Magic Deck Vortex: Innovation & Creativity

[Editor's Note: This is a follow up to Chris Newton's first two articles from earlier this year. You can find Part One here and Part Two here. I suggest you read those first before reading on. It will help. ~Streetz~]

The period following the first block rotation was a very exciting time. There were new decks, new concepts, new ways of thinking, and the desperate search for something to relate to.

I am imagining a newer player trying to compare a block rotation of today with the rotation we had in the beginning. It brings a smile to my face because I know there is no comparison, and thus my story will be read and hopefully it will bring smiles to your face as a small child opening a Christmas morning gift. (Maybe that’s a stretch, but I can hope none the less.)

Today’s rotation usually does not kill the environment, but yet adds new flavor to old ideas. Or the other option is that a rotation will introduce new concepts into the environment that make us forget about the old stuff we just lost. A few examples that might bring understanding to my words would be when Onslaught rotated in, Invasion left, and instead of being heart broken about the loss of Fires and Fact or Fiction decks, in came the cycle and morph decks. Honestly... how much did you miss Fact or Fiction when you cracked open that pack of Onslaught and saw that you now had an Exalted Angel? Did you really miss that Shivan Wurm so much when you saw Eternal Dragon and Akroma? I didn’t think so.

The original block rotation had no such feeling. We played with our Ice Age block cards for nearly 2 years or so, and when Mirage came in, it complimented nothing we had. The typical feeling was, “What the hell is this?” We tasted the power of the old cards, and we didn’t want this diluted 4% orange juice. We wanted our whisky back! Remember… most of us back then still had access to Moxen and such. (A Mox may have ran between $80 to $100 and the Lotus was around $300)

I interrupt this article to bring you this Memory Flashback…

I was reading a report from back in the Ice Age days about a guy playing a Chaos Orb (flip this card in the air, any card it touches when it lands is destroyed, it must flip 180 in the air) in his deck, and when he really needed to blow up the board, he simply tore up his Chaos Orb and tossed it like confetti into the air around the area of his opponents permanents. Upon consulting with the judges, it was ruled that the pieces counted so long as they flipped 180 during decent.

The opponent ended up losing the match, but then the person who tore up his Chaos Orb forfeited the rest of the tournament since he no longer had a legal 60 card deck. Now back to your regularly scheduled article.

I remember sitting at home, so upset because my decks were not as fun as the other guys at the stores decks, and with Mirage so new, I wanted to make a deck that would be not only be fun, but it would win too. I pulled out my Mirage cards and tried so hard to make a deck just out of Mirage cards. I went to bed frustrated that night, because there just was not enough of anything to do anything. Then I had a brain storm. I should look again at the other sets from Ice Age. I opened my binder containing the Alliance set, and scanned through it. As I went through I came across a card, that I thought to myself the same thing I thought when I first saw the card Necropotence. “Why would anyone want to do that to themselves?” Then catching myself in that thought loop, I sat back and re-read the card again and again. I decided it was still a stupid card, and so I skipped it and went on. That’s when I came across the breakthrough in my Magic career. I stumbled upon a card that quickly became my favorite card. Then it remembered the other card that I thought was stupid, and then it hit me. I took the two cards out of my binder and set them on the floor next to each other and I lay down and kept reading back and forth between the two cards. Then I hastily remembered a very pricey card from my Ice Age collection, and it slowly turned my face into a sinister evil grin. I was going to once again make Magic a not so friendly place, and I knew exactly how to go about doing it.

The first card that I determined was stupid, and then became great was a card called Browse (UU2 Enchantment, UU2: Look at the top five cards of your library, put one of them into your hand and remove the others from the game). The other, still one of my all-time favorite cards, was the Soldevi Digger (2 artifact, 2: Put the top card of your graveyard on the bottom of your library). The way I figured it, if I could burn through my library quick enough, I could then put the top card of my graveyard on the bottom of my library! Since I didn’t have a library, it was now also the top of my library. Then I draw the card again! What a concept!

You might be asking why that is so exciting. Well that is simple. It had never been done before. The old way to do recursion was to Regrowth your Timewalk, then Timewalk again. This way, I play a deck full of Counterspells, Lightning Bolts, Wrath of Gods, and… the kicker spell… Jester’s Cap (4 Artifact, 2, sacrifice: Search target players library for any 3 cards and remove them from the game). I would simply dump my library anywhere. I really didn’t care what the cards were, I only cared about getting 1 Soldevi Digger, 1 Jester’s Cap, and some mass removal. Imagine… in those days white had single creature removal (Swords to Plowshares), mass removal (Wrath of God), enchantment and artifact removal (Disenchant), and blue could counter every spell. There was nothing you could really do as long as I had an endless supply of whatever answer I needed. This recursion provided that. Then if you did not do anything threatening to me, I would Jester’s Cap you. Eventually, you will always draw a basic land (because I thought that was funny) or I would deck you (you can not draw a card, thus losing the game).

I remember my friend sitting down and telling me that he had created the next wave of Necro, and it was because he had added red for Lightning Bolt and Incinerate (adding direct damage to replace the lost discard power). I had not showed him my creation yet, and I sat down and shuffled quietly as he talked. I played my first island and he looked at me like I was crazy. Imagine a time where Islands were only associated with Stasis. He was upset because I was playing Stasis and I tried to tell him it wasn’t, but he kept up the attitude. Soon I didn’t play the Stasis and he looked at me and said, “What are you unto?” This was after I countered all of his discard spells and followed that up with removal of his Pump Knights. He was sitting there waiting for the point of my deck, and when he ran out of steam; I played both the Digger and Browse. After re-reading Browse, he almost fell out of his chair laughing at me. I even played with my removed from the game pile face up so he could see all the goodness I was removing and would never get back. When I started to Cap him, he stopped laughing, but still was uncertain as to how I could win. Finally my library emptied.

Me: “At the end of your turn, I will put the top card of my library… this here friendly Jester’s Cap, on the bottom of my library.”

I remember seeing the hamsters get up off the bed in his head and jump into the wheel and make a mad dash. The gears slowly started turning, the squeaking loud and painful as the realization came to him. He laughed maniacally at this. This is a new deck. We have never seen this before. He had just assumed since it had not been done, that it could not be done.

All over the world, players began to have similar experiences. Counter-Post began to have tremendous success. New aggro style decks began to pop-up since Necro was not dominating them. Necro would soon have to evolve itself into a more control style deck in order to compete at all. So many different decks began to flower I could not even begin to tell you of them all, but one that blooms in my memory stands up as an important achievement in Magic deck evolution.

This time period yielded the Grand Daddy of all combo decks. This is not counting the Type 1 style decks that just played a ton of cards before killing you. I am talking about a deck that does nothing but do this combo with the end result of doing about 200 points of damage to you on turn 3 or 4. The deck revolved around three major cards, but used a collection of cards from the Mirage block to deliver a tremendous blow. The object was to play a Squandered Resources (GB Enchantment, Sacrifice a land: add one mana to your pool of a color the sacrificed land could produce) and follow it up with a Cadaverous Bloom (BG3 Enchantment, Remove a card in your hand from the game: add either GG or BB to your mana pool). The following turn (usually 4, but did happen on 3) you tapped and sacrificed your lands to play Natural Balance (each player searches his library for basic lands and put them into play to bring their total lands to 5. If they have more than 5, sacrifice down to 5) to put 5 lands into play (one being an island).

They then would tap and sacrifice those lands and end up with, after removing a few not needed cards from their hand, around 10-20 mana. They would then cast Prosperity (UX Sorcery, Each player draws X cards) for around 9-19 cards. They would then have a handful of cards they don’t need. So after removing around 6-16 cards from their hand they would have around 12-32 mana from the Bloom, and they would cast yet another Prosperity. You can see how this would add up, and eventually they would count their library, as to not deck themselves on accident, and then cast Prosperity for the rest of their deck. You probably have around 50 cards in your hand, and they will now cast between one to four Storm Seekers (G3 Instant, Storm Seeker deals 1 damage to target player for each card in his hand) for between 50 to 200 damage. Think it would be simple enough to just counter it? Wrong, they would play 3 City of Solitudes (2G Enchantment, Players can play spells only during their turn) during their turn if they had any clue to you being able to counter. The only problem the deck had was its stability. It was a fairly easy combo to disrupt if caught early, but due to the Drain Life (B1 Sorcery, Target player loses 1 life and you gain 1 life for each B paid in addition to the casting cost of this spell) they played main deck, even not having the proper start to the engine could be disastrous. It’s hard for Goblins to deal 35 damage, let alone a non-aggro deck.

My personal play experiences in this time period were very fun. I absolutely loved my Browse deck. I think I played the backs off my Prosp-Bloom cards. It was easy to win a tournament in these days because of the shear number of untested decks being played. It became obvious in this time period, that some people are just not deck makers, they are players. Some people are not players, they are deck makers. It’s really unfair to call someone out for this either. Tell an offensive lineman to catch a pass and run for 20 yards. Tell a punter to downfield block Ray Lewis. Some things just don’t work well for some people. Not to beat a dead horse (much) but it was astonishing to see the number of people who were top players because they played Necro for 2 years. They faded away just like their deck, because they didn’t have nor want to have a creative gene in their collective bodies. Even after the cards were ripped from their cold dead hands, they remained loyal to black due to the fact that it had padded their DCI rating for so many years. It was however nice to kick their collective teeth in for all the years they had brutally beaten me in the face. That type of player is still around though. You can tell them apart easily by noting that they always will be playing the “top deck.” Or if there is no top deck, they will default to Mono-Black Control (which has relation to Necro).

If you don’t think so, what card is always sitting in front of them? Phyrexian Arena... the diluted Necropotence.

It was so nice to play a color outside of Black. The sun finally was shining into the store windows. Kids began to beg their mom’s for a few bucks to by packs again. The stores became full again. My prize winnings went up… err, it was nice to play against main staple players playing new decks, and didn’t know what they were doing. Have you ever noticed that the top players in your store refuse to play in a tournament the first few weeks after a block rotation? Do you want to know why that is? It’s because the environment staple decks have not been discovered yet, and they do not want to go in with an old deck and lose rating points to a sub-1600 player who is playing with a deck full of Zephyr Falcons.

Remember that even Tog took a while to be developed, and until that time, they were all playing UG Madness because it was easy and won. That’s why I take my hat off to the guys who made the decks like Academy, Prosp-Bloom, Wake, or any deck that takes some time to piece together. These guys did not just settle and play the easy deck. They figured out what works, and what doesn’t and then adjusted the throttle until it took off and caught like wildfire! Imagine for a moment being the first guy to sit down in a tournament and playing a guy who systematically takes every shot you can give him, and sits there casting Moment’s Peace, Memory Lapse, and Renewed Faith until he gets millions of mana produced and then throws 60 elephants at you. Who saw that coming?

Don’t settle for what others have developed and think that it is good enough for you. If it doesn’t sit right in your hand, don’t play it. If you think you have an idea, don’t let someone tell you it’s bad. You win the next tournament and let them tell you how good your idea ended up being. Remember, every deck was once a rouge deck. Even Affinity.