Some people don’t appreciate”classic” Magic articles like the kind you find on www.mtgword.com. To them, it’s”why should I bother with a bunch of old decklists?”
Like I said in Part I – decklists may change, but a lot of the strategies you see today date back to 1994. To cite an example, I had a wonderful e-mail exchange with Scott Johns, editor of Brainburst, on this very topic.
Star Spangled Slaughter, Jon Finkel, Pro Tour New Orleans 2001 (Extended)
Creatures (12)
4 Lightning Angel
4 Meddling Mage
4 Ophidian
Utility (24)
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
4 Disenchant
4 Fire/Ice
4 Swords to Plowshares
Mana (24)
4 Faerie Conclave
3 Flood Plain
4 Plateau
4 Tundra
3 Adarkar Wastes
4 Volcanic Island
2 Wasteland
What does this have to do with Scott? I congratulated him on Finkel’s deck and, one ancient player to another, he e-mailed:”Wow, someone who knew the reference to Star Spangled Slaughter – you have been around :).”
What’s he talking about?
Star Spangled Slaughter, Scott Johns, 1996 World Championships (Top deck of Type I.5 portion)
Creatures (15)
3 Savannah Lions
4 Order of Leitbur
4 Order of the White Shield
2 White Knight
2 Serendib Efreet
Utility (19)
3 Arcane Denial
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Incinerate
2 Psionic Blast
2 Fireball
4 Disenchant
1 Binding Grasp
1 Control Magic
Mana (22)
6 Plains
4 Plateau
4 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island
3 Mishra’s Factory
2 Adarkar Wastes
Scott continued his stroll down memory lane:”The expected deck to beat for me was a variation on Black Juzam/Hymn/Pump Knight beatings. Because of this, pro-black got priority over Lion #4, which I didn’t expect to be great against black. The one Binding Grasp was because I didn’t have enough blue to support another Control Magic. Arcane Denials were specifically in as an answer to Moat, as that single card seemed to be control’s only chance against this deck, and three Arcanes and four Disenchants makes that a non-issue.
“Perhaps the biggest story of the deck was the sideboard, which included three Martyrdom, a last-minute brainstorm that allowed me a superb way of smashing through the popular StormDrain deck at the event (Storm Cauldron/Fastbond/Drain Life) Drain me? Nah, Drain the Lion for twenty, which gives you one, so you die :). Martyrdom single-handedly powered me by two StormDrain decks and also a heavy burn deck dubbed ‘The Gun.’ At the critical turn, I was able to redirect all his burn to one of my lions instead of it being aimed directly at my head for the win.
“If I recall correctly, the deck also had Sleight of Minds in the board as well, and I seem to recall this also being very handy against the burn variants.”
If I remember correctly, in six rounds I believe I beat two StormDrains, two The Guns (including Olle Rade, who I got to Fireball for two for the win, even though he had ‘Geddon in hand :), and two Juzam/Hymn/PumpKnight decks.”
Star Spangled Slaughter came from one of the few big Type 1.5 tournaments in history, and that Worlds led to the immediate restriction of Fastbond. Scott has a wonderful story there, you’ll agree. (Olle Rade was, among other things, the winner of the very first Duelist Invitational.)
If Finkel can borrow a page from history, then I’m sure you won’t mind…
Reminiscing:
Rakso’s”The Deck,” as posted on Beyond Dominia
Blue (19)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Fact or Fiction
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Morphling
Black (6)
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
1 Diabolic Edict
1 The Abyss
White (2)
1 Balance
1 Dismantling Blow
Red (2)
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Fire/Ice
Green (2)
1 Sylvan Library
1 Regrowth
Artifact (1)
1 Zuran Orb
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
4 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
I received a lot of good feedback on Part I, but some players told me the deck left them confused. Among others, MTGNews moderator Shade2k1 posted on his site:
“Allow me to be the first to critique this thing. Most of it looks good, but why only the single Abyss for creature control? What if you can’t tutor for it in the early game against aggro? What if you’re playing against OSE w/’Cores and Factories, which sneak around the Abyss? I can understand not wanting to use ‘Cores (card disadvantage), and Moat (WW in CC, though it’s still worth considering), but why no Kegs or Disks? I’m sorry, but I just don’t see this having much of a chance in game 1 vs. aggro with only an Abyss, Balance, and one Fire/Ice for creature control…”
(On the other hand, John Ormerod commented past test versions of the same deck had a small glut of creaturekill.)
The reason people like Mr. Shade are confused is that they have the old versions of”The Deck” in mind. To help bring people like Mr. Shade up to date on this complex deck type, I’m going to turn the clock back by about… seven years.
This isn’t a history lesson, though. Pay close attention to how the same strategy evolved throughout the years with an expanding card pool.
1994: Before Dojo History
The cards to make a solid control deck became available by the time Legends was printed. Problem is, I was just a kid without Internet access back then, and not even The Dojo has posts that date back that far. This early period, just before Type II was invented, survives only in the recollections of old-school players like Scott.
Although he developed the strategy and published his notes on The Dojo, old-school players do not credit Brian Weissman with inventing Weissman school. Instead, they say that various players on the West Coast probably came up with their own inventions independently. There was, after all, no such thing as a NetDeck yet.
Scott recalls:”As to ‘The Deck,’ it’s not something I’m sure anybody actually knows. Prior to ‘The Deck’ being famous, in Los Angeles many of us were playing very similar builds, but just with different kill methods. Frenchy and I were famous for Millstone versions, Joel Unger used a Serra and couple legends, like Dakkon Blackblade, and a number of other people had similar builds as well.
“I always preferred Millstone, as it was far easier to force into play in the control mirror, and also allowed for multiple Balances to be maximally taken advantage of. In LA, we called it ‘The 56 card deck,’ since the decks were nearly identical except for how they actually finished the game.
“This was some time before Weissman’s version ever really showed up at LA, so it’s hard for me to tell which branch of the convergent evolution was influencing which.”
Jarrod Bright a.k.a. Vesuvan, a Brainburst writer, e-mailed that it was very different from the Type I we know today. Type II had its own restricted list, and Balance and Mind Twist were unrestricted. Later, with Fallen Empires, he says that the most powerful deck used Hymns and the Abyss/Jade Statue combo. As Scott mentioned, an unrestricted Balance meant very fast games on low land counts. Jarrod added that other popular decks included White Weenie with the Armageddon/Consecrate Land/Mishra’s Factory combo, Land Destruction with Dingus Eggs, Land Equilibrium/Black Vise, Mishra’s Workshop/Copy Artifact/The Abyss, NetherVoid, and the first aggro-control decks based around Mana Drain and cheap creatures such as Kird Ape or Sedge Troll.
When Balance was finally restricted in April 1995, Jarrod concludes that”The Deck” had the breathing room to drop a few lands and flourish. He adds that people also began metagaming against the traditional enemy of control: The mono-black decks with Hymn to Tourach that killed with The Rack at the time.
1995: A Bare-Bones Structure
That year, the first rough versions of”The Deck” and its now immortal philosophy were posted on old sites like The Dojo and The Library of Dominaria:
The Deck 1995, Brian Weissman, as posted on The Dojo
Blue (11)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Braingeyser
4 Mana Drain
2 Counterspell
1 Recall
White (12)
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Disenchant
2 Moat
2 Serra Angel
Black (2)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
Red (2)
2 Red Elemental Blast
Green (1)
1 Regrowth
Artifact (4)
1 Ivory Tower
2 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Strip Mine
3 City of Brass
1 Plateau
1 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
3 Plains
4 Island
Sideboard (15)
1 Plains
1 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Control Magic
1 Counterspell
2 Blood Moon
3 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Divine Offering
1 Moat
Members of the starting lineup:
Ancestral Recall
U
Instant
Beta rare
Target player draws three cards. (Restricted in January 1994)
Time Walk
1U
Sorcery
Beta rare
Take an extra turn after this one. (Restricted in January 1994)
Timetwister
2U
Sorcery
Beta rare
Each player shuffles his or her hand and graveyard into his or her library and then draws seven cards. (Then put Timetwister into its owner’s graveyard.) (Restricted in January 1994)
Recall
XXU
Sorcery
Legends rare
Discard X cards from your hand, then return a card from your graveyard to your hand for each card discarded this way. Remove Recall from the game. (Restricted in August 1994)
Mana Drain
UU
Instant
Legends uncommon
Counter target spell. At the beginning of your next main phase, add X colorless mana to your mana pool, where X is that spell’s converted mana cost.
Counterspell
UU
Instant
Beta uncommon (common in later reprints)
Counter target spell.
Swords to Plowshares
W
Instant
Beta uncommon
Remove target creature from the game. Its controller gains life equal to its power.
Disenchant
1W
Instant
Beta common
Destroy target artifact or enchantment.
Moat
2WW
Enchantment
Legends rare
Creatures without flying can’t attack.
Serra Angel
3WW
Creature-Angel
4/4
Beta uncommon
Flying. Attacking doesn’t cause Serra Angel to tap.
Demonic Tutor
1B
Sorcery
Beta uncommon
Search your library for a card and put that card into your hand. Then shuffle your library. (Restricted in March 1994)
Mind Twist
XB
Sorcery
Beta rare
Target player discards X cards at random from his or her hand. (Restricted in August 1994, banned in February 1996, unbanned and restricted in October 2000)
Red Elemental Blast
R
Instant
Beta common
Choose one – Counter target blue spell or destroy target blue permanent.
Regrowth
1G
Sorcery
Beta uncommon
Return target card from your graveyard to your hand. (Restricted in March 1994)
Disrupting Scepter
3
Artifact
Beta rare
3, Tap: Target player chooses and discards a card from his or her hand. Play this ability only during your turn.
Jayemdae Tome
4
Artifact
Beta rare
4, Tap: Draw a card.
Library of Alexandria
Land
Arabian Nights uncommon
Tap: Add one colorless mana to your mana pool. Tap: Draw a card. Play this ability only if you have exactly seven cards in your hand. (Restricted in May 1994)
Strip Mine
Land
Antiquities uncommon
Tap: Add 1 colorless mana to your mana pool. Tap, Sacrifice Strip Mine: Destroy target land. (Restricted in January 1998 after the printing of Wasteland)
Blood Moon
2R
Enchantment
The Dark uncommon
Nonbasic lands are mountains.
Circle of Protection: Red
1W
Enchantment
Beta common
1: The next time a red source of your choice would deal damage to you this turn, prevent that damage.
Tormod’s Crypt
0
Artifact
The Dark uncommon
Tap, Sacrifice Tormod’s Crypt: Remove target player’s graveyard from the game.
The original decklist should confuse a beginner after everything I just said. Why is the deck half white instead of mostly blue? Four Swords and four Disenchants? What happened to The Abyss? Only six counters but two maindecked Red Elemental Blasts?
Yes, that was the original”The Deck.” Decks were slower, and there were far more creature decks. There was no Draw-Go because there weren’t enough counters, and there was no Sligh because most of the creatures and burn spells – even Incinerate – had not yet been printed.
It’s easy to see the strategy in the bare bones of the great granddaddy of control, with hardly any manipulation or card drawing in print.
The basic idea was to survive and drop”silver bullets” – a Moat against creature decks or Disrupting Scepter against control decks – then a Serra Angel for the win. Serra, Magic’s original cover girl, worked like today’s Morphling. Its four toughness made it easier to protect, and it could block while attacking.
The infamous”Scepter lock” was a Serra beating down backed by Mana Drains and a Scepter, forcing you to discard your topdecks or see them countered.
The infamous”triple threat” of COP: Red, Blood Moon, and Moat reduced”80% of Type I decks to nothing but Moxes.”
Ancestral Recall, Braingeyser, and Library of Alexandria, along with the workhorse Jayemdae Tome, were the only draw cards available, but they did the job in a much slower environment. As early as 1995, Brian laid down the key doctrine of card advantage on The Dojo: You normally draw one card per turn, so casting Ancestral Recall is like taking three extra turns, while neutralizing cards with Mind Twist and Moat is like making the opponent lose turns.
Swords, Disenchant, and Strip Mine allowed the deck to remove any permanent at little cost, and Regrowth, Recall, and Timetwister rounded things out with a rough recursion engine.
Without most of today’s tutors and manipulation,”The Deck” then was more redundant and had to run far more removal. Even the mana base was radically different, and it allowed Blood Moon, which is used against it today.
Note that the starting lineup has very simple cards, yet practically the entire 1994 restricted list.”The Deck” took only the most powerful ingredients.
Reminds Me Of…
Olivier and Antoine Ruel, Go-Mar”Frosties”, Barcelona Masters, May 2001, Invasion Block Constructed
Mana (26)
8 Island
7 Plains
3 Swamp
4 Coastal Tower
4 Salt Marsh
Creatures (6)
4 Galina’s Knight
2 Dromar, the Banisher
Counters (10)
4 Absorb
4 Dromar’s Charm
2 Exclude
Anti-creature (6)
2 Spite/Malice
2 Rout
2 Teferi’s Moat
Drawing/Manipulation (8)
4 Opt
4 Fact or Fiction
Others (5)
4 Lobotomy
1 Yawgmoth’s Agenda
Sideboard (15)
4 Disrupt
3 Gainsay
2 Aura Blast
3 Crusading Knight
2 Prison Barricade
1 Rout
1996: Consolidation Of The Old Card Pool
The Deck, Origins 1996, Brian Weissman, as posted on The Dojo
Blue (12)
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Braingeyser
1 Amnesia
4 Mana Drain
2 Counterspell
1 Recall
White (12)
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Disenchant
2 Moat
2 Serra Angel
Black (1)
1 Demonic Tutor
Red (2)
2 Red Elemental Blast
Green (1)
1 Regrowth
Artifact (4)
1 Mirror Universe
2 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
Mana (28)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Sol Ring
1 Library of Alexandria
3 Strip Mine
4 City of Brass
1 Plateau
1 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
4 Plains
4 Island
Sideboard (15)
1 Fireball
1 Disrupting Scepter
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Feldon’s Cane
1 Ivory Tower
2 Blood Moon
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Divine Offering
1 Moat
Stragglers in the starting lineup:
The Abyss
3B
Enchant World
Legends rare
At the beginning of each player’s upkeep, destroy target nonartifact creature that player controls of his or her choice. It can’t be regenerated.
Amnesia
3UUU
Sorcery
The Dark rare
Target player reveals his or her hand. That player discards all nonland cards from it.
Mirror Universe
6
Artifact
Legends rare
Tap, Sacrifice Mirror Universe: Exchange life totals with target opponent. Play this ability only during your upkeep. (Restricted in August 1994, then unrestricted in October 1999 after rules changes)
Balance
1W
Sorcery
Beta rare
Except the player who controls the fewest lands, each player sacrifices lands until all players control the same number of lands as the player who controls the fewest. Players do the same for creatures and discard cards from their hands the same way. (Restricted in April 1995)
One lesson with”The Deck” is that a one-card change radically changes the entire deck, which makes it extremely personalizable.
There aren’t a lot of changes – an extra Strip Mine, the first appearance of the Fireball in the side, the replacement of Mind Twist with Amnesia after Mind Twist was banned – but the few count a lot. Mirror Universe, for example, replaced Ivory Tower for life gain, but Brian’s 1996 notes don’t reflect that it could be used as a kill card (one could tap a City of Brass to go down to zero life and would not die instantly under pre-Fifth Edition rules, then exchange life totals using Mirror). Balance remained a key missing card.
Also in this period, Dojo sensei Frank Kusumoto reported Warren Chang’s proposal to replace Serra Angel with The Rack to replace Moat with The Abyss – the first appearance of today’s mainstay. Brian objected, saying Serra Angels encouraged the opponent not to side out his anti-creature cards, which helped him take control. (Untargetable creatures were not yet in print.)
Another important note is the smoothing out of the mana base.”The Deck” lives and dies by the consistency of its mana, and experienced players pay attention to this before anything else.
The 1996 version is what remains in people’s minds today. All this is important because you have to understand the environment now why”The Deck” is no longer using four Swords to Plowshares and two Moats, which was the earlier question from my fan Shade2k1.
The above list was from June 1996, and more noticeable changes would be forced by other decks. Necropotence would finally be discovered and”Black Summer” would eventually seep into Type I. More aggressyve”Zoo” creature decks would also enter the scene. Both made maintaining early control with”The Deck” more difficult, and highlighted that it was not just about dropping”silver bullets.”
Reminds Me Of…
CMU Blue, August 1998, Erik Lauer
Land (26):
4 Stalking Stones
4 Quicksand
18 Island
Permission (21):
4 Force Spike
4 Counterspell
1 Memory Lapse
3 Mana Leak
3 Forbid
2 Dissipate
4 Dismiss
Other (13):
4 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Impulse
4 Whispers of the Muse
1 Rainbow Efreet
Sideboard (15):
4 Hydroblast
4 Sea Sprite
2 Capsize
4 Wasteland
1 Grindstone
CMU Blue, Randy Buehler, World Championships ’99 (6-0 in Type II)
Counters (17)
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
1 Miscalculation
4 Forbid
4 Dismiss
Creatures (3)
3 Masticore
Others (12)
4 Whispers of the Muse
4 Powder Keg
4 Treachery
Land (28)
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Stalking Stones
4 Wasteland
16 Island
In the next column, we’ll see how”The Deck” evolved from a passive, defensive deck into something more flexible that could switch gears into a faster, more aggressive control deck, and why. For now, take a moment and think about the bare bones of the strategy,”The Deck” without key cards from the sets after The Dark.
I hope you understood why I said the 1996 version of the”The Deck” reminded me of Draw-Go, of all things. One had five colors; the other was mono blue. Underneath the cards, it’s the same skeleton, though.
Again, the original”The Deck” had a lot of white to remove what the opponent played, then use card advantage to outlast the opponent with a now empty hand, and eventually play and protect a hard-to-kill creature that won as an afterthought. If you think about it, Draw-Go did the exact same thing, right down to the Force Spikes. It’s easier to draw the parallel if you think of Nevinyrral’s Disk as a Type II Moat, for example.
After this stroll down memory lane, you should know that even way back in 1994, Type I was a lot more confusing than stuffing power cards into a deck and winning on turn 1 as though winning a coin flip. I usually advise beginners not to try”The Deck” as their first deck.
How do you learn about”The Deck” if you’re a young new player with a five-dollar weekly allowance? Go to Friday Night Magic and try drafting blue/white.
Trust me – certain ideas were good in 1994, and they only get better today.
As Brian Weissman himself wrote on The Dojo in 1995:”My original intent behind the construction of ‘The Deck’ was to build something that I could never cease to improve on playing, and that would win in direct proportion to how skillfully it was played.”
Six years later, we’re still debating a lot of points on the same deck.
Oscar Tan
[email protected]
rakso on #BDChat on Newnet
Manila, Philippines
Type I, Extended and Casual Maintainer, Beyond Dominia (http://www.bdominia.com/discus/messages/9/9.shtml)
Featured writer, Star City Games (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/archive.php?Article=Oscar Tan)
Proud member of the Casual Player’s Alliance (http://www.casualplayers.org)
P.S. – Thanks to Brian Weissman, Darren di Battista a.k.a. Azhrei, JP”The Polluted” Meyer, Matt D’Avanzo, Adam Duke a.k.a. Meridian and John Ormerod for being tough critics of the drafts of this series.
Thanks to Giles Reid from the Star City list and Nate Heiss of The Magic Word (www.mtgword.com) for sending me the original Dojo files, and to Amy English for being my”guinea pig” reader.
And, thanks to Alex Shvartsman, Kai Budde, Zvi Mowshowitz, Gary Wise, Chris Pikula, Noah Boeken and Ben Rubin for invaluable insights into the Magic Invitational and Invitational playtesting.
Nate put up Brian’s original article on his site after I wrote the first draft of this article, so if you care to read it, go to: http://www.mtgword.com/article1065.html