Old School MTG: Half-Year Recap

A reanimated Shivan Dragon with two Howling Mines? I'll take it!

It's June!

That means I'm about halfway through my plan to build and play a new Old School deck every month for the year.

Digging deep into my collection, I've been able to build all kinds of different decks with different play patterns during the first half of the year. But a couple of things are clear. Robots are the bees knees. I want to play aggressively. And, splashing colors is for tournament play.

Robots are the bees knees.

In Old School Magic, there's a handful of creatures at each casting cost that are relatively easy to evaluate in the small card pool. Shivan Dragon, for example, at 6cmc (4RR) compares to Tetravus at 6cmc (all colorless). They both fly. But the Dragon is 5/5 and has firebreathing for the same cost. It's also not an artifact, so it dodges an entire class of removal spells (Disenchant, Shatter, etc.).



In many cases, playing out a Shivan is going to be more directly powerful than playing out a Tetravus. But the robot has all these neat little tricks! It has cool synergy with Tawnos' Coffin, Hell's Caretaker, Priest of Yawgmoth, Sage of Lat-Nam, and more. It can make a wall of flying blockers to buy you time. Plus, I think it looks neat. It rings all my bells. Same with Triskelion. The amount of synergies with that guy is amazing. On top of that, Juggernaut and Su-Chi both have great power-to-mana ratios. Throw in a Clockwork Avian and Jade Statue or two and you've got an entire deck of robots, ready to rumble, no matter what color you are playing.

I want to play aggressively.

I always gravitated to the control role. My guess is because the games felt more like a puzzle. With control, you are engaged in a way that forces you to consider all the nooks and crannies of how things will play out. There's ample room for bluffing. The control role asks you to engage with the game. But now, I just want to slam creatures into the red zone and burn things.



Why the switch? Probably because I don't get to play that often. Slamming into the red zone is either going to work or it's not. Sure, there are still combat tricks to know. There's still understanding when to play into the board, when to hold back, and how to calculate a lethal attack while planning for tricks and the swing back. But it feels like it's more forgiving. And even if that is an illusion, it's a quicker turn most of the time. A lot of the decisions are focused on the combat step and getting the math right.

Splashing colors is for tournament play.

I'm all for people building decks the way they want to. I wouldn't want someone telling me the "right way" to build my decks. What I'm saying is that I find myself saying, "Of course I need to splash black for Mind Twist and Demonic Tutor." Or, "Of course I need to splash blue for Ancestral Recall." We all know there are powerful cards in this format, so powerful that it is likely "right" to splash a color just to run them. And other than Blood Moon, there's little reason not to splash for those spells. They are that good.

There's nothing wrong with splashing for powerful spells. What I find is that they take up slots for other, more interesting cards. They water down a theme. They make decks have similar play patterns. They minimize my enjoyment of the game.

For the last half of the year, I'm going to put the Dual Lands on the shelf and play mono-colored decks. If I'm playing a mono-black deck, then sure, I'll put Mind Twist and Demonic Tutor on the table. But if I'm playing a mono-red deck, I'm not going to put in 4x Badlands and 4x City of Brass just to splash two black spells. This will give me a chance to explore more themes in the individual colors without decks taking on a "sameness" that I've noticed in the first part of the year.

The few Old School tournaments I've been to have been competitive. Maybe it's a hallmark of American Magic in general, but those of us in the Old School scene around here seem happy to bring it when there's $20 of store credit on the line. It means that if you show up to something advertised as a "tournament," expect competition. If you show up to something advertised as a "get together," people are more willing to play with a lower tier casual deck.



I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there are some decks with more than one color, but where it's an integral part of making the deck work. I'm thinking of decks like Lich/Mirror where casting Healing Salve or activating Dark Heart of the Wood with Lich in play is what makes the deck tick. Those decks are great. I'm talking about decks that are otherwise all one color but then splash one or two other colors only to jam in a handful of powerful spells.

Old School MTG: Mono-U Tron

I really, really want to make Tron work in Old School. I've tried a couple of variations this year, but the Old School Tron decks suffer from three things:

1) Every Eternal Central deck has access to 4x Strip Mine and 4x Mishra's Factory.

This isn't a problem, per se, but giving up access to your own Strips and Factories to jam in 12x other colorless lands is an unreasonable trade-off. Too many games in this format come down to who has the most Factories on the table. Going in with less than the full list is asking for trouble. On top of that, going in with a set of lands that only "combo" when a you get a particular set of three in play is a problem when facing off against that many Strips.

2) The Tron lands eat up too many slots that could be colored mana sources.

The only deck where I haven't had a problem with this is the all colorless (Mono Brown) deck that uses the Tron lands in place of the colored lands. Otherwise, I'm coming up with 8-10 colored mana sources in the list. And that's with me trimming Strips and Factories (Problem #1). Even with dancing around double-colored mana-cost spells, it's relatively easy to either not draw colored mana sources or to get pushed out of a color in a game.

3) This format has limited deck manipulation and tutoring.

This isn't like Modern Tron where you have several ways to filter or search for the missing pieces. You need to draw Tron naturally. And even then, it's not like your turn 3 hay-maker is Karn. It's not. You are looking at a turn 3 Triskelion. Not bad, but not usually game-ending. And other than X-spells, there isn't much to do with all that mana.

With all that said, I still played some fun games with Mono-U Tron. The play pattern is similar to a slower Tron variant in other formats, where you play the control role, take advantage with a sweeper, and then drop a beater into an empty board and protect it for the win. Occasionally, when you draw Tron naturally, you can take the aggressive role and start throwing out threats early on the curve and then use permission to keep your opponent from putting up a defense.

Here's Chris, Mind Bombing me with Reanimator.

Old School MTG: UB Time Bots (Robot Turns)

My love affair with robots continues with this new configuration!

The deck is running the Twiddle + Time Vault combo with a few ways to find the one-of Time Vault including Demonic Tutor and Transmute Artifact along with lots of card drawing. Slamming a few Howling Mines onto the table and then taking a few extra turns in a row can leave me with a grip of cards and my opponent buried in an avalanche of card advantage. Under Eternal Central rules, we are restricted to one copy of Time Vault and one copy of Recall. Swedish rules allow four copies of Recall and just recently unrestricted Time Vault itself!

Astute observers will notice that I don't have a Time Walk. Yes, it does seem rather silly to play a deck like this without running the one card that is an extra-turn combo all by itself. You might also note that I am only running a single copy of Transmute Artifact. More copies of that card is almost certainly better. In fact, a 5-color version of this deck that runs face-first into putting the combo together into a Mirror Universe + Fireball kill is better in almost every way.

But I wanted robots!

I didn't have much of a chance to play Old School this month, but I got in a few good games against Troll Disco.

This is me getting wrecked by Chris. He is playing the Robot Turns deck against RB Troll Disco. Note the use of Mini-Starburst as +1/+1 counters for tasty style points.

The games were "close" in the sense that the Troll Disco deck was always a turn or two behind the Robots deck. We did end within a few life points of each other. I chalk that up to a combination of Moxes for the robots and no turn 1 Ritual --> Hymn turns for the trolls. Where were the Lightning Bolts?! The robots deck even had a turn 2 Mana Vault --> Twiddle --> Tetravus, which was pretty neat to see happen.

I'm interested to build a different version of the Time Bots deck with a control focus. Old School Mono-U Tron! Tron lands, X-counterspells, and Disks! Maybe next month. I've been working on a list of mono-colored decks (that still run robots / artifacts of course). It's amazing how much variety exists in the card pool in every color without needing to extend into color combinations. Dual Lands need not apply.

Old School MTG: Old School 40 Tournament Report

The annual "travel far and gather" trip happened over this weekend. I'm fortunate to see these guys on a regular basis, but it's always nice to spend some time away with them playing games and talking. This year on our trip, I thought it would be fun to hold an Old School tournament!

Since most of the guys are gamers, but aren't into Old School specifically, I modified the rules to make the format more accessible.

1) Eternal Central Rules, except
2) Strip Mine is Banned
3) Restricted cards are Banned
4) No Sideboards
5) 40 Card Minimum Deck Size

And "Old School 40" was born!

There were six of us facing off for the prizes pictured below. Prizes were reverse drafted, where the player with the lowest rank after round-robin would choose first.

Here are the results.

This was a fantastic way to spend more than a few hours with friends. The deck construction rules helped to reduce the cost of building decks and focused the strategies around one or two key concepts. Players were mostly able to stick to using old school art and it felt like playing Magic with friends in days gone by.

Here are the decks everyone played.

Mark's "Making Friends" Deck

Eric's "Also Making Friends" Deck

Ben's "Welcome to the Thunderdome" Arena Deck

Darren's "What Does Banding Do?" Deck

Will's "Giant Ape Escape" Deck

Chris' "Needs More Islands" Deck

Here are some pictures of the action.

Banding is fantastic!

Orb, Tower, and Vise? Hmm.

Old School MTG: BG Nether Shadow

I've had 4x FBB Nether Shadow sitting in a binder for years. They've been staring at me ever since I got into Old School. Back in the day, I thought that card was so cool. I always wanted to paint out the shadow so that it only had one leg instead of two, but otherwise there was just something about that artwork!

Over the years, I tried making it work in a Lord of the Pit deck as a sac target. I've tried it in a grindy deck. Back when I actually owned Bazaars, I tried it there, too. Its never found a home for me, but I thought I'd give it another try this month.

This deck was not a wild success. I splashed a green for Sylvan Library a Regrowth and a sweet, sweet signed Elves of Deep Shadow. I really wanted to get Library and Tower going, but didn't pull that off in the few games I played this month. I'd like to revisit this deck and see if self-milling and a Lord of the Pit or two could make this pop off.

Old School MTG: Mono-Red Atog Robot Urzatron

In February, I played this. Old School, baby.

With only 8 Red mana sources (1 Hammerheim + 6 Mountains + 1 Mox Ruby), hitting red mana was inconsistent. Running the full Urza lands also meant that not only was I fighting for red mana, but I also went with Factories over Strip Mines. Eternal Central Old School rules really wants 4 Factories and 4 Strip Mines in a deck like this, but that probably means not running the Urza lands. Other than a pair of Fireballs, ramping into tons of mana doesn't do much here anyway. Next time, I just need to run more Mountains and the full 4 of Factories and Strip Mines.

Slamming huge Atogs into people was as much fun as I imagined. I'd like to run this again with more Mountains, a Shivan Dragon, Chain Lightnings, and a Shatter or two. There's always next time.

Old School MTG: UB Robot Reanimator vs. ConTroll Disco

Through all the twists and turns of life, I've been lucky enough to still be friends with Ben. Not only is he a great person, but he's also wicked good at playing Magic. We've been casting spells and pushing creatures into the red zone together for more than 20 years now!

So, when the opportunity came up to face off against Ben with a couple of my Old School decks, I jumped at the chance. The way he was talking, I think he may have caught the Old School bug. I thought I would fan the flames.

Nothing fans the flames like a little friendly competition.

So, I suited us both up with decks that I thought would match up nicely. The first deck is a UB Robots deck that ramps out artifact creatures, uses the old man to draw some cards, and has both the renamimation and coffin package. When it does it's thing, it's glorious. The second deck is a RB Troll Disco deck with a parfait variation, dropping Vices, Mines, Orbs, and Barriers. A burn and discard variant is probably objectively better, but this version has more reach.

I can't get over how much I like robots in MTG.

There's also something dirty and satisfying about one-sided Orbing people with Relic Barrier.

We played a dozen-or-so games over a couple of hours, mostly going back and forth. There's enough variance in Old School that mashing reasonably good decks into one another creates enjoyable games more often than not.

The life counter shows 20, but in reality Ben swung in for lethal with the Troll and the Factory the turn before I would have Mirrored life totals with him and started putting the Trike in the coffin.

Ben already started buylisting cards to get into Old School. I can't wait to see what he comes up with. Knowing Ben, I'm in for a savage beating. And I'm looking forward to it!