Theme Deck Review Compendium: Mercadian Masques “Rebel’s Call”

The main thing any old player will get a bit misty eyed about when you mention Masques block… this no doubt was the first theme deck to get nailed down in development.

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Rebel’s Call

A white weenie deck which utilises the “recruiting” ability of Rebel creatures.

Official product information webpage (archived)

At first glance, “Rebel’s Call” might appear to be a typical white weenie deck, a deck with which you try to quickly get out a number of low-cost creatures and overrun your opponent. Though it’s true that the deck can get out a lot of creatures quickly, if you play it that way, you’ll probably lose. Why? Because the Rebel creatures help you to win not with speed, but with perseverance. When playing this deck you should try to avoid playing creatures from your hand. Instead, use the Rebels’ recruiting ability to put your creatures into play. If your opponent appears to be getting off to a slow start, then by all means turn up the heat and get as many creatures into play as quickly as you can. In general, though, you’ll be much more successful with this deck if you take the slow approach and steadily build up your forces.

Mercadian Masques Preconstructed Decks Strategy Guide (compiled here)

The decklist and card images can also be found on Moxfield, MTG Goldfish and mtg.wtf.

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Ramosian Sergeant by Don Hazeltine

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Enhanced Deck

Lands (23)
2 City of Brass
1 Dust Bowl
11 Plains
9 Mountain

Creatures (19)
4 Mother of Runes
4 Ramosian Lieutenant
2 Nightwind Glider
2 Thermal Glider
3 Ramosian Captain
4 Avalanche Riders

Other (18)
2 Disenchant
1 Pacifism
2 Exile
2 Armageddon
1 Ramosian Rally
1 Reverent Mantra
1 Wrath of God
2 Shock
2 Arc Lightning
2 Lunge
1 Hammer of Bogardan
1 Cave-In

This can also be found on Moxfield, MTG Goldfish and mtg.wtf.

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Ramosian Lieutenant by Alan Pollack

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Reviews

Beats and Skies

nuANCED review: Rebel’s Call

This is probably the best of the 12 Masques Block Theme Decks. It’s certainly the most powerful and consistent, and that’s in large part due to how powerful and consistent the recruiting ability is. 

Cubic Creativity

Budget Deckbuilding: Rebel’s Call

“Rebel’s Call” is definitely one of more interesting Preconstructed Decks; and I would go as far as saying of all the available decks in existence. The idea of being able to tutor creatures upwards is quite unique, but due to the high amount of mana needed and the fact that most of the creatures doing so or being tutored do not bring that much to the table, the entire strategy is not overpowered.

Ertai’s Lament

Mercadian Masques: Rebel’s Call Review (Part 1 of 2)

Thanks to the Rebel mechanic, almost every creature in the deck has the ability to call up reinforcements from your library rather than your hand. This is relentless card advantage, which almost turns your library into your hand. This would have the potential to be absurdly powerful if the Rebels were packed with enters-the-battlefield effects, giving you what’s known as a “toolbox” deck where you could find the right answer at the right time by activating one of your Rebels, but as a check against this the deck’s creatures are largely somewhat pedestrian affairs.

Readers comments:

Jay Chong

The first version of the rebel deck is good, but I find the black/white version from Future Sight to be more interesting, partly because I’m biased towards black and partly because the addition of a second color gives the rebels a purpose beyond standing around and gathering more of each other.

Ezra of MMM

this is one of the first magic sets that I remember, from when I was a little kid. rebels are still one of my creature types, although I still think that this deck should have switched with the mercenary deck from Nemesis so that it could have lin sivi.

Backed. It’d have given the Mercenaries better rares too.

Jesse Garcia

It’s too bad I missed this set AND the Allies, because this style of play looks great. I absolutely love the Spellshapers.

Mercadian Masques: Rebel’s Call Review (Part 2 of 2)

Hits: Great framework of Rebels allows you to “chain” up Rebel after Rebel, limited only by your manabase; aggressive creature core lets you quickly attain numberical superiority, and evasive options give you some added dimension of attack

Misses: The creature removal suite is mediocre, consisting of two Arrests and an Afterlife; two Devout Witnesses and two Disenchants is a bit of overkill on artifact/enchantment removal, neither of which tend to be consistent threats in this environment

OVERALL SCORE: 4.30/5.00

Readers comments:

Jesse Garcia

There’s definitely potential in the Rebel tribe. Those Gliders seemed to be all-stars for this game!

flourishingmusic79

Magic The Gathering – Deck Musings – Mercadian Masques – Theme Deck – Rebel’s Call

M:tG Precon Decon

Mercadian Masques Part 3: Rebel’s Call

Viewer’s comments:

@ReubenAotearoa

I recall after a certain point I got tired of playing this deck. Recruiting is pretty powerful and consistent, but fun? Hmm.

It’s worth nothing that a 2/2 vigilance for 2 was a pretty efficient creature back then. Green and white got bears, but the other colours had to make do with 2/1s or downsides like “can’t block”. In fact, Walking Corpse from Innistrad – 12 years later – was the first vanilla black bear.

@Shadow264

This was my absolute favourite precon deck and I feel was probably the best precon in Masques. As a primarily White Weenie player in my younger years this one spoke to me greatly.

@PokeMagicDon_and_son

I still have it at home with the worn-out deck box 🙂 my absolut fav precon deck of all time. I later added Lin-Sivvi to the mix, which made the deck even more ridiculous.

@t.yop9

This was my first deck ever and it felt so underpowered against my friends’ decks made from Tempest cards. I also opened a Pariah and my ‘combo’ was Pariah on Cho Manno obviously. It fell apart at the first black removal spell. It’s funny I played Standard but I guess I stopped playing before Rebels fully rotated in because it seemed like there was no way those Rebels decks would beat blue control, land destruction, bargain, replenish, or even stompy.

reddit

/r/MagicTCG: What is the most powerful Intro Pack?

/u/Psycho_Sunshine

Rebels call is also a pretty fucked up pile of magic cards for the time period and I wouldn’t be surprised if its power level is high enough to compete against other intro decks.

The Duelist presents Mercadian Masques

Magic & Mayhem p.46 (Archived)

Behind the Masque — Henry Stern: “The one advantage to being the lead developer is that essentially you get to choose which deck you’ll build. I thought Rebel’s Call’ would be fairly straightforward, but it turns out that wasn’t quite true. I had to tone it down a bit. But I think it’s the easiest deck to scale up for tournament play, and there will be more Rebels in future sets.”

Oh oops: probably should have done a post on this already. Lots of good precon related stuff in here: not just theme decks but Battle Royale and the 1999 World Champs decks too.

Troll and Toad

Customer review for Mercadian Masques Rebel’s Call Preconstructed Theme Deck (MTG)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

needs better rares but it’s pretty neat for a Precon

ACA

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Ramosian Captain by Matthew D. Wilson

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Unboxings

Doctor Alzheimers Academia Magica

German language channel

Magic Vintage Schätze 35: BEST OF FLOHMARKT – Teil 19: MERCADIAN MASQUES (1999) Deck REBELS CALL MtG

Viewer comments:

@adampescador8054

Ohje, das Deck kommt ja gar nicht gut weg bei dir. Die Rebels und Mercenaries gehören m.E. zu den wenigen Lichtblicken im Masken-Block, da diese gutes Potential für schnelle Weeniedecks haben. In kurzer Zeit kann man den Gegner mit vielen Kreaturen überrennen und hat dabei ständigen Zugriff auf seine Bibliothek. Allerdings würde ich in diesem Deck auch einiges ändern: Alle Spellshaper und zu teuren Rebels rausnehmen und durch billigere Alternativen ersetzen. Dazu noch ein paar aggressive Removals und Pumpzauber (evtl aus anderen Farben), schon sieht die Sache viel besser aus

Oh dear, the deck doesn’t go well with you at all. In my opinion, the Rebels and Mercenaries are among the few bright spots in the mask block, as they have good potential for fast Weenie decks. In a short time you can overrun your opponent with many creatures and have constant access to your library. However, I would also change a few things in this deck: Remove all Spellshapers and Rebels that are too expensive and replace them with cheaper alternatives. Add a few aggressive removals and pump magic (possibly from other colors) and things look much better (via google translate)

@AndiRCR

Das deck ist nicht so stark und die meistens Illus sehen in meinen augen auch nicht sehr gut aus….

The deck isn’t that strong and most of the illustrations don’t look very good in my opinion… (via google translate)

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Ramosian Commander by Scott Hampton

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Evolutions

flourishingmusic79

Magic The Gathering – Commander Fodder – Rebel’s Call Theme Deck (Mercadian Masques)

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Ramosian Sky Marshal by Matt Cavotta

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Any reviews or other relevant content I’ve missed? Drop a comment! Always happy to discover new sources.

Also if you had this deck, played against it, or otherwise just wanted to share your thoughts then go for it too. 🙂

edit history: 27/5/24. Adding reviews, minor reformatting