1
Aboroth
1 Bogardan Phoenix
2 Mindless Automaton
2 Molten Hydra
2 Phantom Centaur
2 Phantom Nantuko
3 Roc Hatchling
2 Serrated Biskelion
1 Spike Weaver
1 Spitting Hydra
2 Thopter Squadron
4 Wall of Roots
2 Magistrate's Scepter
4 Power Conduit
1
Red Mana Battery
2 Sculpting Steel
1 Smokestack
2 Talisman of Impulse
1 Tornado
5 Mountain
6 Forest
1 Ghitu Encampment
4 Karplusan Forest
1 Mossfire Valley
4 Shivan Oasis
1 Treetop Village
2 Wooded Foothills |
  Counter
Clockwise.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
Removing depletion counters and flood counters is okay, I guess . .
. but it doesn't compare to removing death counters! Or age counters, or
-1/-1 counters. Go back in time a bit and you'll find Magic cards with
all kinds of oddball counters on them. How about removing the -0/-1
counters from Wall of Roots? With Power Conduit out, the Wall generates
a mana and a counter for free each turn, and it remains an imposing
blocker. Syphoning off shell counters from Roc Hydra speeds you to a 4/4
flying creature. Keep the -1/-1 counters off Serrated Biskelion and
you've got a colorless Skeleton Ship.
The Conduit lets you manipluate the soot counters on Smokestack, meaning
you could have it destroy one of your opponent's permanents every turn
without losing any of your own. And if Bogardan Phoenix can't keep a
death counter on it, it will rise from the dead over and over again.
Power Conduit's interaction with cumulative upkeep is very interesting.
The end result is the elimination of the word “cumulative.” You see, at
the beginning of your turn, the cumulative upkeep ability triggers. When
it resolves, you add an age counter to the permanent with the ability,
then you either sacrifice that permanent or pay the cumulative upkeep
cost for each age counter on it. You can't use Power Conduit to remove
the age counter before you have to pay the cost. But you can use the
Conduit to keep the number of age counters down to just one at a time.
Instead of seeing the cost increase each upkeep, you just pay a single
installment each turn. Things get even weirder when the cumulative
upkeep cards you happen to be using are Aboroth and Tornado. Aboroth has
both age counters and -1/-1 counters! By funneling off the age counters,
you'll keep Aboroth shrinking at a slow rate. If you put the resulting
+1/+1 counters back on Aboroth itself, it will stay 9/9. Tornado has age
counters to monitor its cumulative upkeep of , and it has velocity
counters to monitor how much life you have to pay to wipe any permanent
off the board. Keep the velocity counters off it and you have a ( + the
upkeep cost) Desert Twister each turn. Keep both counters off it with a
pair of Power Conduits and you have a Desert Twister each turn.
Again, what do we do with our counters? Spike Weaver is a good choice.
So are the Judgment Phantoms and various Hydras. Mindless Automaton
turns counters into size and/or cards; Thopter Squadron turns them into
flying creatures (and is cheaper than Pentavus). To add +1/+1 counters
to man-lands, you have to animate them. But the counters won't fall off
when these creatures return to land state, and they're notoriously hard
to get rid of. While it's easy to find places to stick +1/+1 counters,
charge counters aren't as versatile. Every card printed before Onslaught
that mentions charge counters (except one) uses those counters for
mana—some in twistedly arcane ways. I certainly don't want to mess
around with Ice Cauldron. (Do you?) A single Red Mana Battery can find a
place in this deck, as converting counters into mana can't be a bad
thing. But it's that one exception that proves to be especially
exciting: Magistrate's Scepter. It converts charge counters into extra
turns at a rate of three to one. Yeah, I could use some extra turns.
Luckily, I have some spare death and shell counters.
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