December 1, 1997

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The Card of the Day is...

Coral Fighters

Mirage Uncommon
1U Summon Merfolk

"If Coral Fighters attacks and is not blocked, look at the top card of defending player's library. You may choose to put that card on the bottom of that player's library."

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A brief rundown of the card:

Any act of manipulating an opponent's draw is invaluable. If you can sneak Coral Fighters past your opponent's blockers, you will have the luxury of knowing what cards your opponent is drawing (to a point) and controlling their draw to an extent. If you see a card coming that you can contend with, say an artifact while you're holding a Disenchant, let your opponent have the card. Simply save your Disenchant until the pesky artifact comes into play and whack it. It won't take too many times of doing this until an opponent will hesitate to play good cards that you "give" to them---they'll think you'll just kill it on the next turn. Use this technique after a few turns to see if they fall for it. Here are a few cards to help squeeze the most use out of our Coral Fighters:

• Millstone
  If you see a worthless card on top of your opponent's library, send it to the bottom. If you see something rather good, let it sit there and Millstone it away. Almost always, it is better to put opponent's cards into the graveyard, instead of the bottom of their library.
• Sealed Fate
  Sealed Fate is an excellent means of not allowing your opponent to draw choice cards for a few turns. Alas, your foe will eventually get to those nasty cards eventually unless you send them to the bottom of their library with Coral Fighters. All you need to pull this off is a good memory.
• Lord of Atlantis
  Do not underestimate the power of a Merfolk deck. Lord of Atlantis is not a legend, you can have duplicates of this dude around. All Merfolks get +1/+1 and islandwalk while the lord is in town--perfect for our friends the Coral Fighters--making them tougher to kill, more lethal, and granting them an evasive ability for UU. Neato.

E-mail me with comments, complaints, suggestions, or combos. I can't put every suggestion or combo up, but I will probably try to if I like it.