Our deck sizes and card piles slowly grew, so did our pimples, and within a few months we had a nice collection of both. By that time, Mercadian Masques was released, and we found out about a game store nearby selling singles and organizing tournaments.

Needless to say, we were stunned by the nearly infinite deck building possibilities awaiting us, and we spend our next months expanding our play group and tuning our decks. Our mana bases suffered by the growth of knowledge about the game, but the decks became smaller and more focussed.

For those of you spending Mercadian Masques era in the wombs of their mum or elsewhere far away from Magic –  Mercadian Masques was a terrible set. There were plenty of unplayable cards (I guess they learned from the way overpowered Urzas Saga block), but some were still pretty unbalanced (*cough* Rebels, *cough* Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero). But since netdecking and MTG articles weren’t a thing back then, you had to find out about the goodies and the baddies all by yourself.

My favourite card back then was Dawnstrider. The art, the concept, everything. And it kind of even trumped good old Scaled Wurm, so it had to be truly broken. After opening a copy in one of my booster packs, I was lucky enough to find two more copies in the binders of my friends (and probably spending Rishadan Ports to turn them into my possession). In the shop, I found my fourth copy, so the cornerstone of the deck was built.

Discovering your first Magic combo had something truly magical.

The local shop had an uncommon box with tons of sweet cards, each costing me a buck each, and I soon found a nice partner in crime to go with my Dawnstriders – Groundskeeper. Discarding your lands and returning them to your hand – an everlasting perpetuum mobile. Since those cost me the rest of my pocket money, the rest of the deck was just randomly filled with whatever nice green cards I owned.

After some more games against my friends, I had to revisit the uncommon box, but it paid off: Wishmonger entered the fray to protect Dawnstrider while delivering unblockable beats. And Silverglade Pathfinder and Terrain Generator helped to provide the important mana boost the deck needed.

CREATURES

4 Dawnstrider

4 Groundskeeper

4 Wishmonger

2 Troubled Healer

4 Silverglade Pathfinder

2 Jolrael, Empress of Beasts

2 Clear the Land

2 Squirrel Wrangler

1 Blinding Angel

1 Jeweled Spirit

2 Copper-Leaf Angel

1 Reverent Mantra

1 Predator, Flagship

LANDS

1 Dust Bowl

1 Kor Haven

1 Rath’s Edge

1 Tower of the Magistrate

4 Terrain Generator

15 Forest

7 Plains

SIDEBOARD

4 Devout Witness

4 Story Circle

4 Snake Pit

2 Spitting Spider

1 Monkey Cage

The excitement level was high as around 40 players assembled to play in that tournament. When I was paired against one of my friends in round 1, I knew I couldn’t possibly lose this one. He built a mono green stompy deck around Pygmy Razorback and Wild Might, and filled it up with some Blastoderms, Rushwood Elementals and other beefy creatures.

Needless to say the deck didn’t stand a chance against Dawnstrider, and when I sideboarded Story Circles and slammed it on the board around turn 6 (since I had to spend some time finding double white mana) the rope tightened and there was no way out for my opponent.

It’s crazy how easy, and regularly you would find your key cards in that format, but since it was incredibly slow, you would usually go through half your deck in a game.

Next round, I played against a classic Rebels deck. Probably something pretty close to what you would find online if there were decklists on the internet – the whole Rebel chain, some Reverent Mantras and a lot of mana. We heard about the power of Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero, but since none of my friends ever built the deck, I had no idea how a Rebels deck actually looked like or felt like playing against.

Dawnstrider performed once again, and even though I lost game 2 to Parallax Wave, I sideboarded Devout Witness for game 3 and was able to win.

I felt invincible – did I really just break the format? Spoiler: I didn’t.

Next round, I played against a deck revolving around Rising Waters, Waterfront Bouncer, free spells (Daze, Thwart, Foil, Gush) and some Rhystic spells. They even had Ribbon Snake as their finisher.

Nobody ever beats Ribbon Snake – I wish we had more finishers like Snake these days. So, I was unable to beat this strategy, and well, Snake Pit out of my board probably made my deck and therefor the matchup even worse for me.

Back to earth, I fought against a mono black Mercenary deck in round 4. Even though they had some removal to get rid of some of my creatures, I was able to overcome the flow of Cateran Brutes and Cateran Persuaders and Rampart Crawlers.

The last round was another matchup I couldn’t win. My opponent played Thrashing Wumpus with Charisma, a pretty sweet combo which resulted in a horrible manabase for my opponent, but backed up with Stinging Barrier and Vendetta to buy some time, my opponent just stomped me.