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Elemental Augury.

Description of deck by it's author (quoted):
Slivers and Hondens are the two most common types of five-color decks you'll see out there. I wanted a challenge to make a five-color deck that didn't use either one of them. I'd always had a soft spot for the Elemental Augury/Millstone combination, so I decided to start there. The first few times I tried it, it was short on mana to both cast something and use the Millstone or Augury. Then I thought of trying the Urzatron. The mana shortages vanished, and the deck took off.

I was later challenged to make this a creatureless deck, which meant I had to get rid of a couple of Legends that shared their colors with Augury (Farewell, Sol'kanar! Adios, Crosis!) and some other creature control I was using (Bane of the Living). The deck became pure Johnny.

To smooth out the colored mana issues, Chromatic Spheres and Darksteel Ingots get included right away. The Sphere replaces itself when you use it, so it's never a dead card, and Darksteel Ingots are one of my favorite commons. Millstone is a key part of the deck. Icy Manipulators work as single-point creature control, and they'll make people play more than one creature - which allows your Wrath of God effects to be that much more effective.

Because of the color requirements for the deck, the green spell that's going in here is Sylvan Scrying, which will get you the Urza land you need to complete the set, or get you that color-producing land that you need. Since the deck is now critterless, an obvious choice for the main White spell is Wrath of God. Blue, surprisingly, does not need counterspells of any sort. Instead, I went with the library-searching ability of Soothsaying and the critter protection of either Propaganda or War Tax. (If this deck's in a duel, War Tax is better. Otherwise, stick with Propaganda.) With the Urzatron out, Soothsaying is very close to a Vampiric Tutor minus the two-life penalty.

Red and Black spells were difficult choices. In the end, I cheated a bit and called Elemental Augury my Red spell. Demonic Tutor and No Mercy round the deck out.

The strategy behind this deck is pretty simple: Go after the guy who has the biggest critters and looks to be the largest threat. Muck with their deck, making sure that they draw crap for as many turns as possible. If you do this, the rest of the players may back off you a bit. If people start attacking you, remind them that you are in the position to best handle Big Threat Guy... And with No Mercy out, people will be loathe to attack you no matter what you are doing. Wrath if things start to get out of hand.

Other than the Urzatron, I needed land that was able to generate multiple colors of mana. With the number of artifacts in the deck, Glimmervoid was an easy choice. City of Brass would also fit the bill, but Grand Coliseum works better in that you can tap it for colorless mana without a point of damage. Finally, Reflecting Pool works very well with either of these cards. Because of the heavy mana requirements, there are a lot of mana sources in the deck. It's an expensive casual deck, to be sure, but it is a fun one to play if it gets working.

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by James Sambrook @ www.starcitygames.com

MILL: Elemental August - Millstone