2 Chronatog
3 Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar
3 Barter in Blood
3 Diabolic Edict
4 Duress
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Mutilate
3 Sink into Takenuma
3 Crucible of Worlds
3 Possessed Portal
4 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Gods' Eye, Gate to the Reikai
1 Island
4 Lake of the Dead
4 Polluted Delta
10 Swamp
3 Tainted Isle |
  Possessed
Portal Control.
Description of deck by Adrian
Sullivan
(quoted):
Jonathan Needleman sent in a submission that
made me smile. Of all of the cards that I've had requests for, Possessed
Portal is second in popularity only to One with Nothing (I still get a
handful of requests to cover this card every week). Possessed Portal is
a tough nut to crack, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to have it fit a
full column. Jonathan showed me the ropes quite a bit on this card.
Here's his deck:
Clearly once a Possessed Portal is in play, you're going
to wreck your opponent. The problem is that a Possessed Portal doesn't
discriminate; it's going to wreck you too. The only thing you can have is
preparation. Jonathan does just that with several cards: Crucible of
Worlds, Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar, Chronatog, and Fact or Fiction. A Fact
or Fiction won't last, but it will provide a bit of fuel to keep something
worthwhile in your hand after the Portal locks everything down. The other
two are a bit special, however.
The Crucible is fantastic. Since you can sacrifice a
permanent or discard a card at the end of every turn, Crucible can give
you a virtual out with your graveyard. Yes, in theory, you'll have to
discard eventually, but it will take twice as long with a Crucible in
play. This is especially cute with the single Gods' Eye, Gate to the
Reikai. Here you have the option to either build up an army of little
attackers, or use the 1/1s as more fuel for the Portal so that you'll
never end up having to discard anything. If anything, this is so good,
Jonathan maybe should have included more!
Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar is another inspired choice.
Both Tomorrow and the Portal replace the draw. The Portal doesn't do
anything like force the draw phase to be skipped, rather instead of that
you don't draw. Tomorrow replaces the draw with placing your favorite of
the top three cards of your library into your hand. When you have both
out, you can choose which of the two you'd rather have occur to replace
your draw. Any question which you'd prefer?
The Chronatog dodges half the question of the Portal,
and also provides a potential kill other than Azami and God's Eye 1/1s.
Not nearly as powerful as the other ways out from the Portal, the
Chronatog still does offer a potential threat. If there were any card to
be cut, though, in my mind this would be it. It doesn't give enough of a
dodge from the Portal, and it is only really a reliable threat when you
know your opponent doesn't have anything to mess with it.
The deck packs a powerful amount of hand disruption. One
thing to notice is the effect a Cephalid Coliseum is going to have on an
opponent once the portal is out: it is just going to make them lose 3
cards, quickly hastening them to playing with only the board. Sink into
Takenuma is quite interesting here, as well, being a very strong way to
attack the bulk of the hand, though discard a Swamp from your hand or
sacrificing one in play makes Sink not exactly a dodge of the drawback of
a Portal.
If there were any card that I would love to see added to
this deck, it would have to be Recoil. The deck is already Black/Blue, and
quite heavy on the discard. In addition to being able to handle any
permanent out there, it could easily be a card that could simply buy you
time. In addition, there are bound to be times when you are going to
really want to get rid of your own Portal simply because living under the
portal didn't end up being as great as you hoped (maybe they killed your
only Azami in response). I wouldn't be surprised if Recoil was just a
cheap, instant Desert Twister in this deck.
Here are a couple of strategy tips from Jonathan on his
deck:
Try not to play your blue cards until after the Portal
has hit (especially the Tog). Also do not play portal if you do not have a
win condition, Azami, or multiple Fact or Fictions in hand. Don't forget
to keep two blue open at times to fake the counterspells that you are not
running.
Good work, Jonathan. I thought the deck was fantastic,
and I hope that everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks to
everyone that submitted decks, especially those of you who took the time
to submit several decks. It was hard to cut it down to these few ones that
I selected, but I had to keep this article from being a thirty-parter. If
you had a submission that you wanted to show people, the forums are a
great place to show them to everyone. |
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