I was reminiscing today with Greg Hatch about what we call Dr. Frankenstein's Caw Blade.
Greg shows up at a Costa Mesa Women's Club ptq with no deck and is resigned to not play. I walk in 10 minutes before the start of the event, and after 5 minutes of convincing, Greg is going to use my cards to try to build a CawBlade deck. Now I didn't have the deck, I just had 2 longboxes of modern playables. Greg and I go through it. We pull out 3 baneslayers, 4 mana leak, some snapcasters, some paths, a sword or two, 4 squadron hawk, some colonnades and mutavaults, 2 cryptics I think I had, a beta disenchant, a heavily played remand, might have been a vendilion clique, 3 wrath of God emerge. So Greg finds his 26 land, his 34 spells, and 15 cards looking like they might be in a sideboard (some relics, 2 meddling mages, that sort of thing).
Our 5 minutes are up so Greg is sleeving and registering the deck face up in front of his round 1 opponent. Opponent is just looking at this thing, likely thinking "ok he's got 2 cryptics, 1 maindeck wrath, 2 main baneslayers, 4 leak 1 remand, a disenchant, 1 of each sword...." It must have been as confusing as it was insane to try to play around, like this guy was probably 5%
less likely to be able to win the match having seen FrankenBlade spread out before him. Greg beats him and several others. In the last round or the round before last Greg loses playing for top8. A tragic Frankenstein's Monster ending for the FrankenBlade deck, but its memory lives on. I'll never forget walking over and seeing an opponent get completely blown out by a Wrath of God when Greg had a sword in play and a disenchant in the bin. Greg was laughing about the serendipity of it all; his opponent was less amused and really really confused.
