There's been a few cards over the years with the word 'Serra' in their name somewhere. Some of these cards have even been good. Until the dawn of "Life.dec", Serra Avatar was never really considered one of those “good” ones.

Then Ped Bun showed the world there's more then one way to skin the format. Which means, he found a way to beat the infamous at the time "Trix" combo deck.

Trix was a deck that centered around abusing two cards: Illusions of Grandeur and Donate. Because of the rather loose wording of Illusions, not only did you gain 20 life for casting it, but if you then gave it to your opponent, when the Illusions 'crashed' because of its horrendous Cumulative Upkeep, your opponent not you, would then lose the 20 life! The Trix deck simply tried to do this as fast as possible as consistently as possible.

But what if your opponent has more then 20 life? Since this was back in the day of good old Sword to Plowshares, many creature decks would Swords their own creature (A maneuver that actually gained a nickname in the format, 'Auto-Swords') to get that fragile one or two life points ahead of 20 and keep attacking the Trix deck. The problem was, that the Trix deck had already gained 20 life, so it often had more then enough time to leisurely find the combination a second time to seal the win. Trix became such a succesful deck that some people complained that it was close to ruining the format.

But what if your playing a Trix deck and your opponent has gained more life? What about a lot more life? More then you could Illusions away, even running the combination multiple times? Say, about, three million life? Ped Bun exploited yet another badly thought-out loophole in the Extended format of the time when he made the "Life" deck, which could punch its own combination through to gain an infinite amount of life, just as fast as Trix tried to deal him 20. The various "en-Kor" creatures all have an ability that targets another creature and have a zero mana activation cost. The secret of the en-Kor creatures was you could use this ability even if the creature did not have any damage to redirect. Now put those infinite targeting attempts onto a creature that reacts to them, say an Angelic Protector or Task Force. Voila, you now have a creature with an amazingly huge rear end. One Worthy Cause later and you've gained a truckload of life and a very comfortable cushion to win under. A VERY comfortable life cushion.

How do you win? Well you can always use your single copy of About Face on your monstrously high toughness creature. Suddenly it is attacking your opponent with a flip flopped power and toughness score that means he takes a ridiculous amount of damage. Or you can simply cast your Serra Avatar. With as much power and toughness as you have life, chances are it's going to be a bit hard for your opponent to get rid of.

And what if he does? It doesn't matter. The Avatar shuffles right back into your deck if they kill it! And with nearly infinite life, you can just wait to draw it again. Or use one of your Vampiric Tutors and just go dig it up that way as well. Suddenly that 'lose two life' drawback just doesn't seem that bad, you know?

How can you measure the long term success of a deck? A good way is to see how many people imitate it over the years, and trust me gang, this deck has been mimicked a bloody lot. Even now in the Post-Rotation Extended, people are still trying to use a similar idea to this deck to go for infinite life. Too bad they don't have their Serra Avatar anymore.

And now on to the other deck that abused the big white Avatar of doom. Sneak Attack has been a deck off and on for years, ever since the card first appeared way back in Urza's Saga. At times it was wonderful, at times just plain awful, but it was always lurking in the wings waiting for someone who wasn't prepared for it. Overall, it never became a real 'deck to fear' for Extended. It wasn’t a ‘deck to fear’ that is, until a legendary Japanese deck builder got his hands on the idea just before the format rotated and made it into something the world had never really seen: A consistent Sneak Attack deck.

If you’re at all familiar with previous Sneak Attack decks, you'll see the usual suspects here. What Fujita brought was some new tech in the form of Blazing Shoal and Dragon Tyrant to the party. Dragon Tyrant by itself can deal a very reliable twelve damage, thanks to it's flying and double strike. Double Strike also plays into Blazing Shoal amazingly well. Because anything that pumps an unblocked Double Strike creatures power is essentially doubly effective, one Blazing Shoal, discarding any of the large monsters in your hand, can quite possibly put your opponent away for good. It's possible for this deck to win on Turn one with a 'God hand" and Fujita consistently won on turns 3-5 all tournament long right into the top 8.

Serra Avatar was a key card here, as Sneak Attack could usually power it out so fast as to make it a still significant, if not instantly lethal, threat. And even though you lost it at end of turn, it would just shuffle right back into your deck, ready to be used again. And again, and then once more just for laughs. Serra Avatar also served a very odd purpose that had nothing to with the theme of this deck, but was always welcome nonetheless. If you have a Serra Avatar in the deck and play right, you can NEVER deck yourself. Just hold onto your cards till you have to discard. Discard the Avatar and woosh!, back into the deck it goes. Eventually, you'll be drawing nothing but Serra Avatars off the bottom of your deck, but you won't deck. Talk about winning a game with silly stall tactics!

And just because I like my readers, I dug up another deck that uses Serra Avatar! I would have thought of it sooner, as I played a very similar version of this for years in Extended, but I didn't actually use Serra Avatar, as I didn't own any. Instead I used one of the two other cards that can take her place for this decks purposes, but more on that after the list.

Yes, it's a three card combination deck. Can you see where it loops? The 'other spells' section is your key here, and the four sets of four cards each. Once you get Ashnod's Altar, Fecundity and Saproling Cluster into play, your loop is such:

1) Pay one mana, Discard a card to Cluster. You get a 1/1 token.

2) Sacrifice your token to Ashnod's Altar for two colorless.

3) Fecundity triggers off the token, drawing you a card to replace the one you've discarded.

That's it. Every time you run this loop, you net a colorless mana and draw a card deeper into your deck. Eventually you'll find your kill cards, either a Snake Basket for infinite 1/1's or your Whetstone to deck your opponent. You yourself never deck running this loop, even with Whetstone. Why? YOU have Serra Avatar and its awesome ability to reshuffle itself. It's quite possible you'll end up holding your Whetstone with only one card left in your library, the Avatar. Since every time you discard it, it shuffles back in to your library, you keep drawing it off your combo so you basically loop that same card over and over again. When you have enough mana, drop Whetstone and mill your opponents entire deck away. Since Whetstone doesn't make either player draw, you can keep doing this even with no cards left in your own deck, you don't lose until you have to DRAW a card.

Which you let your opponent do by saying "your turn" after you've decked him. You can also just float one R plus 20 colorless after a sideboard switch and Blaze your opponent to death. Or bring in the Processor and very quickly make a LOT of big tokens. Or for even more fun with this deck, get your single Pattern of Rebirth onto an elf, sacrifice the creature (you've got tons of ways to do just that) and if your life total is high enough, just go pull Serra Avatar right out of the deck into play, as early as turn three.

The other card that does this trick is Legacy Weapon. It lacks Serra Avatar's ability to beat your opponent senseless, but keeps the 'shuffle back from anywhere' ability that's so key. And with City of Brass, Thran Quarry, and Birds of Paradise, its not unrealistic at all to assume you might actually use its activated ability every now and then as well.

You could also use Darksteel Colossus, as it has the exact same 'reshuffle' wording as Avatar and Legacy Weapon. In fact, if I were to make a version of this deck today, I'd definitely use Darksteel Colossus instead of Avatar. Where Avatar might be bigger, Darksteel has Trample and Indestructible. And it's not like your casting him, thanks to Pattern of Rebirth. Though I suppose with as much mana as this deck can float, you could cast him if you really wanted.

So, there we have it, three deck's all using Serra Avatar and all in a different way. From fast beats to combination infinite life gain, right on through to a 'cannot deck self' mechanism, Serra Avatar has a ton of great and fun uses. Which probably explains why its going for so much when you try to buy one, even now when its been out for ages. I'm still debating getting one just to say I have it!

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Rogue
Druid Week Primer
Opting In: Ravnica
MDV Idol: Finale!
Avatar Week Primer
Delusions of Mediocrity: Getting Stuffy in Here.
Lands-More than Mana: Part One
Raiding Ravnica: Guildmages and You!