Series Index

Chapter 1: Back to the Future – An Introduction to Old School Magic

Chapter 2: Old School Magic – The History of “The Deck”

Chapter 3: Old School Magic – A Visit to the Zoo

Chapter 4: Build Your Own Old School Format

Chapter 5: New Strategies for the Old School: The Transmute Control Deck

Chapter 6: Banning and Restriction in Old School

Chapter 7: New Strategies for the Old School: Blue-Red Aggro Control

Chapter 8: 2nd Place at Eternal Weekend, 2016 with Blue-Red Aggro-Control

Chapter 9: Reanimator Rises to the Top!

Chapter 10: Rules of the Road

Chapter 11: The Untold History of Combo in Old School

Chapter 12: Building a Stronger Prison

Introduction

Welcome back to my tour through Old School Magic, a set of historical formats that exclude modern sets.  In the first article in this series, I introduced Old School Magic, which is best understood as an infinite variety of formats rather than a single format with a predefined card pool and banned and restricted list. Although many players enjoy playing derivations of 93/94 Magic, most similar to Constructed Magic as it was experienced in late 1994, before the creation of “Type II,” I took pains to emphasize that Old School Magic may also refer to Type II decks from earlier eras, Type I decks from any number of interesting periods, and much more.

What defines Old School Magic is not what it is, but what it is not. Whereas contemporary Standard formats permit only the most recent sets, Old School Magic is the antithesis. Old School Magic prohibits only the most recent sets. Old School Magic is a nostalgic experience, an attempt to recapture the essence of historical metagames, by designing formats where old favorites remain playable, defunct strategies remain viable, and rekindling and reveling in the aesthetics of a game whose artistic and design principles are vastly different today.

In Chapter 1, I presented three questions every interested player will need to answer to play Old School, and offered some suggestions and guidance on where to begin. In Chapter 2, I provided a complete history of one of the most important decks in that format, Brian Weissman’s The Deck, including a look at contemporary variants in Old School formats.

Today, we will examine another important archetype: Aggro, and it’s most popular expression, Zoo. Control strategies fully bloomed in Constructed Magic after the release of the Legends expansion, which provided many of the critical tools for permission and creature control,  like Mana Drain, Moat, and The Abyss.  Legends helped usher in the so-called “creatureless” era of Constructed Magic and early Type I.  Zoo, and Aggro decks, on the other hand, are older than Constructed Magic, as you will soon see.

Despite the fearsome reputation and tools given to Control decks, and The Deck in particular, Zoo is one of the naturally strongest archetypes you can play in Old School Magic. There are several reasons for this. First of all, although creatures are much weaker relative to spells in this format, the main exception is Zoo, which can play the most efficient creatures in the format, led by Kird Ape and Serendib Efreet, and supported by cards like Savannah Lions and Erhnam Djinn.

Secondly, Zoo backs up these threats with the most efficient burn spells ever printed; cards that still see play in Vintage and Legacy today: Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. These burn spells are actually some of the best spells in the format. This gives Zoo a serious clock for decks of that era.

Beta Lightning Bolt & Legends Chain Lightning

Third, the empirical evidence suggests that, historically, this class of decks were among the best performing in Type I of the era at the highest levels of competition. As I will show, Zoo decks dominated the most prominent Type I tournament ever held, the $50K Type I event at Pro Tour New York in 1996, where the entire top 4 played Zoo variants. Zoo decks may never have earned the respect or admiration of players like The Deck, but it performs when it counts. Zoo is a remarkably strong contender in the hands of a skilled and experienced pilot.

Proto Zoo

In the course of my research for the History of Vintage series, I discovered that people built and played Kird Ape decks in the era of “Wild Magic” before not only the formation of the Duelist Convocation and creation Banned and Restricted Lists, but even before the days of uniform deck construction rules. An early Magic enthusiast and Type I expert, Rudy Edwards, recalls playing with a deck of roughly the following construction parameters in this period of late 1993 after the release of Arabian Nights:

Proto-Zoo By Rudy Edwards   Creatures and Spells: 10 Kird Apes 18 Lightning Bolt Mana Sources: 5 Taiga 7 Mountain

The only deck construction rule in the Alpha rulebook was a mandatory 40 card minimum. This deck could be built with a minimum number of rares since both Kird Ape and Lightning Bolt were commons. As hilarious and absurd as this “deck” may appear, it actually reveals the essence of a Zoo deck.  As simple as it may seem, Rudy’s Wild Magic Proto-Zoo deck illustrates that the archetype, which pre-existed Constructed Magic as we know it, is anchored by both Lightning Bolt and Kird Ape, the most efficient burn spell and the most efficient creature.

It is little wonder that Bertand Lestree’s famous 1994 World Championship Finals deck (2^nd place) is similarly anchored by both elements:

2ND PLACE, 1994 MAGIC WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP By Bertrand Lestree, Proto Zoo   Creatures and Spells: 4 Kird Ape 3 Birds of Paradise 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Chain Lightning 4 Fireball 2 Psionic Blast 1 Control Magic 1 Timewalk 1 Ancestral Recall 3 Argothian Pixies 2 Whirling Dervish 1 Channel 1 Sylvan Library 1 Regrowth 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Mind Twist 1 Icy Manipulator 1 Chaos Orb Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Emerald 4 Mishra’s Factory 2 City of Brass 2 Bayou 4 Tropical Island 4 Taiga 4 Volcanic Island Sideboard: 1 City in a Bottle 1 Control Magic 3 Disintegrate 1 Flashfire 4 Serendib Efreet 2 Lifeforce 2 Tsunami 1 Forcefield

Lestree’s deck shapes the contours of what would become better known as Zoo. Many of the European Old School Magic players continue to refer to Zoo decks as Lestree decks, a nod to a prominent progenitor.

Including the 4 Serendib Efreets in the sideboard, and the Mishra’s Factories, Lestree has 17 highly efficient creatures that serve as his deck’s offense. Kird Ape and Mishra’s Factory were his key mainstays. Serendib Efreet would soon become the partner and pair to Kird Ape (a team performance not entirely unlike modern day Delver of Secrets), so it is a bit strange that Lestree placed them in the sideboard.

Arabian Nights Serendib Efreet

Whirling Dervish and Argothian Pixies both may seem odd choices as secondary and tertiary threats but they each served important metagame functions, holding off Juzam Djinns and Juggernauts respectively, two of the format’s most important threats.

Importantly, Lestree integrated into the archetype a combo finisher which he famously displayed in the finals match: Channel and Fireball. The maximum complement of Fireball illustrates just how important burn and direct damage is to this archetype. In addition to Lightning Bolt, Lestree runs the maximum number of Chain Lightning, a powerful Lightning Bolt variant. In fact, he even had a pair of Psionic Blasts, for additional direct damage. The small creatures do serious damage, and burn can finish the opponent off.

Despite coming in second place, in some ways Lestree’s deck is more famous and certainly more enduring than the World Championship victor’s that year, Zak Dolan’s. Viewed through modern eyes, Zak’s deck appears untuned and unorthodox, whereas Lestree not only presented a well-metagamed deck, but he designed a strategy that would prove popular for years to come.  He had identified and interwove elements that would firmly plant this archetype into the future.

The Monkey Deck

Although nominally dubbed the “creatureless” era, creature-based strategies remained popular even before Balance was restricted in April, 1995.  Mono-color weenie strategies were evident in every section of the color pie, although green and red-based Aggro decks were regarded as the fastest and most efficient. Granville Wright’s so-called “Explosion” deck (published in Chapter 1) was enigmatically referenced in admiring terms in the periodicals of the day. More than just a tournament based strategy, players were endlessly intrigued with the possibilities. Players daydreamed of casting Blood Lust and Berserk on a Ball Lightning, and toyed with the optimal mixture of creatures, creature-enhancement, mana acceleration and direct damage for the most explosive kills as they goldfished in solitaire mode for fun.

Whereas Bertrand Lestree had organized the foundational elements of green/red/blue Zoo into a coherent strategy, other players were called upon to refine the archetype.  Although archival evidence is sparse, one name that stands out as a proponent of the strategy is Mario Robaina who, like Brian Weissman, was a Type I enthusiast and Pro Tour veteran.  Robaina was a core member of the Pacific Coast Legends, one of earliest organized professional teams, which had many recognizable names for Old School players, including Mark Chalice, Mark Justice, and Henry Stern, the 1995 Magic World Championship finalist and later Magic: The Gathering game developer.

Working with his playtest partner Henry Stern, Mario Robaina enjoyed notable success in 1995 and early 1996 in local tournaments and high level matches with a refined version of Lestree’s concept that Mario dubbed “The Monkey Deck,” or, more popularly, “Monkey, May I?”

The Monkey Deck By Mario Robaina, 1996   Creatures & Spells: 4 City of Brass 4 Mishra’s Factory 1 Strip Mine 3 Tiaga 4 Tropical Island 1 Tundra 3 Volcanic Island 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring 1 Demonic Tutor Mana Sources: 4 Psionic Blast 3 Mana Drain 3 Serendib Efreet 2 Merchant Scroll 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 2 Ernham Djinn 1 Regrowth 4 Kird Ape 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Fireball 1 Pyroblast 2 Disenchant Sideboard: 1 Black Vise 3 Pyroblast 1 Jester’s Cap 2 Crumble 3 Hydroblast 2 Tranquility 3 Control Magic

As David Price put it, The Monkey Deck “contained cheap threats like Kird Ape, countermagic, the usual restricted card drawers, and some burn spells.”  Mario not only had tuned and developed the archetype, he (like Weissman had with The Deck) articulated its key features in the parlance of modern theory. In his essay for the Bradygames Players Guide, Mario explained that “The cornerstone of this deck is the set of creatures, and more importantly, the pressure they apply to an opponent in the first four [turns]. With 12 creatures in the deck, you can expect to play one or two in that time frame.”  It should be noted that Channel was actually banned at this time, but in periods in which it was permitted, but restricted, he included it, and can run at least one, and the maximum amount of Fireball.

But what differentiated it from Lestree Zoo was that it incorporated countermagic, a new element, directly – thus, the “May I?” part of the more popular title.  Although Lestree relied on blue spells like Psionic Blast, Ancestral Recall, and Serendib Efreet, Robaina included a bit of countermagic as a tempo element, not simply a sideboard tactic.  For this reason, and perhaps controversially, David Price regards The Monkey Deck as the first ever “Aggro-Control” strategy.  As he puts it, this deck is all about casting “threats on the first few turns then sitting back and countering the opponents answers, removing their blockers, and often finishing them off with a well-timed Lightning Bolt.”  The strategy is organized around quick and aggressive creatures, but can use countermagic to stop removal (such as Wrath of God) to generate tempo or to prevent a faster strategy from winning first.  Thus, “Monkey, May I?” may have introduced the first and most prominent example of role assignment and role shifting in constructed Magic.

Mario’s theory of the archetype is that efficiency of the creatures put the adversary into a defensive posture. “If you are careful to cast them when they cannot be Counterspelled, then the standard control deck has only three or four Swords to Plowshares to deal with them before a global creature defense like Moat or Abyss can be brought into play.” By taking the initiative, and forcing the opponent to have the “correct cards in hand to deal with the threat on the table,” Zoo has a probabilistic advantage as well as a potential lethal threat with every subsequent draw, which may be a burn spell. In other words, the creatures do the first set of damage, and burn can finish the opponent off while their defenses are down, while countermagic keeps the opponent off balance.

In Mario’s estimation, the twin principles that guided his deck construction were efficiency and versatility.  Like Weissman, Robaina recognized that Type I tournaments were rarely won by speed kill decks. His cards were selected on the basis of both match-to-match utility and a measure of “bang for your buck.” These are precepts that guide Aggro-Control pilots and Zoo players today.

Type I Zoo

In early 1996, the DCI completed the separation of formats that began in 1995 with the creation of “Type I” and “Type II” by separating the Type I and Type II Banned and Restricted Lists. Although Constructed Magic had been separated into two formats in 1995, they were tethered by the umbilicus of a shared Banned and Restricted List (even though different sets were permitted). As we know, Type I was ultimately relegated to a second class citizenship within the Magic hierarchy, but not before one final blow-out event.  With a $40,000 prize pool, the second Type I championship was held a Pro Tour Dallas as a professional event (the full story of this event can be found in my History of Vintage series, Chapter 4: 1996).

With such a large prize purse on the line, for the first time in a while, Type I brought out the most serious competition it had arguably ever seen. The emergent professional player infrastructure used the prize as an incentive for serious design and preparation. Nascent professional teams networked to attack the format, and even Brian Weissman brought The Deck into the field. With Necro decks and heavy Control decks expected to be significant parts of the metagame, Zoo proved to be far and away the best performing deck.

In the 95 player, invitation only event, the entire top 4 were Zoo decks.  Calling his deck “Turbo Zoo,” Scott Johns was victorious with a deck that was a more of a throwback to Bertrand Lestree’s design.

Turbo Zoo By Scott Johns – 1996 Pro Tour Classic Tournament 1st. Place   Creatures & Spells: 4x Black Vise 2x Kird Ape 2x Gorilla Shaman 4x Savannah Lions 1x Regrowth 1x Balance 1x Swords to Plowshares 1x Disenchant 1x Ancestral Recall 1x Time Walk 1x Timetwister 1x Diminishing Returns 2x Mystical Tutor 3x Psionic Blast 1x Wheel of Fortune 4x Lightning Bolt 4x Incinerate Mana Sources: 1x Black Lotus 1x Mox Pearl 1x Mox Ruby 3x Plateau 2x Savannah 2x Taiga 2x Tropical Island 1x Tundra 3x Volcanic Island 3x City of Brass 4x Strip Mine 1x Library of Alexandria Sideboard: 2x Disenchant 1x Gorilla Shaman 4x Gorilla Tactics 3x Meekstone 4x Whirling Dervish 1x Zuran Orb

Anchored by Savannah Lions and Kird Ape, Scott John’s Turbo Zoo employed only the most efficient creatures, and went all out on burn and hand-refill effects. With the separation of the Type I and Type II Banned and Restricted Lists, Black Vise was unrestricted for Type I play at the time of this event.  That proved to be a critical decision, as Black Vise was one of the most important tools for combating Necropotence. With a full load of Black Vise, Scott incorporated all of the restricted Draw7s and Diminishing Returns, not only to refill his own hand, but to punish pinion his opponents.

Beta Black Vise

The 2^nd place deck is closer to the Monkey Deck, with a few efficient tempo counterspells and emphasis on Kird Ape and Mishra’s Factory.

Zoo By Huei-Saint Shwe – 1996 Pro Tour Classic Tournament, 2nd Place   Creatures & Spells: 4 Kird Ape 4 Savannah Lions 2 Gorilla Shaman 1 Dwarven Miner 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Chain Lightning 2 Incinerate 2 Black Vise 1 Sylvan Library 1 Stormbind 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 2 Counterspell 2 Arcane Denial 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Swords to Plowshares 2 Disenchant 1 Regrowth 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Wheel of Fortune  Mana Sources: 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 4 City of Brass 2 Mishra’s Factory 2 Savannah 1 Soldevi Excavations 4 Strip Mine 4 Taiga 3 Tundra 3 Volcanic Island 1 Underground Sea Sideboard: 1 Consecrate Land 1 Disenchant 1 Energy Flux 1 Guerrilla Tactics 1 Hammer of Bogarden 1 Healing Salve 1 Hydroblast 1 Psychic Purge 2 Pyroblast 1 Ray of Command 1 Sand Golem 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Whirling Dervish 1 Zuran Orb

With a dubbed “New York Zoo,” Steven O’Mahoney Schwartz finished 3rd place with a Zoo variant with more creature power that featured 4 Serendib Efreet and 2 Erhnam Djinn, with another pair in the sideboard.  This meatier mana curve requires more mana acceleration than the two finalist decks, and Steven’s deck is finally powered for that reason (the 3rd and 4th place decks with a more detailed analysis are presented here).

The most important takeaway for our discussion is not the specific composition of Zoo in this top 8, but the fact that Zoo dominated this event. In many respects, the Type I Championship at PT Dallas may be regarded as one of the most significant Type I events ever held.  Adjusting for inflation, it featured one of the the largest prize pools and among the most intense and serious competition ever at a Type I tournament.  The first place finisher walked away with nearly $12,000. To have Zoo dominate the field underscores its power and its pilots faith in its potential at the highest levels of competition, in a field of Weissman Control and and Necro decks no less.

Old School Zoo

And so it is in Old School Magic.  At the end of the day, Zoo may not be the most exciting or sexy strategy, but it has the tools to beat anything, and the burden will be on the opponents to defeat it. If well-constructed it is capable of competing in any match in historical Type I or Old School Magic. Any player serious about Old School Magic can find a reliable weapon in Zoo, if tuned to their metagame. It is also an archetype that great players can use to leverage their skills through careful play.

These aren’t the claims of a sunny optimist or partisan advocate; this is the dispassionate observation of an empirical realist.  Zoo not only won many of the earliest 93/94 tournaments organized in Europe, but a stripped down variant emerged victorious in the 2014 93/94 championship event, Noobcon, in a 44 player field that was the largest Old School event held up to time.

UR Eel Aggro, 1st Place at Noobcon 2014 By “Stalin”   Creatures & Spells:  1 Giant Shark 1 Serendib Djinn 2 Dandan 4 Electric Eel 4 Serindib Efreet 2 Flying Man 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Chain Lightning 2 Power Sink 1 Mana Drain 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Time Walk 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Timetwister 2 Energy Flux 3 Unstable Mutation 1 Black Vise 2 Psionic Blast  Mana Sources:  5 Island 4 Volcanic Island 3 Mountain 4 City of Brass 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Black Lotus 1 Sol Ring 1 Strip Mine 3 Mishra’s Factory   Sideboard: 2 Energy Flux 4 Blood Moon 1 Red Elemental Blast 3 Blue Elemental Blast 2 Psionic Blast 3 Control Magic

By stripping out green, and therefore Kird Ape, Stalin compensated by being able to run the devastating Blood Moon in the sideboard. The UR version, rather than the more common RGU, also means much greater resilience to an opposing City in a Bottle, one of the best possible tactics against a 3+ color Zoo deck. While looking like an Aggro Control deck, it has the minimal amount of countermagic, and maximal amount of burn and creature efficiency.

This deck represents my view of what the format can often look like at the highest levels. It appears innocuous enough, but it’s tactically and strategically brutal. The UR Eel Aggro deck illustrates this fact more obviously, but two of the best sideboard cards – and I hesitate to even call them that – in the format are the Elemental Blasts. Being able to run both of them is an enormous advantage.

Which brings me to three-color Zoo. How might we build that for the Old School environment?

With a few adjustments, and using NorCal Rules, which nearly parallel those of the 93/94 format, I recommend this list:

Old School Zoo, May, 2016 By Stephen Menendian   Creatures & Spells: 4 Kird Ape 4 Serindib Efreet 2 Erhnam Djinn 1 Serindib Djinn 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Chain Lightning 3 Psionic Blast 2 Red Elemental Blast 3 Power Sink 1 Mana Drain 1 Timetwister 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Ancestral Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Chaos Orb 1 Regrowth 1 Sylvan Library Mana Sources: 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Mox Emerald 1 Sol Ring 1 Black Lotus 4 City of Brass 3 Tropical Island 4 Taiga 3 Volcanic Island 4 Mishra’s Factory 1 Strip Mine 1 Library of Alexandria Sideboard: 2 Red Elemental Blast 2 Control Magic 4 Shatter 2 Artifact blast 2 Energy Flux 1 Whirling Dervish 2 Tranquility

First, this list represents the creature configuration I feel most comfortable with: 4 Kird Ape, 4 Mishra’s Factory, 4 Serendib Efreet, 2 Ernham Djinn, and 1 Serendib Djinn.  This creature package curves nicely, but is sufficiently diverse to prove resilient in a range of situations.  It has early game attackers and late game finishers, ground smashers and aerial assailants.  The single Serendib has proven to be one of the best singletons you can run this in this archetype, but he is strictly a finisher, and therefore not really desirable in greater quantities.

Arabian Nights Serendib Djinn

The team approach to creature offense has proven effective over decades of Magic play, but it’s possible that a few creatures could be trimmed from this list in favor of other tactics.  Burn spells are central to the archetype, but Channel-Fireball could be included as a fun-filled finisher (although Channel has more limited value by itself).  Power Sink nicely satisfies the versatility requirement that Robaina set out so many years ago, being easier to cast in a wider range of situations and serving as an excellent tempo play, along with Red Elemental Blast and Mana Drain.

This deck can seem a bit more control-ish at times, but that is by design. It has plenty of sources of card advantage, and should use them. A Library of Alexandria can easily outdraw a control deck, and should be used to do so.

Although many Old School communities permit it, I began my journey with this archetype in Old School by testing a full complement of Black Vise, which proved underwhelming and generally disappointing. You could steal games with a pair of Black Vises, but more often than not, they did nothing relevant. The only way to win then is to deploy them and Draw7 your opponent into a full grip. The problem with that plan is that they can usually empty their hand pretty quickly by that point.

It’s important to remember that Black Vise’s centrality in historical Type I was as much a function of the presence of Necropotence as any inherent rationale. Even against budget decks, Black Vise is often underwhelming, since such decks deploy creatures fairly quickly.  It should also be remembered that modern mulligan rules mean that starting hand sizes are smaller on average, making Black Vise even less damaging.

The sideboard has a heavy anti-artifact bias. Artifact Blast is particularly important in combating the menace of City in a Bottle. No other card in the format besides a counterspell can stop City in a Bottle from entering play. Whirling Dervish is desirable against Juzam decks, or black weenie, but I didn’t have room for more.

Finally, but perhaps foremost, this deck is enormously fun. Pick it up, crush opponents, or at least give them a run for their money.

Conclusion

Of the many broad strategies in Old School Magic, Zoo is one of the most important but also one of the most overlooked. The Deck and other combo strategies often receive the most press, but “boring Zoo” may, in the end, prove to be one of the strongest. Although it’s true that creatures are weaker in Old School Magic than in contemporary Magic, Zoo features the best creatures in the format. And the colors Zoo inhabits give you the tools to combat any strategy out there. Zoo is not only an excellent strategy, but its great fun.

Until next time,

Stephen