[Samassie2@hotmail.com]

Subject: Greatness always has precedents
The following are the various decks I've actually played in a regular weekly peasant tournament, their successfulness, and my analysis of their placings in their individual tournaments.  I gave each deck a name, some not the official names because either of my playing them before I knew official names or their dramatic changes from the norm.
 
Deck One:  Omni-Burn
This deck is sligh to the extreme using, to my knowledge, ONLY the very best commons MTG has to offer.
This is deck is statistically superior to every deck I've played AND played against.  But that's only the games in MY experience.  I place a huge factor of it's nearly undefeated record largely on the basis that I have faced absolutely NO white decks while playing it.  A simple C.O.P. has always put the fear of God in me when I play it and so pack anti white from time to time (flaring pain-common, Anarchy-"destroy all white permanents in play," uncommon, and Flashfires- "All plains in play are destroyed.", uncommon).
My actual record with the deck is 25-5 with a couple of those losses being to not paying attention, lol, and another two to a person who built a green deck just for the red deck with lots of green toughness 5 creatures.  My burn had a hard time taking toughness 5 out, as my uncommons were devoted to Pyroclasms that day and one browbeat.
I believe my burn deck to be extremely (and I am protective about it's superiority) superior to all the other burn decks I've seen because of two cards.  Very few of them use Fireblast and/or Scent of Cinder.  These are must haves in my opinion in mono red. 
 
 
OMNI-BURN:
Lightning Bolt x4 (c)
Incinerate x4 (c)
Scent of Cinder x4 (c)
Fireblast x4 (c)
Mogg Fanatic x4 (c)  [Tempest, Represent!]
Kyren Sniper x4 (c)
Goblin Grenade x4 (c)
Chain Lightning x4 (c)
3 commons of your choice, I recommend red burn of course, or utility goblins, like the tinkerer.  4 flame bursts/kindles, 3 Thunderbolts, Shocks/Seal of Fire, Stone Rain/Molten Rain, Goblin Gardener, Archlightning.
 
And I change up uncommons depending on the tournament and people showing up and how often I've played the deck.
 
Here is the original 5,:
Browbeat x4
Anarchy x1
 
I also use Pyroclasms for swarm zombie/goblin decks, replacing the anarchy and a few of the browbeats. The strategy in the deck relies largely on the user knowing when to burn the opponent and when, instead, to burn his creatures, and which ones.
 
20 mountains
 
 
Blue:
Storm Tides
This deck is mono blue where the user, like Pros-Tides, attempts to wait until he can or thinks he can make his combo go off successfully.  The deck, I realized, is almost identical to the Prosperity deck except for the main combo.
In this, the deck has one or both of two possible storm combos.  Either Temporal Fissure, or Brain Freeze.  My first deck of this design used one of both, 3 Isochron Scepters and a Telepathy, (Temp fissure is common).  My most potent idea for destroying this specific design is getting the 2 kill cards out of my hand before I can play them or put them under the scepter.
 
4xFrantic Search
3xCloud of Faeries
4xHigh Tides
2xCapsize [Respect the Tempest]
4xMerchant Scroll
3xArcane Denial or Counterspell
1xTemporal Fissure
4xAccumulated Knowledge
4xSeal of Removal
1xRewind
4xLotus Petal
1xBrain Freeze (Uncommon)
1xTelepathy (Uncommon)
3xIsochron Scepter (Uncommon)
 
21 Islands
 
Green:
Speed-Stick
This is a green fast, beat stick deck full of creatures and spells to beef your creatures.  Like the Omni-Burn I try to use only the best green spells I have ever seen.  No substitutes.  This is important.  Both for the deck's long run win percentage and the player's self esteem.  chuckle chuckle.  This may be 'peasant' magic but that's only the title relative to the money cost of the best in Type 1.  There's a lot of extremely efficient old cards out there and if you don't have them you're gonna lose to the ones who do.  I've only played this deck a grand total of 4 tournaments as it's just something to play when I need a change since similar decks to it are played very often, but it finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th twice.  These were 7-12 person tournaments.
 
4xRancor
4Wild Mongrel
4xGiant Growth
4xRiver Boa
4xBasking Rootwalla
4xScryb Sprites
4xScent of Ivy
3xBlastoderm
4xNaturalize
3xOverrun (Uncommon)
2xBrawn (Uncommon)
4xLand Grant
 
16 Forest
 
White:
Deck of Shame
This is my deck of shame.  It's called this because it's a bunch of white cards that I hate, said I would never play because I hated them, tore them up but then played anyway, because I was argued with about how powerful they were.
There is only two cards in all of magic that I think should be banned because they're so efficient and annoying.  Circles of protection and Sneak Attack.  I'm debating adding instant storm to this as it is so hard to counteract, (especially in multiplayer).  Circles are 2 mana to play and use colorless mana to use, meaning they're still very usable in 2 or 3 color decks which include the smallest of white to play them.  When out the opposing player has to get rid of the enchantment, or overwhelm the C.O.P. players land AND blockers with damage sources which is hard to do.  If white gets out a 'cop' red against a mono-red deck, it should be game.  If it gets out a 'cop' black against a mono black deck, it should be game.  The only exceptions to this is if the other players have anti white sideboard because red and black have almost NO way to remove enchantments otherwise, Especially for peasant.
 
3xRune of Protection Red
2xRune of Protection Black
3xRune of Protection Green
1xRune of Protection White
1xRune of Protection Blue
3xSoul Warden
4xCrimson Acolyte
3xObsidian Acolyte
3xPrismatic Strands
4xDevout Witness
3xRadiant's Judgement
4xCho-Manno's Blessing
 
1xStory Circle
1xRune of protection Artifact(only because of Mirodin)
1xSwords to Plowshares
1xEnlightened Tutor
1xAstral Slide
 
SB:
3xCOP of each color
 
A huge majority of the cards in the deck will be useless in each given match but that's okay, because all the ones that will not be needed cycle.
The two problems I've had with this deck are: Colorless damage and Wellwishers.  Colorless damage decks like Affinity and Cursed Rack/discard decks and Articreature-beatdown go through all my protection except for the single rune of Pro artifact and Devout Witnesses can't shoot them down fast enough.
The other was the elf deck where the only way I had of getting rid of the pesky Wellwishers was ONE swords to plowshares.  Something for you to think about when you rebuild this and modify it.  I made this deck when Omni-burn got a record so good that the people who played against it stopped playing or started trying to copy it or build decks just to beat it.  Many of them said it was just 'Too' powerful.  So I played a deck that I feared playing against to show them it wasn't that bad.  One Rune or Circle anti Red has Mono Burn screaming in anger. The decks placements are 2nd, 3rd, and 4th the three times I played it.
 
Black:
 
Back in the day when my Rath cycle, ... that's right, I said MY ... Rath cycle (Because it's my favorite, my set, when I got really big into magic tourneys and I have lots of respect for it, plus noone has more Tempest than I do. I'm the Tempest Master.)  was battling shadows against shadows and buyback vs buyback, creatures such as Dauthi Warlord, and Dauthi Jackal were fearsome among the field.  Today, someone would have to be a jacka$$ 'tard to play them.  Spells like Circle of Protection Shadow, and bloodfrenzy, and lands like maze of shadows are on the list of "Play in tournament only if you like looking stupid." nowadays.  Then there are the few cards that were once totally worthless now jewels in the desert like Mana Severance.  And then of course the long laundry list of all time bada$$ cards that will never become obsolete like Sapphire Medallion, Capsize, Verdant Force, Living Death, Tradewind Rider, and the legendary Cursed Scroll.  But some shadows have their usefulness and if you want some 98% effective unblockable creatures, here's the block to get them from.
 
In my black speed deck I use a few shadows and 4 Cabal Coffers for 8 drain spells.
 
4xDark Ritual
4xUnholy Strength
4xVampire Hounds
4xVampire Bats (I used Tempest's Pit Imps but you can use bats.)
4xCarnophage
4xDuress
2xDauthi Horror
2xDauthi Slayer
4xWithered Wretch (new compared to the rest of this stuff)
4xDrain Life
4xConsume Spirit (also new)
 
16Swamps
4Cabal Coffers
 
Stephen M.
Questions about strategy, modification, or sideboard?  .....
Don't ask me. 
Ha ha
later