Hello Nation! I hope you are having fun cracking the packs of the latest set to hit the shelves. While you are doing that, no doubt you are thinking of ways to use the new cards in your decks. Perhaps you will slide some into existing decks, and others may suggest a new deck to you.

One of the things I've always liked doing is taking the newest cards from a set and using them in decks. I think it makes a fun article to see several decks built with the new cards. Today, we are going to do such an article. So, let's skip the foreplay, and get right to the article!

Consecrated Sphinx

I mentioned last week how powerful this card truly is. It works with lots of stuff, and no stuff. Frankly, it just works with Magic. The flyer beatingness and size are obviously nice, but the main reason to play this is the ueber card advantage you yield.

There are a lot of cards that I want to try out with the Sphinx, but one little guy really came to mind from the days of old. There is a card out there that I wanted to dust off today. It's a little uncommon that was considered good enough to reprint in Portal (as a rare).

It was a member of the posse of one of the earliest decks to go off and kill someone right then and there. Playing against the deck was the first time I truly experienced the helplessness of just observing someone else play the game without any interference from me.

This little number is, of course, Prosperity. By playing a Prosperity with a Consecrated Sphinx in play, you are drawing a vast number of cards. Basically, you are allowing your opponents to each draw X cards, while you draw 2NX+X, where N is the number of players at the table that are not you. For example, imagine a four-player game. You play Prosperity for a simple four cards. They draw four each, and you draw twenty-eight. (Four for the Prosperity, eight for each opponent: twenty-eight cards.) That's a game-changer. Even a simple three cards for Prosperity is twenty-one cards for you, and three for each opponent. You will massively change the game with that card. You can only imagine the card advantage you get with a bigger Prosperity. Plus, you'll never deck yourself with the Sphinx's cards, since they are not required to be drawn (read the "may" effect).

(Imagine playing a land, then popping it off the turn after you play your Sphinx when you have seven mana available—that's 7 mana, for six cards drawn, at a four-person table . . . say hello to forty-two cards!)

Let's take a look at a deck that uses this interaction.

"Prosperous Sphinxes"

• (60)
• 4 Prosperity
• 4 Consecrated Sphinx
• 4 Vision Skeins
• 4 Whispersilk Cloak
• 4 Wall of Tears
• 2 Firestorm
• 4 Psychatog
• 4 Unsummon
• 4 Impulse
• 4 Shivan Reef
• 4 Underworld River
• 4 Lonely Sandbar
• 2 Crumbling Necropolis
• 12 Island

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Okay, let's take a look under the hood.

This deck has two win conditions. The first sees you use Firestorm once or twice to blow out your foes. Play it once, put it on the stack, and then play the other while still on the stack (in order to have more targets to make it bigger); you'll deal a ton of damage to everything.

The other win condition sees a certain Mr. Teeth return from semi-retirement. You can discard a ton of cards to him, and swing for one kill. Then you can eat a graveyard for another. Rawr! He can also take down anyone who did not die to a Firestorm, or who is behind an Ivory Mask or similar effect.

In order to protect your two main creatures, we are seeing a nice little Whispersilk Cloak. This is how you make sure your Sphinx stays alive. It's also how you make sure that your kill condition stays alive post-Prosperity. It's also how you make sure that good ol' Psyche McGee manages to get through any defenses. It serves a lot of valuable purposes here.

I included a quartet of Unsummons in order to give you some ways of using these extra cards you have to bounce your foes. You can send them back to the AEther with ease. Another use for this slot would be to include an emergency list of 4 Counterspell to use as a way of stopping a counter on a key element, or to otherwise stop your foes. Due to the nature of this deck, perhaps Forbid would be a better choice.

In addition to Prosperity, I included a set of Vision Skeins. They can get you started, you can play them early to grab raw cards and make friends, and even with just a Skeins, you will outdraw a four-person table, fourteen to six.

Wall of Tears is your early drop to try and keep people off your back. Other options are obvious and useful as well. Finally, due to the nature of this deck—wanting good cards early—you have Impulse.

I am playing the lands that come into play ready to go because you may need Black or Red mana off a Prosperity so you can drop it and play your Firestorm.

(Side note—which is pimpier for your Commander decks—Asian Prosperity or English Portal? I go with English—the Foglio art is awesome!)

Let's take a look at the next deck.

Phyrexian Hydra

This is an interesting card. It resembles a previous bad rare from Visions, and now that there are two of them out, it seems like a good time to build a deck around them. With all of the -1/-1 counter love we've seen recently, there are a few ways to abuse these guys. Let's take a look!

"LichenHydra"

• (62)
• 4 Phyrexian Hydra
• 4 Lichenthrope
• 4 Flourishing Defenses
• 4 Heartmender
• 4 Serrated Biskelion
• 4 Quillspike
• 4 Plaguemaw Beast
• 4 Cultivate
• 2 Kodama's Reach
• 2 Contagion Clasp
• 4 Llanowar Reborn
• 4 Tranquil Thicket
• 18 Forest

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With both Lichenthrope and Phyrexian Hydra sharing a similar ability, it just seemed natural to build around it. Flourishing Defenses is your secret power card. Every time your two main guys take damage, they get counters, and that makes a ton of tokens for your team. Of course, your Lichenthrope will remove a counter each turn, and your Hydra has infect, so they are not exactly the same, but pretty close!

Heartmender will remove a counter from each player in your team every upkeep. It will come back from death with Persist, and that counter it gets will make a token. Then it will clean off counters, including its own.

Serrated Biskelion will tap to give itself a counter and give a foe one. That triggers Flourishing Defenses twice, and Heartmender will heal it automatically. Contagion Clasp will make a token from Defenses by targeting a foe, and will allow some tricks.

This deck has tricks with Proliferate. Plaguemaw Beast can sacrifice a friend to Proliferate. I'd recommend an elf token or Heartmender, which will just come back anyway. You can then add counters to things that already have them, and make a ton of elf tokens. If you managed to get a poison counter on a foe with your Hydra, you can add to that again and again. Also, note the interaction between a 7- power Hydra with Infect and Flourishing Defenses. Ouch.

Quillspike will pull counters off your guys to make itself very big, very fast. It can make that Hydra a 7/7 from a 2/2 while also giving you a 16/16 until the end of the turn. Double ouch!

Cultivate and the Reach were included just to make sure you have enough mana to go. I included Llanowar Reborn for this deck, since it will give you a +1/+1 counter which you can use to remove a -1/-1 counter proactively, or to allow a Heartmender coming back from Persist to not have any counters on it.

I like this deck a lot and it has a lot of recent tricks in it. The more I think about it, the more fun it seems to be to play.

Massacre Wurm and Sangromancer

Both of these cards are awesome in multiplayer. You can easily slide them into Black decks, from Commander decks like Chainer, Dementia Master, and Sol'kanar the Swamp King to a nice little sixty- card deck, which we will build below.

The awesome thing about these cards is just how damning they are together. Imagine killing a foe's creature with these guys on your side. Zounds! It's a 5-life swing per creature that dies (3 for you, minus 2 for them). Plus, the Wurm helps to kill those weasels.

There are two major ways to build this deck, and we are going to build both, and then talk about them together. Two decks for two cards—it makes sense.

"MassacreMancer Version 1"

• (60)
• 4 Massacre Wurm
• 4 Sangromancer
• 3 Consume Spirit
• 4 Ambition's Cost
• 2 Reiver Demon
• 3 Seal of Banishing
• 4 Nantuko Shade
• 2 Nirkana Revenant
• 2 Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
• 4 Nirkana Cutthroat
• 2 Promise of Power
• 3 Cabal Coffers
• 2 Bojuka Bog
• 21 Swamp

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"MassacreMancer Version 2"

• (60)
• 4 Massacre Wurm
• 4 Sangromancer
• 4 Varchild's War-Riders
• 4 AEther Flash
• 4 Seal of Fire
• 4 Browbeat
• 2 Witch's Mist
• 2 Mind Shatter
• 2 Deathbringer Thoctar
• 2 Cauldron of Souls
• 2 Void
• 4 Forbidden Orchard
• 4 Akoum Refuge
• 4 Lavaclaw Reaches
• 7 Swamp
• 7 Mountain

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Each of these two decks are built around the same two cards, but end up with very different decks.

The first deck is a nice mono-Black control (MBC) deck with the two new additions filling in slots rather nicely. The second uses the cards to fuel a game-winning engine with a nice little combo.

The first one has many of the cards you want from MBC. Lots of mana-making, lots of creature destruction, some good early creatures and good late creatures, repeatable creature removal, and nasty late-game spells.

Since you want to kill many creatures, Reiver Demon seemed a natural high-end spell. Drana was a nice, repeatable creature-kill effect. Add these to Consume Spirit, the Massacre Wurm itself, and Seal of Banishing, and you have a lot of removal.

You also need creatures that can win the game: classics like Nantuko Shade for the early game, Nirkana Cutthroat for the middle game, and your larger creature (Revenant, Drana, Wurm, Demon) for the late game you will surely survive into.

Card draw is important in any deck, so I ran a quick foursome of Ambition's Cost. With the life-gaining from Sangromancer and Consume Spirit, the life loss should be easy to suck up. A pair of the versatile Promise of Power are also included for cards, a demon, or both—to suit your need.

Bojuka Bog was tossed in to take out opposing graveyards. I thought it would be nice to have something to do against recursion-oriented decks.

Finally, we have mana-making with both the Revenant and Cabal Coffers. They fuel the pump of Revenant, Shades, Consume Spirit, Drana, and the level-up of a Cutthroat. They can also give you the entwine on a Promise of Power.

Anyway, there's a nice MBC deck using new cards to good effect. Let's look at the more combo-oriented blend of Massacre Wurm and Sangromancer.

The second deck uses AEther Flash to kill opposing creatures with a great deal of rapidity. I'm recycling Witch's Mist from a recent Powerstone Minefield deck I used a few weeks ago. Who wants to play a creature when you've got an AEther Flash, and an untapped Mist with the mana to run it? That's going to give you time.

Once you've set up, you have a little engine. Sangromancer and Massacre Wurm will really reward you for killing opposing creatures—which AEther Flash will help with. Your foes will refuse to play creatures, so give them some of their own with Forbidden Orchard and Varchild's War-Riders.

Meanwhile, you can swing with impunity into your foe's red zone, since they will be creature-light.

One of the things I try to do when building a combo deck like this is figure out the best way to attack it. That's a Wrath of God. I don't play my creatures, I Wrath of God you, and there go all of your toys, and your way of killing me. In order to counter that plan, we've got Cauldron of Souls. Simply tap it and bring back your team. Yes, they will be a bit smaller, and your 3/3's will die (sad face), but you'll be able to keep going with the kill cards—War-Riders and Wurm. After all, the Sangromancer is just a way of staying alive, and the Thoctar is a trick, not the engine.

(I also included a set of Lavaclaw Reaches as a way to win post-Wrath.)

Speaking of the Deathbringer Thoctar, can you say hello to a big creature? I can! It will get big, and then it can throw off counters to kill off things or players. It can add to some AEther Flash damage to knock off larger creatures, and it can kill off a low-life player.

With a large number of cards that use many Black and Red symbols, I pushed the amount of lands that tap for both. Use the Orchard often! Your Wurm will kill them off when it hits play.

Finally, I included a pair of tricks. One is the Mind Shatter. Your foes may learn quickly not to play things. Punish them by stripping out their hand. Sangromancer will really love that!

Also, we have a pair of Voids. They can be set to a number that will off one or more annoying artifacts. They will also take out creatures (which you want) and strip cards out of a hand (which is a nice bonus). With a large grip from holding cards back, you should have a better chance of hitting several cards from the Void's discard.

For a nasty card for this deck, look at Burning Sands. Yeah, I told you so.

The above decks give you two ways to rock some great creatures. Let's build you one more deck for today, and then we'll finish the article.

Praetor's Counsel

Last week, I talked at length about a ton of ways to use this, and I'm going to abuse one right now.

"Counsel of Dreams"

• (58)
• 4 Dream Halls
• 3 Praetor's Counsel
• 1 Time Warp
• 2 Last Word
• 4 Voidslime
• 4 Snakeform
• 1 Gaea's Blessing
• 2 AEther Mutation
• 4 Fact or Fiction
• 2 Opportunity
• 4 Temporal Spring
• 1 Blatant Thievery
• 1 Biorythm
• 4 Yavimaya Coast
• 4 Breeding Pool
• 2 Simic Growth Chamber
• 2 Faerie Conclave
• 6 Island
• 7 Forest

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This is going to be fun to go off with! We have a little creatureless deck to end the article with.

The goal of the deck is to drop Dream Halls, play big things with it, and keep going with Praetor's Counsel. When you activate Dream Halls, you discard the card, and then play the spell, and the card goes to your graveyard. That means you have a lot of cards in there to bring back.

Since you can discard a Green card to play a Green spell, and the same with a Blue card and spell, I included as many Green/Blue cards as possible. Some are winning conditions, but most are designed to keep you alive until you find and play Dream Halls.

We have counter magic, bounce, Snakeform, and more. Voidslime is an obvious counter for this deck, since you can play it to protect cards, and discard it to play either Green or Blue stuff. Last Word is included as a late counter, and as a way to counter something major without having to bother with a counter war.

Snakeform is a way to slow down stuff for a turn, and draw you a card to keep going. You can use it to run into a Saproling token (see Aether Mutation) in order to kill, or just to slow down. Once Dream Halls is out, it can be discarded for playing something nifty and keen.

Temporal Spring is included for three major reasons. First of all, it can slow down a foe's attack, and feel free to use it as such. Second, it can be pitched to play a bigger Green or Blue spell. Finally, you can play it once you have control of the board to bounce every single permanent opponents have to their library. A regular bounce spell would put them back into their hand to fuel Dream Halls. This is not the best plan. It works, but the Spring is better.

Aether Mutation is expensive and meant to slow someone down and make critters for defense. It also has two colors, and the army it makes can swing for you once you have bounced all of the creatures at the table that aren't yours.

Fact or Fiction is included as a way to find the right card. You need Dream Halls; this helps you find it one turn before you would play it. Opportunity is meant to be played later and get you cards. You can play it pre–Dream Halls, but it's really meant for post-action.

The single copy of Gaea's Blessing is to be used only in an absolute emergency. It was originally Research/Development and could still be used as that. I wanted a way to extend the game past sixty cards. R/D would do it as well.

I'm playing Time Warp instead of something else (Time Stretch, for example) because you can play spells again and again, and this can be played before you Dream Halls, just to give you an extra turn. It's basically a proactive Fog against the entire table when under the gun.

Once the Dream Halls is out, you can discard your hand to play a bunch of stuff (discard a Praetor's Counsel if you have two), then fire off a Praetor's Counsel. The result is regaining all of those cards. You still have a Counsel in your hand. If you just have one Counsel so far, use Opportunity and Fact or Fiction to keep drawing until you find another. Then you can play as many spells as you want. Possible results:

You have a ton of turns with Time Warp. You have all of the permanents on the board under your control with Blatant Thievery.

You have a hoard of 1/1 Saprolings with Aether Mutation.

You deck someone with Opportunity.

You play Biorhythm to kill your foes while you have Saprolings and/or stolen creatures (or an active Faerie Conclave.)

(Remember that you do not have to discard at the end of each turn after you resolve a Counsel.)

You have killed everyone, despite having no creatures, and you likely killed people through the attack phase. This combination of deadly cards allow you to get through any defense they might have—Ivory Mask, Privileged Position, a super high life, or whatever else they throw at you.

One mistake people make when playing against Dream Halls is to assume that they can play cards as if they had flash. They cannot. They are unable to discard a Swords to Plowshares to drop an Akroma on your turn. However, please note the ability of a counter deck to counter you even though they are untapped and may not be playing the pitch counters, once you have out the Halls. Be careful.

You can replace Breeding Pool with the tri-tap from Shards block—Seaside Citadel.

Whew! Well, I hope you enjoyed today's article! Next week we'll count down the Top Ten Pieces of Equipment of All Time. Interested? See you then!

Abe Sargent