Trying to make the title of this post, and of the new series that I’m clearly starting, as dry as possible. That it is so painfully uninteresting that you actually kinda want to click on it out of morbid curiosity. That’s kinda the idea in any case. Trying to think of a creative type of moniker but nothing really coming to mind. There could be said, perhaps, to be a certain creativity in trying to imply that you are very much not someone with an abundance of creativity? Or the ability to avoid confusingly phrased run on sentences for that matter.
I find longwinded, self deprecating, meta commentary to be a bit amusing. My apologies.
So.
There were 72 preconstructed theme decks released in main expansions between Tempest and Scourge. An extra 12 decks were made available for Mirage Block on Magic Online a few years later. 5 from Seventh Edition. With Anthologies, Beatdown, and Deckmasters that adds up to 95. Enough for three brackets of 32, with just one bye.
There’s a few ways to split things up, but I’ve gone for more or less chronologically based on when the cards that feature in each deck were originally released. Consequently the first pool of 32 decks will be from:
- Deckmasters (Ice Age and Aliances)
- Mirage Block
- Tempest Block
- Urza’s Saga
- Anthologies (Alpha to Urza’s Saga)
Yes: it may feel a bit off to split up a block, but 12s and 32s… it just doesn’t quite work. This does get us through to the end of 1998, though, which does make it seem a little bit less arbitrarily truncated.
The method: I’m just going to make a judgment on each match up. Sure I guess you could actually play some matches. It’s what Jay did. The problem with this is it doesn’t allow any room for disagreements. “Well l’ve actually played this matchup and…” BORING. Arguments will increase engagement. You’ll have a week until I post the next set — new post each weekend — to convince me to change my mind.
And boy do I have some spicy opinions to kick things off with.
Match 1: Tombstone vs Defenders of the Faith
This is actually fairly interesting to start! Not because they’re good decks: they’re not.
I actually touched on Anthologies, which is where the Defenders deck comes from, in my Homelands post this week. This was a set of two paired decks released for the 5th anniversary of the game. Kind of an early template of the later Duel Deck series you could say? The gimmick was it contained at least one card from every set that had been released at the time. Even Homelands.
Defenders is a green white creature deck, and contains some pretty notable cards: Erhnam Djinn, Serra Angel, White Knight, Swords to Plowshares, Armageddon, Overrun and even Serrated Arrows. That powerhouse. The issue is that fit’s a bit of pile of cards without too much synergy which is exacerbated by being singleton.
The other deck, Tombstone, I’ve actually made a couple posts about recently too. Weird coincidence. So while I’ve probably written far too much about it recently for the purposes of this particular post I guess I need to again.
Tombstone is a blue and black deck, with a small splash of white, built around the interaction of creatures with cycling, and reanimation spells such as Victimize. A good strategy in theory, but it didn’t really come together here. Still, I’m tipping it to come out the victor, especially if we consider things within a best of 3 scenario.
Defenders could be hard to stop if it curved out with the right selection of cards, but how often could you expect that? As long as Tombstone is played very conservatively, aiming for the long game, I think it edges out a tight win. It’s the control deck in the match up and it has some fairly good tools for stalling such as Turnabout and Despondency. It can get value from it’s reanimation and card selection: I’d be making sure the only lands I played were basics, but probably avoid cycling anything else if it could be avoided. This would technically mean you had 21 mana sources in a 54 card deck: a much better ratio.
Tombstone is through to Round 2.
Match 2: Dominator vs The Plague
Yeah, this is a big one. It could have potentially been a semi or grand final if the RAND function in sheets had ordered things differently. You’d be pretty satisfied with that outcome, too; definitely feels reasonable. But alas, not to be. This time at least.
Dominator, the third on the bracket, is a mono blue control deck from Exodus. It has a few more creatures than a normal “draw go” deck, many of which have extra resiliency in that they can be bounced back to your hand or to the top of your library. It’s permission suite is also formidable: a full set of Counterspell, three Mana Leak and a pair of the reusable Forbid. The buyback cost of Forbid is pretty steep given your only real card draw is Treasure Trove — that card is much better in Widowmaker — but still is nice to have as an option. Capsise and Equilibrium help deal with anything that your opponent manages to sneak past you that they shouldn’t have.
Meanwhile The Plague has a pretty big reputation in precon circles. Most people would instantly pick it as the likely winner in any kind of precon based tournament. In fact, it was exactly this discussion on the Premodern Facebook group which was the inspiration for this. Phil Nguyen, a prominent community member who does the excellent BANDING newsletter on Substack, mentioned that they had a theme deck event where the finals was The Plague mirror match! I can believe it.
Four copies of Pestilence is tricky for most other theme decks to deal with. Outside Tempest and Saga blocks you’d typically only see one or two Disenchant or Tranquility type effects in decks which play plains or forests. Even if you went through to Theros block Intro Packs with their enchantment themes they don’t really offer that much more. Meanwhile, The Plague has very little trouble mowing down the types of creatures most other decks play. For anything which is too big or troublesome for Pestilence it also has cards like Expunge and Humble. Then, finally, all the pro-black cards you are running to manage your Pestilences… they’re pretty solid against other black decks too.
Dominator is not a black deck. It also has the tools to stop Pestilence ever resolving. Alternatively it might not even care too much about Pestilence: just bounce the Disciple keeping it on the board. This might be the most controversial Magic opinion I will ever utter*, but I think Dominator wins this. Realistically the Plague probably needs to play the beatdown, and unless that involves the single Flesh Reaver that’s a tall ask. Dominator has plenty of flying to block Voice of Grace, and most The Plague’s other creatures have only 1 power.
Actually, with certain draws Dominator could play a pretty strong tempo game too. Just run out an early Cloud Spirit (if you have another threat as back up or think you can avoid Sicken for a turn) and protect with counter-magic. 3 power with evasion: it’s basically Insectile Aberration.
Dominator is through to Round 2.
The card images I’m using here are the ones used on the box art for the winning decks btw.
Match 3: Burning Sky vs Dead and Alive
Two of the MTGO only decks from when Mirage Block was released on that platform.
Burning Sky is a red and blue deck which was, in part, constructed via a series of polls on Wizards’ official website. I’ve previously written a bit about that on here. Rather than a mechanical theme it was constructed around the idea of representing the elements of fire and air. With a solid amount of blue fliers the air part is definitely well covered. It’s the fire which is the issue. The red creatures are thematically good: for instance Pyric Salamander and Flame Elemental. The later can even sacrifice itself to shoot another creature which is certainly flavourful. But Burning Sky really needed more than one Incinerate and Kaervek’s Torch for it to function better as an actual deck.
Up against it is Dead and Alive from Weatherlight. This is a monoblack deck with a graveyard theme. Weatherlight itself had a bit of graveyard matters focus so it makes sense for the Development team to start with 24 Swamps and go from there. While Dead does pack two copies of Buried Alive it’s not really a reanimator deck as you’d expect. It can use Necromancy to get things back, sure, but the main purpose of the graveyard is to fuel stuff like Necratog and Spinning Darkness.
So this match up is a bit trickier for me to judge. I was leaning towards the evasive creatures from Burning Sky being the most important factor. Dead and Alive has some fliers too, but it’s a numbers game. The deciding factor was the Ertai’s Lament review which concludes that the black deck is “slower than it looks”. I am going to call it for Burning Sky, but if anyone wants to advocate for Dead and Alive I’d be open to flipping this.
Burning Sky is through to Round 2.
Match 4: Groundbreaker vs Special Delivery
Another quite interesting pairing. There’s probably a good case which can be made for either deck. I’ve certainly not made up my mind about it even as I’m starting on this section.
Groundbreaker is another one of those infamous Tempest Block decks that even just a few years later felt absolutely insane that it was actually released. Land Destruction — that’s what this is — as a viable strategy really lost favour within WoTC about this time: Mercadian Masques had both Stone Rain and Rain of Tears but that was the last time they were both in an expansion, other than a cameo in Kamigawa for Stone Rain.
Because this is a precon from Exodus it’s certainly good at doing what it wants to do. There’s twelve spells which blow up lands, three of which have buyback. Three copies of Anarchist can pop them back in your hand to cast again. Shock, Diabolic Edict and Evincar’s Justice deal with any creatures your opponent does manage to get out. The biggest issue with the deck is that it doesn’t have enough pressure to go along with all that disruption. More than just the one Dauthi Slayer, or similar, would have been perfect.
From Urza’s Saga, Special Delivery is definitely on the faster end of the RG Beats spectrum. Echo lets you have bigger creatures earlier than you would have normally, meaning you’re hitting hard before your opponent is ready for it. This is supported by a good amount of burn, and it even can put lands in the bin itself with Wildfire! Everyone knows what a Red Green deck does, so how does this match play out?
A plausible first couple of turns could see Special Delivery start with Mountain, Goblin Patrol. Groundbreaker also plays a Mountain, but passes the turn and waits until the Echo is paid before Shocking the Goblin. Delivery just plays a Forest and ends their turn. Maybe they had Wild Dogs in hand but thought it too risky a play with the possibility of another Shock? Breaker untaps, drops another Mountain and passes. Third turn, Special Delivery quickly throws out a second Forest and then a Cradle Guard. A 4/4 Trample for 1GG: it’s one of the best cards in the deck. On their third turn Breaker answers with a Stone Rain. This means Delivery won’t be able to pay the echo for the Treefolk and has to sacrifice it.
I guess this scenario does count on the RG player not knowing they needed to play around land destruction. Though The Sparkler, The Spikes and White Heat could all open with a Mountain into Shock too (as could any non-precon red deck) and a second mountain with no play could indicate potential colour-screw, making the on curve fatty the best line. Not that we need to start analysing all the hypothetical situations that my hypothetical player would have hypothetically been weighing up. Or if the Patrol should be killed, though I will 100% stand behind that. You gotta respect a Jackal Pup.
The point being, to get back to the point, [editing next day and I’m leaving this] that that Echo is the main factor needing to be accounted for in this matchup. The Special Delivery player would need to be careful with when they played their echo creatures to avoid blow outs and huge losses of tempo. At that point your Pouncing Jaguar might as well just be Grizzly Bears. Special Delivery is not, by any means, a deck you could completely write off here. Especially if it had Thran Turbine in it’s starting 7. But on balance I’m giving the advantage to Groundbreaker.
Groundbreaker is through to Round 2.
So that’s the first post done. Those who can count, and/or know how brackets work, will have identified that there will be 3 more like this to complete the round of 32. The top 16 will be another two posts, and so will be concluding up around Christmas/New Years. Depending if I do a seperate post for the two semis and the final or not.
I say it under a lot of things I do, but feel free to comment, share your opinions and give feedback. The reason I started this blog was essentially as an outlet to have conversations about a fairly niche interest within the wider Magic ecosystem. I’ll never claim to be an incontestable authority on any of this — well, I would, but it would be intended to be taken as sarcasm — so if I’m mistaken or just plain wrong about anything then I deserve to be blasted about it. 🙂
The whole bracket thing is just in jest, too. It’s essentially a bit of a framework for me to do short little reviews of these so the end result, which deck wins or doesn’t, isn’t really the point. Though it’s already offered me a good perspective to examine the decks rather than just seeing what the curve is like, if the removal is playable outside limited, or if the amount of RKF or DiTerlizzi content is acceptable.
LOVE
beatsandskies.
*other than rotation actually being a good thing, Extended should never have been killed, Commander is overrated and unfun… I can probably annoy a lot of people, actually.
Edit 14/11/23: Kia ora to everyone who’s popped over from topdeck.ru and thanks to whoever posted the link! 🙂
Beats and Skies 
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