Welcome to yet another episode of “Delusions of Mediocrity” where I present ‘mediocre’ cards and try to give you delusions of them being awesome (or at least playable in your casual group). Even the most average of cards or even bad cards have some combo potential…

Last time around I finished up my article about Imaginary Pet, which actually spanned two articles. In the forum discussion from Part 2, a few of you suggested cards like Spawnbroker and Earth Surge for this article. However, Spawnbroker was featured on Wizard’s website and Earth Surge was overly used doing Druid Week… so I digress to a different card. What card?

...

Just kidding. 

Know I actually considered doing Dandan.  I mean he has combo potential with cards like Quicksilver Fountain, Phantasmal Terrain and/or Vedalken Plotter.   He has cool art and is from Arabian Nights.  That's a lot going for him.  However, I didn't think that old fish would fill the article enough. Thus, I'll save him for another time when perhaps I'll feature several cards at once.  In the meantime, I think I have a real fun for you.  This card is more fun than a deck full of Monkey Cages and it isn't type two legal:

Given the spirit of the Mirage block on MTGO (sigh)… I figured the Aku Djinn was a good choice. It’s not terribly good. It’s not terribly bad. It’s evil looking, funny sounding and begging for some combo action. That and I really like +1/+1 counters. I mean REALLY like.

Spikes are awesome.  Power Conduit was a dream come true.  Then there's Triskelion.  If you’ve never noticed, Triskelion is my favorite creature in existence.  Something about the whole "Remove a +1/+1 counter: Deal 1 damage..." bit.  But now our focus is on the Aku...

Bless you!

[Sorry, couldn't help it.]

Aku Djinn is a 5/6 trampler for only five mana. While it’s undercosted for it’s body, its detriment could easily cost you the game if you aren’t careful. This is why he isn’t good in most decks and also why he is great for 'Delusions of Mediocrity'. Some people think that the Aku Djinn is great with a first turn two dark rituals but otherwise the card is crap. These same people also see his “At the beginning of your upkeep, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature each opponent controls” ability as making the card completely unplayable.  I however, see +1/+1 counter heaven.  I also see combo potential.

Aku Passing Gas

While digging through my archives of cards for combos with Aku, I found Reiver Demon. Reiver Demon seemed like a great choice for the Aku, but he only ‘terrors’ the board! When I say ‘terrors’ I mean he only hits nonartifact and nonblack creatures. What if your opponent was playing a mono-black or artifact creature deck? Then the Demon doesn’t work so well. Shifting Sky aside, perhaps we should think about a different card.  Thinking...

Thinking…

Ah!

Let’s think about Plague Wind.   For a mere 9 mana (7BB) you can't Destroy all creatures you don't control and they can't be regenerated either.  It's also in Ninth Edition so you should be able to pick up a few copies of it for cheap.

Who cares if your opponents are getting lots of +1/+1 counters from the Djinn… if they don’t have any creatures to accumulate the counters – you have a bonzer deal when casting Aku Djinn. Getting enough mana to cast the Plague Wind shortly after or before the Aku can be tough. That’s why I would suggest using Cabal Coffers, Dark Rituals and Thrulls (earlier thrulls like Blood Pet and Blood Vassal) in this deck. Any card that can rev up your black mana quickly is a friend to a deck sporting Plague Wind and Aku Djinn. 

In fact, I think I have a deck for you:

In this deck I utilize 11 creatures that are capable of sacrificing themselves, eight of which sacrifice for mana. This mana ultimately is used to cast a quick Plague Wind to facilitate your Aku Djinn. Also, with Cabal Coffers, you should have a fast, efficient mono-black deck centered on the Aku Djinn.

However, I couldn’t stop there. Ostracize is a nice way to keep your opponent low on a creature supply early in the game. Even better than Ostracize is Grave Pact; it fills the role of keeping your opponent creature-free while giving your deck more control. Grave Pact was a last minute addition to the deck as I considered all of the creature sacrificing you could do. Every time one of your creatures is sacrificed for an effect, you opponent has to sacrifice one too.

Finally, I threw in some Duress for noncreature control and Chainer’s Edict for additional creature control. Overall, this deck should play reasonably well against your casual friends so long as they aren’t playing Selesnya tokens. 

Retribution of the Meek

Another card (or group of cards) that combo with the Aku Djinn are cards like Retribution of the Meek. You see, when you are adding counters to your opponent’s creatures they are obviously getting bigger. Bigger creatures is good for your opponent and bad for you.  However, once they become 4/4 or more, they become a legal target to white’s ability of “Destroy target creature with power 4 or greater.” 

Other cards that make use of this white ability on a more targeted basis than Retribution of the Meek include Intrepid Hero, Reprisal, Topple and Radiant’s Judgment.  Topple can sometimes backfire and the Retribution of the Meek doesn't help our your Aku any.  The others might work well with the Aku Djinn. 

Mind you, this concept isn't anything new.  Intrepid Hero and like cards have been combo'd with cards like Thran Weaponry and Nantuko from Odyssey for a while.  Even with Wild Growth variants.  Making your opponents' creatures bigger isn't a route you should ever take... unless you have an cards like Intrepid Hero.

Another non-white card that makes use of a similar concept is Meekstone.  Meekstone doesn't kill creatures, but prevents them from untapping.  And that includes your Djinn.  Perhaps we could include Serra's Blessing with Meekstone... but that's a whole other route.  Let's stick to the intrepid-ness:

This deck focuses on the fact that Aku makes your opponents creatures bigger, which allows your Intrepid Hero’s to quash your opponent’s forces. However, you need some early game before the Djinn comes into play. Cards like Wall of Nets, Master Decoy and Whipcorder all provide early defense and combat tricks while Vindicate, Pillory of the Sleepless and Mortify make great use of the black-white control theme of this deck. I added Ghostly Prison as a backup plan incase your opponent starts to amass a huge army of critters, which you wouldn’t be able deal with without the Prison.

Notice I’ve also included one Sol Ring, a great card if you own ‘em. I own about 20 of them and once upon a time, included one in every deck I had. They are great mana acceleration in the early game or even late game. Plus, I added Purgatory for some fun. You could always replace Purgatory with more Vindicates, Wall of Nets or any other card you see fitting into the theme of the deck. Just remember to keep all four copies of the Aku Djinn because that’s the whole point of the deck – kill your opponent with a jank rare from the Mirage block. Or is it a ‘jank’ rare? Let’s move on.

Aku's Best Friend

Spike Cannibal… the ultimate +1/+1 counter creature! If there were spike rogues… this would be one. Oh. Wait. There is a Spike Rogue. Well, I didn’t mean Rogue as a creature type, I meant rogue like ‘thief vagabond’. Anyway, when this Spike comes into play, he steals … well, let me quote the card: “When Spike Cannibal comes into play, move all +1/+1 counters from all creatures onto it.” No targeting involved. Just an immediate monopoly of all +1/+1 counters on the board.

OK. So let me get this right. Your Aku Djinn is in play for a couple turns and your opponent has four creatures. You manage to keep your opponent from attacking or at least keep them from dealing damage to you while all the while your opponent’s creatures keep getting bigger thank to Aku. Then, all of sudden you cast Cannibal insect-spike rogue thing and steal of their counters… making it a 12/12 or something. In a multiplayer game, it could come into play as a 30/30 creature or better. That sounds unfair and yet, intriguingly pleasurable to put into a deck. Yes?

Of course…

Obvious includes in this deck are Dark Ritual and Propaganda for reasons mentioned earlier. Speed and early game defense are important.

Once you get your Aku-Spike combo on the board, what are you going to do about the counters your opponents’ creatures get after you played Spike Cannibal? Those counters will just keep racking up and without the appropriate measures, will lead you to an inevitable game loss.

I had considered Followed Footsteps given its turn after turn cloning effect. Whether it’s on the Spike Cannibal, the Aku Djinn or both, it will make for interesting game play. Unfortunately, the Footsteps are expensive and break up your tender mana curve (not that I really pay much attention to the ‘mana curve’ in a casual deck). [ARGH!!!! Streetz, you’re driving me crazy! No paying attention to mana curves? *tear* – Death_By_Beebles] That’s when it dawned on me. Equilibrium! What a great card. I’m so ingenious for thinking of it. I’m amazing… I never cease to surprise myself with my keen wit and supreme intelligence…

[Spreading it on a little thick here, aren’t we? – DBB]

Well, OK. I’m lying. I stole the idea from a forum thread over at CPA (Casual Players Alliance). There are actually quite a few cool ideas in this thread, but back to this deck.

Equilibrium is an excellent way to keep bouncing your Spike Cannibal back to your hand to recast every turn. Ultimately, this will keep the counters off your opponents’ creatures. Combined with Man-o’-War you have yourself a nice creature bounce machine. Equilibrium also works well with Drift of Phantasms, should you need it as a tutor but have already cast it. In fact, Drift can tutor for many cards in the deck: Man-o’-War, Spike Cannibal, Propaganda or Equilibrium.

Lastly, for counter control I added a play set of Counterspell and three Mana Leak cards. Feel free to tweak the counters, as sometimes getting that double blue can be difficult. However, I would encourage you to remember the point of this deck is to win via some form of the Aku Djinn and Spike Cannibal interaction.

Also, remember you can always enchant your Cannibal or Djinn with Flight of Fancy.  If you don't mind splashing a little red into an already two color deck, I would encourage adding Ion Storm.  What better way to make use of your +1/+1 counters than the Storm?

Singin’ in the Reign

Ever heard of a blue card that can wipe out all of your opponent’s creatures (assuming you are playing one on one)? No?

Well… neither have I. However, I do know a two-card combo that can do the same thing.

A one-sided Wrath of God in blue?

How does it work? Simple. With Claws of Gix in play and plenty of mana sources, cast Reins of Power. You and your opponent switch control of your creatures for the remainder of the turn. If you can do it without killing your own creatures (currently on your opponent’s side of the table), attack. Then pay 1 for each creature via the Claws of Gix and sacrifice them for one life each. Depending on how many creatures your opponent had, this can get costly. Should you pull this combo off completely, you have just played Plague Wind with a blue and artifact card. That’s nifty.

What does this have anything to do with Aku? Tons. Remember the first deck I presented with Plague Wind? This deck will have the same concept: get rid of all of your opponent’s creatures.

In exchange for early game speed I opted for Thran Dynamo. The Dynamo should give you the mana you need when you’re ready to cast Reins of Power as well giving you consistent extra mana for the rest of the game. Curiosity combos well with both your Dimir House Guard and your Thalakos Seer (a little combo I took from my original version of Power Struggles). And of course you have Propaganda for early game protection.

Dimir House Guard can transmute for your Reins of Power or Thran Dynamo. Time Warp is in there just for fun. Threads of Disloyalty is a nice little trick in the late game should your Reins of Power not surface fast enough. Just steal one of your opponent’s critters with all of the +1/+1 counters so long as their converted mana cost is 2 or less.

While working on this article I had EM (EinsteinMonkey) review it for me and he pointed out something that was oblivious to me previously. Why not replace Claws of Gix with Spawning Pit?  That way you don’t have to have all of the extra mana flow to make the combo work. Thanks EM!

I guess this calls for a revised deck list:

I made this deck a bit more ‘Dimir’. With Drift of Phantasms, Dimir Infiltrator and Demonic Tutor you have 6 possible tutors in the deck. To cheapen the deck up a bit and make room for Twisted Justice (which is wicked with Aku Djinn) I added the Familiars from the Invasion block that affect either your black spells or your blue spells depending on which one you have in play.

Kind of cool is the fact that the Infiltrator could technically transmute for your familiars. Go, Go Aku Djinn and his bad familiars!

Aku Snares

This last deck isn’t by me, but instead by Paul Schaefer of Team Stubes. He takes a slightly different approach to using Aku Djinn -- Ensnaring Bridge.  He also mixes in red, blue and black to make for an interesting deck.  Here’s the deck list:

Ensnaring bridge makes quite an interesting combo with the Aku. Instead of taking the approach of ridding your opponents creatures or tapping them out, why not just prevent them from attacking. Ensnaring Bridge does this well. As your opponents’ creatures get bigger each round, they become more distant from attacking thanks to the Bridge. Eventually, after enough +1/+1 counters, you won’t have to worry about the number of cards in your hand.

Delirium and Backlash combo nicely with the Djinn. If your opponent’s creatures can’t attack, loaded with +1/+1 counters, why not make use of them using the aforementioned cards to deal damage to your opponent. That’s amazingly devious, almost ingenious.

Then there are cards like Sleeper Agent, Lim-Dul’s Paladin and Festering Wound. All three of these cards are interesting card choices, but I personally wouldn’t have included them in a deck had I designed it for Aku Djinn. Perhaps that’s what makes Magic fun -- all of the different card interactions and different, individual approaches to them.

Why didn’t I think of Ensnaring Bridge? This deck looks quite fun, even though I didn’t design it. *evil grin*

Well, that’s about all. I had planned a few more decks but I think I lost your attention span about two decks ago.

I was hoping to do a ‘Triskelion – Aku Djinn – Legerdemain – Mycosynth Lattice – Dismantle’ deck last but I think you can see where that deck would have gone (a big mess). Or I was going to do an ‘Aku Djinn – Spawnbroker - Fling – Brand’ deck. Or ever better an ‘Aku Djinn – Insurrection’ deck. Æther Snap would have also been an interesting choice, but I digress.

Aku Djinn is one of those cards that the average player shies away from. It’s an average card. After reading this article I would hope you have realized there is potential in the card. You should see every card as an opportunity to make a new deck, even if the card is terrible. Even ‘One with Nothing’ has decks using it. Mudhole? Well.... that's another story.

If you got through this article, all the way to this point and are still looking at the monitor with a raised eyebrow, perhaps you’ll be amused to know I learned, despite my stubbornness, that Spawning Pit is better than Claws of Gix. Thanks EM for that one. Had you already known this, you are fully welcome to yell out loud: “Stupid, stupid Streetz!!!” (inside joke).

And with that, I’m done with this article. I welcome you to suggest cards for the next Delusions of Mediocrity.  Thanks for reading this and for visiting MDV. Also, thanks to Death_By_Beebles and EinsteinMonkey for their time reviewing and editing this article for me.

~Streetz~

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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