However, unlike a lot of Wizards of the Coast fans, I never found myself entering the wide world of Dungeons & Dragons until fairly recently. I have no stories of “the good old days” in D&D. I was not present that one time back in ‘78. I’ve never been in the Tomb of Horrors. I have yet to encounter a gelatinous cube. After six sessions of running my own D&D campaign, though, I DO have stories to share.
 

When I started my first campaign as Dungeon Master months ago, I was determined to really focus on learning the ins and outs of the game system. I also decided to start my campaign from nothingness. As a DM and storyteller, I wanted to create my own universe from scratch using the ideas I’d gained from both reading and writing fiction.
 

Chris Perkins’ blog: The Dungeon Master Experience was a factor. I feel like you could just buy some dice and read that man’s articles and you’d have everything you need to run a D&D campaign. Like him and many other DMs, I tend to steal borrow story ideas from the movies and books I read. The D&D books are also a thing. They provide structure and character classes which are important, but where adventures are concerned, I never run sessions straight from the published text. Instead I tend to use the plots and races described in D&D books as props. I can pick and choose the pieces I like best and work them into my campaign. If they don’t make sense, I tweak them or make up a reason why they do make sense.

 

Story time:

With a party of four players (which later grew to 5) plus myself, I began my first adventure using the first world ideas to pop into my head. The King of Avalith had sent out pamphlets (via carrier squirrels) in order to call out heroes from across the land. He needed an elixir retrieved from a temple in the nearby mountains (apparently all the King’s men were terrible fighters/mountain climbers). There was something unique about this little kingdom, though, and the players soon learned that everyone who lived in Avalith was immortal… sort of. The crystal that floated above the King’s throne provided this power, and its batteries were starting to run out. The elixir would basically give it a fresh charge and solve their little aging and/or dying problem.
 

Cut to the mountain temple – aside from a small spider and skeleton infestation, the location containing the elixir turned out to be a nice cozy little spot. Even the ghosts were friendly and offered them supper. The adventurers pressed on through puzzle-locked doors and found their prize, and the elixir they sought was in the hands of an ancient lich. So ancient that he really had no interest in fighting my adventurers – in fact he was quite friendly and offered the party his hospitality (in the best Sean Connery voice I could perform). The problem, however, was that the elixir was also the lich’s phylactery. The players were faced with the dilemma of whether or not they should steal the elixir and kill the nice old retired lich, leave it be and lose the favor of Avalith’s people, or… or… OR DRINK THE ELIXIR and become immortals themselves! Evil lich magic would be theirs! In place of a dark lord you would have a queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the sea!
 

… they chose the first thing. The lich thanked them for playing nice, and the adventurers officially established their first base of operations in his temple, fully staffed with ghostly servants and fluffy beds. The session was the most fun I’d had with a group of friends outside of my card and board gaming habits hobbies. It not only established my new world and several characters, but in my mind it established the group’s first nemesis in the form of a jaded and quasi-immortal King, still awaiting his promised elixir: a consequence my adventurers have yet to fully face.
 

Every single one except for [c]Bountiful Harvest[/c], of course. Sorry but nobody likes you.
 

First on my recovery list is [c]Gigantomancer[/c] in the Ancient Wilds deck. Ancient Wilds is already one of my favorite decks in Duels 2013, so for me it’s already super difficult trying to trim it down to a 60 (or 61) card count. Being a 1/1 for 8 mana, Gigantimancer instantly gave me doubts on keeping it around, regardless of what its ability does. The fact that it’s an activated ability doesn’t help either, as I instantly compare it to excellent cards such as Exalted Darkness’ [c]Sublime Archangel[/c] which has a potentially game-ending ability that’s passive (ie it’s always working and costs no extra mana). To use Gigantomancer’s ability right after casting it, I’d have to have 9 Forests on the board, and that’s something I can’t ever rely on having.
 

What someone in the thread pointed out, though, is that there are multiple ways in Ancient Wilds to sneak [c]Gigantomancer[/c] onto the field, including [c]Natural Order[/c] (which I admit I may still use to grab [c]Thragtusk[/c] or my beloved, the [c]Pelakka Wurm[/c]) and a less-obvious combo with [c]Wild Pair[/c] that actually turns Gigantomancer’s low power and toughness into an advantage. With Wild Pair on the battlefield I could cast any of the two billion 1/1 creatures that live in the Ancient Wilds, and sneak Gigantomancer into play as a result. This presents an entirely new build for me, and now I’m finding myself optimizing for [c]Wild Pair[/c] and removing all the creatures in the deck which don’t share a total power and toughness with at least two other creatures.
 

My second card, which nobody mentioned in the thread (probably because everyone else already plays it), is [c]Future Sight[/c]. I’ve found that especially in Two Headed Giant games, the 5 mana cost isn’t quite as high as I originally judged, and the card advantage you get as a result is potentially amazing. The fact that it helps eliminate land from the top of your deck is a great bonus as well, and in the past I was making the huge mistake of playing land from my hand while Future Sight was on the board (then of course the second card in my library would inevitably be another land and I’d be stuck until next turn). Considering it’s a turn-5 spell with Crosswinds, which doesn’t have anything to speed up its land drops, I like to tweak the rest of the deck to focus more on control and slowing the game down until I'm able to cast it.
 

Again, the thread is HERE if you want to check out everyone's picks. Other underdogs mentioned include [c]Caller of the Claw[/c], [c]Swell of Courage[/c], and [c]Dragon Mage[/c]. All of them completely useless… or are they?

 

I’ve been making a number of Standard format decks lately because I enjoy attempting tricky things when I have a limited number of cards. Sorting through my Innistrad collection I realized there’s a beautiful card I never got to play around with:

[c]Heartless Summoning[/c] is my kind of card because it doesn’t really do anything. Not by itself, anyway. Yet it changes so much. So many possibilities!

_{(and don’t call me Shirley)}

Here’s what I put together as a Mark 1 version. In Iron Man terms this is the rusty, welded together version of a deck that will later be remade into something shiny and glorious that flies and shoots lasers*:

 

2x [c]Sheoldred, Whispering One[/c]
1x [c]Massacre Wurm[/c]
3x [c]Harvester of Souls[/c]
2x [c]Bloodgift Demon[/c]
2x [c]Skinrender[/c]
4x [c]Heartless Summoning[/c]

3x [c]Primordial Hydra[/c]
1x [c]Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger[/c]
1x [c]Elderscale Wurm[/c]
1x [c]Garruk's Horde[/c]
1x [c]Vorstclaw[/c]
3x [c]Soul of the Harvest[/c]
2x [c]Acidic Slime[/c]
1x [c]Thragtusk[/c]

1x [c]Platinum Emperion[/c]
3x [c]Wurmcoil Engine[/c]
4x [c]Solemn Simulacrum[/c]
2x [c]Semblance Anvil[/c]
2x [c]Myr Superion[/c]

4x [c]Woodland Cemetery[/c]
8x Swamp
9x Forest


Now all I need to do is follow a simple three step process to victory:

1)      Get a Heartless Summoning in my hand!

2)      Survive until turn 3!

3)      Cast a big creature!
 

STEP 1:

NO   
NO   
NO   
NO   
NO   
NO   
YESSS! 

STEP 2:

Believe it or not this failed more than once while playing in the “Just For Fun” room. The best thing about turn 3/4 deaths is that you can lose terribly, have a quick cry, and be on your merry way within roughly 5 minutes*.

STEP 3:

YES... eventually, I both drew and casted a big ugly creature. Sometimes I even did it twice!

So three or four or thirteen games later I successfully completed the three steps and won a game. It was a long and bumpy trail with many pit stops for controlled weeping, but the most important part was that I figured a couple things out in the process. Things were learned; secrets were revealed. Then it was time to use that knowledge!
 

1x [c]Frost Titan[/c]
1x [c]Consecrated Sphinx[/c]
1x [c]Gryff Vanguard[/c]
2x [c]Phyrexian Metamorph[/c]
4x [c]Ponder[/c]

1x [c]Sheoldred, Whispering One[/c]
1x [c]Harvester of Souls[/c]
2x [c]Bloodgift Demon[/c]
3x [c]Skinrender[/c]
4x [c]Heartless Summoning[/c]

3x [c]Primordial Hydra[/c]
2x [c]Soul of the Harvest[/c]
2x [c]Acidic Slime[/c]
1x [c]Thragtusk[/c]
2x [c]Rampant Growth[/c]

3x [c]Wurmcoil Engine[/c]
4x [c]Solemn Simulacrum[/c]
2x [c]Semblance Anvil[/c]

4x [c]Drowned Catacomb[/c]
3x [c]Woodland Cemetery[/c]
3x [c]Hinterland Harbor[/c]
3x Island
3x Swamp
5x Forest


That’s the Mark 2. Remember the before mentioned flying lasers? Now is the time for the before mentioned flying lasers. What’s the best course of action when a deck isn’t working? That’s right: add a third color*! And what’s the very best color of all time?!

Trick question – there is none. If you said or thought about a color then you failed the test (especially if it was blue).
 

So I added blue to the deck. The [c]Ponder[/c] will help me find those most elusive and heartless of summonings, and if I already have one out I can search for some creatures. On more than one occasion I did get two Heartless on the board which made things extra interesting, and drawing a [c]Solemn Simulacrum[/c] was like a free land, card draw, and trigger for my Soul Harvest buddies (sometimes drawing two or even three cards as a result).

I also added two [c]Semblance Anvil[/c]s and said goodbye to my [c]Myr Superion[/c]s in this build. Superions are great and everything, but there was no chance of ever casting them without the cost reduction no matter how much land I got. My other creatures are made for stompin’, not mana producing, and believe it or not I played more than a couple long matches where I didn’t even need Heartless Summoning to start playing out my big expensive creatures for a victory.

Now I can’t claim the final version of my deck was any sort of unbeatable masterpiece of Magic-magic, but I started winning just about as often as I was losing, and that’s a pretty good feeling! When the deck worked, it REALLY worked. When it didn’t, I pulled the deck editor back up and considered revisions. If you’re reading and you have a revision or two of your own, let me know and I’ll gladly give them a shot. In the meantime I’m very curious to find out how well a White/Black version of this deck might play out (back to the drawing board).