The oddest thing happened: a group of people got together, out of the blue, and built a new deck for me.
I had previously mentioned that for the new iteration of the Armada Games EDH League that I wanted to build a deck with cards I hadn’t previously played or wasn’t currently playing. I started thinking about what I’d do, knowing that I’d have two weeks (the week of PT San Juan and the following) to cook up something before the League restarted. Then, just before I left for San Juan, fellow L5 Toby Elliott linked me to a thread on MTGSalvation where they a) called me a geezer and b) had decided to build a deck for me. They even took to the time to look at my previous articles to see what I was already playing. The rule was no cards that are in any of my other decks other than mana-producing land (so Tundra is okay, but Wasteland isn’t). I did volunteer to remove a thing or two from a deck if it was in there but a better fit here. Here’s what they came up with:
General
Isperia the Inscrutable: Blue/White is a color combo I don’t play much at all, so this is a good start. Even my Phelddagrif deck has a sizeable Green component. The idea of having fat fliers with Isperia was immediately attractive to me.
Fliers to tutor (20)
Adarkar Valkyrie: When this card first came out, I knew I wanted to play it. I had it in the Phelddagrif deck for a while, and then rotated it out. Seems like a better fit here anyway.
Admonition Angel: How can you not like the flexibility of this guy? If you’re playing in a Wrath-heavy environment, you can always use it to protect some of your own things.
Baneslayer Angel: Got your Karrthus right here.
Cloudchaser Kestrel: Distinctly better than Aven Cloudchaser both cost-wise and the additional ability, which will mostly be forgotten about by other players, although I’ll stipulate that it’s not going to be a game-changer for me as far as I can tell. Best use of it seems to be when someone casts All is Dust.
Djinn of Wishes: Keep this guy alive for fun and adventure. Thin out of the deck of a card you can’t or won’t use, or just cast giant stuff for 2UU. Like…
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn: I’m not sure how often I’m getting to 15 mana here, but when I do, Cthulu is coming.
Eternal Dragon: I was kind of surprised to find that I wasn’t playing this guy. The Plainscycling ability is what you want early, and keeping him coming back is great in the long game.
Godhead of Awe: How am I not playing this in any other deck? In addition to keeping some other fatties in check (man, maybe Serrated Arrows or Bullwhip is suddenly a good idea), it helps with education on Layer 7 (for more information, check the Comp Rules, 612.3). Good news is that the other guy’s Emrakul is only 1/1. Bad news: still has Annihilator 6.
Gomazoa: I’ll confess to not being sure about this one, but I’ll give it a whirl.
Guiding Spirit: Holy card no one ever heard of, Batman! Graveyard order matters!
Linvala, Keeper of Silence: Having already seen this fine lady in action, I was happy with her inclusion.
Meloku, the Clouded Mirror: When I first saw this on the list, I thought it was Uyo, Silent Prophet. The land bounce might still be interesting, especially since you’ll see later we have Amulet of Vigor, but I’m not clear about the purpose here.
Mulldrifter: The purpose here is easy to figure out. Draw cards.
Patron of the Moon: OK, combos with Meloku, I see that now, especially if the Amulet is in play.
Platinum Angel: Simple, classic. Likely to get stolen.
Pride of the Clouds: Potentially a giant dude, since it also counts your opponents creatures. I’m not sure how often I would play the Forecast ability, unless I just didn’t have anything else to do, or I knew some kind of sweeper was coming.
Sanctum Gargoyle: There aren’t that many artifacts in the deck, but some I’d want back if they went away, so this is pretty reasonable.
Sphinx Ambassador: Played this guy when it first came out, took it back out. I’m glad it’s in here because I really like this kind of card that fosters some interesting mind games.
Tidespout Tyrant: This was a long-standing card in my Phelddagrif deck, but I took it out because it can generate some unfun situations. That said, I’m glad it’s in here, because we’ve gotten a little bit of feature creep in the Armada EDH League, and it’s nice to have stuff to keep folks in check.
Vendilion Clique: Never having played Faeries, I’ll now have the opportunity to see what all the fuss was about over playing this card.
More creatures for utility (6)
Azorius Guildmage: This guy is much better than you might think. He’s in my Merieke deck, so I took it out to put it in this one instead.
Knight-Captain of Eos: The Knight-Captain also had to come out of a deck in order to go into this one—although I suspect after playing it for a while, I’m going to put him back where he belongs: in Rith, with the rest of the Soldier token generators.
Mistmeadow Witch: Great utility to save my own dudes or to reset someone else’s Forgotten Ancient, et al.
Ruin Ghost: Other than saving a land from Strip Mine, or having a giant pile of mana and being able to activate Prahv twice, I’m drawing a bit of a blank here.
Thistledown Liege: Nicely straightforward, I’d certainly consider playing him even without Flash.
Trinket Mage: This card should just get renamed “Trinket Mage, Top-Fetcher.”
Tokens and support for fun and profit (7)
Conqueror’s Pledge: Pretty saucy post-Wrath recovery. Can’t wait to eventually cast it and then the next card
Day of Dragons: I’ve wanted to play this since I saw it, but could never find a home for it. Yeah, tokens, which this deck creates a fair number of, don’t come back, but still. Dragons!
Gravitational Shift: Almost every dude that I’m attacking with flies, so that’s great. No more getting swarmed with ground-pounding tokens (that don’t have extra help, like Coat of Arms) is a fine bonus.
Opposition: Never liked this card (mostly because it shut down the types of Standard decks I liked to play back then), but since the gang put it in, I’m going to use it. I suppose keeping Eldrazi from attacking isn’t a terrible idea.
Rite of Replication: I have seen many crazy things happen with this card, so I’m happy to play with it.
Sacred Mesa: Gotta remember to sacrifice the Pegasus. Otherwise, it’s a better Mobilization.
Storm Herd: This is the ultimate EDH card. I know I’m not going to be able to play it all that often, but when I do, it’s going to be crazy.
Library manipulation / draw (8)
Academy Rector: I can see myself getting bored with always fetching up the same enchantments, but we’ll run it and see what happens. I have a feeling it will frequently be getting Opposition in order to save my butt.
Fabricate: Without any really over-the-top powerful artifacts, I imagine this will always be getting either Top or Scroll Rack.
Fact or Fiction: Not sure why I’m not playing this elsewhere. As a side note, I’m not a fan of folks casting this and colluding with an opponent to get a 5/0 split—but it’s perfectly legal, so in dire circumstances, I get it.
Idyllic Tutor: It costs one more than Enlightened Tutor, and it’s a Sorcery. Are those two factors too much cost for the payment of getting to put it in your hand? In EDH, probably not.
Jace, the Mind Sculptor: I predict the number of turns that this guy survives over the course of 10 games to be somewhere near 0. I can’t imagine getting to use his ultimate ability—and even if I could, I’m not sure I would without being in the most dire of circumstances.
Mystical Tutor: Most likely this will always search up a board-sweeper.
Scroll Rack: I generally dislike cards like this because they slow things down terribly. Hopefully I will demonstrate the proper way to Rack in EDH games, making good use of the card without anyone ever rolling their eyes when I activate it.
Sensei’s Diving Top: OK, not fair. The guys have put me in a spot here. I obviously play this in a fair number of decks since it’s ridiculously awesome, but I thought we had agreed to not play cards that I play all the time. Do I look away on this one, or do I replace it? I don’t want to insult the folks who’ve gone out of their way to put together this thing for me, but I don’t want to go back on my promise of playing stuff I don’t normally play. What to do, what to do?
Control cards (10)
Capsize: Right at the top of the d-bag list, I haven’t played this card since the days of my early Virginia group, when I was still living in Yorktown, and the guys couldn’t figure out how to deal with my Palinchron deck. I decided this wasn’t the kind of Magic I liked to play, so I took it out. It certainly has its uses in EDH, even without Buyback, to help protect from an early (non-Emrakul) Eldrazi of some kind.
Dispellers Capsule: I liked the Seals, I like the Capsules. They come out early and sit, just waiting. Waiting to do stuff.
Martial Coup: Again, I like flexibility. In this format, I can’t imagine too many situations in which I wouldn’t have X be 5 or more.
Moat: Sure, it’s easy for someone to say “Hey, you—play a $250 card.” Fortunately, I have an Italian one.
Muddle the Mixture: Having a hard counter is nice. Being able to Transmute it into, um…Scroll Rack isn’t unreasonable.
Oblivion Stone: I currently play this in Rith, and have taken it out to put into Isperia.
Parallax Wave: What kind of timing tricks can I do with this thing to get creatures Exiled forever? Perhaps if I can change Parallax Wave into a land and then activate Ruin Ghost…
Path to Exile: Simple, already classic—but I don’t think I’m playing Swords to Plowshares in any other decks. If I can choose only one between the two, which is it?
Rout: Also removed from Rith, it speaks for itself.
Wash Out: Another “why am I not already playing this?” card. Certainly a token-killer.
Other goodies (6)
Amulet of Vigor: I wouldn’t mind seeing stuff other than lands that this goes with. Perhaps in a future version of the deck.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant: Also out of Rith.
Fireshrieker: Double Strike is a little undervalued in EDH (unless Rafiq is involved), so I really appreciate this choice.
Marshal’s Anthem: One of the few nods to recursion, this can be a late game house. Early game, it will certainly help the tokens.
Mirrorweave: Best use of this card would seem to be really screwing up a combat in which I’m not involved. I will declare this card full of win if someone attacks me with a bunch of dudes that includes a Mutavault.
Relic of Progenitus: Much like Ulysses Everett McGill is a “Dapper Dan” man, I’m a Scrabbling Claws man. That stems mostly from the fact that I really like my own graveyard and don’t want to see it go away. That’s less of an issue in this deck, so I’m fine with the Relic.
Mana acceleration (3)
Coalition Relic: I’ll have to borrow one. All the ones I had have either been loaned out or sold.
Everflowing Chalice: Not sure about this one. Later in the game, a large amount of mana is never wasted, but I’m less of a fan of artifact mana these days. I’d prefer stuff that gives me more land in play, since artifact acceleration tends to get blown up by the inevitable Disk. It’s unlikely that this gets targeted with artifact removal, so it otherwise seems reasonable.
Mind Stone: I like this one more, because you can always get another card out of it.
Non-basic lands (22)
Academy Ruins: Like with the Sanctum Gargoyle, I’m not sure there’s really enough in the deck for this to be useful, but I guess recurring the Mind Stone makes it a 5 mana card draw. And I suppose the emergency Oblivion Stone has some utility.
Azorius Chancery: I like the bounce lands to combo with enters-the-battlefield triggers.
Calciform pools: Piling up mana = good
Celestial Colonnade: Post-Wrath help is excellent, but having someone forget that you can block is also worthwhile.
Flagstones of Trokair: There isn’t much land destruction going on in our League, so this is going to most times be simply a source of white that isn’t fetchable with…
Flooded Strand: But I’ll have a cool Judge foil one. Note that EDH rules would permit me to also have Polluted Delta or Arid Mesa, since there’s not a mana symbol on them, but I’m a firm believer in only having fetchlands that are 100% in your colors. Mostly that’s just stylistic.
Halimar Depths: The ability seems more significant in other Constructed formats where fewer of the cards in your deck actually make it into play, but I like the ability to set up early turns.
Hallowed Fountain: Can get this one with Flooded Strand.
High Market: I love sacrifice outlets for my creatures. I’m not playing Altar of Dementia in any decks, but I might start.
Kjeldoran Outpost: Fortunately the Plains you sacrifice can be tapped. I know it goes with the token theme, but it’s so…slow.
Miren, the Moaning Well: I played this in several decks before better sac outlets, like Greater Good, presented themselves.
Mistveil Plains: Nice little bit of non-offensive recursion.
Moonring Island: The ability would be OK if the land didn’t come into play tapped. It’d be better if you could ship the card, but maybe that’s asking too much.
Mystic Gate: Pretty straightforward.
Nimbus Maze: Another fine little dual land whose conditions will most likely always be met.
Prahv, Spires of Order: The thing that people sometimes forget out Prahv is that it doesn’t have to be an attacking creature, and if it’s a repeatable source of damage (like, I don’t know, Goblin Bombardment), it prevents it all.
Sejiri Steppe: Especially good with bounce lands.
Soldevi Excavation: Mana acceleration! Kind of. And a little deck control.
Thawing Glaciers: This is already in the contest-winning deck from a while back, but since there are new Judge Foils available, I’ll allow it.
Tolaria West: Transmute this into Everflowing Chalice?
Tundra: Ah, the classics.
Vesuva: I think there’s still a point in the League for being the first person to copy something of someone else’s, so you can sneak this one in early.
Basic lands (17)
Island (8)
Plains (9)
So that’s the deck. We’re taking a few liberties with the parameters set out, but that’s hardly a sin. After going through the list, I started to think I might never have listed the contents of the Rith deck in this column, so I can’t blame the gang for those cards showing up.
I’m a little concerned that there is some expensive stuff in the deck without a great deal of ramp into it, but we’ll see. Hopefully the inexpensive stuff can keep things off my back until the bigger stuff comes online. The one card that this list really screams for is Archon of Redemption, but I might have recently put that in a deck. Archon plus Storm Herd seems a little silly.
Huge thanks to Finrod/Just Me and all the folks in the MTGSalvation forums who did the work to put this thing together, and give me a new way to Embrace the Chaos. I’ll play it in Week 1 and report back on how it did.