I have a stack of bad… er… low value rares sitting here, and what I’ll do is grab one, then build a deck around it. I keep doing this until I have a normal sized article — typically four to six decks. Once in a while I sit down to write an article and I have no idea where it will end up. It doesn’t happen that often, but it happens. It’s shortly after 2pm on Christmas here at the Hacienda. I just woke up a few minutes ago and fed my fish before opening up a new Word document and began to write this paragraph.
I keep a document of article ideas I’ve had, and I mine it when I don’t know what else to write. I open it up and sigh. It’s been a while since I’ve added to the document. I have a canned article that I could pull out if I need, but why do that, when I’ve set aside time to write and have the ability to do so?
When I was first asked to do this whole weekly writer stint, I was told that in my column I should revisit some of my old themes. Newer readers may never have experienced some of my older ideas, while older readers may have forgotten or want a refresher.
Well, today seems just as good a day as any to harvest the past. What can I discover here? What old article calls out to me as inspiration for a new article? Rare drafting? Building your first five? I could do another article in the casual metagame series, but that’s too soon for me as a writer. I even could do the Equinaut Primer inside me, but that’s too soon for the audience since I last wrote about it two weeks ago. Perhaps I could write even more on Shandalar or Shop? Peasant Magic? Five Color? Highlander? Prismatic? Alternate Formats? Yet another article with a bunch of decks?
I have no idea what to write.
I don’t have writer’s block. After all, I’m writing this stuff. I just don’t have an article idea in me yet. So keep writing. Something will jump out as I write I know it will. That’s always been the trick in the past. Just type and type until a spark fans a flame and two hours later, the article is written.
It’s too late to write a follow up to Holiday A-Musings, which, incidentally, is one of only two of my articles to ever be linked to from a non-Magic website. Magic Online: The Terms of Service was the other.
I could write more on the Best Player Syndrome or the Multiplayer Dilemma. If I were uber-arrogant I would list all of my own Magic thoughts into one dictionary (the WALD Theory, the Framework, pushing, BPS, Multiplayer Dilemma, etc.)
I don’t want to write on underused cards or spirits. Neither do I want to discuss Portal, Un-, Vanguard or Precons.
Well, looks like I am writing a deck article after all. Ah well.
Now it is time for the hook. I haven’t built a bad rare deck in a while, so let’s do that.
As a reminder, I have a stack of bad… er… low value rares sitting here, and what I’ll do is grab one, then build a deck around it. I keep doing this until I have a normal sized article — typically four to six decks.
I grabbed my stack of rares from the bookshelf and I am ready to randomly select a bad rare. Without further ado, here we go.
This certainly is a bad rare, but it’s a bit easy to build around. Returning Birds and / or Clerics seems pretty easy to build around — just have a Bird / Cleric deck. In fact, this is a rather disappointing rare to pull because of it. I want more of a challenge. Feh. I’m building this deck, but under protest.
Creatures (24)
- 1 Commander Eesha
- 2 Aven Cloudchaser
- 4 Keeper of the Nine Gales
- 4 Celestial Gatekeeper
- 2 Glarecaster
- 2 Soraya the Falconer
- 4 Raven Familiar
- 2 Kangee, Aerie Keeper
- 1 Lieutenant Kirtar
- 2 Phantom Flock
Lands (24)
- 12 Plains
- 8 Island
- 4 Seaside Haven
Spells (12)
Well, there’s your deck. I chose to build around the Bird theme pretty hardcore. Every creature either is a Bird or helps the Bird in all of us. The Aerie, Aviary, Falconer and Keeper each pump the birdies. This can really help the team by giving them some staying power.
The Keeper of the Nine Gales acts like a cheaper Tradewind Rider, tapping two birds and itself to bounce any permanent. There are plenty of Birds in this deck, from the token-producing Battle Screech to major Birds like the Gatekeepers, Glarecasters, Eesha, Kirtar, and such.
For card drawing, I tossed in four Raven Familiars, four Seaside Havens and a pair of Airborne Aid. You only need to resolve one Aid in order to draw mega cards. The Familiars are Birds as well as giving you a slightly smaller Impulse when they resolve.
The Seaside Haven is possibly the best card in the deck. You can sacrifice a Bird for a card with the Haven, thus giving you something if one of your Birds is about to bite it, via damage or targeted removal. Feel free to chump block, then sacrifice the defender before it dies for a card. Trade creatures in combat and sacrifice for a card so you make out.
You can also sacrifice a Bird to kill off a Celestial Gatekeeper to bring back two other Birds. That way you can do it at any time, giving you a guaranteed sacrifice outlet that cannot be Disenchanted or countered. You can also use the Haven to stock your graveyard with two Birds to bring back out when your Gatekeeper dies.
Note you can sacrifice a Familiar if you don’t want to pay the echo to get another card out of it before it dies.
You can always draw a card just because you need to explore. And remember one more thing: dying Birds put counters on the Soulcatchers’ Aerie. You can play havoc with combat math by sacking a Bird to give all Birds a permanent +1/+1 bonus and you draw a card too. That Haven is pretty handy, I’d say.
Because you are running enchantments of your own, there are only two Aven Cloudchasers in the deck. Don’t play them unless you have an opposing enchantment target or you don’t have any of your own enchantments out.
The deck includes a pair of Phantom Flock. They are especially good in this deck because while they are pumped by a variety of Bird-pumping effects, they are unkillable by damage. They become just this shy of indestructible (after all, they can still be offed by destruction effects, like removal spells)
Commander Eesha is around as your uber-blocker. After getting her pumped she becomes a one-Bird killing machine. A 5/7 pro-creatures, Eesha is no joke to opponents. When she dies, she’ll be a top Gatekeeper target to bring back.
Another top target would be the Kirtar of Happiness. As the only removal “spell” in the deck, this Seal of Order (or Order / Chaos fun) can be reused by a Gatekeeper. He’s pretty good if opponents are willing to swing into you, but you’d rather they don’t.
Between perpetual blockers like Eesha and the Flock, Kirtar and the Keepers of the Nine Gales, you are honestly hoping that people chose another target at the multiplayer table.
And let’s not forget the power of the Glarecaster. Once this guy gets out, it’s tough getting any damage through to you. If the Glarecaster should fall, remember your Gatekeepers and use them well. In the late game, cards like Kangee and Glarecaster should help bring you victory.
Would you like to pick two targets for the Gatekeeper? There are many good choices. Eesha and Kirtar are great at holding the line early. Eesha is a winning condition. Glarecaster holds the line late. Raven Familiar draws you a card. Cloudchaser kills an enchantment. Keeper of the 9G will bounce permanents. Phantom Flock is another perpetual blocker under the right circumstances.
That seems like a pretty powerful selection of Birds to me.
Again, it was an obvious build, but if you have never played a Bird deck before, why not try it out? It’s gotta be better than Soldier Deck #71 or Goblin Deck #63 or Elf Deck #142.
Alright, time for the next random pull of a bad rare. What’ll it be? (Ironically, I pulled another Celestial Gatekeeper, so I’m pulling again).
Okay, let’s look at the Behemoth of Deepness. First of all, unlike many large Blue contemporaries, the Benthic Behemoth did not have a disadvantage, like Islandhome or sacking Islands to untap or that craziness. Instead, it had an advantage. Since I flipped it and have to build a deck around it, doesn’t it make sense to try to use that advantage to our favor?
This deck can be summed pretty quickly. Sixteen creatures are dedicated to Islandwalking. Eight cards are dedicated to giving your opponent Islands. Ten cards are dedicated to keeping your opponent(s) from killing you before you can obtain Islandwalk victory.
The Reef Shaman is cleverly one of the best cards in your deck. You want this guy on the first turn in every game. As an 0/2, he can block 1/1 creatures that might otherwise attack in the early game, which helps your defense. That’s not really why you want him, though.
On the second turn, during your opponent’s upkeep, you can change their land to any other basic land. You can use Reef Shaman, and later a Quicksilver Fountain to keep a person off one of their colors of mana. Against any non-Blue player, the Fountain will slowly cut them off from their mana. Reef Shamen are ideal here.
Most opponents will choose to Fountain lands of all colors instead of just cutting themselves off of a color. A White/Green deck, for instance, will start by turning one of their Forests into an Island, then maybe a Plains, then maybe another Plains, then maybe another Forest, and so forth. You can use Reef Shaman to finish cutting off a color.
Plus, Reef Shamen can keep people at Island saturation longer. Suppose you have out a Fountain and two Shamen. During your opponent’s upkeep, they put a counter, leaving them with two non-Islands. Then your Shamen island up the other two in their upkeep. During the net upkeep, another land becomes an island off the Fountain, and you island up the remaining land with a Shaman. The next turn the Fountain turns the remaining land into an Island. You get three consecutive turns of full Island-age with the Shamen helping out.
Now, suppose that your opponent is already playing Blue, or even mono-Blue. A Quicksilver Fountain and an adjunct like, say, a Tidal Warrior instead of a Reef Shaman would be completely useless. There’s nothing we can do about the Fountain — it is useless. However, we can at least play Reef Shamen instead of Tidal Warriors. Now, during the early games, we can give them Swamps or something instead of Islands.
There’s a lot of tapping going on in this deck, like Flood, Deluge, Ensnare and even Sand Squids if necessary. We want to stall opponents long enough to get our team through for the win. This deck stalls in two ways. The tempo loss to Reef Shamen and Quicksilver Fountains mentioned above is one way. All of these tapping effects are the other way.
After the discussion about tempo, the remaining sixteen creatures may seem a bit boring. Three just Islandwalk while the Sand Squid Islandwalks and taps, serving double duty there. These are pretty boring overall.
Well, there’s another deck. Hope you enjoy the Benthic Behemoth love that we all share.
What is the next card?
Okay, now I need to stop. I’ll make some Christmas Hot Dogs in a bit. The reason for stopping is simple — I have no obvious idea on how to use Elkin Lair in a deck. I ask myself what it is good for. It seems good against control. A counter deck would not want to flip a Counterspell, for example. Similarly, a deck with a combo engine would not want to flip one piece without the combo or without the mana to play the combo.
However, in those cases, Elkin Lair does not hurt my opponent any worse than Bottomless Pit would, and in other cases, it’s much worse than the Pit. An aggro deck would just play the Lightning Bolt or Wild Mongrel that got Elkin Laired. No loss of card.
The Elkin Lair goes well with, say, Balance, reducing my hand-size by one. For that trick, I’d rather use Gustha’s Scepter or something. It also works well with Memory Jar, allowing me to use the Laired card after sacking the Jar, but again, the Scepter can do that, and guaranteed since the Lair is random but the Scepter isn’t.
I want to prove that Elkin Lair is a viable card, so I head over to Magic Deck Vortex and do a search for Elkin Lair. I find a deck with an Elkin Bottle, but no decks that use Elkin Lair. In all of their decks, there is no Elkin Lair according to the search engine. Hmpf.
Okay, now this has become a challenge, and you know how I like deckbuilding challenges. I need to find a home for Elkin Lair. What else can it do?
Umm, it can kill another Enchant World.
I got nothing, but boiling water and ready to eat hot dogs. I’m off to make dinner. The next sentence you read in this article won’t be for a while. If I accidentally switch tenses or something, now you’ll know why. So here it goes. Actually, I’ve written several sentences after the “the next sentence” claim without getting up and eating my Christmas Hot Dogs. So let’s append that remark to the, “[F]irst sentence after this paragraph,” okay?
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Okay, I’m back. For you, it was just a few blank lines. For me, several hours have passed. Alright, let’s see if we can’t wrap up this article in one sitting, eh?
Elkin Lair is like a Bottomless Pit except for the following:
You will never have to discard a card if you can play it.
It’s still uber disruptive against combo and control.
Unlike the Pit, it does little against aggro.
Okay, so it’s guaranteed safer for you, and could be safer for your opponent or could be just as deadly, depending on what you play. I think I can work with that just fine.
Okay, so let’s look at this deck in a bit of detail. Every card in the deck can be played immediately for an effect if randomly selected with an Elkin Lair. Instead of a Disenchant, we have a Seal of Cleansing. Instead of normal direct damage, we have Seal of Fire. We have a selection of relatively cheap creatures at hand. We have some cheaper artifacts and enchantments. Finally, the Abeyance can be played immediately for a card.
If an opponent removes a crucial sorcery, stop it with the Abeyance. You can use Abeyance to force through a vital permanent against a counter deck, like the Lair. Otherwise, just play it whenever you feel like it for a card.
Ghostly Prison forces your opponent to make a choice. The Elkin Lair will encourage your opponent to play their card now, before they lose it. When they play it, however, they cannot attack through the Ghostly Prison. It forces opponents to choose whether to attack or to play a spell.
This will encourage your opponent to play as much mana as possible. That’s why Ankh of Mishra is in the deck. You want to punish your opponent for trying to get enough mana to attack you or to play higher casting cost spells. When your opponent randomly selects a land and chooses to discard it instead of playing it and taking two, you know that your deck is working.
Since your opponent will be losing cards, it’d be silly not to take advantage of the opportunity a good Rack will do. Instead of playing The Rack, I’ve tossed in Racklings. They are better in a multiplayer setting where they hit multiple players and they add to the low creature count of the deck.
Goblin Legionnaire is a solid, cheap creature for dropping when it gets Laired as well as removal and protection on a stick. It’s a perfect card for this deck, because its versatility is when it is play, not in your hand, so it works well with the Lair.
Sunhome Enforcer is good because of its large rear. It’s a fine blocker for a deck that may need one occasionally. Additionally, it gets you life, which will help if multiple opponents decide to target you for death.
What’s really remarkable are all of the cards that didn’t make the cut that I was considering. You could look at some of these if you wanted.
Cursed Scroll is cheap to drop for the Lair while also getting better as you lose cards from your hands. Along this vein is Null Brooch, which gets better with a lower (read “no”) hand, and Ensnaring Bridge.
You could play regular The Racks. They are so cheap that the Lair is hardly a problem for them. Because they only hurt one person, you’d be less likely to be a group target. If you still want to attack everybody but do it better and cheaper, look at Storm World.
Seismic Assault would be ideal because you would eventually want to stop dropping your own land and therefore could still get a benefit from it.
Scroll Rack would help to find the key cards, and again costs little to play.
Commander Eesha would be a great aerial blocker for the few creatures that get through.
Fountain Watch would protect your key permanents while also giving you a nice sized body.
Enlightened Tutor would find you a nice permanent.
Sphere of Resistance would force your opponent to play even more land or to attack even less when playing a spell when Ghostly Prison is out.
Zo-Zu the Punisher would be a nice adjunct to the Ankh of Mishra.
Since you are encouraging people to play creatures, something like Congregate might work wonders for ya.
One idea I was consider was to run Aether Flash and creatures with higher than two defense. The Aether Flash would hurt the decks that the Lair is weak against — aggro decks. It would make your Seal of Fire better because creatures of three or four power would still die if you sacked a Seal. It would cause an opponent to lose smaller creatures as the Lair choose them. I thought it’d be a nice move. You could not play it with the current suite of creatures though; you’d have to find other creatures like some of the other options mentioned above. Other choices might include Subterranean Spirit, Wildfire Emissary, and Dawn Elemental.
With this creature selection, look at Wave of Reckoning or Retribution of the Meek as mass removal spells that would leave your own creatures alone.
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Okay, I wrote on Elkin Lair for far too long there. In fact, I’ve just come to the end of the eighth page of the article, and that means it’s time to go. I hope that you have enjoyed this trek through yet another three bad rare decks.
I also hope you enjoy your remaining holidays.
Until later,