Most pet snakes are constrictors: they wrap around their prey and squeeze it to death. The Snake test is a simple measure of a deck's resistance to squeezing. The Snake opponent starts the game with two Black Vises in play. (Yes, this means that you'll take six points of damage the first turn, and will likely take another four or six the second turn!) Other than that, use the same rules as the Goldfish test. Unlike the Goldfish or Turtle, though, the Snake can win a duel--that squeezing gets painful fast if you can't reduce your hand size. So you'll need to keep track of your win/loss ratio instead of (or in addition to) the number of turns it takes to win when figuring your deck's Snake score.

If your deck has few or no low-cost spells, you'll usually lose to the Snake, and most jujitsu and "permission" decks will lose even more quickly since most of their spells can't be cast unless the opponent tries to do something. If you find this test too harsh, you can reduce it to a single Vise, or give the Snake only one Vise at the beginning of the game and a second Vise two or three turns later. Does this seem unlikely? Keep in mind that a real sixty-card deck with four Black Vises in it has about a 45% chance of getting one out on the first turn, and about a 15% chance of drawing two of them within the first four turns of the game, without using any library-searching spells. A Black Vise or two is often the difference in many real duels. A successful deck should be able to deal with the constrictions of a Snake.

If you prefer venomous snakes instead of constrictors, use the Rabbit test (below) but substitute Marsh Vipers for the rabbits. And be sure to keep a snakebite kit on hand....