Theme Decks of Tempest

In 1997, Tempest was released, and alongside it, four preconstructed decks meant not for learning or collecting, but for playing and personalizing, and to promote the exciting new set. Theme Decks would be released for each subsequent set, then later Intro Packs, Event Decks, Planeswalker Decks, and now Commander and Challenger Decks. Introductory decks existed before, but the real fun started with Tempest. The set takes place on the stormy plane of Rath, where Gerrard and the heroes of the Weatherlight set out to find Volrath’s stronghold. What follows are card lists and playing ideas for each of the four preconstructed Tempest decks. Each deck focuses on a different strength of this stand-alone set.

The Slivers is built around these unique creatures, which share a hive mind that allows any one Sliver to grant its powers to all other Slivers in play.
Flames of Rath makes use of Tempest‘s impressive array of direct damage and creature removal cards.
Deep Freeze is a classic control deck, taking advantage of new counterspelling and creature suppression cards.
The Swarm floods your opponent with hordes of green and white creatures and is supported by other Tempest cards that accelerate play.

“The Slivers” is a deck designed for the long game, building up a card advantage. Ultimately, you want access to many more cards than your opponent, which will allow you to win by overwhelming him or her.
Early card advantage comes from Mnemonic Sliver, which lets you sacrifice a Sliver (including itself) to draw a card if your opponent uses a card to kill it. Later in the game, you can choose form several ways to get a large card advantage. One is to repeatedly use Whispers of the Muse, a buyback instant, to draw cards. Another is to play Dismiss, allowing you to both counter one of your opponent’s spells and draw a card. A different type of card advantage is removing opposing creatures: the buyback sorcery Evincar’s Justice can let you do this over and over, while the enchantment Fevered Convulsions can kill many creatures over time.
Your main job early in the game is simply to survive. You want to create a stable situation—that is, one in which your opponent can’t attack you with creatures. There are two ways to do this. One is using Dark Banishing, Diabolic Edict, Evincar’s Justice, and Extinction to kill all the creatures he or she plays. The other is to put a Clot Sliver into play, which allows you to block with your creatures and then regenerate them.
Mana management is very important in playing “The Slivers.” It will cost you two mana to counter your opponent’s spells and to regenerate or sacrifice your Slivers. So you should try to keep two mana available as much as possible, especially if you have a Clot Sliver or Mnemonic Sliver on the table. You can use mana more effectively by playing some of your spells and abilities (such as Whispers of the Muse and Essence Bottle’s ability) at the end of your opponent’s turn, right before you untap. One of the more difficult parts of playing the deck is deciding when to tap out and when to keep your mana available. It may take quite a bit of practice to develop judgment in this area.
Above all, you need to be patient. Keep enough mana to regenerate or counterspell before moving on to other things. When you seem to be losing, don’t spend much effort attacking your opponent; instead, play defensively and try to weather the storm. With luck you will soon stabilize; if you can do this, you can probably go on the attack eventually.

The Slivers

Lands (25)

• 13 Island
• 1 Rootwater Depths
• 11 Swamp

Creatures (16)

• 4 Metallic Sliver
• 4 Clot Sliver
• 4 Winged Sliver
• 1 Mindwhip Sliver
• 3 Mnemonic Sliver

Other (19)

• 1 Whispers of the Muse
• 1 Ertai’s Meddling
• 2 Power Sink
• 1 Spell Blast
• 2 Counterspell
• 2 Dream Cache
• 1 Dismiss
• 2 Diabolic Edict
• 1 Fevered Convulsions
• 2 Dark Banishing
• 1 Evincar’s Justice
• 1 Extinction
• 1 Lobotomy
• 1 Essence Bottle

You control a Clot Sliver, a Mnemonic Sliver, a Fevered Convulsions, and 6 lands. Your opponent controls two Trained Armodon and a Soltari Trooper. If they attack, you destroy a creature of your choice. If they don’t, you kill the Trooper and their position gets worse. A trick or removal spell offers temporary relief, hope is fading. This is The Slivers.

The most obvious choice for a tribal Sliver deck is Muscle Sliver, aggressive, maybe 5 colors. Instead, The Slivers “is a deck designed for the long game, building up a card advantage.” Clot Sliver negates all attackers, Mnemonic Sliver turns kill spells into a liability, countermagic prevents opponents from doing anything meaningful, and removal spells dwindle what little they have left. You win by slowly closing off all methods of attack. Your own offense comes later, or by coincidence, with a Winged Sliver here or a couple Slivers on an empty board there.

With a concept so unintuitive to a nascent player, the included guide does its best to teach the concepts needed to win. Be patient, focus on survival, keep mana open, learn when to tap out. At the time, it was beyond me. I couldn’t wrap my head around how to win. Something would always go wrong. I would tap out to regenerate, only to have my Clot Sliver killed in response. I would counter an early creature because I had no other answer only to die to an Overrun later. I was following the guide! What was I doing wrong?

Maybe I wasn’t following the guide. “Above all, you need to be patient.” So I dedicate myself to patience. I win the die roll against an unknown opponent and go first. I keep a hand of Island, two Swamp, Metallic Sliver, Clot Sliver, and two Winged Sliver. Already, I may have made two mistakes, going first and not mulliganing. I play Island and pass, holding Metallic Sliver. My opponent plays Mogg Fanatic. My patience is paying off. I draw Clot Sliver, play Swamp and pass. They play Fireslinger. Okay, maybe I was meant to lose. I draw Dream Cache, use it to find Evincar’s Justice, and go on to win the game after a long uphill battle. My opponent needed to be more patient! As it turns out, it’s right to hold Slivers until you know what you’re up against. Unintuitive, but powerful.

The easiest way to lose is to slip up. While appearing to need a balance of creatures and spells, almost any mix can be used to the same end: controlling the board. However, time is needed as well. You can’t simply find the answers, you need time and care to set your plans into motion. Once you know the deck, it feels like it feeds you just enough to survive. Played well, you can force your opponent into a position where they simply can’t win, or at least can’t race you to the finish line. From there, victory is assured, even if it comes from a couple flying 1/1’s.

Slivers were designed by Mike [Elliott] while looking at a Plague Rat one day. What if there were creatures like Plague Rats, thought Mike, that shared other abilities with creatures of their own kind. Slivers were originally envisioned as pieces of a large creature that had been split apart. For this reason, the original Slivers were all named after body parts. There were eleven in all, five of which were common.

Rares were a big deal in Theme Decks. Without access to cheap singles, these were the only “guaranteed” rares a kid could obtain. The Slivers is a mixed bag. Fevered Convulsions is excellent in the deck and fine as a single copy, eroding any chance for an opponent to make a move. Ertai’s Meddling has the potential to counter a Rolling Thunder, delay a removal spell until you can deploy a Mnemonic Sliver, or neutralize a critical, time-sensitive spell, but in reality it mostly gets thrown away to a Dream Cache. Its power often comes late in the game when you’ve already stabilized. Extinction is your second sweeper effect, and interesting in that it’s best played against you. Your playgroup is eager to trade for it, but are you willing to let them have it? None of the rares suggest buying multiple copies of the deck, which is good because it’s already a complete package; Wizards didn’t skimp on the Slivers or other key cards. Time Warp and Dregs of Sorrow are the closest alternatives, but what we got is more fitting.

The advanced decklist is inspiring, as it completely retains the strategy. All the creatures are the same. The mana is improved, which is more of an ideal than a necessity. Most changes are for efficiency. Dark Banishing becomes Terror. Dream Cache is out for Portent and Impulse, allowing cheaper digging for that key piece at the right time. Essence Bottle was in the deck to be a learning tool and Disenchant target, so it’s out. Evincar’s Justice and Extinction become the more general-purpose Nevinyrral’s Disk, which features a great interaction with superstar Clot Sliver. Finally a bit of permission and removal are removed for 3 Stupor, another general-purpose change for card advantage and disruption. If modifying the deck for yourself, keep these changes in mind. They address The Slivers’s key weakness: speed.

A tribal deck with only 16 creatures and a defensive attitude, The Slivers is nearly inimitable. Pick a tribe and build a deck to The Slivers’s specifications; it’s almost certain to play differently, more aggressive, more tempo-oriented. I tried knights, griffins, deathtouchers, merfolk, skeletons, regenerators, and more, and while all of them were fine decks, only Rebels came close to The Slivers in playstyle, and I always found at least 18 creatures necessary. Instead of building a new deck, try upgrading the spells like the advanced decklist. Choked Estuary and Sunken Hollow are a cheap land solution, a set of 8 costs about two dollars. If you love the deck more than your budget, try a creature base of Galerider, Clot, Leeching, and Hibernation Sliver. More speed, more power, same idea.

“Flames of Rath” follows a tried-and-true theme:Burn, baby, burn. The deck contains a wide variety of direct damage such as Searing Touch, Kindle, Rolling Thunder, and Lightning Blast. It also employs several anti-creature cards such as Tahngarth’s Rage and Blood Frenzy, which can destroy a creature in the right circumstances while also providing an offensive threat.
Tempest contains a number of enchantments and artifacts that could create a problem for this deck. A splash of white for Disenchant provides some defense against this possibility.
The deck gets going fast, with cheap red creatures such as Fireslinger and Mogg Fanatic. Your goal is to get a couple of creatures on the table, then use the early direct damage spells such as Searing Touch and Kindle to prevent your opponent from keeping any blocking creatures in play. You can benefit further if you can get out Goblin Bombardment, which deals 1 damage to any target when you sacrifice a creature. Thus you can increase the potential direct damage and also get some benefit out of a creature that’s being destroyed by an opponent’s effect.
The deck’s inspiration, Furnace of Rath, is a good finishing card. Once the Furnace is in play, all of your direct damage is doubled. It shouldn’t take long to polish off your opponent.

Flames of Rath

Lands (25)

• 1 Maze of Shadows
• 19 Mountain
• 5 Plains

Creatures (18)

• 4 Mogg Fanatic
• 3 Fireslinger
• 1 Firefly
• 2 Lightning Elemental
• 2 Wild Wurm
• 1 Flowstone Giant
• 1 Sandstone Warrior
• 1 Flowstone Salamander
• 1 Magmasaur
• 1 Soltari Guerrillas
• 1 Coiled Tinviper

Other (17)

• 2 Disenchant
• 1 Tahngarth’s Rage
• 1 Searing Touch
• 1 Blood Frenzy
• 1 Goblin Bombardment
• 4 Kindle
• 2 Rolling Thunder
• 3 Lightning Blast
• 1 Furnace of Rath
• 1 Squee’s Toy

Your opponent casts a Pincher Beetles that you can’t kill. Then a Ranger-en-Vec. They’re at 15, they have an Anoint in hand. You were never ahead, and now any chance of victory is slipping away. You Rolling Thunder them for 4. They play a Krakilin for 5. You take a big hit, then Lightning Blast and Kindle for a total of 7. You untap and draw a Rolling Thunder. Good game. Flames of Rath is a deck of highs and lows, that wins and loses with coin flips, topdecks, and direct damage.

Flames of Rath could have been a simple-looking deck. There are many decisions to make as a red mage, but one tool to solve them all: direct damage. The addition of white adds interest and depth. You’re not as vulnerable, and games go longer, giving you a chance to take advantage of potentially big burn spells like Kindle and Rolling Thunder. It’s also a great template for deckbuilding. With only one Hammer of Bogardan, I swapped the splash to blue for Whispers of the Muse. Later I would switch again to black for Stupor. Before that, a proper splash was pure guesswork for me.

No one knows the difference between Flowstone Giant and Flowstone Salamander, and for good reason. Flames of Rath is built around Tempest‘s impressive burn spells, but its top-end creatures are filler, just whatever was available. People remember Jackal Pup and Wasteland, and if you played Sligh at the time, Canyon Wildcat, and those aggressive cards are nowhere to be found. The consistency of Sligh is missing as well; here we have some cheap spells, expensive spells, and nothing in between. Focusing on large creatures, Flames of Rath could have taken advantage of Ancient Tomb and fully committed to the “big red” idea, turning the deck’s hole at three mana into a major advantage, skipping 3 to play bigger monsters before a proper defense could come online. Whether it went with Jackal Pup or Ancient Tomb, Flames of Rath missed an opportunity for more memorable, exciting gameplay. Instead, we got uninspiring, slow creatures and the unneeded Maze of Shadows. This is Flames of Rath’s failing, and the major reason for losses. Its big creatures can’t close out the game and it gradually floods and flounders.

Richard [Garfield] and [Mark Rosewater] created buyback as an interesting twist to casting spells. Initially, buybacks returned to the player’s hand at the end of the turn.

While most of the large creatures lack impact, the rares are haymakers. Magmasaur looks unwieldy, but presents a lose-lose situation to opponents. If their board is big, it blows it up and hits them with a Lava Axe. If their board is small, it attacks for 4, then 3, then blows up for a total of 10 damage while they’re forced to wait it out. If Soltari Guerrillas isn’t answered immediately, it takes over the game, and Disenchant can even save it from a Pacifism. Furnace of Rath is the big one, pushing direct damage into overdrive and quickly ending the game. Mogg Fanatic and Fireslinger rip the board apart and Lightning Blast and Rolling Thunder end the game out of nowhere. If the deck sees a rare, it has a high probability to win.

The advanced decklist throws out all the creatures except Lightning Elemental and replaces them with 4 Steel Golem and 3 Ball Lightning. The idea is now to land a creature and clear a path with burn, which is upgraded with Incinerate, Fireblast, Earthquake, Fireball, and Hammer of Bogardan, and rounded out with an additional Furnace of Rath. While the new strategy is familiar, almost all the cards are replaced, so it’s not a direct upgrade path. It’s similar to traditional Sligh, so it’s some wonder they didn’t go with that.

A big red deck at heart, it’s easy to create something like Flames of Rath: clear the path with burn and land a big creature of your choice. You can even pump up the Fireslinger effect by going with Sparksmith and a goblin subtheme. The fun part is choosing a splash. You can use it to cover your own weakness or exploit an opponent’s. While it’s best to choose something you want to cast later on to increase your chance of having the right mana available, cards like Negate and Duress are also viable.

The key to winning with “Deep Freeze” is establishing control. Counterspell, Dismiss, Power Sink, and Spell Blast prevent your opponent from playing spells that would cause you problems. In addition, the deck contains eleven cards to suppress large ground creatures. This lets you use creatures with flying or shadow to repeatedly hit your opponent. Pacifism and Gaseous Form nullify opposing creatures’ damage-dealing capacity, while Repentance removes most creatures from play. Puppet Strings and Master Decoy keep the dangerous creatures tapped.
“Deep Freeze” also offers several ways to gain card advantage on your opponent. One is simply not to give up a card when you play it. Anoint and Invulnerability are buyback damage prevention cards: pay the buyback cost when you cast the spell to get the card back rather than put it in the graveyard. (However, you shouldn’t be afraid to play such cards without paying the buyback cost, when the situation warrants it.)
Gaining cards is the easiest way to get an advantage. Dismiss and Legacy’s Allure both help you do this, though in different ways. Normally, you play a card to remove your opponent’s card. With Dismiss, though, you get an extra draw, while Legacy’s Allure not only removes a creature from your opponent but also gives it to you. Every turn, Emmessi Tome can give you extra cards. Precognition doesn’t give you any numerical advantage, but allows you to control your opponent’s next draw. Late in the game, this makes it very difficult for your opponent to draw his or her best cards.
The key to playing this deck is patience. It usually doesn’t hurt to take 5 or 10 damage early on. If at all possible, don’t play your creatures until you also have enough mana to play a counterspell before you untap. Once you have established control, it will be virtually impossible for your opponent to harm you further.

Deep Freeze

Lands (24)

• 13 Island
• 11 Plains

Creatures (12)

• 2 Master Decoy
• 2 Soltari Lancer
• 1 Knight of Dawn
• 1 Cloudchaser Eagle
• 1 Avenging Angel
• 2 Wind Drake
• 2 Horned Turtle
• 1 Sky Spirit

Other (24)

• 1 Anoint
• 1 Disenchant
• 3 Pacifism
• 1 Invulnerability
• 2 Repentance
• 2 Power Sink
• 1 Spell Blast
• 3 Counterspell
• 1 Legacy’s Allure
• 1 Time Ebb
• 1 Dream Cache
• 2 Gaseous Form
• 2 Dismiss
• 1 Precognition
• 1 Puppet Strings
• 1 Emmessi Tome

Your opponent has a board full of creatures. One is tapped down by Master Decoy, another by Puppet Strings. One is enchanted with Pacifism, one is held back by a Horned Turtle. They attack with the last and it meets an Invulnerability with buyback. They cast a creature and you don’t even bother countering it. You attack with Soltari Lancer. The clock has wound down. Deep Freeze is a complete, effective control deck.

Deep Freeze likes answering cards one-for-one, and only needs a small advantage to eventually win. You’re eager to leave creatures back to block, even if it means trading. You tap down, disable, or outright destroy all threats. If anything gets through, it’s the weakest of what your opponent draws. It’s hard to fight back with only your worst cards.

The small advantages come from a variety of sources. Most obvious is through card draw on Dismiss and Emmessi Tome. Sometimes your Sky Spirit will hold back two creatures. The most subtle way the deck builds an advantage is through lands. At five to seven mana, you play out your offense. Every land you draw gives you more freedom to hold countermagic and activate abilities. Every land they draw is essentially a lost turn.

Failure to secure an advantage is how you lose. Answer cards flow freely, but sometimes you don’t draw the right lands to use them. Other times you’re being pressured too much to take the lead. You need to play a creature to block and use another two mana on Puppet Strings, then they play a threat that’s too big while you sit with an unusable Dismiss in hand.

We playtested for two months in all, playing several hours every day. The hundreds of cumulative hours taught us much about the burgeoning Tempest environment. For starters, it was fast. Real fast. Mike [Elliott] and [Mark Rosewater] actually played a five-game series that took only ten minutes. We learned which mechanics were working and replaced those that seemed extraneous. Many of these replacements were defensive cards that we felt would help slow down [Tempest]’s breakneck pace.

The rares are mediocre in quality, but symbolic of the control philosophy and plenty of fun. Avenging Angel is an unkillable threat. The art on the deck box is what got me into Theme Decks. While slow to set up, Emmessi Tome not only nets an advantage, it filters for what you need most. Finally, there’s little more enjoyable for a control mage than controlling a Precognition and putting the card back on top. “Enjoy it, it’s my gift to you.” Then they draw it and it really is what they wanted. “Wait, this isn’t good enough?” “Nope.”

Deep Freeze is already a sound framework for a control deck, and the advanced list shows how to build an even more traditional list. The big difference is the inclusion of Wrath of God as a sweeper. It’s a simple way to obtain card advantage against decks that apply pressure. The rest of the changes, card filtering from Impulse, better mana, upgraded countermagic, achieve the same as all the advanced lists: they prepare you for play on a general, compressed timeline, where a lot of initial action demands immediate response before slipping into the longer, drawn out game a casual player may recognize as familiar.

Deep Freeze is truly “a classic control deck,” looking similar to tournament lists from the earliest days of Magic to those of today, so building a similar deck is easy. Cheap white removal and powerful blue countermagic gain control, while sweepers like Depopulate and card draw like Fact or Fiction provide the advantage needed to overwhelm an opponent. Similar to The Slivers, from there you can win with anything. These days, there are cheap flash creatures to mount an offense, and many creatures with evasion that are difficult to target, like Prognostic Sphinx. You can even win with creature lands. As an allied-colored deck, Port Town and Prairie Stream make a quality mana base for two dollars. Whatever defensive measures you use, choose them based on what will best put your opponent in a bind.

“The Swarm” is a fast white-green creature deck that wins through sheer numbers. Start by playing creatures quickly and inflicting as much damage as possible with them before your opponent stabilizes the game. After that point, build up and overwhelm your opponent with more creatures than they can handle. In addition to creatures, “The Swarm” contains Pacifisms, Master Decoys, and Needle Storm for creature suppression, and Disenchant for artifact and enchantment removal. It also has a few tricks thrown in, in the form of several new noncreature cards.
The first trick is Aluren, which can often be played on your third or fourth turn. This enchantment allows players to play creatures with total casting cost 3 or less at instant speed. Since almost all of the creatures in “The Swarm” cost three mana or less to cast, Aluren lets you play your creatures at the end of your opponent’s turn and then attack with them on your next turn. This also ensures that you will get to attack with your creatures at least once before your opponent can eliminate them with a sorcery like Fireball or Wrath of God.
“The Swarm” also has tricks for later in the game to help finsih off more tenacious opponents. Recycle lets you draw extra cards, and by the time you can afford to cast it you will have enough mana to play several cards per turn. Make sure not to play Recycle unless you have at least two other cards in your hand, since it allows you to draw only when you play a card. Once you have six mana available, try to keep two lands in your hand so that you’ll have cards to play if you draw Recycle and want to use it.
Other cards for later in the game are Krakilin, which can potentially be a very large creature, and Overrun, which makes all of your creatures bigger and gives them trample for one final, massive attack. Anoint and Elvish Fury are also helpful cards later in the game, as they can be played repeatedly once you have sufficient mana available to pay their buyback costs.

The Swarm

Lands (23)

• 14 Forest
• 7 Plains
• 2 Vec Townships

Creatures (26)

• 3 Master Decoy
• 2 Soltari Trooper
• 1 Soltari Crusader
• 3 Skyshroud Elf
• 4 Muscle Sliver
• 3 Pincher Beetles
• 3 Rootwalla
• 1 Krakilin
• 3 Trained Armodon
• 1 Elven Warhounds
• 2 Ranger en-Vec

Other (11)

• 1 Anoint
• 3 Pacifism
• 1 Elvish Fury
• 1 Needle Storm
• 1 Aluren
• 2 Overrun
• 1 Recycle

You play a 2/2, then a 3/3. They get checked and you start chipping in with a Soltari. Your opponent has answers, but you keep playing creatures, and they need to watch out for Overrun. Eventually they tap out to stabilize the board. You resolve Recycle, and within a few turns The Swarm triumphs.

This deck is all about creatures. It plays creatures, enhances them, and provides cover for them. It has big creatures, evasive creatures, and creatures that help you cast more creatures. If you have more, stronger creatures, you will eventually win.

Muscle Sliver gets the offense started. Trained Armodon, a 3/3 for three with no drawback, was an exciting beatdown card at the time, it ruled the early battlefield. Shadow creatures attack on any board. Creatures with regeneration and shroud provide some finesse. Deep Freeze uses Master Decoy to stop attackers, here it’s used to enable attacks. Anoint and Elvish Fury also enable attacks, and just the threat of them can be deadly. Even more lethal is Overrun. Sometimes it rests in your hands, doing nothing. Other times it’s an instant win. It’s always on your opponent’s mind. They have to adapt their strategy to it, and you get to adapt yours to maximizing it. Make sure to represent it whether you have it or not. Always know how much damage it could deal so you can determine when to force through damage and when to bide your time.

When you lose, it’s usually because your offense faltered and you got dragged into a drawn out battle. Overrun doesn’t do anything if you have no creatures, and a land is even worse. Without Recycle, you have no way to draw extra cards. Try to maximize damage where you can. Maybe you could have bluffed an Elvish Fury or sacrificed a creature for a couple points of damage. Perhaps you could have held onto Soltari Champion until you were sure your opponent was out of removal. It can be a challenge to realize all the possibilities on the kind of big, complicated battlefields that The Swarm can produce.

[W]e decided to make the [shadow] creatures very offensive. They were given higher powers and, with only a few exceptions, toughnesses of 1. This ensured that defense would prove problematic.

The rares are exciting, and without them the deck is quite plain. Elven Warhounds is essentially unblockable, but completely closes the door on anyone forced to block it; they’ll redraw the creature that can’t save them over and over. Aluren lets you play at instant speed, allowing you to keep tricks open while still casting creatures. An end-of-turn flurry involving Master Decoy can turn the game on its head. Recycle not only addresses a key weakness of the deck, running out of cards, but can combo with Aluren to play many cards per turn. This made the Swarm a great deck to buy in multiples, increasing the chance to assemble the combo and win on a new axis.

The advanced decklist drops the combo for a new way to get ahead in the late game, using Lhurgoyf and Nature’s Resurgence to take advantage of a stocked graveyard. It retains an Aluren for a smaller combo: chaining Llanowar Sentinels. More importantly, the deck adds Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise to support quick starts and Armageddon. It’s an effective idea that adds a new angle of attack, one that’s inspirational for a new tournament player, and impossible to put together for a casual player opening sealed product.

Building a deck like The Swarm is dependent on what you want. If you’d like to play the Aluren and Recycle combo, it’ll set you back a couple hundred dollars. Elven Warhounds and Lure is a more fitting combo on a budget while retaining the deck’s playstyle. If you want a green-white beatdown deck, that’s a lot easier. You can play huge creatures, or you can go with disruptive creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Pump out tokens with Swarm Sprouting and finish with Pride of Conquerors or Bramblesnap. Creatures are so much more powerful now than in 1997, pick a strength of The Swarm and amplify it.

Overall

Attracted by the cool art and titles, Tempest‘s Theme Decks blew my own out of the water. While I had basic ideas like “elves, monsters, and burn,” these were complete ideas with good mana, curves, creature and spell mixes, the right amount of removal spells and countermagic, and synergy between parts. I had always thought, for example, that 20 land was enough because that’s how many came in a Starter Deck. Now I didn’t need to mana weave, and I knew to adjust land counts up or down based on a deck’s needs. I saw what it meant to be discerning with card choices, and not include Boomerang in every blue deck because “that’s what blue does.” Little things like that make a big difference.

Though many lessons were beyond my understanding, I still learned a lot from these decks. Facing down two 3/3’s on turn 3, it’s easy to realize that Horned Turtle is for now and Wind Drake is for later. Squee’s Toy is terrible, all it does is teach the opponent to ignore it. I don’t want to teach my opponent! Then you play the mirror and it’s comically dominant. “Please, let me draw a Disenchant!” Speaking of mirrors, I’ve never completed a The Slivers mirror. What a brain-bender.

These aren’t good draft decks, they’re fully realized, fundamental archetypes with strategic strengths and weakness. Not only would they become my decks, I still use them as deckbuilding templates to this day. With a fair amount of offense and defense in each list, they make for thrilling, tactical, lengthy games that test wits and smooth over inconsistencies.

In addition to casual play, these decks were designed for league play. Participants would buy a Theme Deck, play against opponents who did the same, and slowly upgrade them with new packs of cards over the weeks. They’re fairly well balanced against each other, with unique counterplay between each deck. Still, this would lead to some clever meta interactions, like two players swapping their The Slivers and Deep Freeze deck boxes. Lead with Island and see if your The Swarm opponent is willing to play that Muscle Sliver.

There’s also a high skill ceiling. As much as the guide tried to help, the me from now would be the me from 1997 almost 100 percent of the time. Even the me from right now would be favored over me from a month ago, before I started preparing this article. If you made one of these decks your own, and they were worth being possessive over, you could do great things with it, plays that a casual observer would be unable to see. Hopefully I’ve brought some of that to light.