For those who normally read Forgotten Power(FP), you might see this as a quick coup, but I’m just baby-sitting until 'ConManXVII' returns to take over again.  Until then, enjoy my flavor of deck-building and style. By the way, I’m Mike. 

For those who haven't read Forgotten Power or Mark Rosewater's articles before, then you haven't heard of Johnny, Timmy, and Spike, the three personalities of most Magic players. I could have substituted any two names, but I did not feel up to doing so.

Like Timmy, in other FP articles, Johnny enters a Vintage contest; he's feeling good and has an average Blue-Green-Black Ravnica deck. In the first round he loses so badly he didn’t know what was going on. Timmy walks over and says, "Hey kid, you must be new, I'm Timmy. If you’re gonna play Vintage, look at buying some older cards." Johnny nods and says, "Uh, yeah, what's Vintage I thought this was a T1 tourny." Timmy rolls his eyes and says, "Vintage is the other name of T1, so yeah, it's a T1 tourny."

They got to talking about the older cards and how to combo them. Timmy and Johnny went to www.magicdeckvortex.com and found the Visual Spoilers on the site. The Combo Archive helped also to bring the combos to life. He then went through the cards in the spoilers one by one and found...

Today’s Card – Limited Resources

Oh yeah, ancient, like back in the Exodus days, this coming from the person who played it when it was new. The idea of the card is to limit the number of lands in the game, from those devastating mass-mana players, playing 2 or 3 cards of 6 'converted mana cost'(CMC) each.

Advantages of Limited Resources

• It limits the number of lands in play
• It's cheap to play
• It's really cheap in the pocket book - $0.79 USD using www.mtgfanatic.com

Disadvantages of Limited Resources

• It's an Enchantment, people use disenchants/naturalizes
• You might have to lose some lands in order to play it

How do you unbalance this card?

Every balanced card in Magic has a way to unbalance it and Limited Resources is no exception to this concept.  Below you will find some general and specific examples of how to 'unbalance' the reciprocal effects of today's card:

Stealing their Lands

Take a land from a player.  While red doesn't have a lot of options in this category, blue has a few.  Annex is the obvious choice but there are also cards like Confiscate and Steal Artifact. Steal Artifact only works when your opponent is playing with artifact lands...
(White // Blue and/or Red)

Land Fetchers

Take a land from the deck and place it into play (it’s not using up that one land per turn, and isn’t consider playing it).  There are MANY cards that facilitate this both in green and white.
(White // Green)

Land Destruction

Kill their lands so they can’t hurt you with spells.  While red is the kind of land destruction, green and black also have some spiffy land destruction spells (like Rain of Tears for black and Creeping Mold for Green). 
(White // Red and/or Green and/or Black)

Each pose an interesting experience in deck building. I will play with each working of the three styles (also, maybe one of the unique combinations).

Limited Resources + Annex

Oh, Annex is FUN! I can take their lands and limit them from playing big creatures with Limited Resources! Now… that means they can still have a land in play when I use all four of my Annexes (at $0.36 USD per card), and the fact that I know I won’t draw all in the same game, so I need a plan B to mess with them if I just get one of the four Annexes.

Copy Enchantment is another fun card to have four copies of them in any enchantment powered deck. Copy Enchantment defines dollar bin rare, I have several copies over the need, but I'm glad to have them because of the playability. You can pick these up for $1.00 USD each.

Replenish is another card to play with to get back those disenchanted enchantments. This will make me very happy if I can use them; I might go and pick up two copies for my Enchantment deck, this card, however is a tad out of the Budget range at almost $4.00 USD for a non-foil copy. (Budget range to me is $2.00 a card, or the cost of a booster pack in your area)

Now that we have the basics of the deck theory, lets see if I can’t add some "Umph-a" to it. Amnesia is an interesting card, it will keep them from having game winning combos, but will easily give them Threshold (a mechanic from the Odyssey block that triggers when you have seven or more cards in your graveyard), but at $1.31 USD per card it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

In theory, this deck has a possibility of being a fantastic deck with powerful cards which will complement the power of Annex and Limited Resources, all the while working to steal all the enemy’s mana sources, *Cue evil villainous laugh* This deck is to take away their resources and their life through direct combat. I added the Incarnations for “Flavor” - and its nice when all your creatures have Flying, First Strike, and can be protected with Glory’s Graveyard Magic. I think it’s all good fun, pretty good big-creatures-attacking-for-the-win type of deck.

In my small circle of Magic playing friends we call this type of deck a fatty slap deck. Sadly, this isn’t a cheap deck at around the $40.00 USD mark.

Limited Resources + Land Fetchers

Almost any land fetching card will do, as long as it puts the card into play. This will allow you to have more than five lands under your control, also Green is really good at mana acceleration with Land Auras and of course Heartbeat of Spring.

With all the available options, I will be using lots of higher costing creatures that will be backed up with smaller creatures and mana acceleration to back up the high power level, so the initial look of the deck will be very weird… So just let me get to the good part, the deck…

This deck should use the power of Vanquish and Wing Shards to cripple the force that would stand against you, while Journey of Discovery and Limited Resources will fetch those extra lands and Skyshroud Ranger will put them into play without messing with Limited Resources. Argothian Elder and Fertile Ground will produce all the colored mana you need in the deck. With a little more help this deck can be very mean. Here are some thoughts.

Instead of …

Stand Together -> Decree of Savagery
2 Muscle Bursts -> 2 Glorious Anthems
2 Muscle Bursts -> 2 Noble Purpose
2 Diligent Farmhand -> 2 Sac The Elder (Sakura-Tribe Elder)

Just a thought to work with… The grand total of this deck is $38.21 USD but almost $20.00 come out with Verdant Forces and Eternal Dragons. I'll say it now, if you own fatties [big creatures] use them instead of the Verdant Forces and Eternal Dragons and only spend about $20 for your deck, it'll give you more cash to make those changes I've mentioned.

Limited Resources + Land Destruction

Land Destruction, let’s see what card comes to mind when I say Land Destruction? Stone Rain happens to just be a red LD staple, I don’t think I’ve played against a LD deck without at least one copy.

The theory is to destroy all the opposition's lands while making all your land drops until there are ten lands on your side of the field. This deck will prove to be both unfun, and unfair - I'm just making it to provide an example of a deck that shouldn't for any reason be played. For that matter, I should say the same with Quick Control that was mentioned moments ago.

People don't like when you catch them off guard by constantly taking their lands so they can't play anything. For some reason Discard, Control, and Land Destruction decks are some of the most hated decks. [Let's not forget about Mind Slaver... ~Streetz~]

The power of land destruction and winning the game comes in the form of a Judgment uncommon, Dwarven Driller, and I like it. He’s fun and exciting and you never know what will really happen; will the Driller get the land or is the land’s controller losing two life?

Now that we have the initial flavor with Limited Resources I need to scout some very neat cards…  Mine Layer, Dwarven Driller, Orcish Settlers, Seismic Mage are really neat LD styled creatures.

Now that will do for the Red side, what about the White? Short of mass destruction i.e. Armageddon, there’s not much that White does for LD, but White does the moral thing well so defensive creatures are in.

(Insert bad Batman/Magic reference here, something about Richard Garfield and the Magic Cave)

In theory, this deck is evil, cheap, and even more evil, and with even more tweaking this deck may become nearly-unstoppable, but that’s the arrogance talking. Just look at these cards then you’ll get it: Panoptic Mirror + Stone Rain/Lightning Bolt/Barbed Lightning/Roar of the Kha/Burst of Energy. Panoptic Mirror makes a copy of the imprinted spell on it every time you choose so, on your upkeep, which either gives you a pseudo-Glorious Anthem, another way to destroy a land, or a clock on the opponent’s life total.

If you play this deck casually expect people not to like you anymore and gang up on you in multiplayer, and I’ll tell you now, you won’t win. If you wish to built this deck as written expect to spend give or take $28.00 USD if you find the cheapest of each of the "power" cards like Lightning bolt and Archangel.

So to recap, Johnny looks on at the three decks he as an idea for and decides to make the “In the Conquest…” because it’s cheap and effective. Consequently, in the next Vintage tourny, he was defeated by one Mox Jet, a swamp, a dark ritual, Black Lotus, Hatred and a Crazed Skirge and was slapped for 21 damage in the first turn.

“Wait, isn’t Johnny supposed to do good this time around?” says random reader.

“Nope, you don't become good overnight unless you have an unnatural talent, Practice, Test, and learn; the only route to becoming the best is the experience of each loss, and each win.”

Michael_Zeora

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

Articles Spotlights from 2006
The Games People Play - Tactical Magic.
If I worked at R&D
The Beginner’s Guide to Rogue
Druid Week Primer
Opting In: Ravnica
MDV Idol: Finale!
Avatar Week Primer
Delusions of Mediocrity: Getting Stuffy in Here.
Raiding Ravnica: Guildmages and You!
Lands-More than Mana: Part One