4 Ravenous Rats
4 Cavern Harpy
2 Dimir Infiltrator
1 Shrieking Drake
4 Man-o'-War
2 Nekrataal
2 Doomsday Specter
4 Circu, Dimir Lobotomist
2 Crypt Angel
1 Sakashima the Impostor
1 Vedalken Dismisser
4 Undermine
3 Recoil
2 Lobotomy
8 Island
8 Swamp
4 Underground River
4 Watery Grave |
  Braindead.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
I set out to write a multi-week series
catching up on all of the neat decks made possible by Guildpact Rares,
but now I'm going to throw you for a loop. I'm not sure how a person
goes about throwing someone for a loop, but I think it involves a
Chihuahua in a hamster-ball. (Sorry, that just cracks me up.) With the
final deck, I'm going to go back even further, all the way back to
Ravnica, a set which, in my mind, is still full of untapped potential.
The deck coming up is actually one of the first decks I built when I
started writing the column. Since Dimir Week was way back in November,
pre-dating my arrival on the site by two months, it became difficult to
squeeze this deck into an article. What's in the deck? Circu, Dimir
Lobotomist. So far, so obvious. What makes the deck special? A cute
little bird-like Beast from Planeshift called Cavern Harpy. With Circu
on the board, and a Harpy in hand, each UB you pay will removed the top
two cards of your opponent's library. This adds up quickly, like my
gambling debts.
There are a few ways you can build a Circu deck. One way
would be to use Circu to supplement a milling strategy based around
Glimpse the Unthinkable and company. Another would be to use Circu as part
of an aggro-control strategy, his ability locking your opponent out of
playing spells long enough to get in twenty points worth of beats. This is
the path I chose.
Now that Visions has made its way into the Magic Online
environment, I thought I'd add one of my favourite cards of all time:
Man-o'-War! I've talked a bit about it before, but, man, I love this card.
It's an amazing tempo card, for one thing, and it gets even better when
you can replay it repeatedly by combining it with something like Cavern
Harpy. There isn't much that's more frustrating than replaying the same
creature a hundred times, except, I guess, replaying it two hundred times.
Man-o'-War, like Cavern Harpy, can also turn into a Lobotomist's assistant
with it's ability to be return itself to your hand. The same goes for
another Visions favourite, Shrieking Drake.
The rest of the deck is filled with nifty Blue or Black
creatures with comes-into-play abilities, and some general utility. Dimir
Infiltrator acts as Cavern Harpies number five and six. Crypt Angel lets
you get back any fallen Circus, while Sakashima the Impostor allows you to
double your lobotomizing power. And what would a Circu deck be with some
copies of Lobotomy itself? Less fun, I say.
If you don't have some of the IPA cards, they can
certainly be replaced. I'd try Memory Lapse or Hinder in place of
Undermine. Putting cards on top of your opponent's library is something
Circu likes. You won't get to remove the card you counter (stupid stack!),
but you can do that later. |
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