Lands:
8 Mountain
16 Island
Creatures:
2 Dwarven Trader
2 Merfolk Traders
4 Spawnbroker
4 Vedalken Plotter
3 Merfolk Thaumaturgist
2 Quicksilver Wall
2 Fickle Efreet
1 Bronze Bombshell
Other Spells:
2 Political Trickery
3 Legerdemain
2 Avarice Totem
1 Cultural Exchange
4 Schismotivate
4 Peel from Reality
1 Amulet of Unmaking |
  Swap
Meet (2007).
Description of deck by its author (quoted):
 This deck is 100% for fun. You may notice as
you read through the list that there aren't very many good cards in the
deck. In fact, the deck is almost characterized by its lack of good
cards. The fun of this deck is in beating down an opponent with his or
her own threats. This is not, however, a typical Control Magic / Bribery
/ Reins of Power deck, as you shall see.
As the name of the deck suggests, the goal of this
deck is trading permanents with other players. The trick in making the
deck even a little bit effective lies in making sure that your opponent
gets less out of the trade than you do. It is the nature of this deck
that even when you come out ahead in a trade, the novelty of the chaos
that you're creating will even out any hard feelings you may have
engendered.
The card that inspired me to create this deck is
Spawnbroker. It is very obviously a Johnny card. Sure, there are lots of
utility creatures with low power that are worth having, but if your
opponent has just played Silvos, Rogue Elemental, your Dwarven Trader is
going to seem puny and ineffectual. My first trick, therefore, to make
the most of Spawnbroker, is Schismotivate. It increases the cost of the
trick substantially, but it turns that Dwarven Trader into a 5/1 and
Silvos, Rogue Elemental into a 4/8. Spawnbroker can facilitate that
trade! Schismotivate, of course, has additional functionality. It can
quickly turn the tables on an opponent during combat even if you aren't
able to later make a trade because of it.
Merfolk Thaumaturgist is also an effective way of
using Spawnbroker to make trades. One, your opponent's creature may have
high power and low toughness. Two, I have Quicksilver Wall in the deck.
As long as my opponent doesn't currently have 4 mana with which to
bounce the wall, I can make it a 6/1 creature, which is big enough to
trade with a great many other creatures. Better yet, I can bounce the
wall at some later time and replay it on my side of the board!
Finally, I can often trade Fickle Efreet in a pinch.
It might result in me later taking 5 damage (unless I have a Quicksilver
Wall on the board) but at least I have a 50/50 chance of getting it back
then. That is preferable to my opponent having a better beatstick on his
or her team.
Peel from Reality is the last link in Spawnbroker's
chain. After I've made a trade (frequently handing over Spawnbroker,
Merfolk Traders, or Vedalken Plotter in exchange), I can return the
swapped creature and another creature to my hand, leading to another
round of trading.
Most of the other cards in the deck are extremely
straightforward. Vedalken Plotter, Political Trickery, Legerdemain, and
Cultural Exchange all yield trades in a predictable way. Legerdemain is
a good backup plan for those times when Spawnbroker just isn't enough to
get me the creature that I want.
Avarice Totem is somewhat more subtle. Of course, I
lack any acceleration, so I can't play this trick as often as I like,
but if I have enough mana to activate it twice (and my opponent happens
not to have enough mana to activate it once) I can stack its effect such
that it trades one of my permanents for one of my opponent's and leaves
the Totem under my control. (In addition to being a fun toy with which
to play, I find the artwork and flavour text of Avarice Totem to be very
evocative.)
Speaking of Flavour, that's the biggest reason why
Dwarven Trader and Amulet of Unmaking* are in the deck. I probably
should take out at least one Dwarven Trader and replace it with a third
Merfolk Traders. They're just as flavourful and are a better card. (*The
flavour text of Amulet of Unmaking reads, "Trade to trade, not to keep.
-- Suq'Ata motto.") |
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