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Once upon a time, back in June 1995, the first standalone expansion in Magic, Ice Age, made its appearance. This expansion brought along some very interesting cards in its 383-card lineup. Looking back at these days, you can tell that R&D hadn’t quite started focusing on its creatures yet. Of course, there were some exceptions, but for the most part, the creatures in these days were weak. But Ice Age introduced many, many strong enchantments, and it was only fitting that Enchantment-based decks would dominate during this era.
Well, with it, Ice Age brought many new concepts to the table. With so many enchantments, you could now play an effective Control deck that would lock down your opponent’s creatures, so they couldn’t win. And then you could fly over them with your Sibilant Spirit for the victory. Since you’d been playing longer, and knew the game better than a lot of these newbies coming into your shop, you could use that knowledge to your advantage. This is when the experienced players started reigning over the rest of the community with their Control decks. But it would be only one card from Ice Age that would decide the fate for many after the release of the expansion. This card was the jank rare that everyone overlooked because of the amount of text and complexity that the card had. And the people that did read through that text, said “What?!? This card helps the opponent more than me? Why would I want a dumb card like that?” It was only a few that saw the power within the card, and started thinking about how to incorporate it into their deck. The card… was the almighty Necropotence.
Trading life for more cards was another new concept that had come into the game. Since most players were single-minded about the game at that time, they thought that the only way that would help them win, would be to add more creatures and damage spells into their decks. Card Advantage was a very new term, and unknown to most at this time. And card advantage was what Necropotence was all about. Drawing more cards than your opponent, and at the same time, finding more answers than them at a faster rate. Now that the few players had found Necropotence, they needed to find other cards that would have synergy with it. First, they wanted to get Necro out fast, so they turned to cards like Lake of the Dead. A land that would grant them four black mana, in exchange for a Swamp. Then the deckbuilders’ eyes fell upon a card known as Dark Ritual. It was an Instant that they could play on the first turn in order to get three black mana. And three black mana was the cost for Necropotence. By golly, they could a first turn Necropotence if they needed to! Obviously, you wouldn’t want to do this most times, because you’d have enough cards in your hand already. But that three mana could be used on other strong black cards, such as the infamous Hypnotic Specter.
Hypnotic Specter brought a threat to the table, but at the same time emphasized on the theme of Necropotence. The player would make his opponent discard a card from their hand, and, in turn, would gain more card advantage over them. Not to mention, lowering their life total by two. Then they thought, “What other threats can capitalize on extra mana?” And they were surprised to find that Ice Age had brought them a couple of “pump knights” in the forms of Order of the Ebon Hand and Knight of Stromgald. These knights also had protection against White. This meant that they would have no problems getting past those White Weenie decks that were popping up everywhere. And better yet, they wouldn’t be able to be targeted by one of the best removal spells at the time, Swords to Plowshares. And then they realized that Pump Knights and the Specter wouldn’t be able to complete the task on their own. They needed a “big brother” of sorts, which would help finish the opponent off.
And these bigger brothers were Ihsan’s Shade and Sengir Vampire in most cases. Ihsan’s Shade had Protection from White, meaning that, once again, he was an immuned threat to those White Weenie decks. Sengir Vampire was picked simply because he was an efficient beater. A 4/4 Flyer for 3BB and an average ability was good back in those days.
Now that the deck had its threats and a drawing engine to retrieve them, deck players were forced to look at the weaknesses of Necropotence. One weakness was losing life too fast. Deckbuilders started looking through their collection for something that would be able to cope with this loss of life. Many of them found Ivory Tower, the 1-costing artifact that read “During your upkeep phase, gain 1 life for each card in your hand above four.” This card went along with the deck great. You would pay 1 life to draw a card, and gain 1 life for each card in your hand over four. In theory, you could draw 3 cards each turn without losing any life. But this was only one answer to the life loss problem. There had to be more. And so the deckbuilders continued their quest to find more cards that would be compatible with Necropotence. They found Zuran Orb, a 0 costing artifact that would allow them to sacrifice their extra lands to gain 2 life. This meant that once they had enough lands, the Necro player could then use Zuran Orb to power their engine into finding finishers.
The other problem that Necropotence players were going to have was competing with extremely quick aggressive decks. Of course, they had chump blockers in the Pump Knights and the Specter, but if the opposing deck broke through those defenses, their life total would be wide open. And seeing as the Necro player wanted to keep their life total high (so that they could draw more cards), this became an issue. So once again, the players and deck designers looked into their pockets for money to buy a playset of Drain Life. This card would allow them to kill off a creature or put some damage on the opponent, yet still gain life at the same time. This card was that stone that killed two birds. And then there was Nevinyrral’s Disk. This was the reset button for the deck, just in case anything got out of control. And it allowed the player to get rid of Necropotence whenever it started becoming a hassle. When their life count was getting low, they’d simply blow up Necropotence and keep playing as normal. This gave the Necro players an all-around answer to most of the threats at the time. It was a card that really completed the deck. With both of the problems solved, players then looked back to the theme in order to finish up the deck. The extra card openings were filled with simple, yet powerful, discard spells like Hymn to Tourach and Mind Twist. This would allow the Necropotence player to gain, yet more, card advantage on the opposition. The extra discard would also come in handy when facing Control, because they could get rid of the opponent’s threats and answers early on.
So the deck stood complete in all its glory. The building process was over, and now it was time to terrorize everyone in the vicinity. This deck was a true beast made for battle.
And, after a while, people starting catching on to the new deck. Its strength in card advantage instead of damage made it very strange to some, but powerful none the less. And what went from a jank rare, now transformed into the most powerful card the Magic community had ever seen. But you ask, “What made the deck so strong that it would not be able to be stopped?” Well, it was because it had strengths against the best decks at those times. As I said before, White Weenie and Control decks were the most played. Necropotence had answers to both of them. White Weenie had to struggle to beat this deck because of the Pump Knights. Since they had protection against White, the Necro player could sit back and chump block all day. Or they could go in for the kill quickly, since the White Weenie player would not be able to block. Also, White Weenie’s one removal spell, Swords to Plowshare, was completely ineffective against them. After that, the Necro player would use Drain Life to take out the weenies. Finally, the person playing Necropotence would just start hitting for 5 with Ihsan’s Shade to end the game. And with double Dark Rituals, a Turn 2 Ihsan’s Shade was possible; which leads me to my next point… This deck was too fast for most control decks. It would have a Hypnotic Specter out on Turn 1 via Dark Ritual. Then it would attack with that Specter, and use a Hymn to Tourach on Turn 2, making the opponent have to discard 3 cards at once. That’s just how powerful this deck is. When you are discarding all your answers, there’s no way you can deal with that measly 2/2. And he only has to hit for ten turns to win. But you can guarantee that the Necropotence player will have a Knight out by then, hacking away for 2 more each turn. There was simply too much speed and disruption in this build for a Control deck to have handled. The deck started to dominate at all the tournaments, and people could find little way to get around it. And slowly, this deck would become perfected to every metagame. Whether that be adding in a single Dance of the Dead to compete with the Ernies and Serras floating around, or adding a playset of Lightning Bolt and a few Mountains to take out those pesky weenies. Demonic Consultation became one of the most common cards to be integrated into the deck. It allowed the player to find a Necropotence quickly, even if that meant getting rid of ten cards to do it. Slowly, this card became more popular. When Dennis Bentley won with Necro at US Nationals in 1996, he was only using 3 Necropotence, meaning he only had 3 ways to get Necro into his hand. All three of them being to actually draw the card. Then in Pro Tour Dallas, later that year, Paul McCabe used 4 copies of Necropotence with 2 Demonic Consultation, meaning he had 6 ways of retrieving the engine. And at PT Chicago 1997, Mike Lauer effectively maxed out the Necropotence count and the Demonic Consultation count. This meant that he would now have 8 ways to find the Skull. After people started seeing all the damage the deck could do, the pace of conversion went up quite drastically. Until soon, everyone and their brother was playing the deck known as Necro. And at this time, the game turned into a boring mess of mirror matches between the same deck, known as the “Black Summer.” Whoever won the coin flip (at this time, if you won the coin flip, you got to go first and draw) most likely won the game. So, as people always do, they looked for an answer to the 'juggernaut'. Magazines started being produced to help players find a way to capitalize on the deck’s weaknesses. The internet started being more of a contributor also. And, eventually, someone found the card that would stop the Necro deck in its tracks. What was this card? Well, I’ll save that for next time. ~ Sincerely, FIRE REIGN 2 ~ You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
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Up
to this time, many people had just been playing with a fun deck, most likely
Aggro. Not much knowledge about the game was needed to play against your friends
with a White Weenie deck. I attack with Savannah Lions and you take two damage.
Mainly, it was just a race between these decks to see which decks’ creatures
would be able to attack for twenty first. Pretty simple, huh?
Fire
Reign 2's Example Deck.