I have a problem.

Okay, I've got lots of problems, but that's not really the point.

The problem is that I'm a Magic elitist. I'm one of those guys that only plays with decks they've painstakingly crafted over, refusing to even look at anything “popular” or “trendy”. I'm the Magic card equivalent of the kid that won't go into the Gap and buys all my shirts at Hot Topic instead.

Actually, I was that kid.

Regardless, I have a very real tendency to not use certain cards because they are “too good” or “too popular”. Yes, I know that's stupid, thank you for the constructive criticism. I've admitted I have a problem, and I'm pretty sure that's the first step on the road to recovery.

Recently I've been much better about this; it's hard to argue against using Loxodon Hierarch because all G/W decks run 'em, and not putting in Demonfires when they are available is stupid. But I still retain some of my stubbornness: if a popular deck archetype is based around a certain card, I won't use it. Char/Lightning Helix? No thank you. Dragonstorm? Only in my all Dragon Whelp deck. Stuffy Doll/Skred? Puh-leese. It was this silly attitude that kept me from the card that I'd been waiting years to use: Glare of Subdual.

I've been running (rather, trying to run) G/W control on and off for like eight years, and got major nerd wood when I came back to Magic and found the Glare. But then- oh no- it was the most played deck at 2006 City Champs. Well, I can't play something that was popular, right? I snubbed my nose and walked away in a huff. Four months later, I realize that no one is running the deck that won 2005 Worlds. For some reason this made it okay in my crazy little head to try my hand with the deck. I still won't run with popular archetypes, but reinventing and revitalizing a has-been washed up version of a once-popular deck? I can do that.

I'm not totally cured (and I'm pretty sure I don't want to be), but it's a start.

What the Hell Happened?

Glare won Worlds last year. Worlds. Less than twelve months later it turned up missing without a trace. There were no pictures on Milk Cartons because no one knew it was gone- the perfect crime! What was once the most popular control deck in Standard just disappeared. It's not like Time Spiral was to blame (if anything, Glare decks were better post-Time Spiral), so the question remains: who killed Glare?

Mike Flores. Okay, not really, but he certainly helped people learn to deal with the threat of Glare, showing them how to exploit its weaknesses (including lack of spot removal, inability to deal with utility creatures, and general overall wussiness). People got better at playing Glare, which meant that Glare lost more, which meant that people played it less.

But the real culprit was . . . You.

All of you! Everyone that ever played a Glare deck is to blame!

The tournament scene was saturated with G/W goodness, and resultantly people were prepared for it and spanked it like a naughty puppy.

That, or we’re lucky enough to play in the largest, most diverse, and (dare I say?) most delicious era of constructed to have ever existed, and the sheer number of possibilities for viable decks means that there is an ever-shifting metagame fraught with constantly changing deck lists, deck styles and deck types. The sheer existence of the constructed metagame means no deck will stick around for more than a couple of months before it fades away into obscurity.

Shut up, Boros! Nobody’s talking to you!

You Can Rebuild Them, Make Them Stronger, Faster

Among my Magic buddies I'm known for a number of things, including my tendency to make a new deck every five minutes. Most of the time these decks suck, but by constantly building and re-building I learn valuable lessons which are willingly passed on to all the other do-it-yourselfer's of the Magic world.

Anywho, I make a different deck every for every Friday Night Magic, and it's usually something off the wall. This almost always works to my advantage in one way or another; because everyone expects me to show up with something wacky (and, to be honest, terrible), I knew that no one would expect a variation on a world-class deck.

The best way to run a popular archetype is to wait until it’s not big anymore and then revamp it. People get in their heads that decks have to be certain ways. This is wrong.

I kind of suck at this game, which means I have to use every tricksy ploy available to me (hence my tendency to play different decks every week). If I can surprise my opponent then I have just a little bit of an edge. Seeing me drop a Glare would definitely be a surprise, but anyone who's played for 6 months or more would know what to do from there. In order to be really sneaky, I needed to not play a Glare deck but a deck with Glare.

I threw the traditional Glare engine right out the window and set about making a G/W control deck from scratch. The first thing I did was address the problems faced by previous incarnations of Glare.

Problem #1: Spot Removal. I thought about how I could get targeted, non-conditional removal against creatures in Green and White and almost instantly came up with the answer: Mouth of Ronom. In went three of 'em, as well as a pile of snow-covered lands.

Problem #2: Fragile Token Creatures. Screw saprolings. It's way too much effort to try and make a bunch of tokens to "lock down" the board, and a good gust of wind is pretty much all it takes to deal with a table full of 1/1 losers. Plus, how much "lockdown" is really needed? Other than me, not all that many people play with bunches of creatures. I decided that the best way to power the Glare was by getting the maximum utility out of my creatures and using them to tap stuff. In went four copies of Seedborn Muse, my all-time favorite card. However, with the Muse being so key I had to protect her, and thus the focus of the deck began to shift a little bit. The Muse soon became the deck's cornerstone.

Problem #3: Getting the Big "W" Without a Lockdown. Two Demonfires ought to do the trick, along with my 26 or so creatures (including Spectral Forces, Serra Avengers, and, uh, Boreal Druids). I already knew I was going to have four Bird of Paradise anyways, so making them work a little extra couldn't hurt, and the Demonfires added even more reliable removal.

Quick Lesson #1: If you wind up using someone else’s idea for a deck but want to do it differently, one thing you can do is focus on what the deck’s biggest weaknesses are and address them in your version of the deck. Does the weenie deck you want to run roll over to graveyard manipulation? Splash in a second color (black, silly) and toss in some graveyard recursion or Phyrexian Totems. Does the blue deck you want to run have problems with early beaters or Giant Solifuges? Yoink out a couple of counters and play old school defensive with some walls (Drift of Phantasm works great, plus has transmute).

See, the biggest problem with Magic deck design is that people like to categorize things. In fact, it’s necessary for us to do so- otherwise we simply can’t handle all the information stuffed in our face every minute of every day. I think the process we use to do so is called “framing”, but don’t quote me on that (or anything else except Star Wars trivia). Most of the time the framing process is helpful, but what often happens is that once we’ve categorized something in one context, we tend to categorize it that way in other contexts.

Here’s an example. There is a card that everyone says sucks. We all know this card sucks because it's use is limited, or it costs seven mana, or you have to sacrifice a permanent every time it takes one measly point of damage. Then some smart guy manages to think outside the “sucky card” framing, puts the card in a certain context (a deck), and all of a sudden it’s tearing up the Internet. Our framing- the way we think about this card- thus changes, due to the context that it was put in. Now we no longer think “awful card”; instead, when someone plays it, we go “oh, he’s running Dralnu at the Louvre” or “Look, Triscitron” or something like that.

You can use this to your advantage. If I “accidentally” drop a Triskelavus while I’m shuffling my cards up, most opponents fully expect to see big mana, lots of draw, and counterspells. The last thing they are expecting is a fourth-turn Mishra, Artificer Prodigy. By taking popular archetypes or jank rares that are associated with one deck type and twisting them around, you can use opponent’s false expectations to your advantage.

Basically what I’m saying is that you have to look at cards within the context that they already exist (the metagame), but be willing to throw every concept out the window and use a card in a totally fresh and new way.

Easy, right? Yeah, okay, not really.

Bringing the Team Together

Following my assessment of traditional Glare deck’s weaknesses (and an incredibly long monologue about something inane) I had a pile of Seedborn Muses, snow lands, and a splash of Red. I was in some dire need of defense, though; I knew the Muses would be key, but how to protect her? I considered about Momentary Blink, or splashing Blue for counter, or even (shudder) Safe Haven, but none seemed to work right. All were way too specific for my tastes, and all would leave my Muse alone in the event of mass removal.

Then I found a card called Ghostway.

I don’t understand why more people don’t use Ghostway. It costs one white and two colorless. It removes your creatures from play at instant speed, saving them from targeted removal, global removal, sacrifice removal, pesticide removal, repossession, and blue theft spells. It returns them to play untapped, assuming that you attacked and want blockers or want to lock down the board and don’t have a Muse. It triggers “come into play” abilities. And because I didn’t want to use tokens, the fact that tokens disappear to Ghostway was (by and large) irrelevant.

In short, it is awesome.

So I put it in the deck, along with some 187 creatures to get maximum use- Yavimaya Dryads ensured that I almost never, ever ever got color hosed, and one Loxodon Hierarch speaks for himself. As additional defense I put in two copies of Saffi Eriksdotter. I could watch her run in fear all day, but Bennie Smith put it best when he said "Daaaamn, girl! Holla!"

The rest of the deck was pretty basic- Birds, Spectral Forces, Stonewood Invocations and the like. So how did it do? Really, really well. As it turns out, playing a strong variation on a world class deck instead of some theme deck I made fifteen minutes ago makes winning games much easier.

The Deck

Jon-Glare
Creatures 2 Boreal Druid 4 Birds of Paradise 2 Saffi Eriksdotter 2 Serra Avenger 2 Selesnya Guildmage 3 Yavimaya Dryad 3 Ohran Viper 1 Loxodon Hierarch 2 Spectral Force 4 Seedborn Muse Spells 3 Glare of Subdual 1 Chord of Calling 2 Demonfire 3 Ghostway 2 Stonewood Invocation 1 Chord of Calling	Land 3 Mouth of Ronom 1 Scrying Sheets 1 Snow-Covered Plains 8 Snow-Covered Forests 1 Gemstone Mine 1 Selesnya Sanctuary 3 Temple Garden 2 Stomping Ground 3 Flagstones of Trokair	Sideboard 2 Giant Solifuge 1 Ghostway 1 Glare of Subdual 2 Thelonite Hermit 2 Molder 2 Wrath of God 3 Loaming Shaman 2 Spectral Force

Expensive? You bet it is. G/W is my favorite color combination, so that’s where the love is. You should see how sad my Blue rare collection is . . . plus, do you know how many packs of Coldsnap I had to open to get those Ohran Vipers? Well, it was a lot. And if anyone is interested, I have 24 Thrumming Stones and 18 Void Maws up for trade.

How I Rolled

Match One: Toby, with Stuffy Doll/Snow
Game One: Toby was using Ray-Ray’s deck and had never even looked at it until our first game. I won that one.
Game Two: Guess what? You can’t counter Stonewood Invocation.
Matches: 1 Games: 2-0
Side note: Toby had just gotten back in the game and lost pretty hard that night- I think he came in 14th- but three months later he won the Planar Chaos release tournament at our store. Never, ever doubt the power of practice.

Match Two: Scott, with Mono-Black Control
Game One: I go down, and I go down hard. There’s just something unfair about getting beat on by a bat token with a Loxodon Warhammer equipped.
Game Two: It looks like I’m out for the count . . . until I pull a Glare. And then win.
Game Three: It looks like I’m out for the count . . . until I play a fourth turn Glare. Turns out, Black still has trouble dealing with enchantments. “Oh no, the color pie! Mark Rosewater is craaaaazy!” Hey, guess what: shut up. That’s what.
Matches: 2 Games: 4-1

Match Three: Newikki, with the dread Dragonstorm (right after it won Worlds)
Game One: We both mull to six; Newikki looks like he’s unhappy about his hand, but keeps anyways. I get him down to three with a couple of weenies, but a turn before I kill him he goes off. I’m ready to scoop, when he pulls from his deck . . . a single Hellkite. Turns out he had three Hellkites in his opening hand, and giving someone free knight tokens (via Hunted Dragon) when they have a Glare in play is, well, unappealing. I topdeck some creatures and win.
Game Two: He gets stuck at one Island, and I beat rude amounts of face.
Matches: 3 Games: 6-1

Quick Lesson #2: Don’t ever ever scoop, ever. Okay, sometimes scoop. But unless you are going to time or you just want to stop playing the kid because he’s running Stasis and it makes you want to die, you never know what will happen. At the very least you’ll see more of the deck and have a better idea of what to sideboard.

Match Four: D-Money, with U/G Beats
Game One: I get my face beaten. Sometimes, colorless snow lands cause more problems than they solve.
Game Two: D-Money gets me down to three life before I topdeck a Glare. Four solid turns go by without him seeing either a Stonewood Invocation or a Psionic Blast, and the Yavimaya Dryad eventually finishes him.
Game Three: We actually went to time in this one, but an early Glare and a guest appearance by Thelonite Hermit kept the board on lockdown. Eventually I busted out Demonfire for the win.
Matches: 4 Games: 8-2

Hey, I won!

A quick side note: why is it that every time I cast a Yavimaya Dryad, people assume that I’m going to give them the forest? I’m serious- I’ll drop the girl, then someone looks across the table and says “I guess I’m getting a forest, huh?” in a smarmy voice like I’m the asshat!

Guess what: in a three color deck, if I play a Yavimaya Dryad the chances are that I’m pulling a Temple Garden, a Stomping Grounds, or (once in a while) a Snow-Covered Forest. I think there was only one situation where I ever gave someone a Forest ever, and that was with my second Dryad, plenty of land, and the game at a stalemate.

Still, I love the expectation that they will be getting the Forest, because it makes dropping a turn three Spectral Force that much cooler. As it turns out, what the deck really ran on was the Dryads; sure the Seedborne Muses made my Glare clock tick, but without the massive amount of fixing and fetching that the Dryads did every time they came into play the deck never would have done as well as it did.

Quick Lesson #3: Sometimes in a deck comprised of hundred’s of dollars worth of rares the most valuable card is a thirty-five cent uncommon. Talk about changing expectations, right? I couldn’t believe how amazing this card was, but now that I know, I’m noticing more and more decks that rely on their cheapies for the grunt work. Mono-Green what?

The Less-Than-Epic Conclusion

Two weeks after I won FNM with Jon-Glare, I was running behind with my deck building. I’d had a very long Christmas break (not in a good way), and instead of half-heartedly throwing something together at the last minute I decided to take my tournament-winning bad boy deck and whoop rude amounts of ass old-school style. I went 1-3, and came in 13th.

What the hell happened? I’ll tell you what happened: the element of surprise was gone. Not only were people used to playing Glare decks, they were used to playing my Glare deck- and more importantly, they were used to the idea of me playing Glare.

The Big Lesson: If you’re going to play Magic using fancy tricks (of any kind), make sure you mix ‘em up. The main reason I did so well was because my opponents were unprepared for me, and when they did realize what was going on (hey, I’m playing against Glare!) they inadvertently had false expectations. At least once a match the game would briefly pause as my opponent read Ghostway, read it again, then swore.

Did you know that Ghostway can rescue a Giant Solifuge from a Cruel Edict? Sweet.

The sad truth is that unless I either become a better player, find a deck to stick with and learn it up and down, or both, I need to keep my fancy bag of tricks wide open. And if that means finding ways to use Lyzolda the Blood Witch in a deck, so be it.

Super Happy Lucky Bonus Round

What, you thought we were done? No way, pal. After I realized how great Yavimaya Dryad really was in Jon-Glare, I decided to try my hand at a budgeted version of the deck. I would only use 8 rare cards, and being that the deck kind of needed Glare of Subdual and Seedborn Muses to tick this narrowed the card pool down considerably. I went with four copies of Glare (because of how much more fragile the deck is without Ghostways), three copies of Seedborn Muse, and one Scrying Sheets. Like I said before . . . I’ve opened up lots and lots of Coldsnap packs.

Jon-Glare v. 2.Cheap
Creatures 4 Boreal Druid 2 Thallid Shell-Dweller 3 Mycologist 3 Selesnya Guildmage 2 Yavimaya Dryad 4 Phyrexian Ironfoot 3 Seedborn Muse 3 Hunted Wumpus Spells 4 Into the North 3 Congregation at Dawn 3 Might of Old Krosa	Land 4 Mouth of Ronom 1 Scrying Sheets 4 Arctic Flats 1 Vhitu-Ghazi, The City Tree 9 Snow-Covered Forests 4 Snow-Covered Plains 1 Safe Haven (yes, really)

The focus of the deck was (necessarily) shifted when it went into “affordable” mode. Trying to run the splash of Red without expensive mana fixing turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, so the deck relies on all four copies of Glare of Subdual to keep the big boys tapped and four Mouth of Ronom for dealing with anything else. I had to return to the somewhat fragile saproling engine, but the two Mycologists make loosing all the sprouts less painful.

Interesting side note: I’m excited about Planar Chaos for a number of reasons, but the biggest is that a lot of the time I don’t know what PC to add to existing decks. Except for the obvious (you know what I’m talking about) there aren’t a lot of “easy fits” in terms of what goes where. This will lead to one of two things happening: either the whole metagame will shift (again) and we’ll have plenty of new deck types to enjoy, or people will largely ignore Planar Chaos in favor of existing decks, which means I’ll have even more surprises to spring. I win either way!

Oh, the master touch on the budget version was (I felt) the inclusion of Hunted Wumpus as the kill mechanism. If you have a Glare in play (and you’d better), the worst thing that can happen (almost) is they drop a big fattie . . . which you keep tapped with the Wumpus. Until you pull a Boreal Druid, that is.

After testing, it’s clear that the deck obviously suffers somewhat in the areas of flexibility and tenacity, but for a super budget deck it’s pretty darn tasty.

And it lets me use my massive amount of Coldsnap cards.

Seriously, I have a ton.