As most of you know, iakae has resigned as a moderator, and I have taken his place in Articles. iakae: I hope you know that everyone on MOTL will miss you, and we wish you good luck wherever you go in the future. I'd like to thank you for creating the Articles forum, and for "hiring" me as a column writer. Articles are a great way to write what's on your mind, and to express yourself. Thanks for everything you've done on MOTL.

Now that that's through, Tedman's Tales is back again, after a short break. This time, I plan to focus on a Magic format that's on a lot of people's minds: Masques Block Constructed, or MBC.

Masques Block Constructed consists of, you guessed it, Mercadian Masques, Nemesis and Prophecy. That means you can only use cards from those three sets in your decks. Now this may seem a bit restrictive, but you'd be surprised how many diverse decks there are out there. I'll give a short run-down of the top decks.

Rising Water
Many consider this to be the top deck in MBC mainly because of the powerful combination of mana-restiction, bouncing and counterspells, as well as cheap and efficient creatures such as Ribbon Snake and Drake Hatchling.

Rebels
Some regard this as the best deck. Many know Rebels' power in Standard, but it's even more obvious in MBC. With access to powerful utility spells like Parallax Wave and Reverent Mantra, beatdown seems a bit easier.

Black/Green
You can play either control or aggressive. I prefer the latter. With cards like Vine Trellis, Dark Ritual and Skull of Ramos, you can play powerful spells easier and earlier, like Thrashing Wumpus, Massacre and Saproling Burst.

Now I know those are not nearly all the decks, but they are considered the top ones.

When Urza's Block was the current block format, the top decks were easily Bargain and Replenish (strange, weren't they the top decks of Standard at some point?). Those decks were good for this reason: they were fast. Bargain could get a third-turn kill, and Replenish could get a fourth-turn lockdown. Most decks couldn't handle the speed. But MBC isn't like that. There aren't any Grim Monoliths, Rofellos, Llanowar Emissaries, Priests of Titania, Voltaic Keys, Thran Dynamos or Worn Powerstones. There are no Frantic Searches, Tinkers, Attunements or Phyrexian Towers. Those were what made the fastest decks in UBC go. But there's nothing like that in MBC. The closes thing to mana acceleration MBC has is Vine Trellis and the Ramos parts. Compared to UBC, MBC is at a snail's pace.

Speed is what makes one deck better than another. If you can play your spells faster than your opponent, you usually win. And mana makes speed. So MBC is a slow, land-based environment. Usually for the first three or so turns, player just play lands and say go. For that reason, they play 22-24 lands.

MBC puts a completely different spin on Magic. Instead of wondering who's going to get the third-turn kill first, players play lands, and play creatures, attack with them, play spells, and win. In my opinion, it's a much better, skill-oriented format than UBC ever was. Some kid could just copy a net-deck UBC Bargain from the Dojo or something, and then play it at a tournament getting third-turn kills all the time, while the same kid could find a Waters deck and not have the slightest clue how to play it. MBC makes the good players better.

Few dispute the banning of Rishadan Port in MBC. You know why? It makes the format even slower. By tapping one extra land a turn, you make players have to wait to get more lands to play the same spell. And what about the players playing more than one colot? Rishadan Port will single-handedly win that game. Since MBC is already a slow environment, they couldn't possibly allow Rishadan Port to be legal.

Now just for laughs, here's my newest MBC deck. I call it "Thunderpuppy" (don't ask why).

4 Vine Trellis (notice how every MBC deck with green has 4 of these?)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Blastoderm
4 Vicious Hunger
4 Snuff Out
4 Bog Elemental
4 Thrashing Wumpus
4 Munga Wurm
2 Haunted Crossroads
2 Rhystic Tutor

14 Swamp
10 Forest

This deck takes advantage of playing lots of lands. It can be extremely fast, getting fourth turn kills some of the time, and 7th turn quite a bit of the time. Haunted Crossroads combos well with Blastoderm (you wait for it to die from Fading and then just draw it and play it again).

Tap Out Red

Black Control

Blue/White

and

Black/Green Is often Called Snuff-O-Derm

4 Avatar Of Woe
4 Rhystic Tutor
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vicious Hunger
4 Rampart Crawler
4 Misshapen Fiend
4 Spineless Thug
4 Plague Witch
4 Vendetta
4 Parralax Dementia
19 Swamp
3 Peat Bog

This deck beats the opponent fast, with little creatures like 4 x rampart crawler, 4 x misshapen fiend, and 4 x spineless thug, and 4 x plague witch... 16 fast creatures, to kill the creatures of your opponent fast we have, 4 x vendetta, and 4 x Plague Witch and of course 4 x vicious hunger... 12 creature (fast) destroy... Now you ask why not Seal of Doom??? That's because we have to be fast, how faster the avatar is in play how better it is... to search the avatar 4 x Rhystic Tutor... To be faster 4 x Dark Ritual... And Parralax Dementia is in for forcing your opponent to block you're creatures , and to fade your creatures away.This deck really kicks *** ...!
Maybe Skull of Ramos ???? Well the deck is under construction but it works very good... Check it!

Side Board
3 Root Cage (Cause alot of people were playtesting Mecr)
3 Tranquility (Waters)
3 Massacre (Rebels)
3 Woodrippers (Idol)
3 Desert Twisters

I went 4 and 2 for the day falling to a rebel deck (1-2)that got lucky with a couple of top decks of story circle, and a black blue control deck (1-2) that Bribary'd a Whampus out of my deck in both the second and third games.
game order
Rebel 1-2
Waters ( A Kid) 2-0
Green speed (Kid again) 2-0
Blue control (Losing to me cost him Top 8)2-1
Blue/Black 1-2
Red Weenie (Very good player)2-0

And later on in the day I played the other black/green deck (Sap burst) and beat him 3-1 in fun games.
I would recommend that anyone playing this deck put Slavers in the side for against the mirror deck
I ended up with 11th place and ahead of the rebel guy who I fell to.

creautures:
3 Avatar of Will
2 Ascendant Evincar
2 Waterfront Bouncer
2 Wall of Distortion
enchantments:
2 Parallax Nexus
4 Seal of Removal
Instants and Socery:
4 Unmask
4 Spectar's Wail
4 Mind Swords
4 Dark Ritual
4 Counterspell
Artifacts:
2 Eye of Ramos
2 Skull of Ramos
Lands:
11 Swamps
10 Islands

The real affective stuff in this deck is the instants. Countering and discarding. Often, i can first turn ritual out a parallax nexus. Second turn remove all counters from it and leave 2 cards in opponents hand. They will likely choose their most useful cards to keep in their hand. You then cast mind swords and remove the goodies completely. LMK what you think of the deck.