Even if you do not play this game, feel free to comment or ask questions. I am more than willing to answer any and all questions.

If you do play, then let me know what you honestly think of this deck. I would also like to know how long you have been playing if you are willing to share.

Deck List: 60 cards.

Land: 20 cards.
[8] Forest
[6] Island
[6] Mountain

Creatures: 5 cards.
[4] Sakura-Tribe Scout
[1] Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Other Spells: 35 cards.
[3] Abundance
[4] Braid of Fire
[3] Bulwark
[4] Darksteel Ingot
[2] Gaea's Blessing
[1] Ghitu Fire
[1] Gilded Lotus
[1] Heartbeat of Spring
[2] Library of Leng
[1] Lifegift
[2] Magmatic Core
[4] Paradox Haze
[4] Psychic Vortex
[3] Words of Wilding

Review:

This deck is mainly for casual play and works best in a game with more than two people. As the name of the deck implies, the main idea around this deck is to get Psychic Vortex out into play then to abuse it. When I first read the card I saw the line “Cumulative upkeep: Draw a Card,” and I thought that I could really make that card work. I failed to read the part about sacrificing a land and discarding your hand at the end of each turn. I did not realize this fact until I had bought four of them along with many other cards in order to build the deck. Once I found this out I knew that I could still make the deck work, but that it would be much more difficult.

Before we really get into the deck, I would like to stress that this deck works best if used in a game with more than two players. To some extent the more players the better, because that means more distractions and targets for your opponents, thus allowing you the time you need to get the deck moving. On the flip side, this means more chances that someone will have an answer to you once you do get going. However if you play a two person game you will most likely be down and out before you can get everything in line.

I am going to start with the deck's namesake and go on from there. The most important piece to the puzzle is Psychic Vortex. Once you have this out you can start drawing extra cards each turn. While you have to sacrifice a land and discard your hand each turn, a few cards were added to help maintain both your supply of mana, and your deck.

One of the most important cards for this is Abundance. Abundance allows you to skip your draw, thus allowing you not to lose the game due to having to draw a card with no cards in your library. When you skip your draw you choose land or non-land, then you reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal the chosen type of card. Using this you are able to get at least one land each turn, therefore negating the land sacrifice each turn.

You can then pair that with Sakura-Tribe Scout. This 1/1 creature allows you to put an extra land into play each turn by tapping it. Using this creature and your extra card draws or by choosing land more than once in a single turn with Abundance, you can now get ahead of the curve and play more lands each turn than you sacrifice. This giving you a greater ability to play more cards.

Still if things continue on that way you will soon have no more lands in your deck to grab, nor will you have any lands in play. Darksteel Ingot and Gilded Lotus help with that since they produce mana like land does, but they are artifacts instead of land. Because of that you are able to keep them around and can have some mana in the most dire of situations. As well, Gaea's Blessing and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre are in the deck in order to get cards back from your graveyard into your library. Gaea's Blessing lets you pick up to three cards and shuffle them back in then you get to draw a card too, and this deck is all about drawing cards. Ulamog shuffles your entire graveyard back in when it goes into the graveyard from anywhere, and this is perfect when you have to discard you hand at the end of each turn anyway. If you wish Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Kozilek, Butcher of Truth may be substituted. Most of the time you will not be playing them and they will be used just to discard. However the deck can cast them from time to time and they can make a big difference in the game. Ulamog just happened to be the one that I owned at the time.

So now we are drawing a lot of cards with limited choice of what we get and putting into play more than one land a turn. We have some mana that does not get eaten by our own cards, and we are recycling our graveyard so that we do not run out of cards.

With those cards you are fairly well protected from yourself. Library of Leng is in the deck and though it gives you no maximum hand size, most likely you will not be using that aspect of the card. The part that you are looking for is that when you have to discard your hand with Psychic Vortex, you may choose to place some or all of those cards on top of your library instead. That way you can keep that important card that you are worried that you may not get to draw again for some time.

Braid of Fire is another important part of this deck. It has a cumulative upkeep of add one red mana to your mana pool. This mana can be used for Ghitu Fire, Magmatic Core, and Word of Wilding. With Ghitu Fire you may use up any extra and left over mana during your upkeep and deal a little or a lot of damage to a creature or player. Commonly once this deck gets moving, this can kill a player outright with little trouble.

Magmatic Core has a cumulative upkeep of one colorless mana. You can play Braid of Fire and Magmatic Core together and they will both build at the same rate. Braid of Fire giving you a little more mana each turn, and Magmatic Core requiring a little more mana each turn. After a few turns, you can generally keep the population of creatures on the battlefield to manageable levels.

Word of Wilding is actually the decks main win condition. It states that if you would draw a card, you may instead pay one colorless mana and put a 2/2 green bear token into play instead. Having this with Braid of Fire and a Psychic Vortex means that each turn you will get one more mana, draw one more card, and then you can use the mana to turn some or all of those cards into bears instead of drawing them. This can give you a lot of bears is short order, and protect you from drawing your deck out.

Another of the decks win conditions is Bulwark. This one allows you to deal damage to an opponent equal to the number of cards in your hand, minus the number of cards in their hand. Depending on how your library is sitting and how many cards you want to draw (remember the deck allows you to turn them into bears instead now) this can be a lot or a little damage.

Along with Ghitu Fire, Heartbeat of Spring and Lifegift are fun cards that end up being relative filler. Heartbeat of spring causes all land, including your opponents to add an extra mana of the type it produced to mana pools. This can greatly boost the game, allowing you to play much more each turn. However it does the same for you opponents so be careful while playing it. Lifegift is the decks only form of life gain. Each time a land comes into play you may gain 1 life. Ideally that is something you will be doing a lot of, and your opponents will most likely be dong a lot of that as well. I currently do not own a second one, but if you decide to build this deck and you do, I would recommend taking out either the Ghitu Fire or the Heartbeat of Spring and adding a second one. You will love the extra life.

The last card left in the deck is Paradox Haze. This card enchants a player and usually you will want to enchant yourself. It gives you an extra upkeep each turn, and more than one stacks. It is almost unbelievable how much of a difference this card can make on the deck. Having a single one of these with a single Psychic Vortex is more rewarding than having two Psychic Vortexes out. Even though every other card in the deck in important. This is the one card that truly makes this deck insane.

A quick example. During a normal turn, you get one upkeep, and draw one card and get to lay one land. Assume you have a Psychic Vortex, a Paradox Haze, a Word of Wilding, a Bulwark, an Abundance, a Sakura-Tribe Scout, and a Braid of Fire in play, and that this is the first turn after they came into play. Now it is important to not that the cards that automatically trigger you get to choose the order that they do so. Thus I am going to give the order that I would choose to trigger them.

First I would get the one red mana, then I would draw the card. At that point it becomes a choice. I could choose simply to draw it, or I could turn it into a bear, or I could choose land or non-land. Whatever I choose Bulwark would then trigger. If I got the bear, I would have no cards in hand because Psychic Vortex would have forced you to discard them the turn before, and you would not be able to deal any damage. If you choose to get the card into your hand then if an opponent had no cards in hand you could deal one damage to them. Usually you would then go to your draw step, make the dame draw a card choices then continue on with your turn, and if you had two Psychic Vortexes you would have gotten a total of three cards instead of 2. However Paradox Haze in play, so you get another upkeep. This allows you to get another 2 red mana, and draw 2 more cards. Thus you could end up with any combo of four cards or four bears. During your second upkeep you could have three cards in your hand so with Bulwark for the turn you could have dealt up to four damage. From there each turn gets worse for you opponents.

I hope you enjoy this review of my deck. If you play and have the cards or the will and ability to get them, feel free to try it out with your friends. Also, feel free to comment or ask questions.

~Kenutsu Yasashiku