Today's something of a cool milestone moment for me: this day marks my 500th article written for CoolStuffInc.com! That's a ton of ink being spilled over Magic: the Gathering! Given this, I figured it'd be fun to take a bit of a nostalgic look at some of my past with the game. After all, I already did a look back through articles of the past for my 300th article (which you can read here). Instead, I figured I'd do something a little bit different: talk about ten of my favorite decks of all time and how they influenced me as a player.

I've been playing for 25 years now, having started back in 1999, so there's plenty of decks to talk about. Bringing this down to a meager ten decks is a very real challenge given just how long I've been with the game, and you'll likely notice some holes. In truth, there were several I wanted to add in during those holes that I just couldn't fit. You may see them get a passing mention here and there throughout this rundown, though.

That having been said, I'm pretty stoked to both take a trip down memory lane and provide a look at a bit of the game's history in the process. It is worth mentioning that a handful of these - namely earlier lists - will be more general approximations of lists based on what I can remember of the era. They won't be exact, but you'll be able to get the gist of what they might've looked like and why they appealed to me so much.

With that out of the way, let's jump in with one doozy of a deck!

Affinity

Now, I know what you're thinking. "But Paige, you just said you started in 1999. Why are you talking about a deck from 2004?" Well, dear reader, the answer is simple: I was but a wee casual for many years. In fact, during the period from 1999-2003, I was actually much more wrapped up in other games like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! Magic, by comparison, was more the fun tabletop game I'd play with my sibling and cousins as opposed to the others were I played in local leagues at the local Toys R' Us or Media Play.

2003 with Onslaught block was where I finally discovered Friday Night Magic and Magic Online and began going really deep with it. Not to the full grinder degree, but to the point that I was getting a real taste for what you could do in a more competitive space. This began with a bad Slivers deck, continued with another deck (which I'll come back to later), and finally Affinity. This is pretty close to what I was running at the time for my main deck:

Broodstar Affinity | BOK Standard | Paige Smith

• Creatures (24)
• 4 Arcbound Worker
• 4 Atog
• 4 Broodstar
• 4 Disciple of the Vault
• 4 Frogmite
• 4 Myr Enforcer

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Thoughtcast

• Artifacts (12)
• 2 Aether Spellbomb
• 2 Pyrite Spellbomb
• 4 Cranial Plating
• 4 Skullclamp

• Lands (20)
• 2 Ancient Den
• 2 Tree of Tales
• 4 Darksteel Citadel
• 4 Great Furnace
• 4 Seat of the Synod
• 4 Vault of Whispers

Buy This Deck Export text

There's certainly a lot of critiques I could make about this list now that I'm older. A lack of good fixing is particularly telling, especially with Chromatic Star in the format. Instead, what I recall was relying heavily on Skullclamp and suiting up Arcbound Workers and Frogmites to draw endless cards. Then you'd kill with Disciple of the Vault and Atog, a massive Broodstar, or a creature equipped with Cranial Plating.

Even with the issues the list had, and the fact that it wasn't even the best Affinity list (that honor would go to Arcbound Ravager Affinity, which I couldn't afford), it still dominated locally. All my friends would get crushed with this deck, to the point that they eventually refused to play with me if I didn't play something else instead. As you can imagine, this was the true entry point and gave me my first real taste of a spiky gamer experience. As such, it filled me with a tremendous love for artifact decks, and I'd continue to play Affinity decks for decades to come in Modern, Legacy, and even Pauper!

Dimir Underworld Dreams

Now here's a bit of spice! Many people who have been reading my articles for some time or followed my competitive play probably know me best for piloting three kinds of decks: aggro decks, combo decks, and midrange decks. You might not know that I really liked this one Johnny/Jenny controlish list once upon a time, though!

Back in the day, I'd jump frequently into casual games on Magic Online when I didn't have anything going on. My collection was unremarkable and I didn't know what to expect. Then Eighth Edition rolled around and brought with it the awesome reprint of Underworld Dreams. This sweet build around never really did anything in the competitive circuit, but was still an awesome card to pick up and play. Suddenly, though, I was running into brews featuring the card online and it made me really want to try out a list of my own!

It'd be a few years before I could do so, but when Ninth Edition brought an extra reprint to bring down the price, I picked up my own version of the list for FNMs.

Dimir Dreams | RAV Standard | Paige Smith

• Creatures (8)
• 2 Dimir Guildmage
• 2 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
• 2 Kami of the Crescent Moon
• 2 Seizan, Perverter of Truth

• Instants (7)
• 3 Last Gasp
• 4 Mana Leak

• Sorceries (8)
• 2 Diabolic Tutor
• 2 Hideous Laughter
• 4 Compulsive Research

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Phyrexian Arena
• 4 Underworld Dreams

• Artifacts (9)
• 2 Ebony Owl Netsuke
• 3 Teferi's Puzzle Box
• 4 Howling Mine

• Lands (24)
• 3 Island
• 8 Swamp
• 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
• 4 Dimir Aqueduct
• 4 Underground River
• 4 Watery Grave

Buy This Deck Export text

This might look a little familiar to some people out there. Ebony Owl Netsuke? Howling Mine? Sure seems like some Owling Mine nonsense! In reality, no it wasn't riffing off that at all, but there were some similarities in overall card choice. The real thing I loved doing was forcing multiple draws with Howling Mine, Kami of the Crescent Moon, Teferi's Puzzle Box, and Seizan, Perverter of Truth. When you have a critical mass of these effects alongside Underworld Dreams, it allows you to completely decimate your opponents' life totals.

In the future, I'd find myself incorporating these strategies into various decks. Howling Mine is a Commander staple for me, and I even once tried to build a Nekusar, the Mindrazer deck as well. That one was far more potent than this one was when I took it to FNM, so it didn't last long. Still, this remains an all-time favorite and the first time I really tried brewing up something I thought was really cool.

Dimir Heartless Summoning

Now we're getting into the era of decks where I actually have some of my old lists! Heartless Summoning was a deck where I was interested in this weird little build around that seemed tough to pull off well. The namesake card gave all your creatures -1/-1, but made them two mana cheaper. How could you make that work out reliably?

Turns out, you just need some really big creatures to do so! Casting a Frost Titan or Wurmcoil Engine for five mana still gave you a huge beater that was hard to deal with. Even two mana for a 4/4 was reasonable enough! What was even better was casting a Rune-Scarred Demon for cheap and then following it up with a cheap one mana Phyrexian Metamorph to get it all over again and do it two more times! Best of all, it was quite easy to boost your mana count by casting a cheap Solemn Simulacrum in addition to the draw value it provided.

This all ended up with a list that looked like this:

Dimir Heartless Summoning | ISD Standard | Paige Smith

• Creatures (16)
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 2 Bloodgift Demon
• 2 Rune-Scarred Demon
• 2 Wurmcoil Engine
• 3 Frost Titan
• 3 Phyrexian Metamorph
• 3 Solemn Simulacrum

• Instants (15)
• 1 Cackling Counterpart
• 1 Go for the Throat
• 2 Dissipate
• 3 Mana Leak
• 4 Doom Blade
• 4 Forbidden Alchemy

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Sorin's Vengeance

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Heartless Summoning

• Lands (25)
• 6 Swamp
• 7 Island
• 2 Buried Ruin
• 2 Ghost Quarter
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Drowned Catacomb

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Massacre Wurm
• 2 Dismember
• 2 Dissipate
• 2 Steel Sabotage
• 2 Tribute to Hunger
• 3 Despise
• 3 Surgical Extraction

Buy This Deck Export text

This was the first deck I ever took into an actual competitive premier event on Magic Online. By this point, I'd been getting back into the game for about a year and a half playing primarily Commander and Limited, so I was itching to up my game a bit. I ended up landing a positive 3-1 record here, which gave me the taste for wanting to really get into it properly! That would finally take over entirely with this next deck.

Tempered Steel

Remember how I said I'd continue playing artifact-based Aggro decks in the future? That finally continued here in 2012 with Tempered Steel! This super aggressive deck featured tons of small low to the ground creatures that got massive buffs from cards like Signal Pest, Gavony Township, and of course the deck's namesake. Much like many Affinity-style builds, you could easily spit out the majority of your deck on the very first turn, making for a truly potent list!

Few decks changed the trajectory of my career as a Magic player like this deck. I picked it up at SCG Tampa 2012 alongside Modern and Legacy builds of Affinity I intended to play that weekend. With cheap entries still being a thing in this era, I decided to just try my hand at the main event as opposed to waiting around for the Modern side event I came for. I ended up cashing the event going 7-2, which to me was an incredible showing for a deck I picked up on the spot and played with zero reps!

This experience was what made me realize that I probably had more play skill than I gave myself credit for. As a result, I built the deck and grinded out several MTGO daily events, earning tons of winnings in the process. These allowed me to build Affinity lists for both Modern and Legacy on the client as well, and is what kickstarted my time as a true competitive Magic player.

High Tide

Like many players, after my strong showing with Tempered Steel, I was looking for more ways to play the game competitively - preferably in a way that could last for some time. Standard's rotation seemed like something I didn't really want to deal with. I was a college student and paying for Magic largely on the back of the fact that I didn't really have bills, but I didn't have a ton of money to throw around year after year at a new Standard deck. So I looked to older formats instead.

At the time, Modern was still brand new. For reference, the format was announced in May 2011 and became official that August. I picked up Tempered Steel - and by extension Modern Affinity - in February 2012. That's barely half a year, and Modern wasn't very popular yet, with stores struggling to fire events instead. So I turned to Legacy with a version of Affinity for that format. I had fun, but it was clearly not the ideal Legacy experience. I wanted something that I could really go nuts with.

Then on Magic Online, I pulled up a Legacy match one day and ran into a weird Mono-Blue deck that played a simple set of cards: High Tide, Turnabout, Time Spiral. Before I knew it, I was dead, and I was totally enamored with what just happened, leading me to build my own version of the deck.

High Tide 2023 | Legacy | Paige Smith

• Instants (25)
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1 Intuition
• 2 Flusterstorm
• 3 Cunning Wish
• 3 Meditate
• 3 Turnabout
• 4 Brainstorm
• 4 Force of Will
• 4 High Tide

• Sorceries (15)
• 3 Ponder
• 4 Merchant Scroll
• 4 Preordain
• 4 Time Spiral

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Candelabra of Tawnos

• Lands (18)
• 12 Island
• 3 Misty Rainforest
• 3 Scalding Tarn

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Blue Sun's Zenith
• 1 Brain Freeze
• 1 Echoing Truth
• 1 Flusterstorm
• 1 Rebuild
• 1 Snap
• 1 Turnabout
• 2 Defense Grid
• 2 Pact of Negation
• 2 Surgical Extraction
• 2 Wipe Away

Buy This Deck Export text

This highly convoluted deck is notorious in Legacy for taking forever to win on a combo turn. Despite this, it always felt so rewarding to try pulling off. You use High Tide to cause yourself to generate extra mana, stacking more as you go and combining them with various untap effects via Turnabout and Candelabra of Tawnos. Now you cast a copy of Time Spiral, refuel your hand and library with more of these effects, and keep going until you can cast a lethal Blue Sun's Zenith or Cunning Wish for a Brain Freeze.

Piloting this deck proved incredibly difficult. I only did it for a handful of larger events, and mainly broke it out with friends or at smaller local events. The intense difficulty of trying to effectively pull off a complicated combo lingered with me, though. It gave me a much more profound love for this style of deck, which would persist in later archetypes I'd try making work in various formats.

Maverick

Originally, I'd built High Tide ahead of SCG Buffalo in 2012 when I was traveling for a wedding and an event just happened to be taking place the week before. While playing High Tide there, I noticed a lot of people playing this weird Selesnya deck using Knight of the Reliquary. It looked interesting, and I realized that I had a lot of the cards in the deck thanks to a collection I recently acquired from a family member.

I got to putting together the deck temporarily using shock lands in place of the actual Revised dual lands and I was immediately hooked. I loved the toolbox nature of the deck and the ways you could battle back against an unfair metagame by doing a bunch of fair things. The grindy nature of the deck caused me to rethink my whole outlook on Legacy's notoriety as a format where you lose on turn one and became the de facto deck I'd play for a long time.

Dark Maverick | Legacy | Paige Smith

• Creatures (19)
• 1 Gaddock Teeg
• 1 Qasali Pridemage
• 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons
• 1 Voice of Resurgence
• 2 Scavenging Ooze
• 2 Stoneforge Mystic
• 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 4 Knight of the Reliquary
• 4 Mother of Runes

• Spells (11)
• 2 Abrupt Decay
• 3 Swords to Plowshares
• 2 Thoughtseize
• 4 Green Sun's Zenith

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Sylvan Library

• Artifacts (2)
• 1 Batterskull
• 1 Umezawa's Jitte

• Lands (23)
• 1 Forest
• 1 Plains
• 1 Dark Depths
• 1 Dryad Arbor
• 1 Horizon Canopy
• 1 Karakas
• 1 Maze of Ith
• 1 Scrubland
• 1 Thespian's Stage
• 2 Bayou
• 2 Cavern of Souls
• 2 Savannah
• 2 Windswept Heath
• 3 Verdant Catacombs
• 3 Wasteland

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Chalice of the Void
• 1 Choke
• 1 Circle of Protection: Red
• 1 Crop Rotation
• 1 Kataki, War's Wage
• 1 Life from the Loam
• 1 Pernicious Deed
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Tower of the Magistrate
• 1 Zealous Persecution
• 2 Ethersworn Canonist
• 2 Surgical Extraction

Buy This Deck Export text

For quite some time after, this was the deck many people came to know me by. This may be different, but in the mid-2010s, everyone knew me as the Maverick player. I played it at several events, though I never made a real showing with it anywhere. Even finding a list like this would be difficult for most people. I had to dig through some archives of my old lists on sites to dredge it up! To this day, I still love this deck, and it even ended up forming the basis for my online handle everywhere: TheMaverickGirl!

Mono-Black Devotion

This is one of the few lists I actually couldn't find, but thankfully I could find fairly close approximations from others in the era. In 2012 and 2013, I largely found myself disconnected from the Standard scene of the time. I dabbled with a handful of Mono-Red and Boros Aggro lists, but never took it super seriously. Then at the end of 2013 came Theros, which provided the basis for one of my favorite decks: Mono-Black Devotion.

I recalled from my earlier years of the game how there existed a Mono-Black Control list in Standard thanks to Torment and powerful spells like Mutilate and Nantuko Shade. We never saw another Mono-Black list like that until now, meaning it had been over a decade since this kind of thing could happen in Standard. Once I got my hands on it, though, I was hooked.

Mono-Black Devotion | BNG Standard | Paige Smith

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Desecration Demon
• 4 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 4 Nightveil Specter
• 4 Pack Rat

• Spells (14)
• 2 Devour Flesh
• 4 Bile Blight
• 4 Hero's Downfall
• 4 Thoughtseize

• Enchantments (5)
• 1 Whip of Erebos
• 4 Underworld Connections

• Lands (25)
• 21 Swamp
• 4 Mutavault

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Dark Betrayal
• 1 Drown in Sorrow
• 2 Doom Blade
• 3 Erebos, God of the Dead
• 4 Duress
• 4 Lifebane Zombie

Buy This Deck Export text

This deck one by grinding out little advantages. Well-timed removal spells would combine with powerful cards such as Nightveil Specter and Pack Rat to dominate the game. You'd also use Thoughtseize to tear apart your opponent's hand and refill your own with Underworld Connections. Eventually, you'd either win with an army of Pack Rat tokens, or you'd simply cast a Gray Merchant of Asphodel and drain your opponent for a tremendous amount of life.

I played a ton of local events with this in the era, and tried out the SCG Invitational Qualifiers that were popular at the time on the back of this deck. For a long time, playing Standard to me was like trying to chase the high of what this deck provided. That was, of course, until later on with a certain aggressive Red deck...

Pauper Elves

Here it is, the deck most people likely associate me with. Around 2015-2016, I sold out of most of my Magic cards. There were multiple reasons for this, namely a lack of time to play in paper, dissatisfaction with MTGO as a client at the time, high cost for several formats, etc. This led me to giving Pauper a more serious try in 2016 once constructed leagues officially launched once again on Magic Online, with me eventually settling on Elves.

To me, it was like coming full circle a bit. Remember how I noted towards the top that Affinity was where I got my first taste of competitive play? That's only partially true! In fact, I'd say my first serious deck was when I played the Tribal Wars format on Magic Online - a format where your deck needed to have a third of it be creatures of the same type. This stemmed from Onslaught's typal heavy theme, and it led me to try out Elves. I was hooked, clogging up boards with hordes of little Green dorks and gaining thousands of life with Wellwisher - a card that changed my entire perspective on how you could win a game of Magic.

Enter Pauper Elves.

Pauper Elves | Pauper | Paige Smith, 1st Place SCG Con Classic Roanoke

• Creatures (35)
• 2 Elvish Mystic
• 2 Elvish Vanguard
• 2 Essence Warden
• 2 Fyndhorn Elves
• 2 Sylvan Ranger
• 3 Llanowar Elves
• 3 Nettle Sentinel
• 3 Wellwisher
• 4 Birchlore Rangers
• 4 Lys Alana Huntmaster
• 4 Quirion Ranger
• 4 Timberwatch Elf

• Sorceries (6)
• 2 Distant Melody
• 4 Lead the Stampede

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Spidersilk Armor

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Viridian Longbow

• Lands (13)
• 1 Island
• 12 Forest

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Massive Raid
• 1 Relic of Progenitus
• 1 Wrap in Vigor
• 2 Luminescent Rain
• 2 Moment's Peace
• 2 Scattershot Archer
• 3 Gleeful Sabotage
• 3 Spidersilk Armor

Buy This Deck Export text

I actually hated this deck when I first played it, notably going 1-4 in my first league with it and swearing it off. But I persisted and found I had the most consistent performance with it of all the decks I played. As such, I kept playing it, and didn't stop playing it. I posted 5-0 after 5-0 and regular strong MTGO Challenge showings as well, even winning one Challenge, the first SCG Con Pauper Classic, and the runner up at the 2018 Pauper Championship at GP Richmond.

Given the way the format has evolved, I've played a lot less of it in recent years, opting instead to play more decks like Bogles and Affinity. However, it's still easily my number one favorite deck of all time and I'll continue piloting it whenever I get the chance.

Hazoret Red

This was the deck that made me really feel like I'd finally made it. Hazoret Red was the first deck I played when I tried to move past being exclusively Pauper once again, dipping my toes once more into more competitively-focused formats. I was planning on running it at Grand Prix Seattle in 2018 and practiced plenty on Magic Online to ready myself for it. Then I went to the event and, well...

Hazoret Red | RIX Standard | Paige Smith

• Creatures (27)
• 2 Pia Nalaar
• 2 Rekindling Phoenix
• 3 Kari Zev, Skyship Raider
• 4 Ahn-Crop Crasher
• 4 Bomat Courier
• 4 Earthshaker Khenra
• 4 Fanatical Firebrand
• 4 Hazoret the Fervent

• Instants (9)
• 1 Abrade
• 1 Magma Spray
• 3 Shock
• 4 Lightning Strike

• Lands (24)
• 18 Mountian
• 3 Grasping Dunes
• 3 Scavenger Grounds

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Glorybringer
• 2 Abrade
• 2 Aethersphere Harvester
• 2 Dire Fleet Daredevil
• 2 Magma Spray
• 3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
• 3 Fiery Cannonade

Buy This Deck Export text

A 10-5 day two finish! Not only that, but I went undefeated on day one! This was the first time I really reached such an achievement, and it made me feel like I could play the game very well. Additionally, the games I played with the deck itself were excellent, and it gave me a deeper appreciation for Red Aggro decks than I already had up to this point.

I loved playing it so much, it inspired me to actually write my very first articles with Hipsters of the Coast telling others how they could build up to the deck from the Challenger Decks of the time. Moreover, it was a big reason why I ended up playing Rakdos Mice in the most recent Regional Championship in Washington DC. The deck simply gave me an experience that reminded me heavily of my time with Hazoret Red. Heck I even got to register a copy of Hazoret the Fervent for the first time since Hazoret Red was a deck!

Esper Midrange

This is the most recent of the decks in this list, having just rotated out of Standard earlier this year. Esper Midrange was the most excited I was to play a deck in some time. More importantly, it also provided the first time I'd actually won something at the RCQ level. I'd tried to qualify via PTQs a little in late 2019, but as this was quickly cut short by the pandemic, I never got too far with it. On the back of Esper Midrange, however, I was able to qualify for a Regional Championship, cashed a $10k, and cashed multiple VML seasons. Not a bad showing!

Esper Midrange | OTJ Standard | Paige Smith, 19th Place 2025 Dreamhack Dallas 10k

• Creatures (21)
• 1 Lord Skitter, Sewer King
• 1 Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
• 2 Dennick, Pious Apprentice
• 3 Faerie Mastermind
• 3 Preacher of the Schism
• 3 Tishana's Tidebinder
• 4 Deep-Cavern Bat
• 4 Raffine, Scheming Seer

• Instants (10)
• 1 Long Goodbye
• 3 Cut Down
• 3 Go for the Throat
• 3 No More Lies

• Enchantments (2)
• 2 Virtue of Loyalty

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 The Wandering Emperor

• Lands (26)
• 1 Island
• 1 Plains
• 1 Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 1 Otawara, Soaring City
• 1 Seachrome Coast
• 1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 2 Caves of Koilos
• 2 Raffine's Tower
• 2 Underground River
• 3 Concealed Courtyard
• 3 Shattered Sanctum
• 4 Darkslick Shores
• 4 Restless Anchorage

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Cut Down
• 1 Duress
• 1 Gix's Command
• 1 Long Goodbye
• 1 Negate
• 1 The Wandering Emperor
• 1 Tishana's Tidebinder
• 2 Destroy Evil
• 2 Disdainful Stroke
• 2 Pest Control
• 2 Rest in Peace

Buy This Deck Export text

The deck functions heavily off the centerpiece of Raffine, Scheming Seer. I feel like to me, it's this era's Tempered Steel or Hazoret: a card so potently iconic that will almost certainly never be quite as strong again after its Standard tenure ends. Getting to pump Deep-Cavern Bats or Aclazotz to absurd numbers always made the experience super worth it, and is a deck I'd love to play again and again if I could.

Thankfully, the deck's cousin in Dimir Midrange is still alive and kicking, and is proving to be quite playable early on in the RCQ season. I've no doubt that deck will continue to provide me with an excellent time and hopefully an invite or two along the way.

I hope you've enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me! It's hard to believe I've been playing this game for a quarter of a century now. It's similarly hard to believe that I've now reached 500 articles published under the CoolStuffInc banner! I'm looking forward to many years of great gameplay and articles yet to come. I hope you all will join me along the way!

Paige Smith

Bluesky: @TheMaverickGirl

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal