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The Kitchen Table #352 – Bad Rares XIII

Wednesday, August 25th – Abe Sargent continues his popular Bad Rares series, building decks based around cards plucked from his huge Box of Bad Cards.

Hello folks, and welcome to today’s canned article. This article was written literally right after Bad Rares XII, because I had used up my canned articles during a vacation. I keep one or two articles in a can on my desktop, already written, and then if I get too busy one week, or sick, or go on vacation, or just don’t feel like writing about Magic (which has yet to happen), then I can grab a canned article and send it off, ready for the audience.

I have no idea when this will get published. August? November? Two weeks later? No clue! Therefore, this article cannot feature a preamble about the Magic topics of the day.

Instead, it will have decks from bad rares, straight from my bad rare box to the decklists and then to you. I’ve got my box ready, so let’s go!

I reach my hand in and pull out….

Well, that card doesn’t count. I must have accidentally let a few uncommon into my box. Patchwork Gnomes from Tempest are not rare. I pull them out and reach in again. I grab a…

Seismic Mage

The Mage does one thing. It turns your cards into Stone Rains, which is great as an adjunct to another Land Destruction strategy or to off annoying lands in multiplayer. Because it requires a discard and three mana and tapping to use, it’s not super great, and hard to abuse.


This is a simple deck with simple ideas. It starts as your basic Red/Black LD deck, but I wanted to add a few cards to mix things up. I added a couple of Planeswalkers, Ostracize, and some unusual choices for lands and creatures.

One of the problems with LD decks becomes apparent when you go up against a deck that wants to have some or all of its cards in its graveyard, and needs very little mana to run. Bojuka Bog can answer the problem of graveyard recursion easily.

Firebolt is in here as a burn spell you can play twice. The flashback cost is quite reasonable in a deck that expects to hit 4 or 5 or 6 mana every game, and keeps their opponent on few mana sources, meaning their creatures are likely to be ones that Firebolt is particularly good against. Not every deck wants Lightning Bolt as its burn, so make sure you understand when to go in another direction.

Trench Wurm is a great creature for this deck, and a little underused. It’s never a threat for one’s basic manabase, but it can kill many threats and ruin someone’s day. Seismic Mage can off any land, and is a great adjunct to your normal removal.

Okay, that’s a very By-The-Numbers deck, with little new. Let’s grab another card and see what I can do with it…

Jinxed Choker

This card is not great. It’s in the style of other Jinxed cards that switch between players, like Jinxed Ring and Jinxed Idol. This card almost reminds me of that cursed item in many D&D campaigns, where you put on the necklace and it starts to strangle you.

There are two major problems with this card. First, your opponent can pull off counters, and I don’t like that. You spend a lot of mana and time to fill it up with goodies, and then they pull them off prior to taking damage and end up taking very little. That’s not friendly. Second, you can get it back, and that’s not friendly either.

There are three ways I can think of to deal with the first issue:

1) Load it up with a ton of counters by having a few cards that produce a ton of mana, like Tolarian Academy in an artifact deck, or Cabal Coffers in a Mono-Black build.
2) Play cards like Coretapper, Energy Chamber, Power Conduit, and Doubling Season to increase the number of counters on the Choker.
3) Ignore it and move on

There are a lot of possibilities.


The goal of this deck is to load up your Choker with counters just before sending it off. Ideally, you play one early and get it out there harassing your foes, and then play another and load it down with a ton of counters before sending it out as well. Once they are sent out, they cannot come back, so you cannot reload them again. Ivory Mask and Spirit of the Hearth prevent you from being targeted by your Choker when in another’s hands.

In a duel, that means you send it over and it stays over, but in multiplayer, they may keep passing it around. You can use Coretapper and Energy Chamber on a Choker even if you do not control it, so you can still add a few counters here and there. On the other hand, perhaps you want to keep them for yourself.

For example, Coretapper and Energy Chamber like giving you extra turns with the Magistrate’s Scepter. Note that this deck can take infinite turns:

2 Coretappers
Emeria
Magistrate’s Scepter

Tap one to put a counter on the Scepter and sacrifice another for two. Take your extra turn. Recur the Coretapper with Emeria. Sac it and tap to add another. Keep taking a bunch of turns and attacking with Commander Eesha which is guaranteed to get through. You can also use the Darts and recur cards with the Soldevi Digger to keep going.

You can also use those extra turns to load up a Jinxed Choker with Energy Chamber or more Coretappers, and then let someone else take a turn and laugh as they die to a Choker with 10000 counters on it.

Leonin Abunas protects your artifacts and Seht’s Tiger keeps you from dying to a mass attack or burn. Sanctum Gargoyle will recur an artifact. Along with Commander Eesha, Coretapper, and Spirit of the Hearth, that gives you a smattering of various good creatures for Emeria recursion.

Serum Tank is your way of drawing cards, so you’ve got that going as well. If the deck was missing the Emeria engine, then I’d add Ancient Den and more cycling lands, plus Kor Haven and perhaps Quicksand.

I hope you enjoyed this little Jinxed Choker deck. The next card is…

Reduce to Dreams

As someone who has long been a serious fan of Evacuation, I will accept the Reduce to Dreams challenge. I can think of a few ways to use it:

1) Play it in a deck without any artifacts or enchantments at all.
2) Play it in a deck where the only artifacts or enchantments you have you want to bounce.
3) Build around it using Mycosynth Lattice or Enchanted Evening to make it an Upheaval.

Which one will I do?


I just made your basic control deck with Reduce to Dreams playing two roles here. First, it can bounce back any problematic artifacts/enchantments for countering. Second, it can really slow things down and enable it to catch up.

After that, we have creatures that play defense and win, counters a-go-go, bounce, and card drawing. This deck was so boring I didn’t even have the desire to flesh out the lands beyond the basics.

Let’s move on and grab another random card, and it will be….

Death Pit Offering

Man, this is an awesome pull! I have tons of ideas floating in my head right now. Shoot, let me build some for the rest of the article, with several decks for this great card from the olden days…


At first, I put Blue in this deck with Faerie Conclave and Teferi’s Response, but it was too many colors so I cut it.

This deck plays creature lands and uses them to attack, and the Death Pit Offering makes them much more powerful. At first, I thought about using Pernicious Deed to sweep the board and prepare for a major land attack, but then you’d lose the Death Pit, and I wanted the deck to be more about that card, so I added the artifact mana and cards like Putrefy and Suffer the Past.

Sylvan Scrying and the lands are obviously part of the same path. The deck wants to get out lands that turn into creatures, and then swing for a lot of damage. One Death Pit Offering makes a Blinkmoth Nexus into a Phantom Monster sized threat, and two puts it at dragon levels.

With cards like Putrefy, Barter in Blood, and Innocent Blood getting the creatures cleared out, you should be able to get in a few hits.

Remember, your creatures are uncounterable, untargetable by most sorceries, and protected from many of the things that would whack creatures. But, unfortunately, they are not invulnerable. Life from the Loam can get back those that you do lose for another go. It is quite valuable here.

Suffer the Past can give you a life bump and take care of any threats in other graveyards, and helps to cut off any angle of attack against this deck. You can Putrefy an artifact. Only lands, Planeswalkers, and enchantments get away from you in this deck. You could add something like Rootgrapple or Desert Twister to cut off those as well.

Okay, let’s do another!


This is your simple token deck with tons of tokens coming in to help your side, and with a Death Pit Offering making it a lot more powerful. You can get tokens from lands, land fetching, enchantments, creature kill, and Grizzly Fate itself.

Death Mutation is an uncommonly played spell because it costs so much mana, but it is a great card for the occasional role, and this deck is perfect for a couple. You’ve also got Corpsehatch, Rootgrapple, and Naturalize for your various removal needs.

We’ve come to the conclusion of another article. At the end will be the usual Flashback Deck from a previous article, as well as a list of all of the cards in Bad Rares articles.

Until later…

Abe Sargent

Appendix A:

I thought a great flashback deck today would be a good Bad Rares deck from ye olden times. This deck was published on SCG on Aug 2, 2007. It was #192 in The Kitchen Table, and you can find out more in the article, here.

This time I flipped a Vermiculos. This will be the first and possibly only deck today where I will put the fear of a bad rare into the hearts of an opposing player. If I built this deck in real life and challenged someone, I suspect I would cause them to cringe at the sight of a Vermiculos. It would become a must-kill must-counter card for sure.


This deck wants to play a Vermiculos. On the following turn, it should be equipped with a Cloak, and then a bunch of artifacts come into play, making it big enough to kill an opponent. Then the unblockable creature swings and kills.

There are a few engines that help Vermi. Mishra, Artificer Prodigy will double any artifact that you play when he is out. Play a Bauble, and you get a second Bauble. That pumps Vermiculos by +8/+8. Do that one more time and you have a 17/17. That’s enough damage to kill most people.

Mishra is an ideal card for this deck, but I wanted the Vermiculos to have a chance at winning without one in play. A clever opponent will send countermagic or removal Mishra’s way before the Vermiculos ever sees the table.

Artificer’s Intuition is perfect here. On the turns before you want to win with Vermiculos, use the Intuition to discard an artifact for a Servitor. Then discard a Servitor for a Servitor, and so forth, until three are in the yard and one is in hand. You can also discard extra lands or artifacts you don’t need to get Baubles.

On the turn before you attack for the win, play the Servitor in your hand. On the following turn, all three Servitors in the yard will come back, and Vermiculos will trigger and become a 13/13, before you even draw your card for the turn. Play two Baubles, or an artifact land and a Bauble, and your Vermi will be a 21/21. That might kill some people.

Trinket Mage is running around to help you set up. Maybe you need a Bauble or a Servitor or even more mana. Trinket Mage can get you any artifact land in addition to Baubles and Servitors.

If you want to add some versatility to this deck, you could toss in Aether or Pyrite Spellbombs. They can be retrieved with Intuition or Trinket Magi, while also being easy to play with Mishra and a Vermi out. You also never know when you might want their ability.

Because this deck needs a Vermi and a Cloak ideally to win, I tossed in Diabolic Tutor. You can always use that as a backup artifact tutor if you have need, but otherwise, it is designed to be used for either the Cloak or the Vermi.

I tossed in four Arcane Denials. I wanted a cheap splashable counter, and I considered Delay as well. I went with Arcane Denial because getting to draw off it is much better than your opponent’s draw in this deck. Counter only the best cards, like things that stop your Cloak, your Vermi, or prevent the damage.

This may be my most complex deck of the day. Treat it well!

Appendix B:

Here are all of the cards I’ve used in Bad Rares articles, including today’s. They are in order from the first card I grabbed randomly, through articles to today.

Caribou Range
Cephalid Constable
Ogre Enforcer
Glowrider
Pirate Ship
Heat Stroke
Flooded Shoreline
Elder Druid
Thran Weaponry
Natural Emergence
Blessed Reversal
Volcanic Eruption
Masked Gorgon
Timesifter
Icatian Town
Nefashu
Marjhan
Overabundance
Barl’s Cage
Onulet
Hisoka, Minamo Sensei
Atogatog
Flowstone Slide
Stalking Bloodsucker
Gemini Engine
Circle of Solace
Overlaid Terrain
Celestial Gatekeeper
Benthic Behemoth
Elkin Lair
Okk
Traveling Plague
Fire and Brimstone
Vermiculos
Xenic Poltergeist
Wand of the Elements
Shizuko, Caller of Autumn
Mungha Wurm
Heart of Ramos
Pulse of the Tangle
Workhorse
Purgatory
Lodestone Myr
Kher Keep
Primitive Etchings
Political Trickery
Hoverguard Sweepers
Null Profusion
Spellbinder
Hecatomb
Mannichi, the Fevered Dream
Shape of the Wiitigo
Memory Crystal
Wormfang Manta
Candles of Leng
Bronze Bombshell
Elemental Resonance
Seismic Mage
Jinxed Choker
Reduce to Dreams
Death Pit Offering