The Control Player’s Bible, Book I (The Fundamentals of 5-color control)
Part I: Overview
Part II: History, 1994-1996
Part III: History, 1996-2000
Part IV: History, 2000-2002
Part IV.1: History, 2002
Part V: A sample control mirror match
Part VI: Playing the core cards: Counters and tutors
Part VI.1: Playing the core cards: Cunning Wish and the core extension
Part VII: Playing the core cards: Card drawing and removal
Part VII.1: Cutting core cards
Part VIII: Playing the Sapphires
Part IX: Playing the Jets
Part X: Playing the Pearls
Part XI: Playing the Rubies
Part XII: Playing the Emeralds
Part XIII: The Sol Rings: Rounding out”The Deck”
Part XIV: Building a 5-color mana base
Part XIV.1: Building a 5-color mana base after Onslaught
Part XV: The best and worst 5-color mana cards
The Control Player’s Bible, Book II (“The Deck” v. Aggro)
Current Index of Book II
I don’t know where he gets it, but our own bad player and rogue deckbuilder whipped up this Type I list as an early Christmas joke:
MeyerTog, JP”Polluted” Meyer, December 2002
Creatures (5)
4 Psychatog
1 Wonder
Blue Spells (27)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
4 Intuition
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Cunning Wish
3 Gush
1 Upheaval
Black Spells (3)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
Mana (24)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
9 Island
1 Swamp
Sideboard (15)
3 Powder Keg
3 Duress
3 Back to Basics
1 Mana Short
1 Shallow Grave
1 Capsize (or Rushing River)
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Gush
1 Diabolic Edict
Tom LaPille, a.k.a. DerangedParrot from Cincinnati, tried JP’s ‘Tog version on me, and we got several good laughs out of it. One botched counter war left my Misdirection to resolve on his Mind Twist-with my Dromar’s Charm countering his last Force of Will, no less. I untapped and cast Braingeyser for sixteen on his fifteen-card library, with a lone Volcanic Island untapped for a Red Elemental Blast (off Cunning Wish).
Darren Di Battista and Matt D’Avanzo probably want to kill me, but the anguished cries I get on seeing that gold card are worth it.
Another time, he had a ‘Tog facing off against my Morphling and was practically shrieking in delight to see me chump block… I could hear his jaw drop after I fetched Red Elemental Blast with Cunning Wish instead, killing the potential 15/15.
Hilarious.
Of course, another funny match saw me dispatch a double Back to Basics soft lock one turn too late to deal with his Cunning Wish for Shallow Grave for Psychatog. In your face, The Abyss? Oh, well.
Interstingly enough, it was JP’s rough German counterpart, Roland Bode, who gave me my first games (which is good, because I haven’t been keeping up with Extended and Type II, and had no clue how ‘Tog played). My first three games ended 2-0-1, with the last game mercifully drawn on account of connection failure. He forced a Nightscape Familiar, then ‘Tog out, so I went Mystical Tutor for Ancestral Recall then cast for Balance. He sacced all his land to Zuran Orb and all his cards to ‘Tog, and we laughed for so long the connection failed before we found out when I’d draw my next blue source.
BodeTog tried Burning Wish and more counters over MeyerTog’s Cunning Wish, but I think JP’s is tighter (hey, it has the Shallow Grave play!). Try the new one-turn kill with JP’s blessings this vacation, and have a laugh on him – and your first surprised opponent – too.
After Fact Or Fiction: A Year After The Dust Clears
Last Christmas, I thought I would be writing the last part in the colorful history of”The Deck.” I expected the metagame to settle back to a more classic balance, and let the “as of December 2001” history stand for some time.
I guess I was wrong.
2002 was possibly the most eventful year in recent Type I history, and everything that people expected to happen in 2001 instead happened in 2002.
Fact or Fiction gave mono blue a consistency no mono color deck should have had, and sheer draw power, Powder Keg, and early Morphlings combined to strongly discourage people from playing aggro. In retrospect, the only viable aggro archtype of the time was Stacker 2. The metagame narrowed and stagnated as people were left to play control or some kind of anti-control, mainly aggro-control such as Suicide Black (with exceptions such as Deck Parfait, which tried to overwhelm the counter wall and slip in permanents).
They had to restrict combo components and Necropotence, and in January 2002, Fact or Fiction was added to the list.
After the domination of combo decks- Tolarian Academy, Trix (Illusions of Grandeur / Donate), Memory Jar and Yawgmoth’s Bargain – and the subsequent domination of control decks, the metagame finally opened up. Some people expected, for example, Zoo to finally resurrect itself after its fall as one of the three defining decks of classic Type I (along with”The Deck” and the Necrodeck).
Metagame notes
Creatures again became relevant, but not quite as expected. Here’s roughly what happened:
1) Weenie-based aggro again became viable. However, other engines such as Survival of the Fittest and Goblin Welder proved far more viable than the classic Draw 7s such as Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune, and classic Zoo and The Funker never gained popularity. What was labeled”Zoo” after control was watered down in 2002 resembled old Gun decks or three-colored Sligh more closely, and more utility-oriented builds were more reminiscent of Extended Three Deuce. Weenie-based aggro also gained an incredible boost with the deck thinning of Windswept Heath and other Onslaught Fetchlands.
2) However, Judgment’s Incarnations, specifically Anger, gave German Tools ‘n’ Tubbies (TnT) the boost it needed to rise as the aggro deck to beat. Stacker 2 and The Funker pretty much converged into TnT, too. Given a deck that could play 5/3s as quickly as Sligh could play 2/1s, given that the 5/3s were immune to The Abyss, and given that the same deck had a better draw engine, weenie-based aggro’s share in the metagame drastically decreased. As a rule, someone somewhere will always play cheap and easy-to play Sligh – but, for example, control players at the recent Virginia States Type I tournament found no one to use their Celestial Dawn tech on (Dawn shuts down Wasteland, Dwarven Miner, Red Elemental Blast, Blood Moon, and Price of Progress).
3) With TnT taking over aggro’s top tier, Suicide Black fell into mediocrity. I once wrote that the deck is inherently metagamed against control and combo, but diehard fans and vehement anti-control players insisted that Suicide could be tweaked for general metagames with additions such as Nantuko Shade. TnT blew the”Nantuko Conspiracy” wide open, and even the most ardent fans gave up.
4) The key aggro-control decks emerged, those that could produce large bodies for creature combat. The appearance of TnT emphasized how Mask is really the powered version of Suicide Black. Chapin Grow was essentially an aggro-control build of Forbiddian, and proved a step up from mono blue Fish and its far weaker weenies. Of course, 2002 also saw Pat Chapin accidentally become the talk of Type I after Mark Rosewater claimed that Grow made a huge influence on Type I.
5) With control watered down, combo again became viable, and proved a counterbalancing influence in Germany, TnT’s home turf. New combo decks such as Dragon (Worldgorger Dragon/Animate Dead) were formed. However, more control-oriented builds of existing combos were also encouraged by the metagame. The German builds of SquirrelCraft, for example, evolved a significant counter component to help fight control, while remaining strong against aggro.
6) Almost all archtypes were boosted by the Onslaught fetchlands‘ deck thinning, color fixing, or both. Blue-based aggro-control decks, additionally, could make good use of Brainstorm and a high fetch land count for reshuffling.
7) A number of decks also benefited from Cunning Wish. Combo decks, for example, could simply leave a kill card in the sideboard (Stroke of Genius) and use Cunning Wish as a placeholder for other utility cards before Stroke was needed, everything from Mana Short to Capsize. SquirrelCraft, for example, suddenly gained a Plan B. If the million Squirrel tokens couldn’t attack for some reason, they could still tap for a million mana and Stroke (this is why Goblin Sharpshooter works as a sideboard card while something like Caltrops doesn’t).
The growth of the gauntlet and the rise or fall of familiar archtypes just this year-remember, this is Type I-is pleasantly surprising. Some of you e-mail that you want to read about other less complex decks and ask why I’ve invested so much time in the Control Player’s Bible. As a control deck,”The Deck” reflects its metagame, and you can tell a lot about other decks from it and the control player’s point of view.
A Recap Of”The Deck” 2002
The last chapter of the Bible’s history listed several January 2002 builds. As a starting point, here’s what I was playing half a year ago:
“The Deck”, Oscar Tan, August 2002
Blue (18)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Stroke of Genius
1 Braingeyser
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Morphling
Black (6)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 The Abyss
White (3)
1 Balance
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismantling Blow
Red (2)
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire / Ice
Green (2)
1 Sylvan Library
1 Regrowth
Artifact (1)
1 Zuran Orb
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
1 Library of Alexandria
4 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 “Underground Sea
4 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
Sideboard (15)
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Scrying Glass
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Pyroclasm
2 Powder Keg
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Aura Fracture
1 Moat
I spent the last few columns discussing the extensive thinking that went behind even seemingly minor changes for the January 2003 build. To recap the last three:
First and most important, Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand revamped the mana base. To make full use of the increased stability they added, City of Brass and green cards were sacrificed.
Second, Cunning Wish added much-needed flexibility that allowed”The Deck” to cope with the broadened metagame without running 65 cards. In particular, it allowed Shattering Pulse and Ebony Charm to be brought in against TnT during Game 1. This is crucial because there are no effective and maindeck worthy anti-artifact and anti-graveyard silver bullets. Skeletal Scrying also provided an additional layer of utility. Finally, having two potential Red Elemental Blast or Swords to Plowshares slots instead of potentially dead cards helped against the enhancements other archtypes gained.
Third and last, a number of”core” slots were changed – or at least very closely scrutinized. Vampiric Tutor was the most controversial casualty, especially since it was much weaker against newer archtypes such as TnT and blue-based aggro-control. I wrote that one has to examine the effects of individual card slots on one’s metagame, since the shifts might have made some obsolete. (Of course, the Europeans who maindeck Grim Monolith and Power Artifact justify different evaluations.)
Another clear casualty was Dismantling Blow. The”Disenchant problem” was extensively discussed in the Bible’s history portion, and the lone Dismantling Blow seemed to be the best way to minimize Disenchant effects’ inherent dead weight. Cunning Wish for Disenchant effects, though, proved even more flexible overall.
The Other Changes Of 2002
The recurring theme of 2002 is that, with faster aggro and aggro-control decks to deal with,”The Deck” has less and less time to set up its survival plan. This demands even greater play skill, as well as the use of yet more flexible or cheaper cards. In hindsight, for example, people might have looked at Cunning Wish differently half a year ago if they had the big metagame picture of December 2002.
Brainstorm
Another important change came with the fetch lands: Brainstorm. John Ormerod initially e-mailed about using it even in Type I, but I initially felt they were weaker than existing effects. Then I tried it, and John e-mailed back,”So you need to work out how to cut three or four cards?”
(In case you never used Brainstorm/Thawing Glaciers or Brainstorm/Impulse in older Extended days, you draw three cards, then place the two weakest cards in your hand on top of your library. Then you reshuffle them away and draw something else. The combo works end-of-turn, is hardly worth countering, and can’t be hit by Misdirection…)
Swallowing my pride, I could only find two slots, partly thanks to the departure of Regrowth and Sylvan Library. Some use three, but it’s difficult for a control deck to use more because you’re limited to seven or eight reshufflers (four fetch lands, Demonic Tutor, Merchant Scroll, Mystical Tutor and Vampiric Tutor). Without a reshuffle effect, Brainstorm is much weaker – and you can’t just, say, hold a tutor until you draw a Brainstorm.
The added Cunning Wishes and Brainstorms have the side effect of increasing the blue card count. That makes it much less painful to use your pitch counters, which increased to five with Misdirection..
Life Gain
I noted how Vampiric Tutor and Dismantling Blow could be turning into dead weight (or at least heavier than alternatives like Cunning Wish) once one looks at the metagame. Another possibility is Zuran Orb.
It sounds extremely strange to see”The Deck” without a life gain effect, not to mention one without the Balance/Zuran Orb trick. However, consider that, say, mono blue never used it.
Zuran Orb is actually a mediocre anti-aggro card. It does absolutely nothing until you’re at the brink of losing, and you only stay alive by losing mana. Unless it’s very late in the game, you gain just one or two turns until you no longer have the mana to bounce back anyway.
Sometimes, you can snatch control in those extra turns; other times, you just delay the inevitable. Orb is best against Sligh and Zoo, and lets your land”counter” their one-shot Lightning Bolts and other burn. Against other aggro, however, their damage sources simply untap and attack again the following turn. Another Swords to Plowshares might save you more life by directly affecting the board.
Now consider three important changes. First, Sligh and Zoo are much less important now, while TnT is the aggro deck to beat. Second, Polluted Delta has practically replaced City of Brass, resulting in a sort of invisible life gain for”The Deck.” Third, Sylvan Library has been cut from most decks, so Orb no longer adds utility when it’s otherwise dead by converting excess land into cards.
I personally tried to address this problem by using Dromar’s Charm instead. It’s still life gain for a tight aggro match, but works before you’re hovering at zero life. It’s also a tenth counter, mediocre creature removal, and can be fetched by Merchant Scroll and Mystical Tutor.
The big criticism is the triple-colored mana cost, but I haven’t had problems thanks to the fetch lands. Even if you can’t use it the moment you hit three mana, I think you can use it before you can use Zuran Orb, anyway. And if you can’t cast it, it still pitches to Force of Will – which is a larger contribution than Zuran Orb’s in many matchups. I’m still trying it, and the extra hard counter is welcome in midgame counter wars.
A less radical substitute is Renewed Faith, courtesy of Darren Di Battista. It cycles, so it can be maindecked much like Fire/Ice, and I’ll shift to Faith if I throw out Dromar’s Charm. Yet another possibility is to substitute another Cunning Wish but board life gain like Faith or Heroes Reunion.
Your initial reaction might be to compare the potential life gain from Zuran Orb to the one-time life gain from these instants. But ask yourself how many times you plan on using Orb in a losing game. If the equivalent of three activations plus the invisible life gain from replacing City of Brass can’t save you, you’d probably have lost anyway.
Finally, as used by the Paragons during Virginia States Type I, one can simply replace Zuran Orb with a maindeck Circle of Protection: Red and sideboard Alter Reality to make it useful in more Game 1s.
“The Deck” 2003
In the face of evolving competition,”The Deck” is forced to become tighter and tighter, and it’s just part of the interesting process begun all the way back in 1995. Always keep a critical eye on all your deck’s slots as the opposition changes, especially on the more conditional or more expensive cards.
Below are a few decklists for January 2003.
Sun Wukong, Oscar Tan, January 2003
Blue (21)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Cunning Wish
1 Brainstorm
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 “Fact or Fiction
1 Braingeyser
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Morphling
Black (6)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Vampiric Tutor (or Brainstorm)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 The Abyss
White (2)
1 Balance
1 Swords to Plowshares
Red (2)
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire / Ice
Gold (1)
1 Dromar’s Charm (or Renewed Faith)
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 Library of Alexandria
1 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
Sideboard (15)
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Scrying Glass
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Aura Fracture
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Pyroclasm (or Powder Keg)
1 Powder Keg (or Moat or Celestial Dawn)
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Allay
1 Ebony Charm
Everyone has a pet name for their personalized control decks these days, so I figured I’d finally pick one out.
Sun Wukong is the Monkey King, one of the most popular figures of Chinese mythology. He’s an immortal monkey armed with a magic size-changing pole who once wreaked havoc in Heaven itself over a snack and trounced the celestial generals with endless trickery. Buddha later ordered him to escort the monk Xuan Zang to India on a pilgrimage to bring back holy scriptures to China, and he distinguished himself in many a tight spot as a paragon of bravery and courage – not to mention mischief and deception..
For the BattleTech and Michael Stackpole fans, you might remember that Kai Allard-Liao gave Prince Victor Steiner-Davion a jade charm during the Clan invasion.. It was a Sun Wukong figurine, the same depicted in the Arsenal card Jade Monkey.
The maindeck is pretty much what is described in the past installments of the Bible, though the fourth Wasteland may become a dual land if it becomes less useful. Also, the Vampiric Tutor becomes another Brainstorm in more competitive play.
As for the sideboard, it remains a generic list for a random metagame. One can see a Circle of Protection: Red, Circle of Protection: Black, Moat and a Powder Keg cut to make room for the Cunning Wish arsenal. These changes mainly reflect the shift from weenie-based aggro to Mishra’s Workshop-backed aggro. Celestial Dawn can come in if you’re really wary of Sligh with fifteen cards to board against”The Deck.”
Paragon Keeper, Darren Di Battista, January 2003
Blue (22)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Cunning Wish
2 Brainstorm
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Braingeyser
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Morphling
Black (5)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Chainer’s Edict
1 The Abyss
White (3)
1 Balance
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Circle of Protection: Red (or Renewed Faith)
Red (2)
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire / Ice
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
1 Library of Alexandria
2 City of Brass
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
4 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
Sideboard (15)
3 Red Elemental Blast
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Aura Fracture
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Alter Reality (or Circle of Protection: Red)
1 Celestial Dawn
1 Pyroclasm (or Powder Keg)
1 Peacekeeper (or Moat)
1 Abeyance (or Powder Keg)
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Allay
1 Ebony Charm
Paragon members’ main decks mainly differ in the numbers of Brainstorms and Cunning Wishes. Darren’s personal build for January differs from mine on the maindeck CoP: Red and lack of Undiscovered Paradise.
Darren’s sideboard reflects the present dearth of control in his Virginia area. Other Paragons’ sideboards also differ. Matt D’Avanzo and Eric Wilkinson, for example, pack basic Disenchants as additional utility against TnT.
Having mentioned Matt and Darren, you might wonder what happened to the last of the old Beyond Dominia four. On Really Dark Keeper (RDK), JP e-mailed,”Dark Keeper hasn’t existed in about a year. At the time, the metagame was really just Keeper vs. Mono Blue because of unrestricted Fact or Fiction. With the much more balanced metagame now, there’s no way that Keeper can devote such a huge number of slots solely to beating control.”
Keep The Oath, Christian Flaaten, January 2003
Blue (21)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Cunning Wish
3 Brainstorm
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
1 Fact or Fiction
2 Morphling
Black (5)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Diabolic Edict
Green (5)
1 Sylvan Library
2 Oath of Druids
1 Gaea’s Blessing
1 Holistic Wisdom
White (1)
1 Balance
Artifact (1)
1 Masticore
Mana (27)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
3 Wasteland
1 Library of Alexandria
2 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tropical Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
Sideboard (15)
1 Abeyance
2 Duress
2 Compost
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Oath of Druids
1 Gaea’s Blessing
2 Woodripper
2 Naturalize
2 Circle of Protection: Red
1 Stroke of Genius
Chris’s list is the most radically different, but that’s because he uses green over red as his fourth color. You’ll notice, for example, the prominent absence of The Abyss because he uses Oath of Druids as a cheaper option. Further, Braingeyser and Stroke of Genius are also missing, replaced by Holistic Wisdom and multiple Brainstorms, one of Chris’s favorite cards. He also has one less mana source, since he has cheaper spells overall.
The second Misdirection is a reaction to all the Ancestral Recalls popping up in Chris’s area, with fetch lands making splashing in Type I easier than ever. Finally, on Vampiric Tutor, he says,”Before anyone says anything: This fetches Oath!”
Chris notes, though, that the sideboard hasn’t been fully tweaked since he hasn’t played the deck a lot in the last six months, having focused on Mask. For example, he has yet to replace something with the now-necessary Ebony Charm.
Combo-Keeper, Carsten Kotter , a.k.a. Mon, Goblin Chief, January 2003
Blue (22)
1 Power Artifact
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Cunning Wish
1 Brainstorm
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Braingeyser
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Morphling
Black (5)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Mind Twist
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Chainer’s Edict
White (4)
1 Balance
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismantling Blow
1 Moat
Red (1)
1 Gorilla Shaman
Artifact (1)
1 Zuran Orb
Mana (28)
1 Grim Monolith
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 “Sol Ring
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
1 Dust Bowl
1 Library of Alexandria
1 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise (or City of Brass or Volcanic Island)
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
4 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
Sideboard (15)
3 “Red Elemental Blast
1 Misdirection
1 Scrying Glass
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Dwarven Blastminer
1 Aura Fracture
1 “Circle of Protection: Red
1 Circle of Protection: Black
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Powder Keg
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Shattering Pulse
1 Ebony Charm
Carsten sent this list in on behalf of the Germans, and reflects their main deck preferences such as the Power Artifact/Grim Monolith combo and Dust Bowl, and Vampiric Tutor to fetch them with. The sideboard includes several experiments, and note an experimental Moat main in place of The Abyss for the home court of TnT.
Props And Props
Well, that’s it for another year. Merry Christmas to all, most especially to the dear readers who keep this column going and to my bosses, Pete Hoefling and The Ferrett.
Special Christmas greetings go out to the people who make endless, invaluable behind-the-scenes contributions to this series:
The Paragons mailing list
(Virginia) Darren Di Battista, a.k.a. Azhrei, Shane Stoots, Joshua Reynolds, a.k.a. SliverKing, (New York) Matt D’Avanzo, John Paul”Polluted” Meyer, Eric Wilkinson, (Belgium) Carl”Professor X” Devos, and (United States) Steven Holeyfield, a.k.a. Nameless.
TheManaDrain.com
Owner Steve O'Connell, a.k.a. Zherbus and his right-hand man Rian Litchard, a.k.a. Kirdape3 (also on the Paragons, but separately credited).
Morphling.de (or, the Germans)
Owner Oliver Daems, sidekick Benjamin Rott, a.k.a. Teletubby and, among others, their friends Carsten Kotter, a.k.a. Mon, Goblin Chief, Roland Bode and Swen Weinhold.
Other Beyond Dominia buddies
(Norway) #bdchat op Christian Flaaten, (Quebec) my one-time co-moderator Raphael Caron, a.k.a. K-Run, (Australia) Jarrod Bright, a.k.a. Vesuvan, (United States) Eric Rouge, a.k.a. Redman, Mark Acheson, a.k.a. Nevyn, and Paul Shriar, a.k.a. Bebe.
Professional help
(England) John Ormerod, (Michigan) Eric“Danger” Taylor, Patrick Chapin, and (New York) Alex Shvartsman.
Rules help
(Norway) Rune Horvik, (United States) Sheldon Menery and (Utrecht) Gis Hoogendjik
CasualPlayers.org (the Casual Player’s Alliance)
Aric Ingle, a.k.a. Spiderman, and the other elders.
Oscar Tan
rakso on #BDChat on EFNet
University of the Philippines, College of Law
Forum Administrator, Star City Games
Featured Writer, Star City Games
Author of the Control Player’s Bible
Maintainer, Beyond Dominia (R.I.P.)
Proud member of the Casual Player’s Alliance