Magic: The Gathering Type II

In my first tournament was at a store called Place to Play in Willow Glen, California. Unfortuntely, this shop is no longer around, but during its time it was one of the best places to play magic in Northern California. It would often have tournaments running till four in the morning and I had many memorable matches there. For this tournament I used a red/green deck which didn't even have a sideboard because I had Gravity Spheres and Rukh Eggs in my deck which were illegal so I had to use my sideboard to get up to 60 cards. I don't remember the exact deck list, but it was pretty tight for a first tournament deck--it had 4 Lightning Bolts, 4 Erhnams, 4 Incinerates, 4 Tinder Walls, Ball Lightnings, and more. My most memorable match was when I beat a guy playing a blue/white winter orb deck. He was so mad that I beat him. After I won he scolded me for my bad plays. As most players eventually learn, direct damage should be saved as removal and only used directly on the opponent if it will provide a finishing blow. Most beginners, like I was, just draw direct damage off the top of the deck and target their opponent with it. This is what I did every game of our match and this was why he was so mad. In retrospect, it was probably the right play to just use the direct damage on him because his only creatues were a few Serra Angels and with all his counter magic I had already lost when that card saw play. I eventually went on to place third in the tournament, with my only loss coming to a Thalid deck (a matchup where my misplay of direct damage would definitely hurt me). This player lost in the finals to a Necro deck played by none other than Chris Pantages, a fairly infamous player from Northern California.

Summer 1996

During this summer I played a deck list that was something like this

When Alliances came out during the summer of 1996 other cards were added such as Helm of Obedience and Thawing Glaciers. It was so funny, when Alliances first came out, everyone was drooling over cards such as Balduvian Hordes, and Helm of Obedience. But there was this older chinese man who used to play at Place to Play who told me that Thawing Glaciers was the best card in the set. I trusted his judgment, so the next day I went out and bought four of them for about $1 each. I was sure glad I did when Thawing Glaciers got hot and they were needed for every single deck. This reminds of how much Magic has changed from these days of old to the modern science of deck building that surrounds us now. Cards are rarely ever overlooked these days.

During this time the most popular deck was of course the infamous Necro deck. Wizards of the Coast somehow made the mistake of restricting Land Tax (a popular defense against Hymn to Tourach) while given Necro even more weapons in Alliances (most notably Contagion and Dystopia). I was eventually won over and made my first Necro deck later that summer. Just in case you don't know, here is a typical deck list from the Black Summer

I don't know if San Jose was unique, but most people did not yet use Demonic Consultations in our area at this time. It just goes to show how cards were still being overlooked at this time.

Fall 1996

During the fall of 1996, after the release of Mirage, I played a Necro deck which relied on Lake of the Dead with Drain Life for victory. The deck looked something like this:

Hymn to Tourach had now been restricted by Wizards thinking that it would slow this deck own--but the deck is called a Necropotence deck for a reason! As long as Necropotence exists, there will be a deck bearing its name.

As you can proably tell, this deck was very geared toward the metagame at Place to Play. This deck is a very controlling version that is actually more similar to the Necro decks that would appear later. I should probably defend some of the strange card choices in this deck. Pestilence was key against weenie decks and outpost decks, the two most popular decks at Place to Play. Phantasmal Fiend was a supringly strong card. The five toughness makes him a great blocker (he can blakc Erhnam Djinn) and he can be pumped up if the oppenent leaves himself open. But for the most part, this was a Drain Life/Lake of the Dead deck. It just played defense and disrupted the opponent's strategy until the killing Drain could be played. Some other people at the shop even added Soul Burns for more firepower. Sideboard included chocking sands (outpost and lake), serrated arrows, sometimes skulking ghost (to block hyppies). Looking back at this deck I wonder why Demonic Consultation wasn't added.

That January Type II went through a huge change as Wizards decided to ban all restricted cards and also ban Fallen Empires, Homelands, and Ice Age. Of course this instantly killed Necro decks because Necropotence was now longer legal! But this didn't last long because due to player outcry, Wizards decided to bring back Ice Age until Tempest was be printed in the fall of 1997, and Necropotence was reprinted in 5th Edition during the spring of 1997.

Winter 1997

I took my first hiatus from Magic shortly after Visions was released. After graduating from high school and then starting college I decided to get back into Magic after Tempest was released. Of course the first deck I made was a Necro deck:

This deck also has some weird card choices. What you need to understand is that the place to play in Santa Barbara has a younger group of players than San Jose did, so I was always playing against red decks. I needed some way to compat the direct damage I was facing because Necro does not like direct damage. So the strange lands were there to I could sideboard Circle of Protection: Red.

Spring 1998

As you might have figured out from the deck list above, I didn't need to dip into white to combat red. Black already had all the answers I needed. Corpse Dance of course.

The Corpse Dance/Bottle Gnome combo is what makes this deck work. There is so much life gain in this deck that I scoff at red mages. I also destroy blue because I can outdraw their counterspells. The only cards I fear are Armageddon and Winter Orb.

During this time I also played around with a more creature oriented version of Necro.

This deck had all sorts of cool tricks including using corpse Dance and Crypt Rats as a reusable Pestilence. Don't ask me why there are only three Dark Rituals in this deck--I guess I was still a subpar deck builder.

I was incredibly successful with this deck, but that success ended that summer with the printing of Exodus. This set brought another card advantage engine--the Survival/Nightmare deck.

Fall 1998

During the fall of 1998, Wizards of the Coast made one of there biggest mistakes ever, the Urza's Saga set. This set had so many abusable cards (most of which were in the same color) that every contructed format of Magic was overrun with combo decks and it took bannings and restrictions in every format to fix the environments.

Of course black (which is never far from blue in terms of abusable cards) got many new toys to play with and this helped Necro rise again as a force in Type II. Here is my first deck list after Urza's Saga was released

Notice the automatic additions of Duress, Skittering Skirge, Yawgmoth's Will, Persecute, and Corrupt. Urza's Saga was powerful! And as I continued to realize how powerful Yawgmoth's Will was, I also added Urza's Baubles so that I could draw two or three extra cards each time it was played.

Everything was so happy, but alas, it would not last long. The spring of 1999 saw the release of 6th Edition and this time Necropotence was not reprinted. It was the end of an era.

Fall 1999

One year later I am still clinging to black, but its not quite the same without the power of death on my side. Here is the deck I was playing at this time.

As you can see, without Necropotence I had to reply more heavily on Vampiric Tutor and Yawgmoth's Will to get the cards I needed into my hand and to get some card advantage. The Phyrexian Tower is mainly there to combat Treachery. And don't ask me why there are no Powder Kegs. With four Vendetta and four Befoul I'm pretty screwed against another black deck, but I was the only one in the area playing black.