Then Hungry Lynx came into my life and it just hit all the right buttons for me. I love the politics of the card! The ability to give opponents a 1/1 deathtouch creature meant that I could make some friends at the table. Players hate trying to push through deathtouch creatures since it means they are going to lose their best creature. Just a few deathtouch rats and suddenly the entire state of the board changes. All because of Hungry Lynx. This seemed like a better deal than random scratches and dead mice underfoot!

What really got to me was the multiplicative nature of Hungry Lynx. One copy is a political tool but not much more. Protection from Rats is minimal and killing one of those rats only gives a +1/+1 counter to the cats you control, not all cats from now on. So once again, another ability that demands you over commit to the board for a long time.

Then I discovered the solution to my problem! I found a way to swing and crush an opponent in one turn! I wasn't giving them turn after turn to find a solution! I was hammering in immediately! Oh, this was going to be great!

4 Hungry Lynx

Of course it starts here. With a 60-card deck you aren't limited to just one Lynx, so you run four! With one Lynx on the battlefield you get a counter for each rat that dies. With two Lynx on the board, suddenly one rat dies and your cats get two +1/+1 counters. If you can kill two rats in one turn, suddenly your cats get four +1/+1 counters and everyone at the table sits up a little straighter! Those cute little kittens turned into cats with claws!

Just a note about Hungry Lynx though. Don't go for more than two on the battlefield ever. Mass removal is still a thing. You are better off keeping a Lynx in hand and have it to start rebuilding than to watch them all disappear into your graveyard. Multiplayer Magic is a marathon, not a sprint.

3 White Sun's Zenith

If you are going to give all your cats +1/+1 counters, you want a lot of cats, and White Sun's Zenith does that. Waiting in the Weeds is cheaper, but it comes at sorcery speed, so all the cats you get will sit on the battlefield for an entire round before they can pounce (hee hee! "Pounce!" Like a cat! Get it?! Get it?! Do you have any idea how funny I think I am?). White Sun's Zenith is an instant, so when you are ready for your major assault, you cast this at the end of the opponent's turn. Your cats will be ready to attack on your turn and only players with instant-speed mass removal will be able to stop it. I'm only running three of them because they get shuffled back into the library after they are cast and you don't want it right away as you are going to want to pay at least six mana for it.

2 Serrated Arrows, 2 Hankyu

This is how you are going to kill those rats. After the White Sun's Zenith gives you a number of cats, tap the Serrated Arrows and kill one of the rats. Then on your turn, with Serrated Arrows untapped, kill another rat. Two dead rats gives you two +1/+1 counters on every cat you control, unless you happen to have two Hungry Lynx on the battlefield.

And if you are wondering why I am running two Hankyu, just know that this deck was built with cards only from my collection, as opposed to buying what I need. This deck is also running a single copy of Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith, so using equipment to fill a gap the deck had just seemed to make sense. I expect that if the deck works like I hope it will, I may be willing to pay the $0.50 for another copy of Serrated Arrows.

3 Shields of Velis Vel

And here is the coup de grace. You have all these kitties with their fur on end, dying to attack, but your opponent decided they were not going to play their rat deck! You have killed off a couple of the rats they were going to use to block, but they still have other creatures, and some of them might even be good! So you could swing in try to overwhelm them. That may be enough some of the time, but other times, you are going to lose several cats and leave yourself with an angry opponent who knows they can't win, but will be happy to take you with them. This is when you cast Shields of Velis Vel, targeting your opponent.

Suddenly, all their creatures are rats. And all your creatures have protection from rats! Suddenly that attack that looked vicious looks outright deadly. All those big kitties stride across the battlefield like they're the cat's meow and just completely wipe out your opponent.

Shields is not just a one-trick pony either. If you have quite a few felines but no way to kill off those rats your opponents have, you can use the Shields on yourself! Now your creatures are Cat Rats, which means that if you have a way to sacrifice one of your Cat Rats, all your other Cat Rats get a +1/+1 counter! Ten 2/2 cats turn into nine 3/3 cats, or eight 4/4 cats. And all of this is assuming you only have one Hungry Lynx on the battlefield!

3 Altar of Dementia

The Altars are not here to load a graveyard, but more as a way to get a Cat Rat to the graveyard. Virtually any sacrifice option would work and I would have preferred an Ashnod's Altar, but all my copies are in other decks. I do need to be careful using the Altar of Dementia. Milling my own library is one way to see a White Sun's Zenith end up in my graveyard as opposed to getting cast and shuffled back into my library. Using the Altar on other players can result in a card ending up in a graveyard with an opponent who has the ability to abuse the graveyard. As I said, I prefer Ashnod's Altar, but some careful play should allow the Altar of Dementia to work for me.

2 Mirror Entity

The deck puts a lot of pressure on three copies of an instant, so the Mirror Entities are in the deck to lessen that load. While they can't turn all my opponents' creatures into Rats, they can make Cat Rats out of my creatures, and they can make them into damn big Cat Rats too! The problem with sacrificing my own creatures is that eventually you start to run out of creatures. There needs to be a way to make token creatures again and again...

3 Nacatl War-Pride

The War-Pride really ramp up the number of cats swinging in on an opponent. The tokens are where the Altar of Dementia/Shields combo really makes things miserable for opponents. An opponent with four creatures to block with ends up facing four versions of Nacatl War-Pride and whatever other cats you may have. Sacrificing a couple of the tokens to the Altar adds two counters to the remaining copies of War-Pride and all the cats you are going to get to keep at the end of the turn.

1 Helm of the Host, 1 Blade of Selves, 1 Hammer of Nazahn

The equipment package is there to help keep the Lynx safe and to make more copies of the Lynx. Both the Blade and Helm will make copies of the Lynx. Once blockers are declared, you can sacrifice the Cat Rats that are going to die to pump up your other creatures and hit for even more.

Missing Lynx | Casual | Bruce Richard

• Creatures (15)
• 1 Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
• 1 Qasali Slingers
• 1 Skyhunter Patrol
• 1 Skyhunter Skirmisher
• 2 Mirror Entity
• 2 Qasali Pridemage
• 3 Nacatl War-Pride
• 4 Hungry Lynx

• Instants (7)
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 3 Shields of Velis Vel
• 3 White Sun's Zenith

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 2 Gaea's Bounty

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Mirari's Wake

• Artifacts (10)
• 1 Blade of Selves
• 1 Hammer of Nazahn
• 1 Helm of the Host
• 2 Hankyu
• 2 Serrated Arrows
• 3 Altar of Dementia

• Lands (24)
• 7 Forest
• 8 Plains
• 1 Sapseep Forest
• 1 Temple of Plenty
• 1 Unclaimed Territory
• 2 Temple Garden
• 4 Canopy Vista

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The cards that round out the deck are cats that can destroy artifacts and enchantments, a ramp package and a couple of flying cats, since I hate to watch my carefully laid plans all come undone by a few creatures flying overhead.

To be fair, for this deck to smash a huge home run, a lot of things need to fall into place. I wouldn't call it Magical Christmas Land, but it definitely involves a number of cards. The joy with the deck is that you can manage without every card. If White Sun's Zenith or Nacatl War-Pride doesn't show up, you can play the political game and throw up a reasonable defense. If Hungry Lynx doesn't show up, you can still swing with a lot of cats! Your plans are not completely ruined if your deck doesn't cooperate. Your strategy can change as you draw your card for the turn, so you'll need to be nimble and ready to change plans on the fly.

A future iteration of the deck may shift away from White and into Blue for all the cloning effects. A well-timed Rite of Replication could put a lot of counters onto a single cat! Hungry Lynx offers a variety of decks and game play! Perhaps I need to work a Doubling Season into the deck somewhere...

Bruce Richard

@manaburned