One of the best things about Magic The Gathering is the plethora of cards at your disposal. Some of the cards are fun to play against and some are not so fun for people. This means you will see many different decks throughout your time with the game. When it comes to me one of the things I love to do is either brew a deck based on the theme of another deck. I also enjoy brewing new decks altogether. I have a bunch of friends who come to me and ask my thoughts or to help them brew something and it’s one of my favorite things about the game. So let’s get into my top 3 favorite brews.
What is a Brew?
To understand the crux of this article, we must first talk about what deems a Magic The Gathering deck a “brew.” What I deem a “brew” is a deck mostly just made from scratch or a new deck based on a pre-existing theme. Obviously, these aren’t going to be the meta decks that are the best in their respective formats, but something a little different you might not normally see. I have played plenty of the meta decks or best-in format over the years and won a lot. So over the last 6 or so years, I have tried to play exclusively for fun mostly by building brews. Also helping others build decks and learn more about the game is where a lot of my enjoyment comes from.
Restore Balance
Kicking it off with my third favorite brew Restore Balance. I have had many iterations of this deck based on Restore Balance, but they pretty much all worked the same way. You play cards that allow you to manipulate and cast the card when you would normally have to suspend it and wait for 6 turns.
The goal is when you are going to cast it, lower the resources and things you have that way your opponent has to sacrifice their things as well. One way to do this is to utilize Greater Gargadon which lets you sacrifice things to lower the suspend counter on him. As Foretold and Electrodominance are 2 cards that allow you to “cheat” on casting Restore Balance.
It’s been a while since I have played it, but the most recent version used Restore Balance, Greater Gargadon, and Crashing Footfalls (before it got super popular), to help me win the game. I love decks that make me think and this is one of them. But I have even made mistakes just ask my friend and Team Nemesis member Bailey. I got this card confused with Cataclysm for a minute and messed up by sacrificing all my stuff. This was in an attempt to get him to get rid of all his stuff and his Planeswalkers. The funny thing is that this card doesn’t affect Planeswalker cards, so my bad lol. I could see myself brewing something with this card in the future.
Any Deck With Kiki-Jiki
Now you might say this is a cop-out and you would be correct. Over the years I have built many Magic The Gathering decks with Kik-Jiki, Mirror Breaker. I absolutely love the card and using it in as many decks as I can. If you are using this card I’d say 99% of the time you are probably trying to do some infinite combo.
The most common is making infinite Pestermite, Deceiver Exarch, Zealous Conscripts, and other tokens with Haste. Then you can attack for enough damage to win the game. I have this with Pestermite to combo in my current favorite Commander deck based around Animar, Soul of Elements. I’ve had reanimator decks where I bring Kiki-Jiki and Deceiver Exarch back from the graveyard.
I have also had “toolbox” style decks where I have a bunch of creatures that do different things based on different situations. Also, my favorite brew which we will get to later has him and Restoration Angel who also make infinite tokens with haste. You can also just make one copy of a creature that can provide good value and help you get toward the goal of winning the game.
I could talk about Kiki-Jiki for hours. Some of my favorite brews I have had over the years are Kiki-Chord, Goryo’s As Foretold, Battle of Wits, and plenty of others. Over time this card has been power crept, but I still love it to this day. So I will take the cop-out just so I can put some shine on all of my Kiki Jiki-based decks over the years.
Battle of Wits
Now my favorite brew of all time has got to be Battle of Wits. One of my favorite things to do when playing Magic The Gathering is build or play a deck that isn’t easy to play. I like to make things harder on myself. The perfect deck for that is Battle of Wits, which the version I am actually building at this moment is 269 cards and a 15-card sideboard. A normal Magic The Gathering deck usually has 60 cards in the main deck and 15 cards in the sideboard. Battle of Wits wants you to have over 200 cards in your main deck if you want to win with the card.
My Battle of Wits deck has so many different things you can do like winning with the infinite Kiki-Jiki and Restoration Angel combo. You can use Gifts Ungiven to get Unburial Rites and a creature you need in the graveyard, so you can bring them back. I had one of my friends do the math and there are 3,617,033 combinations for Gifts Ungiven piles in this deck. That many combinations are absolutely insane and I love it. The actual way I won the most was with the card Scapeshift.
There is the Madcap Experiment and Platinum Emperion combo you can do too. Glittering Wish allows you to get cards from your sideboard that you need in specific situations. Cards in the deck also help you to try and stall the game to get to a win-con. Battle of Wits is the most fun I have ever had and you could even call it a meme deck. I mean who is building and playing this in tabletop paper Magic? I will be continuing to update this deck over time. So we will see what it turns out to be in the future.
My Friend Andy’s Math
Wrap-Up
Now there are many Magic The Gathering decks I have built or played over the years. Many of those decks ride the line of brew/actual deck so I decided they were disqualified. Many people will talk to me and be like why not this deck and that’s why. Other considerations were 5 Color Savage Snow-Blade, Infinite Planeswalking, Titania Jund, and there are plenty of others. If there is something you want me to talk about let me know. You can expect more tabletop and TCG coverage in the future! So make sure to stay tuned!
