4 Howling Mine
2 Winter Orb
2 Static Orb
4 Icy Manipulator
4 Relic Barrier
4 Ghostly Prison
2 March of the Machines
4 Counterspell
4 Forbid
4 Wrath of God
4 Tundra (or Adarkar Wastes)
4 Rishadan Port
2 Blinkmoth Well
8 Island
8 Plains |
  Tempo
Prison.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
I always wanted to remake the classic Prison
deck in the wake of Mirrodin block. Now is my opportunity to do so with
several crucial card being reprinted. The Prison deck is one of the
first deck archetypes, and it was known for it's ability to lock down
the game with relative ease. It used Icy Manipulators, Winter Orbs,
Armageddon, Relic Barriers, Howling Mines and are to lock you down, then
played a Song of Titania and swung with a bunch of artifacts for game.
Sure, modern Prison-style decks still exist, like
Scepter-Chant. We want the old school Prison, however. With a Song of
Titania reprint in Mirrodin and the reprinting of Icy Manipulator and
Relic Barrier, now is the time to try history once more. Where possible, I
will try to have as few older cards as I can. Yes, that's right, this deck
has no creatures. Each creature removal spell in your opponent's hand is a
dead card. You'll ultimately win by attacking with your March of Machined
artifacts for game. In fact, if you have enough, you can swing for game in
one turn, although that is not always necessary.
Howling Mine, Static Orb, and Winter Orb all stop
working when they are tapped. You can use this to your advantage by
tapping them with Icy Manipulator, Blinkmoth Well, or Relic Barrier. Turn
off Winter and Static Orb so that they will not effect you after hitting
your opponents. Turn off Howling Mine after drawing so that you are the
only one drawing cards.
For land, I had to include Tundra and Rishadan Ports.
Both are ideal for this deck. Tundra gives you the needed mana without any
disadvantage and Ports are highly useful in this deck. However, both have
a fairly high price tag attached, and they are replaceable.
Other old cards include the old Winter Orb. I honestly
believe that Winter Orb is among the best artifacts ever printed, bar
none. It fits in combo, control, and aggro. It is the paragon of Tempo.
It's inclusion in the deck used to be vital, but I'd want to experiment
with Static Orb more. Without creatures to concern you, Static Orb may, in
fact, be better for your deck, although it allows opponents to untap two
lands a turn which is highly undesirable. With a tapper out, Winter Orb is
better, but if they get disenchanted, you'd rather be under a StOrb than a
WOrb. I added two of each so that you could experiment and see which
better fits your playing style.
Ghostly Prison is running around due in large part to
its synergy with the Orbs. In addition to that, Ghostly Prison is one of
those cards that allows some opponents to overcommit their resources to
play, so that you can axe them in one fell swoop with Wrath of God. I just
noticed that this is a very abbreviation heavy deck. WoG. StOrb. WOrb.
Icy. Port. It shouldn't take much energy to tell people what cards you are
playing. *End stream of consciousness*
You've got your typical suite of countermagic. Today, we
feature Counterspell and Forbid, but you can easily adjust those to your
cardpool and desires. Hinder might be just as good as Forbid, for example.
I only played a quartet of Wrath of God for dedicated creature removal.
Ghostly Prison slows down the inexorable creature march, while Icy
Manipulator can tap down an attacker.
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