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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

> we are still playing these cards! There are 2 main nostalgia formats, Oldschool 93/94 and Premodern.

A bunch of those cards still get played in the eternal formats and commander. Old magic had extremely weak creatures, but absolutely busted cards in other types.

For instance Necropotence is restricted in vintage, and banned in legacy.

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Still hilarious to me seeing Ironclaw Orcs in there, when a 2/2 for 1R had to have a drawback, compared to the absolutely absurd power level of even red 1-drops now. I understand the rationale over the years of re-centering the game on creatures and so pushing their power level, but it does result in a lot of very dull Standard metagames (e.g. right now).

I've always had a deck that was famous for being able to drop a Craw Wyrm (4GG) 6/4 in turn 3. Later, the Yavimaya Wyrm (4GG) 6/4 Trample meant I had to replace that iconic card. Much more recently, I bought my son a box with cards, and his deck has an Aggressive Mammoth (3GGG) 6/6 Trample but gives all your other creatures trample too!

Modern creatures are just so much better than anything we had back then. But my red/blue direct damage deck is suddenly unfair with its lightning bolts and cheap counterspells.

Big creatures were overpriced in the beginning. Most of the creatures that cost more than 3 in Legends were underpowered

True. Some cheap old creatures still see a lot of play: birds, elves, the merfolk lords for example.

They mostly see it in tribal or for mana or oddball abilities though. Old magic really over-estimated stats and combat abilities, you’d get heavy downsides on anything even passing the vanilla test (cf mogg jailer or mogg squad), especially out of color. And under-estimated fast mana and card draw.

They were in a slow deck, but my big green deck could get them on the table fast enough to win. I think it was mostly the 3/3 creatures for 4 mana that were a poor deal. But it's not like in the 1990s nobody used creatures, or spell-focused decks always won, but I guess the recent changes do give creatures the more central role they were always meant to have.

Yeah, the big-creature decks I recall that didn't suck from that era were green.

Black had great mana advantage too, but Mind-twist and Hymn were both better ways to spend it.

You want to see broken old stuff? Anything involving mana:

https://scryfall.com/search?q=mana

The thing that frustrates me is that there are so many creatures that you have to remove or they basically end the game in 2-3 turns, alongside a bunch of creatures that provide value even if removed. That means removal is "bad" but you still need a certain amount (~6-8 minimum) or you'll just outright lose a lot of games to a single card. It makes the game feel like paper rock scissors + a coin flip, with maybe one or two decision points (one of which may be your choice to mulligan) being the limit of your player agency.

Yes of course. What I meant was more of the sort, we are still "exclusively" playing these cards.

Non-sanctioned formats and mostly at pubs :)

Old magic had strong creatures too, e.g. Serra Angel and Sengir Vampire.

They are very weak for today's standards, while many of the spells are still extremely strong (bannably so).

They were very strong for the time, these days?

Essentially none of them is playable in any constructed format (unless they’re an oddball for an oddball deck). Compare Serra and Baneslayer, and that’s a 10 years old card, and keeping to non-legendaries (for legendaries see Ao the dawn sky).

Meanwhile many non-creature spells are strong enough to be restricted or banned.

The Walletslayer itself has been power creeped out of playability.

Serra Angel already became a draft deck uncommon when I last played over 10 years ago. Even creatures that were banned on this articles list for 1.5 wouldn't be particularly strong by 2012 standards.

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