We've all been there. Some weeks, usually after the decks from the latest ProTour hit the 'Net, the same competitive deck are played incessant in the Casual Play rooms. When I first started playing MTGO, it seemed like Affinity decks were all the rage and I was being run over on turn 4 or 5 consistently with a horde of massive artifact creatures with Affinity for artifacts boosted with artifact lands. For a while, it seemed like 2 out of every 3 Extended games I played was against artifact decks, supplemented by the occasional decks with wacky enchantment combinations. Many of the decks contained rather expensive cards and I was not willing to make a large enough financial investment in MTGO to compete against such decks. However, I didn't want to continue to be a doormat to such decks either. So rather than give up the game, I decided to go off in a different direction and play a deck that assumed it would play against artifact heavy decks. I wanted a deck that could definitely win against just about any artifact heavy deck and at least had a fighting chance against other decks.
What’s that? You say that it is cheesy to design a deck that is geared to only beat a certain set of decks rather than being equipped to handle all threats fairly equally? Balderdash! Anti-decks are a natural reaction to combat cheesy decks that happen to be effective against decks that are more balanced. If a certain type of deck is dominate, it is simply fair play to reduce its domination by building decks to take it down, even at the expense of more general effectiveness. Once a dominant deck encounters a high level of resistance in the form of decks tailored specifically against them, they will cease to be dominant and will be played much less often restoring the cosmic balance.
So, back to the business at hand, designing an anti-artifact deck... First, I needed cards that could be devastating against artifacts. Ideally, quite a few of the cards would also be effective against enchantments, just in case my opponent had an enchantment heavy deck rather than an artifact heavy deck. I needed some quick artifact destruction spells to slow down an artifact deck and some additional, more expensive spells, to perform mass artifact removal. After shopping through my collection, I used the following spells:
2 Echoing Ruin
3 Orim's Thunder
1 Terashi's Grasp
1 Overload
2 Return to Dust
4 Shatterstorm
Yes, this deck is for the Extended environment, primarily because that is the space where Affinity decks live. I knew that I was going to have a lot of dead cards in my hand if my opponent was not playing any artifacts and a ridiculous number of dead cards if my opponent did not have any artifacts OR enchantments. To make up for it, I needed other spells to potentially negate more than one of their cards to at least partially restore card advantage.
3 Pyroclasm
3 Sulfurous Blasts
Of course, nothing provides card advantage like a complete board reset, making the following cards sheer gold in the deck:
3 Magus of the Disk
I still need some way to win. I decided to use a few large creatures that could do enough damage to win quickly. Ideally, they would only come out when my opponent has exhausted their opening hand and they would be forced to quickly top deck an answer or die.
4 Serra Angel
4 Shivan Dragon
The deck still needs a way to stay alive long enough to get the large creatures on the table. Therefore, a few cards were added to slow down or stop attacking creatures:
3 Aether Membrane
4 Condemn
Finally, I kept the land base nice and simple as I knew in the back of my mind that a few Blood Moons would eventually make it into the deck. So far, I've been wrong, but when I start losing to decks that need a ton of non-basic lands then I'll probably swap them in and lower the density of pure anti-artifact cards.
12 Mountains
11 Plains
The following deck actually works quite well against most decks, as well as utterly devasting artifacts and enchantment decks. At first, opponents playing artifact and enchantment decks just think that you are a master at topdecking the ideal cards. Hopefully, if they see the deck enough, the light will go on in their heads and they will be encouraged to try out a new deck idea.
The total card count for the deck is a nice and lean 60 cards. As listed, the deck costs a total of 6.5 tickets. A nice low price point to mess with the minds of Extended players. And if you have them, definitely work in a couple of Blood Moons in the deck somewhere!
Huh? Yes, I got the memo that with Lowryn and Morningtide, all eyes in MTGO are now focused on tribal. In fact, I had my Standard anti-tribal deck ready to go before I saw any Lowryn cards. Be warned that this is probably the worst deck posted on this site to date. However, it gets the idea across and some of these decks have to be turkeys to see if you are paying any attention.
Most of the time, your opponent is likely to have far more creatures out than you will so all mass removal effects are good...
4 Sulfurous Blast
3 Pyrohemia
3 Evacuation
Bounce effects are great for stalling, and bounce combos nicely with Reality Acid for reusable removal...
4 Dream Stalker
4 Reality Acid
4 Reality Strobe
Sometime, you seem a creature you really like and just have to have it for yourself...
3 Persuasion
Card drawing is always a good idea, especially after emptying your opponents hand...
4 Tidings
Finally, you need something to put a serious fear in your opponent. Nothing says 'Resign Now!' quite like a Rimescale Dragon and lots of mana facing off against a tribal deck.
4 Rimescale Dragon
Since this deck doesn't deal a lot of damage until the Dragon makes an appearance, the Arbiter makes an excellent life reset. The Dreamscape Artist is useful to pull snow-covered lands into play in anticipation of an eventual dragon.
1 Arbiter of Knollridge
3 Dreamscape Artist
And the following lands make an excellent base to fuel the spells.
3 Mouth of Ronom
3 Boreal Shelf
4 Mountain
6 Snow-covered
5 Snow-covered Mountain
3 Snow-covered Plain
The total card count for the deck is a nice and lean 60 cards. As listed, the deck costs a total of 29.11 tickets. An absolutely outrageous price for a deck of such questionable performance! However, if you have the Coldsnap cards already or grasp enough of the general idea to create your own anti-decks from your own collection, then its purpose will have been well-served.