Besides oldschool in 2016-2019, I spent the most time playing Magic: The Gathering in 1997-1998. The stored name was "Le Temple Du Jeu". The place was Lyon, Rue Garibalbi.
I could not play Extended since it required having expensive dual lands. I could only drool over Moxes and Type 1 (although I would revisit this era with a vengeance later in life).
I ended up playing Type 2 during its golden age. The months between Jul and Oct '98 allowed seven sets while banning Ice age and its broken Swords to Plowshares / Lightning Bolt. Here are a few decks I built to revive it.
If you want to learn more about this period of MTG history, there are two good resources.
Cathy Nicoloff won the 1997 Florida Regionals with 5CG. This deck was designed to rival Big blue which was dominating the format at the time.
The genesis is amply documented thanks to Cathy's excellent articles[4] and tournament report. It was also discussed in Beth, "BethMo", Moursund piece from the Duelist #21. Brian Weissman called it "the greatest testament to the power of metagaming and the ultimate metagame counterattack" in the Duelist #25.
The deck became a stapler of the format and received updates with each new expansion (see Tradewind Rider iteration by A. Shvartsman in Apr '98).
You can read a lot more about Cathy on her wiki page. She also posted updates on her Twitter account[5] and Reddit[6]. What a joy to see she kept all the cards she ran in Florida!
She played with French revised FBB disenchants and German revised FBB terrors. A lot of her cards were signed! This is so cool!
It is always moving when players keep meaningful cards like Cathy above and Raphael Levy who kept his sets of Erhnam Djinn from GP 1998 Lyon.
In France, 5GC was introduced as "Green Three" in Lotus Noir mag #14 of Sep '97. Despite the deck clearly having five colors, they inexplicably zeroes on "three" (page 1 and page 2).
Jakub Šlemr piloted 5CB to become World Champion in 1997. Read more about it on his wiki page.
The MvP of the deck is the Shadow Guildmage which can save any of your creatures or allow a Nekrataal/Man-O-War to trigger again.
I have no idea why it was named this way but mtgdojoera seems to have been able to dig a lot on their instagram account.
The destruction inflicted when all damage on the board is redirected to the opponent via the Mogg Fanatic is very enjoyable to say the least.
The only issue I found with this deck is that it can be slow to build the combo. Perhaps replacing the Imperial Armor with Pyroclam and Terror with Incinerate would work better. A work in progress.
Matt Linde piloted this deck to 1st place at US Nationals 1998. More about Matt on his wiki page. Tons of good links on the topic at the bottom of this page. Also covered by mtgdojoera.
Cataclysm is the MvP. If you can cast it with an Imperial Armor on one of your guys, that's often game.
Also known as "DeadGuy", you can find a version in the "Decks to beat" section of the dojo every month from Dave Price's "Deadguy" Sligh Deck (Sep 97) up to Deadguy Red" played by Paul Jordan (Nov '98')!
Named after Paul Sligh, the deck has quite a history.The most famous version is by Ben Rubin since he took second at World '98 with it. You can read more about Ben on his wiki page.
Tempest made this deck nearly unstoppable with Cursed Scroll which was THE card of 1998 with nearly all the deck decks running it. I susped the prevalence of Winter Orb and Disenchant in other decks was mainly to counter it.
Brutal deck which kills or dies to itself. I have had great openings with it (Ritual into 3 Carnophage, Bad Moon turn 2, swing for 9). And also really bad games. It really is all or nothing with this deck.
It is fair to call it one of the earlier Reanimator? Many great links available about the genesis of Godzilla here. In particular Combo platter here.
A very very fun deck to play.
I love this deck. It has a bit of Olle Rade vib. Don't forget to hum "Ride of The Valkyries" when you cast Overrun!
The dojo called this deck "John's Meta-Weenie PCL". I prefer to call it Crispy Green since it is Green Weenie with a splash of Red to spice it up.
I did not build any control deck because I find them very boring to play. Therefore, no Counter Hammer, no Big Blue or other soporific, TheDeckiesque Casper.dec. If you want to see those, mtgdojoera has you covered.
