Combo Craziness 2

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squire1

8 August 2010

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Here we are again. Our mission is to discuss the best way to use a card that is underused in magic for better or for worse. Again the real purpose here is to force ourselves to think outside the box and hopefully make us better at building decks. I am under the impression that if a player can build a good deck with crap cards then that player can build a great deck from good cards. With that said, I will start to attack cards that are often thought of as the worst cards in magic. The topic of today's article is often found in the top 10 lists of worst cards in magic and is non other than the Nameless Race:

The Good

Ok so at first glance this guy is bad, but let us focus on the positive for a moment.

1. Only 1 black mana means you do not need to be playing mono-black to make use of him
2. He has potentially a very high power and toughness for 4 mana and paying of life.
3. He has trample. This is a great trait for large P/T creatures.

So the good is still not that great, but it makes him a possible Minion of the Wastes for BB less. To me that is getting closer to a good card. You could play a 4CMC creature and get a huge trampler.

The Bad

1. You have to pay life to make him useful at all. I would say at least 4 life would have to be used to justify the P/T to CMC ratio. This alone is not so bad though. Life loss is nothing new in black and can be dealt with rather easily.
2. You must have cards in your opponent's graveyard. Ok so ensuring this is easy too, but it gets to be a pain as the bad portion compounds.
3. The worst part is that the stuff in your opponent's graveyard has to be white. Not land or any other color. White. So...this guy sucks against anything that is not mono-white.

So what in god's name are we supposed to do with that? Here is what I came up with:

So we have to pay life

Paying life is the least of our problems and the easiest to deal with. We could use simple life gain tactics like Tainted Sigil, Drain Life or Vampire Nighthawk. We could even splash a color that is better at lifegain. We could embrace the life loss using Death's Shadow in conjunction with this guy. We could even do something completely convoluted like use Delusions of Mediocrity or Illusions of Grandeur and then Donate them to our opponent. We could also do something mean like Magus of the Mirror or Mirror Universe. I almost view this issue as one that needs to be planned for but is not a huge deal.

We need opponent's cards in graveyard

Same as with life gain, this is not very hard. But, other than depending on discard it is hard to do without splashing another color. Mill can be done with artifacts, but it is often less efficient. Since this guy can be down on the board early I would focus of early quick milling like, Hedron Crab, Vision Charm, Tome Scour, Glimpse the Unthinkable. Again, not really hard to deal with, but important to plan for.

Only useful against mono-white

This is the main problem isn't it. The Nameless Race with tactics like Alter Reality, Crystal Spray, Glamerdye, Mind Bend, Sleight of Mind, Spectral Shift, Swirl the Mists or Whim of Volrath. We could Donate Celestial Dawn to our opponent and hence make all of their cards white; this could be done in red instead of blue but that makes us three colors. Lastly, we could use Painter's Servant. Now this is really the best option but if we combine Painter's Servant with mill, we all of a sudden get to Grindstone which is a different (probably better) deck all together.

So where do go from here. Well now we consider support cards.

Support cards

With Celestial Dawn we could use Donate or Puca's Mischief to give it to our opponent. If we do, we make their life easier though, so we would have to make it harder with cards like Jovial Evil, Circle of Protection: White, Stench of Evil, Marauding Knight, Wash Out, Anarchy etc. In addition, we could use splash green to take advantage of the milling with Tarmogoyf, Lhurgoyf, or Lord of Extinction. But I really like duplicating the Nameless Race's P/T that we have to work so hard for by using Halfdane.

So here is where I end and pose the question to you. What can we do to make Nameless Race a good card, or even better a great card in the right deck and circumstances. Please post all of your thoughts and decks in the comments below. I would love to see what you guys do with this. Johnny up everyone and make it great.

BTW- this is what I came up with Nameless deck