Cheerios. Full English Breakfast. Ponza. Dead Guy Ale. Magic decks sometimes have the weirdest names. In contrast with UW Control and Bant Flicker, these names don’t really describe what the deck does. In the first of probably a few articles, I’m going to uncover the origins and evolutions of select decks, beginning with one of the most influential decks to ever be built – Sligh.
To understand Sligh, you must understand the meta. The tournament scene in 1996 was dominated by Necropotence grinding out combo wins by using life as a resource, which was extremely novel at the time. It was extremely fast, but as a result of trading life for cards, it often dropped into dangerous territory quite quickly. Enter Sligh. Despite being a mono red deck, it played a more control role, burning out creatures to let your own through. Because Necro used life as a resource, one could view Sligh as a resource denial deck. After all, every point of damage is one fewer card they get.
But it was more than just a control deck (it is, after all, mono red). By playing efficient creatures and spells every turn, it overwhelmed the opponent with advantage based around the mana curve. It’s an established fact now that whoever spends the most mana generally wins the game, but back then the concept of mana efficiency was much less established (keep in mind the game was only three years old at the time). 1-drop into 2-drop into 3-drop into 1-drop and 3-drop is often enough to overwhelm an opponent, even today. With plenty of mana sinks like Brass Man, Brothers of Fire, and Dragon Whelp, every mana was ensured to be put to good use.
That’s the deck, but what about the name? Despite the initial name of “Geeba” (after the one word in Goblin) or “the Orcish Librarian deck,” the Internet decided it should be called after Paul Sligh who took this list to a second-place finish in an Atlanta, Georgia, Pro Tour Qualifier in 1996. While he piloted the deck to great effect and greatly surpassed all expectations, the deck was designed by none other than Jay Schneider of Duels of the Planeswalkers fame. Oddly enough, he designed the deck to beat Paul Sligh but was going on vacation the week of the PTQ, so he handed the deck off and the rest is history.
As the game evolved, so did the deck. Wizards removed the “five cards from every expansion” rule and the deck exploded in power. Type II (now Standard) rotated, years passed, and the deck never really left, generally under the name Red Deck Wins or Burn. Varying in power and inclusions based on card availability, its descendants have touched nearly every format. Modern, Legacy, and Pauper Burn; Kuldoltha Red; Ramunap Red; even Zoo, Atarka Red, and Modern Humans (despite them not being mono red) all tie directly into Sligh partly because of the mainly red base (minus Humans) but also because of the similar lines of play around the mana curve.
Immortality does not always mean living forever. The original deck list is laughably bad in any format, but through its descendants and the mana curve it has touched the very core of the game.
