It may sound a little odd to say, but I'm new to casual Magic. Having participated mainly in semi-competitive Standard and Legacy for quite some time, I find it fascinating here at MDV to be part of an entire sub-culture of MTG that loves alternate win conditions, theme decks, and White mana. I realized that, if other players have similar experiences to myself, it is likely that many casual players have friends who only play Standard and aren't really interested in playing their FNM deck against their friend's Spike deck from the Tempest block. So I set out to build some Standard decks that casual players might enjoy, while hopefully providing a moderate challenge for their more tournament-minded buddies. I also decided to include sample sideboards, because I know that there are folks who use them, even in casual settings.

From my short time running in casual circles (I'm already dizzy), I have noted that a lot of players tend to like the same types of decks, and variations on the same themes are seen repeatedly in MDV's deck submission forum. Always up for a challenge, I decided to take a few of these more popular deck types and use them as inspiration to create casual Shadowmoor-legal Standard decks. I'll start with a variation on the surprisingly popular Black-White Orzhov Bleeder deck, follow it up with a unique look at a Green-White Midgame deck, and, saving the best for last, I'll close out with an unexpectedly strong Mono-Blue Milling deck.

It continues to fascinate me as to how many Orzhov Bleeder decks are posted in the forums, as I don't expect such an unusual strategy to be quite so popular. The plan for the traditional Ravnica style Black-White Bleed deck is to slowly poke at the opponent with life loss/gain spells and permanents and to avoid tangling with the enemy in the combat phase as much as possible, often through board control elements and evasion creatures.

A quick look at the available cards in Shadowmoor-Standard shows that, unfortunately, White doesn't share the Black-style life loss/gain duo that it once did during its Ravnica heyday, so it will be used mainly for control. I expect the coming Eventide, with its focus on Enemy colors, will rectify this situation.

On the other hand, Black has a decent smattering of life loss, and Lorwyn Block contributes two one-mana 1/1 evasion creatures to Black, something which the color has been needing for a very long time. While some may consider Prickly Boggart and Nightshade Stinger to be out of place in a Bleed deck, they both avoid other creatures in combat, do damage in small doses that annoy your opponent, and enable a far more traditional bleeder card: Morsel Theft.

This deck uses its control cards and the Rebel search ability to slow the opponent, all the while pinging away with evasive creatures and non-combat sources of life-loss. Often, you will finish by Blightspeaking a Mirror Entity into play at the end of the opponent's turn and alpha striking with Rogues for the win. The sideboard includes some cards against Aggro-Control and Combo, just because that is what I often see. Here is a little commentary on a few of the more notable cards in the deck:

Blightspeaker—Not only does it cause life loss while avoiding combat, but it also controls the board by fetching Bound in Silence, Aven Riftwatcher, Big Game Hunter, and Zealot il-Vec, all at instant speed. It also fetches out an end-of-turn Mirror Entity for a sudden all in alpha strike or to beef up the defense.

Murderous Redcap—Originally this was Highway Robber's slot, but Murderous Redcap's flexibility overshadowed the Robber's life gain. Murderous Redcap plays double duty as player damage and board control and has strong synergies with Momentary Blink and Nameless Inversion.

An important and fun trick to know about in this deck is that you can convert Nameless Inversion into three damage by using it on a Murderous Redcap before the Redcap's comes into play (CIP) ability resolves. The Nameless Inversion will kill the Redcap, but not before it pumps the Redcap's power by three, netting you three extra damage off of its CIP ability. If you have six mana, you can play a Redcap and an Inversion in response to the CIP ability to deal six total damage, and still have a 1/1 Redcap on the board.

Smolder Initiate and Leechridden Swamp—These two cards really help the deck to feel like the traditional Orzhov Bleed decks. You can get a surprising amount of damage in with a first turn Smolder Initiate.

Razormane Masticore—This card is a brick house, and it almost made it into the main deck, taking out two Murderous Redcaps and a Momentary Blink for three of these shiny trinkets. Its first strike also plays very well with Nameless Inversion. However, the Razormane was better only sometimes, worse others, and the Redcaps better represented the desired theme of the deck, so they just barely made the cut. Swap in the Razormanes if you find they are better against your friends' decks.

If you are made of money, there are a couple of substitutions you can make to give the deck more resilience. While Smolder Initiate is a lot of fun and exemplifies the spirit of the deck, replacing it with the ever-popular Thoughtseize would improve the deck's chances against pretty much any deck. Adding Damnation to the deck would also contribute to the board control elements—for a price, of course.

How long have we heard from independent (non-WotC) Magic columnists that Green and White suck? I've been reading articles on this topic since Mirrodin came out. You can imagine my reaction when I observed the most popular colors in casual seem to be Green and White, by a wide margin. I think Wizards must know what they are doing, despite what some rabid columnists believe. Based on this observation, I set out to build a GW Midgame deck, but, lo and behold, I found that Cashew and his evil twin beat me to it. So I asked myself, "Self, what else is uniquely popular in casual play?" I came to the conclusion that nothing typifies casual more than a deck that gives you a different hand every time you play. Variation is very casual, indeed.

Whether forced by budget or intentionally designed for game play variation, casual players often run only one or two of a card in a deck. Why not take this to its extreme and build a Highlander deck for Standard? I didn't even have to change my intended deck theme, because so many midgame Green and White cards exist in Standard right now that I actually had trouble deciding what to cut!

Take note that this is not just a bunch of good cards smashed together. This deck makes use of the concept of the mana curve, and it has a fair mix of creatures and spells, if a little biased towards utility creatures. I also designed redundancy into certain parts of the deck using card analogs (cards that perform the same basic function as another card). For example, Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elves, Boreal Druid, and Wall of Roots all accelerate mana, while Wall of Roots, Safehold Elite, and Phyrexian Ironfoot hold off ground attackers until the big guys get online.

I have a habit of running lower land counts than some people are comfortable running, and this deck is no exception. If you are not used to mulliganing aggressively, or if you don't use the mulligan rule, you might want to squeeze in a couple more lands.

I amused myself by filling much of the sideboard with anti-Faerie cards, while the rest went to fight Combo. Mix it up for your friend's decks, as necessary.

Some cards will be obvious as to why they are in the deck. Some unusual cards to note:

Treefolk Harbinger—The Harbinger is great for this deck. At 0/3, it blocks well, fixes mana problems via Murmuring Bosk, can find removal in the form of Crib Swap, can attack alongside the Mirror Entity it tutors up, and searches out the expensive Chameleon Colossus.

Judge Unworthy—I think this card is underrated. The ability to scry combined with fairly reliable removal makes my cut in this deck. If you don't care for Judge Unworthy, Sunlance is a lower-risk, lower-reward analog you can use.

Dust Elemental—Surprisingly fantastic. Doubling as card advantage and a nearly unblockable threat, I'm rarely sad to see a Dust Elemental when playing this deck.

If you are anything like me, you might not actually own all of the cards in this deck. Fortunately, there are so many replacements available that you should be able to find cheap and minimally adequate replacements for everything but the lands—just try to replace function with similar function and watch the mana costs. For example, I think the biggest loss to this deck would be removing the Chameleon Colossus, but if it has to go, I'm pretty content replacing it with a Havenwood Wurm. Sure, the Wurm costs a fair bit more and can't be tutored by the Harbinger, but it can be flashed in to kill an attacker and trample over blockers, something the Colossus can't do. In addition to the cards in the sideboard, other relatively budget card ideas for the deck include Gilt-Leaf Ambush; Scryb Ranger; Soul Warden; Essence Warden; Imperious Perfect; Rhox; Twilight Shepherd; Heartmender; Loyal Sentry; Porphyry Nodes; and Rhys, the Redeemed.

While both Blue and Black have milling options in Standard, I chose to run only Islands to empty the opponent's cranium. In the current environment, Mono-Blue Milling seems like such an obvious linear strategy that I expected to throw a bunch of Merfolk together and call it a day. Hoo-boy, was I wrong.

I originally populated my Blue Mill deck with Merfolk and the usual support suspects. The initial version of the deck included Memory Sluice, Ink Dissolver, and Grimoire Thief, but the few test games that went well were won off of the bounce ability of Surgespanner, independent of any milling ability. I just couldn't tweak the deck to race fast enough to eviscerate the opponent's deck before the opponent depleted my life points. At this point, I had to make the decision to add White or Black to the deck for a midgame mill approach, or stick to the Blue mana. Knowing that, if I added another color, I would end up using the same tricks I used in the other two decks I assembled for this article, I chose to forego multi-colored flexibility in the interests of variety and originality.

This turned out to be a rather tricky path to take, as I went through ten completely new versions of the deck before stumbling upon the wonderful combo enabler that is Magus of the Future. Combining the Magus with the right fish-people turned out to be quite serendipitous.

The deck has a two-pronged attack. You can aggro out with a quick Merrow Reejery or two, which is a fine way to go. You can also combo out to mill the opponent, or, in some cases, both mill and kill the opponent. Humiliations galore! The combo can be tricky to start in earnest, but if it fizzles you are usually left with at least several expendable blockers on the board, if not a bona fide army. Frequently, you can combo out again properly the next turn.

Begin the game playing out your creatures in a normal aggro progression, but avoid trading if possible; you want to keep these Merfolk on board to help with the eventual combo run. At this point, you may be able forego the combo mill strategy altogether, winning by the mundane method of attacking. This becomes especially likely if you find you can tap the opponent's blockers each turn with Merrow Reejerey's triggered ability and swing in for the fast kill.

The combo begins to kick in once you get a Magus of the Future down. Then you proceed to play cards from the top of your library until you can use Drowner of Secrets to mill yourself down to more Merfolk in your deck and Merrow Reejerey to untap Islands. Eventually you will have enough cost-cutters, untappers, and self-millers to start milling the opponent with Drowner Initiate for each Merfolk you play. I'll give an example of the combo at work:

You have three untapped Islands, Magus of the Future, Drowner of Secrets, Drowner Initiate and two Merrow Reejereys in play. A Stonybrook Banneret is revealed on the top of the library.

• Play the Banneret, tapping two Islands to pay for it. A Magus of the Future is revealed on top of your library. Put the Initiate's and Reejerey’s triggered abilities on the stack, making sure that the Reejereys’ abilities resolve first.
• Untap the Islands with the two triggered Merrow Reejerey "Whenever you play a Merfolk" abilities.
• Since you will soon have a cost-reducing Banneret on the board, you can afford to use one of your now untapped Islands to pay for the Initiate's "Whenever you play a Blue spell" ability. Mill the opponent for two cards.
• The Banneret resolves, and now you can use the Drowner of Secrets's ability to tap the freshly cast Merfolk, targeting yourself and self-milling the Magus on your library away, hopefully revealing more Merfolk to continue the cycle.

The card choice that seems most uncertain in this deck is Ghastly Discovery. These can be replaced by a second and third Merrow Commerce and a third Merrow Witsniper, if you want. This configuration makes it easier to keep the combo going, but harder to get it started. This spot has also at one time or another been taken by Distant Melody, Dire Undercurrents, and Fallowsage, all with some degree of success.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind, when learning to play this deck:

• It's easy to forget that Magus of the Future, as a Wizard, gets a cost reduction from Stonybrook Banneret. Make sure you get a bargain, not a point of mana burn.
• When you are going off, try to keep one Merfolk card in hand, if possible, so that when you reveal a Silvergill Adept on the top of your deck you can play it on the cheap. If you don't have a Merfolk in hand and would have to tap out to play the Adept, it may be better just to mill it away.
• As you go through the deck, remember you can also untap your Merfolk as well as your Islands. This is important when you run low on self-millers—skip paying for your Initiate's mill ability once or twice so that you can restock on untapped Merfolk, while still keeping mana open.
• The single Merrow Commerce is there because sometimes you have to self-mill so much you don't have enough deck left to mill the opponent with Initiates. The Commerce will let you untap all Merfolk at the end of your turn, at which point you mill the opponent for each Merfolk you control, usually finishing them off. It also allows you to set up blockers if you can't quite finish off the opponent that turn.
• If you control enough creatures at the beginning of the turn to get your combo off, you can often take the opponent's life down to zero, as well. Just use the Reejerey's triggered ability to tap all of their blockers and lands, and swing with pumped Merfolk and the occasional Magus. Milling and killing the opponent is excessive, but fun! (Well, fun for you anyway. Probably not as much fun for the opponent.)
• The sideboard is designed to switch strategies into single-minded Island-walking aggro mode. Bring in the entire sideboard, pull one Drowner of Secrets and all of the Maguses, Initiates, Witsnipers, and Discoveries. Since this deck is Blue, you could instead work in some control, if you prefer.

I hope you enjoy these decks as much as I enjoyed making them. Let me know in the forums how you feel about the article concept or the decks, and if you build and play these decks, tell me how they do!

- DW

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The Games People Play - Market & EDH.
More Evil Than Evil.
Pauper Chronicles: Top O' the Morningtide to You!
Sarpadian Empires, Vol VII: Foreword.
Words from the Streetz: Uncommon and Common Magical Treasures.
The Writers Guild: The Inside Scoop.