Leprechaun Ward

Deck by Henrik Berntsson

Leprechaun Ward may be the strangest deck in 93/94, but it's probably also one of the most fun decks. Especially if you like playing cards that no one else are playing. So let's dive into what the deck is all about; the foundation of the deck is to play a lot of green and white cards that synergizes in different strange ways. One of the more important cards is Circle of Protection: Green, and yes you heard right, green(!). The plan is to cast the COP: Green and then protect yourself from the opponent by making all his stuff green with the cards Lifelace and Aisling Leprechaun.

You can also use the card Green Ward to give the Leprechaun protection from green so that it will never die in combat and just continue to make all of you opponents creatures green. This should make you able to repel the opponent’s creatures quite well but of course you also need to win. One way is to use Force of Nature, as it only has a upkeep cost of 1 if you have a COP: Green on the table. And who knows, maybe you Leprechaun have turned all of your opponent's creatures green, then you can just put a Green Ward on your Force of Nature to make it "unblockable". How does that sound?

Ponza

Deck by Roland Johansson

The one archetype that WOTC hates more than anything else is without a doubt land destruction. That means that they sadly nowadays never ever print good land destruction cards.

Fortunately for us, things were quite different in the 90's and WOTC printed a bunch of nice land destruction cards in 1993 and 1994. Those cards are exactly what the Ponza deck is all about! Ponza is usually a black, red and green deck that include playsets of Sinkhole, Stone Rain and Ice Storm.

The deck's plan is simple, stop your opponent from playing magic by destroying his or her lands. The rest of the deck and the wincons differ but Dark Rituals and evil black creatures is a common way to go. Another card that could be considered is Crumble as it lets the deck destroy moxes as well.

Artifact Toolbox

Deck by Mg

This is a toolbox deck that is based around artifacts and its namesake card, Transmute Artifact. It uses Transmute Artifact and a bunch of different artifacts, mostly one ofs, to always be able to have a good answer to whatever the opponent is doing. As this format contains a lot of powerful artifacts the possibilities are endless, but some of the more common ones are Mirror Universe, Triskelion, Icy Manipulator, Jayemade Tome, Ivory Tower and City in a Bottle.

The two most common ways to build this deck is either mono blue or black and blue. The main reason for playing black is the card Guardian Beast. The beast helps you keep your artifacts intact by making them indestructible, but it also gives you access to two powerful combos. The first combo is with Chaos Orb as it lets you flip the orb without the orb being destroyed. The second combo is with Nevinyrral's Disk and lets you blow up all of your opponents permanents while all your artifacts, including the disk, stays on the table.

Distress

Deck by Mg

Distress is a deck with a very fitting name, because if you meet this deck, you will surely feel a lot of distress. The deck uses cards like Underworld Dreams, Warp Artifact, Pestilence and Black Vise to slowly bleed out the opponent instead of beating down with creatures.

To be able to slowly bleed someone out the deck of course need to stop the opponent from doing his or her thing. This is usually accomplished by playing Sinkhole, Icy Manipulator, Nevinyrral's Disk, The Abyss, City in a Bottle and the above mentioned Pestilence.

The deck often also uses the card draw engine of Relic Barrier and Howling Mine as both cards also serves other purposes, like tapping down Mishra's Factory and dealing damage with Underworld Dreams.

The Deck

Deck by Martin Berlin

This is THE control deck of the format. It's been around since the beginning of the game and was the best deck for many many years. The core of The Deck is blue and white but it splashes the other three colors to get access to all of the formats most powerful and restricted cards. It then combines those powerful cards with the formats most efficient answers in the form of Counterspell, Disenchant and Swords to Plowshares.

Another very important card is Jayemdae Tome which lets The Deck draw the answers it needs to survive. As wincons the deck usually use cards like Mishra's Factory, Serra Angel, The Hive or something similar.