Magic: the Folklore

[Anusien]

Rakso.

[Necrologia]

I'm in the same boat. I know what it stands for but I don't really remember how it came about.

OSE = Old School Expulsion. UB Control.

rOSE = Old School Expulsion w/ red, UBr Control.

[cssamerican]

EBA -  Eon Blue Apocalypse

I remember the deck but I don't remember how that name came about. Does anybody here remember?

[Polynomial P]

The people who invented/named the deck liked Tool: http://www.google.com/search?q=eon+blue+apocalypse&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=23140.0 Reply number 10

I always thought the swiss army knife of magic was morphling....I distinctly remember it being called that back when Saga was in standard.

[Harkius]

No. Morphling is Cardboard Jesus. That is the only acceptable nickname.

Harkius

[Jacob Orlove]

No. Morphling is Cardboard Jesus. That is the only acceptable nickname.

Harkius

I never heard that one used until well after Tog caught on.

[Godder]

To understand the name OSE, you have to know the context, which, at the time, was that the so-called Old School had Keeper (multi-coloured control, often 5-colour) 'optimised' to a 55 (or more) card decklist, with a handful of metagame slots (and terrible mana issues). Minor tweaks came and went, but the core didn't change much, and anyone who proposed major alterations or streamlining colours etc. risked much in the way of flaming, insults and so forth.

Azhrei took the Blue/Black section of "Keeper" and expanded it to replace the lost White, Green and/or Red cards, added Mishra's Factories to speed it up, and then made a joke that he was certain to be expelled from the Old School of Magic for his revolutionary idea, hence the name Old-School Expulsion or OSE. When Red was splashed in later for useful cards like Rack and Ruin, Fire&Ice and REB, it became rOSE. Ultimately, though, OSE wasn't meant to be Control, it was Aggro-Control. It's slow by today's standards, but one of Azhrei's great contributions to Vintage theory was that winning was the best defence.

Rakso.

Damn straight.

[Liam-K]

To understand the name OSE, you have to know the context, which, at the time, was that the so-called Old School had Keeper (multi-coloured control, often 5-colour) 'optimised' to a 55 (or more) card decklist, with a handful of metagame slots (and terrible mana issues). Minor tweaks came and went, but the core didn't change much, and anyone who proposed major alterations or streamlining colours etc. risked much in the way of flaming, insults and so forth.

Azhrei took the Blue/Black section of "Keeper" and expanded it to replace the lost White, Green and/or Red cards, added Mishra's Factories to speed it up, and then made a joke that he was certain to be expelled from the Old School of Magic for his revolutionary idea, hence the name Old-School Expulsion or OSE. When Red was splashed in later for useful cards like Rack and Ruin, Fire&Ice and REB, it became rOSE. Ultimately, though, OSE wasn't meant to be Control, it was Aggro-Control. It's slow by today's standards, but one of Azhrei's great contributions to Vintage theory was that winning was the best defence.

Anyone else miss 'pod?  Also, I thought the whole "expelled from the Old School" was a crack Azhrei made at Matt D'avanzo for being outdated?

[Jacob Orlove]

Also, I thought the whole "expelled from the Old School" was a crack Azhrei made at Matt D'avanzo for being outdated?

Not exactly, but close. Darren joked that he was going to expel D'Avanzo from the old school, and named his deck such.

[asmoranomardicodais]

Don't forget about Wall-of-Boom!

That was a deck that abused some rule about activated abilities between turns, wall of roots, and Magma Mine. It would get infinite mana from the wall between turns, where you could use it as much as you'd like, then give 20 counters to Magma Mine and blow it up on your turn.

[Komatteru]

Don't forget about Wall-of-Boom!

That was a deck that abused some rule about activated abilities between turns, wall of roots, and Magma Mine. It would get infinite mana from the wall between turns, where you could use it as much as you'd like, then give 20 counters to Magma Mine and blow it up on your turn.

I can't remember exactly how that worked, but yeah, I remember that happening.  It had something to do with the "play this only once per turn" clause of Wall of Roots' ability not applying when you were between turns (since there obv. wasn't a turn to count), and state based effects not being checked until the turn started, or something.  I'm pretty sure that whole "between turns" phase thing also caused lots of problems with Time Vault.

Anyone actually remember how this worked?


Anyone else remember the Sands of Time lock?  Since tapped artifacts didn't work, you could completely lock your opponent out of the game very quickly with Sands of Time, since your Sands would tap on your opponent's turn, allowing you to untap your shit.  Meanwhile, your opponent didn't get the same luxury.

[WildWillieWonderboy]

More things I want to know about:

Where did "ting" come from? As I understand it, it is simply an alternate pronunciation of "thing", but I've heard it used in the exclamatory way and perhaps as an affirmation too.

No one has yet addressed the origins of the word "savage" or the phrase "must be nice". Of course, I guess my team is a bit more known for the former because of Mr. Menendian's idiosynchratic speech, but I was under the impression that they were fairly widespread. I remember being in a draft where we declared "Savage Beating" the most aptly named card ever.

Does anyone besides Steve say "how good/lucky/etc." It was popular at one of the cardshops I frequented to say "what a beating" when one's opponent was doing something good or to use the phrase sarcastically to call attention to a bad play. Because of contemporary influence, one might occasionally instead say "what a skeeting".

[pyr0ma5ta]

Savage came from svg, which as I understand it, came from the abbreviation of "so very good."  "Must be nice" is just sarcastic, and I'm not sure where it came from.

I say "how lucky" and "must be nice" all the time. 

Wall of Boom was hilarious.  Some guys figured it out and brought it to a tournament, and one guy made t8 with it, I believe, is the story.  You guys are forgetting Stasis, which was used to skip the Untap step so you could float the mana to your Upkeep, where you get priority again. 

Sands of Time involved Equipose.  I still can't figure out how it works.  My brain hurts.

[Komatteru]

Ok, here's how the sands of time thing would work with [card]Equipoise[/card].  Sands of Time makes each player skip their untap step, and things phase in at the beginning of the untap step, so things never phase in.  Basically, your opponent can never have more land than you because Equipoise will make them all phase out, and then Sands of Time will tap them.  Here's how it would go.  Assume you both played a land on the first turn and passed, and you went first.

Turn 2, you accerate into Sands of Time (Dark Ritual, Crystal Vein, Elves, whatever).
Your opponent's lands becomes tapped and he plays another one.  Your Sands is tapped now.
Turn 3, your stuff untaps (Sands doesn't work b/c its tapped), and you play Equipoise. 
Your opponent's one land becomes tapped, and the other one untaps.  He can play another.
Turn 4, you untap, and now your opponent is locked at 3 lands.  If he ever taps out, he will be stuck on one mana for the remainder of the game, which corresponds to the one land he can play before it phases out.  He will have at most 3 mana once.  However, if he plays a creature, it will phase out on your upkeep and never get to attack (unless it has haste).  His only hope is to play an artifact, and it can't be creature.  He's locked out of the game completely.

Without acceleration, you can pull this turn 4 by playing the Equipoise on turn 3 and Sands on turn 4.  That's not nearly as cool though.

However, you will have 3 mana any time you want it (more if you play artifact mana), and once he's finished, you can play a creature and beat him down (maybe keep a way to kill yours or make it phase out if he gets one down somehow), or just let the game go on indefinitely and your opponent will deck himself (Chronatog would be a good start).

[Matt]

"Ting" is the back half of "beating."

[Godder]

Equipoise phases chosen permanents out. Permanents phase back in during the Untap Step. Sands of Time makes people skip their Untap Steps (while also keeping them locked down), so permanents don't Phase back in. Season with acceleration, preferably noncreature since you wanted to be able to keep all their creatures out of the game, and you had a lock deck that rivalled Confinement and Scepter-Chant decks for effectiveness (see JD's post for more detail).

For Wall of Boom, there was, for a short time, a sort of In-between Turns Step, so players could use the WoR mana ability 20 or 30 times (it was argued that since it's not a turn, once per turn doesn't apply), float it through to the Upkeep with Stasis (as mentioned) and then win with Magma Mine.

[Polynomial P]

Also, during the "in between turns steps" static abilities were not checked, so you could end up with a 0/-400 wall of roots.

[Komatteru]

I just remembered it.  Mana abilities also worked differently back then as well.  There was the concept of a mana source (see old cards that say 'Play as a mana source') -- it wasn't "you tap/play the ability and you just get the mana" like it is now.  You had to have the mana in pool before you could play/activate things (this is why the original wording of LED didn't let you play spells), so you could just fire off Wall of Roots a million times in response to each other.  That's how you could do it more than 5 times.  If it worked like it did now, the counter would go on before you get the mana.  Once the 5th one "resolved," the Wall of Roots died, but each of the other mana abilties still happened.  I think that's how it worked....

Or it might have had something to do with costs being paid at different times back then.

The inbetween turns step was created for Time Vault and Chronatog or something like that.  I remember in the Microprose magic game, if you had Vault in play, before every turn you took, it would ask if you wanted to take the turn or skip it to untap the Vault.  Could have been a Micropose invention, but I thought that was how it worked back then.

[Godder]

There was also a window of opportunity for Damage Prevention and Regeneration abilities to be played, so when creatures triggered to die from damage or toughness issues, you could still play mana abilities (mana sources as they were then), which also allowed lots of activations.

[CCClark]

Here's a less known fact.   GAT started as an enchantress deck with 4 Yawg Wills.    The original was based on a goofy idea of putting wild growths and fertile grounds on islands then casting high tides and turnabouts with a stroke win.    The enchantments were to draw enough cards to set up the combo originally.   

Planeshift came out later and changed the premise.     I playtested the crap out of it with Chapin before it evolved to it's current form.   We argured forever over the name since it was pretty decent even then.   He wanted to call it the Masterbator.  True Chapin style no less.    He said "I just play with myself for 10 minutes then stroke off in your face, it's a great name!"   My name was Enchantress.   Ok, so it was a lame name.  At least it didn't end up being named the Masterbator.

[Bram]

TPS - The Perfect Storm

First, there was Trix (a name worthy of some explanation in its own right). Then, there was ofcourse RectorTrix. Soon, it was discovered that if you had Bargain out, there was really no point in bothering to get Illusions / Donate anymore, so it became a Storm combo. Then my team decided to cut Rector, too. All that was needed was a name. That night, TV was showing The Perfect Storm by Wolfgang Petersen, and it seemed to be a perfect fit for Tendrils:
1. Obviously it references the Storm mechanic
2. 'Perfect' denotes the fact that it was tweaked optimally
3. 'The Perfect Storm' is a cool expression, that denotes an only-remotely-possible disastrous confluence of singly innocuous events. In such a situation, it is clear that if any one element had been displaced in time or space the result would have been far less powerful; a perfect metaphor for how the deck works.

It was only later (after seing Office Space) that it became obvious to me that TPS is also an English abbreviation for 'Test Procedure Specification' as in TPS-report, though this is more often jokingly said to stand for 'Total Piece of Shit.' This, too, is a good abbreviation for the deck, since when it fizzles, it REALLY fizzles. Much later even, some italians (who admittedly did tune the deck to perfection after my team had given up on it) claimed to have thought up the name TPS. Since it's a fairly obious name, it's not unthinkable that they independently came to the same name (though I'm pretty sure decklists featuring the name were published well in advance). Thus ends my only significan contribution to Vintage

[Matt]

Quick rundown on "Trix": there was a penchant at the time for naming combo decks after breakfast cereals. [card]Illusion of Grandeur[/card] has a rabbit in the artwork, so that became Trix.

Other notables:

• Fruity Pebbles (Enduring Renewal/Goblin Bombardment/Shield Sphere combo, using blue for protection and digging spells), so named because the deck's colors resembed the cereal, I guess?
• Cocoa Pebbles (same Pebbles combo but in a Necro shell), pretty obvious given the existence of Fruity Pebbles
• Wheaties (Survival decks which used Rector to get the Pebbles combo)
,

• Life (pretty self-explanatory, but included because I bet most people don't even realize this is one of the cereal combos)
• "Rice Snack" (Domain/Early Harvest Type Two combo) the designer (I think Fujita?) had a deck which he named after a Japanese food which has no English translation, so it became dubbed Rice Snack. This may have been the last of the food combos.

[The Atog Lord]

And then came Full English Breakfast. That was the aggro-combo deck which used Volrath's Shapeshifter. It would then use Survival of the Fittest to dump an evasive creature, attack, stack damage, and then dump Phage into the yard for a kill with the Shapeshifter. It got its name because it was partly a combo deck like the cereals, but like a full English breakfast it was also full of fat.

[Matt]

How could I forget FEB!

[Godder]

The name 'Pebbles' was used because the deck won by throwing shield spheres at the opponent with Goblin Bombardment, one 'pebble' at a time. I think Fruity came along later once there were different decks using the Pebbles combo, to help distinguish between them, but I could easily be wrong about that.

The Full English Breakfast – Paul Barclay's great contribution to deck theory .

[WildWillieWonderboy]

Everyone please post a story or two that you either witnessed or heard by word of mouth. For example, here are some stories from my area:

At the store called Egghead Games in Columbus, Ohio, there was a regular player who lived in his car in the parking lot of the neighboring grocery store, and these are his exploits. There was a little kid who woul get dropped off at the store by his parents (with an allowance) and picked up in the evening. One day he decided to take his money over to another store and buy a sword. His parents, understandably wouldn't let him keep it, so he gave it to Homeless Jerry to hold on to. Jerry promptly walked over to the store, infuriated that they had sold this weapon to his "little brother" and pocketed the refund.

In an unrelated incident, everyone was outside smoking on the porch and Homeless Jerry was asleep in his car with his dog Mutts. The little kid walked over to the car and knocked on the window, making sufficient noise to upset the abused dog, who promptly ran around the inside of the car and discharged solid waste all over Jerry, who in turn opened the door and jumped out after Mutts with intent to further abuse the dog, and Mutts ran away, leaving Jerry standing in plain view of the card store, covered in dog feces.

In another instance, we all managed to play a game of Type 4 while Steve Menendian thought about his Brainstorm at a small local tourney.

[Jacob Orlove]

You need to read the IRC/AIM quotes page:

[23:07] <JDizzle-> ok, story time (I'm just burning to tell it)
 [23:07] <JDizzle-> so I was at this tournament on Friday with a bunch of scrubs
 [23:08] <bigadam5> and u went 0-4?
 [23:08] <JDizzle-> I was told by Brian Demars that no one good plays there
[23:08] <JDizzle-> no, it has little to do with me
[23:08] <JDizzle-> there was this kid who was playing some affinity nonesense
[23:08] <JDizzle-> like T2 + Academy
[23:08] <JDizzle-> and other lousy cards
 [23:08] <JDizzle-> his first match was against Oath, played by one of 3 people with power (myself included)
 [23:09] <JDizzle-> the kid was like convinced that the Abyss would smoke Oath
[[23:09] <JDizzle-> later in the tourney...like round 4
[23:09] <JDizzle-> he storms in and starts screamign that he lost his binder
[23:14] <j_orlove> [23:09] <JDizzle-> and started accusing everyone in the room of taking it
 [23:10] <JDizzle-> anyway, he stormed in and out a few times
 [23:10] <JDizzle-> he was like "you're all wrong about the Abyss"
 [23:11] <JDizzle-> anyway, he finally was like "Will someone just give it to me!!!!"
 [23:11] <JDizzle-> and I was like "Look, dude, we can't give you what we don't have"
 [23:11] <JDizzle-> to which he started running around the room and grabbing bags, only to discover no binder in each
 [23:11] <JDizzle-> eventually, the owner called hte police
[23:11] <JDizzle-> and he was like "~ just called the police! you're all screwed!"
[23:12] <JDizzle-> the officer came back, asked if we knew anything, and then
 [23:12] <JDizzle-> the kid insulted the officer
 [23:12] <JDizzle-> and said that he could do a better job
[23:12] <JDizzle-> and stuff like that
[23:12] <JDizzle-> so the kid was on the ground
[23:12] <JDizzle-> in an arm lock
[23:12] <JDizzle-> and they hauled him out to the car
[23:12] <JDizzle-> and he kicked out hte back window
[23:13] <JDizzle-> glass everywhere
 [23:13] <JDizzle-> it was the best thing ever

[Necrologia]

Dr. Sylvan's quote page is also full of good stuff.

Man, I just started re-reading that site myself. I'd completely forgotten about HengeWolf and Fever(Dog) and tons of other guys. So many awesome people have quit this game it makes me sad. We need a huge TMD reunion is what we need.