Monday, March 9th – This week marks an achievement – it’s the final listing of cards for the Casual Player’s Bargain-Hunting Guide! There’s one final article in charge, but now we finish N through Z of Kamigawa and Mirrodin Blocks… And thankfully, there are some absolute must-haves in here for multiplayer decks.!This week marks an achievement — it’s the final listing of cards for the Casual Player’s Bargain-Hunting Guide! There’s one final article in charge, but now we finish N through Z of Kamigawa and Mirrodin Blocks… And thankfully, there are some absolute must-haves in here for multiplayer decks.!
Nezumi Graverobber
Flexibility: 8
Price: 7
Overall: 8
When I started writing The Casual Player’s Bargain-Hunting Guide, this is the kind of card I wanted to highlight — cheap, flexible, potent in almost any casual multiplayer deck. You should get four, and put ‘em in any Black deck.
The Graverobber is an excellent card on turn 2, when it can get in for some damage — and by turn 4, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have some card in a graveyard in order to flip it. On turn 5, you can start cherry-picking the best dudes in everyone’s graveyards.
Obviously, having a reusable reanimating effect is hideously strong in the late game, but the joy of the ‘Robber is that you’ll often want to use the “Remove a card from a graveyard” effect as well. The ‘Robber shuts down recursion, giving you a nice, effective use for all that unused mana — and it can still attack or block in a pinch.
We use tons of these at our table, and you should use it at yours.
Oblivion Stone
Flexibility: 9
Price: 3
Overall: 7
The O-stone is a card that’s ideal for almost any multiplayer deck, because it can serve multiple roles. Obviously, everyone loves a board-sweeper — but more importantly, control players love a rattlesnake. If you think things are accelerating too fast, plop an O-Stone onto the table and people will immediately stop developing. For three mana, you can often effectively Orim’s Chant every opponent on their upkeep until the O-Stone goes away, forcing them to slow down. In that sense, it’s like a colorless Pernicious Deed.
Naturally, you don’t want to do that all the time, but the Stone’s handy when you’re low on threats and looking to draw into some more. And if you have eight mana, you can cast and pop it immediately — or you can play the waiting game and try to shield your permanents from the ensuing Oblivion. Be warned, however, that that trick is pretty mana-intensive, and I’ve never really pulled it off to any significant value.
The real value, however, is that it’s one of the cheapest (at the time of this writing, only two dollars) effective board-sweepers, making this an easy call to pick up a four-set.
Rend Flesh
Flexibility: 6
Price: 8
Overall: 5
For an extra mana, you can have a Terror that pretty much kills anything that it can target. The number of significant Spirit creatures are small, and the number of other viable targets are huge.
The only problem with Rend Flesh is that yes, it is three mana — expensive for a combat trick — and that Black has so many other “kill your guy” spells that it’s slightly redundant. Yet it does take down so many creatures that it’s worth looking at.
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Flexibility: 9
Price: 6
Overall: 8
Another all-star, the Elder is a damn near perfect two-drop — it staves off attacks for the turn you drop it, preventing you from getting swarmed. I mean, who wants to attack you with a single creature when you’ll just put damage on the stack, then sacrifice it and be up a land? In this sense, the STE is useful even in the late game against anything but fliers and tramplers, serving as the most useful chump block around.
Of course, the Sakura-Tribe Elder smoothes your mana and ramps your curve, making it a useful land-thinner in the late game (and moving towards crazy if you can recur it). If you played back in the day you probably have ten or twelve of these, and you can find a home for them in just about every Green deck around. If not, well, spend the three bucks and get yourself a full four.
Screams from Within
Flexibility: 4
Price: 8
Overall: 5
I was not sold on Screams until I saw it in play, and realized that for 1BB, it had just eradicated every 1/1 at the table. That kind of card advantage cannot be denied — I recommended Goblin Sharpshooter back in the day, and as such I recommend this.
It can be easily circumvented via a board-sweeper, however, and occasionally you’ll run into a Glorious Anthem effect that will shut you down. As such, it’s not quite a Goblin Sharpshooter. Two of these, however, will make everyone’s day veeeery interesting, and three (assuming you can get all of them) will make everyone’s life a living hell.
Sensei’s Divining Top
Flexibility: 9
Price: 2
Overall: 6
Apparently, this card is all the rage in some unplayed format called “Lego-cy” or summat. I don’t know what kind of interaction it has with that junk rare Counterbalance, but I guess in the more casual formats people have to make do with what they can find.
That said, the Legacy craze jolts this tournament-quality uncommon into rare-style prices, but even at those costs it’s worth the money. It really does supercharge any deck it’s in, allowing you to keep the quality flowing, and of course pairing it with any shuffle effect really makes life hard for your opponents. Good in Control decks, good in Aggro decks that want to keep up in the late game, good in just about anything, really.
Skullclamp
Flexibility: 9
Price: 3
Overall: 7
Another popular uncommon that got serious tourney play back in the day, if your format supports this then get four. In case you didn’t get the message back in the day, nobody cares about the +1; what’s important is the -1, which allows you to kill your own tokens and draw two cards for a mana apiece.
The ‘Clamp is, weirdly, at home in bizarre creature-based combo decks — cast your little guys, then cack them to gain momentum, then fetch them back from the graveyard to dance again. But even in “normal” aggro decks, the ‘Clamp’s card drawing will often enable aggro decks like Goblins to keep up with the slew of Wrath of God effects, filling their hand to keep everyone on the back foot.
Sosuke’s Summons
Flexibility: 2
Price: 7
Overall: 4
This is a very narrow card, but for the decks it’s meant to go in it’s a must-have. If you have Snakes (a surprisingly good tribe) or Shapeshifters, then this card will keep coming back time and time again, conserving your cards in hand while you make Snakes.
Ideally, of course, you have cards that benefit Snakes in some form, or a card that allows you to have a usage for many sacrificed Snakes, but that’s fairly easy to do. 99.9% of all decks won’t want this, but the decks that do want the Union of the Snake.
Sun Droplet
Flexibility: 8
Price: 7
Overall: 8
Another classic all-star for multiplayer, most non-multiplayer folks don’t notice that it triggers on every upkeep. Essentially, people have to do more than X damage to you in a turn, where X is the number of players in the game. Eight players? Well, doing eight or less nonfatal damage to you will be miraculously healed by your next upkeep!
Essentially, the Sun Droplet is a walking “Look elsewhere,” subtly encouraging the players to pick on each other. That is a beautiful, beautiful thing, and worth packing four.
Bizarrely, even though it’s potent as all heck, few people want to waste artifact removal on a Droplet, reasoning that they’ll just overwhelm you later. But that would work if the Droplet was the only card that handled overwhelming creature attacks in your deck, which I hope to God it’s not.
I should note for the second time that my friend Josh combined this with Searing Meditation for a slow and mana-intensive combo that turns nasty in the late game.
Thought Prison
Flexibility: 2
Price: 8
Overall: 3
Expensive. Not particularly useful. However, if you have friends who play with Progenitus or Sliver Queen, I just have to note that this can be hysterical.
Tooth and Nail
Flexibility: 7
Price: 3
Overall: 5
A classic in the old Standard days, this is still good in multiplayer — the standard two creatures you fetch are Mephidross Vampire and Triskelion to clear the board (remove a counter from Triskelion to deal a damage to a critter, the dealing damage puts another counter on thanks to the Vampire’s effect, lather, rinse, repeat). But you can also get your Darksteel Colossus, or any other gigantically stupid creatures you’d like to see out. Combine with some recursion, some mana amplification, and hey! You have a deck.
And hey! We have the card-listing end of the Casual Player’s Bargain-Hunting Guide — but next week’s article will serve as the final cleanup, discussing your suggestions, feedback, and a couple of cards I overlooked. If you think I’ve forgotten about some multiplayer gem, here’s your last chance to mention it!
Signing off,
The Ferrett
The Here Edits This Site Here Guy
TheFerrett@StarCityGames.com