Hello awesome folks! I hope that your day is going super mega well! Today I want to look at a retired product that I loved, Precons, and then talk about my favorite one called "The Sparkler."

Starting with Tempest each set moving forward had four Preconstructed decks made with only cards from the set and then that block for later sets. So, Tempest debuted with the Azorius control "Deep Freeze," "The Flames of Rath" a Boros burn Aggro deck built around Furnace of Rath, a Dimir Tribal Sliver deck called "The Slivers" and then a Selesnya colored deck called "The Swarm" which was an Aggro deck.

During that era there was a league called "Arena" that played on Friday nights at most stores, and then some played in the weekend. And then there was a format in that league that debuted with the Precons. You started with the Precon and played in a tournament in week one with just that deck. Then in week two and moving forward you added a 15-card sideboard and could swap in cards from Standard. The winner overall won the prize!

I collected four from each new set and then we would sometimes play multiplayer at my house with random Precons. It was awesome, and I would often just roll a Precon myself and then run it against constructed decks and have an awesome time trying to win with that deficit. Unless I was playing "The Sparkler!"

They were replaced with Theme Decks. I am including all Theme Decks where I talk about how awesome "The Sparkler" is. During this era, they had 3 rares, which would later be dropped down to 2 rares after a few sets.

Here, let me show you "The Sparkler" and talk about why it's so different!

The Sparkler | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (3)
• 1 Mogg Fanatic
• 1 Wall of Razors
• 1 Wall of Tears

• Spells (24)
• 2 Capsize
• 1 Counterspell
• 1 Evacuation
• 2 Fanning the Flames
• 3 Lightning Blast
• 3 Mana Leak
• 1 Mind Games
• 2 Power Sink
• 1 Ransack
• 1 Reins of Power
• 1 Searing Touch
• 1 Shatter
• 2 Shock
• 2 Spell Blast
• 1 Whispers of the Muse

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Contempt
• 2 Flowstone Blade
• 1 Intruder Alarm
• 2 Propaganda

• Lands (27)
• 14 Island
• 13 Mountain

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The 27 lands nice for that era, where the 60-card brew was often broken down into 20 lands and 40 spells. Just three creatures, two of which are Walls that cannot attack? How do you win?

Just one counterspell to counter stuff? How do you counter? "Deep Freeze" ran three Counterspell, two Dismiss, two Power Sinks and one Spell Blast, so it had 5 hard counters and 3 sometimes counters. "The Sparkler" had no Dismisses and just one Counterspell as an emergency and then three early game counters in Mana Leak and then a power of Power Sinks and Spell Blasts not exactly a winning counter suite.

Its three rares are all strong - Intruder Alarm, Evacuation and Reins of Power. So how does it win?

Let's look at the removal suite to figure it out. Shatter destroys an artifact, good stuff there. Flowstone Blade will enchant an opposing dork and then kill it with enough mana. That's three cards. You have a pair of Shocks for early creature removal of the burn persuasion. You have three Lightning Blasts to shoot stuff our 4 damage - nice later removal of players or dorks. Then you have one buyback Searing Touch to ping something for a single damage and buy it back - that's nine spells so far. The last is the buyback X Fanning the Flames to shoot something for damage, and then buy it back for three mana.

That's the wincon: X spells.

So here are the three paths to victory:

• Fanning the Flames - You buyback this X spell sorcery speed a few times and burn out your foe. Since you have two, hopefully you'll find one.
• Random Burn - It's also possible you just combine Searing Touch, Shock and Lightning Blast for damage to your foe to kill them.
• Reins of Power - Sometimes your foe will have enough dorks in play to finish them off with Reins of Power. While this happens rarely in duals, it's much more likely in multiplayer and gives you a very likely route to victory by stealing one player's dorks and attacking either them or another player for wins.

And those are the three paths to victory. But how do you get there? The first takes a lot of mana and time. That's because "The Sparkler" is super secretly a different deck than just a CounterBurn brew. Let's look at this alternate genre we have here!

Supersecret Genre

Let's sort out our supersecret genre by looking at it card by card!

The original Ghostly Prison effect was Black and it was in Homelands, but it required an upkeep to keep it around. It was color shifted to Blue for this uncommon, and then color shifted to White later with Ghostly Prison. This is nasty in multiplayer and strong in duals as you can then swap your removal for what was paid with Shock or Searing Touch or block with a Wall. There are two of these in the deck.

There is one in the deck. When the enchanted dork attacks, you bounce it and the Aura to your hand at the end of combat, then they have to recast their dork and you have to recast this. This slows them down, and if they paid two mana for Propaganda they might not also have mana to recast their attacker post combat.

There are two of this buyback Boomerang effect in the deck. Note that this is a true Boomerang and bounces lands too. Once you get to six mana you can bounce one thing over and over again. If you target their land, barring an Explore or Exploration effect, they will never add lands to the table. You can also bounce attackers that paid Propaganda, or an artifact when you don't have Shatter or an enchantment to slow them down and make them recast their stuff over and over again. You can also bounce their blockers and then swing with Mogg Fanatic or clear a lane for one player to be attacked by another's Reins of Power.

Evacuation is an emergency mass bounce spell that will bounce all dorks, and since you only have three, none that cost more than 2, this is a minor tax on you, but a big deal. It's your best emergency "Oh no" button as you are attacked for a big hit of damage or death. This will take turns to set up, and like Propaganda and Reins of Power, it's more powerful in multiplayer than in duals. It's awesome!

Your Izzet deck runs one of each of these. The enchantment costs three, and creatures won't untap in their turns, but you don't care much about that for your creatures. But if another creature enters the battlefield, everything untaps, so you'll have to counter things to make sure nothing arrives after they tap to attack. Or you can tap them with the buyback Twiddle.

Then if it's a creature and you control the Alarm they will not untap until another dork arrives. You can also cast it when attacked to tap down attackers and then reduce your damage, or to tap lands with extra resources on their upkeep. If they have, for example a Rakdos deck with one Swamp and three Mountains, you can tap the Swamp in their upkeep and keep them from casting Black stuff unless they draw one. Also note that Reins of Power untaps, so you can cast it prior with the Alarm out and still swing, and then they tap after so they won't untap.

One of the Walls that you drop early has an 0/4 body and then will bounce what they chose to block to their hand after combat, if combined with Propaganda and then Contempt, they may not be able to cast and recast everything each turn. The two Power Sinks cost mana, sure, but they will tap out the foe's lands and drain their mana pool so they cannot cast anything more that turn. See how that supersecret genre is in the Wall and counter suite too?

That genre? Tempo! This is a Counter/Burn/Tempo deck that tries to tap, bounce, force payments with Propaganda while also countering and burning. That's how it works. This deck wins on the skin of its teeth and it rarely wins at 20 life in those life formats. Also, all of that mana payment tapping lands and mana rocks and then bouncing stuff for repayments makes Mana Leak a much more reliable counter than normal in this brew, and it's easier to cast, so this deck is more consistent than it may appear at first.

Now, where does this fall?

Card draw!

What card draw do you have in your brew, with access to Blue at the height of its era of card draw dominance? Just these two - that's it for card draw. The sorcery is horrible here for two reasons. First of all, it's a sorcery so you have to cast it on your main phase. That's the only sorcery in the deck other than your win-con Fanning the Flames. It also costs four, so that's really hard. Then you don't draw cards after the scry 5, so it's card loss. The Whispers is great as you can buy it back with six mana to draw again and again as you have 6 mana. The deck would prefer to swap a Ransack for a second Whispers. And that's the only place this deck has issues.

Note that not all of this deck scales well to multiplayer - the Reins of Power and Propaganda and taxes do. But not Intruder Alarm and keeping things tapped with it and Mind Games since it's harder to counter creatures from three foes in a four player game. Also the tapping into Spell Blast and Power Sink will open you up to not being free to counter.

Playing this deck will make you a better player! It's a fun challenge at the multiplayer table or in duals! However, as you can see, this deck wants to kill people with X spells that buyback and that's really a 20 life thing. So, what I want to do next week is build a Commander deck around "The Sparkler" and modernize it with a 40-life format. Also rough in Commander are burn wins with Lightning Blast and Shock, and then a Reins of Power win with double the life to take out, and then have the Intruder Alarm Mind Games combo that also doesn't work in multiplayer generally or Commander specifically.

We'll see you next week for my Commander brew!