Magic: the Gathering Classic Decks

This was last updated around February 2000. I'm amused where below I claim a deck could cost you "$1,000 or more." That same deck today would be ridiculously expensive. I used to have it, too. Damn thief.

I have taken a look at all those decks out there. I mean the big ones, the stereotypes, the ones it seems everyone has made or hated for one reason or another. There are many different deck types described here.

The deck types I'll be talking about are:
the Reanimator deck,
the Weenie Creature deck,
the Direct Damage deck,
the Land Destruction deck,
the Discard deck,
the Poison deck,
the Library Depletion deck,
the Permission deck,
the Pestilence deck.

WIZARDS OF THE COAST, Magic: The Gathering®, and Magic® are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast. ©1998 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

The Reanimator Deck

The purpose of this deck is to discard monstrous creatures, then bring them into play from the graveyard for two mana. The chief cards of this kind of deck are Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead. With support cards that can help you discard your creatures without just waiting until you have 8 cards in your hand, these decks can be rather effective.

Cards that can help you discard your big creatures are Mind Bomb, Jalum Tome and Krovikan Sorcerer. All of these are useful because they do more than get your big creatures into the graveyard. The Mind Bomb will either force your opponent to discard or take damage. The Krovikan Sorcerer and the Jalum Tome will simultaneously put a big creature in the graveyard and give you a new card! How nice! Some favorite big creatures for these decks include Polar Kraken, Deep Spawn, and Leviathan.

This deck has it's natural enemies, of course. Among the enemies of this deck are: Tormod's Crypt, Swords to Plowshares and Disenchant. The first two, Tormod's Crypt and Swords to Plowshares, are enemies because they remove your creatures from the game, and make it impossible to get them back into play. Even the life-gaining benefit of the Swords to Plowshares doesn't help you when you can't damage your opponent. For that reason, I recommend adding Counterspells and Flash Counters.

Other cards that may be helpful in this deck include Twiddle (free untapping of any of the monsters), Strip Mine (get rid of that pesky Maze of Ith or Ice Floes), Norrits (untap your blue creatures), Homarid Spawning Bed (sacrifice one big creature to get a bunch of little creatures) and Meekstone. Believe it or not, Meekstone is mostly ignored by a lot of this deck. If you have to untap the monsters the honest way, some untap during upkeep. If you use Dance of the Dead, they untap during upkeep, too, ignoring the Meekstone. If you want to, you can cast Paralyze on your own creature, and be able to untap it for 4 mana. Paralyze also ignores Meekstone.

The Weenie Creature deck (and its variations)

Weenie creature decks come in many different varieties, but are all focused on the same approach to killing their opponent. You bring out little wimpy creatures and pump them up with enchantments and instants.

The White Weenie deck works mostly from the enchantments Crusade, Jihad and Angelic Voices, and the instants Army of Allah and Morale. Another addition that gives the White Weenie deck an edge is Armageddon. Since the deck itself mostly functions using 2-3 mana, it can survive after an Armageddon takes all land out of play. White also has a great deal of creatures that are advantageous to use, like White Knight and Order of Leitbur, which have protection from black and first strike, Tundra Wolves with first strike for one mana, and Pikemen, with first strike and banding for only 2 mana. Banding is a great edge for the white deck when it has to play defensively (which seldom happens). It means that the white deck will typically lose fewer creatures when it is forced to be defensive. This situation usually happens when it plays against another weenie creature deck.

Another great and widely used weenie deck is the red/green weenie deck. These decks bring out hordes of cheap creatures, like Scryb Sprite (1/1 flier for 1 mana), Ghazban Ogres (2/2 for 1 mana) and Ironclaw Orcs (2/2 for 2 mana). These are some of the cheapest bargain creatures in the game. When they attack, they do a lot of damage through Bloodlust, Giant Growth, Berserk (for type I), Fanatical Fever, and Stampede. Having green also gives you access to Regrowth, one of the most powerful cards in the game (IMHO). Having red gives you fast damage in the form of Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning and Incinerate. These can be used to finish off your opponent or to take out your opponent's creatures so yours don't get blocked. Some people like to use Forbidden Lore and Aegis of the Meek in decks like this, but I have always found these two cards to be too slow to be effective.

There are other varieties of weenie creature decks, like Thrull decks, Goblin decks, and Merfolk decks.  Each of these deck varieties are good in their own right. The thrull deck not only has bad moons to pump up your creatures, but also Thrull Champions. The Goblin equivalent is Goblin King, and the Lord of Atlantis helps out your merfolk. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages. Arguably, the Goblin deck is the fastest of the three, but all of the goblin deck's damage comes from red, which is the most widely-protected-against color in the game. Thrull decks always have to worry about protection from black creatures (there are quite a few) and Karma, and with the release of Ice Age, Drought.

Another variation on the weenie deck theme is the Unstable deck. The Unstable deck is based on smaller creatures, along with Unstable Mutation and Essense Flare to pump up their power. Combined with Giant Growth and Blood Lust, this can be a fast, formidible deck. The problem with using all these cards is you have a three color deck, and may not reliably get the right color mana to do anything.

The enemies of the Weenie Deck include Pyroclasm, Moat, Island Sanctuary, Wrath of God, Pestilence, Drop of Honey, and The Abyss. Pyroclasm and Pestilence will take out your creatures frequently, since typically your creatures have lower defenses. Wrath of God is bad because it will take all of your creatures out of play, but typically the weenie deck will be able to put creatures into play fast enough to recover from it. Unless you have flying creatures in your deck, Moat and Island Sanctuary will shut you down completely. The Abyss tends to just slow a weenie creature deck down to a crawl, since you are losing creatures every round. Your defenses against the cards mentioned include Shield Wall (the anti-clasm), Disenchant, Tranquility and deck speed. Your deck should be fast enough to overcome many of the obstacles I mentioned. White weenie decks tend to be weaker against flying creatures. The most popular white flier in a weenie creature deck is Mesa Pegasus.

The Direct Damage deck (and it's variations)

Direct damage decks tend to be very fast, and very furious, trying to take out their opponent as quickly as possible. A rather "go-for-the-jugular" approach to deck design. The main cards to decks of this nature are red, including Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Incinerate, Fireball, Disintegrate, and many other spells. Direct damage from other colors include blue's Psionic Blast and green's Storm Seeker.

Due to its destructive nature, red seems to be better protected against than the other colors. However, the advantage to these decks is their quick-kill capability. Unfortunately, with all this quick destruction, one card per turn is seldom enough for these decks. Often, you will want additional cards to be able to do more damage to your opponent more quickly. Some of your options include Howling Mine, Jayemdae Tome and Elkin Bottle. The Howling Mine allows you to draw one extra card per turn for free. However, it also conveys this benefit to your opponent. The Jayemdae Tome is much slower, costing twice as much as the Howling Mine to put into play, and costing 4 to use. However, later in the game, the cost of 4 is not bad when you consider what you will be casting will either be a lightning-bolt type spell (1 or 2 mana) or a fireball (which you could theoretically hold until the following round for maximum damage). The Elkin Bottle is good in that it costs one less than the Jayemdae to cast and use, and most of the spells in your red direct damage deck cost one or two mana, thereby reducing the risk that the card you draw will be removed from the game. However, if you decide to incorporate some of reds more expensive spells and creatures, you may want to take one of the other options.

The downfall to these decks, of course, is that red has so many cards against it, that are common, and most anti-red cards are inexpensive to cast. Circle of Protection: Red is the most infamous and difficult to get around once it is in play. Conversion and Justice are others. However, not all the anti-red cards are in white. Blue has its fair share.

One of the variations of the direct damage deck a red and green deck designed to kill your opponent quickly with the aid of green's mana producers, which has become somewhat less popular with the banning of Channel. Some of the best cards for this kind of deck include Orcish Lumberjacks, Birds of Paradise and Tinder Walls. Fire Sprites may work well too, converting your green mana into red when needed.

If you play a direct damage deck, make some provision to take out enchantments that allow your opponent to stay alive. The green/red deck has access to Tranquility. Other cards include Anarchy (specifically against white) and Disenchant.

The Land Destruction deck

Land destructions work on the principle that if your opponent has no land, they do nothing but let you kill them. The purpose of the deck is to strip your opponent of mana to paralyze them until you can get something out that will kill them. A side effect of this is that they will have many cards in their hand, so a logical first choice would be Black Vise.

However, there are other effects that keep your opponent from being able to do anything. Nether Void (legends) is one such effect. If all spells cost 3 more to cast, and you keep your opponent under 4 mana in play, they are effectively paralyzed. Other choices may include Stasis or Winter Orb.

The most difficult part about constructing an effective land destruction deck is balancing land destruction effects out with non-land destruction effects. Typically, your opponent's deck will have 20 or more mana producing effects. However, it is probably overkill to have 20 different land destruction effects and will make your deck less effective rather than more. If your opponent has no lands in play, your land destruction spells are worthless to you.

Another difficulty is figuring out which route to take when thinking about what to include to kill your opponent. You could try creatures, or Black Vise as mentioned earlier (even though it's restricted in type 2), or maybe Storm Seeker. Strategies are diverse.

Cards that negate or equalize land destruction effects include Equinox (seldom effective), Consecrate Land, Pyramids (rarely seen), Land Equilibrium, Balance and decks that function on fewer than 2 mana effectively, such as a weenie creature deck. Also, if your opponent is able to get a Land's Edge into play, they may decide to simply discard land for damage, and discard other cards to avoid damage from Black Vises and Storm Seekers. Another annoying card is the Zuran Orb. It comes into play for free, and every time you target a land for destruction, your opponent will sacrifice it to gain 2 life. For reasons like this, you should not rely on the Black Vise and Storm Seeker to do your damage for you.

Many people put Dingus Egg and Ankh of Mishra into land destruction decks. This may be useful, but I have found them to be unreliable ways of inflicting damage. Besides, they may also do damage to you!

Of course, in any deck, you should be wary of Counterspells. Furthermore, if your opponent has 4 mana in play (this is a bad thing) and one of them is an island, don't forget Deflection (Ice Age).

The Discard deck

The Discard deck. One of my favorites. Well, ok, I hate them. I hate playing against them. I hate losing to them. I hate watching all the things I planned going to waste before I know what's going on. Discard decks work on the strategy of taking your opponents options away, thereby giving you more things to do, and them less, which eventually leads to victory. It's simple, really. Once again, you have to find some way of killing your opponent. The Rack works well, since you're constantly taking cards away from your opponent. However, these aren't the only thing you need. After all, if your opponent gets a Howling Mine or Jayemdae Tome into play, it makes your job more difficult, but not impossible. If your opponent gets a Library of Leng into play, they may be able to keep up with you, since they are able to decide what gets discarded to the graveyard and what gets discarded to the top of their library. The upside to this is that very few people play with the Library of Leng (unless they've been burned by discard decks a lot).

Some cards that you may want to include in this deck are: Mind Twist (banned from type 2 on Feb 1st, 1996, but still legal under the point system), Hymn to Tourach, Mindstab Thrulls, Hypnotic Specters (best creature for discard decks), Abyssal Specters (although this is debatable), Mind Ravel, Cursed Racks, Disrupting Scepter, and The Rack. Other cards may be thrown in, like Wand of Ith and Rag Man. In my opinion, Mind Warp is a bit too expensive. Dark Rituals add a great deal of speed to the deck, as can Demonic Consultation.

Some cards to watch out for are Library of Leng and Balance!! Balance will bring your hand down to where your opponent's hand is. Also, be cautious of Land Tax, since your opponent will be stuffing their hand with land to reduce the chances that you'll have them discard something useful, and keep themselves from taking damage from The Rack.

You should also be cautious of Feldon's Cane, since your opponent can use it to get back everything they lost, but it doesn't pose much of a threat.

The Poison deck

Poison decks work by bringing your opponent to ten poison counters, whereby they lose. There are four poison counter-type cards in Magic at present: Pit Scorpion, Marsh Viper, Swamp Mosquito and Serpent Generator. Poison decks also got a big boost with the release of Swamp Mosquito! These poisonous suckers are flying and don't even have to deal damage!

These cards aren't enough to win the game, of course, though the Swamp Mosquito's flying ability helps tremendously. For the ground creatures, it helps if you can get your attackers through to your opponent unmolested. Tawnos' Wand and Dwarven Warriors are good for this. Anything that keeps your creatures from being blocked are helpful, like Fear.

By itself, the poison strategy will not make a really good deck. You need defenses and backup plans. I suggest Will-O-The-Wisp or Drudge Skeletons for defense, since they regenerate. You may want to put Venom or Fear on your poison creatures to keep them from being blocked. You may also wish to consider some kind of direct damage, like Drain Life, Black Vise or Storm Seeker.

Of course, this deck's enemy is any deck that can take out your poison-counter creatures, either by direct damage or Swords to Plowshares and Disenchants (on the Serpent Generators), as well as the new card Leeches (but who plays with them?).

The Library Depletion deck

This deck type relies on going through your opponent's deck at maximum speed, making them run out of cards as quickly as possible. Cards that work well in this kind of deck include Howling Mine, Braingeyser, Millstones, Rays of Erasure, and Wheel of Fortune. One trick is to Braingeyser your opponent, Mana Drain it, and on your next turn, Regrowth the Braingeyser and cast it again for more. Of course Forking a Braingeyser is just as mean, if you can get that much mana into play!

The biggest enemies of this deck are Timetwister and Feldon's Cane. Both of these cards can make your job of eliminating your opponent's library extremely difficult, since their library recycles. Also, you have to watch out for cards like Regrowth, Recall, Raise Dead, Soul Exchange, Animate Dead and Dance of the Dead. These cards are actually increased in power simply because you give them access to more cards to use them on. The biggest thing to combat these is Tormod's Crypt. If they don't have any cards in their graveyard, they can't recycle it or get anything back from it! Lucky for you, Regrowth and Timetwister are restricted. Unfortunately, the new restricted list for type 2 has removed Recall and Feldon's Cane, so it seems unlikely that without 4 Tormod's Crypts in your deck, you will be able to win with this type of a deck in the type 2 environment.

The Permission Deck

The most famous at the time was Brian Weissman's "The Deck."

One of the most annoying decks to play against is a permission deck. One of the most difficult decks to play (or grow accustomed to) is a permission deck. You have to decide which cards of your opponent's deck are threatening, and which ones you can allow to be cast, hence the name permission deck.

The first thing people think about for permission decks are Counterspells and their kin (Power Sink, Spell Blast, Remove Soul, Force Void, Force Spike, Blue Elemental Blast, Red Elemental Blast, etc). Of course, permission doesn't necessarily mean counterspell. Other things to consider for a permission deck are Swords to Plowshares, Moats and Disenchants. If you have to counterspell everything your opponent attempts to do, you are going to run out of counterspells rather quickly.

Be very careful and try to determine how what your opponent casts is going to affect you and your deck. If your opponent brings out, say a Will-O-The-Wisp, don't worry too much. However, a Ball Lightning might hurt.

Speaking of damage, sometimes, the best thing to do is to take it. If you've been doing rather well, you may want to just take three points from a Lightning Bolt, if it isn't going to be lethal or bring you into an easy kill range. Remember, life is simply a resource to your deck.

Of course, you will want to have some way to kill your opponent (as usual). My favorite choice is Serra Angel. You get yourself into a secure position where your opponent can't do anything to you without you being protected from it. Then you bring out the Serra Angel and continue to hit your opponent for 4 damage per round. Repeat until dead.

It is very important to remember that these decks do not work if you do not play as if you are in control of the game at all moments. You don't want your opponent to ever think he's going to do anything effective against you. The old trick of keeping two islands untapped at all times is true. It is very intimidating and could keep your opponent from casting anything important, even if you don't have a counterspell in your hand.

When your opponent casts a spell that you know you are going to counter, pick up a non-counterspell card out of your hand, pause (acting like you're contemplating it), and put it back. Then, taking the counterspell you were going to use, say, "No, I'll do it this way." That way, your opponent will think you have another counterspell and will hesitate to cast anything else, especially if you keep some islands untapped.

You know you are playing effectively if your opponent hesitates every time he or she casts a spell. It shows that you are in control of the game.

One of the most infamous decks is built on this concept. Here's the (very expensive) deck by Brian Weissman (note that this is not the most recent version):

4 Mana Drain
3 Counterspell
1 Braingeyser
1 Time Walk
1 Timetwister
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Recall
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Regrowth
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist (now banned)
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Disenchant
2 Serra Angels
2 Moats
3 Disrupting Scepters
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Sol Ring
5 Moxes
1 Black Lotus
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Strip Mines
3 City of Brass
4 Tundra
2 Plains
4 Islands
1 Volcanic Island
2 Underground Sea
1 Plateau

Sideboard:
3 Blood Moon
1 Plains
2 Islands
2 Dust to Dust
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Moat
2 COP: Red
1 Counterspell
1 Control Magic
1 Balance

This deck could cost you over $1000.00 if you had to buy all the cards in it. Chances are you don't have a spare set of Moxen sitting around the house. However, for type II, permission decks can still be made, since you still have access to Balance, Disenchant, Swords to Plowshares, Counterspell, Spell Blast, and Power Sink. Force Void, in my opinion, is too expensive for the benefit you get from it.

One of the biggest advantages you can gain in a deck like this is to draw cards more than your opponent. This is one of the keys to winning in Magic. Card domination gives you more options than your opponent, and increases your chances of winning for every card you can get into your hand.

For type 2, however, I haven't seen a permission deck that could consistently outperform all other decks. The type of deck that best emulates a permission deck where you just wait and see what your opponent does is a red and white defensive-style deck. Here, you can use Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant, and Fireballs to get rid of whatever your opponent puts into play as a threat. Also, the direct damage is versatile, in that you can use it also to kill your opponent.

The Pestilence deck

Pestilence, a black enchantment, does one point of damage to each creature and each player for each black mana you pump into it. This can be a tremendous advantage if all your creatures regenerate, and you have protection from black for yourself. This is easily achieved using black and white in combination. Black gives you many inexpensive regenerating creatures, like Drudge Skeletons and Will-O-The-Wisps. White offers Circle of Protection: Black. This deck can be very difficult to beat once it gets going. The creatures brought out against it are blocked, and the blockers regenerated, until you have enough black mana to kill the offending creature, regenerate your creatures, and prevent the damage to yourself.

Cards that are difficult to deal with in this deck are protection from black creatures, Circle of Protection: Black, and Drought. Of course, since you would probably have white in the deck, a few disenchants may be able to save you.