MTG thread

Ronne_sl said:

I still have my copy of Inquest declaring Necropotence the worse card ever printed. Times were simpler back then.

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While that's obviously not true, context matters. When Type 2 was new, Necropotence was bad in context. When everyone was running around with 4x Black Vise and 4x Strip Mine, it's a very hostile environment for the card and decks that would run it. They restrict Vise in type 2, and suddenly the first major tournament, PT1 was full of Necro and Land Tax decks. Amazing how that works.

At the time, people coveted their life total. The thought of ending a game low on life just did not appeal.

In other news, "fixed" Natural Order is coming to modern. 3cmc, sac a dude, go get a dude with cmc equal to what you sacced + 2. No color restriction. Exiles itself on resolution.

That last clause stops goofy E Witness chains, but I guaran-goddamn-tee that someone is going to break the fuck out of it.

Yea it was more than just vice being prevalent. That far back life wasn't really seen as a resource and the concept of trading it for cards was rather frowned upon, especially with necro taking away your normal card draw.

I don't think that's really true though, at least not among the good players. The first major event with restricted Vise, it was all over the place along with Land Tax strategies. Look at the old Vise Age decks which were far and away the most popular deck at the time and tell me how anyone can play Necro in that environment.

Sure, the second Black Vise got restricted people like Leon Lindback were showing up to their weeklies with Necropotence, but we were all pretty derpy as a whole in our card evaluations. The internet was in its infancy so information was slow to travel. It took time for Land Tax and Necropotence to become the dominant strategies. The very first Pro Tour had restricted Black Vise. It was a modified Standard format where you had to play at least five cards from each Standard legal set (4th edition, Ice Age, Fallen Empires, Homelands, Chronicles) between deck and sideboard. Look at how unrefined these decks are -

Mono Black Aggro - Leon Lindb?ck @ mtgtop8.com

There are four copies of Necropotence (all in Leon Lindback's deck) and eight copies of Land Tax in the Top 8. The "Prison" archetype that used Land Tax/Armageddon/Winter Orb/Icy Manipulator is nonexistent. The G/W aggro decks have 2-3 copies of Land Tax and 2-3 copies of Armageddon each. You can see the start of the iconic Ernhamaggedon deck but they've got a ways to go. Michael Loconto's winning deck has 62 cards in it along with Fountain of Youth and Wizard's School. Hell, half the decks in the top 8 are entirely "honest" with just some quality dudes and spells.

Yeah, even during "black summer" the Necro decks used some pretty subpar shit. It was just a bunch of 2/1 knights, discard, rituals, and Necro.

Meanwhile, other cards were overlooked that, in hindsight, were pretty damn powerful and never did a thing. Portent was basically Ponder, only you could use it screw over your opponent. No one even bat an eye.

Brainstorm is one of the cards that I most find interesting in hindsight. There weren't a ton of shuffle mechanics available on the cheap like there are now but there's Land Tax and Merchant Scroll. Later with Mirage you get some acceptable fetch lands, there's Rampant Growth, Enlightened Tutor, and Mystical Tutor. ProsBloom never ran it and that deck had Vamp Tutor and Natural Balance as shuffles.

Your decks don't need to be particularly tight when you're all cheating your asses off

Those other shuffle effects took a lot more investment from your deck, and most of them stacked your top card. Brainstorm is insane because fetches actually improve your mana base dramatically while also giving you free shuffles. Without them, it would still be absurd, but possibly not quite so dominant.

Portent and Brainstorm were both in formats where the average card power was a lot lower. You had some really goofy shit, but generally speaking it was a lot harder to break. Urza block excluded, of course. That shit was just lolzy.

Heylel_sl said:

Yeah, even during "black summer" the Necro decks used some pretty subpar shit. It was just a bunch of 2/1 knights, discard, rituals, and Necro.

Meanwhile, other cards were overlooked that, in hindsight, were pretty damn powerful and never did a thing. Portent was basically Ponder, only you could use it screw over your opponent. No one even bat an eye.

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Yes and no. You wanted to play lots of cheap black creatures so you could easily drop your hand, refill and do it again if necessary. The pump knights really were the most efficient way to do that. Also, some of the weird 1of choices were due to the whole 'minimum 5 cards from each set' rule. Ihsan's shade, serrated arrows, Autumn Willow, etc.. were all played to fulfill the 5 cards from homelands.

That said, yes, general magic knowledge was not as refined back then and there were odd cards choices in even the 'best' decks. I still like the version of necro that won nationals that year that splashed red for lightning bolt and other direct damage, and dropped the nevinyrral's disks.. his theory being, if I can refill my hand once, you should be dead anyway. Plus, he had some land destruction as well.

It's funny how certain cards were completely overlooked for so long too, portent being a good one. But, considering no one even played brainstorm for a long time, and portent is worse then brainstorm, it's not surprising either.

Yeah, once Necro starts picking up a red splash it gets just so damn much better. Whirling Dervish? White Knight? You just bolt those damn things. You pick up Red Elemental Blast/Pyroblast to deal with Stasis, and artifact removal for Winter Orb. I always really, really liked Randy Buehler's version that he won Pro Tour Chicago with, format was Extended -

8 Swamp
4 Scrublands
4 Badlands
3 Gemstone Mine
2 Bad River
3 Lake of the Dead

Creatures (9)
4 Knight of Stromgald
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
1 Ihsan's Shade

Spells (27)
4 Necropotence
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Drain Life
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Incinerate
2 Firestorm
3 Disenchant

It's just murder.

edit - damn, people still not using sleeves in 1997. Check out those beta Volcanic Islands just getting manhandled -

Ugh. The pain.

Brainstorm was vastly overshadowed by Sylvan Library at the time. In the absence of shuffle effects, it's the same thing only better.

Arbitrary_sl said:

Brainstorm is one of the cards that I most find interesting in hindsight. There weren't a ton of shuffle mechanics available on the cheap like there are now but there's Land Tax and Merchant Scroll. Later with Mirage you get some acceptable fetch lands, there's Rampant Growth, Enlightened Tutor, and Mystical Tutor. ProsBloom never ran it and that deck had Vamp Tutor and Natural Balance as shuffles.

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First PTQ I ever won was Ice Age block constructed and I played 4 Brainstorm with 4 Thawing Glaciers. Was U/W Counterpost splashing for Stone Rains and sideboard Pyroblasts and Pyroclasms. Then they banned Thaw for the PT and it was won by some shitty Spider midrange deck!

I forgot about Thawing Glaciers! That's a great shuffle to combine with Brainstorm.

Olle Rade's deck is definitely shitty -

7 Forest
4 Karplusan Forest
7 Mountain
4 Deadly Insect
4 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Giant Trap Door Spider
1 Gorilla Shaman
2 Orcish Cannoneers
2 Storm Shaman
4 Woolly Spider
2 Giant Growth
4 Incinerate
1 Jokulhaups
2 Lava Burst
2 Lodestone Bauble
3 Pillage
1 Pyroclasm
2 Stormbind
4 Urza's Bauble
Sideboard
1 Anarchy
2 Essence Filter
1 Icy Manipulator
1 Jester's Cap
1 Jokulhaups
1 Monsoon
1 Primitive Justice
2 Pyroblast
2 Pyroclasm
2 Vexing Arcanix
1 Zuran Orb

18 lands, 4 elf, 4 Urza's Bauble, 2 Lodestone Bauble in a deck with Jokulhaups, dudes that pump, 5 drops, and X spells is a greedy fucking mana base. He beat a Jokulhaups/Ivory Gargoyle deck in the finals because he was able to pitch a card with Stormbind at a gargoyle to deny his opponent from every drawing another card. Ha, even found that match on YouTube -



Olle Rade is at least using penny sleeves here unlike those savages at Pro Tour Chicago. This is almost a year earlier as well so there's no excuse for those guys not using protection.

edit - holy shit this game is sloppy as fuck, this could be a FNM table

I'd wager your average FNM is more technically competent at this point than any of the pros were 25 years ago.

Likely so. The game is also a good deal more complex.

And goddamn I miss Stormbind. I played the shit out of that card.

There's match has a play in game one where Fleishman attacks with his Ivory Gargoyle and Rade blocks with a Wooly Spider. Fleishamn casts Pyroclasm, it resolves, he points at the spider, and Rade doesn't move. "It takes two damage." The judge then reminds him that when the spider blocks a flier it gets +0/+2. He then takes his 1/1 soldier token off the field, pauses for a second, picks up his Blinking Spirit, and says "blinks." This is the finals of a Pro Tour event keep in mind. Putting the Spirit back in his hand after he indicated Pyroclasm resolved three different ways earned him what would be the equivalent of a caution from the judge. Dude, your Spirit is dead. You played so bad you killed your own unkillable creature. Put that shit in the bin.

Game two he goes all in on a Jokulhaups with Ivory Gargoyle when Rade has a Stormbind in play. He basically bets the farm that he'll get in 8 attacks with an Ivory Gargoyle before Rade is going to have land, elf or land land. The only reason he even got that option is because Rade just didn't start Stormbinding the Gargoyle on his opponent's upkeep and he was able to get the 7th land he needed to cast Jokulhaups past an Icy tapping a land on his upkeep. Olle then Stormbinds his face twice in response risking discarding the elves he's holding. Fleishamn was at like 22 from eating land with an Orb. The four extra damage was completely irrelevant.

So what you're saying is I'm better than the pros, got it.