Hello! I hope you all had a fond week of happiness and joy since the last article. Today I am going to continue the theme I began last week when I discussed a Highlander Five-Color deck named The Essentials. The goal of The Essentials deck is to demonstrate the top cards in the format while also serving as an actual deck.Hello! I hope you all had a fond week of happiness and joy since the last article. Today I am going to continue the theme I began last week when I discussed a Highlander Five-Color deck named The Essentials.
H5C is all about cards that work well on their own when necessary. Sure, Darksteel Colossus is good off a Tooth and Nail, but it’s also good by itself. These decks are designed to typically operate in a multiplayer environment. As a reminder, this deck abides by all Five Color rules. That means card that are banned in Five Color, such as Tinker and Yawgmoth’s Will, are not played here. It also means that we have to have at least 250 cards and 20 cards in each color. As a Highlander deck, only basic lands can be played in multiples.
The goal of The Essentials deck is to demonstrate the top cards in the format while also serving as an actual deck. At the end of last week’s article, you can find it in its entirety.
There’s one tiny correction from last week, which isn’t really a correction but more a clarification. I said this deck has been built for over a year, but apparently, it’s been in our group for almost two and a half years. That’s still, technically, over a year, but I thought an addendum would be nice.
One thing that everybody wants to see when they see this deck is add cards. I personally would feel more comfortable with more Wrath effects. Aaron likes more countermagic. We need more creatures. Before you know it, the deck has climbed upwards of 500 cards and shows no signs of stopping. I know, because that’s exactly what happened with Abe’s Deck of Happiness and Joy.
Keeping this deck at 250 cards is a discipline, and finding cards to cut is hard work. Recently I had to cut Goblin Bombardment. Can you imagine me taking Goblin Bombardment out of anything? My normal response is to try to find ways to fit a Goblin Bombardment into decks, not take one out.
The deck could use more creatures, so we understand that we simply cannot take out a creature for a non-creature. Sure, Chartooth Cougar may not be sexy like Guiltfeeder or Shivan Dragon as a creature, nor as sexy as Explosive Vegetation or Far Wanderings as a land retrieval spell, but it is both a pertinent creature with the ability to impact the board while also helping our land and being one of those crucial 20 Red cards that we need. If you cut him, nothing can take his place, in Red, and do everything that he does. That tension is the beauty of the deck and the format.
Remember, we feel that this deck, in addition to being a real, playable deck, also represents the best of the best, and nothing in Red does what Chartooth Cougar does. Cards like Court Hussar and Temple Acolyte are good enough to get played, not because their power is so overwhelming that it scores a nine or ten on a scale of ten every time, but precisely because your decks need these guys just as much as they need Akromas. Your decks need to know what the good, cheap creatures are that will help you stabilize.
Sure, many creatures from the Best 100 Creatures of All Time list aren’t going to be on here, while many creatures on here won’t be on that list. That’s because that list exists in a vacuum. Magic isn’t played in a vacuum. This is a deck, not a Top Ten list.
Last week I was able to explore the White, Green, Red, and Black sections of the deck. That leaves Blue, artifacts, multicolored and lands for today.
Without further ado, let’s look at the Blue:
Blue
Allied Strategies
Ancestral Vision
Arcanis the Omnipotent
Bribery
Bringer of the Blue Dawn
Court Hussar
Cunning Wish
Drift of Phantasms
Fabricate
Fact or Fiction
Forbid
Future Sight
Magus of the Jar
Mystical Teachings
Stroke of Genius
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Tidespout Tyrant
Time Spiral
Tradewind Rider
Treachery
Willbender
Windfall
Wonder
These 23 cards represent the best that Blue has to offer an H5C deck (within certain financial restrictions. Obviously Ancestral Recall and Timetwister would be here if most people had access to them). As I mentioned in the previous article, White has the most powerful suite of cards. Blue is probably in the middle ground. It’s no chump like Red and its no champ like White. It’s more like Green – solid but unspectacular.
Blue has card drawing effects. Fact or Fiction is so good that decks were built around it, and Vintage restricted it. Here, Fact or Fiction is downgraded from amazing machine of doom to merely powerful. It is often overshadowed by a true powerhouse of this format, Allied Strategies. Both uncommons from the same block, in this deck, Allied Strategies gets you those five cards, instead of just one or two. Ancestral Vision is great in a format with all sorts of “discard draw 7” effects: Memory Jars and whatnot. Stroke of Genius is a solid card drawing spell, although it typically gets played early for a handful of cards. However, every so often it nets you double-digit cards. Windfall is the mini-Wheel of Fortune. In multiplayer, you rarely have the most cards, making this almost always a good card for you. Braingeyser is not played, but I’d consider it if I wanted another good card drawing spell.
A few cards are almost card drawing spells, but they do enough extra that they needed their own paragraph. Time Spiral is essentially a free Timetwister, mana-wise. The shuffling of your graveyard into your libraries is also a subtle way to hose decks that rely on their graveyard. Future Sight allows you to play the now-revealed top card of your library as if it were in your hand. This can effectively allow you to play several cards a turn above your normal allotment. It was the single best enchantment if the format and dominated tables for a few sets until the next powerhouse was printed. Magus of the Jar can tap and sacrifice to draw seven cards temporarily. After your turn, the drawn cards are gone and you get your old hand back. As a result, it’s always been a powerful ability to use yourself, but difficult to play with when another uses it on their turn. Diminished Returns would be my next choice of the cards in this section, were I to want to play another.
Several creatures draw you cards too. Court Hussar is like a mini-Impulse. You need the White mana to ensure that he sticks around, but even if you don’t, it essentially becomes a mini-Impulse sorcery that can be Living Deathed. Bringer of the Blue Dawn gives you two cards every turn on top of a 5/5 trampling body. It combines beatstick with significant card drawing. Arcanis the Omnipotent has arguably the most powerful ability in the deck. He taps for an Ancestral Recall every turn at no mana cost, so you can play what you draw. In just a few turns, you’ll be swimming in card advantage. He can also save himself with a built-in bounce ability.
Blue has some tutor effects, so let’s take a look. Fabricate gets you any artifact, no questions asked. Sure, its no Tinker, but then again, Tinker is banned. You can get anything, from mana to removal to a creature that will kill in two turns. We made sure. Mystical Teachings can get any instant or Teferi from the deck. Combine that with flashback and you have a powerful, although expensive, card. Cunning Wish often acts like a tutor, getting removal or something similar. Drift of Phantasms is my favorite transmute card. Sure, it can be played as a wall, but it also gets you mana, removal of every type, tutors for other cards, countermagic, and even creatures. A card cut a while ago was Long Term Plans, if you are looking for more.
There are still some traditional Blue cards in here, although just a few. Forbid is the only hard counter in the deck. It’s powerful enough to make the cut because it can be used to lock an opponent down. Combine it with any number of regular card drawing methods for a soft lock. You can also use it to toss a variety of cards in the graveyard, from the four incarnations to flashback spells to getting that fourth creature in the yard to activate Oversold Cemetery. Speaking of incarnations, we have Wonder in this deck, the fourth and final incarnation included here. Treachery is a classic stealing effect in the deck, used because it’s free. It’s just one more way to answer Akroma the First or A Colossus of Darksteel. At a multiplayer table, Bribery often reads, “Search target player’s library for an Akroma or Darksteel Colossus and put it into play under your control.” For five mana, that’s a pretty good deal.
After that, the deck has a few miscellaneous cards. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir is a very strong card with the potential to shut down entire archetypes at the multiplayer table. Of course, those decks turn you into target number one, so prepared. Tidespout Tyrant is a flying beater of some size who can really attack for some good damage. He is also a broken bounce effect, once you have a few good spells. Just wait until you play a draw seven card like Time Spiral with a Tyrant out, and see all of the cards go bouncing back after you have reloaded your hand. Tradewind Rider is a solid enough defensive creature who also helps you keep any unsightly permanents off the board at no cost in mana. He turns cards like Wall of Blossoms and Temple Acolyte into very dangerous things. Willbender is the fifth and final morph creature in the deck (Akroma Jr, Bane of the Living, Nantuko Vigilante, and Exalted Angel). Often people will forget it because it doesn’t contribute to combat. They’ll remember that you have an Angel or Bane or Akroma, so they may treat it as such, especially if you show RRR3 untapped at all times. Then pop it up, and retarget that spell or ability.
Next up, multicolored cards.
Gold, Split, and Hybrid (but there’s no Hybrid cards, sorry).
Dimir Infiltrator
Eladamri’s Call
Hull Breach
Intet, the Dreamer
Kaervek the Merciless
Loxodon Hierarch
Mirari’s Wake
Mystic Enforcer
Oros, the Avenger
Pernicious Deed
Perplex
Putrefy
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Simic Sky Swallower
Sol’kanar the Swamp King
Spiritmonger
Sterling Grove
Teneb, the Harvester
Terminate
Vhati il-Dal
Vindicate
Vulturous Zombie
Fire / Ice
Spite / Malice
Supply / Demand
As a reminder, in Five Color, a card with multiple colors can count for any of its colors you wish it to, but only one color. Fire / Ice can count as a Red card or a Blue card, but not both.
Like other colors, we start off this section by talking about removal. Vindicate is the king of removal, often being a tutor target because it can hit lands. Hull Breach is solid because of its 2-for-1 deal that you can normally get out of hit. However, often that second target isn’t something you need, but merely something that’s out there that you can kill. Terminate is arguably the best creature removal spell ever printed, since there’s no life gain issues that Swords gives you. Putrefy is a great instant removal spell, and it makes the cut when Mortify does not because there are usually more artifacts in multiplayer than enchantments, so being able to hit artifacts or creatures is more valuable in multiplayer. Fire / Ice is usually played for the damage-dealing half, and when you are lucky, you can take out two creatures with it. Spite / Malice is honestly played around 50% each half. It’s also the only other counterspell in the deck.
We have a few tutors in here too. Sterling Grove protects your other enchantments, and can go fetch one. You usually use it as a tutor. Eladamri’s Call gets you any creature at instant speed. That’s valuable enough to warrant inclusion. Unlike Worldly Tutor and similar effects, the Call is not card disadvantage. The Demand side of Supply / Demand will get you any of the other 24 cards in this section, which of course includes removal, creatures, countermagic – all of the good stuff you might want. Perplex and Dimir Infiltrator transmute with a cheap cost into a variety of good cards. Plus, the Perplex can occasionally actually counter something, although it’s a far cry from a hard counter.
Allow me to take a paragraph and talk about the best card in this deck, which is in the section. No card wins more games for this deck, in this format, than this card. Earlier I mentioned how this card outclassed Future Sight and in the forums last week, I alluded to this card being the best enchantment in the deck, and all other enchantments need to be powerful on their own, because you are always getting this. What is the single best card in the deck? Mirari’s Wake. No spell breaks this deck more than Mirari’s Wake. This deck wants mana. Mirari’s Wake makes a bunch of it. Sure, Akroma will kill quickly, but a dead Akroma kills no one and there are scads of way to make that game state possible. There are whole decks out there with between zero and four spells in the entire deck that will take out a Wake. You look at it and wonder how a Mana Flare for just you tacked onto a Glorious Anthem can be that powerful. After all, we aren’t playing the Anthem or a Mana Flare. However, once you play with this card, you’ll get it with Academy Rector 90% of the time, and your Sterling Grove will protect it or get it as needed. It turns your deck into a machine.
The gold cards also bring the beats. Sol’Kanar has been rocking Magic Tables since 1994 and he’ll continue to do so in this tricked out foil Time Shifted version. He’s five mana for a 5/5 swampwalky life-gaining fool. We have a trio of the new dragons in Intent, Teneb, and Oros. Realistically, Rith should be in here, but we are trying out these new ones to see if they are worth playing over Rith. Personally, I think we’ll stick with Oros and Teneb and pitch Intet for Rith down the road. All of these 6/6 flyers for six mana are worth the price of admission, though, so you can’t go wrong, as long as you don’t play Treva. (Just kidding Treva, you know I love you)
Simic Sky Swallower is a beatstick from a recent set that can almost rock as well as the Akromas from Dakomas. Yay for untargetability and boo for no haste. I like my five-power beatsticks to also have an ability to kill players with a speed that makes the Flash look like a fat guy with a hernia. That’s why Kaervek the Merciless is in the deck. He’d make the cut down to a sixty card highlander essentials. He wins games quickly, and he swings for serious damage.
Spiritmonger is a classic card, and I still refer to him occasionally as Smoke Break. (Then-StarCityGames.com writer Carl Jerrell would call it Smoke Break, because every time it resolved he’d be able to take a smoke break between rounds shortly after. He’d add cigarettes as tokens to Spiritmonger in order to demonstrate to his opponent how many cigarettes his opponent was denying him by chump blocking. Read the article here and find out why I once called him the best Magic writer on the Net.)
Vulturous Zombie is a find card. Play one, and by the time it comes back to your turn, he’s often already in the double digits in power and toughness. He gets really big, really quickly. Then he’ll swing for a ton of damage. Mystic Enforcer is a great four-power creature, and after you get threshold, it may be the best four-mana creature in the game. A 6/6 flyer with pro Black for four mana and no drawback? That’s awesome, and getting threshold here is no big deal. Loxodon Hierarch is no slouch either. Combining a solid 4/4 body with a cheap casting cost, a good comes into play ability, and a good sacrifice ability. The total package is a powerful creature that fits this deck well.
There are a few other cards in here. One of my favorite creatures of all time was Timeshifted. You might know him as Vhati. He is one of the most versatile creatures ever printed, and he’s still a Hill Giant, so he’s pertinent to combat. Shadowmage Infiltrator is good enough to get a hit in on various players at the table while also drawing you a card of happy. Damage + Draw is an equation for victory. Pernicious Deed is, of course, the best sweeping removal spell in multiplayer ever. Anthony Alongi long called it the single best multiplayer card in existence. Its abilities are long and have been cited many times before, so I’ll not bore you with them here. The Supply side of Supply / Demand is a great card in its own right. No single card in the deck goes better with Wake than Supply (well, maybe Decree of Justice).
Lots of great cards were recently cut from the multiplayer section, including cards like Order / Chaos, Fires of Yavimaya, and Trygon Predator.
Artifacts
Bosh, Iron Golem
Chrome Mox
Citanul Flute
Darksteel Colossus
Engineered Explosives
Etched Oracle
Fellwar Stone
Gilded Lotus
Masticore
Memory Jar
Mind’s Eye
Mox Diamond
Nevinyrral’s Disk
Planar Portal
Scroll Rack
Sensei’s Divining Top
Skullclamp
Sol Ring
Solemn Simulacrum
Sunforger
Tawnos’s Coffin
Umezawa’s Jitte
Vedalken Orrery
Let’s get one card out of the way right now. Of these 23 cards, we need to take a minute and discuss the power that is Tawnos’s Coffin. Tawnos’s Coffin will perma-phase any creature. That means as long as it can be targeted by an artifact, it is leaving play, sorta, for a good long stay. Akromas of Both Stripes, The Colossus of Many Beats, and virtually every other creature not named Simic Sky Swallower and Pristine Angel. So, it is the answer to almost any creature. It also saves one of your own creatures when someone plays a Wrath effect, including yourself. Toss your own Eesha or Silklash Spider in the Coffin and be done with it. It will also save your creatures from targeted removal, from being stolen, and so forth. I know a lot of people don’t know about the Coffin because it is so old. Take a look at its StarCityGames.com price, and then understand that this is a card you need for your multiplayer decks. It is simply amazing, and affordable as well.
A lot of these artifact are involved in the making of mana. Sol Ring has been making mana since the very first set was printed, and it still rocks at the colorless mana production. Solemn Simulacrum retrieves a land for you at a colorless mana cost, so you can get Green mana without needed a Green mana fixer. Mox Diamond makes all five colors, which is vital in a deck that uses all five colors. Felwar Stone also typically makes all five colors, at least in multiplayer or even duels against Five Color players. Chrome Mox is a nice accelerant to get you to your good cards early. A third turn Eesha or first turn Wall of Blossoms can be handy at sending opposing creatures elsewhere, plus there’s usually a card in your hand that you can dump to the Chrome Mox because you don’t have the mana to cast them. Lastly, Gilded Lotus provides a great bump to your mana and can allow us to cast lots of spells we might not otherwise have the mana for.
Artifacts often bring a lot of removal, and this section is no different. Nevinyrral’s Disk is an old school card, but just this past Friday on two separate occasions I won because I had a Disk out. Engineered Explosives is also pretty handy at the boom. It can be set to any cost between 0 and 5, and then popped to selectively take out opposing permanents.
There’s also some serious card drawing going on over here. Mind’s Eye is the obviously broken card drawing engine of doom. The more players at the table, the more likely you are to draw a bunch of cards. Scroll Rack is one of my favorite cards because it is so useful and does so without drawing you a bunch of cards, so it’s not overpowered at all, it’s just good. That means a Scroll Rack will often stay at a table while other artifacts get popped quickly. Sensei’s Divining Top can draw a card as well as look at the top three cards of your library. Both are highly useful, and its cheap cost is a real winner. Citanul Flute tutors your deck for a creature of a specific cost with every activation. It can turn a losing situation to a winning situation very quickly. Ditto Planar Portal who’s admittedly expensive but reusable ability to Demonic Tutor can and should end games in three activations.
Veldaken Orrery changes the game in your favor, and you should seriously consider it in any permanent heavy deck. Especially in multiplayer, it allows you to react to multiple threats that might arise on the board without having to sacrifice your board position.
Bosh, Iron Golem is an amazing solid creature of death and beats. Even more than that, however, he’s a large Lava Axe for eight. Bosh wins games. Play him, throw your cheaper artifacts at someone’s head for some damage, then toss Bosh himself after he attacks and gets in a tramply hit. Masticore can win you a game, but not as a beater. Instead, it can fire off and take down many opposing creatures. It’s not meant to stay in play for long, but instead act as an adjunct to other removal spells and creatures. Darksteel Colossus is the second best creature in the deck. It wins games, and it wins a lot of them. I’ve mentioned it before numerous times so I’ll leave it alone for now. Etched Oracle is a solid 4/4 creature for four mana and also can sac for three cards in a Concentrate sort of way. It contributes on both sides of the table and it is the most commonly recurred creature in the deck with Volrath’s Stronghold or Academy Ruins.
Memory Jar draws a bunch of cards, but only temporarily. I mention the usefulness of the ability back when I talk about Magus of the jar, so suffice it to say that it’s good, you want it, and yay!
We have three pieces of equipment in the deck. Skullclamp is the most broken card drawing spell / permanent since Fact or Fiction, and you can definitely use on in your deck. It may not be as abusable in this deck as it would be in a deck with a bunch of one-toughness creatures, but it is still quite good. Umezawa’s Jitte is also pretty good I hear. I understand that you can do a lot of tricks with it and gain life, kill creatures, or kill your opponent with ease. That’s what I hear. Sunforger is both a solid, offensive piece of equipment that turns even a Birds of Paradise into a Serra Angel killer, but it is also a tutor. Now, it’s not going to play much, but it will get a large spot of removal (Fire / Ice, Swords, Terminate, Wing Shards, Firestorm, Vengeful Dreams, Orim’s Thunder, Dismantling Blow, Oblation), a creature tutor and a land searcher. That’s pretty good.
Some examples of artifacts that were cut out of the deck include Darksteel Ingot, Oblivion Stone, Mangara’s Tome, Journeyer’s Kite, Grinning Totem, Platinum Angel and Duplicant. As you can see, there are a lot of really great cards in there.
Lands
Academy Ruins
Kor Haven
Krosan Verge
Maze of Ith
Strip Mine
Terramorphic Expanse
Volrath’s Stronghold
Wasteland
For this section, I am skipping those lands that tap for colored mana. I’m not going over why I include Temple Garden, for example. It should also be evident why I play cards like Karakas or Urborg. They tap for colored mana at no disadvantage and they have an ability.
You can see that we have the duo of land destroyers in Stripe Mine and Wasteland. Each of these pops an offending land. Sometimes you use these for dangerous lands, like the Stronghold. Often you use them to pop a Legendary land in play so that you can play the one you just drew.
Maze of Ith has been played in decks for eons. It’s good, but it doesn’t tap for mana, so it slows down your mana development to play one, especially to play one early. Kor Haven is a fixed Maze, because it taps for mana. Sure, it’s legendary and requires mana to active, but it’s much better than Maze because it taps for the mana.
Krosan Verge and Terramorphic Expanse are just fetch lands of a different stripe. I hope they don’t need too much explanation as to why they were included.
Volrath’s Stronghold is the best land ever printed for multiplayer. It’s better than Library of Alexandria, better than Bazaar of Baghdad, better than even Mishra’s Workshop. Those lands get you killed. Volrath’s Stronghold gets you a win. It amasses not card advantage but card quality over a long game. It’s an amazing card with an ability to win you the long game against multiple opponents. Academy Ruins does the same, but for a smaller card pool. It still recurs Memory Jar, Bosh, Etched Oracle, Nevinyrral’s Disk, Engineered Explosives, and creatures and cards that were discarded or destroyed too early. It’s also tech against a Haddix deck that turns everything into artifacts.
…
With that, we are now finished with the deck overview. Today’s Appendix will include a list of all of the cards that were once in the deck but got cut as we added new cards. You might find a few goodies in there!
I hope that you enjoyed this little tromp through The Essentials.
Until later,
Appendix: Cards That Were Once The Essentials But Were Cut
Darksteel Ingot
Duplicant
Grinning Totem
Ivory Tower
Journeyer’s Kite
Mangara’s Tome
Oblivion Stone
Platinum Angel
Faceless Butcher
Mind Twist
Night Dealings
Braingeyser
Compulsion
Dizzy Spell
Greater Morphling
Johnny, Combo Player
Fires of Yavimaya
Mystic Snake
Trygon Predator
Assault / Battery
Order / Chaos
Who / What / When / Where / Why
Deranged Hermit
Far Wanderings
Harrow
Hystrodon
Krosan Grip
Land Aid 04
Loaming Shaman
Rampant Growth
Utopia Tree
Worldly Tutor
Ancient Hydra
Desolation Giant
Chastise
Exile
Gift of Estates
Seal of Cleansing