Magic the Gathering is a game of nearly infinite possibilities. A game that encourages us to experiment with our cards, to test our most radical ideas. That spirit is what makes MTG such a special hobby. It has been written that, mathematically speaking, there are more possible combinations of magic cards than molecules in the universe. While I am not qualified to prove or refute such a claim, I can tell you one thing. There’s a lot. Sometimes those cookie-cutter deck ideas get boring and we want something more . . . exciting to play. One of the more interesting, and out-there deck ideas is going sans creature. Meaning no summon spells at all (antiquated terminology I know) .
The Guidelines
it may seem strange at first, but you'll get used to an empty battlefield
When it comes to creating a deck without creatures there are two basic issues. First, how do we protect ourselves from our opponent’s creatures. Any creature-less deck worth it’s salt needs to be able to halt aggressive creature creation from across the table. Board sweeping effects like Wrath of God are an obvious inclusion, and there are many more underrated options. Thunder Staff, Reverence and Porphyry Nodes are all great ways to stem a rising creature tide. Spot removal can work as well, but including enough copies of Terror or Unmake can limit your options for an effective deck combo. That brings us to our second problem. Winning. Without creatures it becomes very challenging to damage our opponent. Damage is the cause of victory in nearly every game of MTG. We’ll need to think outside the box for this one. The power/toughness box that is. Time for what they call an alternate win condition or winning without bringing your opponent to zero life. Decking is the most common AWC, but there are others hidden like Easter eggs within the vast expanse of cards.
Damage is what red does. It won't matter how many or how few creatures we include. Players have been dueling with creature-less red builds since magic was created. I certainly don't need to tell anyone how to create such a deck. There is a reason WotC has so few red cards that offer alternate win conditions.
To address the previous issues we then need to find our color(s). Each color brings it’s own flavor to the creature-less deck, but some are certainly better than others. Red is clearly the best at bringing the pain without the muscle of creatures. So much so that I will not include it here (see side-bar to the right). The next two are really a toss up and depend on preference. Blue allows great defense against basically anything, and has long had a panache for decking cards. Because decking your opponent is the second most common type of win, blue makes a strong case. However I am choosing white, a more creative choice. White offers board sweeping effects, peerless defense, and more AWC cards than any other color. Black and green both bring a little to the table, but not enough to replace white here. We have our color. Now, before we build are perfect creature deprived deck we have one more hurdle to leap.
The Conflict
There is a Story Circle/Sigil of the Empty Throne deck currently making rounds on MTGO. The deck basically locks the opponent down and then produces enough angels via the Sigil to overwhelm any defense. Here is the final piece of contention with our theme, and it is more idealogical than anything. Do we include cards that technically speaking aren’t creatures but produce tokens, or become creatures? Here is where we separate the somewhat ambitious from the truly committed. In the Circle/Sigil deck, the goal is to win by creature token instead of creature. I believe we are splitting hairs here. To be a truly creature-less deck we need to defeat without tokens, creature-stealing, and morphing enchantments.
The Deck
not bad as AWCs go
Now that we have our color, and the parameters to build a revolutionary deck let’s get started. First we need a win condition. We’re using Barren Glory in that slot. To make this deck work, or be possible at all, we’re going to need another combo piece. Using the Enchanted Evening/Tempest of Light pairing we can meet Barren Glory’s hardest requirement. We need to throw extra land in this deck to make the second requirement easier. After we work our EE + ToL combo all we need is to land Barren Glory, and wait until our next turn. For the same effect at instant speed, we simply Oblivion Ring our Barren Glory and wait to use our Tempest of Light until the end of our opponent’s turn. Game over.
Making this all work consistently is a bit of a challenge. For starters we will usually need a fetch like Idyllic Tutor to snag us either Barren Glory, Oblivion Ring or Enchanted Evening. Or all three. Next, we need more than four copies of our catalyst, Tempest of Light. Luckily Patrician’s Scorn does the exact same thing.
With our AWC in place we need to allow time for it to develop. That means holding off our opponent’s army, and their spells. Wrath of God is going to be key here, and we can also add Reverence to hold off repeated token rushes. White has some great spot removal options to rid us of any more pesky issues. Finally we can add a little insurance in the form of Greater Auramancy. The easiest way to ensure our plan isn’t upset by a single Naturalize.
We’re now ready to face our brave new world with nothing but non-creature spells in hand. Remember that it’s never too outrageous if it works.
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Nice idea. Did you try this deck? It would be interesting how good this deck works against other decks. Maybe you can test your deck against different good decks and tell us your results?
I guess it is too difficult to get all the combo pieces together, but who knows.
I’ve played a slightly watered-down version of this deck, and it was pretty decent. White has so many ways to slow down your opponent getting a combo going isn’t hard. Cards like pacify, holy day, story circle, etc make the game last at least as long as you need. If you have a lot of the combo pieces I recommend giving it a try.
The best part of course, is feeling like you accomplished something when it works.
You could replace the Enchanted Evening/Tempest of Light combo with Worldpurge. That should accomplish the same thing. Mana is a bit steeper…
http://sales.starcitygames.com/cardscans/MAGSHA/worldpurge.jpg
Not quite. In order to win, I can’t have any cards in my hand. Worldpurge would give me 7 new cards and make it that much harder for me to meet Barren Glory’s win conditions.
Worldpurge after an Oblivion Ring on one of your better cards would work though. An interesting combo . . .
Ahh…missed the ‘no cards in hand’ bit.
Try reading Worldpurge.
Worldpurge just says “up to 7″. You can choose none. Just O-Ring your Barren Glory and then do the Worldpurge. That’s all she wrote.
I can’t afford WOG (sad I know) right now, but what about Austere Command? http://magiccards.info/lw/en/3.html
I think this would be even better than WOG because it can do a few things for you, destroy the enchantments and clear creatures if need be?
Haha! I just created this deck and against my first opponent it worked like a charm. My last two options was dropping enchanted evening, then tempest of light ftw!
I wanna revise it though and add some other things like possibly faith’s fetter or maybe ghost prison, not sure yet. I need to test it more but here’s the decklisting:
Barren Glory x 2
SLate of Ancestry x 2
Porphyry Nodes x 2
Tempest of Light x 3
oblivion ring x 4
greater auramancy x 2
idylic tutor x 4
reverence x 2
ivory mask x 1
enchanted evening x 2
austere command x 3
barren glory x 2
sunbeam spellbomb x 4
wayfarer’s bauble x 4
path to exile x 3
22 plains
I’ve since revised this deck, will post the decklist later.
Ghost Prison is a great add that I didn’t think of. Nice work Drieghen, and let us know how your deck fairs.
I win pretty consistantly unless I’m playing against super-aggro decks.
Nice idea and the deck looks great, but what about Telemin Performance, wouldn’t that get rid of your whole library?
Would Solitary Confinement be a good addition to the deck/its sideboard to counter aggro decks?
I just finished a deck like this. My friend bet me I couln’t make a decent creatureless mono-green deck. The deck’s win condition is Helix Pinnacle, and its shround makes it hard to disrupt. The deck accelerates the win with doubling season, heartbeat of spring, and vernal bloom. Drop of Honey kills opponent’s creatures, and Enchantresses’ Presence creates a method of rapidly searching through the deck. Rowen ensures a useful card is drawn each turn. To hold down the fort, I use 16 Fogs, specifically 4 each of Respite, Tangle, Moment’s Peace, and Constant Mists. I’ve yet to play through the deck, but I will use it later this week.
nice deck idea, looks cool. You might want to add Fog itself.
Actually, though they all cost 2 mana, they all have unique perks. Moment’s Peace can be used twice with flashback. Respite gains me life in case I don’t have any Fogs later. Tangle taps out the attackers, which can defend me well for almost 2 turns. Finally, Constant Mists has Buyback, so if I’m land flooded I can still hold off attackers.
I played it through and took out the Drops of Honey for Awakening, which not only doubles my Helix speed, but allows me to tap out when I play it and still be able to Fog the next turn.
My sideboard is ridiculous. It’s 7 mountains, 4 Fireball, and 4 Blaze. Why? Because
NOBODY EVER EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Who’d expect this deck to sideboard OUT 4 Helix Pinnacle, 4 Doubling Season, and 7 forests? NOBODY. It’s such a strange, counter-intuitive move, it’s completely unexpected. It also practically ensures they will not have counter-burn cards in their deck. Then, for game 3, they don’t know what strategy you’ll use. Yes, it’s almost completely useless but the expression on your opponent’s face is PRICELESS
This is a great build. Tried something similar online and had a great time. I just love the ‘Hey, whats that mountain for?’ moment.
Cool sideboard… also, for the original deck in this article, did you try Ward of Bones? Great to stop them from playing creatures.
“It has been written that, mathematically speaking, there are more possible combinations of magic cards than molecules in the universe. While I am not qualified to prove or refute such a claim, I can tell you one thing. There’s a lot.”
I’m sorry dude but… SERIOUSLY??? Come on man, I am pretty sure a 10 year old is qualified to refute that claim.
I guess I should have mentioned this in my previous post but mathematically there the possible combinations of magic cards couldn’t even come close to the amount of molecules in a drop of water.
…did I just get trolled?
So no hyperbole allowed on the internet anymore?
Besides, you can look at it in the sense that there are basically infinite combos if you throw out deck size and any attempt to make sense out of the card choices.
Since every re-ordered combo of magic cards is a different combo of molecules, no matter the # of possibilities you can never win. just saying.