The Most Famous Deck of All Time

More has been written about “The Deck” than perhaps any other single list of cards in the history of the game. In the next article in this series, I will dive into the history of this famous archetype, and for the first time ever I will show you every single published change Brian Weissman made to his famous creation, and the reasons for them, from 1994 to 2006.

If you still need a reason to try Old School Magic, here’s one more consideration. Old School Magic generates a unique pace, feel, and game flow. Beyond the fundamental strategic differences between Old School Magic and contemporary Magic already noted, Old School Magic is the only place to capture the very different feel of playing Magic in the early years. It was a game with less search capacity, less fixing, and perhaps more emphasis on bluffing and careful use of every resource available. Yet it was no less intense. With Old School Magic, the tension of every draw step is felt more deeply, as you prayed one turn at a time, for that miracle answer.

In this way, Old School Magic illuminates the significance of subsequent printings. Eternal formats of the modern era are dominated by the principles of Alan Comer’s Turbo-Xerox and Grow strategies with cards like Brainstorm, Ponder, Sensei’s Divining Top, and Preordain everywhere and free countermagic abounds. Returning to a time before Fetchlands with cantrips like Brainstorm and free countermagic, you not only perceive the cards around them differently, but come to appreciate how these cards accelerate the game and change the ebb and flow of normal game progression. Tempo is fought for and achieved with skillful play, not adhering to a set of design principles.

Old School Magic is a format where draw steps are filled with hope and wonder; where nothing can kill you outright, but danger lurks around every corner.

How Can I Play Old School Magic?

Build Old School Decks! The first step to playing Old School Magic is building 2-3 Old School decks for you and your friend(s) to play. I recommend starting with three decks so that you have one to rotate in as soon as you get bored with the first match. However, this advice is harder than it seems. The challenge to playing Old School Magic is the dearth of information about Old School decks. That’s the reason for this series.

Beyond the challenge of simply finding Old School decks is the even harder challenge of finding optimal decks. The decks that were played decades past appear suboptimal from our historical vantage point.  Yet this is also an opportunity. Old School Magic is a class of formats that were never fully solved. There remain untapped synergies and unchartered waters to be explored. In this series, I will be your tour guide. I will share with you strategies, approaches, and modes for enjoying and playing Old School Magic, and point out some notable features along the way, but it’s ultimately a trip you’ll have make yourself.

Choosing the Old School Magic Format Right For You

To play Old School Magic, you must answer three fundamental questions:

1. What sets should be permitted?
2. Which Banned and Restricted list should be adopted?
3. Which set of game rules should be employed?

First, let me say that this is not a test — there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers here.  Old School Magic is designed to be fun!

That said, answering these questions is more complicated than may be apparent.  In fact, they implicate the entire history of the game! Future articles in this series will address each topic exhaustively. But for now you need to understand at a basic level why each question matters.

• Which Sets Should Be Allowed?

The sets that you permit will influence every other decision you make, and will shape the feel of your format and structure and condition the range of strategic possibilities. For that reason, you and your friends must evaluate which sets you wish to permit.

Die-hard Old Schoolers, like the Swedish Group Magic 93/94, only permit sets up to The Dark (Alpha/Beta/Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark), and exclude Revised. Since Revised was on the shelves in the Summer of 1994 and only features reprints from those sets, I would encourage anyone permitted Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited to also permit Revised so that the format is not quite so expensive to play.  Dual lands are an important building block of the format, and Revised has the least expensive dual lands.

One of the most debated issue is whether to allow Fallen Empires, which was released in December 1994.  Fallen Empires increases the viability of weenie strategies (like mono black or mono white) while also providing another potent discard spell in Hymn to Tourach. Fallen Empires is frowned upon for being “unpimp,” but it enhances the strategic diversity of the format without pushing it too far beyond the core flavor of earlier sets.

The Mr. Nice Guys Games “Throwback” tournament permitted not only Fallen Empires, but Ice Age released in June 1995 as well, as did a recent “Conference of Professionals” held in Brooklyn. As Paul Montesanti’s list above suggests, Ice Age introduces some incredible new strategic options like Necropotence. Ice Age brings with it the first cantrips, more card draw and selection, and a number of new tactics (Jester’s Cap, anyone) without diluting the feel of the Old School format too much.

Chronicles is decidedly “unpimp” but goes even further in giving players critical tools for deckbuilding like City of Brass, Erhnam Djinn, and Blood Moon reprints. If you are more interesting in creating the “feel” of the early game, I would encourage you to permit Chronicles as well, which was released in July 1995.

Although Homelands was released in October 1995, it is widely considered among the worst sets in the history of the game, and is so unimpactful that it is largely irrelevant. The next set that matters is Alliances, which wasn’t released until mid-1996.

Players interested in experiencing the feel and strategies of the earliest Constructed Magic formats will probably draw the line somewhere between Fallen Empires and Alliances, although that is just the beginning of the range of possibilities. You have ultimate freedom to include or exclude sets to build your preferred environment.

(2)Which Banned and Restricted list Should be Used?

Which cards to restrict or ban is an even trickier question. One easy way of handling this issue simply is to select an actual Banned and Restricted List from a specific time. For example, you could use the Banned and Restricted List circa January 1, 1995.   From October 10, 1994 through April, 19, 1995, the Type I Banned and Restricted List looked like this:

Type 1 Restricted List By Daniel Chang   Type 1 Restricted List: Ali from Cairo Ancestral Recall Berserk Black Lotus Braingeyser Chaos Orb Channel Candelabra of Tawnos Copy Artifact Demonic Tutor Falling Star Feldon’s Cane Ivory Tower Library of Alexandria Maze of Ith Mind Twist Mirror Universe Mishra’s Workshop Mox Pearl Mox Emerald Mox Ruby Mox Jet Mox Sapphire Recall Regrowth Sol Ring Sword of the Ages Timetwister Time Walk Underworld Dreams Wheel of Fortune Type I Banned List Bronze Tablet Contract from Below Darkpact Demonic Attorney Divine Intervention Jeweled Bird Rebirth Shahrazad Tempest Efreet Time Vault

For Old School groups that wish to more strictly adhere to historical precedent, this Banned & Restricted List is probably the place to start. While using a historical Banned & Restricted List is often the simplest answer to the question under consideration here, it may introduce anomalies. One obvious problem is that Balance and Fork are absent; they were not restricted until April, 1995. Since no sets were printed in that time other than Fallen Empires, which left no cards on that list, you could, in theory, use the April 1995 Type I Restricted List for a format that permits sets only as far as The Dark (or, in other words, the November, 1994 Constructed Magic Banned and Restricted List, since Type II had not yet been created).

You may yet find that, too, is not quite adequate. You may find that other cards are not restricted that should be, or that cards are restricted that shouldn’t be. While I have great respect for the Restricted List of that time, Strip Mine is not the most fun card to have unrestricted, and you may decide that Mana Vault is not a card you want to leave unrestricted. It is notable that Mana Vault was not restricted until 1999!

Perhaps more importantly, there are probably cards on that list that do not necessarily deserve their designation, especially under contemporary rules because the reasons for restriction may no longer exist. As I will explain in a moment, rules changes have dramatically changed the power level of cards like Mirror Universe.  And cards like Shahrazad, Ivory Tower and eventually Zuran Orb were restricted because they extended games too long. That may not be an overriding consideration for you and your friends. Sword of the Ages and Ali From Cairo are probably not even worthy of restriction regardless.

Similarly, there were cards that were feared at the time but may be worth permitting for fun’s sake. The 93/94 community permit four Berserks.   I’m all for permitting players to cast Berserk on a Blood-Lusted Ball Lightning.  Magic just seems more fun that way. After all, how much fun would Granville Wright’s famous “Explosion” deck be with 4 Berserk?

Granville’s Explosion Deck – October, 1994 By Granville Wright Creatures & Spells: 4 Kird Ape 3 Flying Men 4 Scryb Sprites 3 Birds of Paradise 3 Serendib Efreet 4 Unstable Mutation 4 Giant Growth 4 Blood Lust 1 Berserk 4 Lightning Bolt 2 Chain Lightning 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Timetwister 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Regrowth Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Pendelhaven 2 City of Brass 3 Taiga 3 Volcanic Island 3 Tropical Island 2 Island 1 Forest Sideboard: 3 Blue Elemental Blast 3 Red Elemental Blast 2 Strip Mine 3 Concordant Crossroads 2 Chain Lightning 2 Psionic Blast

This is certainly a consideration for any Old School Magic Gauntlet.

While I encourage respect for the Duelist Convocation’s early Banned and Restricted List (they were much smarter than we give them credit for!), you should feel free to tailor the Banned and Restricted List in other ways.

The 93/94 Group has made a number of modifications based upon its environment and play experience.   For example, they decided that they don’t like Strip Mine and Black Vise (understandable) or Mana Drain (!), and restricted them. Its current Banned and Restricted List looks quite different:

Restricted & Banned List 93-94   Restricted in 93-94 Constructed: Ancestral Recall Balance Black Lotus Black Vise Braingeyser Channel Chaos Orb Demonic Tutor Fork Library of Alexandria Mana Drain Maze of Ith Mind Twist Mishra’s Workshop Mox Emerald Mox Jet Mox Pearl Mox Ruby Mox Sapphire Recall Regrowth Shahrazad Sol Ring Strip Mine Time Vault Time Walk Timetwister Wheel of Fortune Banned in 93-94 Constructed: Bronze Tablet Contract from Below Darkpact Demonic Attorney Jeweled Bird Rebirth Tempest Efreet

The 93/94 community adopts the modern philosophy of not banning cards for “power reasons,” which means that Time Vault is here in all its glory, except that taking infinite turns with Time Vault is much harder than it looks!

There are a number of notable differences among historical Banned and Restricted Lists and those employed by Old School Magic communities, which I will cover in the Chapter 3 in this series in more detail. For now, it’s important to be aware that there is debate and disagreement over a number of issues, not just staples like Strip Mine and Mana Drain.

(3) Which set of games rules should be used?

Legends Mirror Universe

With 6^th edition rules, it no longer was possible to use Mirror Universe as a win condition. Under pre-5^th Edition rules, reducing a player to zero life or below did not result in losing the game until the end of a turn phase such as the end of the upkeep. Therefore, a player at one life could activate a City of Brass (or Necropotence), going to zero life, and then activate Mirror Universe to switch life totals and cause the opponent to lose the game. Rules errata eliminated this route to victory, and Mirror Universe was promptly unrestricted.

The question of game rules may seem like the least significant question to answer, but making an informed decision is perhaps the most difficult. Magic has experienced dramatic and subtle changes to its rules over time. The game has changed in ways that affect the feel and experience of Old School Magic. Whole classes of cards have disappeared, and basic interactions have fundamentally changed. I will cover this question in detail in Chapter 6, but for now, you should consider a few questions that might arise, especially if you are trying to recreate historical formats:

• Do you want mana burn?
• Do you want interrupts to work as interrupts (a discontinued card type I’ll explain in future articles)?
• Do you want to use The Stack or The Batch?
• Do you want to use the no-land mulligan rule?
• Do you want to use the new “scry” mulligan rule?

Just to take the first question, you may not see what the big deal is, but the power level of cards like Su-Chi and Mana Drain are dramatically affected by the presence or omission of mana burn. And, under Fourth Edition rules and the Batch, playing a Lightning Bolt in response to a Giant Growth on a Scryb Sprites would not kill the Sprites (I’ll explain why this is in Chapter 10). For now, many of you may simply want to apply contemporary rules for ease of use. But, in the long run, you may want to carve out careful exceptions.