Dipping back into Mercadian Masques cards, I found Statecraft. After seeing it again after a long time, I went “huh?” Mind you, this is the same reaction I had the first time I saw it only this time I have some deckbuilding ideas. Of course, I’ll show you a few other decks from around the net and then build my own. Remember the card? Even if you don’t… keep reading!

One of the reasons I went “Huh?” the second time reading the card is because it’s rules text seems EXTREMELY white to me. Preventing damage? I always thought that was a white only ability, protection from whatever aside. However, after doing a little thinking and a little digging, I can understand why this is blue. However, this doesn’t mean Statecraft the card flavorfully makes any sense at all.

Blue is the color of trickery, illusion and shapechangery. Preventing all damage to and from a creature is in a sense, mist-ifying the creature. Kind of like the old Legends card Gaseous Form. In fact, Gaseous Form is the oldest card in blue to have the ability. And thus, I believe Gaseous Form to be the father of all other cards with a similar ability after it.

Gassy Cards.

In most scenarios, I think it’s important to know other cards that share a mechanic with cards I discuss. Especially cards as strange as Statecraft. In looking at these other cards, perhaps bells will ring and give me another avenue for deckbuilding. As mentioned, I did a little digging and let me say I was thoroughly surprised to find so many cards with the “gassy” mechanic.

In Ice Age, there’s a really bad card called Winter’s Chill that has this ‘gaseous form’ effect for multiple creatures. Fog Bank from Urza’s Saga was a flying wall with a “gaseous form”. Cephalid Illusionist from Torment had the ability to tap to give a creature a “gaseous form”. And those are just the mono-blue cards.

Ebony Horse, which technically is the father of the ability, was an artifact from Arabian Nights that granted “gaseous form” to any creature for two mana. Of course, you had to remove it from combat and the creature had to be attacking. Who’s your daddy, Statecraft?!? I guess I’ll stick with Gaseous Form as the daddy.

One card that has a different flavor including the ‘gaseous form’ ability is Maze of Ith. Cards along the same specific mechanic as Maze of Ith include Elvish Scout and Foxfire in green, Reconnaissance in white, Ith, High Arcanis (of course) and Maze of Shadows.

White has seen the gassy mechanic in the form of Sandskin, Deftblade Elite and Heart of Light. While it makes more sense mechanically in white, it makes a lot more sense flavorfully in blue. Also, given that we’re seeing this ability in white lately means that the “Gaseous Form” ability is in the white slice of the color pie now.

So this mechanic is now in white, but originated in blue. What happens when you cross the two colors with the mechanic? You get Energy Arc from Alliances. Energy Arc was a power-packed spell as it could target any number of creatures, untap them and give them "Gaseous Form" until end of turn. All at instant speed. And only for two mana!

Throwing the color pie out the window, Soratami Cloud Chariot, an artifact from Saviors of Kamigawa, was like Gaseous Form on a stick minus the tap symbol. Unfortunately, that card was just a bad card. And then even red and black get a bit of the ability in a card called Delirium.

Pingers’ Paradise.

One way of taking advantage of Statecraft’s gaseous-form-giving is abandoning the thought of ever attacking. With your creatures preventing combat damage coming in, you should theoretically never have to worry about taking damage. And, of course, with your creatures not dealing any damage either, attacking won’t do you any good without effects upon being blocked (think Saprazzan Heir or Stinkweed Imp) or even unblocked abilities*.

With this in mind, you are still going to need another route to winning. Loss of life effects, milling, and alternate win cards are all options here. But none of these really seem exciting to me. I think Statecraft was destined for another win condition called pingers… lots of ‘em.

Since a creature like Prodigal Sorcerer or any of his ilk taps to deals damage, it isn’t considered combat damage. Statecraft only prevents combat damage. It doesn’t prevent burn effects, archery effects, and creature pinging. Here’s a deck I found in the MTGNews forums using pingers with Statecraft:

Now I see a few problems with this deck, one of which is that it has too much going on.

There are some cool combos and card interactions, like the inclusion of Caltrops and the Curiosity – Mind Over Matter combo. Even Gratuitous Violence seems like a spiffy addition. However, with all of these things going on, and the lack of focus as seen in the high quantities of 2-ofs, I see this deck as being difficult to master in a 1 on 1 casual game.

If I were to rebuild the deck, I would take out the Curiosity – Mind Over Matter combo altogether. While it’s nice in a deck of pingers, I want to focus more on the Statecraft side of things. I also want to find some more interesting pingers like Gelectrode, Kamahl and Fledgling Mawcor.

Then I’m going to up the Statecraft count (this is a Statecraft article after all), throw in some Brainstorms and Concentrates, and add a buyback-able burn spell to combo with Gelectrode. After some additional tweaking and a new mana base, the deck is complete:

Sorry but I had to include just one copy of Curiosity. It’s just too beautiful with Timmy’s.

Now this deck isn’t a World Class Hero of casual decks by any means. Discard decks and board sweepers kill the deck. However, against aggro, beatdown and any other deck based around creatures – this deck is a winner. Unless, of course, they involve a lot of trampling creatures. In which case, I would suggest fitting in a play set of Walking Sponge.

You can completely rearrange this deck to your personal liking. There are over eighty different creature cards in Magic: the Gathering with some form of ping. Whether it one shot pings like Mogg Fanatic, or the crazy recurring combo card like pings found in Niv-Mizzet, you could choose any configuration of creatures. You could even go mono-blue – like the following deck I found online:

This deck uses a little more control and a few less pingers. I think it would play out just as well or maybe a little better than I deck I made above. However, this shows you there’s more than one way to build a deck around one card. It has the same goal, just setup differently.

Remember Energy Arc?

Remember Energy Arc from earlier? Well, have I got a deck in store for you. Looks like all of that digging from earlier paid off. The deck utilizes the same concept of pinging and Statecraft. While Statecraft is holding your opponent’s down, you work to assemble your combo pieces. That is, infinite combo pieces – all involving Energy Arc.

Energy Arc can untap any number of creatures for the small price of WU. They won’t be able to deal or receive combat until end of turn, but who cares – your Statecraft is doing that for you anyway. With an Aphetto Alchemist, Vedalken Engineer and at least one pinger, Energy Arc will go infinite. But only while Energy Arc is Imprinted on a scepter. Let’s walk through the steps:

• Have Isochron in play imprinted with Energy Arc, have one pinger in play, one Engineer and one Alchemist. Sounds like a science conference, doesn’t it?
• Tap the pinger to deal one damage to your opponent.
• Tap the Engineer to add UU to your mana pool. Note you can only use this mana on artifacts and artifact abilities.
• Use that mana to activate the Scepter and target the Pinger, Engineer and Alchemist. (At this point the Alchemist isn’t tapped, but untap it anyway. You will need to untap it during all future repetitions of this procedure).
• Tap the Alchemist to untap the Scepter.
• Tap the Pinger to deal one damage to your opponent.
• Tap the Engineer…

Just keep repeating the process and you get infinite damage. With a Curiosity on the pinger, you also draw infinite cards. With Sigil of Sleep on the pinger, you can return infinite creatures to their owners’ hands.

That’s the entire deck right there. Every other card in the deck is either a pinger, or a protector (Privileged Position). I played around with a better earlier start but this decklist seemed the best. It may be a little slow in the beginning, but once you have a Pinger online with either Sigil of Sleep or Curiosity, the deck should fly from there.

Feel free to try different cards in the deck. You might even be able to splash some red for some better pingers. Whatever you do, make this deck your own, should you like it.

That wraps up today’s One Card to Rule them All! I hope you enjoyed my walk through the land of Statecraft, my attention to details of the mechanic and the various decks and information I’ve presented.

There is one avenue I didn’t go into and that is creatures with effects upon being blocked or upon blocking. You can force your opponent’s creatures to attack using cards like Fumiko, Nettling Imp or Norritt. Blocking with creatures like Infernal Medusa, Deathgazer, Cockatrice, and so on will kill opponent’s creatures. They have this cute little phrase “blocks or becomes blocked” which means combat damage doesn’t matter. After you’ve killed them all you could bounce Statecraft back to your hand and go out for a full-scale attack.

Here’s a list of creature cards in the Gatherer that have the phrase “becomes blocked” to help you find more cards along this line of thought. Typically any of these cards will have some additional effect upon being blocked.

For cards on the above list that only get an effect upon being blocked, like Saprazzan Heir, you can combine them with the channel effect of Shinen of Life's Roar to force your opponent to block them. In Saprazzan Heir’s case, you get to draw 3 cards!!!  Note: This doesn't add up for each creature that blocks it -- it only triggers once per combat phase

OK – now I’m done. This mini-article turned out to be a little longer than I originally thought.  Be sure and let me know what you think of this article, the series and the decks in the forum.

John Streetz
webmaster of www.magicdeckvortex.com

P.S. - I promise to do a non-blue card next week.

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Articles Spotlights from 2007:
Lorwyn Theme Week Intro & Schedule of Events
Blink And Bounce: Timing is Key
Going Blind: XCB Metagaming - A Prolonged Conclusion.
The Science of Magic: Genetic Engineering, Part Two.
Shifting Lineaments: Casual Metagaming (Pt. 2).
The Dungeon Of Malefict: Pure Evil!
Land Week Introduction & Schedule.
Combofusion: Legends Timeshifted.
One Card to Rule Them All: Coastal Piracy
Irrational Love: Chimeras. The Lego's of Magic.