Last week, Gathering Magic’s own Mike Cannon published his first article for DailyMTG.com. Congratulations, Mike! In it, he previewed the Gatecrash Equipment Illusionist’s Bracers. Mike’s article covered two directions the card could go: Blightspeaker and Aphetto Alchemist for infinite life-loss and Nantuko Mentor and Yew Spirit for massive pump.

I want to go a different direction this week, just generating a ton of value. While there are a lot of ways to take the Braces to go infinite, doing so means not getting to play with the Bracers anymore! So instead, I looked for creatures’ activated abilities that could generate the most value on their own.

These three all have something in common: They search our library for a creature card and put it onto the battlefield. With Illusionist’s Bracers, we’ll get to find two of the appropriate creatures. Let’s just hope that doesn’t make them—brace yourself—illusionary . . . 

"Jund Illusionist"

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Bloodline Keeper
• 1 Chameleon Colossus
• 1 Immaculate Magistrate
• 1 Pack Rat
• 1 Voice of the Woods
• 2 Dark Impostor
• 2 Hellkite Overlord
• 2 Kazandu Tuskcaller
• 2 Skyshroud Poacher
• 2 Thunderscape Master
• 2 Wirewood Channeler
• 3 Dragon's Herald
• 4 Fleshwrither
• 4 Priest of Titania
• 4 Seeker of Skybreak

• Spells (4)
• 4 Illusionist's Bracers

• Lands (24)
• 4 Forest
• 4 Mountain
• 4 Swamp
• 1 Golgari Rot Farm
• 1 Gruul Turf
• 1 Rakdos Carnarium
• 1 Wirewood Lodge
• 2 Golgari Guildgate
• 2 Gruul Guildgate
• 2 Jund Panorama
• 2 Rakdos Guildgate

Buy This Deck

Searching Up Creatures

Finally, Dragon's Herald can search up two Hellkite Overlords for the low, low cost of itself, a black creature, a green creature, , plus the Illusionist’s Bracers and the required to cast and equip it. However, when we do get to pull this off, the Dragons get to attack for 16 or more damage straight away—just don’t draw one first.

I considered Behemoth's Herald with Godsire, especially as that then would mean being able to make two or more 8/8s a turn. However, that seems like overkill, and Fleshwrither pulled me away from Naya and toward Jund. But it’s another option if you want to take the build in a different direction. Speaking of different directions, consider Moggcatcher as a Fleshwrither target that can also search up Dragon's Herald if you really want to push for that plan.

More Activating!

Invasion’s Blahscape Masters have always seemed awesome to me. In fact, I once built a five-colored Commander deck just so I could play all five. Unfortunately, I currently have no shard-colored decks built, so I’m not getting to play with any of them . . . However, they all have pairs of great superpowers, so playing one here is irresistible. Thunderscape is the original Jund, so Thunderscape Master finds his place in our B/R/G deck here.

When it comes to generating Elephant tokens with activated abilities, Kazandu Tuskcaller is the most powerful card in Magic: The Gathering. With Illusionist’s Bracers, she’s doubly powerful. Can you imagine an Ancestral Recall that drew six cards? Okay, so maybe comparing the doubling of this Rise of the Eldrazi Shaman to the doubling of the actual best cards in Magic isn’t quite fair. Fortunately, level up consists of an activated ability, so we only need to pay thrice for her to reach her maximum level, at which point she’ll be able to make four Elephants per tap. And for only , she’ll already be at her second stage and making Elephant pairs.

Voice of the Woods provides another super-powerful activated ability, this one with a pretty steep activation cost. He also jumps in on the Elf theme and provides a 7/7 Elemental theme all on his own.

Pack Rat has been all the rage on the Return to Ravnica Draft scene, so I decided it deserves some love here, too. The first Illusionist’s Bracers Pack Rat activation basically costs the same as a normal activation: We have to pay (to equip), and we have to spend a card (in this case: Illusionist’s Bracers). There’s also that 2-mana casting cost, but otherwise, we get to make the same Pack Rat token. Once we’ve paid that upfront cost, it’s all free extra Rats from there on out.

More Fleshwrithing!

Immaculate Magistrate makes threats all around our side of the battlefield, especially when he’s twice as powerful as everyone else. With his 4-mana cost and Elf subtype, we should be able to find him when we need him.

Bloodline Keeper has a nifty activated ability as well, making for us quite the Vampire army when we don’t have the mana to spend on Kazandu Tuskcaller. Just don’t activate his transformation while he’s equipped with the Bracers—he’ll transform twice, leaving you back where you started. I considered Captivating Vampire to create a Vampire subtheme, and you could definitely go this route for a Vampire-oriented deck, but the charming Magic 2011 Vampire is just a bit too inexpensive for my Future Sight Horror’s tastes.

Finally, Chameleon Colossus is just too good to pass up here. It’s a reference to Mike Cannon’s massive-pump theme, it plays well with Fleshwrither, Skyshroud Poacher, the other Elves, Bloodline Keeper, and even Pack Rat, and it has a great activated ability for Illusionist’s Bracers. The only downside is that Dark Impostor can’t exile it for its ability even if we wanted it to—that pesky protection from black.

More Elves!

Seeker of Skybreak is the comboiest piece of the deck apart from the actual Illusionist’s Bracers. Early in the game, they can serve as extra copies of our Channelers or Priests, untapping a mana Elf to double up its juice production. Later on, she can untap our powerful tap-to-activate creatures for more Elephant or Vampire tokens or to double up the massiveness of our team with another go from Thunderscape Master. Finally, if we really, really want to go infinite, she is the piece that can pull it together.

With Illusionist’s Bracers on Seeker of Skybreak, she can untap both herself and one of our other creatures as many times as we like. We can generate as much mana and/or tokens as we want this way, and even if the activation cost we want to repeat requires mana or the tapping of multiple creatures, the Seeker should give us enough untaps to pay for it all—as long as we had enough creatures other than the Seeker to pay the costs to begin with.

For example, with Voice of the Woods, four other Elves, and Seeker of Skybreak with Illusionist’s Bracers, we can tap the five non-Seeker Elves for a 7/7, tap the Seeker to untap the Voice and herself, tap the Seeker to untap Elf 2 and herself, repeat for Elves 3 through 5, repeat for another 7/7, and so on.

With Seeker of Skybreak with Illusionist’s Bracers, Thunderscape Master, and Wirewood Channeler, we can tap the Channeler for , tap Thunderscape Master to drain our opponent for 2, tap the Seeker to untap the Channeler and herself, tap the Seeker to untap the Master and herself, and repeat.

With Bloodline Keeper, a leveled-up Kazandu Tuskcaller, or Immaculate Magistrate, it’s easy mode.

More Signoffs!

Until next time, I’m Andrew saying, “Whatever direction you go, make sure to have fun . . . then, copy that direction. You may choose new targets for the copy.”

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com