Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 14:32:56 +0000 From: Russell K Bulmer Subject: Time AND card advantage A time ago Eric Taylor wrote an article to this list called "it's about TIME"... I ignored this... then I was browsing thru the Magic Dojo and came across it again, and found it very interesting. However, I didn't really like the idea of pure time advantage, I wanted to see if I could get card advantage as well... Anyway, this is the deck (roughly... I'm at work and don't have a listing on me)... I'll explain the ideas after Mana 9 Island 1 Soldevi Excavations 1 Bad River 8 Swamps 1 UDP 4 dark Ritual 24 NB - There should be pain lands, suck lands, whatever, bt I've put this deck together from left over stuff Artifacts 2 Helm of Obedince 1 Feldon's Cane 3 Blue 4 Memory lapse 4 Unstable Mutation 2 Vision charm 4 Phantom Warrior 4 Man-o-War 2 Undo 18 Black 3 Painful memories 3 Agonizing Memories 4 Nektraal 4 Shadow Guildmage 14 Total 61 cards The time based part of the deck uses the undos, man-o-wars, memory lapses, agonising memories, painful memories However, there are other things going on... The unstable mutations are great on the phantom warriors, and you can use the shadow mages can return then to your library when they are about to die. The Shadow Guildmages are key to this deck working, not just saving dying critters. They can recycle man-o-wars or Nektraals as needed to kill of all their critters, while the phanton warriors do the damage. The undo's work well to return one of their big critters and one of YOUR critters, a Nektraal or a man-o-war, you then get card advantage with the nektraal or time advantage with the man-o-war.... As for the visions charms and helm of obedience... not too sure about these yet... will have to play test more. The basic idea is this... The helm can be used to grab a critter you just painful memoried onto your opponents library. Or just use in an emergancy to get a blocker in play... Or to mill a memory lapsed spell, and if it's a critter... all the better As for the visions charms... well, you can play during upkeep v's mono decks to color hose them for a turn. Or if you've just agonizing memoried them, you know what color they'll be needed, so hose them of that color. Also after an agonizing memory or a memory lapse, mill the top 4 cards off their library. But probably my fave is to pahse out the helm after actvating it, thus getting the critter and getting the helm back next turn. The deck doesn't have a side board yet, and could really do with some power cards that are in other decks... but I'd appreciate some comments on the deck anyway, both general and specific. Cheers Russell