(Rankle, Master of Pranks | Dmitry Burmak)

Biding Your Time with Schemes

Hi everyone, Kya here once again to showcase beautiful ways to add more to our EDH hobby by focusing on the people who play. Today I'm calling on the help of my wonderful and diabolical readers in ways to exact revenge on a particular friend. We have a mischievous prankster in our play group who loves to mess with me. It ranges from putting hot sauce in my coffee to providing me various joke decks play when looking for something new to do in our pod! You've read about George before in previous articles, giving sage deck building advice to me when I first started playing EDH. Well now it's my turn to find a prank worthy of getting back at him. Without focusing on the negative, I've been stuck at home and will continue to be at home due to the virus plaguing the world at the moment. This gives me time to create a monstrous deck worthy of torturing George with when we're able to see one another again!

Instead of using this article as a chance to come up with my own idea, I want to see what our readers come up with the comments below. It's not any fun if I just keep doing the same thing over and over after all! Together we can create something truly horrid that even the most seasoned players wouldn't dare touch if given the chance. So we're going to use today's article to go over one of his prank decks, so you get an idea of the mind we're working with here. This article will be short and to the point, as I'm sure most will be more excited for the comment section more then anything else. Now let's look at his "masterpiece" so we can find a way to top it!

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Deception at its Finest!

So one thing George is famous around here for is creating decks with very misleading commanders. You could be handed a deck at any moment with a very aggro type of commander such as Ruhan of the Fomori and find an entire deck specializing in countering and combos, for example. Or you could find yourself playing a Kaalia of the Vast deck without any Dragons, Demons or Angels in it! However George really out did himself with his latest creation:

What can be so scary about Morophon you ask? Well imagine getting what you assume is a five-color deck and drawing your first seven cards. You get a bunch of Sliver creatures, but the only lands you get are islands. So you mulligan and get only islands for lands again. Then you do it a third time before giving up and just keeping your hand with islands.

That's right. It's a five-color deck that only has islands as basic lands. The annoying part about all this? It actually works! With Morophon's ability to reduce colored mana, you can easily play five-color tribal with a very simple mana base! All you have to do is pay seven mana of any color (or colorless) and your commander will worry about the rest as long as your deck plays cards with only one color of a type! This makes Morophon one of the cheapest five-color decks to craft, because the mana base is so simple! I'm sure for those looking for budget five-color decks in general, the idea of saving money sounds wonderful! Money, by the way, that you'll need to afford Slivers. Speaking of which, let's look at these Tyranid rip-offs shall we?

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Slivering Their Way to Your Heart

First off, these are Tyranids and no one can convince me otherwise. Second off, I'm sure for anyone who's played against Slivers, you know exactly how dangerous these little bugs can be when multiple are on the table. If you're newer to Magic: the Gathering and have never played against them, please feel free to ask your friend about Slivers and see the reaction on their face. Slivers are what every other tribal dream of being. With every Sliver that hits the battlefield, all Slivers gain either a keyword or a buff. Before you know it, that simple 1/1 mana dork Sliver is now swinging at you for lethal because of it's friends!

Now, one thing that you might have noticed from the above cards is Slivers are very hungry for different kinds of mana colors. However, thanks to our commander we don't have to worry about any of that! Imagine playing Sliver Overlord or Sliver Legion for free! Isn't that scary? Imagine playing island after island and being able to have every Sliver on the field! Wacky world we live in now, isn't it?

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Together We Will Prevail!

I think you can already tell how and why Slivers get pretty bonkers quickly. Mixing a Sliver that allows mass haste AND another that gives mana? That means if you have a method to draw (something blue has plenty of), you'll be able to play Slivers one after another! This gets especially nasty when Constricting Sliver enters the battlefield. Soon all your enemies will be banished to the shadow realm, leaving you free to attack as you want. Throw in Sliver Hivelord and you'll make sure all your precious babies are safe from being harmed!

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Blue was the Best Pokemon Trainer

Know what's fun about playing primarily a mono-color in a five-color deck? You get to focus on all the goodies that color has to offer! You'll be dropping a massive amount of Slivers quickly, so we need draw to keep up with all of these worms falling from the sky. Rhystic Study will of course help with this, being one of the best value cards in EDH, period! I think I own like... eight of them now? Like Cyclonic Rift, many refuse to play blue without it. So of course George is going to pack all the goodies we know and (do not) love from the endless resources of blue. Looking back, green would have been a safer option for these shenanigans, but if you're going to surprise someone with this deck, you might as well make it greedy!

You might notice in the decklist below we're missing some counterspells. Well George's answer to that is simple: "Why counter just one card, when you can continuously bounce everything to their hand with various cards like Evacuation?"

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Tribal Shenanigans is Still Tribal

While I think Slivers deserves its own special category for now; devastating they are, they're still tribal. This means jamming as many helpful artifacts and enchantments to continue buffing the tribe that... okay, doesn't really need it, but we're here to make a point, right? Kindred Discovery can be especially dirty with Gemhide Sliver because with just a little haste, you'll continue popping Slivers from the ground to surprise your foes! Coat of Arms and Door of Destinies is especially devastating, as just a few small critters and you'll be swinging for lethal. Does this make a whole new definition for Blue Combo? I'd like to think so.

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They Have Only a Sliver of a Chance

It's probably at this point in an article that I'd throw down some amazing win conditions, point out two or three cards that will simply end the game. This deck is different, however, as it's designed to simply overwhelm your opponents with stack upon stack of abilities and buffs until you dominate the field! You don't even need a Craterhoof Behemoth as a finale with these cards, as you'll find plenty of power on the board quickly enough! That and I think I borrowed George's Craterhoof for MagicFest Las Vegas and never gave it back. Oh well, I guess I should be glad he doesn't read these. Now let's look at this nonsensical deck and see the prank master at work shall we?

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Closing Thoughts

So what did everyone think? I know I was surprised the first few times I had to suffer through this deck before I got the hang of it. Did anyone else think of abusing the commander's ability in a similar manner to cut down on the cost of their land base? Now more importantly, how are we getting George back? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments below of commander and deck ideas! What horrors would you craft and make him play with? I'll take the best ideas and be sure to have it ready by the time our quarantine is lifted! If anything is helping me keep my sanity, it's vindictive plotting after all!

Until next time,

Kya