Last week, we ditched Rootha, Mastering the Moment for Muddle, the Everchanging. We ventured through the Undercity, triggered a toolbox of enters abilities, chained extra combats, and ultimately sent our opponents to the couch to await the next game.
We were well-rounded adventurers who were good at many things.
This week, we are good at one thing.
Being hated.
The first game is the only game we will ever have a chance of winning. Once our opponents know what’s up, we will lose every time we choose this deck.
Let’s explore being hated.
With Good Reason
Every Magic player likes playing Magic. Not playing Magic isn’t why we play. Resource denial strategies (like Stax) reduce game actions leading to unfun games.
Mark Rosewater echoes the sentiment, claiming Wizards makes land destruction, but tries not to make it a viable strategy.
“We make discard cards and land destruction cards. The thing we avoid, because it is highly disliked by a large majority of the player base, is decks that are exclusively all discard or all land destruction. Note, we also make it so all counterspells isn’t viable as well.”
Land destruction is the most hated of the resource denial strategies. So much so that building in this way would put us in bracket four, and our opponents will win before our janky, budget creatures hit the board.
When our bracket four opponent plays Narset, Parter of Veils and Timetwister on turn two, let’s at least show them the Ogre Arsonist in our hand before shuffling back to our role as the kitchen table bully.
This suite of b-team, land-destroying beaters utilizes Muddle’s myriad and squeezes out our opponents’ ability to meaningfully keep pace with the game once our hated plan is finally online.
With our opponents squeezed on resources, a ragtag team of Rishadan pirates from the intentionally underpowered Mercadian Masques block will come to collect.
Carried from last build, in a game state with Starfield Vocalist or Twinflame Travelers in play, myriad will cause each of our opponents to sacrifice four permanents if they can’t pay the tax.
Imagine how many times our opponents will hate to hear, “Do you pay the one?” without ever investing in a Rhystic Study.
Volatile Stormdrake really should have been in our adventuring toolbox build from last week, but I failed to notice it until too late. With myriad, we create two drakes, swap them with our opponents’ commanders, then the drakes are exiled at end of combat.
Fair trades are a loved part of collecting Magic.
Stealing is hated.
Seeing your commander on the other side of the board is hated.
Volatile Stormdrake is at home in this build.
Doubling Down
Because we are looking for one consistent effect, this build is going to lean into the token generation strategies present in the precon build. Once our land destruction and tax creatures are in play, it’s time to churn out as many enters abilities as we can.
There are many budget options available to us. In this build, we landed on Cackling Counterpart, Quasiduplicate, and Mirage Mockery as cheap, token-making instants and sorceries that trigger Muddle. As a nice bonus, Cackling Counterpart and Quasiduplicate offer the opportunity to be recast, while Mirage Mockery can additionally copy our Lodestone Golem (below) or our Solemn Simulacrum.
Sublime Epiphany and Season of Weaving are much more expensive to cast, but their controlling flexibility will help us close the door if the game starts to swing in our favor or help us get back to parity if we are falling behind.
Saheeli, the Sun’s Brilliance is another creature that could have made it into last week’s build, but was a late—perhaps unnecessary—cut. Similarly, Determined Iteration was a card I was hoping to have work last week, but we just didn’t have enough support to see it consistently do its thing. Now that we have a consistent plan and many tokens, Saheeli and Determined Iteration sculpt our devious aims.
(S)taxes
Yep, hated.
Last week, we included a small protection suite to ensure we made it to the mid to late game and were able to go off with trigger doubling shenanigans. This week, with our opponents low on resources, we are instead leaning into taxing effects to dissuade or otherwise prevent our opponents from engaging with us or our permanents.
Crystal Shard doubles as a bounce effect that will prevent our opponents from tapping out. Monastery Siege’s Dragons ability creates a hefty barrier to entry for opponents looking to interact and will likely be a near auto include in future blue decks. As a pillow-fort staple, Propaganda should buy us the time we need to deploy our clunky ponza beaters.
God-Pharaoh’s Statue and Lodestone Golem are here to be the final nails in the coffin for our opponents and offer our game plan a small degree of inevitability. Token copies of Lodestone Golem consistently produced with Determined Iteration will be especially disheartening for those hoping to hit land drops.
Carried from Last Build
We carried over the core elements of last week’s build and trimmed back on some.
Both of our trigger doublers are staying, but two of our extra combat cards are out. We are more interested in opponents conceding out of boredom than ending the game out of nowhere, so removing Port Razer and Overpowering Attack felt on theme.
All of our instants and sorceries that grant unblockability have been preserved, but Gossip’s Talent is out. With the stax pieces coming in, we have less room for an enchantment, and Talent’s flicker ability is somewhat redundant with our token makers. Our trio of evasion lands returns to seal the deal.
Our protection suite lost You See a Guard Approach. If things go to plan, our opponents will be resource restricted enough not to deploy a large amount of removal and Monastery Siege should keep us safe.
Also, as self-conflicted bad guys, we are secretly hoping to lose, and not protecting our synergies is on-theme self-sabotage.
One Last Note
This build has significantly higher mana costs for significantly less (immediately) impactful cards. If we are genuinely trying to make this deck function, we are going to require more speed.
Izzet Signet, Mind Stone, and Ebony Fly—while not that exciting—are necessary additions. Classic land destruction builds relied on Birds of Paradise as early ramp for turn two Stone Rain. With three opponents, we will need the extra ramp to get ahead of their plans.
Cuts
No big spells. No spellcasting synergies. No clunky removal.
Newly cut this week are Archmage Emeritus, Goldspan Dragon, and Galazeth Prismari. It was tough to pull the dragons and card draw, but we really need cheap mana rocks to get our plan going, and something had to give. Ramping on turn four or five is just not where we’re at with this build.
- Rootha, Mastering the Moment
- Dance with Calamity
- Dirgur Focusmage
- Rousing Refrain
- Leitmotif Composer
- Surge to Victory
- Prismari Pianist
- Mana Geyser
- Renegade Bull
- Throes of Chaos
- Harmonic Prodigy
- Volcanic Torrent
-Thunderclap Drake
- Volcanic Salvo
- Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer
- Big Score
- Veyran, Voice of Duality
- Archmage Emeritus
- Storm-Kiln Artist
- Goldspan Dragon
- Rootha, Mercurial Artist
- Dig Through Time
- Stormcatch Mentor
- Chaos Warp
- Magma Opus
- Aether Gale
- Reality Shift
- Creative Technique
- Replication Technique
- Archmage Emeritus
- Manaform Hellkite
- Prismari Charm
- Chain Reaction
- Treasure Cruise
- Resculpt
- Island
- Abstract Performance
- Terramorphic Expanse
- Furygale Flocking
- Temple of the False God
- Galazeth Prismari
Cleanup Step
Land destruction is hated. Stax is hated.
Ultimately, if we are going to be hated, it’s ok to also be bad. It’s ok to lose.
This build is pretty bad, definitely hated, and will always lose at a bracket four table.
The initial inspiration for this build came from the ragtag Rishadan pirates from Mercadian Masques. We leaned into resource denial strategies and found a home for many unloved and underplayed cards.
And that’s ok.
As always, Table for Four believes in fun, kitchen table Magic, even when that means being bad at being hated.
