By Imshan AKA Sinis

Back when I was creating a deck for each creature in the cycle of ascendants – Legendary flip creatures from Saviours of Kamigawa – I became enamoured with Neverending Torment.  Specifically when I was making the Kuon deck, I began to think of Neverending Torment as a spectacular win condition for a deck in the prison archetype.  The particular Kuon deck that ended up in the article was not supportive of Neverending Torment because it played a large amount of symmetrical discard effects, which would result in poor copies of Neverending Torment during my upkeep.  Even so, the black epic spell remained on my mind.

Why was Neverending Torment so compelling?  To me, it’s a very elegant win condition for prison style decks.  First, it will inevitably cause other players to lose.  Second, it continually reinforces the prison deck’s position.  Once you understand why these things are the case, it’s easy to see how this would be appealing in any prison deck: you exile all answers in each opponent’s library until they lose the game. Read the rest of this entry »