Scrying into 2020

It is odd to think that the New Year could be bringing exciting changes to a game that ostensibly hasn’t changed since 1994, but 2020 is going to be very interesting for Old School. Specifically, I’m talking about Scryings.

If you’re not familiar, Magnus de Laval, the creator of the Old School format, has put together the first “expansion” of the Swedish 93/94 cardset, adding in cards from Fallen Empires, Homelands, Ice Age, Alliances, Mirage, Visions, and Weatherlight. The best way I have heard it described is as a sort of “reverse Chronicles”. The spoiler can be found here, on Magnus’s quintessential blog: https://oldschool-mtg.blogspot.com/p/scryings.html

To my surprise, the announcement of Scryings has caused a bit of controversy in the Old School community. Some apparently see it as a threat to the format that they hold dear, concerned that they’re now going to be dealing with cards that they’re not familiar with. Others feel that adding cards that were released as late as 1997 breaks the spirit of Old School.

For me, Scryings is very exciting. For one, the cards that were released during the 1995-1997 era hit my true nostalgic sweet spot. While I saw pictures of Juzam Djinn in Inquest magazine and I almost bought a Library of Alexandria at the local card shop (side story… I brought $35 with me, which is the price at which it was marked in the case, but when I asked to buy it the guy behind the counter checked the magazine price guide and said “oh sorry, this is $70″… 13-year old me was crushed), the reality is that I never really got to play with the cards from Arabian Nights and Legends unless they were in Chronicles until I picked up Old School in 2016. My collection from my childhood was filled with cards from Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Mirage, and Visions. Over the past couple of years when I have been thinking about decks, there have been several times when I have been thinking “damn, I wish that X card was legal in the format because it would really tie the room together”. Well, now its happening!

So, if you are concerned that Scryings is threatening the Old School format that you hold dear, consider this… are you playing strict Swedish rules? Reprint policy and all? Well if you are, then Scryings is only intended for NoobCon anyway. If you’re not, then feel free to ignore it! The beauty of Old School is that it thrives in the Underground, free of the tyranny of a governing body. Recall page 33 of the original Alpha rule book:

We already have EC, Atlantic, and Pacific rules in the US (and I think Dirty South????) so if that’s what you enjoy playing, stick with it. For me, I am rushing into Scryings with open arms!

Preliminary Brewing

Now, I have mentioned in the past that I suck as brewing decks. I am no spice master, as is evident from my brewing for Andy Bequero’s Homelands-themed Fall Ball. I took a 10-minute scan of the Homelands spoiler, found an awful card with some errata that I thought was funny and jammed it into a bad version of white weenie. I’m going to try and do a better job here.

So, there are five things that jump out at me right away when I look at the spoiler that I think are very important. I’m not going to get to all of them in this blogpost, but I will address them eventually, I’m sure.

1. Undiscovered Paradise is a big addition. The drawback of having to go back to your hand each untap phase isn’t that bad, especially if it is leveraged in a deck with Land Tax or something, and it now means that decks can have access to 8 rainbow lands (I suppose 12 if you’re playing Scryings with EC and you’re feeling froggy with Rainbow Vale).
2. Order of the Ebon Hand and Order of Leitbur make mono-W and mono-B significantly more viable, where they were pretty awful in Swedish before. I’ll go into more detail below, but I think mono-W has the upper hand by a significant margin here still.
3. Zuran Orb seems innocuous but could potentially be one of the most powerful, impactful cards in the set. Remember that Land Tax-Ivory Tower Control Deck from last summer? Add one or two of these, swap in Undiscovered Paradise for the Rainbow Vale, and you’re off to the races. I’m sure that this is just the tip of the iceberg as well…
4. Red got a lot of tools. Jeez… was this really necessary? Maybe I’m overreacting, but I don’t think that there’s any other color that got a bigger boost than red. It is also possible that my “nostalgia brain” is clouding my thinking since Hammer of Bogardan and Balduvian Horde were among the chase rares of Mirage and Alliances when the sets were released, but there’s no arguing the power and flexibility gained by adding Pillage, Orcish Lumberjack, Dwarven Miner, Goblin Tinkerer, and Goblin Grenade to red’s cardpool. These obviously don’t all go in the same deck, but the red tool box got a lot deeper and wider. Side note… I just noticed that Balduvian Horde got downgraded to a COMMON in Masters 25… wow, how the mighty have fallen. I got turned down when I tried to trade a Volcanic Island for one back in the day…
5. Reanimator goes from Tier 6.9 to Tier 2.7. In my TR for the Fall Ball, I mentioned that I briefly considered Reanimator for that tournament, but eventually decided not to for a couple of reasons. First, the likelihood that Memory Lapse would blowout my Dark Ritual-fueled All Hallow’s Eves and second, because the Fall Ball was using Atlantic rules (4 Strips) and I didn’t want to use a deck that was going to have to rely on Bazaar of Baghdad to function. With Scryings, it’s a whole new ballgame. Sure, Memory Lapse is in the format, but Swedish rules only allow a single Strip and the expansion introduces a lot of new tools… which brings me to my first brew presented below!

Think of this as a rough draft… I’m not sure if the deck is going to work like this, but basically the strategy is to mulligan until we find a hand with a Bazaar and then dump as much of our deck into the graveyard as possible. Once Nether Shadows and Ashen Ghouls stack on top of each other, we’ve got an engine going and Krovikan Horror is a reasonable, grindy, unblockable payoff. Obviously, we’re vulnerable to Swords, but if we can slam an early Deep Spawn (another Scryings present) or Juzam, then we could just race to the finish before our opponent gets anything going. Reanimating a Triskelion early can be a huge pain in the ass for our opponent as well. The tricky part is going to be making sure that we have enough black mana in play to pay for the Ashen Ghoul’s activation costs, since it can be easy to accidentally end up Bazaaring away all of your mana sources in search of your good reanimation targets.

It’s possible that we should try and slide a Mishra’s Workshop in here as some additional insurance/backup plan. And maybe some Su-Chi’s or something in the sideboard as a transformational plan in case we sniff out graveyard hate (though I doubt anyone is going to be packing Tormod’s Crypts at the first Scryings tournament you attend lol). Not being able to play 4 shops kind of stinks, but not having the manaburn from Su-Chi makes it a more viable option for sure.

This is far from a format-breaker. I think its more fun than functional. We shall see…

So, brew #2…

Here again, I’m not entirely sure if I have built this right. The curve it pretty low and it looks like the deck has too many mana sources and not enough creatures, but the Kjeldoran Outposts, the Mishra’s Factories, and the pump knights are pretty mana hungry, so this might be okay. Also, these cards aren’t just mana hungry, they’re WHITE mana hungry… so much so that I don’t think it’s correct to play a Sol Ring in this deck. Maybe I’m an idiot for saying that, especially in a format where you don’t have to worry about manaburn, but it could be correct to eschew it.

Compared with EC, where White Weenie is a mega-aggro, mana denial-oriented strategy, I think that “mono-white” in Scryings really needs red cards and some reprogramming to function properly for a couple reasons. First, you don’t have access to Icatian Javelineers in Swedish rules, which is a much bigger handicap than you realize at first glance. One-drops are critical, and that javelin is actually a very powerful tool. It kills elves, lions, birds, and orders, makes blocking very difficult for your opponent, and can do the final point of damage to the dome in a racing situation. Second, only having the 1 Strip Mine means that the mana denial plan is either not viable, or needs to be enacted via artifact desctruction. So, we’re now on Disenchant and Shatter instead of Strip Mine. So, I think the best way to go is to swap in the Lighting Bolts in lieu of the Javelineers, add in a Wheel for some card draw, play the full 4 Disenchants and Swords for removal, and add 2 copies of Pacifism to the maindeck to control the board and wait for your Crusades to build an overwhelming board presence. In Scryings, this is more of an “aggro-control” strategy in my opinion.

Where I’m confused is with the optimal number of Outposts. Drawing multiples of these feels pretty horrible in many situations given the cost of having to sacrificing a Plains when it ETBs and the functional cost of having to tap 3 mana for a 1/1 token (since you have to tap the Outpost too). One nice thing to keep in mind is that the Plains to sac does NOT have to be untapped, and the Outpost enters the battlefield untapped, so you can tap a Plains and another land, sac the Plains when you play the Outpost and then tap the Outpost that turn to make a Soldier. But again, I know you don’t want 4 since these suck in multiples (ESPECIALLY in your opener), but do you want 3 or 2? Is it actually correct to only play 1? I doubt that, since in a deck where you’re playing Crusade you want as many white dudes as possible and in a deck where you have no card selection, you definitely want some flood insurance, but they can generate a bottleneck. Something to keep in mind for testing.

That’s it for now. I don’t want to give away all of my secret tech 😉

I want to wish all of you and the people you hold close a Happy and Healthy New Year. May 2020 bring you joy and fulfillment in whatever way it means the most to you. Hope to catch you at a Gathering some time soon.