Magic Memories: Necropotence
- Thread starter Oversoul
- Start date
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
As much as the power of the card might get exaggerated, Necropotence really is three mana for an enchantment that can keep refilling your hand at the end of your turn. Sure, it costs life, but that's still a pretty big deal. Maybe some kind of aggressive black/red deck? Modern has a lot of cards to play around with. I have a feeling that something would be viable. Dominant? Perhaps not. But competitive, at least...
I will, but from the perspective of the Modern format, some of these are, I'm sure, both primitive and reliant on other unavailable cards, including some rather broken cards. Before even showcasing decklists, I'm can say from memory that Strip Mine, Sinkhole, Demonic Consultation, Hymn to Tourach, and (of course) Dark Ritual all made appearances in early Necro decks. Demonic Consultation and Strip Mine aren't even legal in Legacy!
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Your post here includes a couple of cards that will be turning up in my "I Have No Memory" articles. So of course I'd be interested to try out something like this. I assume that the setup is too elaborate to compete in Modern tournament play, although I have a poor feel for that format. Of course, Necropotence + Zur's Weirding is also too difficult to set up for tournament decks, so I'm not sure how much I even care about that aspect. Anyway, I think "Liches are Weird" is a pretty cool concept and I'm going to have to save it for trying it out some time.Reflecting on your favorite combo of all time lead me to examine how I would implement it in Modern as it currently exists, and what I found might actually be a solid control engine (this may exist in decks already at some slice of time and space, well outside my wheelhouse). Maralen of the Mornsong + Isochron Scepter imprinting Shadow of Doubt means your opponent can never draw from or search their library once you have 5 mana in place, while you replace your draw step with searching for card of your choice at the cost of 3 life (which you will be stealing from them).
Liches are Weird (Modern legal emulation of NecroWeirding)
24 Swamp
4 Maralen of the Mornsong
4 Isochron Scepter
4 Shadow of Doubt
4 Sign in Blood
4 Soul Spike
2 Mutilate
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Sanguine Bond
3 Fatal Push
3 Doomfall
3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
Wondering how that combo strikes you. In case you want to reciprocate, my favorite combo of all time is Leyline of Anticipation allowing Worldfire to be cast in response to Sentinel Totem ability going on the stack
Amusingly, Necropotence seems like it would be a fine card to use under Maralen, with the daunting obstacle that you'd need to shut your opponent out of using Maralen to dig for an answer.
Maralen of the Mornsong + Mindlock Orb would be hilarious.
P
Psarketos
Guest
While not tournament worthy, that deck would irritate most opponents I play against while having a high win rate against most of the field I personally see. Three card combos are never going to outperform tuned tournament control decks, which is what anyone who liked the flavor of the deck would probably be drawn to when going for maximum power - grinding a slower win without tricks is dominant in part because as you have pointed out, when flashy tricks can outmanuever control staples they get WotC banned. "Look at me, I'm the DCI!"
P
Psarketos
Guest
Because you demanded, Demanded! that I push the deck as close to tournament worthy as possible, I have a few revisions that make the control a little stronger and a turn 5 library lock more consistent. Play guide follows decklist.
Liches Are Weird, Store Tournament Version
24 Swamp
3 Maralen of the Mornsong
4 Shadow of Doubt
3 Isochron Scepter
3 Mastermind's Acquisition
4 Sign in Blood
2 Drown in Sorrow
2 Mutilate
2 Soul Spike
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Sanguine Bond
2 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
3 Doomfall
Turns 1 - 3, shape your and opponent hands while disrupting the board state as needed. Turn 4 you ideally want to Mastermind's Acquisition the last part of the combination you need to cast Turn 5 (which may be a Swamp). Barring that, Mutilate can take care of the threatening Bogle that somehow still only has 4 toughness, or Drown in Sorrow can give you time and save resources for a Fatal Push to either hit an opponent 4 drop or a man land on their turn.
You may be able to get Maralen + Shadow imprinted Isochron in play on turn 5 but not have a board state locked to your satisfaction, in which case you can use the card search on your next draw step to find some combination of Swamp and Mutilate to get the -6 toughness into play, or a Doomfall if it is a single large creature threat that is providing pressure. Otherwise, Exquisite gives you further turns for searching without life cost (effectively), while Sanguine will finish one opponent and then chain to any number of others in a single turn due to Exquisite. If your opponent dropped a Witchbane Orb as their turn 5 surprise, you can always swing with Maralen to hurry things along (though that is probably not how Dimir think)
Liches Are Weird, Store Tournament Version
24 Swamp
3 Maralen of the Mornsong
4 Shadow of Doubt
3 Isochron Scepter
3 Mastermind's Acquisition
4 Sign in Blood
2 Drown in Sorrow
2 Mutilate
2 Soul Spike
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Sanguine Bond
2 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
3 Doomfall
Turns 1 - 3, shape your and opponent hands while disrupting the board state as needed. Turn 4 you ideally want to Mastermind's Acquisition the last part of the combination you need to cast Turn 5 (which may be a Swamp). Barring that, Mutilate can take care of the threatening Bogle that somehow still only has 4 toughness, or Drown in Sorrow can give you time and save resources for a Fatal Push to either hit an opponent 4 drop or a man land on their turn.
You may be able to get Maralen + Shadow imprinted Isochron in play on turn 5 but not have a board state locked to your satisfaction, in which case you can use the card search on your next draw step to find some combination of Swamp and Mutilate to get the -6 toughness into play, or a Doomfall if it is a single large creature threat that is providing pressure. Otherwise, Exquisite gives you further turns for searching without life cost (effectively), while Sanguine will finish one opponent and then chain to any number of others in a single turn due to Exquisite. If your opponent dropped a Witchbane Orb as their turn 5 surprise, you can always swing with Maralen to hurry things along (though that is probably not how Dimir think)
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
About historical Necropotence decklists, and I'd have saved more of the ones I really liked over the years if I'd known I was going to start this thread, there are definitely some quirky issues to take note of. I'll try to do a little digging and provide some reasonable context for all of this. These days, there's a pretty stable setup of notable Magic formats. Standard is the primary format with official tournament support, Modern is popular but inconsistently supported, Legacy is primarily played by an older crowd and is generally ignored by WotC, and Vintage (the oldest format) has a tiny playerbase in "paper Magic" but is growing on MTGO. Aside from Constructed formats, Booster Draft is popular both for major tournaments and for local events, while Sealed Deck is the default format for certain special events. And of course Commander is wildly successful as an officially supported, and yet unsanctioned, casual format. Back when Necropotence was new, there were two official Constructed formats: Type 1 and Type 2. Both of those formats shifted dramatically in their approach to what kinds of cards were allowed and in what numbers, and even in how tournaments were set up. Limited formats essentially didn't exist and casual formats didn't have any real support, but there were more large scale events played under variant rules. In Type 1, it was still possible that one even in one part of the world might ban an entire set, while another event around the same time in another place might allow that set. There were fewer real, structured formats, but things were generally more chaotic.
As a pointed example of how historical quirks affect this, many of the old Necro decks that can easily be found by Google searches include the card Serrated Arrows...
What a cursory search might not tell you is that the reason for this is that the first Pro Tour included a rule that decks had to dedicate a minimum of five card slots to each expansion in the format (Fallen Empires, Fourth Edition, Chronicles, Ice Age, and Homelands). Deckbuilders had to take some creative approaches to the frustrating Homelands quota. The typical answer to this problem for Necro decks was to either shove the Homelands quota into the sideboard or to use a mixture of Serrated Arrows and Ihsan's Shade, a creature that was reasonably beefy for the time and also immune to Swords to Plowshares. In general, I think Serrated Arrows is probably a pretty good card, or at least an OK one. But yeah, if you look at old Necro decklists from 1996 and see the card, it's not because the players all thought it was an optimal card, but because they were using it as the last-bad option to fulfill the "Homedicap." This isn't the only strange bit of history that might influence Necropotence tournament decklists. Far from it. But I bring it up because anyone looking at this 22 years later and not already familiar with it wouldn't even begin to look for something like that or take such a deckbuilding constraint into consideration. Mandatory set-based deckbuilding quotas aren't a thing anymore.
One more thing, before I get to any decklists. I want to set the record straight on something else, because most retrospectives seem to miss this. Although the design of Ice Age might seem primitive in some ways, I have a strong suspicion that the designers fully intended for Necropotence to be a strong card from the beginning. They knew that paying life for cards at a one-to-one ratio was was inherently powerful. That is, I am sure, why they stacked it with various constraints. Triple black so it's harder to splash, you have to skip your regular draw, cards you discard go away forever instead of going to your graveyard where you could use Animate Dead or whatever. And of course, you don't get, or even see, the cards until after your main phase is over. It's not a topic I see others discuss, but those constraints combined prevented a lot of the ways the card could have been ridiculously broken. On top of that, I think knowledgeable players when the set was new processed this fact and were cognizant of it. There's a popular narrative that players initially discounted Necropotence because they failed to grasp how potent card advantage was back then. The card was generally rated poorly by pro players and by set reviewers for magazines at the time. All of this gets presented as either:
There's a card with its own bizarre history. I think I've played with it more than most people. A case for another Memories thread? Perhaps. Regardless of anything else that might be said about it, the card was legal when Necropotence first came out in 1995, was restricted in both Type 1 and Type 2 in February of 1996, had been appearing as a tournament staple in the intervening period, and was just about the worst card for a Necropotence deck to go up against. After Black Vise was restricted, Necropotence almost immediately started appearing in tournament decks. So really, the critics were right. At the time, in context, Necropotence wasn't a good card! Now, based on my hazy recollection of some of the preserved 1995 commentary on the card, it's probably fair to say that some of the critics were right for the wrong reasons, that they really did underestimate what Necropotence, if it wouldn't be at risk of being immediately slaughtered by Black Vise, would be capable of. But that's quibbling. Necropotence wasn't really a diamond in the rough, ignored when it first came out but eventually broken once some people finally realized how to use it. It was a card that happened to be weak against another card that happened to be dominating and defining tournament play at the time.
As a pointed example of how historical quirks affect this, many of the old Necro decks that can easily be found by Google searches include the card Serrated Arrows...
What a cursory search might not tell you is that the reason for this is that the first Pro Tour included a rule that decks had to dedicate a minimum of five card slots to each expansion in the format (Fallen Empires, Fourth Edition, Chronicles, Ice Age, and Homelands). Deckbuilders had to take some creative approaches to the frustrating Homelands quota. The typical answer to this problem for Necro decks was to either shove the Homelands quota into the sideboard or to use a mixture of Serrated Arrows and Ihsan's Shade, a creature that was reasonably beefy for the time and also immune to Swords to Plowshares. In general, I think Serrated Arrows is probably a pretty good card, or at least an OK one. But yeah, if you look at old Necro decklists from 1996 and see the card, it's not because the players all thought it was an optimal card, but because they were using it as the last-bad option to fulfill the "Homedicap." This isn't the only strange bit of history that might influence Necropotence tournament decklists. Far from it. But I bring it up because anyone looking at this 22 years later and not already familiar with it wouldn't even begin to look for something like that or take such a deckbuilding constraint into consideration. Mandatory set-based deckbuilding quotas aren't a thing anymore.
One more thing, before I get to any decklists. I want to set the record straight on something else, because most retrospectives seem to miss this. Although the design of Ice Age might seem primitive in some ways, I have a strong suspicion that the designers fully intended for Necropotence to be a strong card from the beginning. They knew that paying life for cards at a one-to-one ratio was was inherently powerful. That is, I am sure, why they stacked it with various constraints. Triple black so it's harder to splash, you have to skip your regular draw, cards you discard go away forever instead of going to your graveyard where you could use Animate Dead or whatever. And of course, you don't get, or even see, the cards until after your main phase is over. It's not a topic I see others discuss, but those constraints combined prevented a lot of the ways the card could have been ridiculously broken. On top of that, I think knowledgeable players when the set was new processed this fact and were cognizant of it. There's a popular narrative that players initially discounted Necropotence because they failed to grasp how potent card advantage was back then. The card was generally rated poorly by pro players and by set reviewers for magazines at the time. All of this gets presented as either:
- A cautionary tale about the underestimation of new sets. Yes, whatever set is about to come out or just came out might draw a lot of criticism for its dull, weak cards, but that's just because it takes time for deckbuilders to learn how to use new mechanics properly. After all, lots of people thought Necropotence wasn't playable when Ice Age was new, and it took several months for it to start showing up in tournament decks. And Necropotence is now known to be super-powerful, so don't be too quick to judge new cards that you don't understand.
- An example of how primitive deck construction and tournament theory were back in the old days. Those troglodytes didn't comprehend how broken Necropotence is! Now we know it's broken, because our collective grasp on the game has improved so much since those days. The set designers were ignorant to create such a broken card and the players were ignorant for not spotting how broken it was. But now, we live in an age of enlightnment, and can look back on the folly of the ancients with wry amusement.
There's a card with its own bizarre history. I think I've played with it more than most people. A case for another Memories thread? Perhaps. Regardless of anything else that might be said about it, the card was legal when Necropotence first came out in 1995, was restricted in both Type 1 and Type 2 in February of 1996, had been appearing as a tournament staple in the intervening period, and was just about the worst card for a Necropotence deck to go up against. After Black Vise was restricted, Necropotence almost immediately started appearing in tournament decks. So really, the critics were right. At the time, in context, Necropotence wasn't a good card! Now, based on my hazy recollection of some of the preserved 1995 commentary on the card, it's probably fair to say that some of the critics were right for the wrong reasons, that they really did underestimate what Necropotence, if it wouldn't be at risk of being immediately slaughtered by Black Vise, would be capable of. But that's quibbling. Necropotence wasn't really a diamond in the rough, ignored when it first came out but eventually broken once some people finally realized how to use it. It was a card that happened to be weak against another card that happened to be dominating and defining tournament play at the time.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
One of the earliest famous Necro decks was piloted by Graham Tatomer in the Junior Division of the Pro Tour. He won. There was speculation that his deck was stronger than any of the decks in the regular Pro Tour. It was also famous in part because some of the participants in the Junior Division would go on to become some of the most popular big-name pro players a few years later. When I looked for Graham Tatomer's full decklist, none of the records I saw included his sideboard. I assume the Junior Division was using the same Homedicap that the main Pro Tour did at that time, so presumably his Homelands slots were in his sideboard. Anyway, here's the main deck...
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
3 Sengir Vampire
1 Ivory Tower
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
1 Zuran Orb
3 Necropotence
2 Paralyze
4 Dark Ritual
3 Demonic Consultation
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Icequake
18 Swamp
4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Strip Mine
Other than Necropotence and the novel choice to play Demonic Consultation, a card that was made popular by this very deck, it's all pretty straightforward. I never played this exact list, but it's very, very similar to some of the decks I would go on to play several years later. The ratios are a bit different: my decks wouldn't have used only 3 copies of Necropotence and I wouldn't play only two copies of Strip Mine. But other than Sengir Vampire, all of these individual cards are ones I've used in Necro decks. So I can say this pretty much functions as a reasonable, if slightly clunky, proactive control deck. It's not agrro: it's not sprinting for the finish line. And some players today might mistake it for "midrange" at first glance, but it's not buying time and playing defense while building up to bigger threats before going for the kill. Instead, the goal here was to disrupt the opponent from the outset. Hypnotic Specter and Hymn to Tourach could chip away at the opponent's hand. Strip Mine and Icequake could attack the opponent's mana production capabilities. Opponents found themselves under pressure to deal with the creatures, but Necropotence was simply getting access to more cards faster, so it was an uphill struggle. And if opponents could do something explosive, Nevinyrral's Disk "reset" the board, but with the Necro player having more cards in hand. Life gain from Ivory Tower and Zuran Orb could keep the process going. Other innovations would follow, but this deck really set the formula for what a Necro deck would look like and how it would operate. Eventually, it would lead to the nickname "MBC" for "mono-black control." Black decks before this had relied on Dark Ritual for tempo to power out small creature and outrace opponents. Black was predominantly either a support color or an aggro color. Blue was the color of a control deck! They had Counterspell, after all. But with Necropotence for card advantage and the availability of both targeted discard spells and land destruction, black decks could play the control role in a different way. Instead of letting the opponent try to do stuff and then disrupting it, like a blue deck, you don't wait for them. You strive not to give them a chance. You disrupt them before they present threats.
I haven't thought about this in a long time, but one thing I used to do a lot was drop a Nevinyrral's Disk onto the board even though I had a strong board with more permanents than my opponent. I was showing my opponent that I had the reset button, but getting it ready was worth it, and my opponents were caught between a rock and a hard place. Hold back so as to be less vulnerable to the Disk? But then I'll have the advantage on the board and I'll kill them with Hypnotic Specter or Knight of Stromgald. Drop threats aggressively and force me to activate the Disk? But then I'll Necro up some more cards to restock my own threats, and beat them to death with Mishra's Factory.
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
3 Sengir Vampire
1 Ivory Tower
3 Nevinyrral’s Disk
1 Zuran Orb
3 Necropotence
2 Paralyze
4 Dark Ritual
3 Demonic Consultation
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Icequake
18 Swamp
4 Mishra’s Factory
2 Strip Mine
Other than Necropotence and the novel choice to play Demonic Consultation, a card that was made popular by this very deck, it's all pretty straightforward. I never played this exact list, but it's very, very similar to some of the decks I would go on to play several years later. The ratios are a bit different: my decks wouldn't have used only 3 copies of Necropotence and I wouldn't play only two copies of Strip Mine. But other than Sengir Vampire, all of these individual cards are ones I've used in Necro decks. So I can say this pretty much functions as a reasonable, if slightly clunky, proactive control deck. It's not agrro: it's not sprinting for the finish line. And some players today might mistake it for "midrange" at first glance, but it's not buying time and playing defense while building up to bigger threats before going for the kill. Instead, the goal here was to disrupt the opponent from the outset. Hypnotic Specter and Hymn to Tourach could chip away at the opponent's hand. Strip Mine and Icequake could attack the opponent's mana production capabilities. Opponents found themselves under pressure to deal with the creatures, but Necropotence was simply getting access to more cards faster, so it was an uphill struggle. And if opponents could do something explosive, Nevinyrral's Disk "reset" the board, but with the Necro player having more cards in hand. Life gain from Ivory Tower and Zuran Orb could keep the process going. Other innovations would follow, but this deck really set the formula for what a Necro deck would look like and how it would operate. Eventually, it would lead to the nickname "MBC" for "mono-black control." Black decks before this had relied on Dark Ritual for tempo to power out small creature and outrace opponents. Black was predominantly either a support color or an aggro color. Blue was the color of a control deck! They had Counterspell, after all. But with Necropotence for card advantage and the availability of both targeted discard spells and land destruction, black decks could play the control role in a different way. Instead of letting the opponent try to do stuff and then disrupting it, like a blue deck, you don't wait for them. You strive not to give them a chance. You disrupt them before they present threats.
I haven't thought about this in a long time, but one thing I used to do a lot was drop a Nevinyrral's Disk onto the board even though I had a strong board with more permanents than my opponent. I was showing my opponent that I had the reset button, but getting it ready was worth it, and my opponents were caught between a rock and a hard place. Hold back so as to be less vulnerable to the Disk? But then I'll have the advantage on the board and I'll kill them with Hypnotic Specter or Knight of Stromgald. Drop threats aggressively and force me to activate the Disk? But then I'll Necro up some more cards to restock my own threats, and beat them to death with Mishra's Factory.
P
Psarketos
Guest
I cant find the name for the phenomenon right now, but 2. in your exposition above comes up in discussions of Classics and Anthropology - contemporary individuals and societies presuming differences to historical people are based on differences in intellectual capacity and widely available knowledge (they often are not). One professor referred to this the "Our Dumb Ancestors" fallacy.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Well, that takes me back. I read a book in college, but I can't remember the name. The author used some concrete examples of how Modern observers had blatantly discounted certain ancient works and been wrong to do so. I can remember some of the examples from the book, but not the title or the author. Hm, can't seem to find it now.
But it was very similar to what you've described. While it's not as important in our context as something like this happening in anthropological study, I do think that it happens a lot in Magic, especially in discussions about the first few years of the game.
But it was very similar to what you've described. While it's not as important in our context as something like this happening in anthropological study, I do think that it happens a lot in Magic, especially in discussions about the first few years of the game.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Graham Tatomer's deck won the Junior Division. In the main division, Leon Lindbeck took third place with a Necro deck. The sites posting his list actually bother to include the sideboard...
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Order of Ebon Hand
3 Knight of Stromgald
4 Necropotence
4 Drain Life
1 Soul Burn
1 Dark Banishing
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Dark Rituals
1 Dance of the Dead
1 Ivory Tower
1 Zuran Orb
1 Jalum Tome
2 Serrated Arrows
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Strip Mine
2 Ebon Stronghold
17 Swamps
Sideboard
1 City of Brass
1 Safe Haven
1 Feldon’s Cane
1 Meekstone
1 Apocalypse Chime
3 The Rack
1 Torture
1 Stromgald Cabal
1 Ashes to Ashes
1 Serrated Arrows
1 Jalum Tome
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
Most Necro decks from later in 1996 look kind of like some combination of these two decklists. The Graham Tatomer list invests in Icequake for more land destruction and has Demonic Consultation. At the time, Demonic Consultation was seen as insane. It would later get banned/restricted in multiple formats and develop a reputation as one of the most powerful tutors ever printed, largely seeing play in Necro decks. The Leon Lindbeck list uses more pump knights instead of Sengir Vampire, and uses Drain Life to feed Necropotence and as a potential kill condition. Together, these are some of the most important Necropotence decklists in history. This was kind of the "breakout" for the card. Other players would build on their success and make their own adjustments. So it does get better! I started with these not because they're some of the strongest Necropotence decks, but because they were some of the very earliest known Necropotence decks, and the first tournament successes.
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Order of Ebon Hand
3 Knight of Stromgald
4 Necropotence
4 Drain Life
1 Soul Burn
1 Dark Banishing
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Dark Rituals
1 Dance of the Dead
1 Ivory Tower
1 Zuran Orb
1 Jalum Tome
2 Serrated Arrows
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
4 Strip Mine
2 Ebon Stronghold
17 Swamps
Sideboard
1 City of Brass
1 Safe Haven
1 Feldon’s Cane
1 Meekstone
1 Apocalypse Chime
3 The Rack
1 Torture
1 Stromgald Cabal
1 Ashes to Ashes
1 Serrated Arrows
1 Jalum Tome
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
Most Necro decks from later in 1996 look kind of like some combination of these two decklists. The Graham Tatomer list invests in Icequake for more land destruction and has Demonic Consultation. At the time, Demonic Consultation was seen as insane. It would later get banned/restricted in multiple formats and develop a reputation as one of the most powerful tutors ever printed, largely seeing play in Necro decks. The Leon Lindbeck list uses more pump knights instead of Sengir Vampire, and uses Drain Life to feed Necropotence and as a potential kill condition. Together, these are some of the most important Necropotence decklists in history. This was kind of the "breakout" for the card. Other players would build on their success and make their own adjustments. So it does get better! I started with these not because they're some of the strongest Necropotence decks, but because they were some of the very earliest known Necropotence decks, and the first tournament successes.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
I mentioned "Black Summer." I wasn't playing back then, so I can't use direct experience to talk about this. But I've heard enough from people who were there and read enough that was written and preserved from that time, as well as retrospective articles, that I think I get the gist of it. Necro faced two major obstacles in its efforts to utterly dominate the Type 2 metagame. The first and most obvious were aggressive red decks. Necropotence did part of the work of lowering its own life total, so if red decks could land enough early hits, they could neutralize the power of Necropotence with the threat of Lightning Bolt and Incinerate. Less obvious was TurboStasis. Against Necropotence, Howling Mine was one-sided, which let the blue control deck keep up. By their nature, Necro decks were tapping out a lot, and Stasis capitalized on that, relying on Howling Mine to draw lots of cards, play a land every turn, and keep Stasis going. It would bounce Stasis or destroy it with Despotic Scepter, then play Stasis again, keeping the black deck perpetually locked down. Once Kismet hit the board, it was usually over. But Necro decks were flexible. Those "bad matchups" were still winnable. I piloted Necro against red decks a lot myself, and it was dangerous, but once I learned to find the right lines of play, I found that I could turn the tables. Zuran Orb was helpful for this because I could attack with creatures and keep myself alive, forcing the red player to either hold back creatures for defense (playing right into my hands) or risk getting outraced. I don't have a ton of experience playing against TurboStasis, but I did build the deck myself a few times. In that matchup, a slow, controlling Necro deck was at a disadvantage, but a faster deck with more pressure could simply outrace the Stasis deck. Howling Mine took time to set up, and TurboStasis put essentially zero pressure on a Necro player's life total, so it was possible to dig deep and assemble threats that could close the game out before a lockdown could be established. In both matchups, and really in a lot of matchups for Necro decks, Nevinyrral's Disk was especially potent. Sometimes it was worth it to use Dark Ritual to rush out an early Disk, holding it in reserve and forcing the opponent to play around it.
Without robust data records, it may be impossible to quantify how bad the bad matchups were. My vague impression based on my own casual play experience and on what tournament records I did read suggests the following...
4 Necropotence
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nevinyrral's Disk
3 Black Knight
3 Contagion
3 Drain Life
2 Ihsan's Shade
2 Order of the Ebon Hand
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Zuran Orb
1 Ivory Tower
1 Fireball
10 Swamps
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Strip Mine
3 Mishra's Factory
1 Lava Tubes
1 City of Brass
While that's tame by Modern standards, the Type 2 card pool in 1996 had a lot of trouble with it. Hymn, Hypnotic Specter, and Strip Mine put pressure on the opponent's resources very early in the game, and most opponents either couldn't keep up with the fast pace or had their own board heavily disrupted by stuff like Drain Life, Fireball, and Contagion.
Without robust data records, it may be impossible to quantify how bad the bad matchups were. My vague impression based on my own casual play experience and on what tournament records I did read suggests the following...
- Red decks were dangerous for Necropotence, but could be outplayed with lifegain, discard, and proper usage of Necropotence to generate more attacking power and to do it faster than opponents could deal with it.
- TurboStasis was a genuine bad matchup for Necro, but the gap closed and probably started to run the other direction once Necro decks built more aggressively.
- Both bad matchups were lackluster against the rest of the non-Necro field.
- TurboStasis was the most challenging contender, but it was an extremely tedious deck to play. Personally, I really like Stasis decks, but most players do not like them and do not want to pilot them. This probably produced significant selection bias. Stasis was mostly piloted by strong, dedicated players. So they tended to win a lot.
- Necropotence reached a threshold of popularity where the "bad" matchups were not statistically favored in tournaments. Like, even if I have a 60% match win-rate against Necro, which when talking about high-level competitive decks is really quite a good number (and quite possibly not as good as an elite player in 1996 piloting red aggro or blue control against Necro), if the metagame is so saturated with it that I keep facing it, I'm probably going to lose against it before the end of the tournament, just through attrition.
4 Necropotence
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nevinyrral's Disk
3 Black Knight
3 Contagion
3 Drain Life
2 Ihsan's Shade
2 Order of the Ebon Hand
2 Serrated Arrows
1 Zuran Orb
1 Ivory Tower
1 Fireball
10 Swamps
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Strip Mine
3 Mishra's Factory
1 Lava Tubes
1 City of Brass
While that's tame by Modern standards, the Type 2 card pool in 1996 had a lot of trouble with it. Hymn, Hypnotic Specter, and Strip Mine put pressure on the opponent's resources very early in the game, and most opponents either couldn't keep up with the fast pace or had their own board heavily disrupted by stuff like Drain Life, Fireball, and Contagion.
That card was a staple in my decks for as long as I can remember. Potentional first turn play and then doing an almost automatic 7 damage *and* psychologically "freaking" the opponent out into casting spells earlier than expected to get under five cards. This actually was also in my aforementioned deck in the thread about with Mogg SquadOversoul said:
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Yeah, Black Vise is brutal in decks that disrupt opponents' mana, like with Winter Orb or Armageddon. And of course it's potent with Manabarbs. Rather amusingly, I found it to be a perfect kill condition for a Stasis deck, but Stasis didn't really take off in competitive play until after Black Vise was banned. Black Vise is extremely rare in Legacy, although it does see play in Old School formats. My tentative conclusion is that there are now simply better options for damage-dealing and that prison decks are better off taking other approaches (like Lodestone Golem). Would Black Vise be used against a hypothetical unbanned Necropotence? Maybe. I suspect that there'd be better anti-Necro cards in today's environment, but I haven't really tried to brew anything up, so I'm just making wild guesses.That card was a staple in my decks for as long as I can remember. Potentional first turn play and then doing an almost automatic 7 damage *and* psychologically "freaking" the opponent out into casting spells earlier than expected to get under five cards. This actually was also in my aforementioned deck in the thread about with Mogg Squad
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Necropotence as a card was so strongly associated with proactive black control decks that "Necro" was the usual moniker for such decks. They started out taking over Type 2 in 1996, but I think the big reason that the reputation continued while I was playing was mostly due to the prevalence of the "Necro deck" archetype in Extended. A version of the deck was also viable in Type 1, although perhaps a bit overshadowed by the more broken stuff available in that format. And although the format wasn't getting a lot of attention, the archetype also existed in Type 1.5. I was a scrub back then, but I actually did play Necro in Type 1.5. I'll get back to Necropotence control decks in those formats at some point, although I don't know if I'll be able to dredge up a real tournament decklist from Type 1.5 (not a lot of online records kept there).
Necropotence would later become infamous as a combo-enabler. And I'll address that too.
But the seemingly forgotten application of the card is as an engine to help aggro decks find options and continuously pump out threats. This archetype wasn't as popular or enduring in tournaments and just doesn't seem to get much attention. So many years later, Necropotence is either remembered as a dangerous combo enabler or as the centerpiece of a classic control deck. Aggro gets neglected.
Well, Necro can play offense too! I do not know when Necro first came to appear in all-out aggro decks. It's entirely possible that the concept was pioneered in Type 1 or Type 1.5 and I just never saw that. Maybe it was even pioneered in Type 2! I really don't know. But I do know that it arose in Extended. So I'll present two aggressive Necropotence decks from late 1990's Extended...
"Lauerpotence" achieved a measure of fame after Randy Buehler used it to win a Pro Tour. It's a black/red deck with a combination of black pump knights and red burn spells to beat the opponent up. Necropotence keeps the threats coming, with Drain Life as an endgame backup...
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
4 Knight of Stromgald
4 Drain Life
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Demonic Consultation
3 Disenchant
2 Firestorm
2 Incinerate
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Necropotence
3 Gemstone Mine
3 Lake of the Dead
2 Bad River
4 Badlands
4 Scrubland
8 Swamp
1 Ishan's Shade
Sideboard:
1 Disenchant
1 Firestorm
2 Circle of Protection: Black
3 Honorable Passage
2 Mind Warp
3 Pyroblast
3 Terror
It's not really that close to what I played historically, but I've got to admit that deck has in more recent years become one of my personal favorites. It's got a nice balance of disruptive utility, aggressive elements, and sheer power. Notably, Firestorm is an interesting card in this kind of deck...
To protect themselves from attacks or to try to outrace the Necropotence deck, opponents are incentivized to play as many creatures as they can. But this gives one the opportunity to overpay on Necropotence, then discard as many cards as possible to hit the targets of the opponent and every creature on the board, including one's own. This can potentially wipe the board of creatures and weaken the opponent so much that the game can be finished off on the next turn with other burn spells. If the opponent fills the board with too many creatures, it can even more easily serve as a finishing blow in its own right. Firestorm is a strange card in this respect. Necropotence provides as much fuel for it as the Necropotence player can afford to spend in life, so the limiting factor is how many targets are available (obviously you don't want to have to target yourself). Against Firestorm, opponents are disincentivized from playing creatures, the opposite of what they need to do to protect themselves from pump knight beatdown. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Or perhaps the metaphor in this case is out of the frying pan and into the fire(storm).
Taking the beatdown concept to the extreme, there's Suicide Black. Coincidentally the archetype started becoming popular with the advent of Hatred, a card that isn't really compatible with Necropotence. Most tournament players would be likely to associate "Suicide Black" with Hatred and "Necropotence" with control. But Necropotence was used to pay life in order to acquire more creatures that could cost life, all in an effort to beat the opponent down quickly...
4 Unholy Strength
4 Dauthi Slayer
2 Dauthi Horror
4 Carnophage
4 Sarcomancy
4 Black Knight
4 Duress
4 Demonic Consultation
3 Necropotence
4 Unmask
3 Firestorm
1 Kaervek's Spite
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Wasteland
4 Badlands
10 Swamp
Sideboard:
2 Addle
2 Bad Moon
3 Price of Progress
1 Firestorm
4 Pyroblast
3 Engineered Plague
This list isn't as versatile as Lauerpotence, but it does make great use of Firestorm. The use of creatures that can't block, creatures that hurt your life total, a burn spell that can torch your own creatures to do more damage, a spell that kills all of your stuff to hurt your opponent, and a tutor that routinely exiles huge chunks of your library all lend some emphasis to the theme of "suicide" in a deck like this. And the whole time, you're looking to deplete your own life in exchange for more of these dangerous cards. You're either going to kill your opponent or kill yourself trying. It's not reckless, it's deliberately single-minded. And if that isn't fitting for a black deck with a red splash, I don't know what is.
Necropotence would later become infamous as a combo-enabler. And I'll address that too.
But the seemingly forgotten application of the card is as an engine to help aggro decks find options and continuously pump out threats. This archetype wasn't as popular or enduring in tournaments and just doesn't seem to get much attention. So many years later, Necropotence is either remembered as a dangerous combo enabler or as the centerpiece of a classic control deck. Aggro gets neglected.
Well, Necro can play offense too! I do not know when Necro first came to appear in all-out aggro decks. It's entirely possible that the concept was pioneered in Type 1 or Type 1.5 and I just never saw that. Maybe it was even pioneered in Type 2! I really don't know. But I do know that it arose in Extended. So I'll present two aggressive Necropotence decks from late 1990's Extended...
"Lauerpotence" achieved a measure of fame after Randy Buehler used it to win a Pro Tour. It's a black/red deck with a combination of black pump knights and red burn spells to beat the opponent up. Necropotence keeps the threats coming, with Drain Life as an endgame backup...
4 Order of the Ebon Hand
4 Knight of Stromgald
4 Drain Life
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Demonic Consultation
3 Disenchant
2 Firestorm
2 Incinerate
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Necropotence
3 Gemstone Mine
3 Lake of the Dead
2 Bad River
4 Badlands
4 Scrubland
8 Swamp
1 Ishan's Shade
Sideboard:
1 Disenchant
1 Firestorm
2 Circle of Protection: Black
3 Honorable Passage
2 Mind Warp
3 Pyroblast
3 Terror
It's not really that close to what I played historically, but I've got to admit that deck has in more recent years become one of my personal favorites. It's got a nice balance of disruptive utility, aggressive elements, and sheer power. Notably, Firestorm is an interesting card in this kind of deck...
To protect themselves from attacks or to try to outrace the Necropotence deck, opponents are incentivized to play as many creatures as they can. But this gives one the opportunity to overpay on Necropotence, then discard as many cards as possible to hit the targets of the opponent and every creature on the board, including one's own. This can potentially wipe the board of creatures and weaken the opponent so much that the game can be finished off on the next turn with other burn spells. If the opponent fills the board with too many creatures, it can even more easily serve as a finishing blow in its own right. Firestorm is a strange card in this respect. Necropotence provides as much fuel for it as the Necropotence player can afford to spend in life, so the limiting factor is how many targets are available (obviously you don't want to have to target yourself). Against Firestorm, opponents are disincentivized from playing creatures, the opposite of what they need to do to protect themselves from pump knight beatdown. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Or perhaps the metaphor in this case is out of the frying pan and into the fire(storm).
Taking the beatdown concept to the extreme, there's Suicide Black. Coincidentally the archetype started becoming popular with the advent of Hatred, a card that isn't really compatible with Necropotence. Most tournament players would be likely to associate "Suicide Black" with Hatred and "Necropotence" with control. But Necropotence was used to pay life in order to acquire more creatures that could cost life, all in an effort to beat the opponent down quickly...
4 Unholy Strength
4 Dauthi Slayer
2 Dauthi Horror
4 Carnophage
4 Sarcomancy
4 Black Knight
4 Duress
4 Demonic Consultation
3 Necropotence
4 Unmask
3 Firestorm
1 Kaervek's Spite
1 Undiscovered Paradise
4 Wasteland
4 Badlands
10 Swamp
Sideboard:
2 Addle
2 Bad Moon
3 Price of Progress
1 Firestorm
4 Pyroblast
3 Engineered Plague
This list isn't as versatile as Lauerpotence, but it does make great use of Firestorm. The use of creatures that can't block, creatures that hurt your life total, a burn spell that can torch your own creatures to do more damage, a spell that kills all of your stuff to hurt your opponent, and a tutor that routinely exiles huge chunks of your library all lend some emphasis to the theme of "suicide" in a deck like this. And the whole time, you're looking to deplete your own life in exchange for more of these dangerous cards. You're either going to kill your opponent or kill yourself trying. It's not reckless, it's deliberately single-minded. And if that isn't fitting for a black deck with a red splash, I don't know what is.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
Well, this is what I get for not reading all the way to the bottom of an article. I'd wanted to get some examples of Necropotence being used in late 90's Type 2. The original trappings of the deck had rotated out of the format, but Necropotence was in Fifth Edition, so playing it was an option in Type 2 right up until Sixth Edition replaced Fifth Edition in 1999. I remembered this, despite on playing Type 2 myself, but internet searches were mostly coming up with decks from Type 2 when Ice Age was in the format and then from the Extended format a little after that. Right here at the CPA, there's an archived Oscar Tan article and it has just what I was looking for! You can read the whole thing, if you want.
Without covering everything Rakso did, I'll look at some of the information that was significant to me...
Firstly, a good example of Fifth Edition Necro in Type 2 is Brian Weissman's list from 1999's resurgence of Necro, sometimes called "Black Spring":
4 Necropotence
4 Dark Ritual
4 Diabolic Edict
4 Drain Life
4 Duress
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Urza's Bauble
4 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Skittering Skirge
3 Corrupt
2 Stalking Stones
20 Swamp
It might not be as infamous as the lists from 1996 sporting Strip Mine, Hymn to Tourach, Demonic Consultation, Zuran Orb, and pump knights. But Skittering Skirge is pretty strong and puts pressure on control decks all by itself. Even with a lot of differences, this deck features the same kind of fast-paced proactive control reminiscent of Black Summer. Opponents can find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place when facing down Nevinyrral's Disk. The card can cause a blowout against an aggressive opponent, wiping the board while the Necro player has a full hand and the opponent is out of gas. And trying to hold resources back to play around Disk means that Necro can push forward itself. Drain Life and Corrupt offer enough lifegain that unless an aggressive opponent is especially fast, the Necro player may be able to keep surviving and casting spells. By today's standards, most of this looks pretty tame. Sure, Dark Ritual isn't available in Modern or other newer formats and there's the powerful card advantage engine that Necropotence itself presents. But stuff like Corrupt and Duress are well-known to Modern players, and not especially overbearing. Not bad cards, but not broken either.
And then there's Yawgmoth's Will...
If that card had appeared in any set before Urza's Saga, it would have been a controversy in its own right, possibly a bigger, more iconic part of the game's history than Necropotence itself. It's practically achieved that anyway. But when Urza's Saga was new, Tolarian Academy and friends were completely dominating Magic. I can't prove it, but I suspect that this overshadowing of one of the most powerful cards ever had some lingering effects on DCI bans and the tournament environment. Yawgmoth's Will was never banned in Standard and didn't get banned in Extended until September of 1999 (it was simultaneously restricted in Type 1 and banned in Type 1.5). But before that, Yawgmoth's Will effectively bore mute witness to the downfall of almost everything around it. Windfall was good with Yawgmoth's Will, but it was also used in Academy combo and was caught in the flurry of bannings as part of the reaction to Academy. Same for Lotus Petal. Memory Jar was used with Yawgmoth's will, but Jar was banned and Will was left alone. Yawgmoth's Bargain in Extended relied on Yawgmoth's will, but Bargain was banned and Will was left alone.
Even after it was restricted in Vintage, Yawgmoth's Will took over the format with the rise of Storm and got LED, Chrome Mox, and Burning Wish all restricted. For years after that, many Vintage games were contests to resolve Yawgmoth's Will or "Yawgmoth's Win" before the opponent could do the same.
So yeah, the "Black Spring" that followed "Combo Winter" was partially about Necropotence, but really, it was mostly just about Yawgmoth's Will.
Without covering everything Rakso did, I'll look at some of the information that was significant to me...
Firstly, a good example of Fifth Edition Necro in Type 2 is Brian Weissman's list from 1999's resurgence of Necro, sometimes called "Black Spring":
4 Necropotence
4 Dark Ritual
4 Diabolic Edict
4 Drain Life
4 Duress
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Urza's Bauble
4 Yawgmoth's Will
3 Skittering Skirge
3 Corrupt
2 Stalking Stones
20 Swamp
It might not be as infamous as the lists from 1996 sporting Strip Mine, Hymn to Tourach, Demonic Consultation, Zuran Orb, and pump knights. But Skittering Skirge is pretty strong and puts pressure on control decks all by itself. Even with a lot of differences, this deck features the same kind of fast-paced proactive control reminiscent of Black Summer. Opponents can find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place when facing down Nevinyrral's Disk. The card can cause a blowout against an aggressive opponent, wiping the board while the Necro player has a full hand and the opponent is out of gas. And trying to hold resources back to play around Disk means that Necro can push forward itself. Drain Life and Corrupt offer enough lifegain that unless an aggressive opponent is especially fast, the Necro player may be able to keep surviving and casting spells. By today's standards, most of this looks pretty tame. Sure, Dark Ritual isn't available in Modern or other newer formats and there's the powerful card advantage engine that Necropotence itself presents. But stuff like Corrupt and Duress are well-known to Modern players, and not especially overbearing. Not bad cards, but not broken either.
And then there's Yawgmoth's Will...
If that card had appeared in any set before Urza's Saga, it would have been a controversy in its own right, possibly a bigger, more iconic part of the game's history than Necropotence itself. It's practically achieved that anyway. But when Urza's Saga was new, Tolarian Academy and friends were completely dominating Magic. I can't prove it, but I suspect that this overshadowing of one of the most powerful cards ever had some lingering effects on DCI bans and the tournament environment. Yawgmoth's Will was never banned in Standard and didn't get banned in Extended until September of 1999 (it was simultaneously restricted in Type 1 and banned in Type 1.5). But before that, Yawgmoth's Will effectively bore mute witness to the downfall of almost everything around it. Windfall was good with Yawgmoth's Will, but it was also used in Academy combo and was caught in the flurry of bannings as part of the reaction to Academy. Same for Lotus Petal. Memory Jar was used with Yawgmoth's will, but Jar was banned and Will was left alone. Yawgmoth's Bargain in Extended relied on Yawgmoth's will, but Bargain was banned and Will was left alone.
Even after it was restricted in Vintage, Yawgmoth's Will took over the format with the rise of Storm and got LED, Chrome Mox, and Burning Wish all restricted. For years after that, many Vintage games were contests to resolve Yawgmoth's Will or "Yawgmoth's Win" before the opponent could do the same.
So yeah, the "Black Spring" that followed "Combo Winter" was partially about Necropotence, but really, it was mostly just about Yawgmoth's Will.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
So, Necropotence started out as an engine that powered fast, proactive control decks, cutting opponents off from resources and overwhelming them with card advantage. As competitive Magic moved on, important tools in this approach, like Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine, and Hypnotic Specter became inaccessible. But Necropotence remained in Standard even as most of its friends rotated out, so the card's role shifted from synergizing with lifegain to provide attrition. With things like evasive Dauthi creatures, Skittering Skirge, the and the explosiveness of cards like Firestorm and Yawgmoth's Will, Necropotence found a new niche, not as a carefully managed, turn-by-turn card-drawer restocking disruption in control decks, but as a reckless source of cards for hyperaggressive decks. That's control and aggro. What about combo?
I believe that history is murkier on this because records were kept for Type 2 and Extended than for Type 1 and Type 1.5. So I'm going out on a limb here, but I strongly suspect that the first Necropotence "combo" decks were actually casual decks for Type 1. Necropotence certainly showed up in Type 1 tournament play, but those early decks didn't fit an established pattern and a lot of Type 1 players back then would have been averse to "netdecking." Because of the way the game was viewed at the time, it's probable that a lot of Necro decks in Type 1 were budget decks. Virtually any card in the format would cost a mere pittance compared to what people are paying today, but 1996 was a very different time. I've spotted isolated references to the use of Necropotence with Mirror Universe. And that is a sort of natural evolution of the Lich + Mirror Universe combo. Prior to the Sixth Edition rules changes, it was possible to activate Necropotence during your own upkeep, bringing yourself down to 0 life, then to save yourself and kill your opponent by activating Mirror Universe. The rules change weakened this, but it doesn't necessarily have to actually kill the combo outright in order to work. In fact, one could still do it! The typical answer seems to have been a sequence going roughly like this...
-Use Necropotence to dig for cards.
-Use discard effects, kill spells, and blockers to disrupt the opponent.
-Find and resolve Mirror Universe.
-Pay enough life to Necropotence to be confident that you can set up either Drain Life or Corrupt on your next turn.
-During your upkeep, activate Mirror Universe.
-With the Mirror Universe activation on the stack, activate Necropotence enough times that your own Drain Life or Corrupt would kill you.
-Mirror Universe switches your life total with your opponent's life total.
-Cast Corrupt or Drain Life to finish your opponent off.
One thing it has going for it: the combo is a lot less dangerous than Lich! However, it's slow and Mirror Universe has very little utility outside of the combo. Sure, it's set up for more of a control-combo deck and Mirror Universe need not take up too many slots. It could even be the backup to some other kill condition. But as combo decks go, it's not impressive. Fine for casual play, though.
Necropotence started being used as a hand-sculpting engine for combo decks in Extended tournament decks in 1999. I covered this in my "Combo Breakfast" article...
I believe that history is murkier on this because records were kept for Type 2 and Extended than for Type 1 and Type 1.5. So I'm going out on a limb here, but I strongly suspect that the first Necropotence "combo" decks were actually casual decks for Type 1. Necropotence certainly showed up in Type 1 tournament play, but those early decks didn't fit an established pattern and a lot of Type 1 players back then would have been averse to "netdecking." Because of the way the game was viewed at the time, it's probable that a lot of Necro decks in Type 1 were budget decks. Virtually any card in the format would cost a mere pittance compared to what people are paying today, but 1996 was a very different time. I've spotted isolated references to the use of Necropotence with Mirror Universe. And that is a sort of natural evolution of the Lich + Mirror Universe combo. Prior to the Sixth Edition rules changes, it was possible to activate Necropotence during your own upkeep, bringing yourself down to 0 life, then to save yourself and kill your opponent by activating Mirror Universe. The rules change weakened this, but it doesn't necessarily have to actually kill the combo outright in order to work. In fact, one could still do it! The typical answer seems to have been a sequence going roughly like this...
-Use Necropotence to dig for cards.
-Use discard effects, kill spells, and blockers to disrupt the opponent.
-Find and resolve Mirror Universe.
-Pay enough life to Necropotence to be confident that you can set up either Drain Life or Corrupt on your next turn.
-During your upkeep, activate Mirror Universe.
-With the Mirror Universe activation on the stack, activate Necropotence enough times that your own Drain Life or Corrupt would kill you.
-Mirror Universe switches your life total with your opponent's life total.
-Cast Corrupt or Drain Life to finish your opponent off.
One thing it has going for it: the combo is a lot less dangerous than Lich! However, it's slow and Mirror Universe has very little utility outside of the combo. Sure, it's set up for more of a control-combo deck and Mirror Universe need not take up too many slots. It could even be the backup to some other kill condition. But as combo decks go, it's not impressive. Fine for casual play, though.
Necropotence started being used as a hand-sculpting engine for combo decks in Extended tournament decks in 1999. I covered this in my "Combo Breakfast" article...
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
I didn't note it at the time, but I found some of the stuff Psarketos was posting to be a bit reminiscent of Cocoa Pebbles, where the use of Necropotence isn't directly tied to a long-term control gameplan or to some combo relying on Necropotence itself (like my Necropotence + Zur's Weirding lock), but to a separate combo with the sensible premise of "Necropotence lets you dig up lots of cards, so let's use it to dig up our combo, then we cast our combo and win."
Enduring Renewal + Goblin Bombardment + Shield Sphere is pretty clunky by today's standards. The "Bloodbond" combo is more streamlined, although it does cost more mana. Of course, an advantage that Cocoa Pebbles had, which Modern decks don't get, is the potential to grab combo components with either Academy Rector or Demonic Consultation. Also, the mana acceleration from Dark Ritual and Mana Vault is nice.
Enduring Renewal + Goblin Bombardment + Shield Sphere is pretty clunky by today's standards. The "Bloodbond" combo is more streamlined, although it does cost more mana. Of course, an advantage that Cocoa Pebbles had, which Modern decks don't get, is the potential to grab combo components with either Academy Rector or Demonic Consultation. Also, the mana acceleration from Dark Ritual and Mana Vault is nice.
P
Psarketos
Guest
Enduring Renewal combos are mid to long range, and definitely in the clunkier range for Modern, though white as a color has retained and gained some strong tools to keep the clunkiness from being overly debilitating. To give my Wombo v4 example, you have Leyline of Sanctity maindeck, Kami of False Hope as a recursive Fog, multiple Walking Ballista options to recurse or provide utility, Ranger of Eos to fetch both, Mana Tithe for early disruption, and Lapse of Certainty functioning as Cancel in synergy with Altar of the Brood.
Concise version: Fruity Pebbles variants are still powerful enough to be too powerful for my casual environment. I still find that old classic a bit awe inspiring.
Concise version: Fruity Pebbles variants are still powerful enough to be too powerful for my casual environment. I still find that old classic a bit awe inspiring.
Oversoul
The Tentacled One
In Oscar Tan's primer, there's a mention of another early combo-based Necropotence deck, apparently used by Adrian Sullivan in the 1999 Pro Tour...
4 Necropotence
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Pandemonium
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Reanimate
4 Mana Vault
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
3 Final Fortune
3 Duress
2 Vampiric Tutor
5 Swamp
4 Badland
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Gemstone Mine
3 City of Brass
I want to say I've not seen that list anywhere else ever. I also want to say that can't be right. I built my own version of this before learning about the Phyrexian Dreadnought erratum. Or maybe it was after learning about it and this was all theoretical. Maybe I wasn't inspired by this list at all and it was just convergent evolution. I can't remember. I do know that I was building lots of decks with Necropotence back then. Some of them I only ever played in experimental gaming sessions with Al0ysiusHWWW, and some of them never even made it that far because I abandoned them after playing them against myself. I do know that I designed a deck based around Pandemonium and Phyrexian Dreadnought, because I picked up a playset of Pandemonium and that was the first concept I came up with. I also know that I was still toying with this well after the power-level erratum to Phyrexian Dreadnought. By sheer accident, that's one fact I can be reasonably certain of, and I'll unnecessarily provide the anecdote justifying this...
In August of 2000, I went on a road trip with Al0ysiusHWWW and his dad, starting from Kent, Washington and going as far as, ah, somewhere around Madison, Wisconsin (I want to say we didn't go much farther east than that if any, but I can't remember right now). We brought all of our Magic cards along and played a lot along the way. So at one point we stayed at my friend's uncle's house and we were reusing some unwanted forms printed on light green paper for our games, tracking life totals and such. I jotted down decklists on one of the sheets and shoved that folded up piece of scratch paper in with some of my other card supplies. It made the journey back with me. I probably still have the stupid scrap of paper floating around somewhere. I found it and used information from it in one of my Comboist Manifesto articles about three years ago, I think. So yeah. One of the decklists I scribbled on this now-legendary (to me alone) paper was something I called "Kerosene." It was a deck based around the combo of Pandemonium + Phyrexian Dreadnought. Ergo, I was still toying with that concept in the summer of 2000, well after it no longer officially worked.
I don't know. Part of me wants to claim credit for stumbling on yet another deck concept that made it into competitive tournament gameplay. It's actually quite plausible in this case. Necropotence was something I was trying to make work in all sorts of ways back then, and I'd very likely already heard of Cocoa Pebbles, so the notion of Necropotence to dig up multiple pieces of a combo kill was a logical step. Another part of me finds Adrian Sullivan's list eerily familiar, like I might have seen it discussed on some backwater Magic website back in 1999 and been inspired by it myself. It seems like I'd remember details and I don't, but too many of the specific cards (even Final Fortune and Reanimate, which I couldn't have used back then as I did not yet own them) seem like a whole package that I encountered at some point. And yet another part of me has me suspecting that both of those are wrong: I thought I'd abandoned "Kerosene" shortly after jotting down that decklist because Al0ysiusHWWW was the one who owned the copies of Phyrexian Dreadnought. Also, I had a Tolarian Academy combo deck with Necropotence (featuring Initiates of the Ebon Hand to turn blue mana from Academy into black mana for a lethal Drain Life) written down on that very same sheet of paper. I was also testing Necropotence with Firestorm as a kill condition due to my newbish misunderstanding about it needing exactly X targets (note: if you could use it on up to X targets, it would be hilariously broken). And I had multiple variations on my Necropotence + Zur's Weirding prison deck, at least one of which was also jotted down on that sheet of paper. Is it possible that I'm superimposing multiple decks on each other? But then, why does it seem so familiar?
Whatever the case, it's a cool deck that was killed by a bad erratum. Phyrexian Dreadnought has been restored to its former glory, albeit far too late for this concept.
4 Necropotence
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Pandemonium
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
4 Reanimate
4 Mana Vault
4 Dark Ritual
4 Lotus Petal
3 Final Fortune
3 Duress
2 Vampiric Tutor
5 Swamp
4 Badland
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Gemstone Mine
3 City of Brass
I want to say I've not seen that list anywhere else ever. I also want to say that can't be right. I built my own version of this before learning about the Phyrexian Dreadnought erratum. Or maybe it was after learning about it and this was all theoretical. Maybe I wasn't inspired by this list at all and it was just convergent evolution. I can't remember. I do know that I was building lots of decks with Necropotence back then. Some of them I only ever played in experimental gaming sessions with Al0ysiusHWWW, and some of them never even made it that far because I abandoned them after playing them against myself. I do know that I designed a deck based around Pandemonium and Phyrexian Dreadnought, because I picked up a playset of Pandemonium and that was the first concept I came up with. I also know that I was still toying with this well after the power-level erratum to Phyrexian Dreadnought. By sheer accident, that's one fact I can be reasonably certain of, and I'll unnecessarily provide the anecdote justifying this...
In August of 2000, I went on a road trip with Al0ysiusHWWW and his dad, starting from Kent, Washington and going as far as, ah, somewhere around Madison, Wisconsin (I want to say we didn't go much farther east than that if any, but I can't remember right now). We brought all of our Magic cards along and played a lot along the way. So at one point we stayed at my friend's uncle's house and we were reusing some unwanted forms printed on light green paper for our games, tracking life totals and such. I jotted down decklists on one of the sheets and shoved that folded up piece of scratch paper in with some of my other card supplies. It made the journey back with me. I probably still have the stupid scrap of paper floating around somewhere. I found it and used information from it in one of my Comboist Manifesto articles about three years ago, I think. So yeah. One of the decklists I scribbled on this now-legendary (to me alone) paper was something I called "Kerosene." It was a deck based around the combo of Pandemonium + Phyrexian Dreadnought. Ergo, I was still toying with that concept in the summer of 2000, well after it no longer officially worked.
I don't know. Part of me wants to claim credit for stumbling on yet another deck concept that made it into competitive tournament gameplay. It's actually quite plausible in this case. Necropotence was something I was trying to make work in all sorts of ways back then, and I'd very likely already heard of Cocoa Pebbles, so the notion of Necropotence to dig up multiple pieces of a combo kill was a logical step. Another part of me finds Adrian Sullivan's list eerily familiar, like I might have seen it discussed on some backwater Magic website back in 1999 and been inspired by it myself. It seems like I'd remember details and I don't, but too many of the specific cards (even Final Fortune and Reanimate, which I couldn't have used back then as I did not yet own them) seem like a whole package that I encountered at some point. And yet another part of me has me suspecting that both of those are wrong: I thought I'd abandoned "Kerosene" shortly after jotting down that decklist because Al0ysiusHWWW was the one who owned the copies of Phyrexian Dreadnought. Also, I had a Tolarian Academy combo deck with Necropotence (featuring Initiates of the Ebon Hand to turn blue mana from Academy into black mana for a lethal Drain Life) written down on that very same sheet of paper. I was also testing Necropotence with Firestorm as a kill condition due to my newbish misunderstanding about it needing exactly X targets (note: if you could use it on up to X targets, it would be hilariously broken). And I had multiple variations on my Necropotence + Zur's Weirding prison deck, at least one of which was also jotted down on that sheet of paper. Is it possible that I'm superimposing multiple decks on each other? But then, why does it seem so familiar?
Whatever the case, it's a cool deck that was killed by a bad erratum. Phyrexian Dreadnought has been restored to its former glory, albeit far too late for this concept.
P
Psarketos
Guest
You hadnt realized yet that the key to Firestorm kills is handing your opponent a bunch of saproling tokens? Jejeune!
It occurred to me yesterday, thinking about ancient deck tech vs Modern, that a lot of my Modern competitive tools that are dedicated to fighting Thoughtseize, cards like Spell Pierce and Mana Tithe, are going to be strong against Dark Ritual powered decks because they can allow the ritual to go to the graveyard and then hit whatever it is powering, getting easy 2 for 1 trades that likely stall an opponent for a couple turns. Force of Will changes that equation, though Necropotence is one of the few payoff cards that does not make that 4 for 1 trade look decidedly disadvantageous.
I believe that is an example of how Wizards favors control long games over combo compressed time - Dark Ritual and Thoughtseize are near equivalents in "trade a resource (card or life) for advantage turn 1." That one is banned and the other allowed to be the second most included card in a popular tournament format speaks volumes to how Wizards defines the game post card release.
Edit: So this Phyrexian Dreadnought you speak of...its like an overpriced Walking Ballista, right?
It occurred to me yesterday, thinking about ancient deck tech vs Modern, that a lot of my Modern competitive tools that are dedicated to fighting Thoughtseize, cards like Spell Pierce and Mana Tithe, are going to be strong against Dark Ritual powered decks because they can allow the ritual to go to the graveyard and then hit whatever it is powering, getting easy 2 for 1 trades that likely stall an opponent for a couple turns. Force of Will changes that equation, though Necropotence is one of the few payoff cards that does not make that 4 for 1 trade look decidedly disadvantageous.
I believe that is an example of how Wizards favors control long games over combo compressed time - Dark Ritual and Thoughtseize are near equivalents in "trade a resource (card or life) for advantage turn 1." That one is banned and the other allowed to be the second most included card in a popular tournament format speaks volumes to how Wizards defines the game post card release.
Edit: So this Phyrexian Dreadnought you speak of...its like an overpriced Walking Ballista, right?