Arcane Procedures

I have wanted to learn how to play Magic: The Gathering for some time, but never had anyone to teach me, nor have I ever felt comfortable showing up to Friday Night Magic at a local game store on my own. In the last year or so my desire to learn has only grown as a few different people I follow have been talking more and more about the game:

• Avery Alder on Twitter¹
• Zullie the Witch about Elden Ring and Magic²
• Jay Dragon’s “The Magpie’s Cube”³
• Bruno Dias’s “Compleat History”⁴

So it was to my great delight that I finally had the chance to try it out, invited by a local friend to a draft night for the new The Lord of the Rings set.⁵ The last trading card game I actively played and collected was The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game, so this felt like a fitting entry point to the hobby.⁶ I had a great time.

I ended up drafting a primarily red/white aggro deck with some fun Rohirrim synergies.⁷ I was primarily picking cards based on vibes, and every now and again registering a given effect or ability as a good one to pull. I won my first two games (the veteran I was playing against went easy on me), and managed to pull off some combos powered by Théoden, King of Rohan and Bill the Pony.⁸ My next two games were against a primarily blue deck, and I had a more challenging time, winning the first by a very slim margin and drawing the second. My final two games were against my friend, and he steamrolled me with a green trample deck.⁹ I paid too much money for the Elven Council Commander deck before I left, but I had no regrets as I sleeved up the cards at home and turned over the possibilities of each in my mind.¹⁰

Since then, I have been quite obsessed, reading as much as I can, watching videos, analyzing mana curves, the works.¹¹ Scryfall and Moxfield have become my best friends.¹² I also played a bit of Arena to get some more familiarity with the rules—and oh, are there rules, rules upon rules upon rules.¹³ One particular family of rules that caught my attention was that of white typal/token generation,¹⁴ and the lifegain synergies of many angel cards that plug into the token generator to create some powerful feedback loops.¹⁵

This brings us to the subtitle of this essay, “Elspeth’s Choir.”¹⁶ This is the name I have given to my first crafted modern deck, a mono white angel-centric deck with token generation and lifegain at its core.¹⁷ I have not had the opportunity to test it against other players’ decks, but I have been pleased with its performance in goldfishing and have been trying out various changes to see what will prove to be the most effective, and the most fun.¹⁸

The generator that powers the whole thing is made up of five specific cards: Impassioned Orator, Anointed Procession, Divine Visitation, Archangel of Thune, and Increasing Devotion.¹⁹ Played in this order, in ideal circumstances, the following machine comes together:

• Whenever another creature enters the battlefield under your control, you gain 1 life.
• If an effect would create one or more tokens under your control, it creates twice that many of those tokens instead.
• If one or more creature tokens would be created under your control, that many 4/4 white Angel creature tokens with flying and vigilance are created instead.
• Whenever you gain life, put a +1/+1 counter on each creature you control.
• Create five 1/1 white Human creature tokens.

With that fifth step, the board explodes: I create five 1/1 tokens; these are doubled under the effect of Anointed Procession, so now I have ten tokens on the board; these are then transformed into ten 4/4 tokens by Divine Visitation; as each enters the battlefield, I gain one life thanks to Impassioned Orator, and for each life gained, Archangel of Thune adds a +1/+1 counter to each creature I control; the end-state is a chorus of ten 14/14 angels, in addition to whatever else I have on the board. With just one more Impassioned Orator (not too difficult with a mana-value of two), the counters on the above double: ten angels, twenty life gained, twenty +1/+1 counters per angel—a terrifying, radiant legion.

The deck includes some more powerful legendary angels—including the titular planeswalker Archangel Elspeth²⁰—there to help out in the instance of a more resilient opponent, as well as several low mana-value but highly synergistic cards: Bishop of Wings, Inspiring Overseer, and Voice of the Blessed.²¹ If all goes to plan, these additional cards remain supplemental, primarily there for flavour and reinforcement, but with the potential for big payoffs (especially if Giada, Font of Hope gets on the board in the right sequence,²¹ or if Akroma, Angel of Wrath gets on the board before the token generator triggers²²).

The complexity of Magic: The Gathering presents its players with a field of what feels like endless possibilities and combinations. What if I included more sorceries and instants, or what if I focused on artifacts and other passive effects? What if I emphasized command and rule enforcement rather than aggro and tokens? What if I had to manage an opponent with burn, or bounce, or board wipes?²³ What if I tried to rebuild this deck in the Commander format? What if… ?

Magic: The Gathering constitutes a manifold of diagrams for play, a model of actions, a repertoire of arcane procedures.²⁴ There is a specialized praktognosia or practical knowledge at work here, of which we can indeed say, with Deleuze, that “the only possible theory is a theory of practice.”²⁵

Notes