How many times has this happened to you? You're playing in your second big group game of the night, and the player to your left says, "Play Seat of the Synod as my land for the turn, tap my three lands to play Tinker, fetch Darksteel Colossus. Go."

You've seen this before. You know this deck likes to cast Copy Artifact or Clone on its next turn. What's a poor mage to do? There has to be some way to deal with the big, mean 11/11 Machine. There are ways to deal with it with four lands on the table or less.

Because you're a casual player, you know about this guy. You naturally have included several cards in your deck to deal with this eventuality of the third-turn Colossus. The question, then, is "What fits your deck?"

The goal here is not to simply remove Darksteel Colossus and all copies of it from play and the target player's hand, graveyard, and library; that could be done with three different cards, all of which are mentioned later in the article. There are also multiple ways of dealing with this deck before the Colossus hits the table. Lobotomy comes to mind, but for the purposes of this article, we assume that the Colossus has already hit play due to a Tinker cast on the third turn. The goal is to neutralize the threat until such time as we can deal directly with it.

(...Or until we can remove the offending player from the game, thus freeing us to go forth with our dastardly plan of Magic Table Domination. But that's another story.)

This article will examine the color pie to determine the kind of options each color will give you in this particular situation. Keep in mind that these ideas are not Standard-Legal by any stretch of the imagination. This is for large group games. Tinker is still restricted, though, so thank whatever God you believe in.

Two specific lands will make it extremely difficult for Tinker-boy to attack you: Maze of Ith and Kor Haven. The Maze can be used in just about any deck, as long as you remember to adjust your mana base to fit a non-mana producing land. The Kor Haven fits best in decks with white, for obvious reasons... so let's start there.

White has the greatest number of cards to deal with this monster... and most of them cost four mana or less. Some of these cards are proactive, and some of them are reactive.

As for the reactive cards, Swords to Plowshares is the most obvious answer to this threat. Exile is another fine, instant-speed, reactive option. If you're not interested in anybody gaining life, try Altar's Light. You might also try Vengeful Dreams, or Order from the split card Order / Chaos. The downside to this type of card is that you don't get to do much on your turn except play land; the bonus is that you get to wait and see whether or not the Iron Giant is coming your way.

As far as spells to cast during your turn that deal with the Darksteel Colossus directly (or indirectly), white has a ton of options that cost four mana or less. One great choice is the Pacifism-type of card, where a different one seems to be printed every year. The most recent, of course, is Cowed by Wisdom. Moat is another great call here, unless you want to beat down with your non-flying creatures on turn 4. As long as there are two artifacts on the table, Dust to Dust is an easy card to cast. One card that may be overlooked (because it's a Nemesis Sorcery) is Topple; something tells me Mr. D.C. will have the highest power on the table.

There are other White permanents that can eliminate the threat of the Colossus. Some of them involve getting hit once with it, like Reciprocate. Others require you to play something this turn, in hopes that the Colossus player will attack someone else. (An example of this would be Lieutenant Kirtar.) If you want to play the slowdown game, you can drop a Ghostly Prison - but be careful with that. In a group game, everybody who plays creature decks is going to be annoyed at that card on the table.

Blue is not without its ways of dealing with the Darksteel One. Sure, you could Counterspell the Tinker, or even Liquify it... But that's just the start of Blue's options. The easiest way for Blue to deal with the third-turn Colossus is to bounce it. There are more card options here than a person could shake a stick at. They include, but are not limited to, Seal of Removal, Boomerang, Eye of Nowhere, Echoing Truth, and Unsummon among many, many others. If you can't remove the Colossus from the game, it might as well be a dead card in someone else's hand, right?

Blue can also play Propaganda, but it comes with the same baggage that Ghostly Prison does. Discretion might be the better part of valor here. However, Blue as you might expect has some of the most insidious options available: a Control Magic or Steal Artifact can really ruin somebody's day. After control, if you really want to be rude, remove it from the game with a Synod Sanctum, then you can put it back under your control (or not.)

Black has a lot of options for dealing with the Colossus, but they're mostly sorcery-speed. Since indestructibility does not care if the aforementioned creature can be regenerated or not, more dire methods need to be devised. Luckily, the cards in this vein already exist.

In this, Eradicate is a fantastic option, and you will likely get full table support for neutering the deck. If all you can do on your fourth turn is delay the inevitable, you can get that Colossus shuffled back into the deck from whence it came with the sorcery-speed Innocent Blood, Barter in Blood, Chainer's Edict, or the instant-speed Diabolic Edict. You could also cast Abyssal Gatekeeper and kill it yourself with a Massacre if more than one person is playing the third-turn Colossus deck. It's depressing to think about, but not without a solution.

Red, it seems, has the fewest ways to deal with Herr Darksteel, even though it has the majority of the artifact destruction. The best advice to offer a red mage on four mana or less is to steal the Big Man and bash with it using Blind With Anger, Threaten, or half of Grab the Reins. If you can do that twice before the combo-meister can, you have achieved your goal. The Synod Sanctum trick discussed above also works here. Furnace Dragon is another method of dealing with the Colossus, but it's not really viable in this situation.

Green is the other color that seems to focus on artifact destruction, but has precious few ways of neutralizing an 11/11 indestructible threat. Splinter is the only real way to get rid of the Metal Fattie - but, like Eradicate, you will receive the congratulations and full support of the table when you cast it.

The third-turn Colossus can be threatening, but with a deck filled with answers, you too can cope with the Colossus. It looks impressive when seen early, but is easy to mess with. Just remember the old axiom. "There are wrong answers. There are no wrong threats."