We'll begin with a light discussion of casual meta-politics. If you want to skip straight to the deck discussion, search for phasing. (Please don't leave! The deck doesn't really involve phasing!)

That Depends on What the Meaning of"Bad" Is...
In my last article some months ago, I offhandedly remarked that my friends and I play with moderately bad decks. This was, apparently, news to my friends. Although they were all very polite and understated, they were quite inquisitive as to why exactly I thought their decks were bad, and whether I had intended a compliment in saying they were made that way on purpose.

In my attempts to explain myself, I was constantly tripping over my concept of a casual deck. I throw around the word casual a lot, generally as an excuse for using a card with old-school charm like Pyric Salamander over a newer, shinier, and generally better model like Spitfire Handler. But what does it really mean? Should casual even be used to describe decks, or is it more aptly used to define a style of play (i.e., Rules Enforcement Level -1?)

Such decisions depend largely on your playgroup. I've been with my current group, give or take a few people, for about a year and a half now, and the evolution of our micro-metagame has been interesting to watch. Initially, games centered on getting the fattest creatures out first. (In our defense, Legions and its cadre of fatties had just been released, and we like to try out the latest sets, even the mediocre ones.) This led to an upswing in the popularity of Terror, Nekrataal, and the like. This, in turn, spawned decks which focus less on individual fatties and more on weenies, token generation, or reanimation. Opposing decks then started to feature more board sweepers like Wrath of God, Inferno and Insurrection, while the weenie decks added powerful enhancers like Overrun, Decree of Savagery and, well, Insurrection.

And so now, the next step in our evolution awaits us, but we are hesitant to take it. And I think this is what I meant when I said our decks are"moderately bad" - we aren't using all the available tools to build them. But whether that's bad or not is debatable.

Satisfying the Uprising Proletariat (or, Handling an Insurrection)
Ludicrously expensive instants and sorceries like Decree of Savagery and Insurrection are a mainstay of casual play, and multiplayer play in particular. But they raise an uncomfortable question for players at our stage of evolution: How do you handle, for example, an opponent's Insurrection? Untargetability doesn't help, and being able to sacrifice your creatures to something leaves you completely defenseless. Your workable options are unsavory.

1) Pull off some sort of Fog or Peace Talks effect.

2) Counter that sucker.

Obviously Fog or Peace Talks would work. Your creatures will still be fed to the caster's Altar of Dementia, but at least you'll have a chance.

Now: look deep inside your soul, and be honest.

You really want to counter that Insurrection.

You want to counter it just to see the look on your opponent's face, because he's never had a spell countered before. Your group has always been above that kind of ungentlemanly act. Just thinking about doing it makes you feel like you mooned the principal in the middle of a pep rally.

But you still remember when you first started playing, and that mean old opponent played a Remove Soul on your Primeval Force - and probably tricked you into sacrificing the Forests anyway. And you remember when your Fireblasts met Blue Elemental Blasts, and how horrible that felt. And back then, you swore to yourself that you would never, ever be one of those losers who need counters to win.

Counters feel like cheating, because they are so powerful. Green has no good way to deal with creatures, Black and Red have no way to handle enchantments, and Black can't stop artifacts either, but Blue can deal with all of those, plus instants and sorceries. How unfair!

Counters have been around forever, and not every game of Magic is Blue-on-Blue, so they must not be so much better than Disenchant or Dark Banishing. The fact that they can only be used as the spell is being cast limits their effectiveness; you can't Annul an attacking creature's Worldslayer in the middle of combat to take the opponent by surprise. They also limit your ability to play aggressively, because they require you to keep mana in reserve at all times, just in case that bomb comes out. Plus, counters generally result in card-for-card trades, which are less tenable in multiplayer because you are usually left with at least two opponents who have not lost any cards in the exchange - and who are now concerned about the guy who's countering things.

Eventually, you will have to choose between allowing counters and dodging unstoppable sorceries. If you're really that scared, start off slow...use precise counters like Envelop, Flash Counter and Confound, telling yourself that at least you're not one of those loony permission-mongers who won't let anything through. And be sure to enjoy that first countered Insurrection... because next time, he'll be packing Pyroblast.

That's where my group is today, with countermagic beginning to crawl out of the woodwork. What's your casual group's policy on countermagic, discard, and other aggressive disruption? Do your casual games often involve them? How do you keep your games at a level of casual-ness that everyone agrees on...or is agreement not important? Please post in the forums, or email webmaster@mattdrake.com.

A Non-Blue Deck Idea, Thanks to Phasing
I recently finished building a fairly successful U/R deck, centered on the long-forgotten ability of phasing. This was a landmark for me, as all my previous U/R decks had been massive failures. Please don't leave yet; I (again) swear that the deck I'm discussing includes no phasing whatsoever, and"phasing" will not even be mentioned again in this article. I'm bringing it up because this deck's completion left me with only one pair of colors which I had been unable to abuse suitably in a deck; a pair which, unlike U/R, I hadn't even dared attempt to conquer previously.

These dreaded colors were the hues of your blood, the precursors of pink, and the colors of Canada. That's right: W/R.

Now, I had built a Sligh-style deck with Disenchants before, but that was practically a mono-red. Other than that, I had avoided red and white because they do not appeal to me. Though I have some Timmy blood, I get more kicks pulling off Johnny-style tricks (like Blight + Ring of Gix, or Power Conduit + Bogardan Phoenix. What a mix!) Red doesn't generally have enough tricks to interest me, and white has even fewer. What could a combination of the two possibly do for me?

Two words: Squee's Embrace.

Squee Sucks
It's time now for a brief rant about Squee and his bunch of goons, the Weatherlight crew.

This pack of idiots is at least partly responsible for my five-year hiatus from the game. One of my main reasons for playing casually is that I enjoy the variety of cards I see. My enjoyment of diversity includes the artwork, whose scope is extremely limited when one of nine people is required to appear on just about every card.

Oh, sure, they were a diverse group in and of themselves: The silk-shirted, too-neatly-groomed Gerrard, the"beautiful, in a tomboyish-librarian sort of way" Hanna, the irritable token half-bovid Tahngarth, cranky Crovax, shipshape Sisay, egomaniacal Ertai, stupid Starke, saucy Selenia, treacherous Takara and on and on. (In a fitting turnabout, the most worthless of the Weatherlight crew, Squee, ended up featured on what was accidentally made the most playable card of all: Squee, Goblin Nabob.)

Though they were completely flat and not even a third as entertaining as the cast of Suddenly Susan, we were forced to watch the misadventures of this crew of morons for years, with only a brief intermission during Urza block. We were finally freed from this insanity by Gerrard's death during Apocalypse, but were dragged into an interminable Kamahl-o-thon, until the storytellers blessedly decided to leave the entire plane of Dominaria for Mirrodin. And there was much rejoicing.

Now Wizards uses the storyline in what I feel is the"right" way: by using it to guide the card art, rather than dictate every aspect of it. And I don't have to wonder"Doesn't Slobad ever change his loincloth?" like I did about Gerrard and his frilly, frilly shirt.

Squee's Hugs
So, back to Squee's Embrace. It's one of the few R/W cards which have interesting abilities, but what kind of deck can you build with it?

Obviously, since you only can have four of them, and since they'll probably head to the graveyard eventually because that's the only time they do anything noteworthy, you'll need some Auramancers and a Monk Idealist or two to keep your stock up. Also, you'd do well to have some other creatures with comes-into-play abilities, so that you can re-cast the dying creatures which are returned to your hand for some additional benefit.

Let's start with Karmic Guide. For some reason, this fetching feathered femme is often overlooked. Sure, she costs the same as a Serra Angel, but the Guide has echo, and -2/-2, and she taps to attack, and did I mention the echo? But she also has protection from black, and she comes with free no-strings-attached reanimation, which is only slightly more common than colored artifacts.

What's not to love? About the only flaw I could come up with was her unsightly erratum, which says the reanimation triggers only if she's played from your hand. But I won't let that stop me, because I've used other cards of questionable quality in the past, like Mistmoon Griffin. And I might use him again someday, and probably will use him now. Because he, too, returns things from our graveyard to play, and if Squee's squeezing him, then we can even return the Griffin to our hand and still reanimate another creature - perhaps an Auramancer, to get the Embrace back, too. (Look for this and more useful advice in my upcoming book, Magic Rules Lawyering for Dummies.)

What we have here currently is an incestuous reanimation orgy. Things are dying and coming back, but really all it amounts to is a bunch of self- and co-flagellation, because none of these croakmeisters are doing anything worthwhile. A quick solution is to give their deaths some meaning by using Field of Souls, which will reimburse us one (1) Spirit token for each death. Since I only own one (1) Field of Souls, this will be minor assistance at best (duh.)

Here's a recap, as much for my sake as yours.

4 Squee's Embrace
2 Auramancer
2 Monk Idealist
2 Karmic Guide
3 Mistmoon Griffin
1 Field of Souls

Keeping with the CIP-ability theme (and turning to Red for a moment), Magma Giant seems a fun way to take on weenie decks. But since it will also kill most of our things, an even better choice is the oft-maligned Desolation Giant, which gives us the only critter on the board fox six mana. This is not to be sneezed at, since you'll probably spend the first six turns chump blocking with your Griffins and Auramancers, and allowing your opponents' armies to become sizable. Of course, you needn't fear the Giant, because the best of our dying creatures will be coming back soon enough.

Since we're obviously not afraid of sending our creatures to the 'yard, it wouldn't hurt us to have some leaves-play triggers. An excellent one to have, in this age of Crystal Shard and Cranial Plating, is Reliquary Monk, whose special ability involves falling on things and breaking them. And he doesn't even have to sacrifice himself; he just has to die, which makes him perfect fodder for other utilities which require sacrifices, like Martyr's Cause. More than once, opponents have simply opted not to attack rather than figure out how I could screw up their combat plans with just a Cause and four Spirit tokens. And if you're in the business of garnering favors, you can give up a Spirit or a Reliquary Monk to save someone else's creatures and make them love you forever - and even a genie can't do that! Yeah, I said it: I'm better than a genie.

Speaking of which, Bloodshot Cyclops is also better than any genie - he's even better than the Mahamoti Djinn, if you have a Lithophage available for him to throw. Everything else I have to say about him has already been said about Martyr's Cause, and isn't this article long enough already?

Surprisingly, there aren't a whole lot of other creatures with good leaves-play effects. But that's okay, as a lot of creatures can sacrifice themselves to do something useful; you've probably read about them in books. Some of them are even in our colors, like Shard Phoenix. It, too, fries weenies, and it has its own built-in recursion mechanism, as Phoenixes are wont to do, in case the Karmic Guides are on strike or stuck in the library with that"beautiful" tomboy, Hanna. Another good pick is Bloodfire Colossus, which is even better now that we can feed half of our creatures to Martyr's Cause to protect the others, if need be.

4 Squee's Embrace
2 Auramancer
2 Monk Idealist
2 Karmic Guide
3 Mistmoon Griffin
1 Field of Souls
2 Desolation Giant
3 Reliquary Monk
3 Martyr's Cause
1 Bloodshot Cyclops
1 Shard Phoenix
1 Bloodfire Colossus

Since White and Red are arguably the most deficient colors when it comes to drawing cards, I added a Howling Mine. The Mine gets a bad rap among great players, because their opponents would draw extra cards and then promptly toast the Mine, leaving them with nothing for it. But the fact is that, among those of us who are not great (and do not, generally, loathe our opponents), the Howling Mine makes everyone smile, and warms the heart. A Howling Mine is destroyed rarely, and only when it's the only other possible target for Dust to Dust, or gets in the way of a Shatterstorm meant for something else. Everybody loves the Howling Mine.

Fewer people love the Mindless Automaton, but don't think that'll stop me from including it. Just repeat after me:"Damage on the stack?" That's what you say before you remove two counters from it and draw a card. It's good for blocking Tolarian Entrancers or creatures wielding a Scythe of the Wretched: it will evaporate before their very eyes and leave them Automaton-less. (It's also useful if you accidentally shuffle an unusable card like Catalog into the deck - you can discard the chaff to pump the Automaton! This actually happened to a, uh, friend of mine who has the same name as me. D'oh, I've said too much.)

White and Red are also weak in library manipulation traditionally, but thankfully Fifth Dawn has provided an answer for that in the form of Magma Jet. Possibly the most awesome stream of flaming liquid in the history of the planet, this lets you scry for a Disenchant effect, or slough two excess lands to the bottom of your library. It is an excellent card which I would marry if I could. (In spite of this gushing, Stand Firm will not be seen tonight, at least not in this deck.)

The deck could also use Land Tax - what White deck couldn't? - but instead I decided to experiment with a Fifth Dawn toy, namely Wayfarer's Bauble. It's not great by any means, but is a solid card and can get the last mountain you need for that Colossus or Giant. Feel free to replace it with a Tax and some Plateaus if you have them sitting around. We can also use one each of Noble Templar and Chartooth Cougar for a little added stability.

Since we seem to be getting into the"utility" segment of our deck, we will add the obligatory Lightning Bolts, plus a few comes-into-play Disenchant-style effects (courtesy of Cloudchaser Eagle and Keldon Vandals) in case we don't have anything to feed our Reliquary Monks to. Of course, we may instead want to search for a monk-eating enchantment, which is why an Enlightened Tutor would be useful.

Speaking of the Reliquary Monks, it is possible that they will die when we don't want them to, perhaps when we are forced into an unforeseen chump-blocking situation. It is also possible that his carcass will collapse on top of a Mine or Automaton which we'd like to preserve, since his ability is not optional (which makes sense: the body has to fall somewhere.) To that end, we'll include a couple of Treasure Hunters to help us reconstruct our artifacts. And since these hunters do not have the same hideous errata scars that were inflicted on Karmic Guide, we can even reanimate a Treasure Hunter using a Guide or Mistmoon Griffin in order to return an artifact to our hand.

4 Squee's Embrace
2 Auramancer
2 Monk Idealist
2 Karmic Guide
3 Mistmoon Griffin
1 Field of Souls
2 Desolation Giant
3 Reliquary Monk
3 Martyr's Cause
1 Shard Phoenix
1 Bloodfire Colossus
2 Mindless Automaton
1 Howling Mine
2 Magma Jet
2 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Chartooth Cougar
1 Noble Templar
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Treasure Hunter
1 Cloudchaser Eagle
1 Keldon Vandals
1 Enlightened Tutor

Well, that's about forty cards...seems like we should start adding lands. But let me tell you why I've unsubscribed from that magazine of crockery.

Why I've Unsubscribed From That Magazine of Crockery (or, Why You Should Totally Play Decks With 70+ Cards in Casual, in My Opinion)
In casual play, the variety of the experience is extremely important.

The point of the sixty-card guideline is to make your deck behave consistently. The consistency of your deck is inversely proportional to the variety of experiences you'll have using it.

QED. Give up the consistency and get yourself some variety!

Adding More Cards to the Deck You Thought Was Done
To make a last splash in our utility section, we'll add one Holy Day and one Order/Chaos. I always feel compelled to add the relevant split card when I make a two-color deck, and I have not been disappointed by this one. Chaos, in particular, always takes people by surprise, and Order can handle a Darksteel Colossus, which is more than we can say for any of our other spells so far.

We now need something to deal the death blow. Any large creatures will do, but one I've been meaning to put to good use is Luminous Angel, which poops out 1/1 Martyrs, er, Spirits during each of your upkeeps. I also arbitrarily use the aforementioned Magma Giant (whose usability improved with Martyr's Cause), an Archangel and a Dragon Mage, but I'd suggest you use anything, red, white or artifact, with power 4+ and which you haven't played much. Break out those Jhovall Queens and Chaos Lords!

Okay, maybe just the Jhovall Queens.

A final decklist:
4 Squee's Embrace
2 Auramancer
2 Monk Idealist
2 Karmic Guide
3 Mistmoon Griffin
1 Field of Souls
2 Desolation Giant
3 Reliquary Monk
3 Martyr's Cause
1 Shard Phoenix
1 Bloodfire Colossus
2 Mindless Automaton
1 Howling Mine
2 Magma Jet
2 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Chartooth Cougar
1 Noble Templar
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Treasure Hunter
1 Cloudchaser Eagle
1 Keldon Vandals
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Holy Day
1 Order/Chaos
1 Luminous Angel
1 Archangel*
1 Magma Giant*
1 Dragon Mage*
(* ="or whatever")

I won't bore you with a list of lands; you know what to do. There's a little more White than Red in there, so use maybe 15 or 16 Plains, and maybe 14 or 15 Mountains. Use Plateaus or Battlefield Forges if you have them.

If you're feeling experimental, you could try adding a few Soldevi Diggers and a Remembrance or two. Or you could try Goblin Trenches and Crucible of Worlds. Heck, do what ever you want: It's a casual deck, based on Squee's Embrace. You won't hurt it.

Join me next time when, if you're lucky, I'll talk about my phasing deck.

Matt Drake
Proud Member of no team in particular
webmaster@mattdrake.com