Eternal Conflict – The History of Classic

Hey everybody! My name is Steve and I’m going to be talking about Classic. If you’ve been following MTGOAcademy for a while, then it’s possible you’ve read Eternal Conflict before. In the past I’ve written here sporadically, but now that MTGOAcademy is relaunched, reloaded, and running full-steam ahead – I’ll be settling into a regular schedule and writing an article on the second and last Thursday of each month.

I want to celebrate this relaunch with a brief history of the Classic format. I obviously won’t be able to cover everything, but my goal is to hit most of the major inflection points that have shaped the format we know and love today. I’m going to cover a few of the dominant decks, discuss the events and releases that have shaped modern day Classic, and speculate a bit about what we may see in the future. I’m hoping for this to be both a crash course for new Classic players and an opportunity to look back and re-experience some history for veterans of the format.

Without any more babbling, let’s get down to it!

In The Beginning…

In the beginning of Magic Online, Classic did not exist.

Classic was born in late August of 2004. At the time, only cards from Invasion Block and after were available on Magic Online (with the exception of a few promos such as Morphling, Serra Avatar, and Sliver Queen). Due to this limited card availability, the initial iteration of Classic was pretty much equivalent to Extended. Extended isn’t exactly what you think of when you think ‘Eternal Format’, is it?

The first step towards Classic’s distinction as a format took place in December of 2005: Mirage became the first out-of-print set to make its way to Magic Online! Now we’re talking! Mirage isn’t the most exciting set in the world, but Classic was finally starting to get releases. This was the first step for Classic into a larger world. Prior to this release, Classic was just cleaning Extended’s scraps. With Mirage in the mix, eternal Magic Online players finally had hope for the release of all their old favorites.

The First Powerful Deck

There’s something else that Mirage brought in: Classic’s original backbreaker. The first truly dominant deck in Classic was based around junk-rare-turned-format-breaker Flash.

Here’s what the card Flash did for a very long time:

Flash

1U

Choose a creature card in your hand. You may pay its mana cost reduced by up to 2. If you do, put that card into play. If you don’t, put that card into your graveyard.

Seem harmless? It pretty much is. This version of Flash allows you cast a creature at instant speed at the cost of a card and a potentially tougher mana cost. That effect doesn’t seem very powerful. What’s the worst you could do: put a Shivan Dragon into play to surprise block a Tarmogoyf? So how did this card end up breaking formats?

The version of Flash described above has power level errata. Power level errata is a tool that Wizard used occasionally in the past to fix broken cards. It’s basically a way for Wizards to say, “Oh crap! When we printed this card, we had no idea it would someday do THAT! Let’s tweak the wording a bit so that doesn’t happen.”

How did Flash end up with power level errata? Here’s what it originally did:

Flash

1U

Instant

You may put a creature card from your hand into play. If you do, sacrifice it unless you pay its mana cost reduced by up to 2.

So what’s so degenerate about that? The creature that you Flash triggers “when X enters the battlefield” and “when X is put into a graveyard from the battlefield” abilities whether you pay the additional mana for your creature or not.

Let’s say you decide to cast Flash on this creature without any additional mana to pay:

Protean Hulk

If you’re using the version of Flash WITH power level errata, then nothing exceptional happens at this point. Protean Hulk goes to the graveyard and everyone gets on with their lives. If you’re using the original or current version of Flash, then something very exceptional happens. Protean Hulk‘s powerful ability triggers: you get to search your library for six mana worth of creatures and put them onto the battlefield. There are many different ways to instantly win if you’re able to resolve this ability. Think about putting Heart Sliver and four copies of Virulent Sliver into play. Nasty, huh?

So as time went by, Wizards decided to remove this type of power level errata from pretty much every card that received it. Eventually Flash went back to the original functionality, and Flash + Protean Hulk became a format-warping combo. If you’re a Legacy player, then you probably remember Grand Prix Columbus. This errata removal went down just prior to the Grand Prix and caused a serious ruckus amongst the Eternal player base. Steve Sadin ended up winning the tournament with a hybrid Flash-Hulk/CounterTop deck designed by Billy Moreno – which stands to this day as one of the most brutal decks ever constructed.

Without any further blabbing, here’s an example of the first dominant deck in Classic’s history:

So what makes Flash + Protean Hulk such a powerful combo? Think about other combo decks that you know for a second. Chances are they require a whole bunch of stuff to work out in order to deal a lethal blow. Storm combo decks need to resolve ten spells and then a Tendrils of Agony. Minds Desire needs to flip relevant spells. Goblin Charbelcher needs to generate seven mana through a series of rituals and Tinder Walls.

What does HulkFlash need to do to win? Cast Flash with Protean Hulk in hand. That’s it. And it can happen at instant speed. With the Gemstone Caverns or Simian Spirit Guides in the decklist above, you could conceivable win during your opponent’s first upkeep WITHOUT HAVING TAKEN A TURN YOURSELF! The above list uses Protean Hulk‘s ability to fetch up four copies of Disciple of the Vault, one Arcbound Ravager, four copies of Phyrexian Marauder, and Phyrexian Walker. With quadruple Disciple in play, each of those artifacts are worth four points of your opponent’s life total as they head to the graveyard. Good game.

Not only does Classic Flash-Hulk pack a tight, cheap, and easy to cast win condition – but the redundancy and tutor power of the deck is through the roof. Vampiric Tutor searches for both combo pieces, Mystical Tutor finds Flash, and Summoner’s Pact finds Protean Hulk. Mystical Tutor can also find Pact of Negation, Duress, or Chain of Vapor for added protection prior to committing to the combo.

The Original Restrictions

The Flash-Hulk deck above proved to be a truly tough nut to crack for the format. Eternal combos are often battled by the ultimate turn one “no, no” Force of Will – a card that didn’t exist in Classic at the time. Although to be fair, even if Force of Will did exist at the time, it likely would have been Flash-Hulk’s best friend instead of its worst enemy. Force fits in very well with Flash-Hulk’s overall deck structure and strategy. Everyone’s favorite 3UU counterspell isn’t just turn one combo defense, but it’s also turn one combo protection.

As a result of Flash-Hulk’s dominance, in August of 2007 a restricted list was created for the Classic format. Up until this point, Classic decks were allowed to run full playsets of each available card – there was no notion at all of a restricted list or a banned list. The first two cards to make this list? Flash and Vampiric Tutor. These restrictions were clearly aimed at knocking Flash-Hulk down a few notches, and it worked. Flash-Hulk went from being a dominant deck to being a very good deck, and it remains viable to this very day.

Master’s Editions

When Wizards decided to begin retroactively releasing out-of-print sets on Magic Online with Mirage block, a whole bunch of cards were left in limbo. Eternal fans were left asking themselves, “But what about the cards from before Mirage?” There was no clear home on MTGO for any card from Alpha through Alliances that wasn’t reprinted in a later set. Many Eternal staples fell under this umbrella, and something really needed to be done.

In September of 2007, Master’s Edition was released on Magic Online as a solution to this problem. Rather than releasing full sets such as Arabian Nights, Legends, and The Dark – Master’s Edition was developed as somewhat of a greatest hits package. Those old school sets were not developed with limited in mind, and the Master’s Edition repackaging was done with an eye toward the forty-card decks.

The first Master’s Edition contained a serious mix of old-school favorites and soon-to-be Classic staples. Cards like Force of Will, Hymn to Tourach, Lake of the Dead, Berserk, Juzam Djinn, Ivory Tower, Mishra’s Factory, and Ball Lightning entered the format. The restriction of Flash and Vampiric Tutor, combined with this Master’s Edition release lead to a time of parity in Classic. Many different decks were viable, and the format remained fairly open for about one year.

But What About That Manabase?

Take a look at this decklist from the post-Master’s Edition I Classic era:

Notice something weird? The manabase. What a bummer! One of the coolest aspects of Magic’s Eternal formats is the ability to play with original dual lands – which remain some of my favorite cards of all time. Classic was still in a world of Ravnica duals, which isn’t exactly a wonderful place for an eternal format to be.

Up until this point, I had not played much Classic. I spent my Magic leisure time shuffling up Vintage and Legacy decks, and although I had been following the development of Classic with great interest – the format was still a bit too bare for me to make the switch over. There are many reasons why I personally prefer Magic Online to the paper version, and I was waiting with bated breath for the format to develop enough to take the plunge. I still eagerly await the day when we have Legacy and Vintage as playable formats on Magic Online, but that’s a topic for a different article.

So which event finally tipped the scales and got me into Classic? Master’s Edition II hit the virtual shelves, and the five friendly-colored duals lands were included in the set: Taiga, Tundra, Badlands, Savannah, and my personal favorite card of all time Underground Sea.

Things weren’t perfect, since the five enemy-colored duals were saved for Master’s Edition III, but with the release of Master’s Edition II it was possible to create a respectable eternal mana base in Classic. At this point I made the decision to buy into Classic.

The Next Dominant Deck

Other than the five aforementioned dual lands, Master’s Edition II was criticized as a pretty empty set. Many of the included rares were forgotten junk, and the hit ratio did not measure up to the first Master’s Edition. Here’s one Master’s Edition II rare that wasn’t just forgotten junk:

If you’ve ever played with Necropotence, it should be no surprise to hear that the skull formed the basis of Classic’s next dominant deck. At just three mana, Necro is one of the most powerful draw engines ever printed. Back when it was first released in Ice Age, the Magic community did not understand how lopsided of a trade “one card for one life” was. Necropotence is the card that helped us learn that lesson.

Here’s a version of NecroSpike, Classic’s next dominant deck, that I recommended playing in December 2008:

NecroSpike is a combo deck designed to win on the second turn. Here’s the basic game plan:

1. Power our Necropotence by any means necessary. Turn one Dark Ritual is best.

2. Pay a bunch of life to Necropotence. Sometimes you want to pay as much as 19 life, often a few points less.

3. Draw a ton of cards during your end step.

4. Before your end step is over, cast as many Soul Spikes as possible through their alternate casting cost. You’re usually in awesome shape if you can resolve double Soul Spike.

5. Since your hand is packed with cards from Necropotence, you’re going to need to discard down to seven. Craft a hand of seven cards that will be able to play a lethal Tendrils of Agony on your next turn to finish off your opponent – preferably with protection/backup.

6. Build up storm count and resolve a lethal Tendrils of Agony.

Steps 1 through 4 are pretty much boilerplate, but steps 5 and 6 can take a decent amount of strategic ability to pull off. The hand you’re constructing needs to balance protection (Duress/ Force of Will) with acceleration (Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual) and win conditions (Tendrils of Agony). If you manage to resolve a bunch of Soul Spikes, then it’s easy to pack your hand with protection and win with just a mini-storm of three or four. But let’s say you only managed to resolve a single Soul Spike. Storm-killing your opponent down from sixteen is not nearly as easy, and requires some decent planning.

NecroSpike is a very similar deck to Flash-Hulk in the abstract. It’s a combo deck that doesn’t require very much to get going (just Necropotence and some sort of acceleration), and packs serious redundancy. NecroSpike’s biggest tool for consistency was not Vampiric Tutor, but rather the newly released Demonic Consultation – which is risky, but capable of finding any card at instant speed for just a single black mana.

I played a lot of Magic with NecroSpike, and to me the most impressive aspect of the deck is its resilience. The shell reminds me a bit of the old Trix decks, where you’re using cards like Duress and Force of Will to protect your combo kill. I played in many games where my opponent threw the entire (anti-combo) kitchen sink at me and NecroSpike still won easily. I played against Flash and won AFTER he resolved his combo and I hadn’t resolved mine yet.

Imagine untapping for your final turn with Necrospike with a hand that looks like this: Duress, Duress, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Tendrils of Agony. Can you even imagine what your opponent needs to have in order to stop something like that? Remember that you often manage to end up with that hand at the end of your first turn!

The final aspect of NecroSpike that made it so resilient was Tombstalker. The version above plays it in the sideboard, but many versions played it maindeck. Let’s say your opponent does manage to stop your card drawing monstrosity. Can they stop also stop a 5/5 flying monstrosity? The absolute ultimate play was to resolve a two-mana Tombstalker while building up storm for your final Tendrils of Agony. If they did manage to deal with the Tendrils (Stifle, for example), then they’re still staring down at a gigantic monster. Hope you have Swords to Plowshares, dude!

The Fall of the Skull

From my point of view as a tournament player at the time, NecroSpike (for a time) was very underplayed in proportion to its power level. It was obviously the best deck, and yet I still ran into things like Goblin Charbelcher combo in Premiere Events or the two-man queues. Maybe it was a card availability issue (Underground Sea and Force of Will cost $$$). Maybe people didn’t like playing a deck that was so non-interactive. Or maybe people just didn’t know how good the deck actually was.

As time went by though, people started to figure this out. While NecroSpike was previously the best deck, it eventually became the best AND most dominant deck. Lots of top eight finishes, a large percentage of the field, a core strategy that’s nearly impossible to battle – you know how it goes. This lead to the restriction of Necropotence in Classic.

On June 3rd of 2009 Wizards announced that Necropotence and Demonic Consultation were the newest additions to Classic’s restricted list. While these two cards were played a bit in other decks, the message was pretty clear: we’ve had enough of NecroSpike.

From the Vault, Restrictions, and Our Latest Master’s Edition

Now that NecroSpike was no longer the supreme powerhouse, Classic entered a brief holding period until From the Vault: Exiled and Master’s Edition III dropped around September of 2009.

From the Vault: Exiled was actually the second From the Vault set to be released, although it’s the first one that really impacted Classic at all. While From the Vault: Dragons contained a whole bunch of expensive dragons, From the Vault: Exiled was based around restricted cards – many of which have current constructed Classic applications. Tinker, Balance, Strip Mine, Channel, and Goblin Lackey are the exciting new additions – the other ten cards had already existed online. Tinker enables an early Inkwell Leviathan. Balance evens out the game on a serious level. Strip Mine is the ultimate land destruction. Channel converts life to mana. And Goblin Lackey enables an easy turn two Siege-Gang Commander.

Many of these cards were instantly restricted, which brings us to Classic’s current restricted list:

• Balance
• Channel
• Demonic Consultation
• Demonic Tutor
• Flash
• Imperial Seal
• Mana Crypt
• Necropotence
• Strip Mine
• Tinker
• Vampiric Tutor

So that’s Exiled, what about Master’s Edition III? What were the big cards this time around? There were really only a few: the final five dual lands (Tropical Island and Bayou were especially appreciated), Mana Drain, Land Tax, Black Vise, Grim Tutor, and the current boogeyman of Classic – Bazaar of Baghdad.

While there were high hopes of some sort of return to viable Classic control with Mana Drain, Balance, Land Tax, etc. – this hasn’t exactly worked out yet. I myself tried pretty hard to get something working around the shell of Tezzeret the Seeker/ Mana Drain, but this deck just can’t keep up with the speed of the current best deck in Classic: Dredge.

Here’s the Dredge list that Pro Tour superstar Shouta Yasooka played in the Magic Online Championship at Worlds in Rome:

While this isn’t exactly how I would build a Classic dredge deck today, it’s not off by very much – and chances are Shouta knows better than me! So what’s the game plan of this deck? This:

1. Play something that lets you discard cards. Bazaar of Baghdad or Breakthrough are ideal.

2. Discard something like Golgari Grave-Troll or Stinkweed Imp.

3. Start aggressively dredging huge amounts of your library.

4. Get as many copies of Bridge from Below into your graveyard as possible, the same goes for Narcomoeba – who will come into play as a free 1/1 flyer.

5. Sacrifice creatures to flashback Cabal Therapy in order to simultaneously clear threats/answers from your opponent’s hand and put 2/2 zombies into play thanks to Bridge from Below. Repeat.

6. Sacrifice more creatures to flashback Dread Return. Bring Flame-Kin Zealot into play and attack with strong, hasty creatures for the win.

Once again, we’re looking at a dominant Classic deck that’s essentially a combo deck that doesn’t require much to go off (just a Bazaar of Baghdad or Breakthrough) – and has many ways to protect itself. Force of Will is one, but the very nature of the deck is the most powerful protection. Notice that your game plan with Dredge requires resolving almost no spells! Pretty much every strong move in the deck is a triggered ability, which are traditionally tough to battle. The only spell that really needs to resolve is Dread Return, and that usually only happens after clearing the way with two or three copies of Cabal Therapy. Sure you have to resolve those copies of Therapy, but if they counter them they likely won’t have resources to fight Dread Return.

As we’ve already covered in the previous ‘dominant deck’ discussions, Classic Dredge also has some serious redundancy. There are eight A+ discard outlets in the deck, which pretty much guarantees that you’ll be able to get some serious dredging going on turn one/two. Some builds also run four copies of Serum Powder, which send your chances of drawing a Bazaar or two in your opening hand through the roof. I wrote a program and determined that running four copies of Bazaar of Baghdad and four copies of Serum Powder will give you a 94% chance of drawing at least one copy of Bazaar in your opening hand. Not bad.

The main weakness of Dredge should be obvious: its reliance on the graveyard. Tormod’s Crypt, Leyline of the Void, Relic of Progenitus, Yixlid Jailer, and Ravenous Trap are all nightmare cards for Dredge. This deck is ridiculously powerful, but can be targeted with hate in a pretty straightforward manner. You’ll note that Shouta’s deck above goes so far as to play three maindeck copies of Leyline of the Void. Not only does this help him out in the mirror match, but isn’t totally dead weight against strategies like threshold, aggro loam, or any deck trying to resolve Tombstalker.

Modern Day

So that pretty much brings us up to the modern day. There have been three Masters Editions, every set from Mirage up to Exodus, two From the Vaults, many different viable deck archetypes, and about a million tournaments.

Moving forward, there are two major exciting things that will happen with Classic. The first is the release of all missing sets from Exodus through Prophecy – Urza’s block is especially powerful. Cards like Yawgmoth’s Will, Tolarian Academy, Memory Jar, Goblin Welder, Metalworker, Gaea’s Cradle, Stroke of Genius, Exploration, Time Spiral, Argothian Enchantress, Contamination, Masticore, Smokestack, Voltaic Key, Yawgmoth’s Bargain, Exhume, Phyrexian Negator, Academy Rector, Powder Keg, Replenish, and Grim Monolith have the ability to warp most formats.

The second exciting development will be to see what Wizards ends up doing with the Power Nine online. Once Urza’s block has hit the scene, then the Power Nine along with a few other cards will pretty much complete the Vintage format online. If this happens, then we could achieve a true Vintage/Legacy split online – and to me that seems like a pretty awesome place for Eternal Magic Online to be. Here’s to hoping!

Thanks for reading! Check back in two weeks for my next contribution, and feel free to comment below!

Steve Gargolinski

spgmtg@gmail.com

twitter.com/spgmtg
th1ckasabr1ck on Magic Online