The Six-Deck Gauntlet, Plus The Commons You Must Own

Peasant Magic. Dictionary.com defines Peasant as "a member of the class constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, and laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture; 2. A country person; a rustic; 3. An uncouth, crude, or ill-bred person; a boor."

With this in mind, allow me to persuade you to give in to your urges and wreck kids with your ten-dollar deck at the next local Magic outing. I’ll even throw in some decklists. There you go - you’ll be well on your way to becoming a Peasant master. Keep in mind that all of the given decklists are just guides; feel free to experiment, come up with new tech, or just bash my tech in the forums.

Okay, this may seem like a pretty bold statement, but other than Highlander I would have to say that Peasant Magic is the greatest casual format of all time. I cannot speak enough on the merits of playing this silly fun format. Your hair will become more thick and robust, women will flock to you like sketchy kids to 7-11 parking lots at two in the morning, and lesser men will crumble at your mere sight. There are roughly a million good reasons to throw those rares into the junk and pick up them commons.

Peasant: Not Just A Four-Letter Word

I am poor, and as such my Magic budget is limited to going down to the local store every weekend to play in the one unsanctioned tournament and scam kids for good cards. Peasant totally caters to other poor scrubs like me. For less than the price of a booster, you can easily make a killer all commons deck. Sure, it’s probably Affinity - but isn’t that deck just a powerhouse in every format its legal in? (Not Vintage, not yet — The Ferrett) But no worries - because for every Affinity deck played, there’s a Gorilla Shaman pummeling it about the face and neck.

Hmmm... are there budget Peasant decks? What the hell does a budget deck in a budget format look like?

Okay, this is a horrible build. It’s pretty much a standard Ravager Affinity deck (well, not standard any longer) without the Arcbound Ravagers. That’s like walking into a gunfight armed with nothing but rock-hard punches. But do not fret - your opponent is most likely some tool playing a complete pile. I actually think that the first Peasant deck I ever made was an Affinity deck. There you go... a use for all those banned cards in Standard.

Being restricted to only commons and five uncommons isn’t really a deck-building hindrance. In fact, I believe that it opens the doors to a greater variety of viable decks. Play combo if you want to, or aggro. Unlike formats like Vintage, this one actually involves creatures - creatures dealing combat damage, no less. Sure, there are actual defined deck types but it’s always fun to take an old Block deck or old Type Two idea and transform it into Peasant. Astroglide, Frog in a Blender, hmmm.... even Fires of Yavimaya can all be taken out of Magic retirement and be thrust back into the limelight, where they can merrily smash face.

Also, any format where you can shuffle up forty cheap red spells and creatures and twenty mountains and still win, is a fun format indeed. Really, outside of Extended, when has red been a dominating force? My first deck ever was a terrible Sligh deck that just "happened" to win from Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Fireblast, Fireblast. Peasant allows you to relive all the "glory days" of Magic when you only owned four rares and your first green deck was just every green card you happened to own, and you used swamps as forest proxies.

Another bonus to playing Peasant: every set is legal. Even Portal, Starter, Unhinged, and Unglued. To all those savvy deckbuilders, this totally opens up a ton of options. Those unhinged packs you bought while totally intoxicated now seem to be a good idea. In fact, one of the best cards in Peasant is from Unhinged.... But I’ll elaborate more on that later.

Whoa there, Billy. Before you start getting all excited and throwing random terrible commons into a sixty card pile, there are the "good commons" that you should first know of. Throw those Mind Rots and Giant Growths into the trash and invest in a spiffy new set of Duresses and Rancors. Yes, like any other format, sure you can use those cards... but nine times out of ten there’s usually a better alternative. There are cards that you should definitely invest in, and each should be relatively cheap at the StarCityGames.com online store. Here’s a list of staple commons you’ll need four of on the road to changing your deck from a weakasaurus to a wreckasaurus:

• Brainstorm

• Counterspell

• Lightning Bolt

• Diabolic Edict

• Land Grant

• Rancor

• Impulse

• Lotus Petal

• Duress

• Hymn to Tourach

• Dark Ritual

• Pestilence

I don’t feel it is necessary to go into a card-by-card analysis. These are all just really good cards that lesser commons have tried to imitate but failed horribly.

Staple uncommons that you may need four of:

• Demonic Tutor

• Strip Mine

• Skullclamp

• Fact or Fiction

• Force of Will

• Hypnotic Specter

• Sol Ring

• Psychatog

Umm, okay, so granted, a set of Forces isn’t exactly textbook definition of budget. But Peasant gives you a good excuse to be greedy and trade for all those extra copies of Demonic Tutor and Strip Mine.

Rocking The Town Like A Moldy Crouton

What established deck types can you expect?

In my area, there is actually kind of a metagame... well, maybe not so much metagame as just me and my roommate playtesting in our room. But we both don’t suck.... well, I don’t suck. Anyway, in any given Peasant tournament you should at least expect a few kids playing one of the following decks:

Remember that kid your mom always invited over because his mom was friends with your mom? And he always sat in your basement all sweaty and weird and anti-social? Well, if he played Magic, he’d probably play this deck. It’s completely annoying to play against, mainly because it avoids everything you’re doing and just sits in the corner doing its own thing. And just when you think you’re winning, it up and slaps you and you had no idea it was coming. Island, go. Island, go. Island, go. Island, play a whole bunch of spells, draw thirty-two cards, win. What the...?

I actually owe credit to Chris Morling for this build. I pretty much just used his old "Tide Brain Freeze" deck (which he used to win Peasant Worlds and was so powerful it led to the banning of Brain Freeze) and tweaked it a bit. This is one of those degenerate decks that led me to think that they should just outright ban High Tide. With all the card draw and search in the deck it consistently goes off turn 4 or 5, even against first-turn Duress, second-turn Hymn to Tourach.

How the deck works :

1. On turn 4 or 5, cast High Tide. Better yet, cast two.

2. Use any number of accelerants (Cloud of Faeries, Frantic Search, Framed! or just plain tapping lots of Islands) to increase the blue mana in your pool.

3. Cast a large Prosperity, making sure to leave sufficient mana left in pool to cast any copies of Framed! or possibly extra mana to cast a search spell for a Framed! to untap all your Mark Tedin Islands.

4. Rinse and repeat. Before casting the lethal Prosperity, make sure to have cast your one Feldon’s Cane and shuffle your yard back into your deck.

That’s it. Simple. Anyone can throw this deck together, goldfish a few games, and then start smashing face. Sure, it takes a little bit of skill to pull it off, but generally this deck is very, very forgiving. With all the card draw available, it is easy to pull off a win from a mediocre opening hand. And with a large enough Prosperity resolving it doesn’t even matter how many mistakes you’ve made so far, as with all the cards in your grip you should win anyhow.

There are a few cute tricks you can add to the deck — mainly, the addition of Snap to go along with the Clouds. But this is just wrong, as smart opponents, or ones playing red (which you should auto-win anyways), are given an out by just killing the Faeries in response. Merchant Scroll is another option. I just like the instant speed of a card like Peer through Depths.

The sideboard is pretty good, as there are several different blue counters for all the other popular decks in the format.

• Annul vs. Affinity

• Elemental Blasts vs. Sligh/goblins

• Envelop or Disrupt vs. black/sorceries/discard

Basically, since this is a combo deck, you just want to be able to survive until you hit turn 4 or 5. Hey, what’s it matter if you win when you’re at two life as opposed to twenty? Not a thing.

Now, playing with four copies of Demonic Tutor isn’t exactly broken when you’re just grabbing Corrupts.

This deck plays a lot like the MBC deck from when Torment was standard. Basically kill anything that looks threatening, create board parity, and start casting ten-point Corrupts. I won’t lie; this isn’t a very interesting or optimal build. There are just so many directions you can take this deck in, and a lot of your card choices are influenced by the metagame.

Add more creature removal spells if you expect a heavy aggro field (Rend Flesh, Horobi’s Whisper), more discard if expecting a lot of control/combo (Wrench Mind, Hypnotic Specter) and so on. My current version is actually a play on the old Ice Age Necro decks - sans the Necropotence, of course. This involves pump knights, dark rituals and land destruction spells (Icequake, Choking Sands, and Rancid Earth). Chaos Confetti acts kind of like a pseudo-Nevinyrral’s Disk.

Alternative win conditions: Drain Life, Consume Spirit, or more creatures.

Actually, for all the newer players who don’t have access to older cards, it’s possible to make this deck out of only Standard-legal cards :

MBC Type 2

4 Wayfarer’s Bauble

24 Swamps

4 Horobi’s Whisper

4 Rend Flesh

4 Echoing Decay

4 Lose Hope

4 Distress

4 Wrench Mind

4 Consume Spirit

4 Wicked Akuba

I personally hate this deck, since I think casting creatures and dealing combat damage is pretty lame... But this deck does seem to wreck house. Notice a lack of Ghazban Ogres/Wild Dogs. That’s because since red is so prevalent in this format, you’ll rarely have the jump on life totals. But your creatures are larger. Then again, Sparksmith and Pestilence tend to kick green in the sack. That, and large powered flying men (...Ornithopter?).

Simple to play, it’s a good deck for the kids.

Sideboard options: Since there’s no way for this deck to disrupt a combo deck once that deck gets going, speed is absolutely critical. I can see a use for Ghazban Ogre and Wild Dogs coming in for that particular matchup. Just side out slower creatures, such as the Ridgebacks and Jaguars.

hese beats are so fresh... snnnnaaaap. Another popular choice in the format.

White Weenie and Suicide Black should be in here somewhere as well. They all play the same game: reduce your opponent’s life to zero ASAP. I think that Goblins has more game because it’s the deck that actually has a plan B in case combat damage isn’t an option - and that would be Bolt, Grenade, Fireblast, Fireblast.

Pros: Easy to play, very forgiving, tends to just win sometimes.

Cons: Easily sideboarded against. And turn one Mountain, Fanatic is sooooo predictable.

Here’s an actual type two deck that I am running. I wouldn’t recommend running it against actual "Tier One" Peasant decks, but it does have game against Tooth and Nail and it beats blue pretty badly.

SlighType 2

23 Mountains

4 Oxidda Golem

4 Vulshok Sorcerer

4 Goblin Cohort

4 Spark Elemental

4 Frostling

4 Slith Firewalker

4 Volcanic Hammer

4 Shock

4 Bonesplitter

1 Grab the Reins

I actually prefer this to Mono-Blue control, as Mono-Blue doesn’t really have as good a win condition as the Tog. Being able to just win the game in one turn is pretty saucy. Just like any control deck, it is easy to configure the maindeck to the metagame.... but it’s super hard to play and involves a lot of decisions. This is just one example of porting over an old Standard/Block deck to the Peasant format.

I haven’t really played much of the Peasant version to really push this decklist. I did, however, play way too much of this when it was really good in Extended way back when (well, I guess it’s still good now...?) and when it was dominant in Standard. I’m not sure about some of the card choices:

Force Spike vs. Daze

Condescend vs. Mana Leak

Rend Flesh vs. Innocent Blood vs. Terror

Maindeck Duress?

It all pretty much comes down to personal preference and what the general metagame in your area looks like. The general skeleton should be:

• 3 or 4 Psychatog

• 4 Brainstorm

• 4 Accumulated Knowledge

• 4 Counterspell

• 4 Diabolic Edict

The deck of choice for all the nine-year-old punks who seem to play Type Two decks in every format. Honestly, is everyone sick of this deck yet? This is the version that I’m running, though I’m not sure if it’s the optimal version. Wait; the more I look at it, I think the deck would benefit from having more Sol Rings and fewer Lotus Petals. But Skullclamp is such a house in Affinity.

These aren’t even all the possible decks you could play in Peasant. Apparently, with access to four Sol Rings you can make something ridiculous, but I’ve never seen an actual decklist. Something to do with Mono-Blue Control...maybe kind of old-school Urza’s block accelerated blue. I even have an old school "Elfball" deck, but it’s so random I don’t think there’s a point in including a decklist. Other interesting combo decks: Tendrils of Agony, Life, and Angry Ghoul. Make sure to check the casual forums for possible decklists/discussion.

Anyways, I hope that this will give you some insight into the type of decks and the benefits of playing Peasant. I’m sure that most of you just glanced over the decklists, but if you’ve managed to make it this far, thanks for reading. Honestly, I suck a ton at writing, but I am very passionate about Peasant.

And remember, keep the beats like the punches: rock-hard.

-dave wong