I have submitted what I now call,”Chicken deck of the People.” I have no doubt that Rosewater will pluck this deck from the many selected:
“Chicken deck of the People”
(“Choking the Chicken” was so much better, but I bowed to commercialism)
Creatures
4x Chicken a-la-King
4x Mesa Chicken
4x Free-Range Chicken
4x Chicken Egg
3x Poultrygeist
1x Zodiac Rooster
1x Shu Soldier-Farmer
1x Elvish Farmer
1x Orcish Farmer
Spells
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Fowl Play
2x Hurricane
1x Wing Snare
1x Triassic Egg
Land
3x Tinder Farm
3x Remote Farm
4x Tundra (U/W)
3x Plateau (R/W)
2x Tropical Island (U/G)
2x Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author] (W/B)
3x Underground Sea (U/B)
2x Savannah (W/G)
4x Volcanic Island (U/R)
Considering all the great cards that were listed in the last update, why would I pick this particular pile of dreck? I went with cards I believe held strictly to the Chicken theme. The Rooster and the Farmers aren’t chickens, but were so close, I just had to include them. Even Swords to Plowshares maintains the farming theme – and good grief, it just needs to be in there. While Tinder Farm and Remote Farm don’t really help with the mana, they fit too well to not be included. As far as the rest of the lands in the deck? Cut me some slack, here! This is a five-colour deck and I needed the help. There were some suggestions relating to Power Nine cards and City of Brass as a way to help the mana curve, but they just don’t work with the theme. I would love to add Dark Ritual, but it just doesn’t fit.
Finally, there is the obvious card that just doesn’t fit this deck at all, but is in there anyway: Hurricane. What could a Hurricane have to do with chickens? The whole point of the deck is to make the player cluck like a chicken. The best way to do that is to clear the air of flying creatures, but not ground creatures. This should force the pro to cluck like a chicken to try and win. Hurricane simply does that job better than any other card. Besides, I would say that a Hurricane is an example of really”fowl” weather.
Now that I have my deck submitted, I want to thank everyone that participated in the contest and sent me amazing ideas. The first runner-up* was Quinten Cauwelier. His email was short, but listed several cards, all of which made it into the deck you see above. Quinten doesn’t win the big exciting prize, but if he wants to proxy one of his basic lands into whatever card he wants, the next time we play against each other, I’ll agree to play as though it is the real thing. I’ll even pick it up and act all impressed that you have [insert Quinten’s card selection here].
The winner is [email protected], a.k.a. John B. Turpish. John’s email listed off several cards and gave reasons why each of them were in the deck. John didn’t hold as tightly to the theme as I have, so some of the cards he suggested were not included. However, he clearly put more thought into his deck than I had put into mine, and he got my creative juices flowing.
In my last article, I called John a chicken for not including his name in the email. John wrote to me after I wrote that article to tell me who he was. I want to apologize to John for making lame jokes at his expense. John wins a card, signed by me from this deck, and the prize Rosewater would send to me if this pile actually gets chosen. John, if you want your lame card, send me an email with your address and I’ll get the card out to you. No rush, though, as I’m a lazy bugger and won’t be sending you the prize until I find out if my spectacular deck won. Why would I send you stuff twice? I’m poor and cheap.
To wrap up this article, I just want to say that I will never hold another contest again. I think Anthony Alongi is insane for agreeing to do it over and over again. I had no idea of the work involved. I thought writing articles full of lame jokes and using spell check was hard. This is insane.
Bruce Richard
[email protected]
* – That’s right. This is the guy who did a really good job, had some great ideas, but doesn’t win a thing. This is the guy who gets to say”@#$#^&!” and other bad words because he was just this close to pulling it off. And I mean it. It was really close.