It has been quite some time since I've done a multiplayer article for the Casual Challenge - but making decks that lock down everyone in multiplayer? Ah, I enjoy the challenge. There are many important aspects involved in locking down a single opponent, and you need your deck to work like clockwork in order to establish the lock before they kill you. These same aspects are also applied to multiplayer lockdown with one small catch: you have to be able to survive several players' turns and you need to establish a lock strong enough to deal with all your opponents. Before I go into the methods I use for lockdown, I want to go over these aspects.

(Note: For all of those people who read my article on combo decks called Attacking for Arbitrarily Large Amounts of Damage, the principles for a multiplayer lockdown deck are similar, but not congruent.)

1. Knowing Your Lock
This is first and foremost; you want to know how to lock down your opponent and what cards are needed to lock down your opponent. This is to say that you must first decide what you want to lock down - land, creatures, mana producers, spells - and then decide what cards you want to use to accomplish this feat. This coincides with the next principle.

2. Your Lock Needs To Be Fast
This is very important; if you don't lock down your opponent's quickly enough and they realize that you're going to lock them down, well... they're going to gang up on you ASAP. In other words, you will die if you can't get the lock active quickly enough. This usually means that your lock must be easy to assemble (just two to three cards) or you have it in a color that is good at searching up the pieces - so your deck should usually contain Blue and/or Black and you have about three to four pieces to the lock).

3. Your Lock Needs to Work Against Multiple Opponents
This should really be step number two, but your lock down must be effective against multiple people. For example, a Zur's Weirding and a Words of Worship make an effective hard lock against two other people - but as soon as you add a third, you need some other form of life gain. You must carefully decide what the lock is that you are trying to accomplish, but you need to also consider what happens when there is more than one opponent.

4. You Need A Way To Win Once You Establish The Lock
When locking down your opponents, you need a way to win. It doesn't matter if you play Land Equilibrium and then play Armageddon if you don't have a way to kill the opponent after you do so (might I suggest Barbed Wire and mana-producing artifacts?). Also, your win condition should work with your particular lock. For example, if I have a Stasis out, I would not try to win with a creature that tapped unless you could untap it some how (Instill Energy maybe?). However, if my lock was accomplished by using Opalescence, Lethal Vapors, and a Cursed Totem or Damping Matrix, then I could just win with the animated enchantment.

5. You Should Have An Alternative Way To Win If The Lock Is Dealt With
Do not misinterpret this statement; you want your deck to be able to establish the lock. However, just like combo decks, you need to also have an alternative way to win if the lock components are destroyed or removed. Alternatively, you could find a way to recover your lost pieces so that you may reestablish the lock.

Taking all of these into account, you get a general idea of what we're looking for. If you notice, I mentioned no where on this that the lock had to be fun. It would be a lie to say that it wouldn't be great (let alone a miracle) to make a deck that locked everyone down and they enjoyed it - but truth be told, locks are not fun to play against, either in single player or multiplayer (ever played against someone who has an Orim's Chant Imprinted on an Isochron Scepter?). The only real way I can see a lock as fun is if the win condition is fun.

So with all of these in mind, what lock did I choose? Well, I decided I only wanted to deal with everyone's creatures, as creatures are the usual win condition of choice in multiplayer groups and the fact that everyone hates when locks affect their mana. As soon as I began thinking of it, several combinations of cards popped up.

One idea was the Opalescence/Lethal Vapors/Cursed Totem combination I listed in point number four. The problem with this was that you could regenerate creatures, indestructibles would be untouched, and creatures in play could still be a problem. Additionally, the lock required three pieces to work (the totem is to prevent your Lethal Vapors from being destroyed). The second idea (which I did build a deck for) was Aether Flash and Death Pits of Rath. This handled some of the problems with the first combo, and it could be set up faster since it only has two pieces. The deck I built around it was the following:

Flashing Death

Lands (25)
4 Badlands
1 Lantern-Lit Graveyard
2 Ghitu Encampment
4 Bloodstained Mire
6 Mountains
8 Swamps

Creatures (20)
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Pyre Zombie
3 Flametongue Kavu
2 Nekrataal
2 Bone Shredder
1 Shard Phoenix

Spells (15)
4 Aether Flash
3 Death Pits of Rath
4 Night's Whisper
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
2 Oversold Cemetery

This deck was far from bad. If a creature didn't die to the Aether Flash/Death Pits of Rath combination, then it was going to die to one of the many creatures that inhabited the deck. The whole goal of the deck was to lay down some quick creatures, then play you lock and kill your opponent. Goblin Sharpshooter has always had a fiendish synergy with the Death Pits, as did Pyre Zombie and Mogg Fanatic. The way you would win after you established the lock is to recur Pyre Zombies, play them, and then sacrifice them while the ability of Aether Flash was on the stack - or just beat down with Ghitu Encampments.

The deck was nice and all, but it seemed to be lacking the feeling of the almighty lock, and it still had the problem of indestructibles and creatures with protection from red. Also, Absolute Law will absolutely ruin your day. In order to deal with these problems, I decided to turn to one of the most ingeniously sick ideas I have ever had.

Lands (24)
4 Scrubland
4 Caves of Koilos
2 Starlit Sanctum
7 Swamps
6 Plains
1 Tainted Field

Creatures (20)
4 Temple Acolyte
4 Academy Rector
4 Rotlung Reanimator
4 Cabal Archon
4 Monk Idealist

Spells (16)
3 Humility
2 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Underworld Dreams
1 Diabolic Intent
2 Night's Whisper
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
3 Golden Wish
2 Parallax Wave

Wish Target Suggestions (10)
1 Humility
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Parallax Wave
1 Noxious Field
1 Aura of Silence
1 Skull of Orm
1 Seal of Doom
1 Underworld Dreams
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Subversion

The lock, for those who don't see it right away, is Night of Souls' Betrayal and Humility. Together, these two cards destroy every (and I do mean every) creature every printed. All creatures lose every ability, including the abilities that protect them from the other two locks, and then makes them 0/0s. This lock kills everything - even lands or artifacts that become creatures.

The deck is also and example of the principles outlined above. White and Black both have many ways of searching for the enchantments, Demonic tutor, Enlightened Tutor, Diabolic Intent, Golden Wish, and Academy Rector. (For those of you who are curious, you kill your Rector by using Cabal Archons, the Starlit Sanctums, or the Diabolic Intent.) The deck can win by either cleric beats or using Underworld Dreams and it has the possibility of recurring its lock if it is destroyed. The lock is usually fast and it deals with everyone's creatures.

As for card choices, Underworld Dreams is your win when the lock is formed. Monk Idealist serves as a way to get back your combo. Parallax Wave works as a great stall, and with Monk Idealist, you can keep recurring your temporary removal. The Acolyte and the Archon are mainly in there for stalling along with the Rotlung Reanimator, though all can help you win the game.

The Wishes not only help make the lock, but also fish up answers for problems. As for the suggested wish targets, Aura of Silence helps against opposing enchantments, Skull of Orm can recur your combo (okay, there are better ways, but Monk Idealist can't get back the Night if Humility is in play), Noxious Field is just evil with Humility, Tormod's Crypt deals with anyone who has the potential to use their graveyard, the Subversion and the other Underworld Dreams serve as win conditions, and Seal of Doom is just spot removal.

So how does this deck play? Well, the first few times I've played it; it has successfully assembled the combo around turns 5, 6, and 7, which is fairly good by multiplayer standards. However, just like playing a combo deck too many times, you will be public enemy number one and your friends will be sure to knock you out the game first. The deck can be a lot of fun, but one thing I will advise people to do is to be careful as to which component you lay down first, you just may want to sacrifice some of your creatures to the Cabal Archon or fetch and enchantment with the Academy Rectors and it would not be possible to do so with Humility in play.

However, one last idea occurred to me after people had beaten my deck out of the metagame of my playgroup, and this time I would be sure to hit the lands. At first no one suspected I was going for a lock; it just looked like a normal run of the mill white and blue deck. However, people began to realize that the deck had a potential third color (black) and was discarding quite a bit of enchantments via Attunement, Compulsion, and Thought Courier. However it was too late when they realized this - for I had just played Replenish and placed the following enchantments into play:

Humility, Night of Souls' Betrayal, Nature's Revolt, Subversion

I'm not going into detail as to what the deck looked like, but let's just say this isn't a deck to play if you want to keep your friends. Lucky for me though, my friends are loyal, besides, other people in my group occasionally play Stasis.

Until next week, hope you find a Key against locks.

Matthew Lubich