Ho ho.. magic the spending. Oh yes. Been there, done that, sold the t-shirt so I could get more cards....
I'm a strictly black and red guy, with a hint of green. (Lure+basilisk is a golden oldie...)
I just played third edition and up until fourth edition came out, then I didn't buy any more cards so I don't know about all this phasing and fading stuff and things like that. I thought mana flares and dwarven mail bombs was a pretty neat idea... with fire+earth elementals, shivan dragons, dwarven miners, brothers of fire, some direct damage, mana flares, forks, lightning bolts.. worked very well actually.
That, and a demonic-themed black deck that wasn't really good but could be extremely deadly if it got going. (Acolytes, lord of the pit, demonic hordes, frozen shades, nether shades, ashen ghouls, breeding pits, hexatomb and some drain life and dark rituals... once it got the altars running with blood things looked bleak for the enemy.
It's all coming back to me now...
Oh yes, and another deck I made for pure amusement that actually was truly, vehemently deadly. Summoned various things that didn't need to tap to attack, along with a few choice tactical instants, DOT's, and the thing that made it work: stasis...
(some instants did the same thing but not permanently)
And I'm the only player in my particular gaming group who made a (pretty effective) pestilence deck WITHOUT mixing in white... who needs healing when you have drain life?
Oh and I hate blue with a passion. "Oh no you don't!"...... ARGH!
(BTW GE-Raven, mind shrinking that picturet, it's a full page sig - that's a bit much, innit?)