Hello folks! Do you know what a Johnny like me really likes about a set like Kaladesh? There’s a lot of depth to it. A lot of cards can be used to delve into and flesh out. There’s a lot to suggest synergies and combinations of cards that evoke previous archetypes or create new ones.

Last week I looked at four deck concepts with six different decklists around those. Today I want to count off another four cards for your perusal.

Let’s head first to an old archetype from the first year of Magic that we’ve not seen in a while.

The Kismet / Meekstone Archetype

• 4 Meekstone
• 4 Authority of the Consuls

So this is the basic shell. Unlike Kismet, which was often paired with Meekstone, the Authority of the Consuls is a cheap, 1-mana way to make stuff tap early and often. You aren’t dropping it turn four and starting to see stuff arrive to the battlefield all tapped and tired. I can’t even recall the last time I saw a Meekstone get played. So this card will surprise a lot of folks at your casual Magic night.

What would work with these cards? Well, one winning condition potentially is to swing with a few smaller powered creatures that can either win in one or two hits (such as Guiltfeeder or maybe Scalpelexis) or something that can swing through a defense like Commander Eesha and Beloved Chaplain. Let’s go with the White stuff, because they can act like blockers as well early on.

Then I’ll add in Blue because I feel it synergizes better with what I want to do.

• 4 Beloved Chaplain
• 2 Commander Eesha
• 4 Scalpelexis

What else?

• 2 Fountain Watch

Well, I do think some bouncing makes a lot of sense for this build as well. Take a card like Cyclonic Rift, that can bounce a team, and then to come back tapped and to give you more life off the Authority. That works. For a similar reason, our good Vedalken Dismisser can bounce to the library on arrival. It’s a solid card in this oeuvre. I also think that Grand Arbiter Augustin IV gives us another body and a powerful ability to bring to the team. It’s annoying, sure, but it works. I also toss in cards like Daxos of Meletis and Blind Obedience. But the best card by far is Tamiyo, the Moon Sage. Draw a card for each tapped creature target player controls? Yes please!

• 2 Cyclonic Rift
• 2 Vedalken Dismisser
• 2 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
• 2 Daxos of Meletis.
• 2 Blind Obedience
• 2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

And there we go! Here’s the entire deck shell

Authority of the Meek ? Casual| Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Commander Eesha
• 2 Daxos of Meletis
• 2 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
• 2 Fountain Watch
• 2 Vedalken Dismisser
• 4 Beloved Chaplain
• 4 Scalpelexis

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage

• Spells (14)
• 2 Lost in the Mist
• 2 Cyclonic Rift
• 2 Blind Obedience
• 4 Authority of the Consuls
• 4 Meekstone

• Lands (26)
• 12 Island
• 12 Plains
• 2 Rogue's Passage

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And there we are!

Authority of the Consuls does a strong version of Kismet on the creature side of things and is very much worth the price of admission. Here

What about the next deck?

WHY WIZARDS OF THE COAST!?!?! WHY?!?!?

Why did you have to make Dramatic Reversal a 2 mana instant instead of three? Why are you torturing me so?

Don’t get why this is an issue?

So here is how this works. Play the Isochron Scepter. Imprint the Dramatic Reversal. Now you can tap the Scepter for 2 mana to untap everything that is not a land. You can untap your planeswalkers and enchantments. Untap your cool creatures. Untap your artifacts, and yes, that includes the Scepter itself!

All you have to do is to make 3 mana between your creatures and your artifacts and you can make any amount of mana with a Scepter and a Reversal. Tap your stuff for mana and float at least three. Use two to untap by activating the Scepter and casting the Reversal. Then tap for mana again, storing the extra mana, until you have enough to go off with a giant X spell life Fireball or churning it into an artifact like Rocket Launcher or other fun activities.

On the other hand, if you have just two mana, you don’t need to make infinite mana if one of the creatures you are untapping has a tap ability that is useful, you can kill with this instead. With, say, this deck!

Scepters and Reversals, Oh My! ? Casual| Abe Sargent

• Creatures (10)
• 2 Rootwater Hunter
• 4 Prodigal Sorcerer
• 4 Palladium Myr

• Spells (26)
• 4 Counterspell
• 4 Dramatic Reversal
• 4 Impulse
• 2 Fabricate
• 1 Sol Ring
• 3 Thran Dynamo
• 4 Isochron Scepter
• 4 Rocket Launcher

• Lands (24)
• 18 Island
• 2 Academy Ruins
• 2 Buried Ruin
• 2 Inventors' Fair

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And if you have a Thran Dynamo, or multiple mana tapping forces, you can make extra mana each iteration. I gave you the Rocket Launcher for the extra mana. I also built the deck with some useful search as well. You can fetch up artifacts with either Inventors' Fair or Fabricate. And we have both Buried Ruin and Academy Ruins for bringing back the dead artifacts. Impulse plays a cool role here as well. I also gave you the cheap Counterspell, as both it and the Impulse are good on a Scepter as well.

You could slide that to Muddle the Mixture, for potential transmute into one of the two key cards here.

The result is a fun deck with two combos — damage from the Tims and mana fueled into the Rocket Launcher.

What’s next?

While I’m on a tap-tap-untap-tap theme, how about we push that direction even further?

Take a gander at Spireside Infiltrator.

If you tap it for an effect. Then you can shoot everyone who is not you for a damage. That’s pretty keen cool, right?

So let’s delve into ways to harness that.

The first idea that popped into my head was Kyren Negotiations. That’s not amazing, but it’s been my default Red make-something-tap ability to lean on for years. But another card quickly followed that I like better.

Earthcraft

Tap the Infiltrator of the Spireside and untap a basic land, while smashing everyone for a damage. You end up making a mana and shooting for damage. That’s a pretty cool shell right there.

But what if you could enhance the land?

You could enchant the land. You could drop a mana maker on it like Wild Growth or Dawn's Reflection to get more mana or Barbed Field to tap the land to do damage. Or you could do something else that’s mana-intensive.

Something like . . . 

Tap to Infinity ? Casual| Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Goblin Medics
• 4 Beetleback Chief
• 4 Jade Mage
• 4 Spireside Infiltrator
• 4 Wall of Blossoms

• Spells (16)
• 1 Spawning Grounds
• 1 Squirrel Nest
• 2 Dawn's Reflection
• 4 Earthcraft
• 4 Overgrowth
• 4 Umbral Mantle

• Lands (26)
• 12 Forest
• 12 Mountain
• 2 Kessig Wolf Run

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We also have another infinite combo here as well. Play an Overgrowth on a basic land. Equip your Umbral Mantle onto an Infiltrator. Tap the Infiltrator to untap the basic land with Earthcraft. Tap the land for 3 mana. Then use that 3 mana to untap the creature with the Mantle. Then tap it again. You aren’t making any infinite mana, but you are getting a bunch of damage triggers from the Infiltrator. That’s enough to win.

And if someone is immune to damage or whatnot, or you want to be cool, you do have a huge Infiltrator that was pumped by the Mantle a bunch of times. You can swing immediately for game!

I added in a few fun cards to round out your deck, like Beetleback Chief to give you some bodies, Goblin Medics as a backup and less powerful Infiltrator, and Wall of Blossoms to be a blocker, card drawing, and tapper.

Boom goes the tap machine!

With three decks with tap themes, do I want to make this a whole tappy-tap article? Nah! Let’s do a non-tapping deck! Wouldn’t that be crazy?

Investigating the Marionette Murders ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Erdwal Illuminator
• 2 Noxious Gearhulk
• 2 Sage of Lat-Nam
• 2 Sharding Sphinx
• 2 Solemn Simulacrum
• 2 Syndicate Trafficker
• 2 Torrential Gearhulk
• 4 Marionette Master

• Spells (18)
• 4 Confirm Suspicions
• 4 Murder
• 2 Fleeting Memories
• 2 Ongoing Investigation
• 2 Underhanded Designs
• 2 Magnifying Glass
• 2 Tamiyo's Journal

• Lands (24)
• 10 Island
• 10 Swamp
• 4 Opulent Palace

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Originally I was thinking about Green and stuff like Tireless Tracker. But I felt that Blue gave a better flavor for what I was looking for. Having this flavor concept in my mind, I wanted to run this with a Marionette Murder Mystery theme. What does that need?

Marionettes

Murders

And Mysteries

So we have the core card, the actual Murder, and clues. That’s a solid combination for me to harness.

In layered the beginnings of a Clue/artifact smash deck.

First the Master itself. We can put some +1/+1 counters on it to increase the damage we are doing to folks when an artifact goes to the great beyond. Or you can make some artifact creatures for sacrificing to the engines of death and useful stuff.

Then I went to Clues. They self sacrifice for cards so you don’t need a bunch of sacrifice engines to make them work, thus focusing on the power of the investigating clue. You’d better check those Fleeting Memories before they are gone. And the Ongoing Investigation has you to Confirm Suspicions. (Note that the Investigation requires Green to fully use, and we have the tri-land Opulent Palace to help with that). From Magnifying Glass to Tamiyo's Journal, we can investigate from multiple angles.

And then we have the Gearhulks, the sacrificing truth of Syndicate Trafficker and more. Solemn Simulacrum fits the theme as well. We have another engine with Underhanded Design, which can also back up as emergency removal in a pinch.

Now most of the cards in here are in Standard. Just the Palace, Simulacrum, Sage of Lat-Nam and Sharding Sphinx. All of those are very replaceable if you wanted to Standardize this thing up.

And that’s a fun story deck!

And you know what? That’s an article too! Four more decks! We have fun old school stuff like Counterspell, Meekstone, and Prodigal Sorcerer along with classic engines such as Earthcraft or Isochron Scepter with new weapons. And then we even have a silly but interesting theme to finish this thing up.

Was there a deck or card combo here that really resonated for you? That sparked you? Anything that you want to try out in casual Magic? Just let me know!