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Editor: Staff - 29th August 2006
SINGLE CARD STRATEGY CHALLENGE #3
Welcome to the third installmentof the Single Card Strategy Challenge. Let's do a quick recap of the format for the article. The format for these articles will be: • Cover the decks and winner from the previous challenge. • Discuss the basic merits of the chosen card for the article. • Throw out a few combos with the card or ways it can be used. • Perhaps a deck list or two of my own. • A challenge to you to build a deck list that highlights the uses of the chosen card. The card for the last challenge was QuirkingRanger. I chose 'Riding Rangers' from Evan De Beck for its unique kill condition. Riding Rangers 12 Forest 3 Biorhythm The deck is a Tradewind Rider deck disguised as an Elf deck. Once you've set up your pieces (Quirion Ranger to untap and Exploration/Scout to replay land) you will be able to bounce multiple permanents per turn cycle. The kill condition is Biorhythm. Bounce your opponents creatures, and then cast the game winning sorcery. Apart from the Tradewind Rider the deck has no disruption and is pretty susceptible to disruption itself, but you can always cast Biorhythm and just swing if your opponent has less creatures than you and your weenies can overpower him. If your opponent is not controlling your creatures and you have enough in play, you could even pay life to Sylvan Library to draw cards, then cast Biorhythm to gain life. Congratulations Evan; 3 boosters are on their way! Flickerform This articles card is Flickerform.
I originally intended for this article to be on Auratouched Mage, but I decided to go for one of his frequent partners in crime. I felt Flickerform was more open-ended in its uses and tricks, and a few Auratouched Mage tricks will still be on the menu. Flickerform removes creatures from the game at instant speed, then returns them to play again at the end of the turn. This can be used to protect your creatures; if lethal damage is on the stack or they've just become a target of a spell or ability that would kill it, Flicker it out and it will come back. Flickerform can also be cast on your opponents creatures. Then when they attack (or to remove a blocker, or some other inopportune time) you can flicker it out. However, for the costs associated, Flickerform is not very efficient at either protecting your creatures or as pseudo-removal for your opponents creatures. You are unlikely to include it in your deck for these reasons alone, but they are there if the situation demands it. Flickerform has the obvious benefit of having your creatures come back into play, thus triggering any comes into play abilities (and the less frequent 'leaves play' triggers). Eternal Witness is one of our prime candidates; have her block, flicker her out, then return a card from your graveyard to your hand at the end of the turn. There are 575 creatures with the 'comes into play' clause so there are plenty to choose from (admittedly not all of them are great to play with Flickerform; you can always hope your opponent is playing Hunted Phantasm!). If you are an evil land destroyer, you can even do Avalanche Rider tricks. You can flicker him out with the echo trigger on the stack, and he'll come back at end of turn to destroy another land. If you are relying on artifact mana or nonbasic lands, you can flicker out a Sundering Titan to pound your opponents mana base on the way in and out. Used judiciously, Nekrataal can help clear the opponents creature base. At the higher end of the spectrum, you can swing with Angel of Despair, flicker her out, then have her back on the team at the end of your turn to blow up a permanent and block, ready to go again next turn. As well as the comes into play ability of the creature Flickerform enchants, there are also other permanents that trigger on other creatures coming into play. Aura Shards can help keep artifacts and enchantments off the other side of the table (or negative auras on your side). Careful use of Flickerform with Death Match should lead to clearing out your opponents small creatures (flickering out if your creature becomes the target, and then able to 'last gasp' something on the way back in). So far, I've only covered Flickerform as a repeat-use Otherworldly Journey. What really makes Flickerform stand out from it's peers is it's interaction with auras (including itself) attached to the removed creature. They flicker out with the creature, and flicker back in and re-attach themselves to the creature. As well as creatures with comes into play abilities, you can also take advantage of auras that have comes into play abilities. Ravnica just happens to have a cycle of those. While you won't be casting Faith's Fetters on your creature (unless you want a quirky life gain engine) the others are all fair game, with Flights of Fancy netting you cards, Galvanic Arc slinging damage around the table, Fists of Ironwood giving you a growing army and Strands of Undeath keeping your opponents hand empty. If the creature you are flickering in and out happens to be Bramble Elemental, you'll get 2 critters for Flickerform, plus another 2 for every other aura that becomes attached to it. Mana can be an issue with Flickerform. It is cheap to cast, but ties up your mana with repeat use. The other thing that you may wish to be wary of is timing involved in activating Flickerform. You may want to cast Flickerform when you have 6 mana available, so that you have the option of removing the creature from the game if it becomes the target of something nasty (assuming such nasty is not cast/activated while Flickerform is on the stack). Such is the downfall of auras; if the creature gets killed, the auras go with it. Shielding Plax can help out in this regard as it grants the best type of untargetability; only opponents can't touch it. Which means once you've got your Plax on your chosen creature, you can keep adding other auras with a greater degree of safety. And it nets you a card each time it flickers back in to boot! White was given a very heavy aura theme in Ravnica Block, and there are several friends which play well with Flickerform. First and foremost is Auratouched Mage. When he comes into play, you can search your deck for an aura and attach it to him... including Flickerform. From then on, you can flicker out the mage and use his comes into play ability to search out a new aura every turn. The other card is Three Dreams, letting you find the auras you want to slap on your creature (or Pacifism, Pillory of the Sleepless etc if you need those). I was going to head back to the days of yore and bring out an old favourite, Rabid Wombat, but decided to keep things Standard and use his recent homage from Guildpact, Gatherer of Graces. 4 Gatherer of Graces 4 Temple Garden Loading Gatherer of Graces with auras doesn't excite me the same way Rabid Wombat did, but it can be harder to kill with in-built regeneration (to a degree), and there are plenty other things going on in the deck. Caryatid and the Heirarch are simply solid cards, but they can also reap benefits from being flickered in and out. Verduran Enchantress is your draw engine (noting that you only draw when you play an enchantment, not when one comes into play, ala Flickerform). There are a few tricks with her; you can return Cage of Hands to contain a bigger threat while drawing a card. You can also dredge Moldervine Cloak and cast again to draw a card. Cloudstone Curio is a fun singleton which does several things for the deck, given that you are aiming to have creatures and auras coming into play frequently; there are plenty of nice targets to bounce. Imagine a Gatherer of Graces flickering back into play at the end of your opponents turn with 2 Fists of Ironwood and the Flickerform attached, and a Loxodon Heirach in play. Let the 2 Fists of Ironwood bounce each other, let the Gatherer bounce the Loxodon, and on your turn recast them for a 4 life buffer and 4 extra tokens (who can bounce the Loxodon again if need be). Fists of Ironwood is also a good card to slap on Yavimaya Enchantress, to make her your trampling beatstick in the end game. That was an untested deck I slapped together in 5 minutes and could likely do with some polish. However, now it's your turn! It's time for you to get to work on building a deck around Flickerform. Here are the criteria that I'll be looking at: Focus on doing something and doing it well. The deck should showcase the card. Try to make your deck have the little extra something that puts it above the crowd. If similar decks are entered by more than one person, the first person will have preference. Be quick! The deck should be 60 cards. Sideboard is optional; we're generally looking at kitchen table decks. You may enter multiple decks, but they must all be sufficiently different and showcase the card in a different way. The deck can be any format; you might like to let me know which card pool you have used to build your deck. A deck that uses it's available card pool well matters (I will ignore all decks that include the power 9 just because they can). The deck does not have to be tournament worthy or powerful, it just needs to fit the above criteria. Feel free to fully explore an option I've written about here, or cook up your own concoction for something I've missed. The winner will receive 3 boosters, courtesy of MtgParadise, and will be announced at the beginning of the next article in this series. Entries close 08/09/2006 Happy building, and good luck! Michael Howell Forum Name : Bacchus E-Mail gr24159@bigpond.net.au [ Email the Author | Discuss this Article ]
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