Imagine for a brief moment, that feeling of a new set finally hitting the stores and that first pack in hand ripped opened to brand new surprises. Staring, eager, entranced, you zone in as you flip thru common after common stopping only long enough to check out new concepts, then just as the uncommons get your mouth watering, you eagerly thumb to your rare - coming face to face with Norin the Wary.

The dreams of a new Akroma, an always valued land, or even something as staple and desired as Wrath of God are shattered. "I've spent $3.99 on what!" has to be the only thought in your head. ...Or are you instead like me, do you stare at Norin and instantly revel at how to make a deck featuring him. The card is like an intricate puzzle, and the box top is missing, there has to be pieces that make it fit and work, and its up to you to figure it out. It's the same gratification that comes from solving a Sudoko or putting a Rubic's Cube together.

Most Spikes and Timmy's cringe at these unplayable cards, but for us Johnny's (however hybrid we may be) occasionally this horrid card that everyone else deems "unplayable" has a bit of sparkle underneath. It may take awhile or maybe even another set to fill that last puzzle piece, but a true Johnny will eventually solve the riddle and reveal a shiny diamond out of a card others can't even give away. Lets all try not to forget the lesson of Necropotence. For as much dread the card brings now, there was a time, when you couldn't even trade it because everyone and their mom found the card unplayable. It may have been just a single player who saw the light that sparked the darkest summer in the history of Magic.

There are several types of unplayable cards, and we'll look at each type using one or two key examples to illustrate each type. The most common type of unplayable cards are the low casting cost creatures that still manage to cost an arm and a leg to play. Cards such as Leveler and the Efreets illustrate how high or low the cost can be - could be a mana each turn or your entire library. Over the next few weeks we'll look at a vareity of types of unplayable cards such as the heavy upkeep cards like Leviathan, the worthlessness of cards like One with Nothing, and the cards like Force of Savagery that are so dependent they can't be played without help. Over the course we'll even reveal a few obvious or maybe non-obvious combos to make unplayable cards playable...

Like that one above.

Almost since the beginning of magic there have been cards that would cost you heavily to play, in exchange for being very mana efficient. The trend seemed to really start early on in Arabian Nights. The Efreets/Djinns and mana efficient aggro cards such as Hasran Ogress, Ghazan Ogre and Erg Raiders pioneered the speed at a cost. While none of these were particuarlly awe inspiring they definitely laid the foundation for an ever-increasing list of efficient cards that cost you to play. Whether it's the dual-edged blade of a card that your opponent can potentially control for free, a hit at your life total, or something far worse, these cards beg the question, how much are you willing to gain to pay less mana for a creature?

Now while there are numerous ones to talk about, two of the most powerful and well known are Phyrexian Negator and Mindslicer. At a glance, both appear unplayable. Negator could quite possibly cost you tons of in play cards and Mindslicer of course wipes your hand. These high potential costs keep most players away deeming them almost instantly unplayable - and lets not lie against some decks they are. I dare you to bring a Negator deck against a Goblin deck. However, they do have their usages and against some decks they shine. Control decks definitely struggle against Black Suicide and Mindslicers all but punish any deck that doesn't spit out cards.

It seems almost random which cards like these become powerhouses and which ones become trash. In all honesty, the reason Desecration Elemental is generally considered trash and Phyrexian Negator became a powerhouse, probably came down to one player deeming a card worthy and proving it. Which, is why it's really up to innovative Spike's with righteous Johnny streaks in them to enlighten the world as to why in the world anyone would want to skip their draw step and then have to pay life to draw a card. After all, until a deck repeatedly wins, it's pretty much universally deemed a gimmick deck.

Rather than delve into a long passed deck such as Suicide Black and the power of the Phyrexian Negator or Fleshreaver, I want to discuss a card that is relevant today in the Standard environment - Mindslicer. While ideally Mindslicer should be a tad more powerful in the power toughness department, a 4/3 for four converted is nothing to throw to the dogs. The reason I chose Mindslicer to discuss is simple, it represents a seemingly negative ability that can be massively turned around. In fact, no less than two standard-legal abilities directly benefit from discarding cards: Hellbent and Madness. Utilizing either of these, the Slicer can easily turn the situation around on an opponent creating a massive card advantage in your favor. Even further, Slicers are definitely the lepers of Magic, no one seems to want to kill them, they often passed by unscathed getting 4 free damage. I definitely kill my own Slicers more often than my opponents, especially the ones who quickly realize I'm playing it for a reason. Now before I put it any higher on a pedastal lets examine a unique deck I developed for it.

This deck is all about one thing and one thing only - card advantage. Whether it's gaining it from Scrying Sheets or Arena or by forcing discard with Slicers, Specters, or Rix Maadi. If you know my work at all, you also know I'm a Coldsnap fanatic and this deck is one of the reasons why. I orginially developed it as Black Red answer to Karsten Baby Killer and it evolved to what you see today. While land heavy, Scrying Sheets helps to bring level off that feeling of being swamped. It's generally a quick win deck that can struggle against some combo decks, but most of the time, if you can Slice away a hand before they assemble the pieces decks like Ignite the Warrens and Dragonstorm are forced to either go off prematurely or fizzle entirely.

As far as the random nature of the cards, they really do tend to blend together nicely. Cheap madness cards like Call to the Netherworld and Fiery Temper fuse nicely with Rix Maadi and Drekavac. Hippies act as great Red Herrings as well, providing a Lone Wolf powerhouse that helps to create card advantage without revealing the true nature of the deck. Skred, Ronom, and Yeti provide marvelous spot removal and Gutless Ghoul can help prolong life as well as offer a cheap way to Slice-away. However, the king combo here comes from two cards I often see ignored - Abyssal Nocturnus and Mindslicer. Abyssal's natural evasion makes him useful even as just a 2/2 and combined with Mindslicer's hand-wiping capability can boost the Abyssal as high 16/16 (or even more in multiplayer) although 8/8 - 10/10 are much more realstic ranges. Either way, it's a lot of damage from a single attack.

I chose to start this series off with Mindslicer for a reason. Well several actually, but the main one is that while many players do see it's usability, equally as many do not. For every person that would consider it a superior card, there's another who rates it inferior. So to both sides I offered a little pique of the tastebuds, hopefully everyone has enjoyed the appetizer before I move into today's second fresh dish - Shah of Naar Isle. But before we hit up this heavy hitter I want to make sure everyone is on the same page with a few things:

Problem 1. Comes Into Play Costs
Some cards have massive penalties when they come into play, whether it's Levelers total library removal or Eater of Day's two turn snack - it's easier to just counter the effect. Voidslime or even sometimes Trickbind are great ways to just avoid the problem all together.

Problem 2. Echo Costs
Until recently you paid it or just let it die. Now we have Thick-Skinned Goblin to give us an option. Do we pay this upkeep cost or do we just say "nah". How nice. An easy obvious fix to a mana draining problem. However, it won't stop Shah of Naar Isle's effect from triggering despite what many people including myself thought, although if you play the combo on Magic Online it does prevent it and that friend is what we call abuse.

Problem 3. Upkeep Costs
Whether it simply be cumulative, life, or just a simple 1 damage a turn. If you just really don't want to play you have hope in Eon Hub. Sure it's expensive, but so is that upkeep if you're even thinking of dropping this into a deck.

Problem 4. Unpreventable Life Loss
Preventable is easy. However, unpreventable can be tricky. Until recently you either just had swap or gain it back. Now however, there's an easy fix. Children of Korlis simply reverts your life.

Much like Mindslicer, the Shah offers up a powerful creature in exchange for a negative effect. However, instead of simply playing to negate the effect, the goal should be to fuse the "negative" effect into the overall mode of the deck.

I seriously wrestled with how to do this coming up with several interesting ideas and far too many mediocre implementations. Shah decks could punish card draw or hand size, could use it as a second finisher for Vore, or even just steal the draw with Plagiarize. The problem with all four of these methods, is the more I playtested it the more I really wished certain key cards were in Standard. As a Future-Shifted card, Shah really does feel out of place. He'd have been perfect alongside Owling Mine, beautiful in decks that included cards like Gaze of Adamaro and Phyrexian Tyranny.

However, after doing some research on the blue and red environment which I was sure was key to pulling off Shah - I discovered a funky deck that has a cult of followers: Pickles. Using its basic concept of flipping Vesuvan Shapeshifter into key cards like Brine Elemental to deny untap phases or Willbender to confound single target spells, I built a deck that branched away from it. The most noticable difference between this deck and Pickles is the lack of counterspells. Instead this deck uses a more casual and to me interesting concept of time-recursion. Spells and creatures that keep reoccurring topped off with cards like Mark of Eviction lead to a deck that could only be called Deja Vu.

The way the deck plays is utilizing morph cards to to buy time until the recursion effects become overwhelming. With creatures constantly bouncing and small ones falling to the bombard of nukes, it's only a matter of time before Brine Elemental and Shapeshifter create a total untap denail. The deck actually stood up to some Zoo decks thanks to Mark of Eviction, but fell pretty quickly to most Boros-Kills due to their sheer speed. The other realy true threats I encountered were Counter Decks, but mirroring in Teferi or Gigadrowse easily negated them and Dragonstorm/Ignite the Warrens decks definitely required a Shadow of Doubt or Trickbind to survive.

Once this deck gets started, even a Wrath of God has problems stopping it. Rift Elementals and Timebugs keep spells spinning faster, while creatures that just refuse to stay dead like Chronozoa and Epochrasite keep coming back. Meanwhile constant bounces keep the opponent's hand count high and hopefully so frustrated that they take the bait from the Shah only to get hit by a 7-14 point Sudden Impact.

Now that I've talked about two negative cost cards I'll leave you for today. I know that some of you probably didn't see Mindslicer as a negative card, but that portion wasn't for you, it was for those that hate the card. Hopefully I showed them a little bit of the light that many others already see. Hopefully next time you pic up a card with a negative effect you'll find a unique way to use it.

In the next article in the series, Ill talk about co-dependent cards that require other cards to play and in case you're wondering what I'm talking about do your homework on cards like Leveler and Force of Savagery.

~Cashew~

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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.