(Note: It's not strictly a multiplayer combo per se, since it has no unbounded loops, but the idea that a Kamigawa Block deck was whipping a bunch of Power Nine decks was too amusing not to print - T.F.)

If you play multiplayer magic on a regular basis, then you probably went "Oh my God!" when you found out about the new legend Kokusho, the Evening Star - that Shivan-sized-Lava-Axeing-Drain-Life-ing machine of sweet, sweet doom.

(And if you didn't, then you only did it to save yourself and others from the evils of playing this card in multiplayer.) To make matters even better, Wizards simultaneously introduced the new legend rule - so now instead of waiting for someone else to kill your dragon, you get to kill your Kokusho on command.

I preordered a play set of Champions - and when I got it, I decided it would be fun to build a block deck for our multiplayer group and show off the new cards. See, no one in my group owned any of the new cards, and they kept saying that they weren't too stoked on them.

A little background on this group: there are anywhere between five and six of us who show up every week, and I'm the only one who started playing after Planeshift. The rest of 'em started playing when Unlimited was still in print. Well, our games show off plenty of the Vintage restricted list; they all have the Power 9 and play them in almost every deck, as well as nasty stuff like four Mazes of Ith. Well, to combat this explosiveness the minimum deck size in our games is eighty cards. Nonetheless, you'll still see a first-turn Darksteel Colossus and other broken plays - but the answers are also there, and the first-turn Colossus gets a Swords to Plowshares to the face. We get in anywhere from three to six games each game night... But when I showed up with this, I won too much!

This is what I took:

The Decklist:
4 Kokusho, the Evening Star
4 Time of Need
1 Kodama of the North Tree
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Hana Kami
4 Soulless Revival
4 Rend Flesh
4 Wear Away
3 Sensei's Divining Top
3 Journeyer's Kite
4 Befoul
4 Cranial Extraction
4 Nezumi Graverobber
3 Joyous Respite
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
12 Forest
12 Swamp

The plan for this deck is to play Kokusho and Play it and Play it... what happens is that he dies and you gain twenty-five life per dragon and everyone else loses five! Imagine "fourth-turn Kokusho, fifth turn attack with it, then play another." That's five life left for one opponent and ten left for everyone else... All this just from you!

In a six-player game, that's fifty-five damage and fifty life gain! That fifty extra life is usually quite enough to allow you to set up again. Until then (and during) you need to survive, so we use the Hana Kami + Soulless Revival + Arcane spells to have unlimited Rend Fleshes.

The Combos
Kokusho, the Evening Star + The Legend Rule
Fifty-point life swings! Just keep playing the Dragon.

Hana Kami + Soulless Revival + Arcane Spell
It works like this: you cast an arcane spell and splice Soulless Revival onto it, getting back Hana Kami, which lets you get back an Arcane spell, which lets you splice Soulless Revival and get the Hana Kami... and so on...

Sensei's Divining Top + Shuffling
This deck will shuffle a lot, and by using the top you get to improve your draws and find what you need. One game came down to me needing to topdeck Kokusho right now or die. I had all of my Journeyer's Kites out and all my land in play, so I used Sensei's Divining Top and shuffled with Kite three times. Finally, on the last shot I saw Time of Need, which I drew, got my Kokusho, and won.

4 Kokusho, the Evening Star
The focus of the deck.

4 Time of Need
Gets Kokusho and sometimes Kodama (when you need to fight back against Maze of Ith or Swords).

1 Kodama of the North Tree
Big, untargetable, and trampling... for five mana!

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
You really need land to maximize the Arcane recursion, and this guy comes back with spliced Soulless Revivals. It's not all that hard to get all of your land in play in the course of an extended game.

4 Kodama's Reach
Essential; you will recur this spell over and over.

4 Hana Kami
4 Soulless Revival
These are the combo, and can be hard-cast in a pinch; it's almost like Kokushos nine through twelve when you're in late-game topdeck mode.

4 Rend Flesh
It kills everything that they're likely to have, and you can bring it back.

4 Wear Away
Anyone who plays multiplayer knows you need these to stop Mind's Eye and all the other broken enchantments and artifacts.

3 Sensei's Divining Top
One of the most unfun things in multiplayer is when that evil black mage makes everyone discard their hand with the evil Mindslicer. Every one of these in play for you is kind of like a cards in your hand that they can't touch.

3 Journeyer's Kite
This card lets you tap out and thin you deck so you can draw more business spells - and in an eighty-card deck, this really shines.

4 Befoul
Removal is good in multiplayer - and removal that doubles as Maze of Ith killing is just sweet.

4 Cranial Extraction
Play 'em on your opponents before they can play 'em on you! Gets rid of Swords and other problem cards. (Oh yeah - and the first time you do it to the Relentless Rats deck, they won't play it again that night.)

4 Nezumi Graverobber
This guy is a house. He's good in the early game, and fantastic in the late game; you can flip him turn 3 and start swinging like a Phyrexian Negator! The best is when he is flipped and you can pay 8BB to instantly do ten to everyone, because you have (or had) two Kokushos in the graveyard.

3 Joyous Respite
Lifegain is good in multiplayer if it's high enough (or you can do it enough times); this card will save your face, plus you can bring it back again and again.

1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
A combat trick that can save a flipped Nezumi; no reason not to play this guy.

1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
A very powerful effect. It wins games, and it's great to use on an opponent's creature who is attacking someone you need to go down.

12 Forest
12 Swamp
If you think the land count is light, then you probably haven't played much multiplayer. You have to realize that you always draw on your first turn, so the it's clear that to have, say, land drops till turn 3 you need three out of then cards to be land - so 30% of your deck should be land. In this case, the deck wants to lay land every turn - and with twenty-six lands, three Tops, three Kites, four Elders, and 4 Kodama's Reach, you will be able to do that.

(I don't necessarily buy this logic here, since the mana is the deck's weakest aspect. Anyone who wants a tutorial on land ratios should read Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar's excellent walkthrough on mana. - The Ferrett)

Now, I realize that most of you probably don't play against power nine in your multi player games and you probably play sixty-card decks - so I have provided the sixty-card, block-legal version.

Kokusho Go! Multiplayer v2.0
4 Kokusho, the Evening Star
4 Time of Need
1 Kodama of the North Tree
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Hana Kami
4 Soulless Revival
4 Rend Flesh
4 Wear Away
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
11 Forest
11 Swamp

This version is much tighter, and you play pretty much the same way every game: Ramp up your mana, get your Spiritcraft combo going to survive, and Kokusho the board out.

What's interesting about this deck is that the sixty-card version probably doesn't want any non-Block cards, as the real synergies and strengths come from playing the Arcane spells. There really isn't room for great cards like Eternal Witness. I mean come on, you don't even need it when you can get any spell back with Hana Kami or Soulless Revival except Time of Need (and that card is for getting another card anyway).

Some might want to point out the weakness this deck has to Cranial Extraction... And my response is, "Duh!" My group has banned only one card before Extraction, and the card was Mindslaver. It was my weapon of choice in a Mono-White Control deck I played, and the group decided to ban it after everyone got wrecked by it (including me) by Goblin Welder builds. Your group may feel the same way, but I feel that Extraction could be almost as bad as it pretty much eliminates the combo deck in multiplayer - which is no fun. I want to see the Reanimator deck based on Living Death, or the savage beating spellbinder deck! Most of these combos are very hard to pull off already with all the Disenchants and Swords floating about in any given game, so they have enough problems without Cranial Extraction.

If this deck gets hit with extraction once it can still survive and do broken things - but if you want to hose it, Extract it twice naming Kokusho first and Soulless Revival second. Then it pretty much rolls over.

As with all multiplayer decks, if you start to get dominant, expect full complements of hate next time you play it.

-SPARTACVS