A Compleat History of the Magic: the Gathering Metagame, Chapter 13: Mark Rosewater Succeds, Perhaps too Well, in Not Breaking Magic
Last time, we discussed the most broken block in Magic history, Urza's Saga.
This time, we will look at Masques block, including the expansions Mercadian Masques, Nemesis, and Prophecy. Which is to say, one of the least broken blocks in Magic history. While some cards from this block did go on to become very relevant in eternal formats, the reality is that Wizards, having seen the horrors unleashed by Urza's Saga, designed Masques while extremely gun-shy about card power level. The result was a series of sets that had very little impact on the Standard metagame. For example, here's the winning deck from Worlds 2000:
Look at all these Urza's Saga cards! The basic plan with this deck is simply to play Tinker to put Phyrexian Colossus into play. The B plan is to ramp (accelerate the amount of mana you have available each turn) towards casting big threatening artifacts and winning quickly.
The main contributions that Masques block gave to this deck are two annoying mana denial cards, Tangle Wire and Rishadan Port. The plan here is very similar to the 'big red' strategy Kai Budde used to win in 1999, only Finkel's deck has the unfair dimension of being able to cheat things into play with Tinker. Like Budde's deck, this one abuses a suite of lands that can tap for two mana – Wizards will stop making those soon.
The Only Mechanic in Masques
Okay, there were other mechanics in Masques. But the only one that really made a mark on tournament play were the rebels, and they enabled some of the more Masques-centric decks of this era.
The Rebels mechanic is both extremely powerful and very parasitic – that is, it only plays well with itself and designated cards from the same set. As a result, Rebel decks were the main torch-bearers for Masques cards in Standard.
A dorky creature that can go get other dorky creatures seems innocuous until you realize that this is a card advantage engine, and a pretty powerful one. Every rebel is its own army in a can, able to rebuild a full board of creatures from nothing. Rebels, therefore, are one of the most resilient white weenie decks of all time; no amount of board sweepers can fully eradicate the rebel menace. Note the singleton Nightwing Glider and Thermal Glider that can be fetched to put a threat into play that red or black decks can't remove.
Even here, though, the most powerful card is from Urza's block. Mother of Runes ('Mom') would be a staple of white weenie decks in Extended for many years to come, far eclipsing the specific 'Rebels' shell from Masques.
Meanwhile in Extended
While this isn't at all a product of Masques block, this deck was becoming popular in Extended around this time by abusing some of the less obviously broken cards in Urza's block.
The combo is that you cast Illusions of Grandeur and gain 20 life, then cast Donate to give it to your opponent. Illusions of Grandeur has cumulative upkeep 2, meaning that you have to pay 2, then 4, then 6 mana (and so on ad nauseam) every turn or sacrifice it. Once the hapless opponent had no mana to pay for the upkeep, they'd lose 20 life and die. Fun!
This is the classic, archetypal combo-control deck. The combo of Donate/Illusions of Grandeur (known in Magic slang as 'Trix') is a perfectly compact 2-card combo. And Illusions of Grandeur itself will even buy you a couple turns against aggro decks. The rest of the deck is a disgusting Necropotence control deck that draws lots of cards to make the best possible use of Force of Will. Oh, and Illusions of Grandeur also gives you more life to pay Necro with (so Necro can help you dig towards that Donate).
A card to watch here is Duress. Originally printed in Urza's Saga, it would go on to become an oft-reprinted tournament staple for decades; there are Duresses running around in decks in Standard right now. More powerful one-mana targeted discard will eventually be printed, but Duress will be the baseline of what's available in Standard more or less continuously forever.
Elsewhere in Magic
- Wizards felt so burned by Donate that it would be 20 years before they printed another version of the effect, the near-identical (and much cuter) red-shifted version Harmless Offering. It didn't really do much in Constructed.
- Deranged Hermit decks are also popular around this time. The card is nicknamed 'The Rock and his Millions', after the (then) wrestler; black-green tokens decks become known as "The Rock" in general, and eventually the term "The Rock" sticks to black-green until Ravnica rolls around and officially names the color combination Golgari.
- The archetype of red decks featuring ramp and land destruction, similar to Kai Budde's deck from Worlds '99, becomes widely known as 'Ponza' around this time. Ponza, as far as anyone can tell, is the name of a sort of deep-fried calzone from the Wakeusha, WI area. Why was the deck named after it? Your guess is as good as mine.
Next time
EOTFOFYL