How They Brew It - Mazzy, Truesword Paladin and The Keyword That Wasn't

Mazzy, Truesword Paladin

by Justyna Dura

^{The harsh wail of the siren rang throughout the dilapidated apartment. It's already April 32st, and the 4:37 alarm, the daily clarion which summoned Margaret Wilson to work from the coffin which the Department of Supply charitably called a "bed," was as loud as ever. The alarm didn't matter, thought Margaret. She had already been awake for an hour, enraptured by the screens. The screens sent her private information straight to third parties, hackers, and governments, but it was okay, for last week the Chancellor had banned NordVPN... to much fanfare.}

^{Today was special, thought Margaret. Today was the day that the Government would eradicate the clown menace forever. Margaret's lips curled up into a toothy grimace. Oh, how she hated the clowns. She hated them the way that ants hate cinnamon, or the way that the elderly hate that new apartment complex just off of the I-90 ramp near the train station because it'll quote-unquote "lower their property values" and "make a terrible ruckus." But today, finally, was a taste of true victory. Margaret buttoned her "I--THE-CHANCELLOR" overcoat. The rally was about to begin.}

Doublethink

Good thirteen o'clock, citizen. I'm Michael Celani. You're here because you've been chosen to provide the Government with one of its most vital services: setting the record straight. There's a lot of misinformation out there that needs to be corrected, and only some of it is ours. If we don't control the narrative, people might think things we don't like, and that would be no fun. As such, your work is paramount to our nation's continued survival, so on behalf of the entire government of Turbo-Idaho, welcome to the New York Post.

Yes, nothing keeps an Orweillian paradise going like a little bit of propaganda, and to that end, Mazzy, Truesword Paladin

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

First, we must teach you the truth about falsifying the past. Thanks to the fact we bought out NVIDIA for two grand in the early 80s, the government of Turbo-Montana now has the power to hack every computer in the world simultaneously. One way we use this power is to update people's Discord chat messages from five years ago to say terrible things about grain so that if they were to reach out to the massively powerful grain lobby for literal grassroots support, we can cancel them. This control over information is crucial to success; for you to succeed in your role, you'll need to have as much of it as possible. In other words, we're gonna be drawing a bunch of cards:

Enchantment Under the Sea

You know the drill. There's an entire class of permanents out there that tie drawing cards to playing enchantments; Mazzy, Truesword Paladin

A Bit Unorthodox

We might as well investigate the two "enchantresses" out there that get value out of the card type in a manner other than just straight-up drawing you cards. Nessian Wanderer

Animal Farm

Of course, drawing is just a means to an end. The real goal of all of this revisionism is to erase that really embarassing picture I put in one of my YouTube videos of me in full goth makeup convince the masses to fight for us. There's tons of ways to get tokens off of casting enchantments: targeting our own creatures with Auras, or just casting spells in general from exile. Lucky for us, Mazzy

Making the Stars Align

Constellation is no stranger to creating board states so ridiculously complicated you'd need star charts to decipher them. Creatures like Ajani's Chosen

Wartime Heroics

Like a soccer mom telling you about her daily horoscope, this deck just won't shut up about Auras, and since every Aura has to target something when you cast it, they're a natural pair with heroic effects. Heroic is just shorthand for a triggered ability on a creature that goes off whenever something targets it, and there are quite a few of them out there worth looking at for building up a wide army. Akroan Crusader

Banished

Of course, Mazzy

The Ministry of Peace

The theory is in place. We've got the engine to raise an army and keep our hand flush all figured out. Now, the only thing that's left to tackle before we can achieve total victory over the clowns is "what enchantments are we actually playing?" And we better figure that out fast, because clowns scare the hell out of me. Let's take a look:

Increasing Rations

Instead of simple search-ramp, like Cultivate

Staying Safe From Enemies

Mazzy

Weeding Out Traitors

Auras can be removal, too, and since Mazzy

Power Trip

Since we've focused so much of our energy into going wide, it only makes sense to include a couple of anthems to beef up our army as much as possible. Warleader's Call

Substance Abuse

Have you guessed the forgotten keyword, yet? Perhaps you thought it was heroic. Perhaps you thought it was battle cry. Wrong. The truth is, you could have never guessed what it was. Like all good citizens, you've been trained to forget. Trained to stop that thought in your mind when it comes to the forefront of your consciousness. You know that uttering its name is a crime in Turbo-Guam, and that awareness of it condemns you. But you must learn, as you'll need it for your work. It's time to ask the question: what is Substance?

Or that's what we want you to think. The truth is that substance is a keyword that was invented to help certain permanents go away at the beginning of the cleanup step instead of the end step. They were mostly used on Auras in the Mirage block. It existed despite the fact that it was never printed on a Magic card, and though its name has been forgotten, its function has not.

There are five substance Auras in the deck: Spider Climb

But why use mana? With Defiler of Faith

Rewriting the Past

It's said that he that controls the present controls the past, and he that controls the past, controls the future. Unfortunately, I've gotten confused and decided to skip forward to controlling the future directly. That means the past is in control of me, which means I'm not in control of myself. I think I should just end the article before I have to take a philosophy course on the nature of consciousness to understand what I'm even saying.

If you enjoy How They Brew It, please check out the Discord and my other projects at my website. You can vote on what article you want to see next, as well as check out other projects I'm involved in, like Am I the Bolcast. Thanks for reading!

View this decklist on Moxfield