Aaron: Gigantic Nerd

But you still love me, right?

So it should come as no shock to you (especially since I've mentioned it before), that I play Magic the Gathering. Well, played is more accurate since all my friends who played moved away. So I was browsing thru some of my more evil decks the other day, and I decided that I'd tell everyone what my most evil (and most tournament illegal) deck is. Oooh, aren't you all just excited now? On the edge of your seats? Left the site already because this will bore you?

Mountain * 4
Swamp * 6
Strip Mine * 4

Icequake * 2
Stone Rain * 4
Choking Sands * 2
Rain of Tears * 2
Shattering Pulse * 2
Smoke * 2
Forbidden Ritual * 1
Demonic Tutor * 1

Wall of Bone * 4
Orcish Settlers * 3

Winter Orb * 2
Charcoal Diamond * 3
Fire Diamond * 3
Dingus Egg * 4
Sol Grail * 2
Ankh of Mishra * 2
Sol Ring * 3
Black Vise * 2

What's it do? Well, I'd hope that's obvious to those who play -- it's a land destruction deck. An evil, horribly mean land destruction deck.

How's it work? Well, the thought is that you left your artifacts generate the mana for you, so that your land destruction doesn't work against you. You use the Dingus Egg to do damage when lands are destroyed, and the Black Vise to hurt them when they can't cast anything. What's more, if they do get land out, the Winter Orb takes care of them getting to use it, and the Smoke takes care of many creature attacks. The Wall of Bones are there just in case they have creature attacks (since they can regenerate) as well.

Why is it illegal in tournaments? Well, the Demonic Tutor pulls it out immediately since it's a broken card. The four Strip Mines, two Black Vises and Sol Rings kill it too. I also used to keep four Lightening Bolts in there as well for creature control (which would be illegal as well), but ended up not needing them because the deck is so efficient at what it does. Note -- illegal in tournaments doesn't mean illegal to play with friends. We would follow the official rules in the rule books, but those never listed any banned cards. So it's legal by regulation rules.

How's the deck go boom? Well, a typical game goes like this. Your first draw comes with a land and a mana-producing artifact. So you get those out there. The next hand brings out a damage-dealing artifact and hopefully another land. The third hand you start destroying your opponent's land, who then sits there helplessly as they can never do anything. A really good opening hand is to have a Sol Ring and one of the diamonds + a land. So by your second turn, you have two colored mana + two colorless. With that, you can do anything else in the deck.

I use the Shattering Pulses as a way to destroy any artifacts which annoy me, or as a free draw. The Demonic Tutor is in there just in case I'm having a hard time getting a card I need. The Forbidden Ritual is just in case someone is holding out by not playing any cards and hoping my library runs out -- you sacrifice things in play to do damage to them (unless they sacrifice something as well -- but since they're not playing anything, they generally have nothing to sacrifice). It's a good game-ender for the stubborn.

The only deck to ever come close to beating this one is a weenie deck. That's why I threw in the Smokes -- if you can only untap one weenie at a time, it doesn't matter how many you have out there, they run into a Wall of Bone and are done. If you can pull together a turbo Statis deck or an equally mean land destruction deck, you may have a chance at beating this one, but it's a pretty slim chance. The weenie deck has a slightly better chance at overrunning this one if this one manages to get mana-screwed early on.

While I have a large number of evil decks that are hard to play against, this was "The One." When I'd bring it out against friends, they'd all just groan and fold. So it's been relegated to the "shits and giggles, but not serious play" pile since it's just too mean. :-)

Ok, so who's still reading this? And if you're still reading, do you play Magic? Do you understand anything from the post?