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Mystery Vortex… Combo-licious Vortex! When I originally saw the list, provided by Streetz, for the possible 'Vortex' cards, I noticed that there was a couple that I didn’t know what they did. I had never heard of them, so I went in search of these cards, in order to know what they did exactly. I came across one and just rolled my eyes. GREAT! I thought to myself. This one is an Unhinged card. I always looked at Unglued, Portal, etc., cards as JV league cards. They are sub-par, beginners cards that aren’t even legal in tournament play, except in Vintage. Typically, the cards would be re-hash cards for kids, or a joke card made to poke fun at another pre-existing card; true to the form of Scary Movie. In both cases, I don’t really want to pay my money for someone else to make fun of something, when I could do the same for a cheaper rate… namely free. However, when I swallowed my pride and took at look at what this card did, I took in a breath. This is actually a good card! Why, oh why, did they put this card in this crummy lot of cards instead of a actual, playable set? The reason, I believe, is because this card bends too many actual play rules.
The card I speak of is Yet Another Aether Vortex. Just like the Scary Movie type themes, this card is labeled, ‘Yet Another,’ but if you look at the card, you’ll see it appears to read like Future Sight, but cuts short of being the strong card Future Sight is.
This means that if you reveal a land, you can tap it for mana. A creature on top of your library can attack. An artifact revealed can be activated. It seems like a balanced card until you start to look at the fact that you can really manipulate your deck to do some unbalanced things with this card.
So what did I decided to go with then? I decided to take a run at a Reanimator style deck using Yet Another Aether Vortex to get a big, fat, nasty brute in play and then use Astral Slide to slip him out of play, then back into play.. permanently. Lets take a look. First we need our base cards. I did a little research earlier to get a typical Slide cycling card set, and have added them, and customized their quantity to save space and time. Also, you will see the other needed cards: Yet Another Aether Vortex and Astral Slide.
Next I would like to mix in a few cards from Green, because its fun to be unpredictable. The Green addition allows us to keep cycling by including Eternal Witness, fetching our lands from the deck with Wood Elf, and a couple of other good cards that we will get to in a moment.
Next, we get to include the Biggest Creatures we possibly can ask for! These creatures should be able to brutalize our opponent the moment they hit the board, or in our case, the moment they are sitting on top of our library. I have selected five big creatures, which I have listed below, and will give a brief explanation of each. (In alphabetical order.)
Dragon Tyrant - I dare you to find a creature that says brutal more than this guy. Giving him haste makes him even more unfair. With him sitting on top of our library and having haste, just pump your red into him and watch the party begin. Most likely, there will be no need to pay his upkeep. Nicol Bolas - 7/7 Flying, Haste, Drop your hand if I hit you. Nicol is the epitome of what an Elder Dragon Legend should be (Note: Nicol has blue in his casting cost, this might lead to the fact that he doesn’t suck like the other Elders do.) Phantom Nishoba - Game Breaker. Even if you hard cast the Nishoba, he is an amazing force for your opponent to deal with. While the creature has trample and spirit link, the phantom counters and haste set this guy apart as a dominant creature that your opponent does not want to be staring at. Don’t forget to slide him out and refresh your phantom counters. Visara the Dreadful - An active Visara dominates the board. Giving her haste means that there is no waiting a turn for her to take over. With Astral Slide, you kill a creature, slide her out, then end your turn; she will come back into play untapped and still angry. Just in case you were wondering, I am leaving on here my list of creatures that did not make my cut. Just for the fun of wondering why I eliminated them, and possibly for later discussion.
Finally, we need to round out our deck with cards that make the deck go, or catalysts, and land. A card that I think will be great, after the Slide and Vortex are in operation is Congregation at Dawn.
The card forces the issue of what the Vortex can do for us. What does your opponent not want to see happen? You to reveal a card: "Great! There is Visara!" You kill a creature, cycle a card (added to stack), activating Astral Slide (added to stack) targeting Visara. Resolving the stack then removes Visara from the top of your library, revealing… Eternal Witness. Your draw activates, adding Eternal Witness to your hand, and revealing… Dragon Tyrant. Attack you for 12. Finish my turn, which returns Visara into play, and untapped for the next threat. This can be the direct result of stacking your deck with Congregation at Dawn.
He can be sitting on top of your library, and bring something gross from your graveyard to join him up there. The card says only that we must do this on our turn before the combat step. I propose that we turn him sideways, bring the Dragon Tyrant from our Graveyard to the top of our library, where he can merrily kill a creature during the combat step. We then refuse to pay his upkeep, sending him back to the grave. This will reveal Hua Tuo again, untapped, so we bring back a creature (remembering we have a draw step coming) such as Eternal Witness, which we then draw, revealing Hua Tuo again - untapped, and then turning Hua Tuo sideways again to bring Dragon Tyrant back from the graveyard to join him on top of the library again. The best thing about this is that it didn’t cost us one point of mana. All we have to do is somehow keep a creature dead in the graveyard for us to keep recalling, beyond the Tyrant, to cover the draw step. So our deck is looking like this right now…
I never was good figuring out the land and mana count for decks. That was Patrick’s job. I just killed people. However, my thinking with this deck is that we have a lot of flexibility due to the fetching ability of the Eternal Dragon getting Plains… and Sacred Foundries, and Temple Garden, as well as Wood Elf fetching Forests… and Stomping Grounds and Temple Gardens, and that is not to forget the Windswept Heath being able to fetch all of the above. For those of you that want to see the deck in the pretty deck box, see below:
As you can see from the above deck list, the theory is sound, but…. maybe not so much is the land count. Thankfully, I won’t be playing the deck, get mana screwed, and fling the deck across the room. Which coincidentally, springs to mind two stories, but those can wait for another article, on another day. In the mean time, fling your Dragons and Nishobas and call it a day. Happy Sliding! You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Articles
Spotlights from 2006 | |||||||||||||||
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I
had a few different ideas for this card, but I decided to limit myself to just
one combo. A sample combo that I decided against writing about, simply because
it was taking me too long to finish drooling over, was Wormfang Manta and Yet
Another Aether Vortex. The ruling coming from the Wizards smart men, is that the
card revealed on top of your deck does not activate the ‘comes into play’
effect, but when it leaves your library, it does activate the ‘leaves play’
effect. Meaning, if I could theoretically draw a Wormfang Manta from my deck
every turn, I would have infinite turns. 
Akroma,
Angel of Wrath - Do I really need to explain this one? She is
arguably one of the best creatures ever printed, especially when FREE!
Another
thing that is not quite nice, is to play a card from Portal: Three Kingdoms (why
not, we are already playing an Unhinged Card) called Hua Tuo, Honored Physician. 
Yet
Another Æther Vortex Deck.