The return of Homelands and Ice Age bolstered the Necropotence strategy to a considerable degree. While the deck always boasted the game's most blatantly-powerful card advantage engine (Necropotence) as well as first-tier creature removal in the form of Nevinyrral's Disk and Contagion, Homelands gave the Necropotence deck additional defense against protection from black Whirling Dervishes and Knights in the form of Serrated Arrows; Ice Age returned many of its most formidable cards, chiefly Demonic Consultation, Icequake, and Infernal Darkness.

The combination of the Ice Age block with the Mirage block allowed for a high degree of redundancy in the Necropotence strategy. Necrodecks with 8 land destruction or 8 hand destruction, complemented by the power of Demonic Consultation to simulate 11-12 cards of either disruptive nature became possible.

The following deck is representative of the redundant land destruction strategy, as played by Mike Flores and John Lee at small Type II events early on in the environment, and by Gary Wise in preparation for the 1997 Canadian National Championships:

  4 Black Knight
  2 Ihsan's Shade

  4 Drain Life
  2 Contagion
  4 Choking Sands
  4 Icequake
  4 Dark Ritual
  3 Demonic Consultation
  3 Necropotence

  2 Dancing Scimitar

  3 Nevinyrral's Disk
  1 Serrated Arrows

 Sideboard:
  1 Nevinyrral's Disk
  2 Serrated Arrows
  2 Contagion
  3 Dystopia

  2 Lake of the Dead
  4 Quicksand
  18 Swamp


 Sideboard(Cont):
  3 Gloom 
  2 Infernal Darkness
  1 Necropotence
  1 Soul Burn

The primary controversy around this deck concerned the inclusion of Dancing Scimitars. Gary Wise wanted to experiment with the recently-printed Infernal Tribute, and thought that the deck needed additional creature-kill in the main version.

Quoth the Wise One:

"The deck definitely needs another Contagion in the main. Also, Dancing Scimitars are great for controlling the board, but you need something that does more damage when you want to apply the beatdown."
-Gary Wise

Wise's later version employed the Infernal Tribute as a card-drawing engine on its own, and used it as another card capable of removing Necropotence, especially under the Disk-stopping pressure of Weatherlight's Null Rod.

John Lee disagreed with any attempts to remove the Dancing Scimitars, even for a main-deck Soul Burn and additional Contagion or Serrated Arrows.

"The deck is very good, but it doesn't really have enough ways to win. If you take out the Scimitars, you can get screwed by Consult. I've won a lot of games just attacking for 1 while the other guy was manascrewed."
-John Lee

This deck was primarily used to defeat low-mana Sligh decks and mana-intensive Frenetic control decks that won via recursive Hammer of Bogardan. The latter deck relied heavily on its 4 Thawing Glaciers, and a Necrodeck with the ability to remove those lands at a 2-1 advantage (or almost 3-1, counting Demonic Consultations), could defeat it consistently.

The real test of the Necropotence disruptive strategy would of course be the US Nationals. In the end, the best Necrodecks at the toughest Type II tournament in the world decided to go with a combination of disruptive strategies, both hand destruction and land destruction:

  4 Knight of Stromgald 
  2 Ihsan's Shade 

  4 Drain Life
  4 Agonizing Memories 
  4 Ice Quake 
  2 Choking Sands 
  3 Demonic Consultation 
  4 Dark Ritual 
  4 Necropotence 

  3 Steel Golem 
  3 Nevinyrral's Disk 


 Sideboard:
  1 Nevinyrral's Disk
  2 Choking Sands
  2 Contagion
  4 Dystopia

  3 Lake of the Dead 
  3 Quicksand 
 17 Swamp

 Sideboard(Cont):
  2 Infernal Darkness
  2 Mind Warp
  2 Terror

This deck, played by Pete Leiher and Mike Long, plays the combination as time advantage. Their Necropotence deck sought to disrupt opposing strategies via land destruction, and then compound the mana problems fabricated by deterring the opposing draw via Agonizing Memories. Additional Choking Sands in the sideboard created redundancy on this point.

Erik Lauer's US Nationals deck also chose a combination of hand destruction and land destruction, but instead of Agonizing Memories and Icequake, he went with Coercion and Choking Sands:

  4 Black Knight
  4 Knight of Stromgald
  1 Ihsan's Shade

  4 Drain Life
  1 Soul Burn
  3 Contagion
  3 Coercion
  2 Choking Sands
  3 Demonic Consultation
  4 Dark Ritual
  4 Necropotence

  4 Nevinyrral's Disk



 Sideboard:
  4 Dystopia
  2 Choking Sands
  1 Contagion

  2 Quicksand
  2 Lake of the Dead
 19 Swamp

 Sideboard(Cont):
  3 Serrated Arrows
  2 Agonizing Memories
  3 Gloom 

Although he had originally designed the Steel Golem/Agonizing Memories Necrodeck for the US Nationals, Lauer decided to go with this creature and disruption base. In a Counterpost-heavy environment, the Steel Golem was less effective than a full spread of protection from white creatures. Choking Sands was a powerful tool against Counterpost because it could not only stop the Outpost, at once dealing damage, but it could remove Quicksand--the Counterpost player's main defense against protection from white weenies. Coercion was a metagame call that was chosen both against other Necrodecks, to remove their Necropotences, and to stop the Disenchants of various white decks.

NECRO AT WORLDS: AUG '97

The Necropotence deck made another fine showing at the 1997 World Championships. Americans Nate Clarke and John Chinnock both made the final 8 with their Necrodecks.

The following is the deck used by Chinnock, which also won him the 1997 New Jersey State Championships:

  4 Knight of Stromgald
  4 Black Knight
  4 Nekrataal

  4 Drain Live
  4 Coercion
  4 Icequake
  2 Choking Sands
  4 Dark Ritual
  3 Necropotence

  4 Nevinyrral's Disk



 Sideboard:
  4 Contagion
  2 Arrows
  1 Consult
  4 Dystopia

  2 Lake of the Dead
  4 Quicksand
 17 Swamp

 Sideboard(Cont):
  1 Necropotence
  2 Infernal Darkness
  1 Mind Warp

This deck was possibly the most pro-active of the Necrodecks of this era. While like the Lauer and Tongo Nation decks of the same general environment, Chinnock's deck played with a mixture of discard and land destruction, his deck was unique in that it had no express creature-kill. All of the cards that destroyed creatures (Nekrataal and Nevinyrral's Disk) also served other purposes as attackers or Necropotence removal. His sideboard contained heavy creature defense in 4 Contagions and multiple Serrated Arrows--all effective cards against other Necropotence decks.

Chinnock's main complaint about this deck (which nonetheless won him a considerable sum and more notoriety) was that he had only one Demonic Consultation, and it was in the sideboard.

NECRO WITH NOTHING: OCT '97 - MAR '98

The initial rotation from the Ice Age block to Tempest was not kind to the Necrodeck. Not only did it lose staples such as Demonic Consultation and Infernal Darkness, the Necrodeck lost basic defensive measures such as Contagion.

Nonetheless, many of the base strategies, such as the sheer power of Necropotence and the efficiency of Steel Golem and Snake Basket meant that the Necropotence strategy could still be viable. The following version by Erik Lauer maintained the redundant discard version of the Necropotence deck:

  4 Knight of Stromgald

  4 Drain Life
  3 Diabolic Edict
  4 Stupor
  4 Agonizing Memories
  4 Dark Ritual
  4 Necropotence    

  2 Steel Golem
  2 Snake Basket

  4 Nevinyrral's Disk

 Sideboard:
  3 Perish
  1 Diabolical Edict
  2 Coercion
  1 Extinction 

  2 Mind Stone
  1 Wasteland
  3 Quicksand
 19 Swamp

 Sideboard(Cont):
  3 Touchstone
  2 Dread of Night
  2 Gloom
  1 Terror

Northeast Regional Champion John Chinnock also played versions of this deck over the competitive Gray Matter circuit.

Quoth Happy John:

"I believe in this deck. It can beat anything consistently except burn."
-John Chinnock

The deck actually proved at least somewhat viable against burn and Sligh decks, especially with turn-1 Steel Golem or when the Necrodeck was able to manascrew the opposing Sligh deck with a lucky Stupor or Agonizing Memories in the first few turns.

In any case, Diabolic Edict, while powerful, proved ridiculously ineffective against the Ball Lightning attack of the common red decks. The Steel Necrodeck became more and more Sligh reactive until it reached the following version, modified by John Chinnock and Gary Wise:

  2 Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore

  4 Drain Life
  4 Diabloic Edict
  2 Spinning Darkness
  4 Stupor
  4 Agonizing Memories
  3 Funeral Charm
  4 Necropotence

  4 Steel Golem

  4 Nevinyyral's Disk


 Sideboard:
  3 Perish
  3 Dread of Night
  3 Touchstone

  3 Mind Stones
  4 Quicksand
  1 Stalking stones
 17 Swamps

 Sideboard(Cont):
  2 Coercion
  2 Spinning Darkness
  2 Phyrexian Furnace

This deck maintained much of the synergistic card advantage from the original version, but also exploited directed creature removal. Spinning Darkness proved amazing against aggressive red decks, as a 9-point life swing against Ball Lightning or a 8-point swing against Jackal Pup. Funeral Charm was useful as directed creature elimination against weenie decks, but was never a dead draw against control or combo decks due to its ability to force a discard at instant speed.

Quoth the Wise One:

"It has come full circle. It used to be that Sligh was the deck you didn't want to hit. Now... I don't think I've ever lost to a creature based deck."
-Gary Wise