Magic the Gathering is a game of nearly infinite possibilities.  A game that encourages us to experiment with our cards, to test our most radical ideas.  That spirit is what makes MTG such a special hobby.  It has been written that, mathematically speaking, there are more possible combinations of magic cards than molecules in the universe.  While I am not qualified to prove or refute such a claim, I can tell you one thing.  There's a lot.  Sometimes those cookie-cutter deck ideas get boring and we want something more . . . exciting to play.  One of the more interesting, and out-there deck ideas is going sans creature.  Meaning no summon spells at all (antiquated terminology I know) .

The Guidelines

[caption id="attachment_1853" align="alignright" width="239" caption="it may seem strange at first, but you'll get used to an empty battlefield"][/caption]

When it comes to creating a deck without creatures there are two basic issues.  First, how do we protect ourselves from our opponent's creatures.  Any creature-less deck worth it's salt needs to be able to halt aggressive creature creation from across the table.  Board sweeping effects like Wrath of God are an obvious inclusion, and there are many more underrated options.  Thunder Staff, Reverence and Porphyry Nodes are all great ways to stem a rising creature tide.  Spot removal can work as well, but including enough copies of Terror or Unmake can limit your options for an effective deck combo.  That brings us to our second problem.  Winning.  Without creatures it becomes very challenging to damage our opponent.  Damage is the cause of victory in nearly every game of MTG.  We'll need to think outside the box for this one.  The power/toughness box that is.  Time for what they call an alternate win condition or winning without bringing your opponent to zero life.  Decking is the most common AWC, but there are others hidden like Easter eggs within the vast expanse of cards.

[caption id="attachment_1856" align="alignleft" width="126" caption="Damage is what red does.  It won't matter how many or how few creatures we include. Players have been dueling with creature-less red builds since magic was created.  I certainly don't need to tell anyone how to create such a deck.  There is a reason WotC has so few red cards that offer alternate win conditions."][/caption]

To address the previous issues we then need to find our color(s).  Each color brings it's own flavor to the creature-less deck, but some are certainly better than others.  Red is clearly the best at bringing the pain without the muscle of creatures.  So much so that I will not include it here (see side-bar to the right).  The next two are really a toss up and depend on preference.  Blue allows great defense against basically anything, and has long had a panache for decking cards.  Because decking your opponent is the second most common type of win, blue makes a strong case.  However  I am choosing white, a more creative choice.  White offers board sweeping effects, peerless defense, and more AWC cards than any other color.  Black and green both bring a little to the table, but not enough to replace white here.  We have our color.  Now, before we build are perfect creature deprived deck we have one more hurdle to leap.

The Conflict

There is a Story Circle/Sigil of the Empty Throne deck currently making rounds on MTGO.  The deck basically locks the opponent down and then produces enough angels via the Sigil to overwhelm any defense.  Here is the final piece of contention with our theme, and it is more idealogical than anything.  Do we include cards that technically speaking aren't creatures but produce tokens, or become creatures?  Here is where we separate the somewhat ambitious from the truly committed.  In the Circle/Sigil deck, the goal is to win by creature token instead of creature.  I believe we are splitting hairs here.  To be a truly creature-less deck we need to defeat without tokens, creature-stealing, and morphing enchantments.

The Deck

[caption id="attachment_1866" align="alignright" width="200" caption="not bad as AWCs go"][/caption]

Now that we have our color, and the parameters to build a revolutionary deck let's get started.  First we need a win condition.  We're using Barren Glory in that slot.  To make this deck work, or be possible at all, we're going to need another combo piece.  Using the Enchanted Evening/Tempest of Light pairing we can meet Barren Glory's hardest requirement.  We need to throw extra land in this deck to make the second requirement easier.  After we work our EE + ToL combo all we need is to land Barren Glory, and wait until our next turn.  For the same effect at instant speed, we simply Oblivion Ring our Barren Glory and wait to use our Tempest of Light until the end of our opponent's turn.  Game over.

Making this all work consistently is a bit of a challenge.  For starters we will usually need a fetch like Idyllic Tutor to snag us either Barren Glory, Oblivion Ring or Enchanted Evening.  Or all three.  Next, we need more than four copies of our catalyst, Tempest of Light.  Luckily Patrician's Scorn does the exact same thing.

With our AWC in place we need to allow time for it to develop.  That means holding off our opponent's army, and their spells.  Wrath of God is going to be key here, and we can also add Reverence to hold off repeated token rushes.   White has some great spot removal options to rid us of any more pesky issues.  Finally we can add a little insurance in the form of Greater Auramancy.  The easiest way to ensure our plan isn't upset by a single Naturalize.

We're now ready to face our brave new world with nothing but non-creature spells in hand.  Remember that it's never too outrageous if it works.