A Compleat History of the Magic: the Gathering Metagame, Chapter 5: What if life total doesn't matter?
Last time, we explored the battles between Black Vise decks and The Rack decks in the earliest incarnation of Standard.
This time, we're about to meet the first post-Alpha card to be well and truly broken. It's time to say hello to Necropotence.
This card is going to be a monster throughout its time in Standard, and after that it'll be a monster in Extended (a format that doesn't exist yet). It'll be restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy (another format that doesn't exist yet). Necro is such a broken card that it's going to break formats it's not even printed in, but that story is a few years in the future.
Infamously, Necro was not embraced by players right off the gates. It is widely accepted Magic lore that InQuest Magazine, a mid-90s independent gaming mag, gave it a low rating and left it out of their top 10 best Ice Age cards list – though I believe the relevant issues of Inquest never made it onto the internet, so I can't confirm this from primary sources.
What is true is that Necropotence was printed all the way back in Ice Age, but it took Black Vise being restricted to convince players to start playing it. There's a long list of Cards that Changed Magic, and Necro is the first one on that list, and probably still one of the most impactful. Its ascension coincides with the birth of Magic's true organized play system.
1996 saw the debut of the Pro Tour – a series of official Wizards-run tournaments with cash prizes, culminating at a yearly World Championship. Necropotence decks are going to dominate this circuit, but they're going to be even more all-consuming one tier below in competition – in the Pro Tour Qualifier (PTQ) tournaments, run by the dozens all across the US (and later throughout the world). While the Pro Tour gets all the attention, the PTQ circuit is where the 'Magic tournament grinder' cut their teeth. This was the breeding ground of competitive player culture. And Necropotence helped bring that tournament culture into the world.
Necro changed how players read and understood the game. When you're first introduced to Magic, you are told to think of your life total as a score. You're winning if your life total is higher than your opponent's. You are in a race to get them to zero before they get you to zero.
This is, of course, totally wrong. Life points are a resource. The only one that matters is the last one. Thinking that you're winning just because you have more life is about as accurate as thinking a chess player is winning just because they have more pieces on the board. Necro puts that into stark relief.
What's the correct way to play Necro? It's to play it and then draw 4, 5, 6, or 7 cards. Just spike your life total directly into the garbage as you gorge on cards. Discard some useless ones at the end of your turn (remember, the hand limit is seven cards, and you must discard down to it at the end of the turn). The card selection is worth the life points spent drawing over and above the card limit. If you put Necro into play with a Dark Ritual, that's just one more card you can hold in hand that you can draw with Necro.
Necropotence has been used in all kinds of decks over the years, but the original crop of necro decks looked something like this list from the very first Pro Tour:
The actual term "midrange" didn't exist back then but I can't help but identify this as the original midrange deck. It's part of a strategic lineage that leads up to one of the top decks being played in Standard right now – Wizards just banned The Meathook Massacre, a card that has some Necropotence lineage in it, too.
What characterizes a midrange deck is the ability to play both when ahead and from behind – midrange decks combine cheap, efficient removal, card advantage, and high-impact threats. They are, by definition, piles of good cards; every spell generates value, and the value snowballs the game. They aren't looking to let the game run long like a control deck, but they can grind out slow wins if needed – unlike an aggro deck that burns hot and fast. Knight of Stromgald and Order of the Ebon Hand both dodge Swords to Plowshares, the most efficient removal spell in the format, and Terror, the second-most efficient. Dark Ritual can power out turn-1 Necropotence or Hypnotic Specter, which tends to win the game on the spot.
Like many a mono-colored deck since, the pristine mana base full of basic lands allows for running some colorless utility lands. In this case, four Strip Mines. This deck is also a resource denial deck that cheerfully blows up the opponent's lands to stop them from stabilizing. Good luck getting four mana to cast Wrath of God.
Part of how this deck was able to grind out wins was through life gain. Ordinarily a worthless mechanic (Who spends resources to gain life? Who blocks in Constructed? Who cares about their own life total?), it becomes incredibly powerful when you can pump your newly-gained life into Necropotence to binge on even more delicious cards. Ivory Tower was made to combo with Necro; Zuran Orb turned useless extra lands that you drew in your deck full of cheap spells into more life, and thus more cards. Drain Life acted both as creature removal and as a win condition – draw your deck, cast all your Dark Rituals, fuel a giant drain life, finish off your opponent after they've been hit by your various knights and specters.
Necropotence didn't just affect how players view their life total in the context of Necro decks, but in general. As I said before: who blocks in Constructed? Every control player, post-Necropotence, recognizes that the only difference between spending life to draw cards off Necropotence and letting your opponent hit you while you draw cards naturally is efficiency. Necro is a key piece of the puzzle of card advantage – a principle we'll explore more in the near future.
Necropotence is not the only trend in Magic of this time, however. This era is known to tournament grinder lore as 'Black Summer', but the reality is that necro was just one of various incredibly brutal decks floating around at the time – note that Leon Lindback's deck came in third. We'll discuss some of what else was happening in the next few chapters.
Next time: While you were out playing PTQs, I studied linear algebra.