B2 – Head Games
No one would have believed in the first year of the twenty-first century that over two decades later I would finally put together my Cephalid deck. This one started with me seeing Cephalid Looter and asking “Why would you ever want to have your opponent draw and discard?” In the years since, they’ve put a lot of great mill cards in blue and black, and so I came back to the old looter seeing it as either a card drawing engine for me or a mill card.
The cephies have a few alright cards that allow for a control and mill strategy, but they needed help to bring their sinister plans to fruition. Jump forward to Lorwyn and Magic saw its first mono-black elves. Here were the drow elves to fight alongside my illithid cephalids!
The elves in this deck focus on getting rid of enemy creatures long enough for the cephalids to mill your opponent. The fact that Kaldheim gave me some great Elf Clerics to fill the role of the matriarchal drow hierarchy was just icing on the cake.
My original list ran the obnoxious combo of Anvil of Bogardan and Chains of Mephistopheles. However, while seeking an aesthetic touchstone for this deck’s flavor text, I remembered a line from H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds:
“Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to out minds as our are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
I can think of no better way to describe the methodical, calculating malice of the mind flayers. This made me realize that I needed to work in the tripod war machines of the first great alien invasion. Fortunately, Magic has had these guys in print for almost thirty years in the form of Triskelion. Having limited room in the deck, Anvil and Chains had to go. But that also made room for the gold standard for mill cards: Glimpse the Unthinkable.
Like all good villainous organizations, this deck actually steps on its own toes. Cobra Commander had Destro, Megatron had Starscream, and Shredder had Krang. Aboshan and Ayara are doing two different things in this deck that may or may not help each other, epitomized by the anti-synergy of Ruthless Winnower. I can’t say who is who in this pairing, but the acrimony is there.