Perpetual Motion

Brief aside: Wizards of the Coast is changing the design of Magic cards and, although they provide a host of reasons for it, (and you can compare the changes between the old and new from links I found at Reddit) it was stonethorn who pointed out that it's likely because of the increase of counterfeit cards, especially those from China. I found an article on spotting fakes at Quiet Speculation and thought it would be worth everyone's time to bone up. Cheers!


I named this deck after the Anthrax song and it is my opinion that Anthrax was a better band with John Bush as the lead singer than they were without him. The lyrics were more interesting, the music was heavier and they were just a better, scrappier band with him. Then there was drama and he ended up leaving the band and Anthrax just wasn't as interesting with him out of the picture.

That was kind of random. Decklist!

2 Ornithopter
3 Shield Sphere
2 Phyrexian Walker
3 Necrotic Sliver 

4 Enduring Renewal 

4 Phyrexian Altar 

1 Gerrard's Verdict
3 Recover
4 Stupor
3 Barter in Blood
4 Drain Life
2 Inquisition of Kozilek 

2 Enlightened Tutor 

9 Plains
1 Orzhov Guildgate
4 Caves of Koilos
9 Swamp

Perpetual Motion is a combo deck that hopes to stall the opponent out using discard until it can establish a board state which has Enduring Renewal and Phyrexian Altar on it. From there, Necrotic Sliver can destroy all their permanents, or Ornithopter, Phyrexian Walker or Shield Sphere can generate infinite mana and then victory is just a Drain Life away. Barter in Blood is good creature control and with a Renewal out, costs me nothing. Enlightened Tutor helps me assemble combo pieces and Recover lets me get back creatures that have to go away because of Renewal's drawback.

What I've found out from analyzing the deck is that there is too much white and not enough black in here. I could probably exchange at least one, maybe two Plains for Swamps and still be in good shape. I could probably add another win condition-Exsanguinate is a fine choice-in order to build in the redundancies that a deck like this really needs, swapping out the Gerrard's Verdict. Winning is better than discard.