Decklist: URG Shenanigans' Path

Settle down children, and let me take you on a journey. Not only do I have a decklist for you today, but I thought I'd give you some insight into my deck building process. It was an interesting journey, and hopefully someone out there will be able to gleam a little deckbuilding knowledge from it.

Now, today's deck is an odd one. Every once in a while I'll stumble across a card from Magic's past that had somehow eluded me for all these years. Some cards, like Surprise Deployment or Saprazzan Heir, are nice additions to my Johnny arsenal and beg to be built around. On the flip side, others are so bad that they stick with me and taunt me until I put their spirits to rest by building a deck around them.

The lynchpin for today's deck is one such card. Often called the worst Magic card in existence, this card gives a mediocre effect for such a steep cost that it's ridiculous by today's standards. Can you guess which card I'm getting at? Hailing all the way from 1994's The Dark, it's...



Horrible, right? I can only imagine what people thought of this when it was released into an environment with so little ways to properly abuse it. It doesn't even generate mana! Garbage.

Now of course I'm not the first one to try and break this card. There are two more-or-less obvious ways to utilize this card: either as a source of damage for a Spitemare-centric creature base, or as a component in a Donate shell. Seeing as the first option seemed a little straightforward, I decided on the latter.

Simply Donating it isn't going to cut it; I'm also going to need a way to tap it. As this concept is fairly narrow, I'm also going to be looking for other cards that synergize with our main strategy.

Let's get started. Since the deck is going to revolve around this one card, I'd like to include some redundancy to make sure that I can use it consistently.

+ Expedition Map

Now let's take a look at the Donation engine. While I don't like to commit to one color for a deck, especially not this early in development, I will be paying extra close attention to blue, and start off assuming that I'm building a mono-blue deck. It's probably not going to work out that way, but it at least lets me focus my colors a little bit more from the get-go. Besides, how cool would a mono-blue burn deck be?

It seems like our best blue options for getting the Path to the other side of the table are Vedalken Plotter and Political Trickery. It's a bit of a bummer than they're both one-shot effects, but at least I get to steal their land as well. We'll see if we can't find anything better later on.

+ Vedalken Plotter
+ Political Trickery

Now that we can get it under an opponent's control, how do we tap it? Blue has no shortage of answers to that question. I narrowed the initial candidates down to Fatestitcher (which is still relevant in multiples thanks to the "tap OR untap" ability) and colorless classic Icy Manipulator.

+ Fatestitcher
+ Icy Manipulator

Alright, now that we've got a rudimentary engine for the deck, let's take a step back and analyse our options. There are two things I want to look at at this point: What kind of synergistic elements can we add to the deck, and what can we gain from including other colors?

I'll start with the first question. Since the core of this deck is a bit of a one-trick pony, I'd like to include some other elements to add a little variety and resilience. So far we know that the deck wants to give our opponents our lands and tap their stuff. Why not stretch the donation aspect to include other lands? This would allow us to include a few Islandwalkers to provide some much-needed board presence, and potentially deal those last remaining points of damage.

We've got a few good choices in this category with the scalable Enclave Elite, Colossal Whale, and the expensive Stormtide Leviathan, as well as utility picks in Thada Adel, Acquisitor and Cold-Eyed Selkie. I don't want these creatures to take up too much deck space, so I'm going to go with a decent but limited mix.

+ Enclave Elite
+ Colossal Whale

Now let's take a look at what other colors can bring to the deck. While the list we have now is decent, it's not the most efficient build. I'm not too satisfied with the fact that our Donate engine relies on non-repeatable sources, but red gives us a great alternative with Bazaar Trader.

+ Bazaar Trader
- Political Trickery

That's a nice fit, but what about the tapping part of our engine? While that's not red's strong suit, we do get a novel option with War's Toll. While War's Toll isn't as dependable as, say, Icy Manipulator, it does have the added bonus of providing some nice disruption for our opponents to deal with, and doesn't require any mana to tap the Path. I'm still not too satisfied with my tap engine, but I'll see if I can't bolster it later on.

+ War's Toll
- Icy Manipulator

Red also gives us access to Repercussion, which could be deadly once the engine gets going. Let's add it in as extra insurance, but it'll probably be the first to go if we need to cut some cards.

+ Repercussion

Alright, now we've got something decent. We've got a reliable two-color engine, as well as some decent muscle to make sure we can hold off the opponent. All the same, I'd like to see how we can optimize the build by adding in a third color. I think we can safely stay Blue/Red, but you always want to make sure that you've explored every option.

Now what weak spots can we shore up? The engine's good, but with the Path alone we're only dealing 2 damage per turn, which seems a bit slow. The only color I might consider adding is Green; quite simply, it would allow us to untap the Path to deal more damage per turn and get to our opponent's 4- or even 6-toughness creatures. As an added bonus, I can make sure to include the Ravnica bouncelands so that I can aim that effect at myself and get more mana when I need it. I'm hesitant to add another color, but the fact that a few cards added could accelerate our mana AND the damage dealt is too good to pass up. Besides, the bouncelands and Expedition Map should provide us with a healthy mana base.

+ Kiora's Follower
+ Awakening
+ Magus of the Candelabra

Now that we've got a decent deck list it's time to look at the lands. Rishadan Port is an obvious auto-include here, but if you're like me and don't want to spend a fortune on just a few cards, you can stick with its much cheaper opposite Deserted Temple. I also wanted to include the bouncelands, and since we're playing three colors this will take up a large portion of our mana base. We also want to make sure that we have enough islands to make our Islandwalkers playable.

+ Deserted Temple
+ Izzet Boilerworks
+ Simic Growth Chamber
+ Gruul Turf

Alright, now we've got a decent list to work from. After some dry runs, I'm not quite satisfied with the tap engine, so I've decided to add in some Oppositions to make use of the bodies we'll have lying around in Vedalken Plotter and Bazaar Trader. I've also decided to throw in Fire // Ice for some all-around utility.

At this point it's time to look at some raw numbers. Out of about 40 nonland cards (out of a 60-card vintage deck), we've got six categories to include:

Sorrow's Path (Sorrow's Path, Expedition Map),
Donate (Vedalken Plotter, Bazaar Trader),
Tap (Fatestitcher, Opposition, War's Toll),
Untap (Kiora's Follower, Magus of the Candelabra, Awakening),
Islandwalkers (Enclave Elite, Colossal Whale),
Utility (Repercussion, Fire // Ice)

If we divide that down evenly, that leaves us with around 6 or 7 cards per category; however, not all categories are created equally. Utility isn't essential to our plan, so we can go with two of each card. The Islandwalkers are also not a priority, and I want to give more deck space to the Tap cards rather than the Untap cards to make sure the cycle gets going. Finally, here's what we end up with:

Sorrow's Path

4x Sorrow's Path
4x Expedition Map

Donate Engine

4x Vedalken Plotter
4x Bazaar Trader

Tap Cards

4x Fatestitcher
3x Opposition
2x War's Toll

Untap Cards

3x Kiora's Follower
2x Awakening
2x Magus of the Candelabra

Islandwalkers

4x Enclave Elite
2x Colossal Whale

Utility

2x Repercussion
2x Fire // Ice

Lands

4x Izzet Boilerworks
4x Simic Growth Chamber
4x Gruul Turf
3x Deserted Temple
7x Island
1x Mountain

I've gotten to try this deck out once so far, and I must say it performed better than I thought it would. Once the engine gets going we can take out our opponent's creatures while bleeding him out surprisingly fast. The bounceland engine also means that we have access to a lot of mana very early on. I don't expect it to perform quite as well in multiplayer, but it might still be worth trying out.

It's also worth noting that this is the budget version of the deck: if you have any Rishadan Ports or Candelabra of Tawnoses lying around, by all means use them!

I certainly hope that while a bit longer than usual, this post was able to impart some useful deckbuilding insight. Let me know what I missed in the comments!