Hi, everybody! (Hi, Andrew! –Everybody, thinking this is an AA meeting) This is the first article that I've had the guts to submit to StarCity, and I'm really hoping it doesn't show. I've been playing Magic for a while now (I started when The Dark came out, with a hiatus from Mirage to Urza's Legacy), and I've noticed something really obvious - this is such an absolute shocker of information that most of you will be wondering if I'm on some hallucinogenic substance:

Rare cards are powerful.

That's it. Nothing entirely special, but enough that I decided I had to challenge this new law I had discovered. Rare cards are both expensive and hard to find, thus justifying their title. However, I think to myself:"Self! Why don't you make a deck that doesn't use the obviously powerful cards? There are plenty of good commons out there - even some decent uncommons. Make use of them! Why are you thinking like everyone else? Get out of the box!"

Or at least that's what I like to think I say to myself. Mostly it's just:"I want to make a deck, but I don't have the cards…" I have a large collection, but it's not that large. So after rooting through my cards, I came up with this Type 2 monstrosity. And guess what? It works.

Without further ado…

Creatures (23)
3x Nightscape Familiar
4x Ravenous Rats
4x Lava Zombie
4x Thunderscape Battlemage
4x Flametongue Kavu
4x Gravedigger

Spells (13)
4x Terminate
4x Seal of Fire
4x Duress
1x Dark Ritual

Land (24)
10x Mountain
11x Swamp
2x Darigaaz's Caldera
1x Shivan Oasis

Now I'm going to try and speak over the guffaws of laughter that some of you may be snorting now that you've seen this deck/pile I've just listed. This deck works. It's simple, and isn't exactly a Tier One deck like Fires or U/W Control.... But it's a great Friday Night Magic deck, and the price is rather nice. Someone could probably put this deck together for five bucks using a common bin, or for nothing if you were to scrounge the piles of cards left over after Pro drafts. Now, I've said that this deck works, so I'd better explain myself before people start hitting the Back button on their browser.

The deck basically revolves around the synergy between Lava Zombie/Gravedigger and the 187 critters. If you can start bouncing Ravenous Rats and Kavu with the Zombie, or chump block and recur with the ‘Digger, then you're in business. The rest of the deck helps you do that. I'll start with the spells:

Terminate – To sound a bit crude… duh. Every deck needs a response to Spiritmonger and Spectral Lynx, and Terminate fits the bill rather nicely. No further comment really needed.

Duress – How you handle anything that isn't a Spiritmonger or Spectral Lynx. Discard is your primary means of threat removal in this deck, thanks to the Battlemage. Duress just happens to be one of the best discard spells since the mighty Hymn to Tourach, and I included it for just that reason. Again, no further comment really needed.

Seal of Fire – This was a bit of a difficult choice. The obvious alternative is Shock, and I chose Seal of Fire for a reason. Even with the Familiars, this deck taps out a lot - so much even, that Shock becomes a bit of a dead card. Seal fits better because it's a) a one-drop and b) a down payment on a Shock. If you don't like Seal, though, the Shock will work just fine. It really depends on your playstyle.

Dark Ritual – Basically a Nightscape Familiar wanna-be. I messed around with the Ritual/Nightscape balance a bit, and I'm happy with a one-to-three ratio. Collectively, they serve as mana acceleration, mostly because the main spells in the deck are three or four mana.

Now for the critters – they are pretty much divided into come-into-play creatures and"other." The Nightscape Familiar is one such"other" creature. He's there just to serve as mana acceleration mainly, but also as a partial solution to Blastoderms, 'Mongers, and Lynx. I feel it's always nice to have a regenerating creature in a deck - and for this one, the Familiars are it.

The Rats, Battlemages, and Kavu serve two purposes: First, they disrupt your opponent with discard and creature removal. The Battlemage is mainly there for the black kicker, but there are three sources of green mana to serve as emergency enchantment control, in case your Duress turns up four Circles of Protection. (I hate it when that happens…) Secondly, they serve as your creature offense. Provided the deck works right, your opponent's creatures will be either discarded or Flametongue Kavued - and thus, the 1/1 and 2/2 army will be an effective fighting force. The fact that the Kavu has a power of four doesn't hurt either.

Now mostly these creature tricks only work once. However, to prolong the life of our disruption, we can three-R them. (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! C'mon people, we're in an age of green n' clean, here!) That is what the Lava Zombies and Gravediggers are for. If, for some reason, your opponent has more than, oh, two cards in hand (which happens more than I'd like…) or many creatures, we must deal with them. The best method is to bounce with the Zombies, but in the event that your opponent disagrees with this and kills your creatures, you can recur them with your other zombies. The ones who work the graveyard shift! Lather, rinse, repeat until your opponent sees red.

That, folks, in a nutshell, is the deck: Nice synergy between creatures backed with efficient removal and disruption. Now like I said… This isn't a Tier One deck. You can't really expect to go to Regionals and win with this. However… If you're like me and don't like rares, or have a friend with his all-foil, all-rare deck that brags a lot and you want to beat him with some nice humble commonness, or just want to throw your metagame for a loop, this deck is for you. This is all in my opinion, however, but I do have a bit of evidence to back this deck up. I attend some FNM-style tournaments at our local game store and have managed to win two of them with this deck. With this in mind, there are some problems which may help when devising a sideboard.

Voice of All – Nothing wrecks your day than a Voice... Or any other creature that can get protection: red, for that matter. Especially flyers. A sideboard for this deck must be able to remove these suckers, as they make life very painful for you.

Circles of Protection: Red/Black – As silly as this sounds, these also wreck your day rather a lot. I played a game against a R/W/B deck using Seals and Dega Sanctuary to gain seriously massive amounts of life. And his COPs really shut me down… Hard. Therefore, enchantment control is a must in a siideboard. Tranquility comes to mind, as there are really no enchantments other than the Seals maindeck, but you may/may not want more green mana sources for that. Personal preference; do whatever.

That's about it, I believe. I can't think of anything else that would enlighten you more about the joys of rare-less decks, other than just trying them out. Anyways, I think that about wraps it up for now… Feel free to email if in the unlikely event that you enjoy what you've read here, or even if you didn't, constructive feedback is appreciated. My email is just below.

Well, thanks for reading, those of you still here… I hope this went smoothly, and I hope that I find time to write another article!

Take care,
Andrew Crowe
crowebert@hotmail.com