I had been thinking about my previous articles and their direction. I was contemplating what way to go with this article, and was all set on moving right along to the Tempest block deck types, when I realized that I was having fun with the Ice Age – Mirage format. I decided to postpone that article for a little while, because… I was having fun, and isn’t that what this is all about anyways? Chris having fun, babbling like a 60 year old man, reminiscing about his days in Vietnam? Right, moving right along then!

This article is going to give you some prototype deck lists for the old days. I have taken the liberty of making these decks on Magic Suitcase, and have been testing them to make sure that they are sharp and as deadly as ever. What I have decided to do, is instead of giving you match-up decks of the time they actually played each other, I am producing deck lists of they deck types when they were at their most devastating. In other words, instead of giving you the boring Stasis deck where it sat there and hoped to get a lock before Necro knocked the key cards out of its hand, I am giving you the list of when this deck was at its top and was the deck to beat. I am also going to give a brief outline on how the deck was played at the time. Hopefully, if time is available, you can punch these decks into your personal computer programs of choice and see how they worked.

A rare was a rare...

Before I go on with the deck lists, I want to express a few things to you that as a newer player would not know. In the days of these decks, there were not many vendors out there that had 15 of the tops cards for sale. Most of the time if you wanted a Necropotence, you had to buy 7 or 8 packs of Ice Age and hope to get lucky. Or else take your prized Balance and go get ripped off by the guy who works in the local factory, and did nothing with his pay check except buy magic cards and keep his rent paid. What I am trying to say is that a rare was a rare. If you did not have 4 Howling Mines, there was no substitute, and it was not easy to get them. So when a guy would show up with a deck full of rares, it was very impressive. His games were usually high profile games. He also would have a high winning percent because of this.

Lucky for me, I was one of these guys, so I had a good look at a lot of good cards and decks throughout my career. These deck lists may not be completely accurate as I am doing them up from memory. That is 10 years worth of time has passed since I last seen these decks, but the main staple cards are correct (the quantity may vary, but then again… who doesn’t customize their decks to suit their play style?). For example… some people may have played 3 Necropotence, while others had to fit the 4th copy in. Once again, as a last reminder… in these decks days, the winner of the coin toss played and drew. It would only be fair to these decks to play them (especially Necro) in that fashion. Oh, and I almost forgot. The mulligan rule was not a friendly thing in these days. You got one chance, and it was only used if you had 0 or 7 lands in your opening draw. Then you could shuffle up and draw 7 again, but you were stuck with what you got at this point. Lastly, this was before the interrupt was changed to an instant. So where you see a card listed a ‘interrupt’ its an instant.

So with that all said, and sitting neatly in the back of your mind, let’s move on and see what deck lists used to look like back in my late teen years.

Deck -- Necro.

Necro was basically a hand destruction deck that lives on gaining and maintaining card control. Ideally it would start out the gate quickly with casting one or two copies of Dark Ritual and playing either; one big Mind Twist, a couple Hymns to Tourach, or a combination of small but efficient creatures.

Deck strategy: Pillage the opponent’s hand, knocking harmful spells to the wayside before they can be cast, then devastate the enemy with the various knights and specters. Nev’s Disk is played when possible in advance of a threat being posed, since it comes into play tapped, and is one turn too slow. Keep in mind that once you play Necropotence you do not draw for free anymore. You should not play it until your hand is depleted and most likely until you get a Disk so you can remove it when it’s no longer beneficial to you. A lot of times the deck would kill the opponent, and the Necropotence never hit the board. A good strategy to use against Necro was to allow the Necropotence to come into play, but by all means the Disk can not resolve. If it does, it can not survive that round. Thus you will notice in the other deck types that artifact / enchantment removal was main deck material in this era. Most likely, if you did not, you forfeited round one, and had to pray that a Hymn did not take your Disenchant in game two, because you just lost the tournament. During a few play tests of this deck, you will be surprised at how often you get between 3-5 mana on turn one. Dark Ritual is by far the lightest card ever printed (meaning it is always on top of your deck after shuffling). This deck has recorded more turn one kills than any deck I have ever seen. This is mainly because if you get a double Dark Ritual and Mind Twist for 4 cards, you win 9 out of 10 times. Normal reaction to these cards being played in succession was submission by the opponent.

One thing that has always amazed me throughout the years is the actual number of lands played in decks. You probably will most likely see this and think it is some mistake or that we were crazy. No and yes. No it’s not a mistake, and yes we were crazy. I do not understand how I was able to play in the old days with 20 lands and have the same speed, if not better, as today playing anywhere between 23-27 lands. It’s strange to me that I only needed 20 lands in Necro to power my 2 and 3 casting cost creatures, but UG Madness needed 24 or so lands to play the same casting cost spells. Go figure…

Deck -- Turbo Stasis.

Stasis is basically a test of the round time limit. It became called “Turbo” when some smart person added Howling Mine to the deck to increase the pace of drawing your opponent’s deck. What happened as a sad side effect is that when drawing 2-4 cards a turn, you will almost always draw an island, thus being able to always afford the next turn’s U upkeep. The deck once in a while requires a reboot, so the player would cast a Boomerang on his Stasis at the end of his opponent’s turn, which enables him to untap his precious Islands. Once the Stasis player played his Feldon’s Cane and Kismet, he could call for a judge and normally the judge would award the game to the Stasis player (if all his opponents’ lands were tapped).

Deck Strategy: Typically Stasis player doesn’t care what spells you play, so long as they do not effect; a.) his hand, b.) his Islands, c.) the spell does not heavily effect the game board (Nev’s Disk). Playing against Necro, he would most likely try to counter every spell early just to slow the game down in order to survive a few extra turns. Once he gets a Howling Mine operational, and it begins to lead into a few other pieces, Stasis was one of the hardest locks to break ever created. In the end, you will be left with a hand full of stuff and a pile of tapped lands and creatures. There is typically nothing that can be done, except hope a well timed Disenchant resolves. There is not much really to explain about the deck. It just wins, and it’s exceedingly annoying to play both as and against. One of the most discouraging things you will encounter in Magic, is watching Stasis player tap his last Island to pay the upkeep, hoping he can’t pay the upkeep next turn, he then draws three cards… and plays his land for a turn, another freaking Island. “Great! I get to go through this again next turn!” Face it kid, he is going to draw an island in the next three cards, or he already has four in his hand and is just playing the drama game. One last note from me about playing a Stasis deck, you can not really appreciate the deck until you have sat there with around 14 cards in your hand, having to decide which one to discard (to the Anvil of Bogarden), and saying to yourself, I know there was an Island in here somewhere… You may notice that if you play the Necro v Stasis match-up out that Stasis typically loses the game. The sideboard Stasis utilized, namely Wall of Air (1/5 Flying) became the breaking point. Sometimes they would even run Yotian Soldier main to slow down the Pump Knights, but typically this was not necessary. They might also bring in a couple copies of Unsummon. All Stasis needed was to stall between 2 to 3 turns to establish itself, and only the speed of Necro could over come that speed, and the sideboard options eventually overcame even Necro’s speed.

After play testing this deck a few times, it all came back to me… dear Lord! This deck puts a ton of permanents into play. I can now remember the difficulty shuffling afterwards, because of the stacking of matching permanents. You didn’t want any clumping, and so you shuffled a little extra, and then were called out for stalling. Stasis was not worth the hassle. I should have just converted to Necro and been done with it!

Deck -- The Prison.

The Prison is just that… a jail sentence. Just like Stasis, the Prison is not a fun deck to play. I remember playing in a huge single elimination tournament and as a gift, my friend insisted that I show up and play his Prison deck. I think the tournament went 8 rounds, and I all but handed my 6th round opponent the game because I had such a headache from playing this piece of crap and did not want to play anymore. Sure! The deck wins. The deck has an answer to everything. I would almost say (without doing research) this deck would either dominate or give every deck I have seen a run for its money.

Deck Strategy: When this deck began, it was designed to defeat Turbo Stasis. This was due to the effect that the Winter Orb has of not allowing the Stasis player to untap all of his islands and because of the numerous ways to destroy the Mines and Stasis. Its win condition was to kill its opponent with Mishra’s Factory. That all slowly went away, as the Factory ended up became a chump blocker for Pump Knights. After that, it became a slow death Stasis style deck. It either made you draw your deck one card at a time, or if you were lucky, it would Millstone you a few times to speed the process. My headache is returning just thinking about it. However, interestingly enough, a variant of this deck sprang up in which it splashed a bit of green for a huge surprise. They played 2 copies of Titania’s Song (This variant was called the Singing Prison) and 2 Deadly Insect. The only way they could generate green mana was from an artifact called the Sol Grail. The player would play the first and second copy of this card and say blue or white (you name the color of mana it produces). Then out of no where, they would play the third copy, of course after you were very locked down, and name green. It was then that you knew you were in trouble. Titania’s Song brings all artifacts in play to life as creatures with power and toughness equal to its casting cost. Most of the artifacts they controlled were between 2 and 4 casting cost, but there would be about 10 of them in play. Needless to say, that was usually the end of the game. This version was the minority, as if it was not a surprise, it was not as effective. The normal version was much more dominant. The deck just simply destroys everything. It runs Armageddon, Wrath of God, Disenchants, and even some countering spells. There was not one card that it could not deal with. One way or another, all of it opponents cards were going to the graveyard.

This decks eventual downfall became its own popularity. If you remember the end of the Wake days, you will get a feel of the end of the Prison days, where practically everyone was playing it, and so everyone who was not, was playing cards to fend it off. Also, giving a helping hand was the birth of the untargetable creatures. Jolreal’s Centaur gave this deck fits because it could not Swords or tap it. It required a Wrath of God (4 casting cost) to eliminate it, and they would simply casting a new one next turn, you prevented the player from casting Armageddon because they needed to keep their own lands available to be able to control the Centaur. Since Prison player was not keeping the Centaur players lands at bay, they were free to cast and kill off the board controlling artifacts.

In conclusion of this lengthy article, I would like to show you a few extra decks that came into being following these deck types. They never experienced the ultimate success of these three original Type 2 decks, but they were very fun in their own way.

Deck -- Counter-Post.

This deck is the grandfather of all blue – white control decks. It would end up being the standard “to beat” deck of its day.

Deck Strategy: This deck outrageously takes advantage of the Alliance land Thawing Glaciers. Every other turn you tear a land out of your deck and put it directly into play and return the Glacier to your hand. When you get to a second Glacier, the game is well in hand because you are going to now get a land out of your deck every turn. With the Rainbow Efreet a constant blocker and the Outpost constantly churning out soldiers, this deck did not have much to fear in the way of creatures. Its typical lose came to just not seeing the Glacier and Outpost before death came a knocking. I would like to point out the Rainbow Efreet for a moment. At the time of this decks run, the stack rule was not established yet. What I mean is that typically, we would announce the Efreet as a blocker and just phase it out. If not it simply died. There was no adding damage to the stack and then phasing out her like today. This creature would be absolutely devastating in today’s deck creation. She was strong in our time, let alone what kind of havoc she would cause today. Honorable mention goes to the Ophidian. This was the first deck to use him, and would eventually evolve into the deck that was called Ophidian-go due to his drawing ability.

Deck -- Browse.

My baby. This deck was the first real head scracher deck created. You just kind of sit there waiting for the point of the deck, just to see what this moron is trying to do. Normally, it’ll be some young kid trying out his 14 card unbreakable lock on you, and somewhere along the line, you will counter a Talisman and he about cries. But when this deck started off with its build-up, you needed to just stop watching and kill him now, or it will be a long round of drawing basic lands for you.

Deck Strategy: The deck begins looking like CounterPost, but slowly its own persona begins to show. When instead of using the good countering spells of the day, it starts countering with Arcane Denial and Memory Lapse (remember, at the time this card was looked at as a crappy alternate Couterspell), disenchanting any card it can target, wrathing over one creature, etc., just to get your opponent wore down. You really didn’t need to be concerned about resources. Spend and spend and spend! Finally, out comes the Browse. You start looking at five cards from your deck and picking the Memory Lapse, and leaving the Swords, Wrath, Browse, and Counterspell to be removed from play, just so you can stall him one more turn. This deck became a fun way to monkey around, play with your opponent, until you tapped four lands and played a Jester’s Cap. Inevitably, your opponent then stopped smiling, looked down at this hand, and realizes that he was not fooling you into thinking the four lands in his hand were important cards, then moving his eyes to his graveyard, he slowly realizes that his immediate threats are now residing there. THAT’S why he cast a Wrath over a Savanah Lion!

Precisely! He simply did not care, because once he became the dominant player at this table, he could cast that Wrath ever turn. Then, Jester’s Cap you.

“Why Mana Flare?” You might ask. This was my personal twist to the equation. I noticed that on turn 3, I most likely had nothing to fear, because what ever I would have countered, I was going to Wrath away on turn 4 anyways. So I added them, and so instead of waiting for the 6th turn to be a force, I subtracted two turns, and when you went first with the mana surge provided, there was really nothing you could do minus pop the flare that would harm me. I would normally have a Force of Will for that futile effort. Once I untapped, played my 4th land, now I am a blue player with 8 mana, and nothing to do. ‘Mise well cast this here Browse! Then the game became a sinister little sub-game. This is because if you did not cast something dangerous to me, I was going to use the Browse atleast once during your turn, then untap. I would dig deep, and at that point, my only concerns were, a.) Grab a Digger b.) grab a Cap c.) grab a few countering spells along the way. Most likely, all the creature removal you need is already in the graveyard. So when your opponent ran out of steam completely, throw away your library, toss out the digger and cap, and wait for your opponent to concede. Also at this point of the game, your really do not care what the cards are that your removing from their library. At that time, there was no way around a counterspell. So even letting your opponent have a disenchant was not really bad. He pops your digger, you just counter it, or just dig its brother from the grave into your newly established library.

I just happened to look over the amount of writing that has taken place here, and I wonder to myself, are my readers going to be able to walk tomorrow after sitting and reading so much stuff. Is Streetz even going to let me post eight pages worth of story? I even chuckle to myself; I didn’t even get to the Sligh deck, or the Sands of Time deck. Not to mention the deck Necro morphed into. Alas, I am content to leave those for another time in another place where we can all sit around the camp fire, taking turns with the flash light and hoping that little Johnny does not get scared and scream at the end of the scariest of stories.

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