You’re surprised, I know it. I promised a few weeks of Nephilim fun for you, and now I’m not doing a Nephilim deck. To be honest, it’s more like postponing the Nephilim decks. So what’s keeping me from writing about Nephilim this week? Mechanics, that’s what and an email from a member of the MDV Forums. I’ve got some reader mail to get through, and I’ve got some decks that are going to be great for your pocketbook. Check out in this edition of Raiding the Dollar Bins!

I know it’s odd to think of, but it’s been three years now since I started writing this column for MDV. It started with a call for writers for the site, and from the beginning when it was just Tynion and myself, to now, with a full Writer’s Guild, a blog, and monthly publication. It’s grown into something I had never even imagined could ever exist. It’s due mostly in part to the amazing efforts of the webmaster, John Streetz. Give the man some credit, he does all this work for fun.

Mechanics are the life-blood of the game. Whether they’re the simple mechanics of attacking or tapping lands to produce mana to play spells, or something complicated like the keyword mechanic Phasing or Haunt, mechanics have always played an integral part of the Magic experience.

I received an email back in February that I’ve been mulling over for a while now, from a forum member willoe. Here’s what he had to say:

Death_By_Beebles,

I simply love cheap decks almost as much as I love Pauper, or what I call it, commonkill. I’ve got some ideas on my mind which I like to see come true. They’re all about theme decks; singular mechanics have always fascinated me. So here goes:

Could you make a deck around buyback? Memory Crystal could be your MVP.

Also, could you build a deck around clash. When I spotted Lantern of Insight + Research the Deep combos in the Morningtide Combos section, I was fascinated. People, we got a drawing engine!

I would be grateful if you one day could make a clash deck. In contrast to buyback, clash is a brand new, undiscovered mechanic. Sylvan Echoes, Research the Deep and i.e. Sensei's Diving Top makes a savage draw engine. I just don't know how to accomplish the deck. If you want to, you could take a closer look at this? And for some MB protection, Counterbalance has never been better!

Best wishes,
Willoe.***

Well willoe, I’ll do my best to make these deck ideas into a reality. The first deck on the list you asked for was a Buyback deck. Memory Crystal is an amazing artifact with Buyback; if you use the right spells, you can get almost free Buyback on the card you buy back. When I first received this email, I immediately thought of Sprout Swarm and Haze of Rage; both of these cards have a low (three mana or less) Buyback. Sprout Swarm has the added mechanic Convoke, which is really good, if you can play it right. With Memory Crystal out, Sprout Swarm only costs 2G to get back, and after you play it the first time, it only costs 1G to play and get back every turn (since you can tap the creature you made the first time you played it).

If you’re making a ton of Saprolings then with Sprout Swarm, why not finish off your opponent with a Haze of Rage alpha strike? I love attacking with 20 5/1 saprolings. Let’s take a look at the deck.

You start off the game by playing Sakura-Tribe Elder, and start putting together your Thallid army piece by piece. Sporoloth Ancient helps make Saproling tokens faster, and Scatter the Seeds helps get your army primed for the attack. Memory Crystal cuts the Buyback costs of your two Buyback cards, Sprout Swarm and Haze of Rage, which is almost necessary to get the amazing alpha-strike you’re looking for. Use Sprout Swarm in conjunction with Memory Crystal to make masses of Saprolings. When you’ve played Sprout Swarm 5 or 6 times in one turn, use Haze of Rage once and your army of very small men will become an army of very winning men. It’s glorious.

In case the Memory Crystal program doesn’t come through for you, you can always just use your powerful beaters like Sporesower Thallid and Ulasht to bring your opponent’s life total down. Saprolings make excellent chump blockers, and with a few powerful guys, you can push through just about any board stall.

Things to Remember

1) Use Rift Bolt to set up your Haze of Rage and knock down troublesome creatures. You probably shouldn’t be aiming this lovely three damage at an opponent’s head. Aim for Enchantresses, Ravagers, and other men you’d rather your opponent not have.

2) Ulasht, the Hate Seed is great creature removal, and it makes more tokens. In case you ever draw into a second Ulasht, never fear! Just use your extra mana at your opponent’s end of turn phase to make more tokens and clear out his creatures until the first Ulasht perishes. Then play a harder, better, faster, stronger Ulasht next turn. **cues the Daft Punk**

3) One Memory Crystal is good, but two are better! Don’t let that extra Memory Crystal just sit in your hand! You can make boatloads of Saprolings with Sprout Swarm if it doesn’t have a Buyback cost. Getting spells back for free? Now that’s something I can support!

Card Suggestions

If you’re into the more Saproling oriented mood and less of the Thallid mood, there are some good Legends from Invasion block that could grace this deck. Nemata, Grove Guardian and Verdeloth the Ancient are both Treefolk that would love to see some play.

You can also splash White here for powerful cards like Supply//Demand, Pollenbright Wings, and Rith, the Awakener for starters. If you want to add White, make sure you get some Terramorphic Expanse into the list, and maybe a few Rampant Growth to fix up the mana base. STE can only do so much, you know?

Next up on the docket is willoe’s suggestion for a Clash based deck. Clash is a fairly difficult mechanic to build a deck around, mostly because there are so few cards with the Clash mechanic. A total of 37 cards have clash or trigger off clash. That’s not a lot of cards, so your deck choices are kind of limited.

When it came to a clash based deck, I wanted the clash to play an important role, but not really the central role. Sort of like a best supporting actor, clash is very good at doing powerful things, but not by itself. With this in mind, I decided to stray away from the drawing engine willoe suggested, and went with something a little more aggressive. Let’s take a look.

As you can tell, this is obviously an Elementals tribal deck, but it keeps with the clash theme by using a very powerful Elemental card; Rebellion of the Flamekin. With ANY clash, you get a 3/1 Elemental. You don’t even have to win the clash to make Rebellion of the Flamekin good.

To make sure you could get copies of Rebellion or some of your other powerful creatures, I added four copies of Flamekin Harbinger to the decklist. Smokebraider also makes this deck tick, accelerating your Rebellion drop to turn 3, and your Supreme Exemplar drop to turn 5. The 1-of Elementals and Street Wraiths are there to help win your clashes; likewise, Magma Jet is a good burn spell that allows you to adjust the top of your library for future clashing.

Things to Remember

1) Flamekin Harbinger is an easy way to set up a good clash. If you’re about to play Lash Out and need that extra three damage, playing Flamekin Harbinger is a great way to get there. Move Supreme Exemplar onto the top of your library, get your win for the clash, and then go about what you were doing.

2) If you’re using Magma Jet to set up a clash, use the card that’s second in line as your clash key. You’re probably going to draw the top card of your library before you get to do some clashing, so the second card on the top of your library is going to be the one you want to rig up for your clashes.

Card Suggestions

There are a lot of cards out there that can help this deck. Cards that have Scry such as Riddle of Lightning or Foresee are great to help you win your clashes. Other cards that can help in this department are cards like Sage Owl, Index, Brainstorm and Ponder. If you need some counter magic, Scattering Stroke and Broken Ambitions can fill those roles.

If you want a more combo build of the deck, add Lantern of Insight to the list. It lets you know when you want to clash and when not to clash. Lantern can also scare away your opponent’s key card (hopefully) so it can be useful in keeping your opponent off of big scary creatures you can’t deal with.

Well that’s all for this week. Check back next time for more Nephilim fun. Until then, don’t forget about those dollar bins. You just might find some fun in them.

~Death_By_Beebles

Alex Hoffman has been parading around with the pseudonym of Death_By_Beebles for three years now. He’s a writer for Magic Deck Vortex, and can often be found tinkering with his latest decks and studying for biochemistry. He is the author of Raiding the Dollar Bins and Going Blind series at MDV, and the recent startup series Pauper Chronicles. Alex likes kittens, reading, and generally enjoying life. He doesn’t like Brussels sprouts. You can send him deck ideas, combos and suggestions at deathbybeebles@yahoo.com.

*** Email edited for length.

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