Most people looked over the Saviors spoilers looking for the latest tech or deck ideas. As a casual player, though, I've always been a fan of looking for the uncastable yet cool crap that won't or can't ever see play. I'm a big fan of cards like Cabal Patriarch - cards that aren't quite good enough until you get them out into the casual tables.

Most people might try to build up drama before revealing their ultimate-kaiju-combo-level-five.... Well, I won't. I give you the infinite red/green damage deck.

Sekki, Seasons' Guide Featured by Chris Hyde on 2005-05-29 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/9764.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 4 Sensei's Divining Top Creatures 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 4 Veteran Explorer Enchantments 4 Pandemonium	Instants 4 Worldly Tutor Legendary Creatures 4 Sekki, Seasons' Guide Sorceries 4 Earthquake 4 Kodama's Reach 4 Savage Twister Basic Lands 16 Forest 8 Mountain	Stats: Average mana: 1.53 Average creature mana cost: 3.67 Average creature power: 0.67 Average creature toughness: 0.67 Deck Composition: Sorceries: 20.00% Basic Lands: 40.00% Artifacts: 6.67% Creatures: 13.33% Enchantments: 6.67% Instants: 6.67% Legendary Creatures: 6.67%
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I'm sure some of the other casual Johnnies out there are hitting themselves for not seeing this combo, but for me it was the first thing that popped to mind when looking at the spoiler. With Pandemonium in play, you cast Sekki, Season's Guide. And then you win the game.

For those of you who don't see it, here's how it works: Sekki, Seasons' Guide comes into play and trips over Pandemonium and deals eight damage to himself. Sekki, Seasons' Guide then dies of embarrassment (or state-based effects as judges like to call such things) and falls into little spirit pieces, which all trigger Pandemonium allowing you to divide eight damage anyway you choose. These spirits can then be sacrificed to bring Sekki right back into play and start the whole thing over again like some twisted version of Groundhog Day, only not.

And now it's time for the obligatory deck walkthrough.

First of all, if you play Green in Multiplayer and don't play Veteran Explorer, go a get a playset now. Veteran Explorer is an expendable blocker that mana-accelerates into threats without making you a target, and actually has great synergy with your board-clearers. He also has the ability to make people use their targeted instant speed removal on him to thin out their own decks. In this deck, he also chains right into Sakura-Tribe Elder, which then gives you enough mana to cast Kodama's Reach next turn. In any event, stop reading this article right now and go to the card buying section and pick up a few. I'll wait.

Done? Good.

Now, the mana acceleration is self explanatory, it lets you cast Sekki fast and hopefully (but not always) the same turn you cast Pandemonium. Cast Pandemonium only when absolutely necessary since once that hits the board, even the dullest of the group will realize you're about the pull something and may (and by may, I mean will) use it to kill you off.

Sensei's Divining Top and Worldly Tutor act as well, um, Tutors. And the Top works well with the twelve shuffle effects in the deck. The strategy is going to be mana acceleration and board sweeping in the early game, then finish off with the combo to kill off everyone at the table at one time.

You can change it slightly, depending on your playgroup. Glacial Chasm is a pretty decent stall card that's uncounterable if you really have trouble with early rushes in your playgroup. You could even make lots of mana off your own Sekki with a huge Earthquake or Savage Twister, and overrun a clear board with a horde of spirit tokens instead of using the Pandemonium combo. Your basic deck outline should look something like this one up top though. Pretty simple right?

Now, here's where we gild the lily.

In Constructed, you try to hone your deck to try to try to win as fast and easy as possible. In fact, if I were trying to do some weird Constructed deck I would probably use a Reanimator base with black for Duress and Cabal Therapy, using Putrid Imp for early beats and Goryo's Vengeance and Cauldron Dance to go off as an instant. There would be Dark Ritual to try to power out Pandemonium...

...But that's not what Multiplayer should be about. (Besides which, there are much better reanimation targets that win games by themselves in Constructed anyway.) (Though it might be fun to try to combine this with Sneak Attack - The Ferrett) This is not to say that multiplayer decks shouldn't honed, lean, and capable of winning - decks that don't do anything at all aren't fun to play with, either. The point I am trying to make is that in this format, the most important thing is having fun.

The deck list above is straightforward and probably will win a fair share of the games you play it in. If you are a Spike at heart, you could probably play it over and over again and never get bored winning the same way every time. I, on the other hand, have fun memories of a Red/Green/Black pile I had that used Kormus Bell, Blanket of Night, and Simoon in one game and Giant Growth, Blood Frenzy, and Delirium the next. Was it capable of winning? Maybe. Was it fun? Yes. So, what I'm going after this article is take that nice, focused deck list I just showed you and turn it into a pile.

The core of the combo should remain the same, so Pandemonium and Sekki have to stay; everything else is up for grabs. First of all, like his Judgment ancestors, Sekki's ability will prevent damage even if he has no counters on him, so pumping up his toughness artificially will keep him virtually immune from damage... So infinite damage can turn into infinite tokens as long as Sekki stays above one toughness. (This is true, as shown in the Saviors FAQ - The Ferrett)

How best to accomplish this, though? I could use Dragon Scales on an early elder and have it come out for free on Sekki before the damage is dealt, then make an infinite amount of 1/1 tokens. However, seeing as how Sekki is a spirit and the tokens he makes are also spirits, Coat of Arms is probably a better choice in this situation. Not only does this beef up the tokens, but it also stops the Engineered Plague/Night of Souls' Betrayal nonsense that would shut the combo off normally. I could even add Biorhythm to the deck to take out people sitting behind an Ivory Mask or Solitary Confinement and force them to (just maybe) interact with the rest of the table.

It might look something like this:

Sekki, Seasons' Guide Featured by Chris Hyde on 2005-05-29 As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/9764.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 2 Coat of Arms Creatures 4 Sakura-Tribe Elder 4 Veteran Explorer Enchantments 1 Heartbeat of Spring 1 Mana Flare 4 Pandemonium	Instants 2 Artifact Mutation 3 Natural Affinity 3 Worldly Tutor Legendary Creatures 2 Homura, Human Ascendant 4 Sekki, Seasons' Guide Sorceries 2 Biorhythm 4 Savage Twister Basic Lands 16 Forest 8 Mountain	Stats: Average mana: 2.13 Average creature mana cost: 4.00 Average creature power: 1.14 Average creature toughness: 1.14 Deck Composition: Basic Lands: 40.00% Artifacts: 3.33% Enchantments: 10.00% Creatures: 13.33% Instants: 13.33% Sorceries: 10.00% Legendary Creatures: 10.00%
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This deck is nowhere near as focused as the previous build. It is, in fact, objectively worse. On the other hand, it's also filled with a lot more interactions than the first build and is a lot more entertaining and interesting to play with. That, and it is still capable of winning with just two cards. You can end up with infinite tokens in this build that also have infinite power and toughness thanks to Coat of Arms, which also has nice synergy with the Artifact Mutation (using an Artifact Mutation on a Darksteel Colossus with Coat of Arms out is some good beatings). Artifact kill is something the previous incarnation of this build lacked, and in chaos multiplayer there is seldom a lack of targets.

Killing your own Homura, Human Ascendant gives your army of tokens a power boost and evasion. Adding Natural Affinity to the deck provides it with some more choice interactions. Combining it with Savage Twister is great at locking a game down if you have infinite tokens out with coat of arms or just an Armageddon affect mid-game as a super reset. Using it with Homura's Essence out is a fun way to go on the beat down too or just to surprise an alpha strike with an army of Shivan Dragons. Heartbeat of Spring and Mana Flare are the "I'm your buddy" mana-accelerants they always are in multiplayer games. (Just make sure that you make it absolutely clear that you aren't looking to kill with some Fireball variant, as Mountains tend to arouse this sort of suspicion.)

Worldly Tutor gets the nod over the Top in this build, but the top may win out in others. It's just a matter of personal preference with what the deck is trying to do. In this build getting the right creature at the right time is more important to me than smoothing out the draw step.

Biorhythm is non-targeting and gets around damage prevention too, but I already covered some of that before. It's in here for the "Ha ha, you just got killed by a dollar rare" factor that no fun multiplayer group should be without. You could take the legend theme further if you wanted, by adding Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, who could not only bring Overrun-like fun to the party, but also selectively kill lands with Savage Twister (or maybe Pyroclasm, if that's more your taste).

There are a couple of different directions this deck could go, and I'll probably try all of them sooner or later...just as long as they're fun. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go build a multiplayer Green lockdown deck.