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Today, my students, we will discuss my favorite (and only) Magic Online budget deck and how it captures the concept of a color curve. Yes, decks are fun and yes, theory is boring - but put them together and that's breaking even. It's my humble opinion that only the most charismatic authors can execute a well-written theory article (you know who you are) and I'm not one of them. Instead, I'll show you how I built my only Magic Online deck that uses all five of the colors using just $23.74 - and how the color curve guides how I tweak and play it.

We'll start with a little theory, go into a brief rant, then a deck and a concept... and we'll wrap it all up with some comedy. Whether you want to or not, you're bound to learn something by the time we reach the end.

Let's begin our discussion: What is a color curve? Well, let me illustrate, starting simple and working my way up. Let's assume we only get mana from lands, for simplicity's sake.

The most trivial case is a deck with no lands. There aren't many decisions to be made here about mana development. Say, zero? Moving on.

The next case is a deck with just one land type, like twenty Mountains. Your mana base development is affected by only one decision each turn: to play or not to play a Mountain if you have one in your hand.

The next case is when you add utility lands like Wastelands and Rishadan Ports. Now you have a different "color," so to speak, because you have an additional decision: to play either a colored basic land or a colorless nonbasic land. Too many colorless lands can leave red uncastables stranded in your hand, while too many Mountains may not be as disruptive as your utility lands.

Now when you add an additional color, like green, you will eventually, inevitably, be color-screwed. While present even in a red deck with only Mountains and colorless nonbasics, color screwing reams you harder and harder as you add colors, reaching its peak with the full five colors.

The Color Curve has been explained eloquently by Shaun "darkness" Crawford in "Still Life - 250 Color Curve" for 5-Color decks, where he details a simple sorting method that helps you discover your deck's color curve. The underlying points are, essentially:

• Your colors should naturally come online at different times.
• Two of one color is more stressful than two different colors.
• The higher the colorless cost, the more time you have to find the colored cost.

Shaun's method works for decks of all shapes and colors, from decks of 250 or sixty or even forty cards in both Limited and Constructed (except all you guys in Type 4!). Let's take specific look at the color curve and see just how it can shape both deckbuilding and playtesting in one particular deck.

The deck I'm showcasing today is a sixty-card budget deck on Magic Online (which I like to call MODO). I know many of you reading this are MODO fanatics. I am not - though I admit while beta-testing MODO that online drafting is wicked fun. I did it nonstop for days. However, as a subscriber of Nerdular Nerdence, I know that all it takes is one hacker to spawn a thousand lawsuits and bring the whole company to its knees. One clean hack of one thousand FOIL Reya, Dawnbringers, reversing a week of trades, or a strange rule loophole (once I froze a 2HG game somehow with Phyrexian Infiltrator) can start a cascade.

• One playset fits in all decks
• Autoshuffling
• Easy and Fast Tutoring (Awesome for Prismatic!)
• Time clocks
• No deck registration
• Games 24-7
• Strict rules enforcement
• Sorted, Searchable Collection
• No loss of card condition
• Qualification prizes
• Gunslinging
• No travel
• No physically unattractive or smelly gamers (except yourself)
• Play in your underwear

• Set release delays, sometimes on individual problematic cards
• Cheating through collusion and help from others
• Heightened rudeness and spam
• Multiplayer is abhorrently slow
• "Testing" the swear filter "earns" bans
• Bugs, abusable at times (bugged Fatespinner: Biggest Limited Bomb ever?)
• Requires computer, MODO, and Internet connection
• Unfair redemption program (every pack opened leaves ten commons and two uncommons unredeemable)
• MODO's user-friendly interface can make your IRL skill lazy
• Not a good avenue to meet girls

For these reasons, I risked $23.74 for 2 draft sets of ODY/TOR/JUG. I won my first draft on the back of Jeska, Warrior Adept, then sold U/G Madness parts and scrubbed out until I had no more drafts left. I traded for a Domain engine because it is fun, powerful, inexpensive (at the time), and I can endlessly tweak it. Later, I got some free ONS/LEG/SCO cards at Chuck's Virtual Party (promotional Sliver Queen!) and later sold my New Frontiers for 25 tickets and some MIR/DAR/5TH drafts, scrubbing out hard. Drafting Molder Slug is some good... unless you never draw it!

So now I'm forced to let my MODO experience stagnate or justify paying for digital cards over real cards.

Is MODO fun? Yes! Draft almost instantaneously whenever you feel like it? The possibility of going infinite? Playing with my friends across the world? I remember a couple of memorable games, like when my "Prismatic Odyssey Block Draft" deck lucksacked endless Grizzly Fates, barely eking out a win against Aaron Forsythe's high-powered painlanding, Wishing, and Tutoring monstrosity. I remember another game where Oliver Ruel dropped Battle of Wits (the Johnnyest card ever) from his monoblue deck against me in the Invitational Gunslinging room and countered my Orim's Thunder twice. I look up to these guys like heroes, and such experiences would not be possible without MODO.

But $23.74 is all MODO gets from me. So what can we all learn from this little narrative? Why, how to build a color curve, of course!

My MODO Token Domain Deck
Let's look at a detailed color curve for a sixty-card deck with an underpowered land base. This Domain deck (a deck with all five colors and mostly basic lands) usually wins with a large amount of Bear and Bird tokens. It's inspired by my real-life Burning Wish Domain deck designed to wreck Mono-Black Cabal Coffers-fuelled Control with token creatures and Global Ruin, just before Mirari's Wake was discovered (in this kind of deck, it's merely a "bomb" card and not an "untap and I win" card).

Obviously, this deck is fiercely budgeted, built from the meager pool and earnings that my $23.74 could afford. This deck can tear up the Casual Constructed Room as well as use and abuse Holistic Wisdom, a card many people in there have never seen before.

Mana Acceleration (11)
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Harrow
3 Sunscape Familiar

Bombs (9)
2 Questing Phelddagrif
3 Ordered Migration
3 Grizzly Fate
1 Mirari's Wake

Utility (18)
4 Worldly Counsel
2 Quiet Speculation
2 Deep Analysis
2 Keep Watch
2 Orim's Thunder
1 Firebolt
1 Moment's Peace
1 Rushing River
1 Aether Mutation
1 Ancestral Tribute
1 Holistic Wisdom

Land (22)
1 Nantuko Monastery
1 Terminal Moraine
1 Krosan Verge
1 Tranquil Thicket
9 Forest
4 Island
3 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Swamp

While the deck appears spotted with random cards, it's actually not. As Adrian Sullivan reminds us, if you have enough search, you will find it.

Between thinning lands, Quiet Speculation, Worldly Counsel, and the card drawers, I can usually find what I'm looking for if there's an emergency. There are some analogs like Deep Analysis and Keep Watch, Orim's Thunder and Firebolt, Rushing River and Aether Mutation - but this healthy mix of spells is what makes Holistic Wisdom devastating in the late game. Control decks need some kind of inevitability like Eternal Dragon, Eternal Witness, Psychatog, or Legacy Weapon - and from my experience Domain, is the best deck ever to abuse Holistic Wisdom. It's quite difficult to lose when you have a healthy graveyard, 7+ mana, and Holistic Wisdom. In fact, I can't remember ever losing with a board position like that (it would be even stronger if I ran Evasive Action, but the casual room isn't keen on counterspells and wrecking lands with Global Ruin).

MODO Usage Note:
Holistic Wisdom's wording can screw you. You pay two mana, click on Holistic Wisdom, click a target card in your graveyard, then click on a card to remove from your hand. Let's say you want to Wisdom back Tranquil Thicket by removing a Forest. If you click on Tranquil Thicket then misclick on Worldly Counsel, when Holistic Wisdom's ability goes on the stack Worldly Counsel gets removed - and when it resolves, you get nothing. If you misclick on Sakura-Tribe Elder in your graveyard then click on Forest, Forest gets removed and you get nothing. That's because Holistic Wisdom only returns the target card on the condition "if it shares a type" and not "target card that shares a type," which would force accurate targeting. A subtle difference that screws you for misclicking, yet allows you to remove cards in your hand from the game at will.

About the mana base: Domain's mana base is so good, it's actually boringly good. I felt compelled to dirty the mana base because it was just too easy to get my colors against other casual players. Of the nonbasics, Tranquil Thicket deserves a spot (because of Holistic Wisdom), then Krosan Verge, then Terminal Moraine, then Nantuko Monastery (which performs rather poorly against everything except Mono-Black Control).

Needless to say, this budget deck is watered-down even further to hover around the power level of other decks in the Casual Constructed Room (second from the left).

This deck has a great color curve for demonstration purposes because:

• With all the land searching, we often decide what color to get next.
• There are many different colored spells in the deck, which we want to cast at certain points in the game.
• Colored mana is produced exclusively from basic lands. There's no color-cheating from painlands or Birds of Paradise, for example.

R&P's Ideal Color Curve
As the game progresses, R&P wants access to an increasing number of colors. With each passing turn, it generally seeks out basic lands in the following order: Forest, Island, Plains, Mountain, Forest, Island, Plains, Swamp.

That's because green fixes and accelerates lands, blue draws and searches for cards, white is defensive, and red kills creatures. Might as well use each color's strength, am I right?

For the land base, I use a slightly-modified version of Jay Schneider's basic land formula for Domain decks. Basically, I play as many Islands, Plains, Mountains, and Swamps, as I expect to need in one given turn. The rest of my lands are Forests to support my eight land fetchers and accelerators: Sakura-Tribe Elder and Harrow. After quite a while, I replaced two Forests with an extra Plains and Island, which seems to keep the colors flowing. While I always want to draw a Forest, it really helps to also draw into either an Island or a Plains so that my first mana fixer gives me GUW; otherwise, I'm reliant on drawing two mana fixers or a Harrow while sitting on too many green sources.

Looking at this nifty chart I made, we can see what colors of mana are ideally available each turn and when each spell comes online:

G - Tranquil Thicket
GU - Sakura-Tribe Elder, Quiet Speculation, Worldly Counsel
GUW - Sunscape Familiar, Harrow, Orim's Thunder
GUWR - Orim's Thunder with kicker, Deep Analysis, Questing Phelddagrif
GUWRG - Ordered Migration, Grizzly Fate, AEther Mutation, Mirari's Wake
GUWRGU - Keep Watch
GUWRGUW - Ancestral Tribute
GUWRGUWB - Holistic Wisdom

Moment's Peace, Rushing River, and Firebolt are silver bullets - so play or recur them as necessary. Keep Watch piggybacks when attacking with Bears or Birds, which is a play that wins games. Both Ancestral Tribute and Holistic Wisdom come online in the mid- to late-game, when you have a healthy graveyard.

This color curve does shift around a little depending on your draw. Let's count the ways:

• Harrow interacts incredibly with this deck's color curve, and it's free or better with Sunscape Familiar. You can shift from GUWW to GUWRG painlessly, for example.
• You technically don't need the Mountain unless your opponent has creatures you need to kill, but I like having it there just in case. Quite often you can finish your opponent with a Firebolt to the dome.
• You'll want an untapped Plains when you drop Questing Phelddagrif against black (and sometimes red beatdown decks). In these cases, a defensive Questing Phelddagrif is the best way to stay alive until you can flood the board with tokens.
• You can get the Swamp after the Mountain to power up Ordered Migration and multiple Worldly Counsels if you can reasonably get a second Forest, Island, or Plains when necessary (like if you are holding Harrow).
• Sometimes, you'll be clogged with blue spells, so go for the second Island early so your blue spells can draw into mana fixers. This is typical when you resolve turn 2 Quiet Speculation for double-Deep Analysis and Grizzly Fate against control.

When I tinker around with the deck (which is a reason I traded my earnings for a Domain deck in the first place), I make sure to stay within the color curve. Some powerful cards might come online far too late because of the color curve.

Let's talk about the Sliver Queen that I slipped into the deck from Chuck's Virtual Party. Sliver Queen looks like it fits really well in this deck... but it really doesn't. An untrained eye staring at the decklist might classify Sliver Queen as a turn 5 bomb. In reality, Sliver Queen falls around turn 8 or later in the deck's natural color curve.

Don't get me wrong; I've dropped many a five-basics Sliver Queen (and then she bakes a cake with Mirari's Wake), but when you look at the deck's color curve, she's harder to cast than Phantom Nishoba, Beast Attack, and Bringer of the Blue Dawn. She long ago became a second Questing Phelddagrif.

Now that you can see why Sliver Queen (and other WUBRG cards) don't fit this color curve, can you think of a card that does fit? How about a card that fits perfectly?

While you think of a card that fits perfectly, here's one that at least doesn't disappoint: Mystic Enforcer. At 2WG, Mystic Enforcer fits snuggly into the deck's ideal turn 4 color curve of GUWR and its most frequent variations of GGUW, GUUW, and GUWW. Threshold is never a problem unless your opponent specifically hates on your graveyard. And just from my experience, the deck could use more Holistic Wisdom targets for late-game Sakura-Tribe Elders and Sunscape Familiars.

Thought of the perfect spell yet? You remember the color curve, right? Green then blue then white then red? What spell starts green and gets more powerful as you add more colors to it...

Times up! The answer is: Thornscape Battlemage. Let's look at Thornscape Battlemage alone in the color curve:

G
GU
GUW - Thornscape Battlemage no kicker (emergency chumpblock)
GUWR - single-kicked Thornscape Battlemage (mini-Flametongue, bad sex monkey)
GUWRG - double-kicked Thornscape Battlemage (0wn4g3!)

Mechanically, Thornscape Battlemage meshes well with Sunscape Familiar and Holistic Wisdom while mini-comboing with Rushing River and Keep Watch. Also, a double-kicked Thornscape Battlemage can randomly steal a full turn of tempo, much like Aether Mutation. Recurring Thornscape Battlemage beats random decks like Myrs the same way recurring Aether Mutation beats decks that drop Spiritmongers.

Fact or Fiction fits as well, though Deep Analysis has superior interaction with Quiet Speculation and Sunscape Familiar. We could go on and on here with the high-ticket cards that I could never trade for and thusly never test... but what if you want to play a powerful card - a card powerful enough to elicit a change in the color curve?

Adjusting the Color Curve
Pernicious Deed? It's excellent at ripping apart beatdown decks - and while it does kill all your token creatures, you can always make more. Personally, you won't ever hear this green mage sputtering, "%&^alicious #$%&@, I topdecked Pernicious Deed!" in disgust. (In fact, I frequently utter it in delight.)

Multiple Pernicious Deeds would make a good tweak, if they didn't clash with the color curve. If we do some overhauling, we could probably swap the roles of red and black in the deck. This could mean swapping in Vindicate for Orim's Thunder and Chainer's Edict for Firebolt. That way the color curve goes:

G
GU
GUW
GUWB - Pernicious Deed
GUWBG

...or better yet...

G
GU
GUB - Pernicious Deed
GUBW
GUBWG

...which ensures your black removal spells come online in a timely fashion.

Conclusion
Your color curve should have a plan, just like your mana curve has a plan. If you force your color curve to change to obey your opening hand, you could be stranded later with topdecked uncastables. If you pull your color curve's progression in too many ways at once, you're painting yourself into a corner before you even start playing.

We green mages enjoy the most stable mana bases in the game, especially for underpowered decks. If you can design a perfect mana base for your deck, you begin every game with an advantage. If you can get your mana curve to obey your mana base's color curve, your deck will naturally have the correct mana for your spells at the correct time.

I'll leave you with my modified version of a thread post from "What Would Hugo Weaving Do?":

Smith: Surprised to see me?
Kokusho: No.
Smith: Then you're aware of it.
Kokusho: Of what?
Smith: Our feature match coverage. I don't fully understand how it happened. Perhaps a Shrapnel Blast imprinted onto my Isochron Scepter, something overwritten or copied. That is at this point irrelevant, what matters is that whatever happened, happened for a reason.
Kokusho: And what reason is that?
Smith: I killed you, Kokusho, the Evening Star, I watched you die... With a certain satisfaction, I might add, and then something happened. Something that I knew was impossible, but it happened anyway. You destroyed me, Kokusho. Afterward, the judge told me the rules, I understood what I was supposed to do but I didn't. I couldn't. I was compelled to take it back, compelled to disobey his ruling.

And now here I stand because of you, Kokusho, because of you I'm no longer a money finisher of the Pro Tour, because of you I've changed - I'm unplugged - a complete newb, so to speak, unlike you, apparently free of the gravy train.
Kokusho: Congratulations.
Smith: Thank you.

Kenneth Nagle
NorrYtt
Casual Green Mage Extraordinaire
Proud Member of the Casual Players' Alliance
ken2@msstate.edu