Welcome back, folks. This is the latest installment of the Casual Magic series. Today we will be focusing more on instants and sorceries. As you might suspect, instant and sorcery spells play a big part in Magic. Creatures deal damage, but instants and sorceries get entire decks built around them. Think about it, Mind's Desire, Tooth and Nail, Mudhole (j/k), all have made it in the big tournaments proving that they are good enough for us casual players. But enough of that, let's just get to the decks.
Warp World
Warp World is the poster child for Red cards. It's a sorcery, and has that reckless "I don't care" kind of attitude packaged inside. Were you ever beaten at chess or checkers by an older sibling and you responded by throwing the board across the room? This is the card for you.
There really isn't much you can do with this card. All Warp World decks are generally the same. Play a bunch of mana acceleration, play permanents with comes-into-play effects on them, add a card that can get Warp World back after you play it, then play some win conditions. Then just keep going untill your opponent dies somehow.
| Warp World (Extended-legal)Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Engine 4 Warp World 4 Eternal Witness Neat Tricks 4 Civic Wayfinder 4 Flametongue Kavu 4 Wood Elves 2 Elvish Pioneer | Damage 4 Galvanic Arc 4 Hunted Dragon 4 Goretusk Firebeast 2 Siege-Gang Commander | Land 14 Mountain 10 Forest |
Were you expecting something different? The deck is basically what I just described. Get as many permanents out on the field as you can, while taking as many of your opponent's permanents out. Cards like Wood Elves, Flametongue Kavu, and Galvanic Arc will net you an extra permanent over your opponent usually. Then play Warp World, and cool stuff happens. Since virtually everything in the deck has a comes-into-play effect, something is going to happen when they come into play via Warp World. Most of the time it will either get you a permanent out of your deck or kill one of your opponents'. Bring Warp World back via Eternal Witness (hopefully one is put into play, but you should have held one in your hand just in case anyway). Your lands untap and you are free to play more spells in your hand as well as the Warp World in your hand.
The sad thing is, this combo isn't infinite. Eventually you run out of Eternal Witnesses and Warp Worlds to play. But usually by the time you can't play Warp World any more, generally you have messed things up enough for your opponent to get the win anyway. Goretusk Firebeast is 4 damage to the head, Galvanic Arc deals 3 to a creature or player, Hunted Dragon will fly over for 6, and Siege-Gang Commander will finish your opponent off.
Doesn't sound that exciting? I know. But there are other fun cards to abuse this with. Just combine Red with some other colors. Red/Black? Nekratraal and Faceless Butcher come to mind immediately. Red/Black/White? Angel of Despair and Blind Hunter. Red/Blue? Vedalken Dismisser and Merchant of Secrets. I could go on, but I won't.
Eye of the Storm
This is where I usually talk about how good a card is, but to be honest Eye of the Storm isn't that great. I'm just going to get past the fact that it costs seven to play, cause most good combo cards cost around that much (Tooth and Nail, Mind's Desire). But your opponent gets the same effect you do if they play any instants or sorceries. So your strategy can be turned against you if they play instants or sorceries, and if they time it right, it can be devastating.
So you might ask "Why even bother?". Why? Because it's fun, thats why! Some cards you just make decks around just because it's fun to have your instants copied over and over again. So what if it doesn't win all the time?
So I made two decks around this card. The first one is... well... I'll just show it and talk about it after.
| UR Eye (Extended-legal)Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | ||
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Engine 4 Eye of the Storm 4 Stitch in Time Card Draw 4 Fact or Fiction 4 Compulsive Research 4 Telling Time | Bounce 4 Repulse 4 Jilt Burn 4 Firebolt 4 Flames of the Blood Hand | Land 4 Izzet Boilerworks 8 Mountain 12 Island |
The basic strategy is to play Eye of the Storm and put Stitch of Time on it. Then you have card drawing, bounce and burn. Just cycle through your deck with your card drawing spells, and play any burn or bounce you might have. Every time you play a spell, it will copy all the other spells you played, including Stitch in Time (if you played it first). So if you run out of mana (which you will very soon), you will most likely have an extra turn from Stitch in Time to play more spells.
Now that's pretty much all there is to the deck, but that's not really all there is to the concept of a Blue/Red Eye of the Storm deck. There are many instants and sorceries that you could throw in this deck, I'll just name a few:
Threaten- If this goes on Eye of the Storm early, and you can get off a lot more spells, you could easily take control of your opponent's entire army and turn it against him. If you are able to get an extra turn or two from Stitch in Time, then you could swing with your opponent's army a couple of turns in a row... probably enough to kill him. And this is one card your opponent can't use against you since you don't play with creatures.
Brain Freeze- Say you play Brain Freeze first, then more spells (meaning Brain Freeze gets copied), that Brain Freeze will have a higher storm count cause you have played the original Brain Freeze + another spell. Play another spell and you get even more cards milled. After Brain Freeze and two other instants or sorceries, you would have milled 24 cards, one more spell during the turn and its 39 cards, one more and its 57. So you can see how you might make short work of your opponent with this card in your deck. And you won't have to play Burn spells if you play this if you plan on milling your opponent. In fact, you could really just take out red completely and go UB so you can play more mill cards.
Anyways, I said I had two decks built around this card. Here's the second one:
This deck is pretty much the same idea, but gone about a different way. Instead of Stitch in Time you have Early Harvest, which will untap your lands. Then just keep drawing cards and playing spells, and untapping your lands every time. You win by playing Beacon of Creation and getting a bunch of insect tokens into play (cause the spell keeps getting copied), and then you play Beacon of Tommorows and swing with those tokens on the next turn. Good stuff....
Instant fun
I'm not even sure this deck is going to work. It went through many changes to get to the point where it was, so I don't even know if it works like I want it to. But it was fun to build, and the concept was pretty good. It was pretty simple too. You know about Sunforger right? Well, that was the deck. The idea came me when I was looking through the Dissension spoiler and thinking about the new split cards. And I realized split cards were really sweet with Sunforger. You only need one side of the split card to be red or white and one side of the split card to be less than 4 mana. And you can play which ever side you want. So you can search for Odds // Ends and play whatever side you want.
After that I pretty much went to town with the idea, and here's what happened:
| Instant Fun (Extended-legal)Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards | |
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Creatures 4 Copper Myr 4 Silver Myr 4 Beloved Chaplain 4 Skyknight Legionnaire Artifacts 4 Isochron Scepter 3 Sunforger Instants 1 Absorb 1 Suffocating Blast 1 Holy Day 1 Lightning Helix 1 Razor Barrier 1 Condemn 1 Fire // Ice 1 Mortify 1 Research // Developement 1 Raise the Alarm 1 Odds // Ends 1 Hit // Run 1 Wing Shards | Lands 4 Boros Garrison 4 City of Brass 7 Plains 5 Mountain 4 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree |
I'm going to start with the creatures first. The 8 myrs are there to accelerate your deck, and to help hardcast some of the spells if you happen to draw them. Then you have 8 more creatures with evasion, making sure that the +4/0 from Sunforger will have a better chance of hitting your opponent.
Now the instants... well, basically you can pretty much do whatever you want. You have 2 counters that will protect your artifacts from any spells that might destroy them. Holy Day prevents all damage, Razor Barrier protects your cards from spells. Development and Raise the Alarm will make more creatures, which might come in handy if you are attacking and they block your last creature. Condem, Mortify, Lightning Helix, Wing Shards, Fire and Ends will destroy creatures or deal damage. Then you have random stuff like Research that will put cards removed via imprinting it to Isocron Scepter back into your library, and Run which could put an end to the game by making your creatures big enough (or it could add some extra damage so that you can kill that one creature in play blocking).
(Note: Using Research to shuffle a card imprinted on Isochron Scepter back into your deck means that card is no longer imprinted, so you can't make copies of it with the Scepter again. - Ed.)
Speaking of Isocron Scepter, what a fun card. Since only one side of the card has to be less than 2 mana, and you can use either side when you tap it. So you can put Research // Development on it and keep making 3/1 tokens or drawing cards, or imprint Odds // Ends and make your opponent sacrifice two creatures every attack.
Because the deck is so flexible, your opponent won't know what to do. If you have a ready to activate Sunforger, your opponent might be afraid to attack with big creatures because he might be afraid of Wing Shards. And he might think you are playing instants that you aren't even playing and make certain moves to take precaution. At the same time, he might not think of instants you are playing and get a surprise when you spring the trap on him. Even without Sunforger and Isocron Scepter in the deck, the deck is so random that you could surprise your opponent with certain cards. But at the same time, you might find yourself in topdeck mode if you can't get a Sunforger or Isocron Scepter into play fast.
That's all folks
I have to say, this is getting to be one of my favorite articles. These decks were really fun to build compared to the other ones I have done. In the other ones, it was all pretty much cut and paste type stuff. But for this article I actually had to look through Gatherer for good instants and sorceries (and creatures with comes into play effect in the case of Warp World) to get these decks to be somewhat decent. Like I always say though, these decks aren't set in stone. Add your own twist to it, you might have as much fun as I did making these decks.
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