First of all, don’t call me old. Secondly, the intention of this article is not to give a detailed history of everything that happened from point A in time until point B. It is to give a series of stories that might help the younger generation of players to get a grasp on the history and tradition of the game of Magic: The Gathering. These are personal thoughts, memories, stories, and sometimes rants (and even when I do rant don’t call me old!) about the way Magic was and up to what it is. I want to take a moment and express my personal feelings about the game in general before I get into details and stories. I am a 27 year old man who has spent 11 years of my life playing this game. For those who don’t care to do the math, that is nearly 40% of my life I have played this game. I don’t regret it either. The game kept me out of trouble, entertained, and kept my mind sharp. I met many people through playing the game, and traveled to a few different states playing in tournaments. I met most of my better friends while playing the game, and I met a lot of people whom I never liked much while playing the game. I appreciate Richard Garfield for influencing my life positively. I put a lot of money into the game, and made very little from it. Through out every turn and wave in my life, I still have a love and passion for the game. That’s why I am writing this article. Payment, recognition, and praise are not important to me. I want to give back to the community that I have been apart of, willingly or not, for so long.  

And now… on with the show!

It was June of 1994 when I bought my first pack of magic cards. If I am not mistaken, it was a $0.99 pack of 12 cards from Fallen Empires. (I had acquired about 3 packs of the Dark from somewhere, I can’t remember where…) My first true purchase was from a store across the street from my first job, which was a bagger at a grocery store. I don’t remember what my rare was… they were all pretty crummy in those days, but I remember seeing a card, which at the time I thought was dumb, but would influence my entire next summer. “Let’s see… this card costs two skulls, and it’s a sorcery. It says, ‘Target player discards two cards at random from his or her hand. If target player does not have enough cards, his or her entire hand is discarded.’ Oh, and it’s got a pretty picture too! Susan Van Camp sure can paint a pretty ghostly looking wolf.” What did I know… I was a ‘noobie’ (a person whom is new to the game or someone who has yet to grasp the fundamentals of the game). Oh how long ago that seems. This card of course did not mean anything until the next set was released. Back in those days Wizards did not have as good a communication with its players and we had no clue when the next set was coming out. As far as I knew, Fallen Empires was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Knowing how it all ended up, I could say that I was very foolish, but I don’t think that should be said, as I was not the only one. There was no internet deck copying yet. There was no magazine to publish the current threats (decks and combos to beat), and the tournament scene was a new born thing. I remember that one day the owner of the store was telling me about a group of guys that came up and played at the store on a certain day of the week. I thought I was bad and took my vicious merfolk / goblin deck and went for war. I played the guy who ended up being the top guy in the store and of course he schooled me. Let’s see if I can remember how that played out. Island, merfolk go. Plains, Savannah Lion, go. “What does that do? Oh, it’s a 2/1… my merfolk will kill it!” Mountain, goblin, attack with merfolk, he takes 1, what a moron, why didn’t he block? Plains, Crusade, “All white creatures get +1/+1. That means the lion is a 3/2 now”. Lion attacks, dead goblin. “Hrmm…” Island, merfolk, first merfolk attacks for 1. Balance, “Players equalize creatures, lands, and hand size. So I lose an island and a merfolk.” plains, tundra wolf, Lion kills merfolk. Mountain goblin, go… etc. Needless to say he wins every game, while casting Balance sometimes 2-3 times a game. He would mix in a Land Tax if needed, but it wasn’t usually. See, there was no such thing as a restricted list. Let me tell you… the first Balance is bad. Usually, if someone casted Balance, you were going to lose the game. Casting a second Balance is just plain wrong.

So, our store eventually started up a small league and during this time, we picked up a lot of people to play in our league. People saw this deck, which came to be known as White Weenie, in action and decided it was fun and began making their own versions. Thus the deck copying began. Usually we got the better of the deck in the late rounds and we all laughed at it and were merry. Soon afterwards… the Magic world would change.

We entered the store one afternoon and saw the owner pealing the plastic off a box of cards. A new set! We were in awe. This never happened before. We raced up with money in hand and stars in our eyes. We then started tearing into packs. I can remember my first paycheck after the set came out. It was around $88 and I went to my bank, which was right next to the card store, cashed it out and raced to the store and was soon after broke.

We saw the glory that was known as Ice Age. We were in awe of the mighty Seraph! Serra’s big sister! Marton Stromgald! WOOW! Jester’s Cap. I can take out your Crusades! Zuran Orb? Why would someone want to sacrifice their own lands? Llurgoyf? I don’t want my creatures in the graveyard! That means I am losing! Look at these lands! These are crappy! You have to take 1 damage when you use them! I will just keep using these basic lands. OH my! The Icy Manipulator (Hey, we got one right… blind squirrel theory).   ‘Skip your draw phase. If you discard a card from your hand, remove that card from the game. 0: Pay 1 life to set aside the top card of your library. At the beginning of your next discard phase, put that card into your hand. Effects that prevent or redirect damage cannot be used to counter this loss of life.’ What the? Who wants to not draw cards anymore? *moment of silence for our innocence*

From that moment on, Magic was not the same. I sit and shake my head when I hear the player of today talk about how unfair the Affinity decks were. How they killed you too quickly and there was nothing you could do about it. How this card or that one is broken. When was the last time you sat down to play a game of Magic, and when your opponent played a basic land on turn one, you knew you just contributed 10 bucks to the pot, and get to watch the rest of the tournament and see who won the prize. It’s one thing to have a few cards get axed from your deck. It’s quite another to be one of the reasons the restricted list came into being for your environment. There was no answer to the Necro deck. Resistance was futile. Join or be terminated. Your only hope was to place if you did not play Necro. (Period)

In those days if you won the coin toss, you went first and drew. So Necro players opening to their games usually went something like this: (8 cards in hand to start the game) Swamp, Dark Ritual, Hypnotic Specter go (When Hypnotic Specter deals damage to a player, that player discards a card at random from their hand. You have one turn to live. If you do not Swords to Plowshares or Lightning Bolt this guy NOW you lose. This is because he will knock the land from your hand.). Swamp, Hypnotic attacks, Hymn to Tourach you (The card I mentioned in the opening where you discard two cards at random for BB). Swamp, attack and either hymn you again (which would leave you without a hand) or play a pump knight (Order of the Ebon Hand or Knight of Stromgald). The pump knights were the killing machines of that day. ‘Protection from white. <BB>: +1/+0 until end of turn <B>: First strike until end of turn.’ They sound easy enough to deal with, but you never had a hand. Necropotence is then played around turn 5 or 6 and they simply fill their hand of seven cards. IF you did get a threat in play, you end up doing them a favor. They would then play a Nevinyrral's Disk (artifact that costs 4, comes into play tapped, T: Destroy all non-land permanents), wipe the board (except their lands) and by doing this, they get rid of the Necropotence, and can now draw for free again. The Zuran Orb would keep them in good health (with help from Drain Life), and that is basically how every game went. It then truly came down to who won the coin flip, because we were all playing Necro.

That time period became known as “Black Summer.” Soon came the birth of internet decking. Between that and magazines finally coming around and trying to help us out of the evil summer, a breakthrough came. Someone had figured out a way to defeat the Necro deck! Unfortunately the answer was Stasis. Pump knights and Hippies that don’t untap can not cause mischief. The disk comes into play tapped, and is not a threat. Black naturally has no answer to an enchantment, and so Necro became the running man. It was still the front runner though. If it went first, and knocked your islands or the Stasis out of your hand quick, it still got you, but you now at least had a chance. Eventually, the Necro players, being the big cheeses of the magic community, invested a few bucks and now became the Stasis players, because nothing could beat Stasis.

If you don’t know how the Stasis deck works, let me run it by you real quick. First, you had to make a land drop every turn. Island go, Island, Howling Mine go (draw an extra card each turn). Island Howling mine (hopefully) go. Island, Stasis (players skip their untap step), welcome to the waiting game, go. Because you are now drawing between 2-3 cards a turn, you are going to draw an island each turn; therefore you can always pay your upkeep for Stasis (one blue mana). They would normally play around  3 plains and 4 Adarkar Wastes in the deck to be able to generate one white mana to be able play Kismet (all your opponents permanents come into play tapped) and they then just sat and watched you draw your deck then shook your hand.

You always got up from a game and wanted to punch Stasis player. They were the most arrogant players in the world, and for no good reason. On a ten scale, a Stasis deck was around a 3 in difficulty to play. You didn’t even need to counter anything. If they killed your Stasis, you had another in hand and just played it next turn. When Alliances came out it gave this deck exactly what it needed to be ruthless. Between Arcane Denial and Force of Will, this deck didn’t even need to run Counterspell to be effective. There is nothing in the world of Magic like playing Stasis v Stasis. Whom ever got their Feldon’s Cane (shuffle your graveyard into your library and remove Feldon’s Cane from the game) countered lost. But they always waited until the last draw to try and play it! So it was in overtime and in game one and there was no; who ever had the highest life rule. The judge just waited to see who could get control then called it. Mind you, all tournaments at this time were single elimination. There was no swiss yet (at least not in my area) AWFUL! Then to make matters worse, since everyone started to play Stasis, we now had the problem of figuring out how to beat it.

In that day, there was no set or block rotation, and there was no Wizards to the rescue. It was players figuring out how to beat a deck. The answer we discovered then became the same problem. The deck that beat Stasis was the Prison. The Prison also happened to beat Necro as well, and so it became a huge mess. The Prison was a deck purely designed to beat Stasis. Nothing more. It had no real win condition outside of decking you or a helping Mishra’s Factory beatdown. All it was was a stack of 35-37 answers. Creature? Wrath of God, STP, tap it. Lands? Armaggedon, Tap it. Artifact? Disenchant, Divine Offering. Enchantment? Disenchant. The deck basically would get a few Fellwar Stones (<T>: Add one mana to your mana pool. This mana may be of any type that any land an opponent controls can produce.) and an Icy Manipulators into play (Usually turn three before Stasis is set up) and then Armageddon (Destroy all lands). They would wait for you to put a land in play to give the stone power, and then tap your only land during your upkeep. Eventually, they draw into a Winter Orb (No player may untap more than one land during his or her untap phase.) and then the game is all but over. “During your upkeep, tap which ever land you untap.” That was signature of a Prison player. They wouldn’t even untap the stone or the Icy. Once they got a second Icy, they would tap their Orb at the end of your turn, and reset their lands. The reason this beat Stasis is because Stasis periodically would have to Boomerang (return target permanent to its owners hand) their Stasis to reset their land base in order to play a few spells (Howling Mine, Kismet, etc.) then recast the Stasis, which keeps you locked down. Winter Orb does not allow for the resetting of the Stasis players precious Islands. The Stasis deck ran around 8 countering spells and 4 Boomerangs. They needed to counter the 4 Winter Orbs, and the Disenchants of the Prison player. If they could not catch them all, they then needed to waste precious Boomerangs on the opponents Winter Orb. The Prison player then would then keep 2-3 Orbs in play and it was a loosing battle. The Stasis player also had to counter Prison players Feldon’s Cane. It was too tall of an order to ask of 8 counters. Especially since Prison player would break all the Howling Mines. And so the Black Summer came to an end. It was a wonderful time period. Count your blessings that you will never experience this. If you play in Vintage or Extended, you are on your own, and know what your getting into. Standard players are now protected. Wizards now play testing the cards before releasing them. In those days… that was not the case.

My personal play during that time was very frustrating. I have always been an against the grain kind of guy. I tried hard to beat Necro. I would not bow down, I would not surrender. I would not join the dark side. I played the trend deck of the time. Ernie-geddon. Basically it was a white-green beat down deck, but it was fast. It relied on getting a first turn Land Tax or Birds of Paradise. Second turn playing Sylvan Library, and using the power of the Library to burn through both life and deck to get the Zuran Orb and Armaggeddon In the deck The concept was to isolate my fat creature v your fat creature and see who wins without mana back up. Naturally my creatures (Ernham Djinn, Autumn Willow, and Serra Angel) were the biggest and most efficient creature in the environment (not including the Necro creatures). It was probably one of the first decks that would both tear all the lands out of its deck and then discard them, and then follow that up with blowing up all the lands in play, and trying to win with all your lands in the graveyard. It sounds crazy, but there was not very much pin point removal back then, and no one realized to kill the Birds of Paradise. By then, I was only going to draw threats, and not a land. Where they would draw a land, play it and hope to draw a few more before Ernie ate them. The only problem I had was that giving a Hypnotic Specter forestwalk was not a good idea. I also always had bad luck with random discard, and they would typically hit my only lands, and I was dead before my first turn.

My opinion of those days: They were fun. Serra Angel was the toughest creature in the environment. She was a big wall that could kill too. Hypnotic Specter was the worst threat. If someone tapped 12 lands and said Balance (Balance only cost W1 to cast), something bad was about to happen to you. Having a guy, who was no doubt a jock in high school, show up with his hot girl friend, and having her sit next to him in hopes of distracting you (yea I am talking about you Eddie!) was interesting. Those days were probably the most underrated playing days of all time. In that time period, we learned to metagame. We learned about sideboarding, and why it was important. A Necro v Necro game would happen and you have a guy on his first turn play a Hippie, and the opponent would play a paralyze on it. Sideboard was good! We made the most of what we had, but in an unbalanced environment, we had the most fun. It’s unfortunate that the fun we had in those days will never return. The commercialism of the game and the competitiveness of the players have ruined the innocence of the game. The only place you can go to experience that is a friends front room with about 4-6 buddies all sitting around a table and playing a multiplayer game where you use all the cards, regardless of format that you own, and play until someone says… “What does that card do again?” Then after reading the card, that he knew very well what it did, he grins and plays a card and everyone in turn then has to re-read that card. Then you will know what it was like to play back then. To show up to a tournament with a merfolk deck and not even own a Lord of Atlantis. To go to a tournament hoping upon hope that you don’t get paired against a Necro deck in the first round, because all of our tournaments were single elimination. Buying a pack of Ice Age, hoping to get a Jester’s Cap, and getting a Jester’s Mask. Those were the days.

The Black Summer…

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