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Sliding Maps.

Description of deck by it's author (quoted):
Let me start with a deck that I mentioned once in passing a few months ago. It's a green-white Astral Slide deck meant for chaos play. (Ironically, though it does nothing to hurt teammates, it has performed far better in free-for-alls than in team formats. Go figure.) Scourge added a great deal to it...

Before going on, I'll note that I break some of my own deck-building rules on this one. Most flagrantly, I have lots of "one-of" cards in this deck: Invigorating Boon, Auramancer, Gilded Light, Noble Templar, Wirewood Guardian...and those aren't even the rares!

I also pretty much ignore the concept of a mana curve. Let's just say turn seven is full of choices for me.

But I do all this because I have a particular philosophy about white-green decks in multiplayer: I hate them. Honestly. The color combination does nothing for me. I can't get rid of a single creature when I need to, I can't punch through for lethal damage, and whatever mass removal you'd normally pack (e.g., Wrath of God) runs against what the green half of your deck (e.g., creatures) is trying to get done.

It's at this point that tired minds turn to Swords to Plowshares (and in fact, my green-white spider deck does exactly that). But here, I wanted to take advantage of Astral Slide, which I initially thought was trash. A friend turned me onto a trick some Pro Tour regulars were toying with: Astral Slide – Cartographer – Tranquil Thicket. It works like this: you cycle the Thicket (or Secluded Steppe), you slide your Cartographer out, you draw a card. At the end of the turn, you get your Cartographer back... and the Thicket you cycled returns to your hand.

I have no idea how this panned out on the tournament scene. But in a multiplayer game, when you have a few mana open, it's nice to draw three or four extra cards between one turn and the next. It draws you to a nifty win condition, like Phantom Nishoba or Eternal Dragon. (Yes, a nearly-depleted Nishoba returns from a Slide with seven counters. That's why Spike Feeder and Spike Weaver are in the deck, too.)

Once you've got a base like that, you spend the rest of the deck protecting it and trying to avoid a serious shellacking from your group. Sterling Grove keeps Astral Slide somewhat safe, Auramancer brings it back if you're stuck with three in the graveyard, and Gilded Light is for those fabulous times when the Super-Bright Red Mage throws a 24-point Fireball at your face.

Playing the deck gives you a good idea as to how to cope with unwanted attention. It's pretty hard to keep more than two or three creatures in play at once, and not particularly advisable anyway. You want to have mana open to threaten cycling, once the Slide is out – and the fewer creatures you have, the more realistic it appears that you could come out unaffected by a Jokulhaups. (Someday, this deck will get rebuilt as a red-white, and use that global clearer!)

Miraculous Recovery may actually be the most important card in the deck – it is a wonderful surprise, because players will spend a great deal of time and effort nailing your Spike Feeder. Bringing it back with an extra counter is a polite way to deliver a rude insult.

Before I go on for much longer, I'll discuss one last card in the deck: Forgotten Ancient. This MagicTheGathering.com creation represents a point where I think a lot of decks start to flounder – the "I can fit one more idea in there!" point.

The deck is a cycling deck. Forgotten Ancient is irrelevant to this process – in fact, if you Slide out the Ancient, you lose whatever counters it has built up. But I threw one in there because (a) I had one and I wanted to play one, darn it; and (2) it does do lovely things with the Spikes and Phantoms.

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by Anthony Alongi @ www.magicthegathering.com

GROUP: Astral Slide