First, results!

It's funny, when you give people 250 cards to play with, you get to learn a lot about them. You start to see patterns, and pet cards that people have. Certain strategies that are integral to the person's personality, and not just to the deck, start to come out.

Some people go for crazy things, like say, pulling hundreds of elves out with Nissa Revane's ultimate ability. Other people are rebels who buck authority by basically trying to include every tutor in the game that I DIDN'T ban.

But all that aside, we have 11 decks that made the top 10 this time around, paradoxical as that is. We have a tie in 10th place, but first, an honorable mention.

Honorable Mention- blueclay - Dumb

Seriously, just go look at it. How could I not show you that? YOU WILL PERISH.

10 - Tie (22 pts)

l0ki - THIS is a Deck Challenge & time-spiral-timeshifted/squire.jpgSquire - draw, I dare ya

L0ki likes the simple things in life. Creatures and mana. And lots of both. I tried to count how much mana l0ki's deck could conceivably produce in a single turn, but then I decided "screw it" when I had gotten up to about 800 or so when I realized that the final number would be at least double that. Instead of putting all that mana into a truly epic conflux/banefire.jpgBanefire, l0ki just uses his deck to find and cast dudes. Lots and lots of dudes. And if you kill them all, say with a planar-chaos/damnation.jpgDamnation, he finds and casts more dudes. Really, after turn 6 or so, even in a deck with 250 cards, this deck reliably has essentially infinite mana. Good times! l0ki makes his debut top-10 appearance with this entry.

Squire, predictably, was unpredictable. His strategy was to cause his opponent to draw massive numbers of cards, then punish them for it with all the cards in the game that punish opponents' heavy hands, and wish they were fourth-edition/black-vise.jpgBlack Vise, but were never properly motivated when they were children, so that doing 6 damage for 1 mana at the beginning of a game will forever remain a far-off dream. Where was I before I went off on that tangent? Ah, yes. Squire's deck = good. While he runs a ton of counterspells and bounce in order to allay the main drawback of "You're giving your opponent a bunch of cards," I found in playtesting that this deck still had trouble stemming the flow of enemy castings. tenth-edition/boomerang.jpgBoomerang on lands and other such plays to slow down the enemy mana base were critical. Squire has appeared in every top-10 list I've ever published, and doesn't stop here with this, his fourth appearance.

9- i_call_BS - Drawing up a plan... - 23.5 pts

This deck can draw a lot of cards really fast. And it can keep ALL the cards it draws IN its hand. AND it can make that huge hand kill you with * / * creatures where * = cards in hand. And don't forget weatherlight/firestorm.jpgFirestorm. And onslaught/words-of-war.jpgWords of War. And exodus/sonic-burst.jpgSonic Burst. And I would go on, but this was the 250 card challenge, and suffice to say- this deck has a LOT of ways to get things done. I_Call_BS is now a top-10 sophomore with his second appearance.

8- Illiad - Are you afraid of the Dark? - 24 pts

Illiad takes us all back to the days of SNICK with his deck title, but the Midnight Society won't be so angsty and full of teenaged energy and spunk when ACTUAL monsters from beyond the grave start ripping off their delicious, and probably pretty lean, tender flesh. Illiad puts things in the graveyard. Then he gets them out again. It's a classic magic strategy, what with odyssey/entomb.jpgEntomb and odyssey/buried-alive.jpgBuried Alive and all, but it's trickier to pull off than you might think when you have to have 250 cards in your deck. But Illiad dug deep (PUN DEFINITELY INTENDED) and found the cards to make it work consistently. Illiad pulls in his fourth top-10 in four challenges.

7- Siegfried - Dredge Away - 24.5 pts

Dredge is no disadvantage at all to a deck with 250 cards in it, thought Siegfried. And he is quite correct. But showing himself to be a multi-dimensional thinker, Siegfried also included the majority of the cards in the game that give benefits based on some kind of card or another being in the graveyard. (Except for future-sight/tarmogoyf.jpgTarmogoyf. Irony, eh?) Siegfried's powerful entry gets him on the board with his first top-10.

6- Darkness1835 - BIG GUY - 25.5 pts

Darkness1835 shows he can meet a challenge just as well as he can issue one. This deck is big. And I mean that in every sense. Darkness not only EXCEEDED the minimum card limit by a chutzpah-filled 13 cards, but based the deck on big dudes. I mean really big dudes. I mean, this deck is in the running for the "deck with the greatest total power and toughness of all its creatures" award, although we have another entry coming up that also throws its hat into the ring there. Darkness found all those Alara (and to a lesser extent, Lor/Sha) cards that do good things to/with big creatures, whether it's creatures with a power of 5 (as with all those Naya cards), or toughness of 4 (like lorwyn/colfenors-urn.jpgColfenor's Urn), and then put them to good use with a collection of nasty, huge beaters that he casts on a regular basis thanks to lots and lots of ramp. This is Darkness1835's second top-10.

5- ChaosandKellee - Depths 250 - 26.5 pts

You know what a pretty good extended archetype is? HexDepths, which uses zendikar/vampire-hexmage.jpgVampire Hexmage and coldsnap/dark-depths.jpgDark Depths to, well, you know, bring out a flying 20/20 indestructible creature on turn 2. (And when I say "pretty good extended archetype," I mean "format-warping monster of a deck") Chaos&Kel took that archetype, mixed it with morningtide/maralen-of-the-mornsong.jpgMaralen of the Mornsong lockdown, and then shoved in a bunch of transmuters to cleverly avoid my tutor restrictions. The result is a very fast, reliable deck that you'd never suspect of being 250 cards if you just played against it without looking at the giant stack o' cards. This solid entry nets ChaosandKellee his/her/their first top-10.

4- luckyfirefox16 - Must Love Spells - 27.5 pts

luckyfirefox16, if you don't remember, was the Master Deckbuilder who defeated all comers at building a deck with 4x saviors-of-kamigawa/one-with-nothing.jpgOne with Nothing and 4x mirrodin/leveler.jpgLeveler. As you might suspected, the kind of person who can manage to do that can probably find their way around a blue deck. And indeed, Luckyfirefox shows that he knows well the holy trinity of blue- draw, bounce, counter. This deck will do these three things. A lot. And then, sooner or later, it will Polymorph or Telemin Performance itself. And then you will have to deal with conflux/progenitus.jpgProgenitus. conflux/progenitus.jpgProgenitus has protection from you, your mother, your deck, and its stupid face. So good luck with that. Luckyfirefox16 adds his third top-10 to the board.

3- time-spiral-timeshifted/squire.jpgSquire - Big bad blue - 28 pts.

Squire was apparently like me when he saw the Worldwake spoilers. He ignored all the crazy-good vampires, the interesting burn, the new helpful allies, the puzzle of that one Eldrazi artifact, etc. He ignored all of that, and went right for worldwake/quest-for-ulas-temple.jpgQuest for Ula's Temple. So his entry for the contest has 4x worldwake/quest-for-ulas-temple.jpgQuest for Ula's Temple. Then a few counters, and some ramp, and some draw. And then EVERY KRAKEN, SERPENT, LEVIATHAN, AND OCTOPUS IN THE GAME. (Except for the really quite bad time-spiral-timeshifted/leviathan.jpgLeviathan) So yeah, THIS is probably the deck most in the running for "most combined p/t among all creatures." This deck can have a bit of trouble getting the Quest out, but even when it can't, it casts Krakenish things very fast using its ramp. It can even avoid the drawbacks that characterize many leviathans and such with its suite of ability counters. And if Squire DOES draw a worldwake/quest-for-ulas-temple.jpgQuest for Ula's Temple, you lose. Seriously. He WILL be putting down two huge Krakenish things EVERY turn for the rest of the game. He's not going to run out. 250 cards. Seriously. Master Deckbuilder Squire makes his fifth top-10 appearance, which ties him for first with TAMA for most top-10s.

2- $ªmHεiπ - Bringer of the NepHeraLeigatum - 28.5 pts

So, in order, the title references the nephilim (i.e. guildpact/dune-brood-nephilim.jpgDune-Brood Nephilim), the heralds (i.e. shards-of-alara/sphinxs-herald.jpgSphinx's Herald), the lieges (i.e. shadowmoor/boartusk-liege.jpgBoartusk Liege), and the ultimatums (i.e. shards-of-alara/cruel-ultimatum.jpgCruel Ultimatum). What is impressive about this deck is the breadth of its mana base. Samhein can find and produce a ton of different-colored mana, and then he can use it to cast not only all those wonderful cards referenced above, but also crowd-pleasers like alara-reborn/wargate.jpgWargate, conflux/obelisk-of-alara.jpgObelisk of Alara, and so on. Samhein makes his fourth top-10 appearance in style, and with authority, like a Slam Dunk Contest winner.

1- TAMA - Health, Wealth and Knowledge 29 pts

Tama finally breaks through and earns his first Master Deckbuilder title. The entry that did it for him scored high in all categories, but earned a perfect 10 in effectiveness. This deck was killer. It drew and drew until it got a stronghold/dream-halls.jpgDream Halls. Then it kills you. It can draw basically forever using the Dream Halls, cast a bunch of painful stuff using it, and then fetch (if it hasn't drawn it already) a storm spell for the win. And it does this quite reliably despite the fact that it has 383 cards, which makes it a winner not only in effectiveness, but also makes it jibe well with the theme of the competition. TAMA tells us all that not only can he build a good 250-card deck, he can build a good 383 card deck. He can slam down this deck proudly on the casual table when you produce your cute 60-card deck, with its well-tuned type ratios and mana curves, and say ominously, "That's no deck.....THIS is a deck." Tama's victory earns him a place alongside time-spiral-timeshifted/squire.jpgSquire, luckyfirefox16, and mwkelley as a Master Deckbuilder, and keeps him ahead of time-spiral-timeshifted/squire.jpgSquire by earning him his record sixth top-10 appearance. Well done.

Fret not, though, deckbuilders, for your next challenge awaits.

I've been too unkind with you recently, I think. Honestly. Using 4x saviors-of-kamigawa/one-with-nothing.jpgOne with Nothing and 4x mirrodin/leveler.jpgLeveler? 250 cards, but none of the cards that would make a huge deck any good? Yes, sometimes I'm pretty sadistic. But this week we're going to slow things down a bit, relax, and get to know each other in a friendly, casual, after work sort of way. This week, a bit of a more free-range challenge.

Rule 1- Your deck must be extended-legal. That means that, in addition to the 60-card minimum and 4 copies of a card max rule, you can only use cards from certain sets, and that certain cards are banned. To see which sets are legal, and which cards are banned, go here: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=judge/resources/sfrextended

Rule 2- Your deck must be a three-color deck. That is, if I look through your deck, and look at the mana costs of all the cards, I will want to have seen three (no more, no less) different colored mana symbols in the upper right when I finish looking.

Rule 3- Only these three-color combinations are valid- W/B/R ("Oros" colors), U/R/G ("Intet" colors), B/W/G ("Teneb" colors), R/U/W ("Numot" colors), G/U/B ("Vorosh" colors).

Rule 4- You will be graded, as usual, on creativity, effectiveness, and theme adhesion. Theme adhesion will check, among other things, whether you only paid lip service to the "three-color" idea by having two main colors and a splash color, or whether your deck is more fully "three-color."

Submit your deck, as usual, in the comments to this article. This competition will close at the end of February 13, so that we can have the excitement of results and a new challenge on Valentine's Day. Because we badly need it then. Because we're Magic players and will probably die alone and unloved. Good luck!