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Ravnica Peasant Deck Challenge
By Michael Howell.

Peasant decks. I'm sure most of you know what they are. A peasant deck could be considered a super budget deck. It contains no rares. It may have a maximum of five uncommons. The rest is basic land and commons. That is basically the rules. Peasant Magic is all about facing these decks against each other.

Some time back, I offered a Peasant Deck Challenge for Champions and Betrayers of Kamigawa. Due to personal circumstances, I was unable to complete the games required to determine a winner in a timely manner. Now that I am back into regular gaming sessions, I am very keen to issue another challenge.

Of course, Kamigawa has now been superceded by Ravnica, and thus our challenge begins here - to design a Peasant Deck from only Ravnica cards. Remember, your deck is supposed to be competitive and beat other decks that you think might be prominent. Let's confirm all of the rules:

• The deck must be at least 60 cards.
• The deck MUST be accompanied by a 15 card sideboard.
• The deck must have no rares. It can have a maximum of five uncommons between the main deck and sideboard.
• Ravnica cards only.
• The decks will be chosen based on their design for the metagame, and well thought out sideboards. Include a brief description of the deck and sideboard options as I might miss some synergies or tech you've put into the deck.

Playing of the Decks
The best five decks will be played against each other, three games each. A deck will receive 3 points for each game win, 1 point for each game draw and 0 points for a game loss. The deck that has the highest point score will be declared the winner. If there are two or more decks that have the same score, another round of matches will ensue until one deck is the clear winner.

Prizes and Entries

• The prize is 6 boosters.
• One entry per person. If you do choose to make multiple entries, your last
• entry will be the only one considered (this gives entrants a chance to submit a modified deck, or a completely different deck if they think their earlier decisions were suboptimal).
• The last day for entries is 2 weeks from publication. Please send them to the e-mail listed at the bottom of this page.

When it comes to peasant decks, Ravnica might be a little narrower than I expected from Champions/Betrayers, mainly due to the guild model. The guild model was designed to work well in limited, which inherently means that many of the commons are strongly linked with the guilds. That said, Ravnica does not limit us to just the 4 colour combinations of the guilds represented, even in Peasant Magic. Here are a few cards or strategies that could work well in Ravnica Peasant Magic.

• Svogthos, the Restless Tomb and Stinkweed Imp . With a recurring Stinkweed Imp, you could make your Svogthos, the Restless Tomb quite large in the mid to late game.
• The Boros guild has a nice array of effective cheap creatures for a weenie rush.
• Selesnya has their Selesnya Evangel and Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree to pump out critters, as well as the ability to convoke out some decent creatures. A defensive Dimir deck can hold off their opponent with the likes of Drift of Phantasms and Tidewater Minion while your Vedalken Entrancer s eat away their library.
• Tidewater Minion and Viashino Fangtail can control the board in the long game. Galvanic Arc and Mark of Eviction are also great together, meaning red/blue could be a non-guild contender.
• You could always go for the two guild crossover; a Selesnya/Golgari hybrid or a Dimir/Golgari hybrid.
• Remember, you can always play a mono-coloured deck!

So, what do you choose? Do you focus on one guild and maximize all of its strengths? Do you spread out into three colours to diversify your threats while trying to optimize your answers at the cost of consistency? Do you eschew the guilds, maybe with some form of white/black control?

Remember, your deck is meant to be competitive. Consider what others will be playing. Between your deck and sideboard, can you defeat it or defend against it? You only have access to five uncommons - choose them wisely! Try and make it something hard for your opponent to deal with, or a strong answer card.

It's time to begin the deck building process! Feel free to discuss anything related on the boards; your deck prediction, popular cards you expect to see, or tech you think will be good for the sideboards. Have fun!

Michael Howell
bacchus in the forums
gr24159@bigpond.net.au

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