I have a problem. Perhaps there’s an Anonymous group somewhere I should seek out and join – because I can’t stop picking Blue cards to feature for this series. Blue Obsession Anonymous (BOA)? Anyway, today I’m dipping into the Invasion block and grabbing a Blue rare enchantment called Sunken Hope.

As usual, I’ll feature a few decks from around the net and then present one of my own. However, this time around I will be presenting a lot more decks, one of which uses a card from Planar Chaos. Curious what card? Keep reading!

I won’t spoil the card just yet, but know that if you are an avid fan of the combo pages here at Magic Deck Vortex, you should know which card already. If you don’t check out the combo pages regularly and you still want to know right now which PC card I am talking about, you have three options:

1. Keep reading this article and find out. I promise to entertain you.
2. Jump over to the combo pages, search out the Planar Combo Page, and search it for Sunken Hope. Here – I’ll help you out and provide a link! [link] Once done, come back here and start over at the beginning of this article.
3. Just skip down to the last deck… I don’t recommend this.

As mentioned in the introduction, I will be presenting a few more decks than normal. First up, found on Boldo’s Armory, is what I think to be the oldest of them all. Note: This deck is already in the MDV Deck Database.

Pirates sure seem to like this series, as almost every article I published in this series has referenced them. Apologies in advance for the redundancies, but I present each deck for a reason. (Maybe if I stopped doing Blue cards, I can avoid the Pirates…)

In this deck, Sunken Hope bounces creatures symmetrically while giving you the upper hand with a bunch of creatures that have comes-into-play effects. Each of your Rishadan Pirates makes an opponent sacrifice a permanent unless he or she pays an amount of mana. Coupled with a play set of Hoodwink, Recoil and Boomerang makes this deck into a potential land destruction deck, Blue style [here’s looking at you, Chris Newton]. Thus, preventing them from paying the costs of the pirates’ abilities and providing you with a hefty upper hand.

Sunken Hope is the fuel to the deck’s constant onslaught of control-ish creatures. Its purpose is mainly to facilitate recasting the pirates over and over again with an added bonus of bouncing opponent’s critters too. While the symmetrical portion of Sunken Hope is great in this deck, it isn’t completely necessary.

The Lesson Here: People have been building decks with Stampeding Wildebeests and Wall of Blossoms for ages and this concept is the same: If you are going to be returning a creature to your hand every turn, make it a creature that counts when it comes into play again. In other words, “When <THIS> comes into play…” is your friend. Usually.

Straying from the Path…

Despite the lesson noted above, some player’s focus more on one aspect of the card than the other. In Sunken Hope’s case, to any control player, bouncing a creature every turn means keeping them from attacking you; thus, controlling the board. Wrath of God does the same thing, just in a different sort of cataclysmic way.

What if you made a deck of almost entirely bounce and creature hate with Sunken Hope included? Well, I found such a deck.

While the deck needs some work, let’s take a look at it.

I would like to re-name this deck, “Where’d Your Creatures Go?” because there’s a lot more creature bounce in the deck than just Sunken Hope. And there’s a lot of creature hate all around too.

In addition to Sunken Hope, the deck’s creator adds Equilibrium to the mix – a card that I’m not too sure is completely necessary - that provides even more bounce for a few extra mana. Then there’s Mistblade Shinobi… If the bounce doesn’t work, just Condemn or Cage of Hands their creatures. Of course, I’ll touch up on a problem there in just a moment.

To round out his creatures, there is a Pro: Black and Red Crusader, a flying Morphling wanna-be and the Azorius Herald. The Herald is really the only creature that combos with Sunken Hope (with a comes-into-play effect of gaining four life).

Seems like a decent deck, but there are some serious flaws in the design of it. For instance, Cage of Hands is a bad choice; it will only suck up mana you could be using to play and bounce more creatures. If you enchant an opponent’s creature with it, they can just choose to return that creature to their hand because of Sunken Hope’s ability. At this point, either you pay 1W to return it to your hand or lose the card. That’s extremely anti-synergistic.

Also, as mentioned before, the Equilibrium is overkill in the deck. Its purpose is to return more creatures to your opponent’s hand but between Sunken Hope, Condemn and Mistblade Shinobi in the deck, I don’t think you will have many good targets for Equilibrium. 

The last problem refers to lesson number one – this decks needs more creatures with comes-into-play effects. It would make for a much stronger deck and it wouldn’t ignore the power of Sunken Hope. 

While the above deck didn’t take full use of the Sunken Hope’s positive combo possibilities, the following deck takes the combo potential of Sunken Hope and creatures with comes-into-play abilities to an extreme:

I honestly think this deck needs no description. Every creature in the deck has a comes-into-play ability of sorts. Together with Crystal Shard, Sunken Hope and Eladamri’s Call you have a potential and reusable combo toolbox. One card of note is the Duplicant.  It's like a Vindicate for creatures which you can bounce and recast every turn.  Or just keep it as one of your opponent's best creatures on your side of the table.  Good times.

The Lesson Here: Don’t ignore the possibilities of a card. You can always explore other avenues, but the message is clear here: returning and replaying cards over and over again demands those cards to have extra effects to make the Sunken Hope worth it. Otherwise, just replace Sunken Hope with Wash Out or Boomerang or something… there are many options considering there are 223 cards in Magic that have the phrase “return target” in their rules text. (Thanks Gatherer!) 229 post Future Sight.

Having Combo Fun with Sunken Hope

Speaking of other avenues, what about an almost creatureless deck? Suddenly, Sunken Hope’s ability becomes asymmetrical and you don’t have to worry about building a deck around creatures with comes-into-play effects. What’s left to build around?

Perhaps a mean combo using the creature bounce. Here’s a deck as an example:

This deck is just cruel. Go ahead and play your creatures so I can bounce them and then make you discard and then have Megrim deal damage to you and then draw a card… That’s the routine of this deck in one sentence.

To lay it out for you, Warped Devotion will make a player discard a card when a card is returned to their hand from play. Megrim will deal two damage to an opponent whenever they discard a card. And Geth’s Grimoire will draw you a card when they discard a card. The rest of the deck is library manipulation and bounce with a couple of Waterspout Elementals and Time Stops thrown in for overkill. Well, not really overkill. I’ll just call it deckbuilding style.

While Sunken Hope isn’t the star in the deck, it facilitates the combo in two ways: One, by fueling the Megrim-Warped Devotion combo; Two, by keeping creatures off the board to keep your combo in place and unthreatened. Overall, I really like this deck. It’s mean, it’s controllish and it has some style.

The Lesson Here: While some cards dictate being built completely around, other cards like Sunken Hope can be support to a combo that holds more importance. As mentioned before, don’t be afraid to explore all avenues of a card.

Conjuring One Last Deck.

The card from Planar Chaos that I was referring to earlier was none other than Braids, Conjurer Adept. Braids likes to Show and Tell… every turn and for every player! Now, get your minds out of the gutter. Show and Tell was a sorcery from Urza’s Saga for 2U that allowed all players to choose an artifact, creature, enchantment, or land card from their hand and put it into play.

While Show and Tell only worked once, Braids let’s us do it every turn. The unfortunate part is that your opponent will get to play something first before you. This could prove to be a detriment for you in case they have some nasty card like Reiver Demon or Clambassadors to play. However, a well-built deck will be prepared for nastiness like these. (By the way, I was just joking about Clambassadors).

One difference between the Blue Braids and Show and Tell, aside from the whole creature vs. enchantment deal, is that Braids doesn’t allow players to put enchantment cards into play this way. Show and Tell allowed enchantments. Considering this next deck is going to feature Braids and Sunken Hope, I guess I’ll just have to hard cast the enchantment.

Speaking of which, here’s the goal with those two cards. If both are in play, you both will get the opportunity to play an artifact, creature or land card from your hand for free. But then, you’ll have to return a creature card from play to your hand thanks to Sunken Hope. You’ll be playing with lots of comes-into-play abilities and your opponent most likely will not.

That said, here’s the deck:

I will admit this deck was difficult to put together as I really wanted to showcase Linessa from Future Sight. However, because she didn’t actually have a comes-into-play ability, I felt she didn’t really belong. While the massive amounts of bounce she could provide would be fantastic, she would really outshine the deck.

You’ll notice there are only four-of’s for three different cards: Sunken Hope, Braids, Conjurer Adept and Wood Elves. The two cards featured in this deck are obvious choices, as I really want the combo to go off in each game. Wood Elves is there in maximum force because I wanted to make sure she was there in my opening hand so that I could accelerate my mana early in every game. When you get your pieces in play, you’ll be able to return her and either play her for free or hard cast her for her ability (pulling a Forest from your deck and putting it into play) each turn until you have a fantastic mana base. Remember, you still have mana open after playing something for free from Braids. Including the Elves should give me plenty of mana to play with.

Man-‘o-war is my anti-big creature guy – saving me from having to deal with whatever big fat creature my opponent plays off of Braids. While Sunken Hope returns a creature to a player’s hand each turn, it isn’t your choice. It’s that player’s choice, so you need a back-up plan and Man-‘o-war does that well.

The win conditions of this deck are found in Triskelion and Keldon Marauders. With your combo on board, either one can be players, deal its damage, bounced and then either played again using your mana or just played again next turn through your combo. Triskelion will net your three damage a turn and Keldon Marauders will net your two damage a turn.

Every other creature in the deck serves utility purpose. Venser can bounce both permanents and spells, Avalanche Riders will nuke an annoying land, Wall of Blossoms provides card advantage, Angel of Despair can destroy permanents, Loxodon Hierarch will gain you life and Plaxmanta will protect your creatures. Oh, and then there’s Cryptic Annelid – this little guy can dig you six cards into your library to find another utility creature or one of your combo pieces.

Venser is good news for this style deck with the added bonus or sort-of-countering a spell. His ability gets around “cannot be countered” rather nicely.

Quick Note: Venser is the only creature card thus far in Magic that can return any permanent to it’s owner’s hand upon coming into play. There are creature cards that can return just a creature, or just an enchantment, but not any permanent… at least until Future Sight was released. Despite him being legendary, I felt it important to have three copies of him in the deck in case one of the first get destroyed or removed from the game.

While this deck looks good, don’t be afraid to mix some different colors. Braids and Sunken hope is a mono-Blue combo. You try by adding some black or white. If you try black, add a lot of discard effects to prevent your opponent from using Braids’ ability. If you go white, try Thran Turbine and Azorius Aethermage for some good free card drawing.

Well, that ends today’s journey in One Card to Rule Them All. Let me know your positive and negative thoughts about the article in the forum! 

Next time, I might do an old-school not-so-good artifact or I might dip into the Future Sight card pool. Check back often for another episode of One Card to Rule Them All!

Streetz

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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.