SavageTheCabbage

I'm not too fond of your choice of planeswalkers. I'm not too familiar with this sort of deck, but I do know you'll want to run a set of Gideon Jura (probably, in place of Jace Beleran). Check out a deck archetype known as Super Friends for more ideas.. as I said I'm not too familiar.

I do agree with bellabom regarding your lands, though. 16 lands is enough if you're highest CMC card is 2, but not for a deck with 4 CMC spells and other mana sources that require a casting cost. If want to run green, then I suggest dropping sphere of the suns for Birds of Paradise, and looking into some dual lands.

Planeswalkers can only be cast any time you could cast a sorcery, which means they will always be the first thing put on the stack. If they survive the stack, they enter the battlefield and you retain priority. That means that so long as the very next thing you do is activate one of their abilities, the opponent will not have the opportunity to do anything about it. Of course, they could destroy it in response, or later, but the ability would have already been put onto the stack and anything short of a Stifle, et al., will not prevent its ability from resolving.

I'm just saying, you're wrong. You'll be able to use a planeswalker's ability at least once :)

That's the whole idea of a friendship deck :)

Two words. Belbe's Portal. :)

Also, if you're looking to hardcast your spells, Dragonspeaker Shaman are very good, and don't be afraid of the lower cost dragons either. Dragon Whelp and Rakdos Pit Dragon are very powerful examples of low cost dragons. However, since Moltensteel has been printed, I consider him a replacement for Pit Dragon as a low-cost summons.

This deck is pseudo-mill / friendship. The mechanic is not literally "top N cards of target player's library into his or her graveyard" but the effect is the same. Mill operates by reducing the cards in your opponents library until eventually nothing's left, and that is exactly what this deck does.

But what this deck isn't, is DEFINITELY not a discard deck! Discard operates by reducing your opponents card advantage (cards in hand) until they have nothing left to cast. This deck does the /opposite/ of that, and gives your opponents crazy good card advantage, and hides a mill win condition between the lines.

Because of that, decks like this create interesting games of politics in multiplayer. You actually help your opponents early game, and because of that they want to keep you around.. but it's like dealing with the devil, and players know this. So long as you remain helpful, though, they will have a more important threat to contend with -- dealing with every other opponent that you've helped as well.

By including cards like Megrim (Liliana's Caress), Memory Erosion, and anything player specific, you throw the "friendship" out the window. Which because you've been giving opponents cards all game long, means you'll likely die very quickly unless you've got your pieces in place and are ready to start taking players out.

Also, Boomerang is your friend. When you cause each player to discard their entire hand, cards like Boomerang essentially read "Destroy target permanent."

I love the idea of building a deck like this, and once my "serious" decks are finished I may begin to work on one like it. I have a deck concept already, on my other profile.

A few things to note, however. You are using card draw to pseudo-mill your opponent's library. Your only win condition is Elixir of Immortality, to prevent yourself from decking yourself. There are a few inherent problems with this, the most obvious being that a single Elixir of Immortality isn't difficult to eliminate. Less obvious, is that if you cast Venser's Journal, you could very well end up with 20 cards in your hand, and Elixir of Immortality be in the last 20 cards of your library.

There are a few ways to solve this. First is to make sure your opponents lose cards from their library faster than you do, and you do that with Jace's Erasure. Even though it is targeted, it still speeds up the removal of your opponents' decks much faster.

Then there's Words of Wilding, which reads "{1}: The next time you would draw a card this turn, put a 2/2 green Bear creature token into play instead." That is potentially huge, right there! In one or two turns, you could quickly end up with an army of 2/2's, if not enough to overrun your opponents, then at least enough to defend yourself. 13 "Fog" spells is a lot, but you could find yourself vulnerable very quickly if opponents decide to gang up on you once you've given them enough cards.

And finally, there's Trinket Mage, which allows you to tutor Elixir of Immortality out of your library, as well as provides another chump blocker.

Another card to look into is Mikokoro, Center of the Sea. If you can fit a colorless land into your mana base, it's more card draw, and it's in a form that doesn't typically see a lot of removal.

A few more cards of note that you can look up on your own are Stoic Angel, Static Orb, Propaganda / Collective Restraint / Ghostly Prison, and Archmage Ascension.

At any rate, best of luck! I love this kind of deck, they provide a very interesting dynamic in multiplayer games. Players love you at first, everybody loves free cards! But then, at some point they will have to turn against you, and you've just spent the whole game giving them card advantage! Fun stuff :)

Propaganda can be replaced by Norn's Annex if absolutely necessary, but both Propaganda and Rishadan port could be dropped entirely if you wanted. I would suggest in that case something like Soul Barrier or Isolation Cell. Counterbalance is an obvious candidate for Countertop. Or simply more countermagic, like Mana Leak.

Really the core of the deck is all about Iso-boomerang to bounce their lands and then Wall of Tears, Propaganda, and Dissipation Field making it difficult for them to attack. It's pretty much a lockdown deck for casual games, so you can run whatever you like :)

Aether Figment is pretty awesome. The multikicker run of creatures are typically inefficient, but when you make them unblockable... now add 4x or 8x lords that give them an inherent +1/+1 bonus.. The little guy suddenly becomes a powerhouse during all phases of the game.

Also, since this deck is casual, I want to point out a card that'd work well with your other cards. Mimic Vat.

Having creatures with such a glaring vulnerability, the ability to reproduce them with tokens would add another layer to your deck. Does your Big Green opponent use that Giant Growth to kill one of your illusions? Is it really worth it, you can just make a copy... or should he save it for one of his beaters, as the MtG God intended?

You also have two creatures that share amazingly fun synergy with Mimic Vat. Phyrexian Metamorph and Phantasmal Image. Both of them may enter the battlefield as 0/0's, which would immediately allow you to imprint them to Mimic Vat. It's not exactly the most powerful combo ever, but it is a LOT of fun being able to create a creature token copy of anything on the board, whenever you like. :)

Just food for thought.

I just want to point out to you that Spellskite will not protect your Illusions, only your lord & metamorph. Once the illusion becomes a target, it's condition is triggered and it is sacrificed. Even if you change the target to Spellskite, it's still too late.

He's really a dead draw in this deck, in my opinion. You don't have much worth protecting that you can't already do so with other means. IMO, another counter spell would be more useful.

Also, just my opinion, but Tezzeret's Gambit is so much better than Jace's Ingenuity. It's one less card, but can be cast for up to two less mana.

Lol, equip your Phantasmal Dragon with Swiftfoot Boots so it gains hexproof, and promptly sacrifice it from the faux pas. XD

I looked into some other auras, but I really don't need anything else besides Eldrazi Conscription. Sigil of the Nayan Gods can give me some decent beaters, but more importantly it cycles, and Hyena Umbra and Armored Ascension both can be hardcast if I can't dig out a Mythmaker.

There are some other really good auras, but really what else would I need besides +10/+10, trample, and annihilator 2? :P

I take it that the pair of cards is more like a bag of tricks. They both do different things, for different occasions. Stuffy provides an intimidating defender, whereas Everlasting Torment provides permanent damage, allowing Goblin Sharpshooter to rapid-fire more easily against high toughness decks, and prevents damage prevention / life gain decks from overwhelming the army of Tims. Timmies are typically slow to build, so both spells are useful to cover the deck's ass since it's likely to suffer 2-4 turns of combat damage before it truly gets rolling.

Also, since you're running UR, why not a pair of Trinket Mages to tutor out Blade or Collar? Blade + Spikeshot Goblin and Collar + Sharpshooter = win.

One question: Where is Charisma? It's so classic, you can't /not/ run it!

Machine Gun Crab, Stealer of Souls {3}{U}{U}{U}{U}{U}
Legendary Creature - Crab
You may exile a permanent named Horseshoe Crab instead of paying Machine Gun Crab, Stealer of Souls casting cost. Use this ability only if Horseshoe Crab is enchanted by Hermetic Study and Charisma.
{T}: Machine Gun Crab, Stealer of Souls deals 1 damage to target creature or player.
{U}: Untap Machine Gun Crab, Stealer of Souls.
Whenever Machine Gun Crab, Stealer of Souls deals damage to a creature, you gain control of that creature so long as you control Machine Gun Crab, Stealer of Souls.
1/3

I made a creature token identical to that ^ for my machine gun crab deck ages ago :) Wasn't legal in my deck, but my friends allowed me to swap it into play for it's alternate casting cost. I think I might want to revitalize my old deck as a W/U "Timmie the Tapper" they're a hell of a lot of fun to play in casual ^-^

I've always had a difficult time building Slivers. So much, in fact, that to this day I still have not built a Sliver deck. I start removing a few to get the deck down from 90 or so cards, and then begin juggling back and forth between colors and support spells. By the time the hour is up, I've made 6 different decks XD Well, I've also never had the land base to support more than 3 colors until recently.. that's a huge determining factor.

Anywho, so far as tribal is concerned, I made a Nomad tribal using your format rules. I hope your idea of casual isn't too different than mine :P My serious decks are usually all control, so for casual I tend to omit it for the most part, and go for straight forward action. I was inspired by your format, and with those constraints in mind I think I've put together a rather fun deck :)

This is pretty sweet! I've been working on a Torpor Elemental deck focusing around the "evoke" ability of some older elementals, though I haven't quite been able to bring it together yet. I hadn't thought of Phyrexian Dreadnought! Honestly, just a card I rarely see so I just forget about it.

Also, agree with everything WhiteAndBlue said in the above post, especially the time taken for long detailed responses :) I used to go to great lengths to leave detailed comments like that too.

I will one day be able to call myself an extractor ^_^ Baby steps for now, though, I'll work on milltraction in the mean time. Which isn't really extraction so much as it is mill with a brutally quick finish and unique method of control while waiting for it to fall into place.

It doesn't seem to be a good season for articles here, the forums have been kind of dead for the past few weeks. But, don't let that discourage you, I think you could find plenty of insightful things to write about!

I was going to become an article writer a few months back, writing about the inane things in Magic (like this deck), but I just didn't (and don't) have the time for it /-:

Best of luck!