From: Dirk Rattat Subject: Shoreline/Orb, deck evolution Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 15:07:40 +0200 (MEST) Hello! A friend of mine in the UK told me about a Flooded Shoreline/Winter Orb deck at the end of June. The concept was fascinating so I decided to play it...(the original version was mono-blue) Sorry, I don't know who created it the first time, it was not my idea... But whoever it was, I had a lot of fun with it!!! It alway happend that my opponents excessively used their Thawing Glaciers to come around the Winter Orb or simply played land after land till they had enough to control the game. At that time I wished I had a few Armageddons in the deck... ;-) And with the return of Ice Age "Swords to Plowshares" had to be in it, so it changed the following way: Version 2.5, blue-white: 14 Island 4 Adarkar Wastes 1 Plains 1 Soldevi Excavations 1 Gemstone Mine 2 Quicksand 4 Sky Diamond 3 Flooded Shoreline 3 Winter Orb 3 Impulse 4 Counterspell 4 Force of Will 4 Dissipate 2 Chronatog 3 Suqata Firewalker 1 Sybilant Spirit 2 Abeyance 3 Armageddon 3 Swords to Plowshares ___ 62 The use of the creatures needs a few words: The Chronatog is a cheap creature who's power/toughness can be 4/5 if needed, especially if there's no other creature out, all Your lands are untapped and Your opponent suffers from the Orb (which should happen most of the time) ... ;-) If You have the control in a certain game, You probably might care less about the disadvantages of Your creatures, same with the Sibylant Spirit. The Sibylant was a "heavy hitter" for the late game and together with the Wall of Swords the answer to the "untouchables" who caused problems for this deck (one more wall in the sideboard). And Suq'Ata's are a MUST in this deck, so I went back to three in later versions... Later I tried to run with Mana Web/Dream Tides, but that didn't really improve the deck. Finally I took the "Dream Tides" to the sideboard... Most of the time it was fun to play, however not for my opponents... ;-) Sure there may be stronger decks out there in the Magic universe, but actually it was some kind of fun-deck for me. I never used it at a big tourney, but it did well in many duels against a lot of different decks. Have a try... DIRK RATTAT.