In this experiment, we set off a series of chain reactions involving dolls, half-horse gods, sometimes-horse shapeshifters, and a lot of fire.

As I often do, for this deck, I started with one card I knew I wanted to build around. From there, I added cards to make it do what I wanted to accomplish, and—as isn’t always the case—I ended up finding a perfect final addition to add a new element to the deck.

There’s a lot of stuff jammed into this deck, but a lot of it works together, and there are a few different ways to assemble the chain reactions.

Blazing Effigy and Clone

The Effigy is the one I knew I wanted to start with. I wasn’t sure why, but it’s an interesting old card that gives us the possibility of doing things that not a lot of newer cards allow. Applications for Magic cards in the past few years are relatively straightforward, whereas older cards had more freedom in letting their concepts lead them into odd design space.

Blazing Effigy, when it dies, deals 3 damage to something, and if it hits another Blazing Effigy, that’ll kill it, allowing it to deal 6 to a following target. If it hits another Blazing Effigy, that one will die and get to deal 9 to another creature. And if we have a fourth Blazing Effigy to take 9, it’ll be able to deal 12.

The obvious problem is that we’re only allowed four copies of Blazing Effigy in our deck, so bringing them all out is quite a challenge. Because of that, the deck was going to be all about Clones.

Clone is the straightforward option, acting as a second string of copies of Blazing Effigy. Cemetery Puca is 1 mana cheaper, and it can act as an Effigy when it counts, though we’ll have to spend . Finally, Rite of Replication is basically a more mana-intensive Clone, but it has the potential upside of providing us with a whole army of fiery death.

Of course, the second problem is that, even if we create a hundred Effigies and have each die to the previous one, we’ll have nowhere to productively focus our inferno of damage. We need a creature to take the damage that can actually make it relevant.

Stuffy Doll and Blazing Effigy

Something like Binding Agony could work to focus Blazing Effigy damage onto, but as I’m already playing blue and red, I want to keep the deck to as few colors as possible. Stuffy Doll is a sweet colorless option that can also help us stall the game

Clone and Stuffy Doll

Incidentally, we’ve already filled our deck with Clones and similar cards. We won’t always have a Blazing Effigy though, and even when we do, it may not be the right call to duplicate it.

Duplicating Stuffy Doll is pretty potent, however, as we can create a veritable wall of inevitable damage. The Dolls may only be 0/1s, but they prevent ground attacks quite effectively, and their tap-induced damage can really add up over time.

Dictate of the Twin Gods and Stuffy Doll

Speaking of the damage from Stuffy Doll adding up over time, add Dictate of the Twin Gods to the mix, and things get out of hand quickly.

When Stuffy Doll taps to deal 1 damage to itself, the Dictate will double that damage to 2. The Stuffy Doll will then take 2 damage from its own ability, but as it’s indestructible, it won’t die. Its trigger will then deal 2 damage to the chosen player—ideally our opponent—which will also then be doubled to 4. Thus, our Stuffy Dolls will essentially have “: Stuffy Doll deals 4 damage to the chosen opponent.”

Dealing 4 damage each turn is pretty awesome.

Dictate of the Twin Gods and Blazing Effigy

The Dictate doesn’t just work well with Stuffy Doll though. Imagine our Blazing Effigy chain from before. When the first dies, instead of dealing 3, it will deal 6. The second Effigy, after taking 6 and dying, instead of then dealing 9, will deal 18 to the third, which will then deal 42 to the fourth, which can finally deal 90 damage to our Doll—for it to deal 180 damage to the chosen opponent. That should be enough.

Obviously, that sequence assumes we have four copies of Blazing Effigy, but as you can see, with the Dictate of the Twin Gods around, we don’t need as many Effigies anymore. Just two Effigies and a Doll should be sufficient.

Burn Spells

To supplement our Dictate and our Stuffy Doll, to stave off dangerous attackers, and to kill our initial Blazing Effigy when we need to start a chain reaction, we need a good suite of burn spells.

Lightning Bolt is the apparent choice, dealing 3 for only . It’s super-efficient, and it’s enough to kill an Effigy. And even one Bolt can hit our opponent for 12 when funneled through a Dictate-enhanced Doll.

Speaking of funneling burn through Dictate-enhanced Dolls, Fated Conflagration’s 5 becomes amplified to 20, giving us a three-card, instant-win combo option. Oh, and we can scry 2.

Finally, Magma Jet deals less damage for more mana than Lightning Bolt, but its scry will help us find the pieces we need for the game plan we want to employ depending on the circumstances.

Dolls of the Twin Gods ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (16)
• 4 Blazing Effigy
• 4 Cemetery Puca
• 4 Clone
• 4 Stuffy Doll

• Spells (20)
• 4 Fated Conflagration
• 4 Lightning Bolt
• 4 Magma Jet
• 4 Rite of Replication
• 4 Dictate of the Twin Gods

• Lands (24)
• 6 Island
• 6 Mountain
• 4 Cascade Bluffs
• 4 Izzet Guildgate
• 4 Sulfur Falls

Buy This Deck

Walk Away from Explosions

If you’ve ever wanted to create a chain reaction worth a ton of damage to your opponent’s face—and you didn’t actually want to use the card called Chain Reaction—give this deck a try. Oh, and if you really like the Blazing Effigy plan, and you don’t mind playing three colors and 6-mana Clones, try Progenitor Mimic.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com