Pojo's MTG
MTG Home
Message Board
News & Archives
Deck Garage
BMoor Dolf BeJoSe

Columnists
Paul's Perspective
Jeff Zandi
DeQuan Watson
Jordon Kronick
IQ
Aburame Shino
Rare Hunter
Tim Stoltzfus
WiCkEd
Judge Bill's Corner

Trading Card
Game
Card of the Day
Guide for Newbies
Decks to Beat
Featured Articles
Peasant Magic
Fan Tips
Tourney Reports

Other
Color Chart
Book Reviews
Online Play
MTG Links
Staff

120x90 Ad Space
For Rent!

BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
BMoor's Deck Garage Contest 2009:
Five Colors, Six Choices
April 28, 2009

Welcome back to the Deck Garage, everybody! I'm not fixing a deck this time. It's time for all you loyal fans to show me that you've learned something.

As I alluded to earlier, the release of the new set Alara Reborn also allows me to stage another contest. Ever since the Stuffy Doll contest a few years back, I've wanted to have another one. The main reason I haven't is that there's never been a card that stuck in my craw as hard as Stuffy Doll since then. I also was hesitant to hold a contest around any non-artifact card, since if I were to hold, say, a contest revolving around Manabarbs, everyone would need to build a red deck. Or at least a partially red deck, and so most folks would likely just stick with monocolor.

Since the color of you deck has taken on a whole new dimension in Shards of Alara block, I have decided that for this contest, I'll be going at it from the other direction. For Stuffy Doll, I banned red decks. This time, I expect every deck will be red... and white, blue, green, and black. You guessed it: it's time to go five-color. And not just any five-color, either.

DECK GARAGE CONTEST CHALLENGE: FIVE-COLOR CARDS OF ALARA BLOCK

For this contest, your mission is to build a deck around one of the cards from Shards of Alara block that are all five colors. Your choices are: Child of Alara, Fusion Elemental, Maelstrom Archangel, Conflux, Progenitus, and Maelstrom Nexus. Pick any one of those six and build a deck around it. Submit your decklist to me, I'll judge it, and a total of six winners will be declared-- one for each card.

Decks will be judged according to the following criteria:

1. Focus on the chosen card. No fair shoehorning a few Fusion Elemental into a netdecked 5-color control deck. Ideally, you should be winning with the card you chose, but since neither Conflux nor Maelstrom Nexus actually do anything directly to your opponent, I will allow another card in your deck to be your win condition. That said, if removing the chosen card from the decklist and replacing it with any other random card makes it run better, you've clearly missed the point.

2. Creativity. This is subjective, I know, but the rule of thumb is that if more than 10% of the people who choose a card use almost the exact same strategy, that strategy becomes disqualified. Taken to the other extreme, if one of the six cards above only gets chosen by one contestant, that contestant automatically wins. I admit that this is dependent on something you as a contestant has no actual control over, but I have confidence that if you all think about it hard enough, you'll be able to find a strategy few enough other people will think of.

3. Functionality. It doesn't need to make Top 8 at a PTQ, but you should be able to convince me that it would at least hold its own among a kitchen table full of Magic players, playing both multiplayer and in duels on the side.
Also, this means that your deck should show enough knowledge of the rules to function as intended. If your deck depends on a combo, make sure that the combo actually works the way you think it does. Any rules misunderstandings will hurt your chances. Rules misunderstandings that cause the premise of your deck to not work may disqualify you. If you have any doubts, I recommend sending an E-mail asking about it to the writers of Cranial Insertion over at MTGSalvation.

Finally, some guidelines on deck construction.

1. Obviously, it must contain four copies of the card you choose.

2. Once you've picked one of the six, the other five are banned. Using Conflux to search for Child of Alara, Maelstrom Archangel, Fusion Elemental, Maelstrom Nexus, and Progenitus may be a hilarious idea, but it makes judging too complicated for me. I don't need to be trying to figure out which card you picked so I know who to judge you against. Please pick one and stick with it.

3. Monocolor cards are banned. This is balls-to-the-wall multicolor time. Colorless artifacts and nonbasic lands are okay, as a concession to the reality of mana bases. Hybrids cards are also okay.

Other than that, whatever you want to try is fine. Decks need not be Standard legal, or even Extended legal. Feel free to dig around for multicolor gems from Ravnica, Invasion block, or heck, even Legends if you want. Banning all monocolor cards already gives this contest a banned list longer than any tournament format, so go crazy with the Power Nine if that's what you want. After all, I suspect most of you won't actually put these decks together physically and play with them-- just write me an E-mail about the idea.

Speaking of, the E-mails are due in to me by midnight, June 1st (when June 1st becomes June 2nd). Five weeks are enough, right? Include the card you picked in your subject line, i.e. "Progenitus Contest Entry". One entry per person.

I can't guarantee when winners will be announced, but it will be early to mid-June, I expect. There will be prizes, to be announced later.

So start thinking about your entry! And good luck to all of you!

~BMoor