Public Library Format

[Ephraim]

I think everybody's had one of those days where you just grab a stack of commons, shuffle in some lands, then have everybody draw from the same stack of cards. It's a quick way to pick up a game, whether anybody actually has their decks with them or not.

I've taken this idea a step further. The problem with using a random stack of commons is that the deck's going to be totally hit or miss. You might end up with a good assortment, but you might hit a clump of all Darksteel or the twenty Scathe Zombies that somebody ditched. To rectify this, I've actually constructed a Public Library deck. It contains 246 cards, carefully selected. Each colour is equally represented, having an equal number of cards, with an identical assortment of commons, uncommons, and rares. One of the best things about this is that it makes possible the use of rather substandard, but fun cards, like Topple, Addle, or Zur's Weirding.

It's always a lot of fun to take this deck to a coffee shop or something. Even if you just start with two people, the deck's large enough to allow six or so people to play at once. I've occasionally had somebody come over to the table and express interest in the game, then be pleasantly surprised that there are more than enough cards for them to sit in the next hand.

The formula I used to create my Public Library deck was, for each colour, to include four each of four commons (well, actually 4, 4, 4, 3, 1) (16 cards), three each of three uncommons (9 cards), and one copy of a single rare, for a total of 26 cards per colour.

Artifacts were added somewhat at whim, although I tried to keep the number of artifacts close to the number of each colour -- in this case, 28 artifacts.

Lands were included to yield a mana ratio of slightly higher than 1/3 (35.8% to be precise).

In general, I tried to include only a small number of cards per colour that had more than one coloured mana in their mana cost (It occured to me just now that I failed miserably with White, so the posted decklist is going to get revised, tonight. Suggestions are welcome.)

Black
Common
4 Grimclaw Bats
4 Raise Dead
4 Rampart Crawler
3 Dragon Shadow
1 Twisted Abomination

Uncommon
3 Carrion Wall
3 Devour in Shaddow
3 Addle

Rare
1 Tainted AEther

Blue
Common
4 Jaded Response
4 Mistform Wall
4 Thought Courier
3 Dragon Wings
1 Shoreline Ranger

Uncommon
3 Mind Bomb
3 Spiketail Drake
3 Meddle

Rare
1 Zur's Weirding

Green
Common
4 Sylvok Explorer
4 Reclaim
4 Elvish Ranger
3 Dragon Fangs
1 Wirewood Guardian

Uncommon
3 Forcemage Advocate
3 Tel-Jilad Justice
3 Wall of Mulch

Rare
1 City of Solitude

Red
Common
4 Goblin Digging Team
4 Panic Attack
4 Longhorn Firebeast
3 Dragon Breath
1 Chartooth Cougar

Uncommon
3 Carbonize
3 Last Ditch Effort
3 Minotaur Explorer

Rare
1 Sulphuric Vortex

White
Common
4 Loxodon Anchorite
4 Topple
4 Aura Blast
3 Dragon Scales
1 Noble Templar

Uncommon
3 Skyhunter Skirmisher
3 Seasoned Marshal
3 Vanquish

Rare
1 Rule of Law

Artifact
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Steel Wall
4 Patchwork Gnomes
4 Darksteel Ingot
4 Lunar Avenger
4 Heliophial
4 Composite Golem

Land
12 Swamp
12 Island
12 Forest
12 Mountain
12 Plains
4 Rainbow Vale
4 Tarnished Citadel

[LotusHead]

This reminds me of my very first game of Magic back in '94.  Someone had some cards, no one really knew all the rule, we all drew from the same deck.  Fun.  By the time I had a flying, firebreathing invisible Scathe Zombie, I was HOOKED!

Does everyone have their own graveyard, or one giant mass grave?

[Ephraim]

Mass graveyard. It makes stuff like the Dragon enchantments, Raise Dead, and Reclaim interesting. Of them, Reclaim is especially neat in a team game. It allows you to feed cards from the 'yard to your team mate.

[Matt]

So how does Funeral Pyre work? Whenever I make a "public library" format, I have to just ban the thing.

[Smmenen]

Everyone has their own graveyard.  play t4.

[Ephraim]

Everyone has their own graveyard.  play t4.

Begone, thou vile threadjacker!

Nobody listen to him. Do not play Type 4. Play Public Library.

So how does Funeral Pyre work? Whenever I make a "public library" format, I have to just ban the thing.

It's not a card I ever really considered. I conscientiously avoided cards with Threshhold and [most] cards that make you search your library. Funeral Pyre falls into the same sort of category -- a card that just doesn't work so well with the deck. I've only vaguely toyed with the idea of including cards with Flashback. I recently took out all of the cards in the deck with Morph. I didn't have a good selection across the colours, so if somebody had a morph creature, you knew it was one of four things and you could readily discern which by keeping track of which mana they left open. However, I suppose if I did want to include it, the simple way of doing things would just be to ask, "Who had that card last?" and give them the Spirit token.

Also, how does it sound to make the following substitutions to the white cards, so there are fewer cards with two white in the mana cost.
Replace Loxodon Anchorite with Aven Redeemer
Replace Skyhunter Skirmisher with Standing Troops

[Luc, Use The Force]

I suggest you to play Memory Lapse, this card is sooooo hot with only one library!

[Ephraim]

If/when I decide to remove Metamorphose from the deck, that would be a good replacement for Jaded Response. As it is, I like having the counterspell be 1. weak and 2. an extension of the fact that the deck is five colours. Memory Lapse has actually seen play in "real" decks. Neither Metamorphose nor Jaded Response have. By that token, the latter two get into the deck, since one of its large themes is otherwise unplayable cards getting played. (see also: Tarnished Citadel, Addle, Mind Bomb)

EDIT: Of course, how could you be expected to know that Metamorphose is in the deck? I swapped them in, in place of Meddle, since this was last posted. Yeah, it's a deck that evolves a little bit from time to time. Sometimes older cards that I'd never considered before catch my eye and go in. Sometimes newer cards get added, just to make the deck fresh. At any rate, the changes I needed to make for white were made shortly after posting. Loxodon Anchorite became Aven Redeemer and Skyhunter Skirmisher became Tonic Peddler.

[Xenophon]

This will start off-topic but please bear with me.

When it comes to PC games, there's a subset of the community that are the unsung heroes amongst PC gamers, the put back in what they take out.  These are the people who stoke the fires of the community, who fuel it and take n00bs under their wings...these are the people who spend hours developing detailed strategy guides to post for free somewhere on the web, these are the people who calculate the number of hitpoints per second a Hydralisk can drain...

Ephraim, you are MTG's equivalent.  It was great of you to put the effort into this decklist...it's the fun sort of thing to, as you say, take into a game shop or bookshop or cafe and play with...and it so doing you draw new players into the game in a way that will introduce them to something other than the n00b community of beatdown decks.  


Clap clap clap clap clap clap clap.

[Ephraim]

It's been a while since I posted the last Public Library list. Champions of Kamigawa and Betrayers of Kamigawa have brought some huge changes to the lists. Cards like [card]Kami of Ancient Law[/card] are really fantastic. Unlike [card]Aura Blast[/card], Kami of Ancient Law is never dead-in-hand. Unlike [card]Monk Realist[/card], you must give up card advantage to use its effect and you don't have any incentive not to cast it. Although there have been several rounds of changes since I last posted, this latest round has finally seen the removal of the Dragon Enchantments from Scourge and the associated land-cyclers. The Dragon Enchantments were fundamentally preventing me from adding creatures with converted mana costs greater than six and were well past their prime, anyways. I've also begun to phase out the walls. They're interesting, to a degree, but they're just taking up too much space. I like [card]Wall of Mulch[/card] and I like having an excuse to play with cards like [card]Goblin Digging Team[/card], but as with all aspects of the deck, it's time for some evolution.

Black
Common
4 Grimclaw Bats
4 Raise Dead
4 Irradiate
4 Unnerve

Uncommon
3 Addle
3 Ogre Marauder
3 Deathgazer

Rare
1 Infernal Genesis

I am pretty sure that Black is going to get shaken up again when I make the next revision. I find it unfortunate that some of the most interesting spells in the colour are all common, which leaves me with a lack of creatures in the common slots. It may be necessary to forgo one of the spells I like (Irradiate or Unnerve), just to keep the mana curve tolerable if/when I replace Raise Dead with Gravedigger.

Red
Common
4 Goblin Digging Team
4 Hearth Kami
4 First Volley
4 Shinka Gatekeeper

Uncommon
3 Carbonize
3 Pain Kami
3 Minotaur Explorer

Rare
1 Hand to Hand

Red really highlights the value of Kamigawa block to this deck. Hearth Kami and Pain Kami fill slots that were previously occupied by spells that performed similar effects, at competitive costs. Because I like games with this deck to revolve around combat, this is a plus. Shinka Gatekeeper is an interesting variant of Balduvian Barbarians, which previously held a position in the deck. Although each colour is permitted one or two double-C cards, red has none, because I think the Gatekeeper is a far more interesting card than the Barbarians.

White
Common
4 Topple
4 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Aven Redeemer
4 Silverstorm Samurai

Uncommon
3 Empty-Shrine Kannushi
3 Gallantry
3 Glittering Lion

Rare
1 Glowrider

White is the colour that got the first benefit from the removal of the Dragon Enchantments. Silverstorm Samurai really isn't all that good, but I love the flavour it represents. Without the Dragon Enchantments, I can actually include it. Glowrider was the first enchantment-like creature I included in this deck. I think it's a good fit and it's definitely more interesting than Earnest Fellowship, the card that used to occupy white's rare slot. Empty-Shrine Kannushi is one of those cards that just happens to be incredibly interesting in this deck, since it's force 5-colour. Of all the colours, I think that white has the best-balanced selection of spells and creatures.

Blue
Common
4 Infiltrate
4 Counsel of the Soratami
4 Cephalid Scout
4 Shimmering Glasskite

Uncommon
3 Spiketail Drake
3 Metamorphose
3 Psychic Membrane

Rare
1 Unifying Theory

I continuously waffle back and forth between Unifying Theory and Zur's Weirding. Z.W. often turns out to be just stupid, so as little as I like Unifying Theory, it gets the nod this round. I'm always on the lookout for something new for blue's rare position, though. Psychic Membrane highlights one of the problems with walls in this deck. I've intentionally kept it somewhat low-power, so the fact that the Membrane seldom dies in combat and that it really sucks to give your opponent cards means that it often reads, "you can't be attacked." Even if I don't clear out walls entirely, it may be subject to removal as soon as I find something with which to replace it. Metamorphose remains one of the most interesting cards in the deck, since everybody shares a library, it actually takes on some tactical value. Cephalid Scout replaces Thought Courier, which actually turned out to be too powerful. Persistent card-drawing has turned out to be so critically powerful in this deck that I decided a land-sacrifice would hardly be an excessive cost to use it. Shimmering Glasskite and Counsel of the Soratami get in largely because I have four copies of each that I've been dying to use.

Green
Common
4 Reclaim
4 Orochi Leafcaller
4 Tel-Jilad Lifebreather
4 Order of the Sacred Bell

Uncommon
3 Wall of Mulch
3 Forcemage Advocate
3 Elephant Guide

Rare
Dosan, the Falling Leaf

Forcemage Advocate remains one of my favourite cards in the stack. He'd certainly suck in constructed, but he's perfectly balanced in this deck. Orochi Leafcaller replaces Quirion Elves, both because I think it's a little more powerful and because it was time for a change. Tel-Jilad Lifebreather is a card that I think is terrible, but which I think will work out in this deck. Given the importance of combat, I think that regeneration, like card-drawing is one of the most valuable assets a creature can have. Even if the Lifebreather only activates once or twice in a game, I think those activations will have critical importance.

Artifacts
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Steel Wall
4 Patchwork Gnomes
4 Darksteel Ingot
4 Clockwork Condor

3 Flowstone Armor
3 Icy Manipulator
3 Mourner's Shield

1 Gate to the AEther
1 Ashnod's Coupon

I boasted that I was going to add Ashnod's Coupon for months and I finally found one for less than $5, so I bought it and threw it in. It is predictably stupid and funny. Gate to the AEther just does interesting things. If nothing else, it speeds up the game a lot. Flowstone Armor may end up coming out. Too many of the creatures in this stack are x/1 for it to be particularly fair. Clockwork Condor is an interesting addition. It was on my hit list for a while, until I got it into play simultaneously with Forcemage Advocate.

In addition to the cards above, I have added one of each of the Hondens from Champions of Kamigawa. The land mix is about the same, although I think I've added one of each basic land since the last revision.

[Ephraim]

The latest edition of this deck is the result of a lot of evolution since the last posted build. Previously, I took out the Dragon enchantments from Scourge -- partly because they had been in the deck for too long and partly because I felt like they made the game too luck-based. Often, drawing one of the five 6-cc creatures in the deck would result in a behemoth that would spell automatic victory for the lucky person who drew it. After I took them out, however, I came to realize that the deck wasn't as much fun to play anymore. The solution I devised was to increase the power level somewhat so that games would swing more often, but less drastically than they had with the Dragon enchantments. To this end, each colour underwent a fairly severe overhaul. One of the changes I made was to remove the old, symmetrical rare cards to make room for more powerful, swingy, rare sorceries and instants.

White
Common
4 Topple
4 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Awe Strike
4 Dive Bomber

Uncommon
3 Empty Shrine Kannushi
3 Glittering Lion
3 Orim's Prayer
1 Honden of Cleansing Fire

Rare
1 Solar Tide

One of the things I recognized regarding the last posted edition was that white's commons were significantly higher-priced than those of the other colours. Although I ended up replacing Aven Redeemer with the identically-costed Dive Bomber, I also replaced the 6-cc Silverstorm Samurai (which sucked, by the way) with Awe Strike. The switch to Dive Bomber has, I believe, increased the interactivity of the deck. Although damage prevention was never too powerful, it did encourage sedentary strategies. I think that Dive Bomber limits a player's temptation to sit back and let the game simmer. Awe Strike has proven a much more interesting, swingy card than the Samurai could ever hope to be. I also swapped in Orim's Prayer in place of the entirely-too-weak Gallantry. I'm not sure if this was a wise decision or not. There are enough low-power creatures in the deck that Orim's Prayer encourages stasis. One big reason why I put it in was because I wanted Kami of Ancient Law to have targets. If anybody could suggest a different, uncommon, white enchantment, I'd welcome suggestions. I considered Diversionary Tactics and Hypochondria, which could be viable alternatives. Story Circle might not be bad either. Solar Tide, as you can see, is the rare I opted to use. Partly, this decision was made because I happened to own a Solar Tide, but I do think that it's an interesting, versatile Wrath variant.

Black
Common
4 Unnerve
4 Servant of Volrath
4 Phyrexian Denouncer
4 Spinal Graft

Uncommon
3 Bone Shredder
3 Souldrinker
3 Zombify
1 Honden of Night's Reach

Rare
1 Diabolic Intent

Black underwent the most drastic changes in this latest revision. Only one card, Unnerve, remains intact from previously, and I've been toying with the possibility of swapping it out in favour of Syphon Mind. The problem I mentioned before is still present, to some degree. It can't be helped that a lot of black's most interesting spells are common. Spinal Graft and Servant of Volrath are both really interesting additions to the deck, although experience is beginning to show that there are too many targetted spells and effects for Spinal Graft to be worthwhile very often. They do a good job of reflecting black's mentality regarding risk/reward and I think they both contribute well to a more intense game. Phyrexian Denouncer doesn't particularly excite me, but I was getting tired of Grimclaw Bats (in part because the last edition had far too many flying creatures in it.) Souldrinker is just an oldschool card that I have always admired, but had never previously found a home for. I am glad to have found a deck where it plays well. Bone Shredder earns its place because I no longer have reliable removal in the common slot. I considered Nekretaal in that position, but I am wary of first-striking creatures in this deck and it would tilt the mana curve, considering that the other two uncommon spells I selected both also have casting costs of four. Zombify, like Bone Shredder, was added to the deck as an uncommon-level replacement for a common spell that was removed -- in this case, the iconic Raise Dead. I decided that the colour issues with this deck were significant enough that Zombify would be especially useful. That's good, becuase in other regards, black added to the swinginess of games primarily though high-risk behaviour. Diabolic Intent was added largely because I couldn't think of anything else to add. Black is good at tutoring, so it is certainly an appropriate card for the position. I was, however, rather nonplussed at what I felt was a dearth of other viable options.

Green
Common
4 Orochi Leafcaller
4 Reclaim
4 Tangle Asp
4 Krosan Tusker

Uncommon
3 Elephant Guide
3 Forcemage Advocate
3 Titania's Boon
1 Honden of Life's Web

Rare
1 All Suns' Dawn

Green really didn't undergo all that many changes. With the removal of all walls from the deck, the powerful Titania's Boon found its way into one of green's uncommon slots. Forcemage Advocate remains one of the most amusing cards in the deck. After the removal of the Dragon enchantments and the Scourge landcyclers, I found that the deck's colour fixing was somewhat unsatisfactory. Krosan Tusker solved that problem as well as providing one huge, green creature to the deck. The fact that it cycles also yields an interesting interaction with Zombify. Tangle Asp replaced Tel-Jilad Lifebreather because I concluded that the troll was too bad even to appear in the Public Library deck -- especially with the increase in power with this latest revision. All Suns' Dawn has proven to be a very powerful choice. Because the deck is five colours and because opponents will often discard cards that they can't cast, the graveyard often has 3-5 different colours of spells available.

Blue
Common
4 Merfolk Traders
4 Rushing River
4 Shimmering Glasskite
4 Counsel of the Soratami

Uncommon
3 Metamorphose
3 Eyes of the Watcher
3 Rootwater Diver
1 Honden of Seeing Winds

Rare
1 Desertion

Blue underwent some very significant changes with this revision. At the common level, Merfolk Traders replaces Cephalid Scout. Sacrificing a land turrned out to be too heavy of a drawback for the draw/discard ability. Since I was trying to reduce the number of flying creatures in the deck, I passed over Soratami Cloudskater. Instead, I opted to knock down blue's card drawing ability a little bit with the cheaper Merfolk. Infiltrate just seemed to be getting boring. It was very seldom useful. The player that was winning usually had the upper hand without having to sneak an attack through. Rushing River, on the other hand, has a lot of versatility. It also takes up the "sacrifice a land" cost that I liked about Cephalid Scout, with an ability that is often much more worthwhile for the price. Spiketail Drake was cut because too many games were being decided by who controlled the 3/3 flying creature. Psychic Membrane was cut with the elimination of walls from the deck. Eyes of the Watcher is a fine replacement, since blue's library-manipulation skill is particularly potent in the case of a shared library. Rootwater Diver isn't spectacular, but it provides an effect that the deck has never seen before. Especially with several artifact creatures, it certainly isn't always used to retrieve the victims of artifact destruction. Desertion hasn't seen many games yet, so I can't say much about it. It's nice, I suppose, to have a little bit of countermagic back in the deck, even if it's just one card. I'm sure it has the potential to make for a terrific swing.

Red
Common
4 Dwarven Scorcher
4 Kindle
4 Shinka Gatekeeper
4 Echoing Ruin

Uncommon
3 Pain Kami
3 Blood Rites
3 Goblin Psychopath
1 Honden of Infinite Rage

Rare
1 Relentless Assault

Echoing Ruin is actually a last-minute revision to this deck. When I reviewed my selection of cards in preparation for writing this article, I realized that I had omitted artifact destruction. I was kind of bored with Hearth Kami and I had too much direct damage anyway, so it wasn't any great sacrifice to swap out First Volley in favour of Echoing Ruin.  Kindle is just a neat card. The fact that everybody shares a graveyard makes it maddeningly fun. Ronin Cavekeeper replaced Goblin Digging Team partly because of the removal of all walls and partly because I realized that red really should be good at beating too. You may notice, of course, that Ronin Cavekeeper is not present in the above list. After a brief stint, I realized that I'd given red a really bad curve, so I replaced the Ronin with Dwarven Scorcher. Goblin Psychopath replaces the Ronin as red's beater. Carbonize was simply in the deck too long; Blood Rites has fascinated me ever since I saw it so I was really glad for an opportunity to use it.

Artifact
Common
4 Thermal Navigator
4 Yotian Soldier
4 Chromatic Sphere
4 Darksteel Ingot
4 Clockwork Condor

Uncommon
3 Mourner's Shield
3 Icy Manipulator

Rare
1 Gate to the AEther
1 Ashnod's Coupon

The artifacts haven't undergone any particularly drastic changes. Flowstone Armor got nixed when it turned out to be way too effective as creature removal. I replaced Patchwork Gnomes with Thermal Navigator just because I was getting bored with the Gnomes and I replaced Steel Wall with Yotian Soldier when I got rid of the walls. I figure Yoshi fills a similar niche.

[Matt]

Bone Harvest is something I've always had a lot of fun with in such formats. Stack it so I get back the Blastoderms, and you get the Sea Eagles.

[Ephraim]

I don't think that Bone Harvest would be very good for this deck. I previously ran Sage Owl and I ended up having to take it out because that kind of deck stacking was way too powerful. The same would be true of Bone Harvest. That said, I am still looking for cards to replace Spinal Graft -- preferably an enchantment of some sort. At the moment, the top contenders are Coils of the Medusa, Dark Privilege, and Twisted Experiment. Another option I could consider would be replacing Bone Shredder with Mind Slash, Spinal Graft with a creature -- Nim Lasher or Death Charmer probably -- and Unnerve with Feast or Famine. (If that looks complicated, it's because I want to maintain balance between different black functions -- creature-kill and discard, in this case.)

[amuraivel]

@Ephraim

1. I guess my critique of your Public Library is that with all the multiples of 4, you may have a lot of symmetric
board positions--like playing a mirror constantly.

2. The mana base is bad...I tried playing with 5C Public Library, and without alot of colored mana floating around I found myself with little to do within the first few turns except for drop lands.  My solution was only using 40 dual lands, which effectively reduces the number of "colors" from 5 --> 2.5.

3.  Don't take this harshly--for it is just a preference --- but, nothing in your Public Library realy excites me;

In that case, I fail to see why it made you resurrect a two month old thread. I'll leave this open for the time being, because I like the public library idea, but don't make thread necromancy a habit, please.  - Bram

 I realize you are trying to use commons, but well these seem like pretty boring commons. 

Precisely why I am building a singleton Public Library.

Obviously, certain cards just don't work or are useless: e.g. blood moon, or energy flux, the Sage Owl..., but
I think this is a great casual format because it gives everyone the same chances as far as card drawing is concerned.

I tried to develop a balanced set a bit spicier than Beta to play with my wife...but the problem was
the deck construction part of the game is just too overwhelming.  There is was also a sense of fairness, that was
lacking--whether this blue card or black card was better (this because the card pool was limited to one copy).

Has anyone else built a public library?..Would you post them for the rest of us?

[Ephraim]

1. I guess my critique of your Public Library is that with all the multiples of 4, you may have a lot of symmetric
board positions--like playing a mirror constantly.

2. The mana base is bad...I tried playing with 5C Public Library, and without alot of colored mana floating around I found myself with little to do within the first few turns except for drop lands.  My solution was only using 40 dual lands, which effectively reduces the number of "colors" from 5 --> 2.5.

3.  Don't take this harshly--for it is just a preference --- but, nothing in your Public Library realy excites me.

Edits to the deck since last posting: Memory Lapse replaces Counsel of the Soratami & Thirst for Knowledge replaces Metamorphose; Grave Servitude replaces Spinal Graft; Mercurial Kite replaces Shimmering Glasskite;

1. The board doesn't often end up being symmetrical. Although there are lots of cards with multiplicity four, don't forget that the deck contains somewhere between 230 and 250 cards. Most games, the two sides of the boards look nothing like one another. Having cards with multiplicity three and four allows me to keep the colours in balance against one another more easily, since I only have eight or nine unique cards per colour to judge.

2. Your criticism of the mana base is well-founded. In fact, I haven't updated the section on the mana base ever, but I believe it looks something more like this now:

9 of each basic land
4 each of Abandoned Outpost, Bog Wreckage, Ravaged Highlands, Seafloor Debris, and Timberland Ruins
4 Rainbow Vale
4 Mirrodin's Core

Mirrodin's Core is a lot more versatile than Tarnished Citadel and the Odyssey sacrifice-lands are very good at colour fixing. Although I could use duals, theoretically, I don't own a full playset of duals and furthermore, I'd hate to have to dig them out of my real decks every time I wanted to play with this deck. Furthermore, having many lands makes it possible to use more expensive spells. Even at that, I think the ratio of lands in the deck is actually smaller than in most decks. A lot of casual decks are one-third land and that is often considered slightly low for a competitive deck. This deck has a land ratio somewhere between 0.29 and 0.32 and that's with 73 lands. Using just 40 duals would require me to cut the size of the deck a lot. I selected 240 cards as the optimal size for a deck that could potentially service six people at once. The other solution, I suppose, would be to run 40 duals and five to seven basics of each type, for a total of 65 - 75 land. That still supposes that I have dual lands to spare, which I don't.

3. It is just a preference, but I would still like to address it. In part, I've avoided some more interesting cards because I didn't want to offbalance the colours. If just one colour has a creature with Morph, then it quickly becomes no surprise at all when somebody plays a Morph card. If I were to give one colour a spell with Buyback, that colour would have a distinct advantage over the other colours — and I don't particularly like the selection of spells with Buyback that are available for every colour. Additionally, the nature of the deck prevents Threshold and Flashback from working well. Because I like playing this deck with people who are new to the game, I also tried to keep the spells ideologically consistent with their colours and relatively easy to understand. Of course, some of the spells are uninteresting, simply because I needed to fill some niches. Artifact destruction, enchantment destruction, card drawing, etc. are seldom exciting abilities, but I think they're crucial to the deck operating smoothly.

That leaves relatively little space for the really exciting cards, but I think you'll find them if you look closely. Consider how interesting Memory Lapse and reclaim are in a deck where every player is drawing from the same library. They're even more interesting when you're playing team games from the deck.  Forcemage Advocate is really good when you have a means of putting something relatively useless into the community graveyard (the Odyssey sacrifice-lands, for example.) I'm eagerly awaiting the day that Forcemage Advocate + Ashnod's Coupon results in a table where Magic cards are vying for space with beverages. Empty-Shrine Kannushi and Mourner's Shield can be game breakers in this deck. I bet you won't ever see that anywhere else! Although the cards may not be especially interesting in a vacuum, some of them have been chosen specifically because they're more interesting in a Public Library deck than they are in general.

[Tons of Fun]

I've been working on something to this effect, but my strategy is to put 1 of every common in whatever sets I can get my hands on into the stack. Having every common from the Onslaught block included makes Morph quite a bit more mysterious. I do, however, see how Morph just doesn't work for what you're trying to do. My stack currently includes:

9th Edition (Working on 7th and 8th as well)
Odyssey
Torment
Judgment
Onslaught
Legions
Scourge
Mirrodin
Fifth Dawn (Working on Darksteel)
Champions of Kamigawa (Working on Betrayers and Saviors)
Ravnica
Unhinged

[amuraivel]

I think Memory Lapse was made for Public Library as you said, because it can be very political with several people; I will put it in mine--and ashnod's cupon--that is fun and not stupid like the knight of hokey poky (sp?)

Mana base is better.  I agree--I hesitate about the duals if not for the reason that toting 40x20USD --800USD around in a casual deck that cannot be checked easily is just begging to be stolen from.  Besides "sub-optimal" mana producers should be just as good considering the game is a bit slower and there is no blood moon / price of progress / Back to Basics, etc. to deal with.

I agree with the problem about the balancing act--even though Sage Owl is not overly broken--who ever draws it swings the game considerably.

Amuraivel

I'll post my list for for critique...

[TylerEss]

Public Library is the best!

My wife and I have a Public Library deck about as big as yours, but instead of worrying about having a manabase, we just play with the two basic Type 4 rules: infinite basic lands, one spell per turn. It works really well that way, and is a lot of fun.

We run a lot of broken stuff, like Mind Twist, Mental Discipline, and Yawgmoth's Agenda(Great in T4, think about it in mass-graveyard!), but the sheer amount of "b0rken" practically assures an equal amount of it for both players.

Kinda sucks never to have more than one spell per turn, but it kinda sucks to be mana or color-screwed. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

[JigglyPuff]

Everyone has their own graveyard.  play t4.

Type 4 is the BOMB!!!!
I wish i played at the tournament but i guess top 4 is more important....
Practically everyone has there own t4 stack around here...
I really like Ray's stack with every card altered....