Hello, and welcome to the first of what I hope will be many Magic: The Gathering articles!

Today, we’re going to take a look at a card that is one of my personal favorites:  Pandemonium!

Pandemonium

The entire point of playing this card is creating some of the most insane game situations possible.  Just look at that art!  Of course, this guy shines in multiplayer; although it’s damn good in one-on-one with the right sort of deck built around it, I don’t think you’ll experience a better feeling than the one you get while watching each player agonize over which direction they want to fling their creature’s damage, knowing that if they tick the wrong person off, things could get VERY bad for them.  This makes the game state rather nasty, and more often than not, more than one player is going to decide to come after you just to get rid of that Pandemonium that’s screwing everything up.  This article is meant to guide you towards picking the best cards to use in conjunction with Pandemonium, in order to beat everyone else out of the gate and dominate the game from the moment you slam this beaut on the table.

(A quick aside:  The word Pandemonium comes from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, in which he coined the term “Pandaemonium” to refer to the place in Hell where the demons hold all of their rockin’ parties (”Pandaemonium” literally means “all demons”).  Feel free to build a Demon deck and call it “Pandaemonium,” then watch as your opponents squirm in their chairs, anticipating that infamous enchantment.  Then, watch them squirm even more after they realize that they’re actually up against a deck full of Demons!)

Demons!  Oh NOOOOOOOOO!

Anywho, let’s get on with it!  Here’s a list of the best cards to use with Pandemonium.  This list is not simply made up of creatures with large power; rather, it is populated by those creatures that can maximize the potential of Pandemonium by dealing damage multiple times, or by creating the opportunity to do so.  This list will be without any sort of ranking order until the end, at which point it will culminate in a Top Five.  Here we go:

“Penumbra” Creatures

Penumbra Bobcat

Penumbra Wurm

This small group of creatures, populating the Apocalypse set (with a special appearance by Penumbra Spider in Time Spiral) allows you to put a token with the same power and toughness into play when they go to the graveyard.  With Pandemonium out, this essentially means you’re doing the damage twice, for free!  (Okay, you have to lose the creature to get the token, but it’s essentially as if you’ve not lost a creature at all).  Creature advantage is a must with Pandemonium; yes, you want your creatures to resolve in order to deal their damage, but you also want them to stick to the table, in the event of the more-than-likely gang-bang that’s probably going to occur at your expense should your side of the board get too out of hand.  You can throw Penumbra creatures in front of your opponents’ attackers and still have a creature at the end of it, plus they might hold their removal spells since you can just whack one of their creatures (or their life total) right back with the Penumbra token.

Grinning Ignus

Grinning Ignus

With Pandemonium out and this little guy on the table, every one of your untapped Mountains becomes a Shock.  This combo is great against Weenie decks, but you can also use it to take out a big creature that you might not have an answer for at the moment, or to kill a player with a low enough life total.  You’ll soon be grinning, too.

Flametongue Kavu

Flametongue Kavu

By himself, he’s a great four-drop, because if you can get him out on or before turn 4 you can pretty much axe any creature on the board.  With Pandemonium, you get an extra 4 damage to dole out to a creature or player.  Just be sure that you play him with enemy creatures on the board; his 4 damage to a creature ability will target him if there’s nobody else around.

“Gating” Creatures; “Champion” Creatures

Horned Kavu

Changeling Berserker

There are a bunch of creatures out there that replace other creatures on the board while allowing you to see them again at a later point in time.  Two of the big groups are the “Gating” creatures, which require you to return other creatures to your hand, and the “Champion” creatures, which completely remove another creature you control from the game until they die and the creature comes back.  Both groups are nice because you can get double Pandemonium damage out of creatures which are “gated” or championed.  The more powerful group is definitely the “Gating” creatures, because you can get the replaced creature back into play more quickly.  Another nice thing about them is that you can use their ability to target themselves, which is pretty much useless… unless there’s a Pandemonium out!  Horned Kavu becomes a reusable Vulcan’s Hammer for RG, for example, and a card like Shivan Worm, with enough mana out, is just sick.

Deathtouch Creatures

For anyone unfamiliar with the keyword, Deathtouch means that whenever a creature with this ability damages another creature (in any way), the damaged creature is destroyed.  Case in point.  All of a sudden, those Thornweald Archers got a whole hell of a lot scarier…

Thornweald Archer

Bang!  You’re dead.

Demigod of Revenge

Demigod of Revenge

A great card by itself, with Pandemonium it becomes pretty much a death knell in any games involving less than 5 people.  Save one in your hand and try to get another three into your graveyard via discard or Buried Alive, and go to town.  20 damage divided between up to 4 people, plus 4 5/4 flying hasties?  Game over.

Balthor the Defiled

Balthor the Defiled

An ability similar to the aforementioned Demigod’s, but with so much more potential.  If you can play him with enough black mana left open, you can tear the game a new you-know-what faster than your opponents can say, “Oh, crap.”  If you’re playing against a lot of black-red, don’t expect the end result to be too peachy-keen for you, but if you’re the only one with black-red… well, that’s just wrong.

Devour Creatures

Predator Dragon

Another ability that’s great on its own but nuts with Pandemonium.  Devour creatures get the counters (and the subsequent power boost) as they come into play, so you can deal extra Pandemonium damage with them.  If you can devour enough creatures, you could possibly kill an opponent the turn you play a card like Predator Dragon, which adds Flying and Haste on top of its +1/+1 counters.

Protean Hulk

Protean Hulk

This guy’s a freakin’ beast, even without Pandemonium around.  With the red enchantment, he becomes 6 damage and a 6/6 creature for 7, but that’s not nearly the best part.  When he dies, you get to tear through your library and find any combination of creatures whose mana costs total 6 or less and toss them into play.  Nab a Flametongue Kavu and any number of 2-power 2-drops, for example, or just go and get, I don’t know… Broodmate Dragon, perhaps?  Speaking of which… the Top Five begins!

5. Broodmate Dragon

Broodmate Dragon

Hoo yeah.  Now we’re getting to the good stuff!  This guy comes into play with a friend, and his friend is ready to kick just as much butt as he is.  Two 4/4 fliers for 6 mana is pretty insane, and with Pandemonium you also get an extra 8 damage to divvy out.  This is one of the staple cards in my Pandemonium deck, and for good reason: he’s hard to deal with (because he’s 2 creatures in 1), he does tons of damage on the play and even more over the next few turns, and he provides good air cover.  A must-have if you’re willing to play 3 colors.

4. Deus of Calamity

Deus of Calamity

Coupled with Pandemonium, this is one of the more broken 5-drops you can find.  You get a 6/6 trampler who destroys a land the moment he hits the table, and has the potential to burn even more of them as the game goes on.  Along with Broodmate Dragon, the Deus combos extremely well with #1 on this list, which we’ll get to in a moment.

3. Dragon Broodmother

Dragon Broodmother

The amazing thing about this card being used with Pandemonium is that you’re dealing 4 damage right off the bat, and more damage every single turn (not just your own).  You’ll probably want to let some baby dragons hit the table as 1/1’s before you start devouring and dealing, say, 5 damage every upkeep.  She would be second on the list if not for this next one…

2. Mycoloth

Mycoloth

Alara block has provided us with 3 of the 5 cards on this list!  If you get Mycoloth out late enough in the game, your opponents can pretty much kiss any chance they had of winning goodbye.  Even if you only devour 2 creatures, you’re still getting 4 damage at the beginning of each upkeep, which is nothing to sneeze at.  Furthermore, his Saprolings feed our Broodmother’s little dragon babies, so they don’t have to eat each other and can hit the table for an additional 3 or more damage on every turn.  I mean, honestly, how is that fair?  Oh, that’s right… we don’t give a damn about fairness.  Which brings us to:

1. Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker

I can’t begin to relate all the insane Pandemonium stories I can tell about this guy.  I can say that with Broodmate Dragon and / or Deus of Calamity available to copy, you’ve all but won the game.  He turns the Dragon into God because you get to keep the 4/4 token that comes into play with the Kiki-Jiki copy, and Deus becomes a Stone Rain per turn tacked onto a 6/6 hasty trampler just dying to bust some skulls.  Yes, he’s a big fat target for just about everyone who realizes the havoc he can wreak, but the risk is absolutely worth taking.  He’s more than a bit red-intensive, but he will reward you the turn you play him, and every turn after that.  Use him in a blue-red deck with Pandemonium and Intruder Alarm for infinite creatures and damage!  Penumbra creatures, Flametongue Kavu, Deathtouch creatures (yikes!), Protean Hulk (double yikes!) (Spaulding!)… all of these and more become so much greater in a Pandemonium deck just by playing the Mirror Breaker.  He is, without a doubt, the best all-around card to play with Pandemonium.

Honorable Mentions

Budoka Gardner (or rather, his flipped version, Dokai) is capable of dealing 10 damage a turn all by himself, but you have to have the available mana and the right amount of lands for him to flip in the first place.  He usually dies by then, but if he can stick he’ll be a menace.  Heat Shimmer is a one-shot Kiki Jiki for 3 mana that can copy any creature on the board; it is a Sorcery, which makes it a bit less powerful, but it’s still worth consideration.  Ooze Garden solves the problem of having to lose Kiki Jiki or Heat Shimmer tokens by allowing you to sacrifice them to get a nice Ooze token with the same power as the sacrificed creature, thus giving you more Pandemonium damage.  The ability can only be used as a Sorcery, though, which is something I often forget.  Smaller token generators like Mogg War Marshal are also a great idea; the War Marshal is one of the best two-drops around right now, and provides nice early game defense as well as some decent Pandemonium damage later on.  And, of course, what better to use with Pandemonium than… another Pandemonium?  I can hear the groans from here.  Trust me, though:  if you play it at the right time, you will win the game, possibly by concession.

Last Words

You’ll notice that there are a lot of pricey creatures in this article; the thing about playing Pandemonium, that I’ve found, is that it tends to get a bit mana-intensive.  Make sure you have acceleration for the early stages of the game so you can start doing gobs of damage a couple turns before everyone else.  I like to use Sakura-Tribe Elders and Llanowar Elves, but it’s up to you.  Also, don’t think that you have to use green creatures with Pandemonium.  I would love to see a red-white or red-black deck that really kills.

Please leave comments if you feel that I overlooked something in this article; I would love to hear other people’s opinions, even if they completely contradict my own.

[All card images from www.magiccards.info; "Satan" image from Wikipedia]