees or Divergent Growths. Since all of the lands are Forests, Timber Protector gets maximum value.
Doran loves the creatures in this deck, making a bigger Timber Protector, Utopia Tree, Singing Tree, and Harbinger. With a Protector out, the Harbinger and Doran are indestructible, which is strong at the casual table.
With Creeping Mold you can take out either artifacts or enchantments, and you can even blast troublesome lands. Combined with a Stunted Growth, you can really knock a player back in terms of tempo. If you destroy their lands while also slowing their hand by three turns, you are doing some serious damage to their development.
The Singing Tree is great defense for several reasons. It prevents a Darksteel Colossus from dealing damage to you, and it is in the only color that is not protected from by either Akroma, so you can keep them back as well. Although a U1 from Arabian Nights, (there were no rares in the set, there were just some uncommons that were harder to find than others), it can be found played here on StarCityGAmes.com for just ten bucks, which makes it very purchasable for a lot of people. This is a perfect deck for them too. It needs creature defenses, and Doran makes it a 3/3 instead of a 0/3. Note that, like the Utopia Tree, it has never been errata’d to treefolk, so you cannot fetch them with a Harbinger or grant them indestructible with Timber Protector. This is a casual theme deck, so not all of the creatures work together perfectly.
You do have a Moldervine Cloak to make one of your creatures into a terrifying threat. You can also dredge to bring it back, but this is not a dredge deck, so be careful with your dredges. There’s no way to recycle cards that go to the yard. Only dredge it back when you need it.
Thornscape Battlemage adds some crucial removal to the deck, both for artifacts and creatures. Be glad is it themed as a plant-oriented creature.
You could turn this into a dredge deck with the addition of cards like Greater Mossdog and Shambling Shell, which is a plant. You could even run Vulturous Zombie as an aerial threat.
You also run a bunch of walls, from Wall of Roots to Wall of Blossoms to Thallid Shell-Dweller to Wall of Mulch.
It’s a shame that Timber Protector doesn’t protect trees that are plants and not treefolk. It protects Forests and treefolk, so you know that it should protect and pump Utopia Tree and Singing Tree. But it doesn’t.
At your casual table, if you can get people to agree to common sense changes like this, then go ahead.
…
Time for the next deck. What card is it?
Card the Second: Leyline of Lightning
That’s a little combo-tastic, isn’t it? Let’s see what I can do with this:
In this deck, you want to have out Leyline of Lightning, Cloudstone Curio, Dual Nature, and either a Cloud of Faeries or a Peregrine Drake.
Play a Cloud or Drake. Bounce a Cloud or Drake back to your hand. Make a token off Dual Nature. Then untap twice as many lands a before. Repeat as necessary using the extra mana to kill everybody at the table off a Leyline of Lighting.
If you do not have a Leyline of Lightning out, go off, and use the Invoke the Firemind to draw your deck, ensuring you can drop a Leyline and kill everyone at the table. The Invoke is also useful as a backup Blaze in case someone sends a Disenchant your way.
Since this deck needs a lot of colored mana on the turn it goes off, and it doesn’t want to keep tapping and untapping the City of Brass, Divergent Growth can be used to allow all of your lands to tap for any color, so you can leave the City of Brass alone on that turn, and get all of the colors you need from your Forests.
For card draw, I decided to toss in the very useful Harmonize, because Green is such a strong component of the deck. I also tossed in Impulse, since there was no good Green counter to that
You can use Harmonize in the early game to find mana or combo pieces, and Impulse later to do likewise. Sakura-Tribe Elder is good at accelerating your mana while providing a speed bump for attackers. Its usefulness is well-chronicled.
It might be a little unusual, but I hope you liked this deck. Now let’s amp the challenge level and move on the next card.
Card the Third: Magus of the Moat
Hmm. I suppose we could use the Magus as defense in a combo deck.
Creatures (14)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
Let’s take a look at this deck.
Magus of the Moat acts as defense, keeping the ground critters away and drawing creature removal, which we need removed for our combo pieces.
In order to win, you need:
1 Leyline of Lightning in play
1 Cloudstone Curio in play
1 Priest of Gix in hand
1 Carnival of Souls in play
1 Essence Warden (or Soul Warden) in play (two gives you two infinite combos)
Either second Priest of Gix in play or in hand
Play the Priest of Gix. Gain a life off the Essence Warden, three Black mana off his comes-into-play ability, and lose and life and gain a mana off the Carnival of Souls. The life gain cancels each other out, and you make four Black mana. Bounce another Priest of Gix (or play another from your hand) and repeat, this time activating the Leyline of Lightning and hitting someone for one damage. Repeat as needed until everyone dies.
Note that Cloudstone Curio forces you to target another card, so you cannot play Priest of Gix and bounce itself; you have to bounce another Priest.
Divergent Growth helps you to pay for the colored mana costs on a lot of these cards. Harmonize joins the team again as a great searcher.
Note that if you have two Essence/Soul Wardens in play, you can gain an arbitrary amount of life off your combo.
This plays similarly to the second deck, just with some combo pieces changed, and therefore some details, like the colors used, change with it. Let’s see what the next card brings.
Card the Fourth: Pulse of the Tangle
Hmm…
Spells (32)
The obvious problem here is that you want to make 3/3 creatures, but then they cannot attack through your own Magus of the Moat. Therefore, I need to find something to do with them. Luckily for me, I have Leyline of Lightning to use as a combo engine.
You need to have out the following:
1 Ashnod’s Altar
1 Earthcraft
1 Forest enchanted with either a Wild Growth or Fertile Ground
1 Leyline of Lighting
1 Pulse of the Tangle in hand
And one opponent needs to have some extra creatures than you. Use Forbidden Orchard to do that if needed.
Play Pulse of the Tangle, and it returns to your hand. Tap the land enchanted to help pay for it. Then tap the newly minted Beast to the Earthcraft to untap that land. Then sac the beast to Ashnod’s Altar. You have made four mana, two colorless and two colored. Now, play Pulse of the Tangle again, this time triggering the Leyline of the Lightning, and repeat. Play again and again until your opponents are all dead.
Just like previous iterations of these decks, Harmonize is running in the deck as a solid card drawer, while Magus of the Moat exists solely as defense against ground attacks. It also keeps the spirits made from Forbidden Orchard from attacking you, removing one of the major weaknesses of the land. Since people cannot attack with ground creatures, they will not be losing them in combat, which means it is likely someone will have enough to trigger the Pulse of the Tangle. Kill that person last when you go off.
And now it is time for the final challenge. What is the fifth and final card?
Card the Fifth: Haazda Shield Mate
That an interesting pull. Have you ever come across a card that you just don’t get? I see what Haazda Shield Mate does, but I remain unsure that I want to run it in any deck. I don’t get it, if that makes sense.
Let’s see what I can rummage up.
Creatures (10)
Lands (24)
Spells (26)
This deck uses the Haazda Shield Mate to prevent damage dealt by the three janky Red enchantments — Antagonism, Impatience, and Spellshock. You can use the Shield Mate to keep yourself alive while your opponents will slowly die. Spellshock plus Impatience is particularly cruel.
I kept the Forbidden Orchard plus Pulse of the Tangle combo alive. Forbidden Orchard makes painless mana while the tokens either help your Pulses or can’t get through a Magus of the Moat. Or both. Magus of the Moat is great defense, helping to keep you alive because opponents will attack you when you have out all of these crazy enchantments. You can use Haazda Shield Mate to keep flyers at bay, so you need a lot of White mana, which is another reason Forbidden Orchard is key in this deck.
Later, after you’ve stockpiled enough beasts, you can Lightning Helix your Magus of the Moat and conquer the remaining players. You can also kill them off with Leyline of Lighting, which is not a combo piece in this deck, but merely a damage adjunct.
I tossed in Dawn Elemental as great defense as well. It can block in the air and keep off attackers of any size.
Both Harmonize and Browbeat make appearances in order to draw you cards. Play your Red enchantments and hold onto tricks for later.
Divergent Growth can smooth your mana for a turn, because many of the cards here are very color-dependant. It can help you drop a Dawn Elemental, or some opponents might try to gang up on you in one turn in order to get around your Haazda Shield Mate, so you allow your Forests and Mountains to tap for White as a surprise. There’s only two in the deck so you shouldn’t get them too often.
And there’s the deck!
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I hope you enjoyed another series of random decks, with each one building on the previous offering. It was another fun experiment. Who knows, perhaps another will follow soon.
Until later…