One of the most powerful effects in Magic the Gathering history is the interaction between Squee, Goblin Nabob and Bazaar of Baghdad. These two cards have the power to create card advantage like very few things can. Once operating, this combo creates a virtual Ancestral Recall, for free each turn, which cannot be countered by conventional means. For several years has been utilized in the Dragon combo deck, but over the last year a number of other decks have appeared that may take the Bazaar farther than ever before.

Bazaar of Baghdad on its own creates a disadvantage when used over successive turns without Squee, Goblin Nabob to back it up. In light of this disadvantage, one of the first requirements of a Bazaar deck is that it turns the Bazaar disadvantage into an advantage. For an example of Bazaar disadvantage, here are the four general scenarios when running Bazaar with Squee.

1: Bazaar with 0 Squee.

Draw 2, discard 3 = -1 card disadvantage.

It may create a quality advantage by dumping stuff you want to go to the graveyard, or drawing into something broken (Ancestral Recall, Tinker).

2: Bazaar with 1 Squee.

Draw 2, discard 2 + Squee = 0 card advantage.

Possible quality advantage similar to the above scenario. Squee returns to hand next upkeep. This is simply a replacement for cards in hand.

3: Bazaar with 2 Squee.

Draw 2, discard 1 + 2 Squee = +1 card advantage.

With advantage guaranteed, the extra card should be better than the discarded card. This is especially good if the one card you discard is something else you want to discard like Worldgorger Dragon.

4: Bazaar with 3 Squee.

Draw 2, discard 3 Squee = +2 Card advantage.

Now, you are playing an uncounterable, free Ancestral Recall each turn. And you aren't playing a card to do so. Not too shabby.

With that in mind, there are several different approaches for abusing the power of the Bazaar draw engine. Methods have varied from utilizing Madness effects, graveyard recursion, Dragon combo, Squee-abusing cards, and even non-Squee options such as Uba Mask. These decks each try to make the best attempt at running the optimal Bazaar-abusing build. In the remainder of this article, I will look at a number of the current Bazaar decks.

Dragon
Probably the most popular, and also the most successful, Bazaar deck over the last several years is known simply as Dragon. This deck is based on the interaction between Animate Dead and Worldgorger Dragon. Dance of the Dead and Necromancy will also initiate the same infinite loop. Due to errata issued by the DCI, Animate Dead comes into play as a permanent before it targets, and is a normal enchantment until the targeting effect resolves. This allows for the Worldgorger Dragon's ability to create a loop of all the permanents you control to move in (untapped) and out of play, with lands available to tap for an infinite amount of mana.

To stop this loop you must have another creature available to animate, in either graveyard. Without another viable target you end up with a drawn game. Of course, drawing a game is not a lofty goal for anybody playing in a tournament... but it can be useful at times. With that in mind, you must have a way to win. Enter Bazaar of Baghdad, and (to a lesser degree) Compulsion. Once the Dragon loop has begun, courtesy of the previously mentioned cards, you are able to create infinite amounts of mana along with infinite card draw and discard so long as you have Compulsion or Bazaar in play. This allows for you to get another creature into you graveyard to animate.

This leaves us with the question of which creature/win condition to run.

For a long time, the number one choice was Ambassador Laquatus. With him, your infinite mana can be used to deck your opponent in one fell swoop. This choice, however, has fallen out of favor due to Oath of Druids decks that run the anti-decking Gaea's Blessing. With Oath decks making a sudden reappearance in the US metagame, Laquatus can be a daunting choice.

Among current alternative choices, we generally see either Eternal Witness, which can generate infinite Ancestral Recalls; or Shivan Hellkite, which can create infinite direct damage so long as you have a Red mana source when you "go off."

For an amazing example of this deck we can take a look at this deck from the Vintage World Championships this year at GenCon.

Of note in this deck is the use of Glimmervoid and Forbidden Orchard as a mana source, along with the more standard five color sources of Gemstone Mine and City of Brass. Forbidden Orchard spirit tokens are hardly a problem if you can deal infinite direct damage, or win through other such methods, before your opponent gets another turn. Hale's deck also features a maindeck secondary kill in Sliver Queen, which can generate infinite Sliver tokens to win on your next turn. As an extra option, you can simply animate the Sliver Queen or the Shivan Hellkite to attack. The tertiary win condition in the sideboard, Verdant Force, is to offset Smokestack in the Stax matchup. Other sideboard options are mainly used to disrupt opponents until you reach your combo.

When playing this deck, there are several things to keep in mind. The first is: how to I handle conditional Bazaar hands? By this, I mean a hand that includes Bazaar, and perhaps one good thing to throw to the graveyard, but that could otherwise be a hand that will lead to much card disadvantage. This is a problem for most Bazaar decks in Type One, but you can overcome it by learning your deck and knowing when to mulligan. This deck has more inevitability than almost every other deck in Magic. You can win by casting only one spell that will inevitably appear your hand. This deck never needs to build up a big mana base; it never needs to get a counter wall going; it simply needs one Animate Dead and a creature in a graveyard, hopefully a Worldgorger Dragon.

This deck plays like you are goldfishing, as it seeks to limit interactivity. By utilizing an uncounterable draw engine, cards like Duress and Xantid Swarm, and by playing as few spells as possible, this deck limits interaction to a very low level. For this reason, Stax is a good matchup most of the time as it also seeks to limit interaction.

You can simply out-draw a Control deck and win. Control cannot force Dragon to interact, which causes much of the control element to sit worthless in hand.

The other problem faced by inexperienced Dragon players is trickier: understanding the stack when you are "Comboing off." It is easy to say "I create infinite Red mana and then animate Shivan Hellkite and ping you to death." It is quite difficult once you are in the combo to understand interactions of instants and when each triggered effect hits the stack. It's also very important for players playing against Dragon to understand, since you need to know when to disrupt the combo and remove all their permanents. This is one of the key examples of the skill required for Type One players. While the stack is a basic, set-in-stone phenomena, knowing how to use and abuse the stack is something that many players will never fully comprehend.

The Shivan Hellkite example given above is very simple, as is the Ambassador Laquatus kill. However, if you look at winning via Eternal Witness then you will be required to do a number of things. Here is an example of how to run the Witness/Ancestral kill in Dragon.

1: Animate Worldgorger Dragon.

2: Utilizing either Bazaar of Baghdad or Compulsion, draw and mill yourself until you have Eternal Witness and a second Animate Dead (or other such animate effect).

3: Target Eternal Witness instead of Worldgorger Dragon when Animate Dead comes back into play (from Worldgorger Dragon's triggered effect).

4: Recur Animate Dead when Eternal Witness is animated.

5: Play second Animate Dead on Worldgorger Dragon to begin the loop again.

6: Generate enough blue mana to play enough Ancestral Recalls to deck your opponent. You can do this in pieces each time the loop happens.

7: Each time you loop you can return a card to your hand via Witness, so mill yourself some more and make sure you get all of your Force of Wills to hand, and your Ancestral Recall.

8: In response to a triggered effect, you need to play Ancestral targeting your opponent. If he draws into any hate, you can cast Force of Will, recur it, before you begin casting Ancestral Recall (targeting them) again. Do this until they are decked.

That's at least eight steps, which isn't difficult once you've done it a few times, but can be hard to remember if you don't play this frequently. My best advice is to practice this deck constantly. A good opponent will always make you demonstrate the combo at least once to prove you know the deck and to see your win condition. Learn the rules on how triggered effects are stacking when you are in this loop. One last tip: never forget that you can draw a game with this deck, and sometimes it may be a necessary evil in order to not lose a match.

Cerebral Assassin
Another deck that gained some early attention is Cerebral Assassin. This deck was founded on the basis of "Mishra's Workshop is a terrible way to get Sundering Titan into play." Originally created by Eastman and the Hadley Rockstars, this deck utilized Goblin Welder along with Bazaar of Baghdad to quickly dump Titans and other large artifacts into the graveyard, for recursion via Welder's ability. No other deck in the game can reliably play Sundering Titans faster or more consistently than Cerebral Assassin.

The second major feature of this deck can be the "combo" of Squee, Goblin Nabob and Possessed Portal. By playing out Portal, you can constantly dump Squee from your hand rather than sacrifice a permanent. This situation quickly leads to a locked game state for the opponent, since they can no longer draw cards (and will be losing permanents in short order). Many Stax players even find this to be an amazingly fun alternative deck, simply due to Possessed Portal being the best lock card in the game if played quickly. Personally, in my metagame this has been relegated to the sideboard... but a heavy Control metagame, with a decent amount of Combo, sees this card as a must. I myself have taken to this extremely fun and exciting deck, and have made numerous Top Eights as its pilot.

Here is one of my recent versions of Cerebral Assassin, with which I won a Mana Drain tournament:

Cerebral Assassin
Scott Lemenager
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
4 City of Brass
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Sulfurous Springs
1 Shivan Reef
1 Underground River
1 Vault of Whispers
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring

4 Goblin Welder
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
3 Animate Dead
2 Reanimate
2 Intuition
2 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
2 Sundering Titan
1 Duplicant
1 Triskelion
1 Platinum Angel
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Shivan Hellkite
2 Xantid Swarm
2 Echoing Truth
1 Living Wish
1 Tinker
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sideboard
3 Ray of Revelation
3 Sacred Ground
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Worldgorger Dragon
1 Xantid Swarm
1 Possessed Portal
1 True Believer
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Withered Wretch

This particular version is set up for my local metagame, and features many of the tricks I have found over the past year. Of special note in this build are the Reanimates, and the Living Wish found in the maindeck. One of my favorite changes has been the addition of two maindeck Echoing Truths, since they can deal with a number of threats in my current metagame (Stax lock pieces, Darksteel Colossus). While this deck has not had a lot of attention given to it of late, it is a proven deck and has the ability to compete in today's Vintage arena.

While playing this deck, you need to remember several things. Most importantly, Sundering Titan is your primary win condition. It is always the goal of the deck to play proactively and drop a very early Titan. The best way to do this is to play a first turn Goblin Welder and an artifact, then on your next turn (when Welder is active) you either drop Bazaar and pitch a threat, or get threats into your graveyard via Thirst for Knowledge, Intuition, or Buried Alive.

Why, then, is Sundering Titan your number one priority?

Because this is one of the most disruptive cards available in the game.

Your deck needs to disrupt something early to maintain a tempo advantage. It is also the easiest early threat to pull off, since not only does Welder bring him into play, but Animate Dead gives you numerous ways to get him into play by turn two. The other very strong choice, if you do get an early Welder to resolve, is to use Intuition to fetch two Squee and a Possessed Portal to get the game locked... then kill with the Welder by actually having him attack. Alternatively, if you are playing against either Oath or Stax, you can aim to get Duplicant or Triskelion.

My last advice for this deck is that since you have outs, use should utilize them. With Possessed Portal and the Dragon combo in the deck you have amazing late game possibilities for the win. You also have a powerful Yawgmoth's Will available, as you'll be dumping all sorts of brokenness into you graveyard all game long.

Squee Infestation
Of similar popularity and success is Alejando Escribano's Squee Infestation deck. This great Bazaar deck utilizes Zombie Infestation, along with Squee, to create Zombie tokens and beat down the opponent. It also features the secondary win condition that many players have adopted: Tinker fetching Darksteel Colossus.

To allow for the Zombie tokens to begin piling up, this deck features a somewhat heavier control element when compared to the previous two Bazaar decks. Utilizing Force of Will and Circular Logic, this deck can adopt a much more reactive game plan whenever needed than either Dragon or Cerebral Assassin. It also uses Strip Mine, and several Wastelands, to support a slower gameplan.

Other tricks to the deck include everything from Death Spark to a maindeck Red Elemental Blast and Pyroblast, along with a Gorilla Shaman, which all help shore up a medium-strength control base.

Here is Alejandro Escribano's list from the GenCon World Championships, where he placed just outside of the Top Eight. He also took a similar list to a second place finish at the French Vintage Championships, the largest Type One tournament of the current era.

Squee Infestation
Alejandro Escribano
1 Island
1 Swamp
3 Underground Sea
3 Volcanic Island
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Strip Mine
4 Polluted Delta
2 Wasteland

1 Black Lotus
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
1 Death Spark
4 Force of Will
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Echoing Truth
1 Pyroblast
1 Mystical Tutor
3 Brainstorm
4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Zombie Infestation
3 Intuition
4 Circular Logic
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Vampiric Tutor

Sideboard
3 Arcane Laboratory
1 Gorilla Shaman
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Shattering Pulse
2 Energy Flux
1 Zombie Infestation
2 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Rack and Ruin
1 Firestorm

This deck can play a reactive game with its Bazaars. By refusing the use of Bazaar during your own turn, you can hold on to both Squee and Circular Logic. Should you need activate Bazaar play Circular Logic and discard Squee, you can... or you can just discard Squee to Zombie Infestation.

Another bonus of this deck is, with a somewhat higher control base, it has a better matchup against fast Combo decks such as Long and 2-land Belcher. It also has a decent plan against Stax, in that Zombie Infestation creates a nice permanent base, and every turn you can offset Smokestack by creating another Zombie token.

With this deck, you need to remember that you can play very reactively, and at times it really wants to be the Control. Of course, it can play the beatdown, but it can lend itself to Control by simply leaving lands untapped and playing largely on the opponents turn, especially once an Infestation is in play. If you haven't played with it before, Circular Logic can take some thought. Keep careful track of your graveyard size, and know how much mana the opponent has available. I have played against players using Circular Logic that have made big errors against me, even losing games they should have won, by misjudging a Circular Logic.

This deck definitely has potential, if more players begin utilizing this build. With slight modifications, it fits into most metagames. It is also controversial, as a number of players in the US find it to be jank... yet it has proven itself numerous times since the French Vintage Championships.

Replenish
One of the more interesting Bazaar decks I've seen is Replenish. Also known as Leviat, after it's creator, this deck utilizes Bazaar of Baghdad to dump various powerful yet expensive enchantments into the graveyard. Once the enchantments are there, Replenish puts them into play.

The main win condition for the deck is Form of the Dragon, but this is backed up by Solitary Confinement and Humility to keep opponents from stealing your life away. Solitary Confinement is a solid card, as when coupled with Squee it can purchase you numerous turns of protection. While Possessed Portal is a stronger protection card, yet it does not fill the enchantment requirement for the deck... but the effects are very similar. Of course, being able to Replenish with a Yawgmoth's Bargain in the graveyard is simply broken.

While this deck is quite popular in Europe, it hasn't caught on in the United States. It remains one of the few to demonstrate that Bazaar and Mana Drain can co-exist within a deck.

Here is a top 4 list from Lieden in the Netherlands by Hugo van Dijke:

Leviat
Hugo van Dijke
1 Plains
5 Island
4 Force of Will
4 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Solitary Confinement
4 Mana Drain
3 Squee, Goblin Nabob
3 Thirst For Knowledge
1 Seal of Cleansing
4 Flooded Strand
2 Form of the Dragon
4 Intuition
1 Humility
3 Deep Analysis
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Emerald
1 Black Lotus
1 Balance
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Tundra
4 Replenish
1 Yawgmoth's Bargain
1 Mana Crypt

Sideboard
2 Arcane Laboratory
1 Darksteel Colossus
1 Solitary Confinement
2 Energy Flux
1 Rule of Law
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Pithing Needle
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tinker

Of all the decks I have had the pleasure of playing, this deck alone shows how powerful Intuition can be. Casting Intuition for Squee, which is generally done in all of the Bazaar decks, is the tip of the iceberg... this deck pitches the most devastating combinations of cards into the graveyard to be Replenished back to the hand. The only things I might change up in this deck are the sideboarding options, but then again who wouldn't change things? Other cards to consider would be Sacred Ground rather than Energy Flux in a more Stax heavy (rather than Workshop Aggro) metagame. I'd also run 3 Arcane Laboratory rather than Rule of Law, as Lab is pitchable to Force of Will.

The last thing I would consider would be using one or two Echoing Truths, rather than three Swords to Plowshares, and possibly running either Propaganda or another Humility to shore up the creature defenses.

Leviat is another in the new wave of Control Bazaar decks that have been showing up around the globe. While this deck is slightly less reactive than the Infestation deck, it runs a substantial amount of disruption in the form of proactive enchantment threats that can often be hardcast early in the game, such as Seal of Cleansing. Overall, this deck shines due to its ability to utilize the Bazaar/Squee draw engine while also utilizing Mana Drain to fuel devastating turns. One other amazing highlight is that Leviat uses six basic lands. The mana base is probably the best you are going to find among Bazaar decks, which tend to have shaky bases due to four land slots being filled with a non-mana producing land, Bazaar.

Other Options
While on the topic of Bazaar of Baghdad decks, I wanted to also bring up several other options for players to try out. Two other decks sporting Bazaar in today's metagame are Uba Stax and Hounds R Us.

Uba Stax is a strong and popular deck in the United States, and only the introduction of Suppression Field puts a damper on it. While this deck is considered a Bazaar deck, it correctly belongs grouped with Workshop decks, or more specifically Stax concepts. Rather than build on the advantage of Bazaar/Squee, Uba Stax utilizes Goblin Welders (for similar reasons as Cerebral Assassin), but also uses Uba Mask to create both card advantage and a soft lock in the middle of the game when coupled with Welder. Utilizing Uba rather than Squee creates a very similar advantage. However, you are able to take advantage of three free draws, while your opponent might be forced to lose their only draw of their turn, especially if you have Welder in play. By Welding out Uba Mask after the opponent has drawn, there is no ability in play that says "you may play cards removed from the game this way until the end of turn," so the card is simply lost. Uba Mask on its own negates any reactive counter-type spells, like Mana Drain or Force of Will, if they are drawn this way.

The Hounds R Us deck feels like a combination of Leviat and Infestation, with one major difference: Hounds R Us allows a player to play a much more proactive game, while maintaining as much control. This deck not only uses Mana Drains and Force of Will, it also adds in Mana Leak and Pernicious Deed. The win conditions are Wild Mongrel and Vampire Hounds. The premise here is still to abuse the raw power of Bazaar and Squee, but it also utilizes Squee as part of the win condition. As early as turn two or three, you can be swinging with an 8/8 Vampire Hound, while still holding a grip of control. While Xman, the original creator of the deck, somewhat disagrees with me on this, I find this deck to relate itself very closely to what Fish, or more accurately WTF, would look like if it ran Bazaar. You can look at this as a backwards Standstill. Personally, I find this to be a deck that might be able to break through in able hands. I hope enough people give it a shot and tweak it up to find what works best.

Play Tips
Everybody asks for tips on how to play these decks. I'll go over a few basics, but the decks can be drastically different.

1: Be prepared for conditional Bazaar activations.
At times, you will be forced to decide whether you wish to keep a hand that has a Bazaar and not much else- on the hopes that Bazaar can dig you into your threats- or whether it would be best to mulligan. For example, your hand contains the following:

Bazaar of Baghdad
City of Brass
Intuition
Thirst for Knowledge
Yawgmoth's Will
Demonic Tutor
Death Spark

This hand is extremely powerful at first glance, but the question remains... "Should I keep it?"

Just playing a City of Brass, then saying go, means you will probably lose if the opponent plays a Wasteland. Bazaar of Baghdad could draw you into another mana source, playing out a devastating second turn... you need to learn the odds of hitting another land. What if your opponent has more than one counters in his hand? I won't give exact numbers, because it is different for each of the above decks.

2: Don't fear the hate.
Many people find Dragon and other Bazaar decks to be lacking, due to the sheer amount of hate that can ruin your day. Most decks in the format are already running hate against these decks, even if they didn't specifically have them in mind. For example, while 5cStax might run three Ray of Revelations against Oath and other enchantment heavy decks, this card is also rather good against Dragon. It can leave you with zero permanents when it targets Animate Dead. The most common hate, however, is Tormod's Crypt and other grave denying effects, such as Phyrexian Furnace, Ground Seal and Planar Void. In my experience, I've found the best answer to this types of hate is to go full-bore into them. By forcing the opponent to crack his Crypt we are allowing ourselves the ability to restart, and try to get something happening before they find another hate card.

On this note, you must remember to not throw all of your eggs into one basket. You should hold back something for after the hate, which could lead into a conditional Bazaar when normally you should not have to.

By gunning for the hate, you are also digging through your deck and fetching your own hate (or anti-hate) options.

3: Squee... he is important.
Many times, I find myself using my first Intuition to grab a minimum of two Squee, Goblin Nabobs, or getting Uba Mask into play. One of the primary reasons Bazaar decks are good is that their draw engine is uncounterable. Generating small tempo boosts and massive card advantage by getting this engine online are very important goals. Generally, you only want to spend your first Intuition on other items if you already have the keys to winning in play, or know you have the ability to resolve them.

An example of when Intuition for threats (and not Squee) would be correct could run as follows:

In Cerebral Assassin, you resolving a first turn Goblin Welder.

Your opponent has several dual lands in play.

An Intuition for Sundering Titan, Sundering Titan, Platinum Angel seems to have good value here. Against Control Slaver, or anything with Goblin Welder, then Triskelion makes the grade.

But even in these cases, you generally want to Intuition for Squee, Squee, Possessed Portal... as long as you have a way to pitch Portal to the graveyard, such as a turn two Bazaar or Thirst for Knowledge.

Squee is the deck, more so than Bazaar itself. Without Squee, Bazaar loses its true potential.

Conclusion
In the end, we all need a willingness to try something new, to think outside the box. Learning these decks, inside and out, is vital for success, as not everybody can pick up these builds and win. Choosing the correct metagame for each deck is vital, and knowing how to sideboard within those metagames can make or break an average player.

I urge you, challenge you even, to pick up a deck and try it. It will leave you feeling refreshed, happy at the end of a testing session. These decks are different from the set-in-stone Drain vs. Workshop Type One environment offerings, and they have the power to beat any deck on any day.

As usual, I recommend testing and practice. Learn these decks, as they are different. Different, yes... but not more difficult. They take serious skill to pilot to the top of a decent sized tournament, but they aren't so complicated that one wrong move could mean disaster.

So there they are, the Bazaar decks.

Enjoy them, learn them, play them... or be ready to face them, because they will be around for a long time to come.

I guarantee it.

Any additional questions or comments, please feel free to shoot me a PM here, or just leave a post.

Scott Lemenager
a.k.a Lunar