I have two odds and two ends for you today. Somehow, I don’t have Odds // Ends for you (though I have played it in a Riddle of Lightning deck). There will be some further adieu, but without further ado, how about the odds and then the ends? (If you say “no,” turn to page 73. If you say yes, turn to page 39. If you haven’t read a Choose Your Own Adventure book, what exactly were you doing in 1991? I mean, the Goosebumps books weren’t out for another year . . . )

Odd Number 1

Mirror-Mad Phantasm is good at a couple things. It’s a 5-power flyer for 5 mana; blue doesn’t get those all the time. It’s also an excellent self-miller, for what that’s worth. So what is it worth? Depe6nds on what we do with it.

In late-night fiddling with Modern—the sort of late-night/fiddling where movies/decks you admit are terrible/impractical are somehow funny/funny anyway—I’ve become obsessed with the synergy between Treasure Hunt and Summer Bloom. In a deck with loads of lands, you can do silly things like play a turn-two Summer Bloom, play two extra lands, play Treasure Hunt, draw a third extra land, and wind up with five lands. Is that good? No idea, but it’s a stunning turn two, and sometimes, the “huh!/what!/wow!” factor is fun if your casual games tend to be soporific.

But why do you want a deck with a lot of lands? Maybe you want to play Seismic Assault or Borborygmos Enraged. Or maybe you want Countryside Crusher to be huge. You know who can help with putting a lot of lands in the graveyard? Mirror-Mad Phantasm. (You see what I built there.) Getting a Countryside Crusher out and looping Mirror-Mad Phantasm in a milling frenzy will create some crushing Crushers, and it’s as unexpected as it is deadly.

Since we’re including so many lands, we don’t need many more spells. Gaea's Blessing should mill to a Countryside Crusher or Mirror-Mad Phantasm and let us keep the tricks up indefinitely. Guided Passage is at its best in a spell-light deck; it can find you a land after Countryside Crusher stops you from drawing any (Treasure Hunt helps there, too), and it guarantees you either Countryside Crusher or Mirror-Mad Phantasm if those are your only creatures.

I’ve left the land slots open to whatever lands you want to put in. Creature lands such as Raging Ravine might be useful.

"Recycled Countryside"

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Countryside Crusher
• 4 Mirror-Mad Phantasm

• Spells (14)
• 2 Gaea's Blessing
• 4 Guided Passage
• 4 Summer Bloom
• 4 Treasure Hunt

• Lands (38)
• 38 Lands

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Odd 2/End 1

But there is one place where 6/6 is unlikely to be outclassed. It’s a format I’ve played once or twice online if at all, a format where Essence of the Wild is the end of the curve. It’s Rainbow Stairwell. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a singleton format requiring six cards of each color and six artifact cards, with each color and artifact stratum having a single card at each converted mana cost from 1 to 6. So there’s one white 1-drop, one white 2-drop, et cetera. You have your choice of lands in the other twenty-four slots; I assume nonbasic lands are supposed to be singletons as well.

The important bit for our purposes is that it’s a format without creatures much larger than 6/6. A high-powered Rainbow Stairwell deck might end at one of each Titan, but even they’re still 6/6s, and you can trade with them via your Essence of the Wild, or maybe your brother Essence of the Wild, or maybe your other brother Essence of the Wild.

While I have no idea what’s good in Rainbow Stairwell, I can build an Essence of the Wild deck, I’m sure. What wildness is out there?

I Opened This Book and a Weird Plant Thing Came Out

• White (6)
• 1 Oust
• 1 Intangible Virtue
• 1 Lingering Souls
• 1 Indomitable Ancients
• 1 Geist-Honored Monk
• 1 Angelic Skirmisher

• Blue (6)
• 1 Realmwright
• 1 Dreamscape Artist
• 1 Long-Term Plans
• 1 Chronozoa
• 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
• 1 King Crab

• Black (6)
• 1 Thrull Parasite
• 1 Puppet Conjurer
• 1 Deadly Grub
• 1 Diabolic Tutor
• 1 Unburial Rites
• 1 Infernal Genesis

• Red (6)
• 1 Spikeshot Elder
• 1 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Defender of Chaos
• 1 Flametongue Kavu
• 1 Goblin Rally
• 1 Hellion Eruption

• Green (6)
• 1 Tukatongue Thallid
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Fierce Empath
• 1 Explosive Vegetation
• 1 Hibernation's End
• 1 Essence of the Wild

• Artifact (6)
• 1 Hex Parasite
• 1 Prophetic Prism
• 1 Sarpadian Empires, Vol VII
• 1 Muse Vessel
• 1 Etched Monstrosity
• 1 Obelisk of Alara

• Lands (24)
• 24 Lands

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There are a lot of fun for grabs here. There are tutors, token makers, mana fixing, some five-colored artifact favorites, and even Indomitable Ancients—it can block everything in the format. That . . . and it’s weird.

Oust and King Crab can bounce your Essence of the Wild if you want to play a different creature (such as Angelic Skirmisher, who would love to help out) or they can serve as tempo against opposing creatures. The deck theme probably doesn’t allow for too much removal, but how much do you need when you’re making 6/6s?

End 2

This, sadly, is the end of my regular column. The economy has not always been kind to me or indeed most lawyers, and I’ve been out of full-time work since early June 2012. I’ve had some part-time work as the legal reviewer for municipal codes—a thoroughly Melvin job—but paying bills hasn’t been easy in the last year. A former supervisor contacted and hired me last Thursday for some full-time work, and I’ll be doing that and code review for a while.

Working forty-five to sixty hours a week, finishing the revisions to my book, trying to get with the guy who’s mastering my album, preparing for a Wizards of the Coast flavor text team this summer, judging Magic, playing Magic, writing about Magic, and being a husband somewhere in there aren’t doable all at once—or at least not with me—as I have an elvenly low constitution and often pick up a week-long illness on missing a couple hours of sleep. Even if I found the time to write a column, I don’t think I’d give you quality articles. You deserve someone with more time than I have.

I was on the Deck Tease podcast in December as an ambassador for multiplayer Magic. It, at the very least, is my best performance on a podcast.

The Decktagon is my framework for building decks. It has helped me figure out what’s wrong with a deck faster than anything else I’ve encountered. I had an early Muse Vessel article that talked about specific types of deck repair, and it holds up.

I sort of called my shot on cashing a Grand Prix by giving my philosophy on how casual Magic can translate to tournaments.

It took years to come to this articulation, but for those who don’t understand the multiplayer social contract, I explained it as best I could.

Last but not least, here’s my take on being a Magic (and baseball) writer.

And for the privilege of being a Magic writer, I have many people to thank. With so many people I could thank and reasons to thank them, I will give specific thanks to: John Dale Beety; Daryl Bockett; Nathan Brown; Natasha Lewis Harrington; Joshua Jenczyk; John Persons; Michael Piggott; Buddy Renahan; Bruce Richard; Jules Robins; Bennie Smith; Sean Smith; Alex Spurlock; and Adam Styborski. Together, they’ve been just past a baker’s dozen of awesome behind this column.

You’ve been awesome, too. I’ve had an intelligent, thoughtful readership from day one; not every Internet writer gets to say that. Thank you for reading.