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Hello Nation! Welcome back to the article that Explore the casual side of your Magic kingdom. Today I want to leave behind all of the theories and strategies, and just get back to deck building.
I was writing an article for Beckett's Magic magazine last week. My part of an article written with Bennie Smith and Laura Mills was to create a very Johnny-tastic deck using Scars of Mirrodin. I ended up building a cool deck that I'm quite proud of. (So you should buy the magazine…hint hint!).
It got my Johnny juices flowing. I can build any sort of deck. I've built decks that appeal to Timmys and Spikes. I've built decks around crazy themes and crazier cards. I have a secret to tell you. My name is Abe, and I am a Johnny. (Hello Johnny…er…Abe!)
In my Magic career I've always been a Johnny. I prefer rogue decks to netdecks. Now, I'm not 100% Johnny. I'm about 60% Johnny and 40% Social Timmy (random guess, obviously). I managed to fit Relentless Assault into tournament decks, so there's definitely a Timmy here.
At the end of the day, I'm about creating a deck that I can put my name to. I really don't like the articles on Wizards' website, when they spoil a card from the new set – and then build decks with it. I want to build those decks on my own. I want to find that space for myself. That's why I often eschew the normal cards like Doubling Season, (you know, the ones everyone uses) and instead use interesting ones.
That's why there's a tension to deckbuilding as a Johnny. I want to build these cool decks built around a card, but I don't want to interfere with your own Exploration and use of the cards. It's been long enough since Scars was printed that I think they are a good choice for Johnny decks. I love writing combo decks , and I understand the need to Temper them in my articles right after the set comes out. I try to keep them a bit lower key then.
Today is an article of decks designed to tweak your inner Johnny. These are crazy decks that do fun things. Let get started!
"Go Go Golem"
This deck is sort of a Johnny-Timmy hybrid. Just like me! You have all of the Johnny stylings of Precursor Golem and yet you are just making them big and swinging with big creatures. That's ultimately a very Timmy way of using a Johnny card, so I think it's cool.
The idea is to have out a Fires of Yavimaya. Then you drop a Precursor Golem and swing (they have haste). Follow with Berserk and/or Giant Growth to turn them into a very angry trio of golems and then nail your foe for a lot of damage. Because you have haste, they come out of nowhere and can easily win the game. Three Golems with a Berserk is 18 trampling damage on the board. Ouch.
(Actually, it can be more. Swing with your creatures, then Sacrifice the Fires to give one +2/+2. Then Berserk them all, and you get one 10 power one and two 6 powered ones, for 22 trample damage).
In order to prevent your opponent abusing the Golem their way (by, say, using Lightning Bolt on one to kill them all), I tossed in a pair of Asceticism. They aren't your main cards, they simply shore up an obvious Weakness.
I rounded out the deck with removal, recursion, and redundancy. The three Rs. You have Flametongue Kavu, Vithian Renegades and Acidic Slime as creature based removal of things. They are joined by a quartet of Lightning Bolt.
The deck lacks a lot of cards you might normally see me toss out there. You don't see any land search or cards like Harmonize or Browbeat in here. It's just the combo, removal, Birds of Paradise, and stuff to help out. I had Lightning Bolt in the deck until I realized that Murderous Redcap is better here and moved it in. You can pump it with your Giant Growth, Berserk, Skarrg or a sacrificed Fires in order to make it deal a lot of damage.
There's just not a lot of the usual suspects, and that's okay. This is a pretty good deck. If you can't get the combo off, you can still just swing and win with other cards – it's not the end of all things. A combo deck that can still win through a Memoricide that says Precursor Golem (or whatever your combo part is) will be pretty tough.
"ChangeMyr"
- (60)
- 4 Myr Galvanizer
- 4 Myr Reservoir
- 4 Elemental Mastery
- 4 Earthcraft
- 4 Tauren Mauler
- 4 Chameleon Colossus
- 4 Palladium Myr
- 2 Kyren Negotiations
- 4 Rolling Thunder
- 2 Cultivate
- 4 Kazandu Refuge
- 10 Mountain
- 10 Forest
This deck uses the Myr enablers from Scars of Mirrodin, along with the changelings of old, to make an interesting combo deck. The key card in this deck is the Myr Galvanizer, which for a single mana (and a tap) can untap all your other Myr. When your other Myr are both Myr and changelings, you'll have a lot of untapping.
In order to get these Myr tapped, I included three options. One makes mana via Earthcraft and the untapping of a basic land (preferably your own). Another will be Kyren Negotiations, which allows you to tap creatures for damage to a player. Finally, we have the aura Elemental Mastery. Just tap the creature it enchants to make a bunch of 1/1 elemental dudes which have haste and die at the end of the turn. Then you can use these dudes to attack, or fuel more Kyren Negotiations or Earthcraft.
Myr Reservoir seeks to make your Myr deck quicker out the gate, recurs Myr cards in the graveyard, and can help Chameleon Colossus get big by helping with its activation cost.
Since this deck can make a lot of mana with Palladium Myr, Earthcraft, Cultivate, and Myr Galvanizer, I wanted an outlet for the mana. What's a good outlet? Rolling Thunder. You can kill a player at the board pretty quickly with this little deck.
There's also a combo in here. You need to have in play two Myr Galvanizer, an Earthcraft and a kill condition and two creatures. Tap a myr to make mana. Tap your myr to activate kill conditions. Then Tap the untapped Galvanizer (and spend a mana) to untap all of the other Myr. Then make a mana, and activate a winning condition. Spend that mana to tap the untapped Galvanizer and untap everybody else. Repeat as needed until you have out 10000 1/1 hasted tokens or have dealt enough damage to kill everyone at the table (or you can make about 1000 mana and just Rolling Thunder kill them).
I think you'll find this to be quite powerful and a lot of fun. There are a lot of possibilities here with the Myr and changelings. In fact, let me deviate from the set task at hand (building a Johnny deck) just to show you another way to use Myr and changelings.
"Myr and Magic"
- (60)
- 4 Myr Galvanizer
- 4 Myr Reservoir
- 4 Crib Swap
- 4 Nameless Inversion
- 4 Palladium Myr
- 4 Avian Changeling
- 3 Mirror Entity
- 3 Skeletal Changeling
- 2 Vindicate
- 4 Wall of Omens
- 4 Orzhov Basilica
- 4 Fetid Heath
- 8 Plains
- 8 Swamp
This quick control deck I just threw together rocks the Myr-Changeling combo to reuse creature removal, make the playing of your creatures easier, and to pump your creatures and untap to make them block after swinging. Then you have some other cards to help out. It's not a combo deck, so I'm just spending this one paragraph talking about it, but it uses the same engine in a different way.
"Lifestaffing into Infinity"
This deck wants to get out a Lifestaff, Altar of Dementia, one of the two creatures that untap lands when they come into play, one of the lands that taps for more than one mana, and an Enduring Renewal. Here's how it works:
Equip a Cloud of Faeries with the Lifestaff
Sac it to an Altar of Dementia to mill someone for a card
You gain three life
It returns to your hand (Enduring Renewal)
Tap the Azorius Chancery and a land and make three mana
Play the Cloud and untap those lands
Use the last mana to equip the Cloud with the Lifestaff
Repeat
You can use any Sacrifice outlet that you want. You could use an Ashnod's Altar, Thermopod or Phyrexian Altar to make infinite mana (or you can make a ton of mana with a Lotus Vale or two Chanceries instead of a Chancery and a land). You could use damage based cards like Blasting Station or Goblin Bombardment. You could Scry 1 with Viscera Seer or to pump a Vampire Aristocrat. You could kill off creatures by -1/-1'ing them with a Sacrifice to Phyrexian Plaguelord. You could activate a Greater Good or a Sadistic Hypnotist. You could put a ton of counters on Spawning Pit, and then if you are making extra mana, pull them off to make a huge amount of creatures. Altar of Dementia can deck everyone while you gain thousands of life. Of course, the presence of cards like Gaea's Blessing and Darksteel Colossus keep that from happening consistently. Thus, you have the infinite life gain to really keep you in the game.
After that, we have a few cards that counter spells, kill stuff, and keep you alive. You can assemble the various pieces at length and try to go off.
Once you have 15,000 life, and you've milled everyone you can, then just play and swing with the unblockable Deep-Sea Kraken. A few hits and you've won.
If someone is alive from the decking, and the Krakens are killed or unable to be found, then I included an emergency Denying Wind. Play it to Remove all of their Dread and Gaea's Blessing and Legacy Weapon and similar cards that are keeping them from being decked.
I know you might look at stuff like this and Wonder why you might want to play a clunky deck like this. It's because you aren't a Johnny! Johnnies get that this stuff is fun. Trying to get off a convoluted and clunky combo is worth the stretch.
While combos are fun, my particular Johnny is intrigued by finding cards that no one likes and building around them. It doesn't always have to be combo, combo, combo. Just using a card in an unusual way is enough. Let's take a look at such a deck.
"It's Scandalous!"
- (60)
- 4 Scandalmonger
- 4 Psychic Purge
- 4 Dodecapod
- 4 Cutthroat il-Dal
- 4 Rend Flesh
- 4 Mind Control
- 2 Seal of Removal
- 2 Oona, Queen of the Fae
- 2 Metrognome
- 2 Opportunity
- 2 Desertion
- 4 Jwar Isle Refuge
- 4 Darkslick Shores
- 9 Island
- 9 Swamp
This deck wants to play Scandalmonger. You activate it to force your opponent's to discards cards, but when they activate it on you, you discard Physic Purge to cause them to lose five life or Dodecapod to get a free 5/5 creature in play or Metrognome to make 4 1/1 gnome tokens without paying any mana.
If your opponent forces you to empty your hand, Cutthroat il-Dal gains shadow, and that's a nasty 4 powered creature that's likely unblockable when it swings.
The point is to keep your opponents from forcing your discard while they do so to each other. Then you can use your cards to establish control of the board. You can steal creatures with Desertion and Mind Control, or make them with Oona and Metrognome. Oona is a quick clock because she Exile the cards instead of milling them, and makes a bunch of creatures. She's a good game ending creature for a deck like this.
Alright, let's look at one more crazy deck!
"Lightest Hour"
This deck wants to play Darkest Hour, and then changes it to White by playing Crystal Spray. Once you've done that, all creatures in play are White. It's yours too. It doesn't affect anything else, like casting cost or activations, just color.
Since they have all White creatures, the next thing you want to do is drop Phyrexian Bloodstock. This 3/3 common from Planeshift has an interesting ability – when it leaves the battlefield, you destroy target White creature. Hmm. If only we had some White creatures…
Then you want to cast Flickerform or use Momentary Blink to get the Bloodstock to leave play a bunch of times. You get to kill virtually anything you want. I think you might be able to kill a lot of creatures in this game. You also have Crystal Shard to bounce it back to your hand and replay, if you have the mana later in the game. That will also trigger the Bloodstock.
Since you are turning your opponent's creatures White anyway, I thought we should run some protection from White cards. Enter Stillmoon Cavalier, Ihsan's Shade, and Black Knight. Each of these can block all day long, or serve for damage through any defense.
After that, I wanted Dromar. We're playing the dragon's colors anyway, and its ability to bounce all creatures of the same color was just too much to ignore when combined with Darkest Hour. If you have too many creatures to kill with the Bloodstock, or it gets exiled or something, you can still use the Darkest Hour to bounce everything if needed.
I rounded out the deck with two of Dromar's Charm to gain some life, kill something small, or counter a spell. It gives you a surprise people might not have been expecting for those emergencies.
My mana base is a bit odd, but it has 12 ways of making White, and 12 ways of making Blue and 26 ways of making Black, so I think it's pretty solid.
Well, that brings us to the conclusion of another article here at CasualNation. I love this stuff, and I hope you enjoyed seeing these different types of Johnny decks. Anyway, let me know if you found any of the decks helpful.
See you next week,
Abe Sargent
