The introduction
I'm a magic player with a lively interest in Vintage, but due to budgetary reasons I'm restricted to playing casual. During the creation of a casual UW Fishlike deck I decided to cut one plains for a Karakas I had, because Wastelands are non-existant over here and the card added some style. After testing a couple of matches I started to think some more about it and noticed some major advantages.

I'd like to say I have hardly any serious playing experience in Vintage, and most of this post will be purely theoratical. I'm not trying to tell everyone to play Karakas, but I do hope to make people think about this card and discuss it.

But first for those of you who don't know the card:


Errata'ed text:
Karakas
Legendary Land
T: Add W to your mana pool.
T: Return target legendary creature to its owner’s hand.

The pros:
1) Uncounterable
2) Wrecks Oath's double angel team (pre-board)
3) Creates colored mana
4) Saves Kataki's, Isamaru's and other creatures
5) Many random advantages

The cons:
1) Non-fetchable
2) Wasteable
3) Legendary

So what I'd like to ask: Has Karakas been tested in for example UW Fish? If so: why didn't it turn out valiable? If not: might it find a place?

Okay, I might be a new face to some people here, I've been a long time lurker and an occasional poster. Like to read and think about competitive magic, but I only play casual. My latest creation is based on the lotus salvagers/bomberman deck, but I wanted to try a more aggressive approach:

Mana:
4 Great Furnace
4 Ancient Den
4 Seat of the Synod
1 Karakas
3 Flooded Strand
3 Plains
4 Island
1 Lotus Petal
1 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Sol Ring

Creatures
3 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
4 Trinket Mage
4 Auriok Salvagers
2 Isamaru, Hound of Konda

Trinkets
2 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Scrabbling Claws
1 Conjurer's Bauble
2 Bonesplitter
3 Mishra's Bauble
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sunbeam Spellbomb
3 Aether Spellbomb

Draw & Tutor
2 Thirst for Knowledge
3 Artificer's Intuition

The deck doesn't have much of raw drawing power, but the combination of Sensei and the shuffle-effects, and the fact a lot of spells replace themselves quite make up for that. One might claim this deck lacks focus, but I would counter that by saying that's the point of the deck. It's supposed to be aggro-combo with toolbox functionality. The combo is mainly included as an emergency brake, not as primary win condition. Like I said before, this is a casual deck and casual is supposed to be about the fun. Just going off out of nowhere and winning isn't often considered fun, but going off at the end of an exhausting match is often welcomed.

However, casual doesn't equal bad, and I would welcome suggestions for improvement. I'm mainly looking to steer the deck more toward aggro, and suggestions for decent aggro-critters are welcome.

Some cards I considered but chose not to play:
Force of Will: Powerful, but I lack blue.
Meddling Mage: My metagame is casual, varied and always changing rapidly, making the use of this one almost impossible.
Jotun Grunt: In my meta, most of the time I lack supplies for the upkeep.

I'm currently building a very budget monoblack version of the deck, focusing on major disruption. Playing a full set of Wastelands, Ghost Quarters, Strip Mines, as well as 4 Chalices, Unmasks and Therapies buys me some time while I set up using Anvil of Bogardan and Zombie Infestation. It's nowhere near the power of the bazaar-driven version, but it can be done on a budget..

I've had a quite good casual fairy deck once, and the way I used to overwhelm the opponent was by combining Future Sight with lots of landfetchers, resulting in huge amounts of very small creatures on my side of the board, and often quite a lot of mana too. I also included 3 copies of Tribal Unity, and I often managed to cast it for 6 or greater, which usually is enough to ensure a kill, even if some of my attackers were blocked.

The first version of the deck used recycle instead of sight, but I really didn't like the reduced hand size.

I'd advise you to consider the sight, and if you find you often have decent amounts of mana, test tribal unity. Rancor is a must-add, adn you might consider some landfetchers. Equipment didn't really work for me, but you might want to test it for yourself.