If you have enough sugar, you will win.

I'm not talking about bringing a dozen Twinkies to a Magic tournament. Sugar is whatever your opponent sees. If you manipulate them to see what you want, you gain a significant advantage. In a tournament, your opponent has no idea what you are playing (assuming you don't netdeck), and this is easily accomplished. However, in multiplayer it becomes much more difficult. You are playing with your friends, who see your decks every other day. Casting a Psychatog will not cause them to forget that you are actually playing a deck built around Stasis. To create enough sugar, you have to use the cards in a lasting way: subtlety.

Think of each time you have thrown a deck together and hoped that it would win every game against your friends. Now think of all the times you have failed. Those two numbers should be about equal. It is very difficult to make a deck that can compete with multiple opponents and win a significant percentage of games. In chaos Magic:

1) There are multiple opponents. Probability says that you will only win an average of 1/n games, where n is the total number of players.

2) When your opponents see you win many games in a row, they will begin to try and eliminate you quickly in subsequent games

3) It is difficult to predict a system (like a Magic game) when there are more variables involved (opponents and card interactions).

Don't worry; we are going to ignore all of these rules, and put our money on one assumption. First let's make a principle of our own.

Catch Me If You Can: It's all about the pinstripes. If we distract our opponents enough, they won't notice how we are going to win. If your opponents don't notice something about your deck, you have an advantage. This is most easily achieved through card interactions rather than individual effects.

Now, on to the deadly assumption:

I know; that's quite an assumption to make. Before you send an angry mob of goblins to my front door, hear me out. Combo decks are generally not good against multiple opponents. The same tends to apply to decks with countermagic. They are not fun to play against, because they are not as interactive as other decks. So, if we are faced with such decks in a chaos game, we can just allow everyone else to kill them. With that in mind, we can make card selections without worrying too much about Mana Drain and third-turn twenty-point Fireballs.

Think back to the first time you were locked down by Stasis. Didn't it annoy you that your opponent's one card could stop your swarm of goblins? For some cards, such as Stasis, this made you realize their power (and hate them for it). For others, you were just annoyed or took almost no notice. You dismissed the card fairly quickly thereafter. Pay attention to the cards that were dismissed. Those are most likely the cards that have subtle power.

Now for the part you all scrolled down to anyway.

Lucky Charms.dec
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Mother of Runes
4 Academy Rector
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Regrowth
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Dueling Grounds
1 Overgrown Estate
1 Worship
1 Platinum Angel
1 Balance
1 Mind Twist
1 Aura of Silence
1 Ivory Mask
1 Sol Ring
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Genesis
1 Replenish
1 Dust Bowl
1 Treetop Village
2 Maze of Ith
2 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
4 Bayou
4 Scrubland
4 Savannah
5 Forest

Granted, there are a lot of single cards. This would suggest a lack of reliability. However, the card interactions and tutoring/recursion effects make the dispersion worthwhile. In fact, the scattering of cards helps our attempts to distract.

I started playing this deck in my multiplayer group, and it has won forty-three out of seventy-eight matches thus far (in four- or five-player games). If you do the math, you'll find that to be just over 50%. Considering the expected probability of 1/n (about 20% or 25%), it has performed well. Even after seventy-eight matches and such a high win percentage, my friends do not gang up on the deck. My playgroup uses the following deck types:

Living Death
Hatred
Sligh
Black Control
Isochron Keeper
Rebels
Elves
Enchantress
Slivers
Drain Life
Dragons
Milling
Mirrodin based artifact decks
T1 Aggro B/R

The best part is that No One Ever Notices It Win. This deck seems to be the king of subtlety. Lucky Charms plays like a sad child. Not one of those whining children; more like an introvert. Only react if you are severely threatened. Otherwise, play small things that protect yourself. Often you don't even need to play the politics of the deck to do well. It is built to handle creature swarms of any magnitude and quantity (even infinite), plus any direction-based decks (Drain Life, burn). There are only one or two cards in the entire deck that anyone ever feels threatened by. Therefore, save those cards for dire situations, or as game finishers.

Birds of Paradise
You want this to be the first card played in every game. These little buggers allow you to play any spell in the deck, and play it faster. Adding to the theme of subtlety, opponents will often not notice the Birds as either a blocker or mana producer. Sometimes I put my Birds with my lands, to increase the chance of that happening. Just don't let yourself forget about them!

Academy Rector
If your playgroup tends to be scared when they see an Academy Rector in play (nightmares of Yawgmoth's Bargain, Illusions of Grandeur, etc.), take it out of the deck. It can be a distressing card for some people. Otherwise, it serves as an early blocker and deters attacks. Pernicious Deed can be used to activate Academy Rector. There are so many attractive choices for the Rector's ability, making it an optimal card for Lucky Charms.

Xantid Swarm
Remember that assumption we made earlier? Xantid Swarm is in the deck in case we were wrong. If there is such a combo deck (or Blue control) that can stay alive, Xantid Swarm will allow you to play your spells unperturbed. It can also make for very fun plays with Balance/Overgrown Estate/Mind Twist.

Regrowth
This is essentially a Demonic Tutor for anything in your graveyard (which can sometimes be 2GB for anything in your library also). Pernicious Deed gives assurance that there will be plenty of juicy spells in your graveyard. It is wonderful to see someone finally destroy your Worship, only to have it put back into play.

Enlightened Tutor
There are eight things to search for with this card. Never discount any of them. Sometimes you just need to search for Sol Ring because you are low on mana. But more often than not, Enlightened Tutor is used to find either Dueling Grounds or Ivory Mask. Be wary of searching for something like Platinum Angel. Revealing such a threat is not in the best interest of a deck that is trying to be subtle.

Dueling Grounds
If I were to call any card the heart of the deck, this would be it. It has won more games for me than any other card in Lucky Charms. It stops any sort of creature front, and has amazing synergy with so many cards: Mother of Runes, Swords to Plowshares, Maze of Ith. There are so many ways to lock a game when only one creature can attack you at a time. Pay attention to the fact that you can still be attacked my multiple players before your turn comes around.

Overgrown Estate
It has been suggested to me that this card be replaced with Zuran Orb. I disagree. The Estate can be searched out with Academy Rector. Furthermore, the one extra life per land makes a difference when you are running so many lands in a deck. Sometimes this card is stalling the game while I search for an answer. The more time the better. Overgrown Estate can also be used to sacrifice all of your land before a Balance.

Balance
Possibly one of the best reset buttons ever made, and yet Balance is far from balanced in this deck. Cards like Overgrown Estate, Pernicious Deed, and Mind Twist can manipulate the card to work how you want it to. Lucky Charms often wins off of the Balance/Overgrown Estate combo. Don't be afraid to discard important cards early on to Balance, because Genesis, Replenish, and Regrowth can always be used to get cards back.

Mind Twist
Usually targeted discard is bad in chaos magic. Mind Twist is an exception. The ability to completely devastate the Blue mage, and force our assumption to be true, is very potent.

Ivory Mask
I threw this card in the deck as an afterthought, and it has become the MVP. Ivory Mask foils so much more than I ever thought it would. More importantly, the cards that are affected by Ivory Mask are those that are most threatening to Lucky Charms (discard, burn, life draining, milling effects, etc.).

Genesis
Lucky Charms runs several mass removal spells. This means that many permanents, including creatures, will be in your graveyard. Academy Rector is an especially good creature for recurring, allowing you to find many enchantments. Worship becomes much more powerful with graveyard recursion to keep your creatures alive.

Treetop Village
Zvi was right when he recognized the power of this card. It survives board-sweeping effects, some targeted removal, and comes at the low cost of a Forest coming into play tapped. Also, the land often goes unnoticed, which can be a fatal mistake. If Worship is in play, Treetop Village can be activated at instant speed to make worship active until end of turn.

The most important thing to remember when playing this deck is that you cannot act cocky! You must be quiet and respectful. Otherwise you will sacrifice the advantage we have been working to build.

The Moral of the Story is...
The affects of card interactions need not be limited to the game. They affect politics as well. Try making a deck that has intentions for both in-play strategy and out of play politics.

Sincerely,
Michael Jermyn
(Mikendher@yahoo.com)