Welcome to the third article on Harem Format.  If you still haven’t tried it, you should.  The biggest thing you need to know about the format are the deck building rules.  In my first article I laid them out, but then I talked about how they’ve changed and never clearly defined the current rules.  That was completely my fault and I will correct it later in the article.  No, wait, I will do it right now.

1.  All creatures in your deck must be female.  Our definition of female is that it must have a distinctly female form.  Easy rule to figure this out: if you would need to argue that the creature is female, then the card does not count.

2.  Creatures that are not female that feature women in the art are NOT allowed. ex: Merfolk Looter from Exodus, and Krovikan Vampire from Ice Age.  While the both have women in the picture, the name of the card is clearly referring to the male in the picture.

3.  The format is highlander (singleton).  These means you can only have 1 of any card in the deck.  This includes non-basic land.  For those of you that don't remember, duel lands are non-basic.  The number of cards in your deck should be at least 60.

4.  Non-creature spells MUST also feature women in the picture.  Again the simple rule, if you would have to argue that there is a woman in the picture; just assume the card is not allowed.  Ex:  Mana Leak.  This figure is clearly too disguised to tell what it is, therefore it is NOT allowed.

5.  Sideboards are legal in harem.  They must consist of 15 cards that are not in your main deck and you can only have one of each card.  This means 15 DIFFERENT cards.
 
6.  No dragons can be used.

So there are no males in the format anymore and there isn’t a banned list.  Everybody got it now?  I hope this clears up any confusion.

M11 just came out online and it is bringing some new cards to harem.  Core sets used to be something that harem players really looked forward to.  The reason was because in core sets, to make the reprints more interesting, WotC would change the artwork on some of the cards.  Any time art gets changed there is a chance that we may be getting a harem legal version of a card that was not originally usable.  Some examples would be 5th edition’s Hill Giant and Bad Moon, or 7th Edition’s Coat of Arms.  With the change in how core sets are done, reprints are now going to become much less common, and the ones that do get reprinted tend to just reuse the pictures that already exist because they are putting the “new” art on the new cards.  Not that I am knocking the existence of new cards, but I always hope that some cards might make it over to harem through an alternate art.  Now the only thing I really have to hope for is alternate art promotional cards.  On a side note, in the last article where I was talking about recent promos, I forgot to mention that Path to Exile had been made harem legal in promo form.  Yay!

Ok, back on topic, M11 gives us a usual list of reprints, none of which are very exciting, except for Baneslayer Angel, but we all know how amazing she is already.  Here is the list of reprints.  There are 27 which fit into neat rows of three.

Baneslayer Angel             Palace Guard                Safe Passage
Serra Angel                    Solemn Offering            Alluring Siren       
Foresee                          Merfolk Sovereign         Sleep           
Bloodthorne Vampire      Child of Night               Doom Blade       
Duress                           Howling Banshee           Liliana Vess       
Sign in Blood                 Act of Treason              Chandra Nalaar
Lightning Bolt                Angel's Feather              Platinum Angel

Now the part you’ve all been waiting to see: hard core nudity!
….
What?
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Really?  I can’t do that here?
……
Fiiiiiine.  Sigh.  Here is the list of new cards that you’ll want to pick up.  Oddly enough their number is also a multiple of three: 24.  Together that makes 51 for the entire set, which is also a multiple of three.  I think someone at WotC is trying to send us a message to harem players about the number three.  Quickly!  Decompress the main shuttle bay before Kelsey Grammer kills us all!  Again!

Angelic Arbiter               Knight Exemplar            Serra Ascendant
Tireless Missionaries      Aether Adept                 Conundrum Sphinx
Maritime Guard             Mass Polymorph            Time Reversal   
Barony Vampire            Liliana's Caress              Chandra's Outrage   
Reverberate                   Wild Evocation              Autumn's Veil   
Fauna Shaman               Plummet                       Sylvan Ranger

Several of these are completely forgettable and you’ll never have any use for them, but I would like to examine a few cards in detail.  To start my examination of the new cards, I want to talk about two cards in particular, one that is on the list and one that isn’t.  As readers of my work can attest to, I am no huge fan of Mark Rosewater.  Granted, I know he doesn’t design every single card, but as the head of the magic division, he has to be the one held accountable for things.  For this complaint, I will be taking you on a trip through time.  Just before the release of Planar Chaos, Mark published this picture  showing how R&D view the color pie.  He did this so that we had some reference for all the changes that were about to occur in Planar Chaos.  Using that information, I’ll take you back a bit further to Darksteel, where Shunt was released.  At the time, this card was explained on the website as the new Deflection.  It was stated that redirecting spells was really more of a chaotic effect and red is the color of chaos.  To drive this home, Shunt was printed in 10th Edition to show that it would be the standard place for this ability.  What made it odd was that Deflection was in 8th Edition, which came out just before Mirrodin block.

This same thing was done when Saviors of Kamigawa rolled around and Fork showed up in blue as Twincast.  Again, an explanation appeared stating that copying things, aka cloning, has, in general, been a blue ability.  It, too, was solidified in 10th Edition.

Here we are in Magic2011 and both of those cards have been switched again.  Enter Redirect and Reverberate.  Reverberate is an exact reprint of Fork back in its original red color.  So now we have two harem legal Forks.  That’s not overly special though because Twincast has always been that “surprise” card that you can shock your opponent with.  Look at me!  I copied your Lightning Helix!  Not overly impressive.  One could argue that Redirect is not a reprint of Deflection and that they are entirely different, which on a strict reading is true.  However, realistically speaking, these are the exact same cards.  The only real difference is that Redirect costs less and does more, so it’s actually better than Shunt and Deflection.  Does this impact harem?  No, Shunt is even more of a useless card than Twincast is.  I can Shunt your Lightning Helix?  Ok?

Some quick shout-outs for cards that I like, but I doubt I will be using in harem.  The first is Time Reversal.  Timetwister brought into harem.  I don’t really need to talk about how good this card is.  Fauna Shaman is Survival of the Fittest.   I might be wrong on this, but I don’t see the advantage of a card that asks you to discard a creature that you are playing a single copy of to fetch another creature you are only playing a single copy of.  I don’t know, maybe the singleton players will prove me wrong on that.

Plummet is the real card I am excited about in this set.  Destroy target creature at instant speed.  Green has needed this for years.  Every solution to flying that WotC came out with for green was never really that good and hardly ever threatened fliers.  Remember when Raking Canopy was supposed to stop Faeries?  How well did that go?  Plummet will probably also end up on the scrapheap of tournament worthy, flying answers as well, but in harem, it might go on to be one of the most useful cards ever printed.  This thing kills Akroma, that’s all I need it to do.

I’m also excited about (Chandra’s Outrage).  Good burn for a decent price and it’s an instant.  I know that sounds stupid, but harem, red, instants are not that common.  Red is the forgotten child of harem.  In most sets, we’ll be lucky if we get even one playable red card.  Often we get cards like, Enslaved Dwarf.  Yeah, that will come in handy. Or you get cards like Vicious Shadows.  This card should have been good, but for some unknown reason WotC decided to cost it at seven mana.  That makes it completely unplayable.  The only conclusion I can come to is that they felt red’s enemies wouldn’t be able to handle it.  White doesn’t even flinch at enchantments and blue will counter it when it costs seven.  At four mana this card might have actually seen play instead of being instantly forgettable. 

That brings us to Wild Evocation.  This is the WORST harem card in M11.  Even worse than Maritime Guard.  This is, essentially, Gate to the Aether for your hand, which is a horrible idea.  This is a terrible card that WotC threw in just to fill a rare slot for red.  That is upsetting because they could have put anything else here and it would have been better than this.  Show me the red deck that still has multiple cards in hand on Turn 7, assuming you cast this on Turn 6?  When I think of the most popular red decks, none of them would want this card.  The only real use for it would be similar to Gate’s and that is getting big spells/creatures into play for free.  Even Eldrazi aren’t really into this though, because they have Sneak Attack, which costs less and does more.

So now let’s get done with all the card nonsense and get onto the decklists.  Behold, my mighty red deck.  This deck is awful and has lost almost every single game I’ve ever used it in.  If you think you can improve it, please, let me know.  Just for fun, and because I mentioned them in the article, I moved Shunt and Reverberate to the mainboard.  Ordinarily, Stun (from Invasion) and Stoneshaker Shaman are in the mainboard. 
 

Red Hot Hotties

 

Creatures 1 Ashling the Pilgrim 1 Goblin Gardener 1 Vulshok Sorcerer 1 Frostwielder 1 Ghitu Fire-Eater 1 Dragonmaster Outcast 1 Sparkmage Apprentice 1 Lavaborn Muse 1 Ronin Houndmaster 1 Fortune Thief 1 Akroma, Angel of Fury 1 Reckless Embermage 1 Vengeful Firebrand 1 Jeska, Warrior Adept 1 Inner-Flame Acolyte 1 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage 16 cards Other Spells 1 Undying Rage 1 Shard Volley 1 Incinerate 1 Ghitu Fire 1 Grapeshot 1 Lightning Blast 1 Staggershock 1 Seal of Fire 1 Chandra Nalaar 1 Word of Seizing 1 Volcanic Fallout 1 Magma Jet 1 Reverberate 1 Spitting Earth 1 Chandra Ablaze 1 Lightning Bolt 1 Browbeat 1 Strip Mine 1 Shunt 1 Act of Treason 1 Chandra's Outrage 1 Fiery Fall 21 cards

Lands 1 Ancient Tomb 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Wasteland 1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle 1 Keldon Megaliths 1 Tectonic Edge 16 Mountain 22 cards Sideboard 1 Scorched Rusalka 1 Reversal of Fortune 1 Thunderblade Charge 1 Disorder 1 Fiery Conclusion 1 Flamekin Harbinger 1 Yuki-Onna 1 Vicious Shadows 1 Lovisa Coldeyes 1 Pyroclast Consul 1 Arcane Teachings 1 Havoc 1 Pyroblast 1 Retribution 1 Stoneshaker Shaman 15 cards