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This thread is for discussion of this week's From the Lab article, which goes live Thursday morning on magicthegathering.com.

The first deck seems like it could be done much more easily with either Conspiracy or Essence of the Wild .

The last deck looks like a pretty standard black/white control deck with a goofy combo shoehorned into it.  The combo isn't really essential to the deck, it's just a round-about win condition once you have control.

The decks were a lot of fun this week.  Well...okay I wasn't too entranced by the Seance deck, but that's still 3 out of 4.

Going '8' tipping is fun sometimes and Angelfish does it with an awesome angel so I'm liking that.

The Seance deck is just...I mean making oodles of tokens is cool and all, but the only thing that saves it from being a complete bore in my book are the extra little 1-ofs you threw in at the end.  Otherwise it's just: Cast spell; swing.  Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, it just doesn't do it for me.  Or it could just be that I'm tired of seeing soldiers...

The knowldedge pool deck is a real hoot to build.  But I tell you what, I'll bet it won't be the mana tithe that has your opponent punching you...

The Lightshift deck is fun mostly because massive lifegain is somewhat difficult to get it to work.  Dragon_Bloodthirsty is right in that it does look a lot like a B/W control deck with a wacky combo.  But I'm okay with that.  It's the wacky combo that you selected for this particular B/W control deck that makes the whole thing interesting.  The control package is just there to make sure you survive to get to 10+ mana.

I actually liked the idea of the Seance deck. The Angelfish Blast deck combo seemed excessive.  There are many other ways to get around the creature's type issue. The Cursecraft deck is a very entertaining way of using Knowledge Pool . By entertaining, I mean to play, not to play against. And the LightShift deck felt political. Archangel's Light is getting bashed, and they want to try and soften the critisism. As mentioned, this deck is the combo tossed into a rather mundane control shell.

Having said that, the article was a good read and all the decks look fun to run a few matches with.

And back to the  Seance deck. After rereading the card, I am greatly surprised, confused, and disappointed haste wasn't given to the creature. Oh, how badly I wanted to put Hero of Bladehold into this deck. To jump off with this idea, I decided to walk a little deeper into the forest. I axed all the singletons from my quick build. Not because they aren't good, but because they were often extras and fillers. With the deck's already high CC, anything to slim that down helped. I dropped it to 3.03 from 3.65. I was tempted to go very heavy Kithkin, but I felt the Soldier angle was better. Playtesting may proove otherwise. Here's the deck.

Creatures: 31
2x Birds of Paradise - Slight ramping
3x Goldmeadow Harrier
2x Rhys the Redeemed - Do I need to explain?
3x Elvish Visionary - Card drawing that goes great with the combo
2x Nest Invader - Chump blocking and ramp that goes great with the combo
2x Riftsweeper
4x Sakura-Tribe Elder
3x Kor Hookmaster
2x Kinsbaile Borderguard - Though light on Kithkins, getting two to four counters looks easy
2x Knight-Captain of Eos
3x Cloudgoat Ranger
3x Captain of the Watch

Other Spells: 7
4x Parallel Lives
3x Seance

Land: 22
5x Forest
8x Plains
1x Kjeldoran Outpost
2x Selesnya Sanctuary
3x Sunpetal Grove
3x Temple Garden