Revisiting Magic Theory in Old School

I love playing Magic, but I also love thinking about Magic. One of the biggest appeals of the Old School formats is all the thinking you can do. There aren't many resources for deck lists and content available, so most of the time spent thinking about the format has been on my own. I've only played Old School in one tournament and one get together, as well as a few games in between rounds at a Modern tournament. I've spent far more time thinking about decks than I have playing games,

Another appeal of Old School is the static card pool. As much as I would like to have a certain card or certain tools available in deck building, I will always be limited to the cards as they are today. This can be frustrating when I don't have access to anything that does what I desperately need, but it does force me outside of my comfort zone as a deck builder to try things I'm not quite comfortable with. This has led me to spend more time thinking about the theoretical concepts behind deck building.

I want to start a series of posts about Magic theory with a strong focus on Old School. Given the nature of the format, much of the fun is in building decks as opposed to playing games. Games aren't quite as deep and interesting given the extreme swinginess of the restricted cards and lack of strategic options. Deck building is how you win the game before you play the game. I like to say "You never want to lose a game in the deck building phase."

I will hopefully cover most of the topics I originally discussed here. I don't expect anything to be groundbreaking or revolutionary. It will likely be refresher to things people already know, or possibly obvious things that don't necessarily need to be spelled out. I'm mainly going to do it as a way to organize my internal thoughts in a manner that hopefully flows logically.

I'll update this post below each time I add an entry in this series.

-Ty

Posts about Magic Theory

Definition of Terms (old)