MTG Salvation

Going into it, I had only the faintest idea of how I was going to approach the decks. (Click here for the Voldemort Death Eater deck.) I did know I wanted to stick with Human Wizard for most of the decks' creatures. Next, it was a matter of selecting which characters to include in the decks. I elected to represent the series' primary characters with Legendary creatures. When I decided to include Madam Professor Minerva McGonagall, I thought very carefully about the deck's nonlegendary creatures. I wanted Harry to have easy access to his Patronus as well as be able to dodge spells, and I also wanted a high probability of retrieving either.

Having used numeric restrictions in a few recent decks, I did it again here, this time around the number seven. This quickly simplified things for creatures. I'd originally selected over a dozen creatures — the trio, some of their friends, a few faculty members, even a couple of Dementors — but with only seven slots, I had to make them count. I went with the legendary trio and their Madam Professor as well as the aforementioned Purity and Deadeye Navigator, selecting Faerie Mechanist as an analogue for the Golden Snitch bequeathed to Harry.

By including the Snitch, it made sense to also include the other items Dumbledore left to the trio. With three noncreature artifact slots filled, that left enough room for the Deathly Hallows and an extra wand.

The Dumbledore deck's enchantments are largely stand-ins for the powerful protections cast over Hogwarts during the final battle. Runed Halo is a flavorful choice for the Sacrificial Protection bestowed by Lily Potter. The remaining slots go to more, combo pieces.

The Dumbledore deck's sorcery spells are relatively vanilla with two notable exceptions, both combo pieces.

I had a lot of fun pulling together the Dumbledore deck's instant package! While the deck packs a lot of countermagic, in an effort to mirror the way spells are used in the series, I opted against most standard Counterspells, instead going for specialized counters like Confound, Muddle the Mixture, and Trickbind. And, of course, I included a handful of cards to represent Harry's signature spell, Expelliarmus, the Disarming Charm.

Combo-control!