Auld Lang Sine

There’s been a lot of discussion recently on the Mana Drain about the old Microprose Magic: the Gathering game. I had been playing it a lot and created a thread about it after someone else brought it up in another thread about the good ol’ days. Now it seems as though a lot of people are getting in on the act.

It’s free, easy to acquire and play (for most people anyway—no guarantees on Macs or, well, anything actually), and it’s really weird to play if you played at all when that game would have been current, around 1995 or so.

Today, for example, I was reminded of the awesome but tenuous power of Power Sink.

Power Sink
XU
Counter target spell unless its controller pays X. If he or she doesn’t, that player taps all lands he or she controls and empties his or her mana pool.

What a strange evolution. Back then, the card was surprisingly awesome. First, it was a quality counter that could be splashed in blue. Second, because of the way counters and interrupts worked back then, you couldn’t respond to this by, say, casting a Lightning Bolt. You could interrupt it, but you couldn’t play instants. This means that as soon as someone casts a spell that you can Power Sink, you can effectively end their turn.

Did I mention that, whether on purpose or mistakenly, the Microprose programmers also made this spell take mana from artifact sources as well? In real life, this doesn’t happen, but in the virtual world, this spell is even better.

Anyway, I remember trying to play around this card back in the day. If you could, you would cast your spell before dropping your land, in the hopes that you would then have mana up to do something else, like cast a Lightning Bolt or a Llanowar Elf or something.

The deck I’ve been using Power Sink in is my old arch nemesis—UW Millstone Control. I probably played 20 matches against it, and I don’t think I ever won. That’s probably because I was using some terrible concoction of my own design, like RW Retard Weenie, RB Burn with 72 cards, and WG Somethingorother.

Anyway, I didn’t have a list for UW Millstone Control, so I made one up from what I remember:

4x Millstone
4x Howling Mine
4x Counterspell
4x Power Sink
4x Swords to Plowshares
3x Island Sanctuary
2x Wrath of God
2x Serra Angel
2x Boomerang
2x Disenchant
1x Balance
1x Ancestral Recall
1x Time Walk
5x Moxen
1x Black Lotus
1x Sol Ring
1x Black Vise
1x Ivory Tower
4x Plains
4x Islands
1x Library of Alexandria
3x Mishra’s Factory
1x Strip Mine
4x Tundra

Of course, I played against this in Type 2 before it was Standard, so Moxes, Lotus, and Library weren’t legal. Also, Ivory Tower was restricted, I think. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I may just think it was restricted because I only ever owned one, which I still have by the way.

My hatred for this deck ran deep when I was 14 years old, so I’m a little surprised at myself that I’m actually playing it. I imagine it’s like wanting to run someone over with your car, just to see how it feels, or to start playing Stax.

I went with Island Sanctuary over Moat because it’s two mana cheaper and because Howling Mine and Island Sanctuary are a huge combo when you’re trying to win by decking.

Basically, the way it works is that you use Howling Mines to draw a lot of cards, counter or Swords things that will hurt you (which is usually just flyers and lethal damage, since you’ll get to an Island Sanctuary soon enough), and make massive card advantage with Balance and Wrath. At one point against a Kobold-packing computer player, I managed a 15 to one trade with Wrath. Later I used Balance against my black-red opponent to kill all of his creatures and his Pestilence. Making trades like these, you’re bound to win eventually, and I think most of the games I’ve taken through decking my opponent with multiple Millstones and Mines.

It seems odd to me that this is really the only deck that I remember from back then. Of course I played against the mono-red burn and the black and white weenies, but this is the only unique one that I haven’t really seen anything similar to since.

Clearly, the format was a lot slower than anything now in any format. One-to-one trades were okay because the biggest thing you were likely to face was a 5/6 Mahamoti Djinn, which was a lot rarer than 4/4 Angels and Vampires.

So far, the most threatening creature I’ve seen is Black Knight, simply because he can’t be sent farming. My losses come against that when I can’t find two Mishra’s Factories to block with or Wrath, Balance, Boomerang, or the Sanctuary and Mine combo. I believe I’ve lost to Black Knight on the table four times out of six total losses in 50 or so games.

Actually, these losses really make you appreciate the new mulligan rules. Back in the day, before Paris was discovered, you only got to mulligan if you had the all-land hand or the no-land hand. Or, oddly enough, if your opponent mulliganed. I don’t know why that made sense, but it did. Soon, people realized that was pretty lame and led to some pretty retarded manascrews with hands that started like this:

Counterspell
Counterspell
Air Elemental
Mishra’s Factory
Fellwar Stone
Power Sink
Unstable Mutation

“Sweet! All I need is one more mana of any kind and I’ll be able to use Fellwar Stone to make the kinds of mana my opponent would use! I sure hope he’s running Islands!”

Now, of course, you can mull from seven to six to five etc. however you see fit, and that helps a lot when you’re trying to play lands and casts spells on your first few turns. If it were coming up on Thanksgiving instead of Christmas, I’d definitely be thankful for the Paris mulligan.

Another thing about Magic '95 is that games end up in creature stall. I hardly ever see creature stalls anymore. In fact, the last time I saw a creature stall in real life was in The Spoils (does anyone play that game? does anyone care?). Of course creature stalls just don't happen in Vintage because, well, no creatures. And in all formats, removal of all kinds has become so important that aggro-control is usually the chosen flavor. This means that you either out-aggro or out-control your opponent depending on what your opening hand looks like (see above) and whoever was improperly suited for their choice loses.

On the computer, the computer will stop attacking with its Grizzly Bears as soon as I put down a Giant Spider. And of course I can't attack because the Spider has also made him hold back his Craw Wurm for some stupid reason.

Hooray for green!

And hooray for the holidays. I hope you and yours have good ones, whatever winter gift-giving festivities you participate in. Hopefully you'll get some sweet cards. As a last-minute recommendation, the Hero Zone has some really nice-looking Forces of Will in the case. I almost considered upgrading my copies.

Have a happy red-green aggro holidays! Peace.