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The Seeker

Oldschool 93/94 Combo Competitive Creatureless Silver Bullet Toolbox UBRG Wheels

2000AD

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Land (18)

Instant (12)

Sorcery (10)

Enchantment (5)

Artifact (15)

Sideboard

Sorcery (10)

Artifact (2)

Instant (3)

Maybeboard

Enchantment (2)

Instant (2)

Artifact (1)

It's called Howling MINE, not Howling YOURS!

"I looked under chairs

I looked under tables

I try to find the key

To fifty million fables

They call me The Seeker

I’ve been searchin’ low and high..."

As I've said before - To me, Magic has always been as much about the brewin' as it's been about the stewin', and it's been this way for my entire adult life. Ya see, back in "the old days" (my god), your skills in the realm of deckbuilding were something you took as much pride in as your ability to know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em, make good plays, et cetera. NEVER would be the amount of times you'd go to a tournament and see a single deck built exactly the same, nevermind the exact same deck being run by 4 or 5 people in the room. I mean that sincerely, when you sat down across from the myriad of players at any given event, there would not be a single similar deck between them - maybe not even a similar deck type! Consistently winning brews were a coveted, sacrosanct item for their owners, who kept the exact nature of the secrets held within close to the vest.

COPYING someone's deck was an area that was "off limits", and there was no respect for those that wanted to participate in that kind of chicanery. Your deck was a unique amalgamation of tools, ideas, or built with a theme in mind - and that made each person's deck something that was unique unto them. An extension of their personality, an espousal of their ethos, flag they could plant firmly atop a hill amidst a sea of others and say: "there may be many like it, but this one is mine." As such, copying someone's personal creation was seen as a slap in the designer's face. How did they know - who snitched? Get your own! While the act itself might not necessarily get you shunned en masse, it was still met with derision from those who valued originality and their ability to solve the puzzle of especially difficult deckbuilding strategies.

Obviously, we've moved away from this in large part, but I still wanted to build something that might be able to hang while also still truly being something that was ... well ... mine!

HOWLING MINE.

And I'm a HOWLIN' MAD BASTARD, baby! Speaking of - the idea here is the player begins as the nice looking Wizard on the card Fastbond, and by the time power has corrupted him ... he's turned to mixing his ways in with the dark arts, using the insidious methods of Demonic Tutors to shortcut his way to the power of ascendency - he would be a 'walker, it was his only goal. Driven mad from drinking from the very veins of power such as this, he has become the crazy sumbitch seen depicted on Channel. His goatee has turned into a wild, scraggly beard. His human features appear sunken and ghastly due to the corruption of his mana. His hands now extend toward the flames of hell with long and bony fingers - their eerie, almost vampiric fingernails, adding more than a twinge of evil to his aura. He stares into The Abyss with cold, heartless eyes - it ceaselessly stares back with a quiet, piercing fury - and he heard the awful Call of the Nether Void. As his soul was infected and his mind consumed within the gaping maw of the Void, he is a shadow of his former self after this exposure. His tunic is as filthy and shredded as his mind has become, and all he cares about is the termination of his enemy vis-a-vis the continuous acquisition of MORE POWER.

AT ANY COST.

A TRANSFORMATION:

So ... you want cards in your hand? Then I will use them against you.

Dropping out a Black Vise on Turn 1 is peak, the 3-point hit straight off the bat being like starting your foe off with a Lightning Bolt to the face, which usually becomes a Shock the following turn. Amazing value, and less work that I need a Storm Seeker to do, the better off everything is.

Who remembers the old Underworld Dreams decks? Y'know...the ones for whom their whole gimmick was to get an Underworld Dreams on the table as fast as could be done, and then hit as many "Draw Seven" cards as possible, moving through their deck with a quickness to dig those out? Yeah, this is KINDA like that, except slightly different. The idea is to hit Storm Seeker/Fork w. Black Vise/Howling Mine, using maindeck Red Elemental Blast to stop the Counterspell crew from wrecking my whole day. Back in the day, I played this sweet Underworld Dreams deck in "Type One", now called "Vintage", and it ran maindeck Red Elemental Blasts too. We called them "R.E.B." for short - they were just in there to protect the win con from Mana Drain and Force of Will, and they were meant to be a curve ball. Kinda like: "Ope! Thought ya had me there, didn't ya!?" In a pinch, the Fork could also be used as a makeshift Counterspell, copying the one cast by an opponent ... or copying the errant Ancestral Recall!

Where the mana base is concerned, I've got a good smattering of -producing lands, with City of Brass to produce either/or, as well as relevant Moxen and a couple -producing lands in there to help cast the "steroids" (as I've heard the blue power cards being called). The card advantage gets real stupid when you can Time Walk with multiple copies of Mine out, especially when sitting on top of a Sylvan Library - drawing a fistful of cards and being able to drop Fastbond for the kind of insane mana acceleration I'll need to start putting big, nasty spells out much sooner than the average mage. Despite Fastbond not having the pain of being Restricted, I really don't feel like I need more than one copy of it. If you disagree, I'd love to know why. Anyhoo - speaking of Sylvan Library, it's a recent addition, and card selection is always a good thing (the interaction with Howling Mine is great). I feel like two is the right number, but I can't explain it - three feels like too many, and I needed the slot open, to be honest

Demonic Tutor going to go snag an answer, but a lot of times that tends to be Fastbond. I have used the Tutor several times to grab the Fastbond, then used Wheel or Twister, and just a couple extra lands off that can really accelerate things ... but at a cost: This deck does have the tendency to cause me to burn through life points like I am writing checks I know my ass can't cash if I can't get to the finish line before I run out of gas (or "credit", as it were). One issue this tends to present is that to move through the spells and protect the ones I want to see the light of day, I can't really devote more than a few slots in this deck for things like answers to this creature, that artifact, this or that enchantment ... etc. Invariably, what this means for me is that I'm probably going to be racing the clock more often than not in order to find the pieces I'm looking for to push whatever strategy I've decided to try and carve out at the time while the opponent is doing their level headed best to just blow the tread off of my tires as fast as possible.

Being , this deck rocks the classic OG Channel/Disintegrate combo, but also can be used to facilitate more than one spell requiring a good bit of colorless mana (such as extra copies of Seeker, or emergency sideboard answers like Nevinyrral's Disk). Why Channel/Disintegrate instead of Channel/Fireball? Cuz there ain't a website named "Channel Disintegrate", that's why!

One answer I pack in here as a complete and total sucker punch is Mirror Universe - you only need to bide your time as best you can, wait for the opponent to tap out, and then drop the Mirror with a Time Walk right behind it. Flip life totals, and throw a Seeker, or burn the poor bastard out with a Disintegrate, no Channel necessary! Other methods of slowing down an aggressively-paced game are The Abyss and Nether Void. Before you say it, yes, I know I'll catch heat for that last one, but what can I say? Whip out a Mine and a Vise early, then put the Void in front of my opponent - let whoever that may be wrestle themselves out from underneath it while it stares into their soul for a change...that's if they still have a soul left. Hurkyl's Recall puts a bunch of artifacts back in someone's hand for a crunchy bit of Black Vise damage....OR it allows me to return casting cost artifacts back into my hand to replay them and tap them for mana again, which can be handy if I need for a Channel, but don't have access to it (for reasons like things being tapped or just missing it). Reconstruction is also for this purpose - imagine you drop your Lotus into the Graveyard for one color, casting Reconstruction to return it to your hand and play it out again, sacrificing it for a 2nd color you desperately need access to right then. Also good for bringing back Vise after someone rocks it with a Disenchant or Crumble, to say nothing of returning Mirror Universe at an opportune time. Regrowth and Recall facilitate further recursion.

Against specific decks known for their great speed and/or brutality, I need something to DRASTICALLY slow things down when I'm not developing with a quickness. Not just in the case of fighting off a Weenie deck - I'm talking powerhouse piles like Dead Guy Ale, Monoblack, etc. Hell, Goblin Ball with their maindeck Blood Moons are especially gnarly if I can't slow the tempo down to my own pace relatively quick. So, that's where Nether Void enters the chat; maybe someone can get a Juzam Djinn out on me for an impressive 1st turn play, but if I start the game and get that VOID out on those folks first...imagine staring at a Juzam in your hand and not being able to do a damn thing with it, because you can't even play a Black Lotus or a lousy Dark Ritual - hope you got time to set up for that Disenchant. A Black Vise or two can go a looooooong way when the Void's holding you down. Times like these I gotta ask ya -

"Not going anywhere for awhile?"

Yes, I am well aware that I can't have both the Void and an Abyss out simultaneously ... but this is all part of my plan, y'see. Were I to have the Void on the table first, and I finally needed to be let loose off of that chain so I could get to going duck-tits bonkers, that's when I simply save up and play The Abyss, and since you can't have two Enchant World cards on the table at once, that'll send the Void to ... well ... the void! It did its job - it held you back long enough for me to get where I wanted to go so I could take YOU to where you needed to be: the Graveyard! Push comes to shove, my twin copies of Nevinyrral's Disk in the sideboard can handle it in a pinch. Some have suggested the addition of Atog to me, but I really would rather it be creatureless for the time being; leaving them out takes any creature removal like Swords to Plowshares or Terror and turns them into dead cards in an opponent's hand - and The Abyss can't hurt me if I have nothing for it to swallow. With either that or Nether Void, I have the ability to "set it and forget it", focusing my mental energies elsewhere while one of those two relentlessly does its job, helping to ease my opponent into the transition of going creatureless, as well! You know what the Goblin Medics always say: "First, do some harm."

As gnarly as that may seem, there IS a move I won't make ... and that's Mind Twist. As of now, this one's off the table for two reasons. 1.) It's a dick move, I don't like it. I'd rather my opponent at least have cards to play, the chance to play them, and not be sitting there watching me play. What's the point in that? 2.) Twist kinda makes the whole Black Vise thing useless. Also, things like Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune tend to fill someone's hand back up, so why am I trying to waste time Twisting a player's hand away only to fill it back up?

"Focusing on nowhere

Investigating miles

I'm a Seeker

I'm a really desperate man"

Not sure about the 'board yet, kind of still experimenting for now. I may need Meekstone, but for now, I will hang back on an Earthquakes as an extra answer for weenie decks pumping out tons of creatures (White Weenie, Green Stompy). Psychic Purge is my standard auto-include in every single sideboard as insurance against Mind Twist. Almost every deck that runs two colors actually runs three so they can "SpLaSh" for the Twist, plus Demonic Tutor, so I'll take any help the Storm Seeker can get! Tranquility to get those pesky enchantments that ruin my day like Underworld Dreams. Two Nevinyrral's Disk are for emergency situations, Juxtapose pulls an ol' switcheroo when needed. Crumble rounds it out for insurance against Mishra's Factory, and other artifacts (Jayemdae Tome, rival Black Vise, etc.) I'd consider adding Flashfires to the sideboard, as well.

"I'm looking for me

You're looking for you

We're looking at each other

And we don't know what to do

They call me The Seeker

I've been searching low and high..."

It's been suggested to me that removing the Reconstruction and Winds of Change in favor of a second copy of both Hurkyl's Recall and Fastbond would be a good idea - for the utility of Hurkyl's Recall adding to the already-gnarly damage dealt by Black Vise/Storm Seeker, and that Winds may help the opponent draw into Enchantment removal to stop some of my slowdown answers. Moving The Abyss to the side has also been suggested, replaced by Land's Edge as a "light switch" that can "turn off" the Nether Void, and for those instances when a big draw spell yields me more lands than I reasonably have use for. and I need to get someone's life total down into Storm Seeker/Fork range. It's also been suggested to me that I remove Recall and add in a card I've been toying with for a hot minute ... Tormod's Crypt! Imagine casting Hurkyl's Recall to put a slew of the opponent's Artifacts back in their hand, only to force them to discard them all after I cast Wheel of Fortune, and using Tormod's Crypt to ensure I never have to see them again for the duration of the duel? Or activating the Crypt right before going into a Timetwister...

What do you think?

Either way, the quest continues, my ... fiends. Any (constructive) feedback is welcome, as usual. Things I've been suggested are in the Maybeboard.

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