When did our decklists cross over from the realm of the wacky to the boring? Nothing is worse than decks built entirely around infinite combinations. Snore. What's the fun in that? Hoping that your cards fall just right so you can kill your opponent in one go? Big deal. I may build my decks to be strong, but they're never that cheesy. The Insurrection-based deck two weeks ago was the same way. It didn't even need an infinite combo to win in a hideously dull manner. Where's the competition?
I don't know. Maybe these decks seem wacky and exciting to some people, but I prefer not to know how I'm going to win. Get a solid series of creatures out on the table to slug it out in a furious deathmatch with the other side, while maintaining some tricky moves up your sleeve. The odd burn spell or creature buff instant to turn the tables in your favor is certainly a good thing, but I never know which one will make the difference for me.
Thinking about it more, maybe the thing about these decks that is bothering me most is that they're one-trick horses. Sure, reanimating everything in sight might be a cool way to win, but only *once* in a while. I put combos in my decks, but I rarely expect to see them show up, because there's only one instance of the cards needed to make it work. To me, this accomplishes two things. First, when the combo does come up, I can feel excited about it because, "Wow look! It actually happened!" Second, when I attempt to do the trick, there's a much greater chance that it can counter or backfire, since I don't have the redundancy of three other cards that could make the whole thing go if one gets countered. My Invasion-heavy 5 color deck that I used for so long had a really cool combo in it, but I think I only pulled it off once. That creates underused potential perhaps, but there's at least always the trill of trying to pull it off all over again.
I guess the reason I got started on this is that I recently browsed over a few decklists online that were designed with the big-name tournaments in mind, and the decks we've been seeing recently reminded me greatly of those. Fell didn't go over how the decks matched up against Sligh or somesuch, but it still felt the same.
So...what do I think makes fun, interesting decks? First, pick a theme. My largely untested planeshifting deck is like this. Most of the cards I put in there are designed to planeshift heavily, bouncing creatures in and out of play faster than you can keep up with them, and doing cool effects at the same time. Other themes could be creature types. Or something--perhaps even Fell's old Nightmare deck. This serves to make the deck interesting and reliable. It gives you something to do if your cool tricks don't show up.
After that, you get to start adding tricks such as the Artificial Evolution/Rotlung Reanimator combo Fell outlined for us. The difference here is that there aren't 4 of each in the deck, but one instead. Then you get to look for other wacky ways to win. I'd rather have multiple tricks, hopefully that use overlapping cards so some of them actually happen on a semi-regular basis. More tricks = more fun. The tricks should also interact well with the theme of the deck just to make it cooler. A good example of cool tricks in the Planeshifting deck I described above is my Caldera Kavu/Pledge of Loyalty combination. Pledge of Loyalty gives the creature it enchants protection from every color of pernaments you control. The first impulse is to place this on a creature with lots of colors or that has a high power/toughness. The Caldera Kavu is a better choice however. It pumps on 1B for starters, but that's not the point. This little 2/2 Kavu also changes color for one green mana. This means that any attempts to block/get by/destroy the Kavu have to deal with the Pledge of Loyalty on it. If you don't have a black pernament in play, spend G and make the kavu black when the black destruction spells come down. Blue creature bouncing? The same trick works. The little guy would also be very hard to block as well, and even harder to kill or get by on an attack. The coolest part of this combo is that the separate parts are both highly useful separately. The Caldera Kavu can become any color you need to make Planeshifting work or pump up huge if you need it to. Pledge of Loyalty is just plain useful no matter where you put it in a 5-color deck. Add in a full set of familiars and my almost full set of Sanctuary enchantments, (full set meaning one of each color) and you have a full array of 'trick-or-treats' to play on someone, not just a single goofy infinite combo that will make your deck boring or predictable after a couple plays, not to mention losing you playing partners as people become tired of being trounced repeatedly by 5,000 zombie tokens.
After all, no one would like Halloween if it was every day.
