Magic Emperor Fun

This past weekend, Bennie Smith - magicthegathering.com columnist - proposed a "Days of Emperor Fun" (scroll down to the section headed "IntoTheAether Invites YOU") on Magic Online. The reason for this was the lack of games using the 2/2/all spell ranges and the prevalence of the 1/1/1 format (please check out Bennie's column for more information on what these numbers mean). I enjoy the occasional emperor game offline, so I fired up Magic Online on Saturday night to give it a whirl.

I quickly found a game where I could play as the emperor, so I loaded this deck:

(Note: All cards can be looked up using the handy-dandy Gatherer tool on magicthegathering.com!)

Land (23):
4 Forest
1 Plains
3 Brushland
3 Quicksand
4 Selesnya Sanctuary
4 Temple Garden
4 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree

Creatures (7):
4 Selesnya Guildmage
3 Wood Elves

Other Spells (30):
4 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Glare of Subdual
4 Faith's Fetters
4 Devouring Light
2 Scatter the Seeds
3 Seed Spark
3 Honden of Cleansing Fire
4 Honden of Life's Web
2 Hour of Reckoning

The idea: create lots of tokens via the Guildmage, green Honden, or Vitu-Ghazi, and tap down the opposing flankers' creatures via Glare of Subdual. It also has Devouring Light, Quicksand, and Faith's Fetters to further neutralize their guys. So...how did it do?

This deck sucks.

It requires way too much help from the opposing team (they have to play creatures!) and doesn't help my flankers as much as I'd like. The first game saw me basically do nothing until one of my flankers was killed and the other conceded. I decided to join another game...this time as a flanker. The "now-infamous" deck...

Land (24):
11 Mountain
5 Plains
4 Boros Garrison
3 Quicksand
1 Miren, the Moaning Well

Creatures (20):
4 Boros Swiftblade
2 Firemane Angel
4 Frostling
4 Frostwielder
2 Sunhome Enforcer
4 Viashino Fangtail

Other Spells (16):
4 Sunforger
4 Char
4 Lightning Helix
4 Shock

This is a non-tournament worthy Boros deck, but it has some neat tricks. With Sunforger, you get to make a pretty lethal Swiftblade or Angel, and then post-combat, deal some direct damage via Sunforger's "search-for-a-burn-spell-and-kill-things-for-free" ability. The pingers (Frostwielder and the Fangtail) add some decent utility if the game stalls out. This makes a pretty good flanker deck, since you can send your burn directly at the emperor if you need to.

Of course, you could always just throw a Char at the other emperor's creatures. From Bennie's article today (I'm GL2270):

"When he tossed a Char at my Nephilim, my first thought was “Hm, isn't that going to kill him?” Then with horror I quickly realized that I would control the copies of Char that Ink-Treader Nephilim spawned, each hitting me for 2 points of damage. A quick count of the available creature targets around the board and I knew I was toast, literally."

Bennie was at 14 life, and there were seven creatures on the board he could target...

"gg"

I felt kind of bad (not too much, but a little), so I switched back to my original deck. I ended up being a flanker this time, and my emperor was none other than...

Mark Gottlieb, Magic Rules Manager.

Pants.

I'm a touch starstruck. It passes. However, I wish I had brought my Chars. No Chars, bad deck, and me. w00t! Actually, we're competitive, but Bennie's deck does it's thing, and we go down for the count.

All in all, a great time was had. Thanks to Bennie for setting everything up, and for the pub in his article. I hope we can do this again!

Maybe I'll remember the Chars...