For Thursday’s deck, I decided to look at my recent article on Fifty Multiplayer Combos from Saviors for inspiration. I came across three combos close together using Freed from the Real. It seemed like I already had the backbone for a Red/Blue deck using Freed from the Real to abuse a few creatures. However, rounding out those deck ideas was a bit more difficult. Here’s what I ended up with:
FreeReal
4 Freed from the Real
4 Counterspell
4 Impulse
4 Puppeteer
4 Merfolk Looter
2 Arcanis, the Omnipotent
2 Kamahl, Pit Fighter
1 Solarion
1 Surestrike Trident
1 Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor
1 Callous Oppressor
1 Dwarven Driller
1 Sand Squid
2 Serrated Biskelion
1 Bomb Squad
2 Cephalid Broker
1 Musician
4 Shivan Gorge
13 Island
7 Mountain
The goal of this deck is to have many different creatures hat you can readily use multiple times in combination with Freed from the Real. The best creatures for that combo are Kamahl, Pit Fighter and Arcanis, the Omnipotent. Both of these can really start changing the game state. One lets you draw many cards while the other quickly kills someone.
I added four Puppeteers to the deck. Not only can they play defense while you look for good creatures, but they can also untap a creature once. There are a lot more creatures in this deck than Freed from the Reals, so I wanted to have another option. You could also toss in Aphetto Alchemist, but I liked the ability of the Puppeteer to lock down a creature as well.
You do have a lot of creatures in this deck. Even if one dies, you can hope to keep swinging or tapping.
In order to find helpful cards, we have incorporated several search effects. Four Merfolk Looters and a pair of Cephalid Brokers can dig into your library. Remember that a Puppeteer can untap one and you can go again. You also have four Impulses as well to find that useful card.
The Cephalid Brokers double as player kill. With a Freed from the Real on one, you can make a player go through an awful lot of cards really quickly. It’s certainly not plan alpha, but it can get the job done at times.
I wanted several options to control creatures. There are a variety of options, including Sand Squid, Callous Oppressor, Kamahl, Puppeteer, Musician, Aboshan, Cephalid Emperor, Bomb Squad, and the Serrated Biskelions. You should have several ways of handling troublesome creatures.
This deck really abuses a certain trick, so you need to know how to play it. Suppose that you have a creature with a tap ability and a Freed from the Real enchanting it – like a Serrated Biskelion. When Serrated Biskelion’s ability resolves, both it and a target creature get a -1/-1 counter. Normally, you can only use the Biskelion twice, barring some form of pumping effect.
If you tap the Biskelion, use Freed from the Real to untap it while that ability is still on the stack. Then use it again. Untap while both abilities are on the stack. Untap once more, and so forth. Once you have tapped all of your Blue mana and put a bunch of Biskelion abilities on the stack, let them resolve. Your Biskelion will die uquickly, but the abilities will keep resolving. Since the ability has a legal target still in play (whatever you targeted), it will resolve, putting a -1/-1 counter on something. You can easily slap down five, six, or seven -1/-1 counters with a Biskelion and a Freed from the Real.
Where this becomes really powerful is with Sand Squid and Callous Oppressor. Both read that as long as they remain tapped, their effect remains. You can put the tap ability on the stack, untap them with a Puppeteer or Freed from the Real, then tap again. When each of the abilities resolves, they will see a tapped Squid/Oppressor, so the effect will continue, but you will get several creatures effected. Just a simple Callous Oppressor and a Puppeteer can grab two creatures from your opponent while allowing the Puppeteer to untap and keep going.
Solarion can be used to become really big. Even with sunburst set to two, Solarion becomes an 8/8 the following turn with a Puppeteer out and a 32/32 the next turn. That makes Solarion a beatstick of major proportions.
I tossed in a single Surestrike Trident. Tapping a ginormous Solarion to toss a Trident at someone for mega damage is really fun. You can really have some fun, however, with the Trident. Tap the Solarion to deal, say, 32 damage to someone. Untap the Solarion with the Puppeteer. Equip it with a Trident. Tap to deal 32 damage to kill someone else. It’s mad fun.
Dwarven Driller is amazingly abusive with untapping. He essentially taps to shock a person and when they get low on life he can take out so many lands that he becomes some sort of land eating machine. That will also essentially end the game for someone.
The Bomb Squad can be used to put a variety of counters on permanents, popping many creatures. Not only is this nice creature control, but the four damage taken by the controller is a nice winning condition as well.
A Freed from the Real that can allow you to use a Bomb Squad enough times in one turn to off two creatures will seriously dominate any table. You put three counters on two creatures, then during your upkeep, they each get another and go poof. Two dead creatures and eight damage dealt.
Remember that the counters that Musician gives will stay until the creature dies. Putting a permanent upkeep on a creature is nice, especially when you can keep untapping and tossing more counters onto opposing creatures. Musician can kill a lot of creatures or tie up your opponent’s mana base – preferably both!
Between all of these clever ideas, you might think that I exhausted all of the cool ideas that I had, but I wasn’t even close. From Coretapper making a Darksteel Reactor go off just three turns after coming into play to powering out more Solarions and using Fling to send them, there are a lot of ideas left.
Both Red and Blue have creatures that tap for damage. Although I including Kamahl, the one who taps for the most, you might want to consider Reveka, Wizard Savant or Psionic Entity.
The last card to get cut from this deck was Heartless Hidetsugu, which is another nice path to consider. Even Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker could prove useful and abusable. There are scads of great ideas out there to use, so good luck finding more ways to break Freed from the Real!
Until Later,
Abe Sargent