The Great Manipulator

I continue to slowly explore some of the new Gatecrash interactions in my casual play budget builds. It is unfortunate so many players choose to play tournament quality decks in the casual play section of MTGO instead of the Tournament practice area. Nevertheless, this deck build is designed to steal their creatures. The key is to buy enough time to get the Simic Manipulator to a point where it can safely steal their creatures. Ideally, you would equip the Ring of Evos Isle to Simic Manipulator. This will give it hexproof (when you pay for it) and a counter each turn. After that, you can use Agoraphobia to shrink their creatures and make them suitable targets for the Simic Manipulator. Once stolen, return the Agoraphobia to your hand to target their next creature and just keep repeating the process. Aetherize is designed to buy some time as is Hands of Binding. Some players may wish to explore the use of the counterspells here. Anyway, it's up to you.

As works in progress go, this shows a lot of possibilities for casual play MTGO. I am also including the relatively new Thespian's Stage which might come in useful for cloning an opponent's land if you steal something with an activated ability.

The side deck is basically just a bunch of suggestions which are designed to deal with different threats you might face. It's hard to steal Hexproof creatures, so the Glaring Spotlight makes a good side deck choice. I picked up my four Glaring Spotlights for only 12 cents each. Clone is very helpful in my opinion, but again, players may wish to go for some kind of counterspell depending on their play tastes. Both Grafdigger's Cage and Witchbane Orb are fairly common sideboards against burn or recursion threats. A card like Bioshift might also prove useful in a deck like this.

Anyway, as prices continue to drop (and drop), I am able to finally branch out and explore these new cards.