Madness, You Say?

For this blog's inaugural post, I am going to talk about a subject that has grown on me throughout my years in college: Magic: The Gathering. I was introduced to this game during my sophmore year of college and have been playing ever since. I should follow this statement with a disclaimer; I am no tournament player. I much prefer casual play amongst my friends where cards from many different Magic sets can combine in unique, fun, and sometimes, as I will demonstrate later in this post, ridiculous ways. I am a big fan of EDH, or Commander, since it allows many cards that don't normally see a lot of play their chance to shine, and have created four of my own decks following this format, with a fifth in the works. My latest creation, featuring Melek, Izzet Paragon as its illustrious commander, is the focus of the rest of this post.

While hitting random on the Gatherer website one night (a wonderful way to find interesting cards), I came across a card from the original Ravnica set called Eye of the Storm. For those who aren’t familiar with the blue enchantment, the exact wording of the card is as follows: “Whenever a player plays an instant or sorcery card, remove it from the game. Then that player copies each instant or sorcery card removed from the game with Eye of the Storm. For each copy, the player may play the copy without paying its mana cost”. I had also recently picked up a card called Hive Mind, another blue enchantment that says, “Whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery spell, each other player copies that spell. Each of those players may choose new targets for his or her copy”. Since the Izzet are one of my favorite guilds from Ravnica, I immediately began thinking of a spell-focused blue/red deck where my objective wasn’t necessarily to win, but to give everyone the opportunity to “have fun”. Upon doing an advanced search for cards containing spell randomizing effects, I finally ended up with the following build for my “Chaos Deck”:

Creatures

Melek, Izzet Paragon

Mindclaw Shaman

Wee Dragonauts

Chandra’s Spitfire

Izzet Chronarch

Kiln Fiend

Nivix Guildmage

Augur of Bolas

Gelectrode

Shrewd Hatchling

Fire Servant

Djinn Illuminatus

Surrakar Spellblade

Galvanoth

Izzet Guildmage

Goblin Electromancer

Instants/Sorceries

Dizzy Spell

Erratic Mutation

Sleight of Hand

Brainstorm

Radiate

Rift Bolt

Mugging

Spy Network

Flame Slash

Fire/Ice

Fling

Lightning Bolt

Dissipate

Foresee

Chandra’s Outrage

Memory Lapse

Perilous Research

Turnabout

Traitorous Instinct

Magma Spray

Scrambleverse

Counterspell

Discombobulate

Fireball

Invoke the Firemind

Izzet Charm

Prophetic Bolt

Massive Raid

Warp World

Enchantments

Flight of Fancy

Quicksilver Dagger

Grip of Chaos

Quest for Pure Flame

Cloak of Invisibility

Hive Mind

Wild Evocation

Mystic Remora

Counterbalance

Confusion in the Ranks

Rhystic Study

Eye of the Storm

Artifacts

Izzet Signet

Isochron Scepter

Sphinx Bone Wand

Skull of Orm

Lands

1 x Izzet Boilerworks

1 x Saprazzan Skerry

1 x Reliquary Tower

1 x Nivix, Aerie of the Firemind

1 x Izzet Guildgate

16 x Islands

18 x Mountains

           

The only enchantment that I would like to include that I don’t currently have is Possibility Storm, if only to further increase the hilarious situations this deck causes in larger multiplayer games.

To give an actual gameplay example, 3 of my friends and I recently sat down to play some EDH. One of my friends didn’t have any decks with them but is also an Izzet fan, so I lent her my Melek deck saying only, “Cause mayhem”. I was not disappointed. In the late game she finally managed to play Wild Evocation and then got lucky on her next turn when it allowed her to cast Hive Mind for free. The following turn saw Grip of Chaos put into play, which visibly started to worry my other two friends. As a side note, I had been knocked out at this point while playing my artifact deck (another of my personal favorites), and so I was sitting back and enjoying the show. Finally, a couple of turns later, Wild Evocation allowed her to cast Rift Bolt, and to top it off she threw in a Radiate. This meant that even before the copies of Radiate given to my other friends by Hive Mind could be factored in, there were already 20 Rift Bolts on the stack, all with randomly assigned targets. At this point we all decided it was more important to find some dinner and so declared that everyone was obliterated in the massive wave of energy. Simply perfect.

Thanks for reading and I hope it was enjoyable. If it wasn’t, tell me and I’ll try to be more interesting (no easy task). Otherwise, look for me to post content about videogames as well as Magic, and even my own “exciting” adventures as I teach myself game development (which might mean short, free game downloads for you) while looking for work with a Bachelor’s in Physics.

- Arcthos