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Editor: Audrey Chin-Quan. Wednesday 20th October 2004.
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Speaking What Should Not Be Spoken
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With all the new Arcane spells released in Champions of Kamigawa and the ability to create a spell which can technically have the most text ever on a single card, I thought it might be interesting to examine many of the new cards that help interact with each other and abuse one card in particular by adding to a fairly recent deck, Crystal Witness.
After examining the selection of Arcane spells that green and blue had to offer, I went through the list putting aside the ones that would be useful to recur over and over again. After several cycles, I found the following to be of some use in the deck:
There was one other card that caught my eye as well, Hinder. A decent nonrare hard counter spell like this is a must have in any Crystal Witness deck. I arrived at this decision for two reasons. The first is that you can make sure that they have a small chance of drawing the card for a while and the second is that you can create a soft lock if you have the Crystal Witness part of the deck in play.
After examining the main colours, it veered off to look at seeing if a third colour was worth adding. First came white, which offers the following useful Arcane spells and Spirits.
Next, I went through the list of black cards, which lead to the following interesting discoveries:
Last, but not least, was red, which can add an interesting twist to the deck with the following cards:
Putting all white, black and red cards aside, I began to edit my deck list. I spent several hours testing the deck without adding a third colour, and came up with this idea.
Whilst the deck worked well, I have always thought of adding a third colour to make it more interesting and Champions gave me more of a reason to do so. Firstly, I tested the following deck, adding white:
Then I thought that adding black would also add an interesting twist to the deck, with Rend Flesh and Thief of Hope, the deck could hold off most creatures until they end up dieing from the Thief of Hope, Dampen Thoughts. Here's the decklist I came up with:
Next, I examined red more closely again, to weed out the cards that weren't that beneficial to the deck. I came up with the following deck:
Well, there you have it, four different deck lists for the one main idea. It is fairly obvious that Champions of Kamigawa has added quite a few decent cards to Crystal Witness' arsenal. Many people might say that adding another colour to the deck would put it off balance, but I like to tinker "net decks" to suit my own style of play. It certainly seems that black would seem to have an advantage over red, but red can still hold its own in this deck, providing recurrable direct damage and creature kill.
Black adds its own form of creature kill and recursion, which can help to return a dead Witness back. The Thief of Hope helps to speed the game up and keep you alive a bit longer as well. Thusly making black a strong contender as well.
White adds a way to protect you from the constant rush of creatures until you can get out the cards you need. Hikari also helps, allowing you attack and block by sliding it in and out of play when needed.
However, I found that the original blue and green only deck using The Unspeakable seems to tickle my fancy a lot more than the other ideas. Nonetheless, it seems that any of the four decks could be powerful when played right. I still don't know which version I will play at States yet; I guess it will depend on what other decks seem to emerge with the introduction of Champions of Kamigawa to the tournament scene.
Remember, the metagame counts at States, so if you wish to use one of my lists, think about what your up against and tweak as needed. That was the main reason I didn't provide any sideboards, the other reason being I honestly don't know was worth adding to it at this point.
I hope you enjoyed the articles and good luck at States
Daniel Merrifield (aka Chainer2002).
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