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Unless you're using a Mindslaver, your opponent usually gets to choose what to do.

Although the below decks don't use a Mindslaver, they all get to in one way or another force our opponents to do things they don't want.

Deck 1 Sisters of Stone Death

"Each creature you control must be blocked if able."

		In fact, the greatest artwork ever on a Magic card.

Your opponent may not want to block your Drelnoch, or your The Wretched, but with this avatar, they really don't have much say in the matter.  (Also, with regards to Saprazzan Heir — I've never said this before, but I wish Mercadian Masques were online!)

There are no shortage of cards that work better when blocked.  Everything from Deathtouch to Wither to Bushido to that weird tapping mechanic that Kamigawa snakes had gets better if the block is ensured.  There are also oddball cards like Deep-Slumber Titan, Ib-Halfheart, Phytohydra, and Broodhatch Nantuko.

A few cards even specifically mention an "if this is blocked" clause, such as Unstoppable Ash, Deathgazer, Vedalken Ghoul, Elven Warhounds, and (hehe Homelands) Joven's Ferrets.

All five colors can be synergistic with the Sisters' "must be blocked" ability, but I ended up settling on a green-red deck.  Here's how it works.

Early Game

Joven's Ferrets can stall and Karplusan Wolverine can take out multiple of your opponent's early drops.  Remember: if your opponent's creature is untapped (for instance, because it was just cast and has summoning sickness), it HAS TO block.

Dwarven Berserker can kill ALMOST any two-drop your opponent might play, while also trampling over them.  Tangle Asp performs similarly.  (If you're wondering why I'm running the Asp instead of Deadly Recluse for instance, skip ahead a few sections to the deck's centerpiece.)

Mid Game

By now you can not only force your opponent to make undesirable blocks, but you can also pay the 4 mana to activate the second half of your avatar.  Remember: this occurs BEFORE damage is dealt.  But after triggers, such as Dwarven Berserker's, are put on the stack.  Let's give an example.

Suppose you attack with your lowly Dwarven Berserker and your opponent blocks with his untapped Darksteel Colossus.  You know, because he had to.  You pay four mana to exile the Colossus.  Then the Berserker's trigger resolves and he becomes a 4/1 trampler.  Who was blocked, but the blocker is no longer there.  So your opponent takes all 4 trample damage.  And that's why Dwarven Berserker is in the deck.

		"Somebody finally put me in a deck!  I never thought this day would come!"

You also have enough mana to cast Elven Warhounds, which, when your opponent has to block, becomes quite good (possibly for the first time in its life?).  Notice that even if you don't have four mana to spare for your avatar, the Warhounds' ability will still resolve before damage is dealt, meaning it will live to see another day.

Late Game

Now you have enough mana to cast your really big beaters, like Kodama of the North Tree, and Scuzzback Marauders, and then fuel them both with a Stonebrow, Krosan Hero.  Why all the trampling?  Because, as shown in the above Dwarven Berserker section, tramplers get to deal damage to the opponent after you use the avatar to exile the opponent's blocker.  Without trampling, you just have to patiently wait for your opponent to run out of blockers if you want to send any damage to the dome.

The Deck's Centerpiece

I realized after some playtesting that, given how fragile most of my creatures were, they ended up dying quite often.  Even once I had enough mana to activate the avatar's exile ability, they would die to double blocks, or on defense themselves, or to direct damage.  Then I had a flash of insight (not to be confused with Flash of Insight):

BUBBLE MATRIX!  Here's why it's good in this deck.

I do not need to deal a single point of damage to my opponent's creatures.  I only need to get blocked by them, so my creatures' abilities can trigger, and so I can activate my avatar, and so I can trample onto my opponent.

And for the occasions when we DO want to damage our opponent's creatures?  Lava Burst.

(Bubble Matrix is also the reason I'm using Tangle Asp instead of Deadly Recluse, by the way.)

Here's the decklist.  As always, it's intended for CASUAL play, and I encourage you to customize its contents to your liking.

Avatar: Sisters of Stone Death Land (23): 10 Forest 10 Mountain 1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers 1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits Creatures (21): 3 Joven's Ferrets 2 Karplusan Wolverine 3 Tangle Asp 2 Radha, Heir to Keld 3 Elven Warhounds 2 Kodama of the North Tree 1 Scuzzback Marauders 2 Stonebrow, Krosan Hero

Noncreatures (16): 2 Naturalize 4 Kodama's Reach 4 Bubble Matrix 2 Harmonize 4 Lava Burst

Due to the new and awesome rules, you can't float mana from the Declare Attackers step to the Declare Blockers step, meaning you can no longer use your Radha, Heir to Keld to pay for your avatar's activation.  But at least it no longer mana burns you when you use it to activate your Skarrg, the Rage Pits.  Anyway it's in here more as a GR version of Llanowar Dead than anything else.

One final note.  Between Radha and Dwarven Berserker, both dreadlocks and mohawks are represented in this deck.  (When is WotC going to print a creature with an afro?)

Deck 2 Figure of Destiny

This deck was originally a nonvanguard deck of mine, until I realized that the above avatar made it a little less reliant on drawing its centerpiece:

Oh man.  If I ever did make a list of my ten favorite cards, Power Conduit would for sure be on it.  I've already made five different decks around it — one for each color — because there are just too many cards that are synergistic with it.  Today's deck started as the black one.

No, I haven't forgotten about the article's theme.  We're still trying to force our opponent to do things.  Here's how it happens in this deck:

Infernal Darkness.  Your opponent might want to pick what color mana he gets to play, but with one of these out, we're picking for him.  Against a lot of decks, this is all but an auto-gg.

In case you're missing the synergy, when you have a Power Conduit out, you can remove this card's Age counters, so its "cumulative" upkeep never is greater than one.  And while you're doing this, you can also make your creatures larger.

Since cumulative upkeep is so good with the Conduit, we'll also add Phobian Phantasm to the deck.  Another "once a turn" card worth using, and quite a nostalgic pleasure for me, is the Fallen Empires classic Ebon Praetor.  No, we're never sacrificing a thrull to him, but we are using the Conduit to replace those –2/–2 counters with +1/+1 ones.  (And unlike –1/–1 counters, –2/–2s don't cancel anything out.)

–1/–1 counters are of course great targets for the Power Conduit, so I'm running Scarscale Ritual, Bloodied Ghost, Canker Abomination, and Incremental Blight.  To summarize, casting a Bloodied Ghost with a Power Conduit out gives you a 4/4 flier for 1BB.  Your less savvy opponents will often be surprised by this math and set themselves up for an uneven block.

And –1/–1 counters are also great with the avatar, for those games when you don't draw into a Power Conduit (even with Scarscale Ritual helping).  Even after you use your avatar to pump up your Bloodied Ghost once, it still won't have a +1/+1 counter on it, so pumping it up a second time will only cost 1 mana.  (This is cheaper than double pumping a Wind Drake, for instance.)

With all the counters being thrown around, it's not hard to cheat Necroplasm's self-destruct sequence by skipping that from 2 to 4 counters on him.  After that, he'll grow indefinitely.  And since we're running 4 of him, why not also throw in a Hunted Horror?  If you time it right, your 0-counter Necroplasm will kill the Centaurs before they even get to attack.

With all of our creatures having the high (and ever-increasing) toughness that they do, it's safe to run another nostalgic pleasure in Cuombajj Witches.

Oh and a great card to run next to your Power Conduit: Makeshift Mannequin!  I will gladly remove that mannequin counter in exchange for a +1/+1 counter.  That way, it's free to be targeted without getting sacrificed.  And with the way the Conduit is worded, you don't even target the Mannequined creature.

Sun Droplet is perhaps the easiest way to accumulate charge counters, which can always provide the Conduit with food when nothing else does.  (This is one of those rare decks when it's occasionally the right play to click "No" to Sun Droplet's optional trigger.  Not always.  Just sometimes.)

I mentioned almost every card.  Let's just get to the list.

Avatar: Figure of Destiny Land (24): 24 Swamp Creatures (17): 3 Cuombajj Witches 1 Hunted Horror 4 Necroplasm 2 Bloodied Ghost 2 Phobian Phantasm 4 Canker Abomination 1 Ebon Praetor

Noncreatures (19): 4 Dark Ritual 4 Power Conduit 2 Sun Droplet 4 Scarscale Ritual 2 Makeshift Mannequin 2 Infernal Darkness 1 Incremental Blight

Deck 3 Hermit Druid

I've featured this avatar a couple of times already, but today's deck is quite different from the past ones.  Whereas those were all about accelerating into tons of mana (for instance with Vernal Bloom or Lake of the Dead), this one uses the avatar to just barely stay afloat in the midst of ample mana denial.  What kind of mana denial?

I originally ran Storm Cauldron too, but playtesting didn't go so great.

So how does this fit into the article's theme?  The best link I could come up with was that we're denying your opponent the freedom to have a lot of mana available?  (Which I admit is a cheat, but trust me that this deck is a lot more interesting than the Fumiko the Lowblood one I had planned.)

While we're denying our opponent mana, we might as well take it further with Propaganda and Frozen Æther (the latter of which combos with Mana Breach).

And while we're keeping the opponent's hand glommed full of cards he can't cast, let's pick a topical win condition:

Of course, four of those isn't reliable enough — especially when we only have a 5-card starting hand — so I'm also adding 4x Forced Fruition.  And with all the mana denial, it isn't as risky as normal, since the opponent won't be able to cast very much of what he's drawn.  (And they even make sure your opponent is always getting hit for 7 by the Dreamborn Muse, for the times when both are out at once.)

The milling theme (and especially the Dreamborn Muse) is aided by playsets of Vision Skeins and Words of Wisdom.

I threw in a singleton Paradox Haze, to put on your opponent, for both Dreamborn Muse's and Sunken Hope's sakes.

"Isn't Dreamborn Muse anti-synergistic with Sunken Hope?"  Sort of.  Not extremely.  This isn't one I can defend on paper much beyond saying "playtest it and you'll see that it works."  The main reason is that, once you have all of your stuff set up, there isn't a whole lot you need to cast or really spend any mana on, so recasting the Muse a couple of times is barely noticeable.  And, if you have a Forced Fruition out, you won't need more than a couple of Muse triggers anyway.

To help us stay alive while we're setting up (and, well, afterwards too) I'm splashing green for 4x Lifegift, a card extremely synergistic with our avatar, and also extremely synergistic with the above Mana Breach.  Trust me, your life total will be skyrocketing over the course of the game, even if you don't get multiples out.

The green splash segues nicely into....

The Land

Figuring out the manabase for this deck was a bit of a trick, but I eventually got a configuration I'm happy with.  Remember, we do not need a lot of mana in in play at once.  And our avatar gives us one every turn.

We don't need to draw a lot of lands, especially once a Mana Breach is out, because we'll almost always have more in our hand than we can play.

After a bit of tinkering, the best number seemed to be 13.  (10 Islands, 2 Forest, and 1 Reliquary Tower.)  Feel free to do more tinkering yourself, of course.  Oh and the Tower is to work with things like Vision Skeins and Mana Breach.  Remember, 5-card max handsize with this avatar.

Oh and one cool late-game strategy, for when those Mana Breaches have our hands full of lands we can't play: Teferi's Puzzle Box.  I've got it as a one-of since we ONLY want it in the late game, and not even every late game, and never more than one at a time.  Frankly though it can do some pretty good things.  It can recycle unwanted cards (for instance, a redundant second Static Orb, or a Propaganda against a creatureless deck).  It can also shuffle those Mana Breached lands back into our deck, thus letting the avatar sneak them back into play.  Very useful.

The list:

Avatar: Hermit Druid Land (13): 10 Island 2 Forest 1 Reliquary Tower Creatures (4): 4 Dreamborn Muse Noncreatures (43): 2 Echoing Truth 2 Negate 2 Remand 4 Vision Skeins 4 Words of Wisdom

2 Static Orb 2 Recollect 4 Lifegift 4 Mana Breach 1 Paradox Haze 3 Propaganda 1 Teferi's Puzzle Box 2 Frozen Æther 3 Evacuation 3 Sunken Hope 4 Forced Fruition

See you next time, and have fun with vanguard!