A few weeks ago I finally managed to go 3-0 at the Tribal Apocalypse Player Run Event.  This article goes into the evolution of that deck.

Let's skip the formalities and roll right into a deck list:

Elemental Burn - Classic Tribal Wars
Lands (18)     15x Mountain       3x Forgotten Cave	Creatures (20)    4x Spark Elemental    4x Hellspark Elemental        4x Kiln Fiend    4x Stigma Lasher    4x Hell's Thunder	Non-Creatures (22)    4x Lightning Bolt    4x Fireblast    4x Incinerate    2x Final Fortune    4x Rift Bolt    4x Needle Drop

I put this deck together to provide an option against the combo decks that were showing up at the weekly Tribal Apocalypse tournaments.  I wanted something that could result in a relatively quick win.  In the casual room, one opponent noted rather unhappily that I was playing a "burn deck" rather than a tribal deck.  I cannot fully disagree with him.

In the end, I think there are only three unusual card choices in the entire deck.  Two of them are directly attributable to my experience running Red Deck Wins in Pauper.  Many of the best burn spells are common, so RDW is a viable deck choice in many Pauper games.  The deck, however, completely loses steam after a Aven Riftwatcher is played.  The combination of that life gain plus the Riftwatcher's potential as a blocker or as a soak to a burn spell which should be aimed directly at the opponent can result in an unrecoverable tempo gain by the opponent.  Stigma Lasher solves that problem.  In Classic Tribal, life gain can never be unexpected with Ajani Goldmane, Wellwisher, and Ondu Cleric.

The second unusual card is Needle Drop which is extremely common in Pauper RDW, but is rather inefficient in other formats.  This card resolves tempo loss associated with running out of cards.  Needle Drop is not a perfect answer as it only regains one card and only inflicts one damage, but most of the time it is easy to slip in without disrupting the flow of the deck.

The final unusual suspect in the deck is Final Fortune.  Most players are hesitant such an all or nothing card in their deck.  I, however, view it as opportunistic method to cheat an extra turn out of the game before my life total is knocked down to zero.

Overall, I consider myself a better game player than deck builder, but I can evolve a deck over time into a moderately successful and consistent collection of cards.  As such, I usually have a decent feeling for the flow of the game.  As long as my grasp of the current situation is accurate, Final Fortune is a very cheap option for avoiding a loss on my opponent's next turn and giving me the opportunity eke out a victory.  So when my opponent spends all of his mana to plop down a Sneak Attack, I can use Final Fortune to try and win before I am facing three Eldrazi with haste.

I have managed to use Final Fortune a few times across the various Elemental decks I will discuss.  I have only lost one game to the end of turn trigger attached to the extra turn, but I would have lost that game without Final Fortune.  In every other instance I won on the extra turn, and in two of those games my opponent's board presence would guarantee a loss if they had gotten another turn - no telling how many of the other games would have ended in defeat without Final Fortune.

To illustrate how this deck plays, here is a game against an Elf deck.

My opponent elects to play first and keeps his opening hand I see:

Replace any two cards with two lands, and this is a stellar hand.  With Rift Bolt and Needle Drop, I would have kept this hand with a single Mountain in place of a Fireblast.  Moving forward without land is not an option.

Twice in a row with no land is depressing.  I mulligan one more time.

It's awful, but I am unlikely to get better by going down to four cards.  At least I am on the draw and can actually cast a spell.

My opponent and I open with a Forest and a Mountain, respectively.  He follows with an Oran-Rief, the Vastwood while I drop a Mountain, play a Spark Elemental and Needle Drop to reduce my opponent to 16 life.  My opponent responds with a Forest and a Nissa's Chosen which receives a +1/+1 counter from Oran-Rief, the Vastwood.

Having drawn four cards, my third turn lets me drop another Mountain and then cast and attack with a Hell's Thunder to set the life totals to 20 for me and 12 for him.  The opposition sticks at three lands and casts Jagged-Scar Archers.  He bypasses an attack and I repeat my previous turn except the new Mountain allows me to follow the Hell's Thunder attack with a Needle Drop.  My opponent is at 7 life, and he brings out a Elvish Champion on his sixth turn and attacks for four damage.  With the Jagged-Scar Archers sitting at 4 power, I play a Stigma Lasher and pass the turn with only a Lightning Bolt in hand.

On turn 6, my opponent drops a Forest and quickly follows with Nissa Revane.  He activates her life gain ability and I respond by eliminating the Elvish Champion with the Lightning Bolt.  His life is back in double digits (at 11).

Nissa can provide 4 life a turn, so I unearth a Hell's Thunder to eliminate the planeswalker and pass the turn back.  My opponent drops a Forest and a Joraga Warcaller that was kicked once and then adds another +1/+1 counter via Oran-Rief, the Vastwood and attacks with the Nissa's Chosen, leaving us tied at 11 life.

On my next turn, I pull the other Hell's Thunder out of my graveyard, use Fireblast to eliminate Joraga Warcaller, and attack with both Stigma Lasher and the Thunder.  My opponent blocks the Lasher with his Jagged-Scar Archers and drops to 7 life.  My opponent spends turn 8 playing a Forest and a Wilt-Leaf Liege before attacking with his Nissa's Chosen.  Our life totals are now tied at 7.  With three Mountain in play and a Hell's Thunder in hand and nine power on the other side of the table, I need a Fireblast to win or a blocker (i.e., Stigma Lasher or Kiln Fiend) to extend the game another turn.  Alas, I draw a Spark Elemental and concede.

Although a loss, the deck performed very well considering two mulligans and facing a deck with life gain.  Without the life gain, I would have pulled out a win, and this reaffirms my inclusion of Stigma Lasher.  The deck performed admirably, but it truly was a burn deck.  Given that I was building the deck for Tribal Apocalypse, my evaluation of the deck was that it was not particularly fun to play against.  So, I decided to head down a slightly different path, but there were a few cards (e.g., Stigma Lasher, Final Fortune) from the original version that I wanted to pull forward into the next version.

Bypassing a direct damage version of Elementals, I decided going for an approach using a more classically Tribal strategy - lords.  Unlike Zombies, Soldiers, Elves, Merfolk, and Goblins, Elementals have only a single lord, Incandescent Soulstoke, but just as Lorwyn was kind to races, Shadowmoor benefited its residents based on their tradecraft, and the boost to Shamans was included on an Elemental, Rage Forger.  As Stigma Lasher, Incandescent Soulstoke, and Rage Forger are all shamans, the deck quickly evolves into a Elemental Shaman deck with Hell's Thunder as the only non-Elemental creature in the deck (Flamekin Harbinger is a shaman who provides ensures that I draw my lords in a timely manner).  The new version loses four direct damage spells as the land count increases by three and I add in a third Final Fortune.

Elemental Shamans - Classic Tribal Wars
Lands (21)     17x Mountain       4x Forgotten Cave	Creatures (20)    4x Flamekin Harbinger    4x Stigma Lasher    4x Incandescent Soulstoke    4x Rage Forger    4x Hell's Thunder	Non-Creatures (19)    4x Lightning Bolt    4x Fireblast    3x Final Fortune    4x Rift Bolt    4x Needle Drop

I win initiative and elect to go first.  My opening hand is workable, but not overly exciting:

I open with a Mountain while my opponent drops a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.  On turn 2, I play the Stigma Lasher and find myself facing a second copy of Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.  That puts my deck on a clock that is dependent on my opponent's draw.

I play another Mountain followed by a Hell's Thunder and attack with both of my creatures.  I lose the Lasher to a Lightning Bolt but manage to get in 4 damage.  On turn 3, my opponent drops his first Mountain followed by a Dragonsoul Knight.  I respond with a Mountain and a Flamekin Harbinger, placing an Incandescent Soulstoke on the top of my deck.  Across the table, a Mountain precedes the attack by the Dragonsoul Knight before the turn comes back to me.  I draw and play the Incandescent Soulstoke and attack with the Harbinger, who only inflicts 1 damage after a Lightning Bolt eliminates the Soulstoke.  Another Mountain enters the battlefield for my opponent, winding down the clock on suffering a lot of damage.  I am attacked by the Dragonsoul Knight before a Kargan Dragonlord enters player under my opponent's control.  After he activates Kargan's level up ability, I remove it with a Lightning Bolt.  I drop another Mountain and attack for 1.  In return, I am attacked by the Dragonsoul Knight after my opponent plays a Mountain and we are both at 14 life.  The opposition then adds Homura, Human Ascendant to his side of the board.

On turn 7, I resolve another Incandescent Soulstoke and attack for two with the Harbinger.  In response, my opponent adds his fifth Mountain before attacking with Homura, Human Ascendant and the Dragonsoul Knight.  I bolt the Dragonsoul Knight and take 4, leaving life totals at my 10 to his 12.  It is my eighth turn:

Another Mountain under my opponent's control would drop me to 4 life which means I need to choose between keeping both creatures back for defense (only keeping one back makes it too likely that one could be eliminated allowing Homura to attack unblocked) or going all out for the win.  I attack with both of my creatures and cast Final Fortune.

With my opponent at 8 life, I unearth Hell's Thunder and attack with all three creatures for 8 damage.  Nothing spoils my plans and I pull out a win.  Another Mountain, which he may have in hand, and any number of other cards could have resulted in a loss on the next turn and the cost to prevent damage from Homura would have meant weakening my opportunities to actually deal lethal damage.

I then took this version to a Tribal Apocalypse tournament.  In the first round I faced a heavy discard deck built around rats.  My opponent hit a Hymn to Tourach all three games and in two of the games followed up the Hymn with another discard spell (Stupor one game and Consult the Necrosages the other game).  I lost the first round 1-2 and took it as an omen that I really shouldn't have shirked the other things I needed to get done around the house.

My first foray into Magic began with an Unlimited starter deck.  With that deck of sixty cards, I return to college at Florida State University and sat around a table with friends and played a few games.  We played with three or four players using a community deck, my sixty card starter.  It didn't take too long for everyone to learn the contents of the deck and play patterns emerged.

Playing an Island was dangerous because the Sea Serpent was one of the biggest creatures in the deck, but could be eliminated with a Red Elemental Blast.  Wall of Bone was wonderful at encouraging a Craw Wurm to attack other players.  Serra Angel and Sengir Vampire were alone, but typically created a standoff once both were in play until a Terror or Swords to Plowshares solved the stalemate.

As it turns out, my first starter deck had the potential to really bog down with answers and countermeasures for each threat in the deck.  Winning was often predicated on drawing the correct lands, but in games where multiple players drew lands that matched their spells, games would often be resolved when someone drew the last card from the deck, triggering a loss for each of their opponents.  The deck, did however, include an answer for this dilemma: Timetwister.  Timetwister became the card in the four player games that would often decide the course of the game.  Once cast, each player would have to decide how to use the instants in their hand in order to repopulate the deck with both creatures and spells.

After about a week of playing a ridiculous number of games, I added more cards to my collection and quite a few friends bought their own cards, but during that week I experienced the development of a self-contained metagame.

Based on previous weeks in the Tribal Apocalypse tournament as well as what I see the participants trying in the casual room, there are a few things to expect in this Player Run Event:

1. Players trying to get large creatures into play either via a mana ramp or cheating (e.g. Show and Tell or Natural Order).
2. Discard.
3. Multi-lord based tribes such as Zombies, Elves, Goblins, and Merfolk.

In addition, given the predominance of red decks over the previous events, I expected to see some protection from red creatures.

Guerrilla Tactics took the place of Rift Bolt in the deck to provide a means of occassionally punishing discard effects.  Even getting one Guerrilla Tactics to resolve via discard might give an opponent pause in playing a discard effect if they are low on life.  When not facing discard, Guerrilla Tactics is primarily used to kill opposing creatures.

Heat Shimmer provided the opportunity to actually copy and attack with an opposing Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre before my opponent could abuse it.  Heat Shimmer isn't enough to shutdown opposing Eldrazi, but the inclusion of two Nova Chaser means that a large creature may need to block the 10/2 trampler in order to avoid losing the game.

In addition to its ability to make an opponent take a dose of their own medicine, Heat Shimmer has a number of meaningful interactions.  First, it equivalently has an effect that states, "Destroy target Legendary creature."  Second, Heat Shimmer has fun combinations with the other cards in the deck:
 

• Copy a Rage Forger producing a 2/2 attacker with haste that provides all of your shamans with a permanent +1/+1 counter and lets them deal 1 damage for just attacking.  If you have a Flamekin Harbinger, Stigma Lasher, and Rage Forger in play, the Heat Shimmer will give you a 3/3 Harbinger, a 4/4 Lasher, and a 3/3 Forger and if all four creatures attack, you deal 6 damage directly to an opposing player regardless of blocking.

• With a Flamekin Harbinger and Incandescent Soulstoke in play and five mana available, use the Soulstoke's ability to put a Nova Chaser directly into play, championing the Harbinger.  Then, cast Heat Shimmer copying and then championing the Nova Chaser.  That lets you attack with an 11/3 trampler, place an Elemental of your choice on the top of your deck and permanently keep the cheated Nova Chaser in play.

The other significant change I made to the deck was to shift from Needle Drop to Browbeat to enable the deck's card draw.  Should an opponent elect to suffer five damage, the direct damage in my deck changes from creature control to being directed straight to the opponent's life total.

Elemental Shimmer - Classic Tribal Wars
Lands (21)     17x Mountain       4x Forgotten Cave	Creatures (21)    4x Flamekin Harbinger    4x Stigma Lasher    4x Incandescent Soulstoke    4x Rage Forger    3x Hell's Thunder    2x Nova Chaser	Non-Creatures (18)    4x Lightning Bolt    4x Guerrilla Tactics    3x Browbeat    4x Heat Shimmer    3x Fireblast

In the first round of the Tribal Apocalypse Player Run Event, I am paired against a Sphinx deck.

I choose to play first and keep my opening hand:

A first turn Flamekin Harbinger stacks my deck with an Incandescent Soulstoke while my opponent plays a Cloudpost.  My second turn sees a second Mountain enter play followed by a second Flamekin Harbinger stacking a Nova Chaser to the top of my deck.  My opponent plays a second Cloudpost.  I bring in the Incandescent Soulstoke and attack for four, putting my opposition at 15 life.

My opponent then bounces a Cloudpost back to his hand with a Dimir Aqueduct.  I follow with a fourth Mountain, attack for 6, and champion a Flamekin Harbinger with the Nova Chaser.  My opponent acknowledges his mana issues in the chat and concedes.

My opponent chooses to play first and I keep my opening hand which isn't great but has potential given the slowness of Sphinxes (yes, Sphinges is also correct according to dictionary.com):

After my opponent plays a Cloudpost, I respond with a Mountain.  He then plays an Azorius Chancery and I play a Mountain and the Stigma Lasher.  An Arcane Sanctum enters play for my opponent while I play another Mountain, attack with the Lasher, and finish with a Flamekin Harbinger which brings an Incandescent Soulstoke to the top of my deck.

My opponent replays the Cloudpost and then uses an Oblivion Ring to remove my Stigma Lasher.  I play a Mountain, attack for 1 with the Harbinger, and then play the Nova Chaser.  On the next turn, a second Cloudpost comes into play for my opponent followed by a Wall of Denial.  I attack with the Nova Chaser which is shown a Path to Exile, giving me a free Mountain and returning my Flamekin Harbinger to play and setting up my deck with a Nova Chaser as the top card.  I then cast the Incandescent Soulstoke.

My opponent uses his turn to copy a Cloudpost with a Vesuva and then casts a Magister Sphinx and an Amulet of Vigor.  My turn begins by drawing the Nova Chaser and seeing the following:

While the combo I discussed above with Heat Shimmer, Nova Chaser, Incandescent Soulstoke, and Flamekin Harbinger is in play, I don't believe it is the best option.  Instead, I use the Soulstoke to put the Nova Chaser into play with haste championing the Harbinger, then cast Heat Shimmer, targeting the Magister Sphinx, equivalently dealing 7 damage directly to my opponent before attacking with an 11/3 trampler and a 5/5 flyer.  The Wall of Denial blocks the Nova Chaser and the two Magister Sphinx collide emptying my opponent's board and dropping his life to 5.  When my Flamekin Harbinger returns to play as the shimmered Chaser is exiled, I put a Rage Forger on the top of my deck.

My opponent plays a Sphinx Summoner and adds a Sphinx of the Steel Wind into his hand, but does not have the mana necessary to immediately cast it.  I drop the Rage Forger and attack with the 2/2 Harbinger and 3/3 Soulstoke triggering the Rage Forger to inflict 2 damage directly.  The Soulstoke is blocked by the Sphinx Summoner and my opponent drops to 1 life.  I cast a Guerrilla Tactics to win the match.

Sadly, the replays of two of the three games in round two are lost to the depths of the MTGO servers.  I know that I took the first game handily while my opponent returned the favor in game 2.  I won the match 2-1 after the mana screw and moved on to the finals.

I win initiative and the right to play first.  I keep my opening hand which is nearly perfect except for the risk of not reaching three mana:

I play a Mountain and the Flamekin Harbinger, but bypass the search for another Elemental.  My opponent follows with a Swamp.  I play the second Mountain, cast the Stigma Lasher, and attack for 1.  My opponent plays a Swamp and a Hymn to Tourach knocking a Flamekin Harbinger and a Rage Forger to my graveyard.  I attack on turn 3 with both of my creatures, dropping my opponent to 16 life and preventing him from gaining life for the rest of the game.

My opponent spends turn 3 playing a Swamp and a Chainer's Edict sending my Flamekin Harbinger to the grave.  I turn my Stigma Lasher sideways to deal 2 more damage and pass the turn.  A Ravenous Rats comes into play for my opponent and I discard a Heat Shimmer.  I finally draw and play a Mountain

I then cast Incandescent Soulstoke before attacking with the 3/3 Stigma Lasher which are chump blocked by the Rats.  My opponent casts a Chittering Rats and I return the Rage Forger to the top of my deck.  I draw and cast the Rage Forger and attack with my 4/4 Stigma Lasher and my 3/3 Incandescent Soulstoke triggering 2 damage directly to my opponent.  The Rats block the Lasher, but the Soulstoke gets through to drop my opponent to 9 life.  My opponent concedes after his next draw phase.

Game 2 opens with my opponent electing to play first and both of us keeping out opening hands.

He opens with a Swamp and I follow with a Forgotten Cave.  Another Swamp enters the battlefield before I play the Mountain and Flamekin Harbinger, bypassing the search for an Elemental.  He plays a third Swamp and I attack him for 1.  On turn 4, my opponent plays a Swamp and a Chittering Rats.  I redraw a non-land and pass.  He attacks with the Rats, uses ninjutsu to place a Skullsnatcher in play.  He recasts the Chittering Rats and next turn is once again looking dismal for the home team.

After my draw and go turn, my opponent attacks with both rats and I trade the Flamekin Harbinger for the Skullsnatcher.  A Hymn to Tourach knocks two useless cards from my hand and a Nezumi Graverobber enters play under my opponent's control.  I finally draw a Mountain and cast Browbeat which deals 5 damage to my opponent rather than drawing me cards.

He plays a Swarmyard and attacks with his rats.  I cast another Browbeat and my opponent once again chooses to lose 5 life.  He attacks some more, and when I finally get a Stigma Lasher into play, he hits it with a Tendrils of Corruption.

I contemplate using the Lightning Bolt to prevent the 6 point life gain, but let it pass.  It is just a matter of time before the Nezumi Graverobber is flipped and my opportunities to pull out a win are crushed in short order.

I choose to go first in game 3 and keep my initial seven cards:

Once again, I have only two lands, but the dual Guerrilla Tactics makes me smile.  I open with the Forgotten Cave and my opponent responds with an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.  I follow with a Mountain and cast the Stigma Lasher.  He plays a Swamp and passes.  On turn 3, I attack for 2 and prevent any life gain for the rest of the game, but once again fail to hit a third land by turn 3.

After playing a Swarmyard, my opponent passes the turn.  I attack for 2 and pass the turn.  He plays a Swamp and casts Damnation.  On turn 5, I cast Guerrilla Tactics to avoid the discard.  My opponent plays a Swamp and casts Hymn to Tourach which discards a Hell's Thunder and a Guerrilla Tactics dropping his life to 10.  He casts a Crypt Rats and passes the turn.  I draw and play a Mountain followed by a Browbeat.  He takes the five damage rather than giving me three cards.  On his turn he plays a Swamp and attacks for 1.  I play a Mountain and the Rage Forger.  My opponent plays another Swamp and attacks with the Crypt Rats.  I block and he regenerates with Swarmyard.  Then he plays Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni before passing the turn.

I champion the Rage Forger with a Nova Chaser.  He uses Swarmyard to regenerate the Crypt Rats and blasts away for 2 damage.

That knocks him down to 3 life and brings the Rage Forger back into play.  He casts a Tendrils of Corruption targeting the Rage Forger and concedes the game.

After many weeks of trying, I completed a Tribal Apocalypse tournament at 3-0.  Heat Shimmer was an all-star while Guerrilla Tactics really helped win the final game.

Overall, I am very happy the performance of all three variations of the Elemental tribe.  I think that Rage Forger is a truly under-appreciated lord and has a great deal of potential.  Unfortunately, there is not a great means of creating Shaman creature tokens to really propel Rage Forger to silly interactions.

In a few games, I had to bypass using the 'enters the battlefield' ability of Flamekin Harbinger as I looked for more land.  As such, one of the few changes I would make to the Elemental Shamans and Elemental Shimmer builds would be to include one Brighthearth Banneret.  I would probably remove a Stigma Lasher to make room as the lords are too valuable and Hell's Thunder is essential when facing Moat or Teferi's Moat which come up often enough in Classic Tribal that you have to be prepared for them.

The other change which I would suggest is to replace one Mountain with one Karakas.  There are just too many legendary creatures running around tribal to skip Karakas.  The only card in the deck impacted by this change is Fireblast with its alternate casting cost.

The art for the section titles if from Aleksi Briclot's Chandra Nalaar.  You can visit his official site.