I have 4 or 5 players that I correspond with occasionally on e-mail about Magic in their area. We talk about formats, decklists, and other things that are running around in my area. One of those is Laurent Lignon out in Paris. We have a lot of similar interests in terms of decks, formats, and such, and the local scene is doing some interesting things.

He mentioned to me that he introduced someone his friends to Commander ’95, the variant that I created where you have to play only cards that were initially created up through 1995, but you can play any copy that you own, you aren’t required to run an expensive Arabian Nights Serendib Efreet, you can just run the bulk rare from Eternal Masters. One of his friends commented that, “It was as fun as Old School 93/94 but cheaper.” Which is a great compliment, so thanks!

OS 93/94 is a casual-ish variant of Magic that requires that folks play only cards released in the first two years of the game, and it intentionally only includes the expensive and pricey sets, so sets like Fallen Empires and Ice Age are disincluded. And you are required to play the initial version of the card. So you cannot play the bulk rare Serendib Efreet, you can only play the $100+ initial version. It has a lot of cachet out in Europe right now, as well as migrating to Canada and the States.

Well, Laurent told me about a variant of Old School 93/94 that is popular out in the UK and the French players are picking it up, Old School 95/96. Now, 95/96 has (almost) all of the same rules of OS 93/94.

1. You can play any card printed in a set in 1995 or 1996.
2. Preferably (but not required) you play the version printed then. So running a Swords to Plowshares from Ice Age is preferred to one from Conspiracy, but just for flavor, it is not required.

These sets are legal:

• Fallen Empires
• Ice Ages
• Homelands
• Alliances
• 4th Edition
• Chronicles / Renaissance

But there is another fun benefit for 95/96 as well. Do you see it?

Yup!

The broken and expensive cards of 93/94 are missing (for the most part). No Sol Ring. No Moxes. No Demonic Tutor. No dual lands.

Now 4th Edition had its issues. There were cards legal there that had no business in a Core Set. Strip Mine? Balance? Land Tax? Mana Vault? Mind Twist? Black Vise? But those cards are considerably fewer than the mistakes in Unlimited or even Revised. And we still have fun cards like Sylvan Library, Swords to Plowshares, and fun reprints like Xenic Poltergeist that evoke that era very nicely, making it a fun Core set to use. And the other sets have tons of great options as well.

So I wanted to do a few things today.

First, I wanted to make a few 60 card decks as samples of the era and format. And second, make a quick Commander deck using those rules as well. Now none of these decks are designed to be major players, but instead to evoke the times. You don’t see a Necropotence fueled Black monstrosity here, nor a powerful combo deck with Stormbind and Whiteout. (Activate Stormbind and discard your hand, including Whiteout, and sacrifice Snow Land to recur Whiteout and discard again and again until you have killed your opponent).

Nope, just the fun times of the era! Although I’m still pushing a little bit on the first deck. Enjoy!

60 Card Fun Times!

Thou Shall Not Tap ? Old School 95/96 | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Mahamoti Djinn
• 4 Giant Tortoise
• 4 Serra Angel
• 4 Yotian Soldier
• 4 Zephyr Falcon

• Instants (2)
• 2 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (4)
• 4 Portent

• Enchantments (6)
• 2 Castle
• 2 Flood
• 2 Stasis

• Artifacts (4)
• 2 Icy Manipulator
• 2 Meekstone

• Lands (26)
• 11 Island
• 11 Plains
• 4 Adarkar Wastes

Buy This Deck

This deck runs a few critters with Vigilance along with tempo cards like Meekstone and Stasis to keep things from untapping. You have a few key cards that play into this theme nicely, such as Icy Manipulator (printed in Ice Age) to tap a creature, Flood too, and Castle to make your stuff a little bit bigger. Then layer in the needed support, and flying Djinn, and you have a deck.

Now let’s do another trio of quick decks

Thou Shall Not Block ? Old School 95/96 | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (18)
• 1 Mindstab Thrull
• 1 Necrite
• 4 Abyssal Specter
• 4 Diseased Vermin
• 4 Hypnotic Specter
• 4 Murk Dwellers

• Instants (7)
• 3 Terror
• 4 Dark Ritual

• Sorceries (2)
• 2 Word of Binding

• Enchantments (3)
• 3 Paralyze

• Artifacts (6)
• 2 Joven's Tools
• 4 Tawnos's Wand

• Lands (24)
• 24 Swamp

Buy This Deck

This deck works by making the player not able to block one of your small dorks, and then swinging with a now-unblockable creature with a hit-trigger. The obvious choice here is Hypnotic Specter and junior partner Abyssal Specter with their infamous You Shall Discard hit-triggers. And then we are running Murk Dwellers to smash for four damage, and check out the coolness of Diseased Vermin here! Get in a hit or three, and then sit back and wait as the damage mounts.

Meanwhile, in addition to the Tools and Wands, we have the deadly Dark Ritual, and even outside of the dreaded Swamp, Ritual, Specter 1st turn, you can still accelerate a hit-triggered creature early. Getting Diseased Vermin swinging on turn two and piling up the disease counters for more life loss before your foe can mount a proper defense is great. And you have Terror, Paralyze, and Word of Binding helping you to kill stuff or get through. You’ve got this!

You Shall Not Live Past Turn Six ? Old School 95/96 | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (22)
• 2 Stromgald Cabal
• 4 Black Knight
• 4 Erg Raiders
• 4 Hypnotic Specter
• 4 Knight of Stromgald
• 4 Order of the Ebon Hand

• Instants (8)
• 4 Dark Ritual
• 4 Terror

• Enchantments (4)
• 4 Bad Moon

• Artifacts (2)
• 2 Serrated Arrows

• Lands (24)
• 24 Swamp

Buy This Deck

The typical aggro deck of the day that won was White weenie, because of Swords to Plowshares. But Dark Ritual is also an important part of a healthy breakfast. And you still have the dreaded Ritual into Specter follow up. Let’s do one more before Commander Time!

You Shall Not Have Creatures ? Old School 95/96 | Abe Sargent

• Creatures (14)
• 2 Cockatrice
• 2 Lhurgoyf
• 2 Yavimaya Gnats
• 4 Thicket Basilisk
• 4 Verduran Enchantress

• Sorceries (5)
• 2 Stunted Growth
• 3 Desert Twister

• Enchantments (17)
• 1 Night Soil
• 2 Aspect of Wolf
• 2 Sylvan Library
• 4 Lure
• 4 Regeneration
• 4 Wild Growth

• Lands (24)
• 24 Forest

Buy This Deck

And there we go. A typical sort of Enchantress into Lure on a Thicket Basilisk or Cockatrice to kill some stuff on the block, and then this with your other stuff. Check out Lhurgoyf in this build which can get big quickly. I’m running Wild Growth over Llanowar Elves, flying Gnats for blocking, and Aspect of Wolf to turn any creature into a threat, including the Enchantress herself. Night Soil is here for graveyard hate and token making, Sylvan Library for general awesomeness and Stunted Growth cutting off some cards (and turns) beautifully.

All right, Commander time!

Elder Dragon Fun Times

Now I wanted to push an actual Elder Dragon. Many legendary creatures were reprinted in Chronicles and Renaissance. Among them were the super casual-friendly Elder Dragon legendary critters as well, so you can run the creatures that this format was named after. That’s some good stuff

So why not take advantage of that and drop some strong Jund beats behind our good Elder Dragon leader?

Vae-Victory ? Old School 95/96 Commander | Abe Sargent

• Commander (1)
• 1 Vaevictus Asmadi

• Creatures (27)
• 1 Autumn Willow
• 1 Baron Sengir
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Carrion Ants
• 1 Clockwork Avian
• 1 Cockatrice
• 1 Craw Wurm
• 1 Dragon Whelp
• 1 Elven Riders
• 1 Erhnam Djinn
• 1 Eron the Relentless
• 1 Fallen Angel
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Giant Trap Door Spider
• 1 Gorilla Shaman
• 1 Hypnotic Specter
• 1 Ihsan's Shade
• 1 Karplusan Yeti
• 1 Lhurgoyf
• 1 Llanowar Elves
• 1 Orcish Librarian
• 1 Royal Assassin
• 1 Sengir Vampire
• 1 Shivan Dragon
• 1 Shapeshifter
• 1 Triskelion
• 1 Xira Arien

• Instants (9)
• 1 Broken Visage
• 1 Dark Banishing
• 1 Feast or Famine
• 1 Fire Covenant
• 1 Fissure
• 1 Incinerate
• 1 Inferno
• 1 Lightning Bolt
• 1 Terror

• Sorceries (9)
• 1 Desert Twister
• 1 Earthquake
• 1 Fireball
• 1 Fumarole
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Pyrotechnics
• 1 Renewal
• 1 Untamed Wilds
• 1 Winter Blast

• Enchantments (6)
• 1 Animate Dead
• 1 Dance of the Dead
• 1 Goblin War Drums
• 1 Necropotence
• 1 Sylvan Library
• 1 Tornado

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Barbed Sextant
• 1 Book of Rass
• 1 Conch Horn
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Horn of Deafening
• 1 Jayemdae Tome
• 1 Nevinyrral's Disk

• Lands (40)
• 10 Forest
• 10 Plains
• 11 Mountain
• 1 Balduvian Trading Post
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Koskun Keep
• 1 Mishra's Factory
• 1 Rainbow Vale
• 1 Strip Mine
• 1 Sulfurous Springs
• 1 Thawing Glaciers

Buy This Deck

I pushed this into a cool control theme. We have sweeping creature control with Red’s Inferno and Earthquake. I felt Hurricane was a little weak given the light quality flying available at the time for Commander and skipped it, but it’s there if you want to run it. Don’t forget that Inferno is an instant, giving you a powerful response to a bad situation. We have Nevinyrral's Disk too! And you can add in cards such Jokulhaups if you wanted.

Meanwhile I pushed removal. Pretty much every reliable targeted removal spell is here. Desert Twister? Fumarole? Fissure? Dark Banishing? Terror? Feast or Famine? Broken Visage? Yeah, there they all are. And I put in a handful of burn as well. I really wanted burn that was either fast and cheap and reliable, such as Lightning Bolt and Incinerate, or had the potential to go wide and kill multiple creatures, such as Fire Covenant, Pyrotechnics and Fireball. But there are a ton of burn options I didn’t explore, such as Pyrokinesis and Lava Burst that you could. I also missed Soul Burn and Drain Life if you wanted to head down that direction.

Now, check out the awesome jank that is Tornado. It works, relatively simply. Play it. Pay cumulative upkeep as needed it keep it around. Whenever you need, toss three mana onto it to destroy a nasty permanent. Put a counter and lose life. Now a few Tornado notes:

1. The first time you use it, there are no velocity counters on it, so no loss is involved.
2. The second time you use it, you pay three life and destroy another permanent.
3. The third, and likely last time, you use it, you pay six life and destroy another permanent

Now that you can see where I was going with my control spells, what control creatures pushed? Well I have a few classics you expect from this era, no question. No one is going to second guess the presence of Sengir Vampire, Erhnam Djinn, or Shivan Dragon, the Triune Ender of Games. Ditto Autumn Willow or Lhurgoyf. And some early drops like Hypnotic Specter and Dragon Whelp need little introduction as well. Neither do the mana-makers of Birds of Paradise and friends.

But what else? I sought support for the theme. Xira Arien can spend some mana to draw you a key card. Many add to my removal options, as Karplusan Yeti can fight and kill stuff, Triskelion can shoot stuff, and Royal Assassin can tap and kill tapped creatures. Giant Trap Door Spider? Tor Wauki? Gorilla Shaman? I’m sure you can see the added value of my control-esque creature cadre.

I pushed my sensitivity for card drawing with Necropotence, Book of Rass, and Jayemdae Tome, in addition to fun cards like Conch Horn. In this three color build where mana is already an issue, I prefer Book of Rass to Greed, but you could run both. And there are certainly other routes to consider too like Jalum Tome or discard in Disrupting Scepter. You’ve got this!

And frankly, most Magic players have most of these cards just laying around in various card collections already. Jayemdae Tome has been printed so many times that is was recently an uncommon. Cards like Hypnotic Specter and Shivan Dragon have no value outside of bulk rare status. Untamed Wilds? Incinerate?

And the handful of cards you probably don’t own and would need to pick up are pretty cheap, like Tornado, Winter Blast, Orcish Librarian, and Eron the Relentless. You could likely build a deck like this with your own cards, a few key trades with your playgroup or at the LGS, and then dropping $20 on coolstuffinc.com. And the format is compelling.

You have a lot of combo engines to figure out. Here is what Laurent told me about combos in the format after playing with it for a while:

And I agree. Other than cards that are dangerous or limited, like Merchant Scroll or Demonic Consultation, the tutoring factor is basically non-existent.

Looking for a challenge? How about this? My challenge is to break this card:

For reference, here is Oath of Lim-Dûl’s Gatherer text:

Whenever you lose life, for each 1 life you lost, sacrifice a permanent other than Oath of Lim-Dûl unless you discard a card.

How’s that for a challenge?

The format is cheap, fun to play, and keep’s out the broken stuff. You can drop Commander or 60 card decks with equal aplomb. So what is stopping you from playing it? And taking the Oath of Lim-Dûl challenge?

Are you ready for Old School 95/96?