Project X is a relatively new
Magic: The Gathering deck. It was developed by Geoffrey Siron and Vincent Lemoine for the Ninth Edition/
Ravnica/
Time Spiral type II environment and has been a force to be reckoned with since its creation, taking
second place at the 2006
Grand Prix Kyoto, making multiple top eights in 2007 US Regional tournaments, and even making a showing at the 2006 Worlds tournament.
The deck is based around the combo of two cards:
Saffi Eriksdotter and
Crypt Champion. Saffi is a creature with the ability:
Sacrifice Saffi Eriksdotter: When target creature is put into your graveyard from play this turn, return that card to play.
Crypt Champion is a
creature with the abilities:
When Crypt Champion comes into play, each player puts a creature card with converted mana cost 3 or less from his or her graveyard into play.
When Crypt Champion comes into play, sacrifice it unless {R} was spent to play it.
The combo can be difficult to understand without a fairly intimate knowledge of the rules of Magic. To prepare the combo, the player must either have Saffi Eriksdotter in play or in his graveyard. (For this example, we will assume that she is in play.) He then plays Crypt Champion without paying {R}, causing both abilities both
trigger. Since the Project X player is the
active player and both abilities trigger
simultaneously, he may choose the order in which they are placed on the
stack. The second ability is placed on the stack first, which will cause it to be the last to resolve. Then, the first ability is placed on the stack. Before he allows either ability to resolve, he sacrifices Saffi Eriksdotter to put her ability onto the top of the stack, targeting Crypt Champion. This ability is then allowed to resolve, setting up a
delayed trigger for when Crypt Champion goes to the graveyard. Then, Crypt Champion's first ability resolves, and the Project X player uses it to return Saffi Eriksdotter from his graveyard to play. After this, the Crypt Champion's second ability resolves, and he is sacrificed. When this happens, Saffi's delayed trigger goes onto the stack, and when it resolves, it returns the Crypt Champion to play. Because {R} was not spent to play it, both of its abilities trigger once again, allowing the player to repeat the loop an
arbitrarily large number of times.
Now, the
astute observer will note that this combo, in and of itself, does
nothing. It must be combined with another card for any real effect. There are three main options for the Project X player here. The first is
Soul Warden/
Essence Warden. (These are essentially the same card, with the Soul Warden being
white and the Essence Warden being
green). For the low cost of one mana, you can have a creature with the ability:
Whenever another creature comes into play, you gain 1 life.
With all of these Saffis and Champions popping into and out of play, you can attain an essentially infinite amount of life, although the rules do confine you to the realm of definite integers. However, the Project X player may still lose if his opponent is able to stretch the game out long enough. Project X uses a large number of tutors, and is therefore more susceptible than many decks to running out of cards, causing a game loss. This is why most Project X decks also rely on
Teysa, Orzhov Scion, a lovely lady with the abilities:
Sacrifice three white creatures: Remove target creature from the game.
Whenever another black creature you control is put into a graveyard from play, put a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying into play.
Each time a Crypt Champion dies, a 1/1 white Spirit creature token gets its wings, resulting in a very, very large army of spirits, all waiting to attack your opponent next turn for a game-winning amount of damage. Unfortunately, because these Spirits have
summoning sickness and cannot attack the turn they come into play, this strategy is vulnerable to any mass creature kill, including, but not limited to
Damnation,
Wrath of God,
Sulfur Elemental, and even
Orzhov Pontiff. Luckily, the release of the set
Future Sight gave Project X another tool to work with, and this tool is a little sorcery called
Bitter Ordeal, which reads:
Search target player's library for a card and remove that card from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.
Gravestorm (When you play this spell, copy it for each permanent put into a graveyard this turn. You may choose new targets for the copies.)
This allows the Project X player to remove his opponent's entire deck from the game, causing him to lose the next time he attempts to draw. This method is not susceptible to mass creature kill or stalling. In fact, the only real method of preventing death by Ordeal would be an
Ivory Mask, preventing the Project X player from targeting his opponent with the spell. Ivory Mask isn't quite as effective at repelling an opponent with infinite creatures and infinite life, though, and the most recent Project X decks can often be seen sporting all three of these win conditions.
The popularity of Project X stems not only from the strength and flexibility of the combo, but from the number of powerful tutors available to this deck as well.
Chord of Calling can be used to call any creature from your deck directly into play.
Congregation at Dawn lets you search for THREE creatures and put them on top of your deck. The recent addition of
Glittering Wish from
Future Sight may be the most powerful tutor of all. It can search for any multi-colored card from your sideboard and bring it to your hand. This could be either Saffi Eriksdotter or Teysa, Orzhov Scion, who are both integral parts of the combo. It could be a powerful beater such as
Loxodon Hierarch or
Teneb, the Harvester. It could be a control card to slow your opponent down, like
Glare of Subdual or
Debtor's Knell. The options are nearly limitless.
The classification of Project X isn't exactly simple. It is, at its heart, a
combo deck. However, nearly all Project X variants include
Loxodon Hierarch (a powerful, efficient creature which is widely regarded as being one of, if not the best beater in the current type II
metagame), and many variants also include one or two other large, aggressive creatures. This allows Project X to play out as if it were an
aggro deck, winning through combat instead of the explosive
synergy for which the deck is most widely known. Other variations on the Project X
archtype, including the subdeck known as the
Glare Wish Project, use elements of
control to lock the opponent down, generally using the
enchantment Glare of Subdual to tap their opponent's creatures while searching out
silver bullets and combo pieces using the tutor card
Glittering Wish. All of these options allow Project X to change its strategy mid-game and still come out victorious. It is one of the only decks to successfully combine the combo, aggro, and control strategies into one package.