Ever since the beginning of my Magic career, I have been attracted to bad cards. All the misfit rares and wallpaper commons have been right next to my heart; I can almost hear them pleading to me, their cries for recognition ringing through my ears.

But apart from helping those poor, pitiful, pieces of cardboard in need, what is more fun than beating those"Pompous, arrogant, subhuman scum Wake players" (thank you, Craig Stevenson!) with your Tempting Wurm deck? Or utterly destroying U/G Madness, a deck that is more common than cockroaches and more annoying, with your pathetic rabble of Aven Envoys? That's right - there is absolutely nothing better than that, and that is why I choose to build rogue decks focused around the worst cards you can find in Standard.

So I guess it is that desire that led me to my favorite multiplayer deck ever. It began a long, long ago, back when the winners of the Legions prerelease were just finding out that the boxes they won were next to worthless. And as I stood there, opening up my eighth Legions booster and preparing for disappointment, my eyes rested upon the rare. Suddenly, angels were singing, people were happy, and Elvis came back to life.

I held in my hands a foil Dreamborn Muse.

After this amazing revelation, I began working on a deck that could incorporate Dreamborn Muse - or, as I soon began to call her, Gertrude. It was obvious from the beginning that it would be a deck with lots of bounce so as to slow the opponent down and add extra cards into their hand, so that Gertrude could Millstone them more. And of course, it would have the other elements of a typical mono-blue deck: Draw spells and counters. (I had already decided that this deck was going to be mono-blue, just to get back at Wizards for mutilating my favorite color.)

But it wasn't until a few months later after Scourge came out that the deck actually fleshed out completely. A few key cards I had forgotten about suddenly came to me one day when I was up at the top of a treeless mountain in a lightning storm. I guess while I was thinking about getting down the mountain as fast as possible, my hair stood on end and all the charged particles and all the scientific stuff made me smarten up for a little while. I don't think I'll try it again, though, so I'll never know.

Now, comrades - follow me as we take a look at the multiplayer deck I like to call...

Creatures
4 Dreamborn Muse
3 Forgotten Ancient

Draw
4 Howling Mine
3 Words Of Wisdom
4 Sleight Of Hand (if you play multiplayer where it must be Standard-legal, change this to Moment's Peace)

Bounce
4 Evacuation (it's back in Eighth!)
4 Unsummon
4 Boomerang
4 Aether Burst

Counter
4 Counterspell (For a Standard-legal card, change to Mana Leak)

Mana
17 Islands
5 Forest

You may look in there and see a few questionable cards for multiplayer, such as Howling Mine or Words Of Wisdom - and admittedly, they give all your opponents more cards. But these are built in for the politics of the deck. Gertrude The Glorious is a nice deck... At first, anyway. Playing either of those cards will make you liked much more by all the players. Everyone likes to draw cards - and as long as you leave your Mine out there, people won't be all that interested in killing you, especially since you won't play anything that's threatening for a while. But the Mine works double duty, because it not only gets you to Gertrude and finds more bounce to protect yourself from attacks, it also adds cards to the opponent's hands. If Gertrude is out, she will Mill everyone for more! It's great synergy. Words of Wisdom is trying to do the exact same thing as the mine - draw for you, more cards in hand for the opponent, and make everyone love you.

If everything goes well for the first five or six turns, your life total should be still floating at twenty. If this holds true, and no one is interested in attacking you (who has nothing but a Howling Mine on the board), then you have three courses of direction:

(Of course, this assumes that your multiplayer group won't simply jump on the helpless guy, which they would in every group I've played in... But I realize that other groups' politics are different - The Ferrett)

The first is the lazy man attitude: Sit back and let them kill each other, and when there are only about two or three opponents (one, if you can stay out of trouble for that long), then you step in. First, you send out Gertrude, who you should have been holding for a while. Suddenly, you are a threat to everyone since the decks are usually low anyway from killing the other opponents in the game. Removal will be hurled at Gertrude. Use any counterspells to protect her - and since you pack multiple copies of Gertrude, one or two can die as long as you hold another (and the effect doubles if two are on the board at the same time) and if that isn't enough, you can bounce her to save her from the evil forces. Once the opponents find that removal won't work, they generally try to attack you if they have creatures. Once again, just bounce the threatening creatures and let any low-level guys try and eat your high life totals while their low libraries are destroyed. Evacuation can be a key card here, since it will give a round of no attacks while Gertrude does her work.

The second way to play this deck is my favorite: The Peacekeeper strategy. This strategy involves Forgotten Ancient (who I, being fond of my cardboard, have named Norman), who becomes monstrous in multiplayer games. In this, you begin the same way as before: Try to get a Mine down or at least give a few good vibes with those wise Words full of Wisdom. Then send out Norman. If you do this, you need to have an adequate amount of bounce in your hand to begin with, because the initial reaction from your fellow opponents will be something like"Hey, that thing's gonna get big - let's kill him!" and you might get some animosity directed toward you or poor little Norman. Just try to send some more good vibes, and don't attack anyone yet.

Now that Norman's out, you have to figure out which decks will be hard for you to beat yourself. Then just pick them out, bounce anything in the way, and send in Norman. Don't overextend, because the worst thing this deck can do is turn everyone against it, since it can't bounce everything. Once the problem decks are out of the way, send in Gertrude.

The final way I play Gertrude The Glorious has, unfortunately, no name as of yet. The object is to get out Gertrude really early and try to hold off everyone while you try to Mill everyone, too. This requires at least one evacuation and a handful of bounce, a Howling Mine, and of course, Gertrude. Basically, you need a God hand, and it still might not work... But when it does, it is quite funny.

A few final good things about this deck include the fact that it is quite a multiplayer-friendly deck. Obviously, you give your opponents cards, but also there's no mass destruction to anger people. Also,, it is great for playing the emperor. Just keep in mind that you shouldn't play Gertrude until one of the Generals is down; otherwise, you will probably Mill yourself to death before the other emperor. And finally, this deck is extremely cheap to make.

So go out and get the cards, build the deck and you too can bask in the glory of Gertrude!