Hello, folks! Every time a new set hits the shelves, I want to build some decks around it! It doesn’t matter if we are talking a few cards from a Commander product or a bunch from the latest expansion set—I’m all in on decks. After a while, having everyone give their opinions on cards grows old. Let’s get some decks in!

After all, no one plays Magic with two or three cards. They shuffle things and play with them. Let’s flip some cards and play some Magic!

Illusionary Beats ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (16)
• 2 Akoum Hellkite
• 2 Draining Whelk
• 2 Shivan Phoenix
• 2 Subterranean Spirit
• 4 Illusory Ambusher
• 4 Windreader Sphinx

• Spells (18)
• 2 Chaos Warp
• 2 Fact or Fiction
• 2 Magmaquake
• 2 Scatter to the Winds
• 4 Earthquake
• 1 Sword of Fire and Ice
• 1 Sword of War and Peace
• 2 Hedron Archive
• 2 Thought Vessel

• Lands (26)
• 10 Island
• 12 Mountain
• 4 Steam Vents

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There are a few tricks beyond that though. The first is Illusory Ambusher, the card that inspired this deck. You can blow it out with your removal and draw some serious cards. If you deal just 2 damage with an Earthquake or Magmaquake, the Ambusher will replace both itself and your ’Quake. Any additional mana turns it into a powerful Braingeyser variant for you! It’s a great card here.

Meanwhile, your Subterranean Spirit can survive on the ground and then either block stuff, swing, or tap to add some damage to the deck from another angle. That’s a lot of value from a long-forgotten card. Windreader Sphinx is another powerful trick as well. Since most of your team can swing in the air, you can draw serious cards from it. Also, any opposing creatures that survive a ’Quake probably have flying too, so the reader of winds can draw you cards when they bring the heat as well.

And there’s your deck!

I was inspired after seeing how interesting myriad seemed to be, particularly with the Blade of Selves. So what could I do with it?

Myriad Options ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (22)
• 2 Mulldrifter
• 4 Aether Adept
• 4 Man-o'-War
• 4 Mist Raven
• 4 Riftwing Cloudskate
• 4 Wistful Selkie

• Spells (12)
• 4 Ponder
• 4 Equilibrium
• 4 Blade of Selves

• Lands (26)
• 22 Island
• 4 Rogue's Passage

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The goal of this deck is to drop some solid, but cheap, creatures that bounce opposing stuff, like the original Man-o'-War and the many cards in that genre that followed. Then, you slap a Blade of Selves on said Jellyfish. Tap it to swing, and make multiple copies of the Jellyfish or friend attacking other folks. When those copies arrive, bounce more stuff. Suddenly, the battlefield is looking pretty open, and you can swing and get in hits with the little guys. You won’t need anything bigger than a 2/2 when your foes don’t have answers to your bouncing tokens of joy.

I added just one trick to the table: Equilibrium. Play it later to bounce a creature for 1 more mana whenever you cast one, and you can target your own, so you can reset a crucial battlefield trigger if you like. But the best part is to target a few creatures your foes have.

Layered in the rest of the deck is some card-draw to find the Blade and the Equilibriums. You want more gas for a bounce-heavy deck like this that has no real answers beyond forcing a card off the table. Ponder can be used early to find the right card, while both Mulldrifter and Wistful Selkie can find some additional cards, and those welcome being myriad’d as well for a ton of cards.

And that’s one take on Blade of Selves. But there are more out there—it’s pretty flexible as a tool in any multiplayer deck.

Most of the myriad/Blade tricks I’ve seen suggested online harness battlefield triggers, smash through a defense with a large trampler, or rock slippery, hard-to-block creatures that help you to get in a few hits. All of those are useful options for a Blade of Selves. But what if there were a fun way to swing with multiple creatures and then use that not as a way to smash, or make a bunch of triggers, but to kill opposing creatures instead?

Deathtouch is fine. But I want to force creatures to block. We could run something like Lure to force folks to block. And now we have something. If I Lure a creature with the Blade on it, every untapped creature that all of my opponents control will be forced to block either the original or the token that comes their way, as long as it’s able. That’s pretty good, but I’d need a big power on the creature to slay a lot of blockers. And there’s no way to force tapped creatures to block . . . 

Or is there . . . 

Take a look at Masako the Humorless. You want to give Masako to someone with Bazaar Trader? Nope? Okay then!

What else?

What if you untap stuff? A creature with provoke won’t work with the spawned tokens (just the original—you’d generate one trigger). Not really. We could punish people with a card like Angel's Trumpet—that would be interesting. Maybe Turnabout . . . 

Or how about this . . . 

Intruder Crusaders Emergency Operators ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (16)
• 2 Acidic Slime
• 2 Broodbirth Viper
• 2 Nacatl War-Pride
• 2 Tempting Licid
• 4 Noble Hierarch
• 4 Sylvan Basilisk

• Spells (18)
• 2 Impulse
• 4 Fact or Fiction
• 2 Lure
• 4 Intruder Alarm
• 2 Basilisk Collar
• 4 Blade of Selves

• Lands (26)
• 10 Island
• 12 Forest
• 4 Simic Growth Chamber

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The goal of this deck is to attack with a creature with myriad (either with Blade of Selves or the Broodbirth Viper). Then, when you do, you create a bunch of tokens, and that creatures triggers for the Intruder Alarm that you can use to untap everything out there—and then force folks to endanger blocks with all of their stuff.

Now we layer a few tricks on top of that. The first is to use a deathtouch creature to kill two creatures per flank with Acidic Slime or force through 2 damage. This works in addition to the Slime popping into play and popping a permanent as well. It’s a great place to start.

The best selection in here, though, is clearly Sylvan Basilisk. Anything that blocks it dies. That triggers before damage is even dealt. If you make a few copies and then swing at everything, you can again force the damage out or to blow out some creatures.

Now if you can layer either Lure or Tempting Licid on top of those creatures, you can really add another element to the deck. A Sylvan Basilisk that features a Lure that attacks one player with a Blade of Selves out and an Intruder Alarm will just devastate the board position of one player while harassing the other (obviously, Lure effects won’t copy with the token).

All right, let’s leave behind all things myriad for another deck from Commander (2015 Edition).

Jester at Three ? Casual | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (2)
• 2 Talrand, Sky Summoner

• Spells (34)
• 2 Aethersnatch
• 2 Capsize
• 2 Cryptic Command
• 2 Desertion
• 2 Dominate
• 2 Domineering Will
• 2 Fact or Fiction
• 2 Mystic Confluence
• 2 Polymorphist's Jest
• 2 Scatter to the Winds
• 2 Synthetic Destiny
• 2 Stolen Goods
• 2 Cyclonic Rift
• 2 Jace's Sanctum
• 2 Skywise Teachings
• 2 Jester's Cap
• 2 Jester's Mask

• Lands (24)
• 18 Island
• 2 Mishra's Factory
• 4 Faerie Conclave

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I added a few ways to win the game. We can steal creatures with cards like Desertion and Dominate. Then you can animate the Urza's Factory or Faerie Conclave for beats. Meanwhile, you can make flying Djinns and Drakes. And you can animate a land with Scatter to the Winds.

Now set aside all of those cool ways of dominating the game. You have a metric ton of tricks for the casual game. I emphasized tricks over really powerful and annoying cards. There’s no Vedalken Shackles or anything else. I didn’t want to play the game overly mean. And we have just a handful of counters. Instead, this is going to be very different—more fun and jesting than anything else.

And that concludes an article with four decks! What are you expecting to build around from C15?