"Excellent. I know your heart now. You are mine. –Yawgmoth"

Welcome to the Dungeon, and watch your step. The dead littering the floors don’t like to be disturbed, take my word on that. Make yourself comfy, or as comfy as you can, I’d like to share something with you—a little insight to the pleasure of pain. But before I begin, I’d like to advise you to open your mind a little. There is more than one meaning to much of this. Close your eyes, and let the darkness be your guide, with its infinite possibilities.

“From void evolved Phyrexia. Great Yawgmoth, Father of Machines, saw its perfection. Thus the Grand Evolution began.” –Phyrexian Scriptures

Magic is a game of death, pure and simple. [I prefer to think of it as just a game... ~Streetz~] Either you die, or your opponents die. You are the maker of their demise, you can do so in any way you wish. Why make it easy for them? That’s no fun. So I’ll give you some flavorful tips to enhancing the… fun… of your games. For you, anyway. Though to do this, it helps to know a bit about your enemy first. We’ll get to that. First…

"The first stage of the illness: rash and nausea."
-Phyrexian progress notes

…Meet the most famous and dreadful villain in all of Magic: Yawgmoth. So feared was he, every land knew of him in one name or another. The Lord of the Wastes, The Ineffable, Father of Machines, the list goes on. They are all synonymous with The Dark Lord. For more background, click Here. It is long, but then, Yawgmoth has lived for over 10,000 years. And one doesn’t go 10,000 years as a god without building quite a story out of themselves… and having to teach a few people the hard way along the way.

Enter the 7th Sphere of Phyrexia—the Punishment Sphere:

Quoted from the novel Planeshift, by J. Robert King

Urza rematerialized in another place, a deeper place. Just over his ashen hair rolled enormous grinders studded in diamond teeth. They gnashed against each other. Were Urza to reach up, his hand would be caught and his whole body ripped away. The ceiling extended in every direction, supported by nothing and tumbling ravenously by. Spatial distortions sometimes lifted the grinders away from the ground and other times brought them into direct contact.

Urza looked at the ground. It was covered with bodies. This was no random carnage, but a calculated thing. Creatures were laid out on their backs. Their legs and arms were bolted to pipes. Their feet and kneecaps had been ground away. Their bellies had been ripped open by the diamond points. Their faces were gone. It was a horrid death to have suffered but fitting for those who had failed the lord of Phyrexia.

As Urza watched, the ceiling nearby warped and descended. Grinders spun, coming into contact with a whole field of bodies. Where they rolled, blood and oil and bits of meat came away. That was not the most ghastly sight though. Worst of all was the jiggling of the bodies, the agonized shuddering that told that these forms were still alive.

Urza stepped among arms and legs, passing over the flayed figures. They breathed even though their noses were only holes in their faces. They lived even though their hearts were laid bare. The air shivered with agony.

None of this poisoned Urza’s heart. Those who pleased Yawgmoth received his bounteous mercies. Those who displeased him received his bounteous wrath. It was the right of gods.

The first tip here: In Magic, you are a god in your own right. If your opponents displease you, punish them mercilessly. This is especially helpful in multiplayer games. Get people on your side, and if they don’t see your ultimate wisdom, make them learn the hard way.

But of course, you can’t easily do that without quite a bit of power; and it just happens that Yawgmoth is the single most powerful being in existence. Learn from Him, my children. It’s no coincidence that Yawgmoth’s Will and Yawgmoth’s Bargain were restricted in Vintage.

“The second stage of the illness: high fever and severe infectiousness.”
–Phyrexian progress notes

Perhaps Yawgmoth’s greatest accomplishment is that of Phyresis, or progressive evolution, in which one is completed into the absolute killing machine. A Phyrexian. A creature composed of every killing thing and every killing inclination. Perfect.

Except there is no true perfection. There is always room for growth, always another chance to best your enemies.

Through the loss or defeat of others, you learn, you grow stronger, you ascend. You evolve through Phyresis. Learn from your mistakes and your victories, and you will become great.

But why should you limit yourself to only your mistakes and your victories? Learn from others as well. This way, you don’t make the same mistakes they do, and you evolve yourself through learning how they succeed.

You can learn much quicker this way, as there are a lot of people to use as examples. Also, it helps to think before taking action, and the more the better. Invasion is no petty matter. Instead, look to Yawgmoth as an example:

”No mere mortal can oppose me. Before they act, I know what they have done. Before the battle, I know I have triumphed.

“This is not a game of chance. I know every rule, every exception. I know how you think you will win, and I know how you will lose. I know the inexorable mathematics of our duel, and I see your death.” –Yawgmoth

So why leave it to luck? Know the variables, know their hearts, and know what’s going to happen. This even works in the game of Magic. How, you ask?

“The third stage of the illness: muscle aches and persistent cough.”
–Phyrexian progress notes

Knowing what’s going on in play, in everyone’s hands, their libraries and what they may be thinking to plan helps plenty. By seeing how they play, how they react to your actions, what they’ve already played, what risks they take or don’t take, you can plan out the rest of the game. For example, you may be up against a careful player that doesn’t like to get hurt. They stop every move of yours no matter how small, whether it be by counterspells or Wraths of God. Well, if they’re wasting all their time doing that, they’re not getting anywhere winning-wise.

For this, you may want to take the game slow. Play only one threat at a time, so they can’t stop all of them at once. They have to spend more time taking care of them, and eventually will run out of cards and won’t be able to. Then, slowly, you will succeed. There is the chance they have enough force to still take you down, though, and for that you’ll need to get rid of their cards. Make them discard, prevent draws, or stack their library so they don’t find their answers. It’s usually helpful to have some kind of control in your deck. If you can only play one certain way, the opponent can beat you the same way every time.

But you can even plan out the battle before you get to the game. That, my children, is where the Metagame comes in. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s what types of decks the people you play with are using. You learn their decks, how they work, how they think they will win, and how they lose. This is often applied to constructed tournaments as well. Learn from your enemies to progress yourself.

Sideboarding is very useful for this, but why leave it to that? If you can only beat decks by changing yours first, you’re not in very good shape. You may have a deck that works well on its own, but you still need to have answers to what you know you’ll face. It doesn’t have to be much, and you can still have extra in your sideboard, but it helps a lot to have a chance in your main deck. It’s the same idea as playing a little control. Answers are most always helpful, so why not put them in your main deck?

I have a sample deck that shows this concept very well, but I must say a few things about it before I post it. It was created (not by myself, mind you) when Standard consisted of the Urza’s Saga block and the Mercadian Masques block, where the reigning decks included Tinker, Yawgmoth’s Bargain, and weenies (especially rebels). This is before a lot of cards were banned or restricted, but it still shows my point. Also, Jon Finkel (one of the best Magic players ever, for those who don’t know of him; he even got his own card: Shadowmage Infiltrator) used a version of this in a tournament—quite successfully. So without further adieu:

“The final stage of the illness: delirium, convulsions, and death.”
–Phyrexian progress notes

As you can see, there are many, many cards of which there are only 1. There is reason for this madness, though. This deck is designed to defeat all the other decks of its time. Not the one or two most popular decks, all of them. It has an answer to virtually everything, which it can find with tutors and reuse as many times as needed with Yawgmoth’s Will.

Then, once seeing what deck the opponent is playing, can evolve to even better destroy that specific deck with the sideboard. Ironic then, how the deck is pure black, and many of the cards are related to Yawgmoth.

As the creator of the deck, Jeremy Smith of Inquest Magazine explains, Black Death was created to battle the top tournament decks of its time. And not only was it built to beat the best decks of its time; it has eight discard spells to cripple your opponent before they even begin the game, no matter what they’re playing. And like that isn’t enough, it has Vicious Hunger to deal with what they do get into play before you can strip it from their hand, and gain you life to compensate for Vampiric Tutor and Phyrexian Processor (if you need it) at the same time. Oh, and it’s still not done! Even the lands can shut down your opponent – tapping down their resources or flat out destroying them. Combine these elements, and you’ll be controlling the board pretty quickly, and quite surely.

Once that’s taken care of, your powerful creatures can go in for the kill. They are extremely efficient at what they do – killing your opponent. Especially Phyrexian Negator (hah!). A 3 mana 5/5 trampler? That’ll ruin anyone’s day. Add to that a 3 mana 4/3 (with less of a drawback), a 2 mana 3 power flier, and a couple board-mutilating bombs, and things start looking plain ridiculous, since the opponent has next to no answers (you gutted their hand with all that discard). Even if the opponent top decks something like Wrath of God, you still have Yawgmoth’s Will, and all must obey His Will. With the Dark Rituals that you can play both from your hand and grave, it should be pretty easy to get your army back up and running, and in addition, further handicapping your opponent with leftover discard and removal spells.

Great as this deck is, though, nothing is ever perfect. The “silver bullets” can’t save you every time; you have to know how to play against certain decks. Burn cards roasting your creatures and your life? Get rid of them with discard. Counterspells keeping you down? Kill ‘em before they can react with first turn Negators and the like. Yawgmoth’s Bargain decks could also be tough for this, since it also takes advantage of a broken card (hey, another Yawgmoth card, whaddya know). But if you can take their life away fast, they won’t be able to pay it for cards. And when they do, take the cards away.

Other times still, the main deck won’t be enough, since it still has many 1-ofs and against some decks, useless cards. That’s where the sideboard comes in. Some of the cards are pretty self-explanatory. Perish for green creatures, Rebel Informer for Rebels, Rapid Decay for anything that wants to use its graveyard, Kill Switch for artifacts (like in Tinker decks), and there’s some extra kill for weenies in Powder Keg, among others. Protection from Black can ruin this deck – though Chimeric Idols help a little – so Thran Lens gives another answer there. There are some duplicates of cards in the main deck here as well. As the main is, it’s pretty balanced; a little bit of everything so it doesn’t have to rely wholly on its sideboard. But once you know what you’re up against, you can tune your deck to ensure your opponent’s death. (See kiddos, proof that knowledge is power. Yawgmoth knows what he’s doing .)

“We decide who is worthy of our works.”
–Gix, Yawgmoth praetor

And so ends the lesson for this installment. Hopefully I have opened your eyes at least a little to the all-knowing darkness. If so, you just might be worthy….

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