Building Artist Themed Decks in Premodern
PLUS: Brews and Bottle Gnomes for a good cause, Premodern Super League on Sunday, Entering our RG Terravore era
It’s been nearly half a year since the last issue of BANDING… there are no profound excuses other than family (my twins are now 16-months old) and work. Today’s issue will be brief and light but I wanted to start getting back in the swing of things.
One of my favorite things about collecting Magic cards and building decks are the aesthetics. My interests range from my love of Japanese foil cards, like this one of Carlos Romão’s Worlds 2002 Psychatog deck that I played in a recent Odyssey Type 2 league, to the other extreme, like my infamous Angel McAngelface with as many unrecognizable and unique non-Premodern printings as possible. Another ongoing project, which I want to highlight today, is my Rebecca Guay artist series Premodern deck:
Rebecca Guay is easily my favorite artist in Magic and I thought it would fun to build a Premodern-legal deck to showcase her work. Unfortunately, she only illustrated art on three lands in the Premodern era: Plains, Mountain, and Saprazzan Skerry — the latter of which may be too ambitious to use as a splash for iconic cards like Memory Lapse and Predict (my favorite card). She has since released a full set of old frame basics, thanks to Commander Masters, so I may take another crack at a blue-based deck for her.
Other people have created Premodern-legal artist series decks, two of which were showcased in this MTGStocks article: Mark Seccareccia’s Ron Spencer deck and Nacho Brr’s Pete Venters deck.
But what other artists could you feasibly make an artist series deck for in Premodern? Using Scryfall and Google Sheets, I found artists with Premodern era basic land artwork (as well as a filter for including retro frame basic land artwork), and compared it to the number of cards of the corresponding colors in the Premodern card pool.
These are the top 15 artists with basic land artwork and the number of viable cards to be used in their deck. Non-viable cards would be cards illustrated by that artist but don’t have a corresponding basic land illustrated by that artist (e.g., Rebecca Guay illustrated Predict but did not illustrate a basic Island in Premodern era sets).
You can play around with the Google Sheet here, I recommend making a copy to play around with the filters yourself. You can see which colors each artist has access to, which basic lands are included, and the full list of artists. You can also flip the toggle to include retro frame basic land printings, which expands the pool of viable cards. In this case, Rebecca Guay jumps to the top because now she has access to all five colors, as opposed to just red and white.
Perhaps someone would be open to an artist series battle in the future? Hit me up!
Premodern Event in Brooklyn is Raising Money for a Good Cause
Our friend Sunny S. has organized a Premodern event called Brews and Bottle Gnomes this Sunday at Endless Life Brewing in Brooklyn. Not only are there plans for a feature match stream but there’s also a raffle going on for the prizes above (as well as any other additional items donated) to benefit The Chick Mission, an organization to help preserve fertility for cancer patients. If you’re interested in participating in the raffle or supporting this cause, reach out to Sunny!
Content
🎙 The hot deck of the moment is none other than RG Terravore Oath (or whatever you want to call it)… the latest Spike Colony podcast is out to cover it
📽 Fpawluszmtg is out with a video featuring the deck as well, featuring deck tech and MTGO matches
🥊 The Premodern Super League returns this Sunday, featuring an all-star cast
🍾 Monster of the Week is back with an interview of Philipp Altmann about his Iggy Pop deck
Definitely up for taking Szczudlo for a spin!