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Main » Articles » Top 10 Casual Deck Archetypes, Part 1

Top 10 Casual Deck Archetypes, Part 1

Abe Sargent
Posted on March 9, 2014
 Reddit

Ever since Magic began, people experimented with decks that have resonated through today. You can’t play kitchen-table Magic without running into decks with ancestors that stretch back to 1993. What are the Top 10 Casual Deck Archetypes of all time?

The goal of this two-part series is to give you ten of the most impactful deck archetypes we’ve ever had in casual circles. All were among the first archetypes to evolve in the early days of Magic, and all can still be found at gaming nights across the world. These archetypes have endured the test of time.

To begin, I’ll give you a short bit of history and a sample decklist of what the deck used to be. Then, I’ll build a quick, updated decklist for your Magic night tomorrow.

We’ll look at the archetypes I think are rated 10 through 6 today, and then we’ll cover the Top 5 next week.

Are you ready? Let’s get this thing started!

10. Tokenspew

This is my personal name for the archetype that plays lots and lots of creature tokens. It’s always been a popular concept since creature tokens were pushed, but recently, you see more and more hordes of tokens being pressed into service in your local game night. We can thank Selesnya for the popularity of tokens in a lot of ways.

Let’s take a look at one such deck:

"Considering G/U Tokens"

This deck uses blue’s Quiet Speculation to set up a flashback, token-making house such as Roar of the Wurm. It has a lot of other flashback spells that make tokens, and then even, it has Parallel Evolution to double them. This is the sort of deck you might see at a table when creature tokens had been pushed. I regularly ran into decks with four each of Decree of Justice and Mobilization or Goblin Offensive, Warbreak Trumpeter, and Siege-Gang Commander.

"Upgrading G/U Tokens"

This deck takes that early concept and keeps the shell like Quiet Speculation and some of the great flashback spells. I even really liked Compulsion and returned it, too. Plus, we added some fun stuff from Innistrad block that suited the deck—and then a few lands—and called it.

Today, you see Tokenspew decks everywhere. Some of the most popular cards in the last ten years have been token-making dorks. We have entire Commander decks built around token-making strategies, and many decks have won tournaments on the backs of guys that make tokens, such as Geist of Saint Traft or Brimaz, King of Oreskos.

9. Game-Winning Combo

Down through the years, we’ve seen a lot of decks that build a combo quickly in order to win. Many of these combos were not just game-winning at the kitchen table, but also dominated in tournaments.

One of the earliest examples of a deck that dominated and won tournaments used mostly pieces from Mirage block to create a nasty combo that fueled a game-winning Drain Life.

"Random Pros Bloom"

And this is a Mirage-block deck—I didn’t even add Standard-legal cards! I just hacked this deck together for demonstration purposes; I’m sure it’s not the tricked-out version. This deck works by playing lands, sacrificing them for mana after tapping them, using Natural Balance to grab a bunch more lands (tap them and then sac them for a lot of mana), using that mana to fuel a Cadaverous Bloom, card-drawing stuff until you find your Drain Life, and then going off with a giant Drain Life.

We had a lot of these decks in the early days—you had the Fruity Pebbles combo that used Enduring Renewal, Goblin Bombardment, and 0-cost creatures like Shield Sphere to sacrifice for a damage and then replay it for nothing and repeat until you win. We had Donate and Illusions of Grandeur. We had the infamous Combo Winter that used a variety of combo decks from Uzra’s Block to destroy folks. You get the idea.

Combo was hot from the first get-go. There is a place for combo decks today. I’ve never been a casual player to eschew combo decks. Any healthy metagame enables as many archetypes as there are Magic players! So, let’s look at a combo deck that I built just now using some cards from Theros block.

"Non-Random Rakdos"

This quick deck uses Rakdos, Lord of Riots to reduce the cost of your creatures by at least 4 colorless mana. Then, you drop Peace and Pierce Striders, bouncing another back to your hand with the Cloudstone Curio. In order to be able to play Rakdos, and to use its ability, I included Barbarian Ring, Flame Rift, and Purphoros, God of the Forge, who doubles as another combo element to the deck.

This was just a quick-and-dirty idea to show you a modern take on the ProsBloom-style deck. People regularly play these combo decks. The impact of these Game-Winning Combos is still felt today.

8. White Weenie

Aggro decks in the early days were no joke. There were a lot of cards running around that enabled fast decks all over the place. Not only could you run a powerful weenie deck for casual play, but it also could dominate a tournament, too. Here, let me build you a quick White Weenie deck using nothing but cards in print up through 1995’s Ice Age:

"Ancient White Weenie"

You could stomp a table with this deck today. You have Crusade and Jihad for permanent pumping of your bodies (See also: Angelic Voices). Your deck has very aggressive and solid bodies, and the pump Knights are epic cards that defined aggressive Magic for years. Modernizing it doesn’t take a lot of shine off the deck.

"Modern White Weenie"

Your updated version of this deck can run a lot of hate bears, like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Leonin Arbiter. Don’t think you have to run expensive cards either. You could easily find replacements for cards like Brimaz on your decklist.

This White Weenie, while an amazing aggro deck, also represents Black Weenie, too. It’s a slot dedicated to powerful, synergetic, aggro decks of all forms like this.

7. Sligh

The Sligh–Geeba deck came about because someone considered the idea of a mana curve and the value of tapping your lands every turn. As a mono-red deck, it ran creatures like Goblin Balloon Brigade that would use the red mana you had sitting around—as well as a mana curve of creatures that arced up—but emphasized the first few turns of play.

A ton of mono-red decks had been built before, but these ideas modernized Magic, revolutionized red decks, and created a new archetype of mono-red decks that lasts through today. It is still popular. Let’s take a look an earlier version of Sligh.

"Old Sligh"

Here’s the deck at the height of its power and majesty. It has twelve 1-drops, eight 2-drops, and six 3-drops. It has four 1-mana removal spells, four 2-mana removal spells, and four cards that use no mana at all. This is a ruthlessly-efficient deck. It steamrolled folks.

"New Sligh"

Again, you can see a strong mana curve in this deck. We still have a dozen 1-drops and an eight-set of the 2s. Ember Hauler and Kargan Dragonlord are great upgrades. Koth of the Hammer is amazing here, too. It’s similarly powerful, for all of the same reasons, such as using all of your mana every turn (for things like the Satyr, the Dragonlord, and the Figure).

While this deck uses a lot of rares and mythics, you can easily have the same result with Goblin Bushwhacker and Mogg Fanatic and such. You don’t need to run these cards in order to enjoy the power of Sligh.

6. Reanimator

This was a thing. I can still remember players would skip playing a card on their first turns in order to discard a giant creature and then, two turns later, play Animate Dead, bring it back, and smash face with a nasty creature.

You might not think this was a thing when you look at the lack of quality for reanimation effects. We had Resurrection, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, and then things like Necromancy or Miraculous Recovery. So yes, it wasn’t hot. But it worked. However, we had some nasty graveyard-based strategies, too. One of the most powerful decks of all time used Bazaar of Baghdad to discard creatures including Nicol Bolas, and they then played Shallow Grave to bring him back for one hit of 7 damage and a Mind Twist in one. It was a sick deck. That’s not casual-friendly, so we’ll be looking at something else that you often saw:

"Remembered U/R Reanimator"

This deck uses several strategies to fill your graveyard with goodies. First, you can play the horrible Mind Bomb. When the next set, Weatherlight, was released, these were replaced with Buried Alive! Forget was not bad—discard two and draw two. Then, you could mill your deck a bit with Deep Spawn to gain more fuel for the fire. So there were several points of entry.

Note that Reanimator was such a player in the early days that Spirit of the Night was intentionally given protection from black to keep it from being the target of Animate Dead and its cohorts!

Instead of running creatures you can’t cast, such as Scaled Wurm or Crash of Rhinos, the deck just has Mahamoti Djinn, Deep Spawn, Colossus of Sardia, and Clockwork Beast as good targets. You are running ten reanimation spells, all enchantments (so perhaps Skull of Orm might be a useful addition). Then, add the ubiquitous Counterspell, and you can call it.

Of course, Reanimator decks are all over the place, even today. Either at gaming night at your house or at the local Friday Night Magic, you see these decks regularly. They are a bit better, but they still use a lot of fuel that was created in the early days, such as Reanimate, Exhume, and Buried Alive. Let’s look.

"Updated Reanimator Deck"

This is such an enduring archetype that we have the Premium Deck Series: Graveborn that uses it. Here, we have the same shell, but with better reanimation spells, better support, and better creatures. There are bunches of ways to take reanimation today. It works in a lot of places. Use it, and abuse it!

And that brings us to the end of the first five enduring archetypes. We’ve looked at old and new and had a bit of a walk through history. Next week, we’ll explore the Top 5 Casual Deck Archetypes of all time.

What did you think? What deck types do you think might be in the top five that are missing here?

See you next week,

Abe Sargent

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TAGS articles, strategy, casual, archetypes, deck lists, decks, abe sargent

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