---

Ordinarily, my mantra for this column is "casual, creative, affordable."

Today, we're only doing the first two of those things.

I realize that while most casual players are budget-conscious, not all of them are.  And tournament players aren't the only ones with money to burn.  So today I'll be highlighting two casual decks each from two avatars that may be too costly for some of us.  In fact, either one of them alone will cost more than an average deck of mine.  But honestly, they do such unique and versatile things that they may be worth considering, even if you don't normally spend this much on cards.  (But next article, I am returning to affordable decks!)

First up, at 25 tickets:

Arcbound Overseer

This is an awesome avatar.  It was obviously intended for Mirrodin block's Modular creatures and Sunburst cards, but it can do so much more than that.  And its uses increase with each set.  Here are different types of strategies you can pursue with it:

• Creature rush.  A first turn Will-o'-the-Wisp is pretty sick with this avatar.  So is a first-turn Bushi Tenderfoot or Goblin Grappler.
• Cards that eat counters.  Chisei, Heart of Oceans will have plenty of food.  So will Sage of Fables and Ion Storm.
• High power.  The Spikeshot Goblin cycle is great here.  So are cards with lifelink.
• Using +1/+1 counters.  Not only spikes and the creatures with graft, but also cards like Rage Forger and the phantoms (like Phantom Nomad).  And Fungal Behemoth will have something to lord over.
• -1/-1 counter abuse.  Devoted Druid is absurd with this avatar.  Scarscale Ritual is effective as well.  Also reuse Persist creatures indefinitely.
• Charge counter artifacts, obviously, but I just want to mention a few of the highlights.  Orochi Hatchery is even great on the first turn, with X=0, because by the time you can use it, it will already have enough counters to make 5 snakes.  Pentad Prism has also been fantastic in my playtesting.  Infused Arrows as well.  There are also new Charge Counter cards being printed all the time, and this avatar makes even a lowly card such as Sigil of Distinction into a certifiable bomb.  Like Orochi Hatchery, even casting this early with a low X cost allows it to grow huge before long.
• Charge counter lands.  I believe there are three right now, if you group the Vivid lands together and then count Tendo Ice Bridge and Mirrodin's Core.  (I really, really wish the upcoming City Of Shadows reprint had been worded to use Charge Counters instead of "Storage Counters."  Why not, WotC?)
• Doubling up. Since you're already building around counters, why not use Energy Chamber and Power Conduit to help out even further?  Doubling Season is also effective.  My favorite in this category, so much so that I put it in both of the below decks, is Paradox Haze.

So, it looks like we have a lot of options!  As said above, I'll do two different decks with this avatar before moving to the other avatar.

Deck 1: Huge Creatures (Green with blue)

The key player in this deck is Fungal Behemoth, who is complemented by not only the avatar but lots of creatures that use +1/+1 counters.  Most of the cards in this deck should be self-explanatory after reading the above bulleted list, but I do have a couple of tips below.

Casual, Noncompetitive, Customizable Decklist:

Avatar: Arcbound Overseer Land (22): 13 Forest 7 Island 2 Vivid Creek Creatures (20): 4 Llanowar Elves 3 Devoted Druid 2 Aquastrand Spider 2 Spike Feeder 2 Phantom Tiger 4 Fungal Behemoth 2 Wiitigo 1 Phantom Wurm

Noncreatures (18): 2 Lignify 4 Scarscale Ritual 1 Pentad Prism 4 Paradox Haze 2 Infused Arrows 1 Decree of Savagery 2 Orochi Hatchery 2 Sigil of Distinction

N.B.:

• Once a Fungal Behemoth is out, use the avatar to put at least one +1/+1 counter on him.  That way, if your other creatures are killed, he won't become a 0/0 and die himself.
• For those who skimmed the bulleted list, DO play your Orochi Hatchery on Turn One for zero mana.  DO play your Sigil of Distinction on Turn One for one mana.  They will get huge no matter what their X value was.
• Most of the time, you'll want to suspend Fungal Behemoth with X=1.  You don't generally need any more help than that getting counters on people.  When a Paradox Haze is out, suspend him with X=2.
• If you don't have anything to put a charge counter on, put it on a basic land.  This will cause your lands to stack singly instead of in fours, thus disorienting your opponent and clouding his mind.  (And if your build has something like Chisei, Heart of Oceans or Power Conduit, you can even use those counters for something later on.)

For a different approach (but one that still clings to Paradox Haze), here's my second deck:

Deck 2: Huge Damage (Red and Blue with white)

This originally started out with me wanting to activate Ashling the Pilgrim with like 10 counters on her.  I ended up making the deck a little less single-minded, much to its benefit.  Again, the tips will be below the decklist.

Casual, noncompetitive, customizable decklist:

Avatar: Arcbound Overseer Lands (24): 14 Mountain 4 Island 2 Vivid Creek 3 Plains 1 Vivid Meadow Creatures (12): 2 Goblin Grappler 2 Boros Recruit 2 Ashling the Pilgrim 2 Izzet Guildmage 3 Spikeshot Goblin 1 Brion Stoutarm

Noncreatures (16): 1 Lightning Bolt 1 Lightning Helix 4 Pentad Prism 2 Pyroclasm 2 Scarscale Ritual 1 Honden of Infinite Rage 3 Ion Storm 4 Paradox Haze 1 Honden of Cleansing Fire 2 Pyrohemia 1 Form of the Dragon 2 Sigil of Distinction

Some of the deck's less-obvious points:

• With our avatar's help, our creatures can in fact survive the Pyrohemia and Pyroclasm.
• Ion Storm and Spikeshot Goblin, aside from already being great with the avatar, further that direct damage theme.  So too does Honden of Infinite Rage, which also combos well with Paradox Haze.
• Ion Storm gives you a reason to put charge counters on your basic lands other than making them stack funny.
• The White splash was to help us gain life and therefore avoid dying to our own Ashling the Pilgrim.  I used Honden of Cleansing Fire and Brion Stoutarm specifically.  I generally don't like multicolor Honden decks with Paradox Haze, as I think they're quite boring, but I figured with only 2 of the 60 cards as Hondens it wouldn't be a problem here.  You can always add or remove Hondens according to your liking.  (You could also just avoid the white splash altogether, stick with RU, and use Clearwater Goblet to gain life.)
• Form of the Dragon is here for one reason which is to interact with Paradox Haze.
• Do not underestimate Pentad Prism.  It will win you games.

Like I said, it's a very fun avatar!

And now, to our second avatar, at 13 tickets:

Sakashima the Impostor

At first glance, one gets the sense that this allows for some tricks, but what's not obvious is the sheer amount of tricks it allows for.  Here is what I came up with, which is far from exhaustive:

• Mirrorweave tricks.  I don't mean using Mirrorweave with this avatar.  I mean using this avatar to replicate what Mirrorweave does.  Imagine what happens when you make multiple creatures into a Pride of the Clouds.  Or a Primalcrux!
• Cheating the legend rule.  The reason this works is that Sakashima DOES NOT copy the card name.  So if you have a Lovisa Coldeyes and a Llanowar Elves in play, you can turn the Elf into the Lovisa, and you'll now have two Lovisas in play (with different names) and all of your Barbarians will be getting +4/+4.  When you then turn your Saproling token into a Lovisa, all of your Barbarians will get +6/+6.  Careful, though: if you turn a second Llanowar Elves or even a second nameless Saproling token into a Lovisa, or in fact into ANY legendary permanent, those two will die.  Because they'll both be legendary and have the same name.  (Yes, it turns out, with this avatar, nameless counts as a name.)  Oh and before you try to get fifteen Brothers Yamazaki in play, notice that only creatures with that NAME get the bonus, so our avatar won't help us there.
• +1/+1 counter tricks.  Long ago, I played against this avatar.  My opponent cast a First Turn Birds of Paradise, a Second Turn Vigean Hydropon, and on the Third Turn turned his Hydropon into a Birds and attacked with a 5/6 flying.  That is what made me want to use this avatar myself one day.  (If you missed how that works, a creature keeps whatever counters it had before it copied something else.)  Another great creature to use in this way is Shifting Wall.  Ditto any graft creature.
• Token generators.  A good way to ensure you'll be able to copy a specific creature is by casting Fists of Ironwood on it.  You can also do some combat tricks in the way of the instant-speed Raise the Alarm.
• Reusing CIP effects.  This is a little janky even for me, but technically you can do stuff like cast a Ravenous Rats, turn it into an Imaginary Pet, and then recast it as a Rats after it bounces.
• Gaining haste.  If there's already a good creature on the table, you can cast a Raging Goblin, attack with it, and then switch it to the other creature midcombat.
• Gaining flash.  Similarly, if you cast a Zealous Guardian during your opponent's attack, you can then turn it into a creature that doesn't ordinarily have flash.
• One-card combos.  Jedit Ojanen of Efrava is both a token generator and a worthy target for those tokens to copy.  The same goes for Nath of the GIlt-Leaf, Living Hive, Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, Darien, King of Kjeldor, and Cloudgoat Ranger.
• Cheating defender.  Attack with a creature, and then turn it into a Sunweb, or Illusionary Wall, or (perhaps the closest we have to Hatred online) Wall of Blood.  All of a sudden you're attacking with a creature that usually can't.
• Tricks with unique counter types.  Your Woolly Razorback's ice counters will prevent him from attacking.  But turning another creature into a Razorback will mean you now have a Razorback with no ice counters on it!  And if you then turn your original Razorback into something else, it will now have ice counters on it that don't do anything.  (Unlike +1/+1 counters and -1/-1 counters, which have built in rules, most counter types don't do anything without a card telling them so.)  Another card that works similarly is Roc Hatchling: any creature without shell counters that gets turned into a Hatchling will immediately get the bonus.
  
  One more counter trick, that's a bit more contrived (but has a much higher reward): play a Dark Depths and then (for instance) use Lifespark Spellbomb to turn the land into a creature.  Then turn any other creature into the Dark Depths.  Since the new Dark Depths won't have any ice counters on it, it will immediately trigger and you'll get a Marit Lage token!
• Combat tricks.  Even with damage stacking gone (this avatar used to let a creature deal damage as a Ball Lightning and take damage as an Uncle Istvan), this avatar still allows for some cool combat tricks.  Consider what happens when you attack with your Taunting Elf and then turn it into a Souls of the Faultless.
• Copying the opponent's creature.  This is something you'll often end up doing anyway, but there are ways to make it doubly effective.  To make sure your opponent has a creature worth copying, lure one into play with your Hunted Wumpus.  Or Boldwyr Heavyweights!  If that fails, the Heavyweights themselves also make a great target for copying.  (Bad Boldwyr Heavyweights story: The first time in my life I ever cast one, my opponent fetched a Duplicant!  Fortunately, I didn't let that discourage me, because the subsequent castings have generally been much more successful.  It is of course risky, but that's why it's exciting.)
• Cheating CIP requirements.  Phyrexian Dreadnought usually requires either Stifle, Illusionary Mask, or a ton of creatures.  Or this avatar.  Cast it for one, put its trigger on the stack, and turn something else into it.  (I wouldn't even usually mention a card as pricey as Dreadnought, but this is the Moneybags edition, remember?)  A similar trick:
• Cheating evoke.  Cast your Ingot Chewer for one.  Turn your Shifting Wall into a large and more permanent version of him.  And another similar one:
• Cheating vanishing.  Cast a Keldon Marauders.  Turn your Shifting Wall into a large and more permanent version of him.

Whew!  I told you this avatar was versatile.

 Let's get to the decks.

Deck 1: Mono Green

Like most Sakashima decks, I imagine, the cards in here fall into two basic categories: (1) things you want to copy other things with (cards with counters, cards that make tokens) and (2) things that you want to be copied (large creatures, creatures with cumulative abilities).  Some cards fall into both categories, like the "one-card combo" and "cheating evoke" sections above.  Here's my mono-green list.

Casual, noncompetitive, customizable decklist:

Avatar: Sakashima Land (24): 20 Forest 4 Llanowar Reborn Creatures (30): 4 Llanowar Elves 2 Simic Initiate 4 Aquastrand Spider 4 Viridian Joiner 3 Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers 2 Ravaging Riftwurm 2 Briarhorn

1 Jedit Ojanen of Efrava 2 Primalcrux 1 Vigor 1 Living Hive 4 Shifting Wall Noncreatures (6): 2 Naturalize 3 Fists of Ironwood 1 One Dozen Eyes

Pretty self-explanatory, I think.  A lot of these cards were directly mentioned in the above bullets, and the rest were indirectly covered.  Let's just get to the final deck for the day.

Deck 2: Red-White

Same basic gameplan: get stuff out that you want to copy and get stuff out you can use to do the copying.  Both categories in this deck use wildly different cards from the previous deck, though.  (Except for (Shifting Walls).  I'm telling you, it's incredible with this avatar.)

Avatar: Sakashima Land (24): 12 Plains 1 New Benalia 11 Mountain Creatures (26): 2 Roc Hatchling 2 Keldon Marauders 3 Phantom Nomad 2 Aven Riftwatcher 2 Boldwyr Heavyweights 1 Márton Stromgald 1 Woolly Razorback 1 Cloudgoat Ranger

2 Ingot Chewer 2 Lovisa Coldeyes 1 Darien, King of Kjeldor 3 Spitebellows 4 Shifting Wall Noncreatures (10): 2 Lightning Bolt 1 Lightning Helix 3 Boros Signet 2 Raise the Alarm 2 Spectral Procession

Fun fact: Three attacking Marton Stromgalds will each be 7/7.  Four will each be 10/10.

One final word of advice for the avatar.  Be very careful with how you click things.  You need to click the copy-ee first and the copy-er second.  More than once I've gotten careless with that!

That's all my decks for the day, but... one more thing before I wrap it up...

Bonus section!

If you're anything like me, you're racking your brain for ways to combine the Sakashima avatar with morph creatures and flip cards.  (If you're not, you can probably close the article now because that's the only thing I'll be talking about for the rest of it.)

Here's a rules summary for all the cases I could think of.  Some may seem a bit counterintuitive, but I have tested all of these with the MTGO client and I assure you they're accurate.  Also, most of these are fairly useless, but one or two may give the hardcore Johnnies some ideas.  Like I said, feel free to skip this section.

Sakashima Avatar and Morphs The basic rule of thumb is that "copying doesn't change a card's face-up-ness or face-down-ness."  For the details, there are four basic scenarios to know. Morph copying nonmorph.  Suppose you have a face-down Maelstrom Djinn and a face-up Hill Giant.  You turn the Djinn into the Giant.  What will happen is your Djinn will remain face-down, as a 2/2, and on its "other side" will be a Hill Giant with no unmorph cost.  In other words, it's stuck as a 2/2 forever (unless you have something like an Ixidor, Reality Sculptor).  I don't recommend this.  But I admit it is fun to hover your mouse over the morph, see the other creature's description, and laugh as you envision him imprisoned forever in this impenitrable spider shell. Morph copying face-up morph.  Same as above, except it will at least now have an unmorph cost on its flipside so it's not stuck.  It will unmorph into whatever it copied, of course. Morph copying face-down morph.  You will end up with a face-down 2/2 that has on its other side a 2/2 with no abilities, color, or unmorph cost.  I cannot think of an application for this, outside of its inherent humor.  It's vaguely reminiscent of the old Confiscate-on-Confiscate loop trick.  (I am curious to see what it would look like to flip over this morph-ball with an Ixidor.  I've never tried it since I don't own one.  If anyone does try it, please let me know the result!) Nonmorph copying face-down morph.  Suppose you have a Serendib Efreet and any face-down morph.  You turn the Efreet into the morph.  Your Efreet is now a face-up 2/2 with no name, color, or abilities.  Even as a way of upgrading that Eager Cadet, this is probably useless. Of the four, Scenario 2 seems to have the most potential, but still not a lot.

As for the flip cards:

Sakashima Avatar and Flip Cards The basic rule of thumb is that "copying doesn't change a card's flip-ness."  This time there are five scenarios to know. Regular copying flipped.  You have a Grizzly Bears and a flipped Bushi Tenderfoot.  You turn the Bears into the Bushi.  Since your bears were "unflipped," they will copy Bushi's unflipped version.  Of course, you can still flip it later if you meet its requirements. Regular copying unflipped.  Same outcome as number one, actually. Flipped copying regular.  You turn your flipped Bushi Tenderfoot into your Grizzly Bears.  This will make it a regular Grizzly Bears, but it will be flipped, which will make the art and template look funny.  No practical application, of course.  Still, worth a try in a solo game. Unflipped copying flipped.  If you have an unflipped Bushi Tenderfoot that you turn into a flipped Cunning Bandit, it will actually become the unflipped version of the Bandit.  Sorry. Flipped copying unflipped.  This to me seems the most potentially useful.  If you have a flipped creature that's easy to flip, like Cunning Bandit, and an unflipped creature that's hard to flip, like Bushi Tenderfoot, you can turn your flipped Bandit into a flipped version of Bushi.  Note of course you can't turn it into a flipped Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant without first animating the flipped Rune-Tail, because the avatar can only target creatures, not enchantments. Johnnies, fire away.

Well, that's all for the Mr. Moneybags edition.  Should I include expensive avatars more often?  Would you rather I stuck with budget decks exclusively?  Let me know!

See you next time, and have fun with Vanguard!