A Compleat History of the Magic: the Gathering Metagame, Chapter 6: What if playing good cards doesn't matter?
Last time, we met the brokenest card in Ice Age. This week, we're continuing to work our way through 1996 – so many principles of strategy and deck archetypes are being invented or popularized in this moment. This is another story that runs parallel to the 'summer of Necro.'
The story of this deck goes back to the very beginning of Magic. But the specific list that popularized it was played in a Pro Tour qualifier by a player of little renown.
Look at this sea of red mana symbols! This list appears on Usenet not long after this tournament. David Doust, the person posting the tournament report and the list, calls this a "really goofy red deck" and states:
Up till now, I still do not understand how this deck got as far as it did, but it did. The math worked out, I guess!!!
The principle at work here is pretty simple – if you don't tap a land for mana on a given turn, that's wasted potential. By efficiently using all of your mana every turn, you can get ahead of your opponent, deploying more resources than them. After all, cards in hand do nothing for you – it's cards in play that can affect the game.
By carefully tuning the number of lands in the deck, and the relative costs of all the spells, you can maximize your chances of being able to do this. Play a one-mana spell on turn one, a two-mana spell on turn two, and a three-mana spell on turn three. This is what is known as a 'mana curve.'
The idea originates as early as 1994 with Jay Schneider, who says he thought of it while not paying attention in linear algebra class. But Paul Sligh, though he went on to do almost nothing in high-level Magic, popularized it – hence, this style of deck would bear his name for several years. This eventually became a point of contention; in modern Magic, we usually call this type of deck 'Red Deck Wins' (RDW). Or, more formally, mono-red aggro.
There's a mono-red aggro deck in Standard right now. There's been one, almost continuously, for as long as Standard has existed. Mono-red has waxed and waned in power – sometimes it's a tier 1 deck, sometimes it's a tier 2 deck, sometimes it's a fringe deck – but it resolutely refuses to go away. Every set has cheap, aggressive red creatures – because cheap aggressive creatures are core to Red's identity. Every set has efficient direct damage spells – because efficient direct damage spells are core to Red's identity. Mono-red aggro is the fun police; it exists to ensure that nobody is casting spells that are too big, playing too many lands, or just generally dragging games out too much. You have to care about what your opponent is doing, and you have to care early on. Otherwise mono-red will come for your head.
The game plan with the original Sligh deck is simple: Play out your hand of creatures. If you can, use your burn spells (like Lightning Bolt) on your opponent's creatures so they can't block. Once the assault on the ground stalls out, you have the two Dragon Whelps to finish your opponent in the air. If your opponent kills all your creatures or stalls you out in the air, you start pitching your remaining burn spells at their head to finish them off.
The notable thing about this deck is that the card quality is absolutely atrocious. Consider Brass Men. Generally, a 1/1 creature for 1 mana is not thought to be worth spending a card on even in Limited. Sligh's PTQ-winning deck is playing a 1/1 for 1 with a drawback, because it attacks through Circle of Protection: Red. Note how tournament rules at this time require a certain number of cards from every Standard-legal expansion – hence the Dwarven Traders alongside their arch-nemesis, Goblins of the Flarg.
Besides 'Sligh', this has often been known as the 'Orcish Librarian Deck'. Look at Orcish Librarian. Really get in there and examine it. I'll give you a moment to consider this card.
If you're trying to figure out what the trick is, what makes this card useful, it resides in those two sweet words at the end: "any order." It lets you reorder your deck.
Orcish Librarian is just a 1/1 for 2 until the board stalls out, at which point it can be activated each turn to provide a janky form of card selection. The first activation is indistinguishable from just looking at the top four and picking the best one. Because the Librarian 'eats' some random cards every time it's activated, it doesn't meaningfully 'lock' you with three bad cards on top of your deck once you draw the good one that you kept on top. Essentially, the Sligh deck has a huge advantage in finding the last bit of reach that it needs to finish off the opponent. Or, in post-sideboard games, it has a much higher chance of finding its hate cards.
Those Manabarbs in the sideboard? Those are for the Necropotence decks that have no way to answer an enchantment.
The Sligh deck is often thought of as a 'mana advantage' deck – one that deploys its resources faster and more efficiently than the opponent. But looking more deeply into the 'sligh principle' reveals that mana advantage is card advantage (in the same way that rhythm is pitch, or that time is space). Because it's full of cheap cards, the deck runs fewer lands and thus draws more relevant spells as the game runs long. Orcish Librarian creates more virtual card advantage by smoothing draws. This deck runs mostly creatures and instants – in an era where maindeck enchantment/artifact hate was commonplace, that equals dead cards in the opponent's deck. And of course, Orcish Artillery generates card advantage by tapping to kill the opponent's creatures.
Jay Schneider's red deck is, essentially, the first proper aggro deck – it's simply trying to kill the opponent as fast as possible and it is focused on efficiency rather than card quality. Many, many of its cards are bad in a vacuum, but this deck reduces them down to an equation: An exchange of mana and a card for damage dealt to the opponent. So what if it's a 1/1 for 1 – if it gets to attack 3 times, that's Lava Spike, and 7 Lava Spikes are a win. In other words: If your 1/1 dork attacks more than 3 times, you're in the money.
I am only briefly going to cover future red aggressive decks in this series because the archetype has been so solid and unchanging over so long. There'll be interesting cards to mention as they impact the meta, but the deckbuilding principle will remain basically the same.
Next time: We cover what the best color in Magic (blue) has been up to during all this. And then it's on to the very first World Championship of the Pro Tour era.