legendofa great, glad to be of help. I can't really comment if these archetypes exist outside OS since OS is all I'm interested in. There could possibly be some overlap with Vintage, but then the available cardpool just explodes compared to OS.

As for tournaments, I only mention those because I happen to be interested in them and have recently been documenting tournament-winning decks to help me focus my investments in OS, which are very expensive as you can imagine.

Outside of tournaments, the bulk of casual play allows a lot of brewing fun, one-off decks. There are many formats that branch off from OS that encourage deck diversity, especially X-points (where specific, powerful cards are assigned a point value and the whole deck cannot exceed a certain total), Singleton (where only a single copy of each card is allowed) and Four Horseman (a variant of OS that only allows the 4 original expansions, but not the base set ABU). These certainly produce diversity. But I'm not familiar enough with them to know if some of the archetypes I've proposed to you also show up there.

Here are some references to these OS format variants if you are interested. They generally have some deck pictures on each site:

https://xpointoldschool.com/

https://www.fourhorsemenmagic.com/

https://7pts-singleton.com/

https://www.mtgoldframe.com/93-94-old-school-scryings/

Let me know if I can provide any more info. Cheers.

Hi legendofa, sure let me see if I can help.

Lion Dib =========================

The core of Lion Dib is always the creatures Savannah Lions and Serendib Efreets. It is always at least UW. Because of that it almost always has Counterspell, Disenchant, and Swords to Plowshares. So the core of it is always fast creatures with control/denial spells, possibly you could call it midrange?

Sometimes players splash B for Demonic Tutor and Mind Twist (black OS staples). See example here: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/old-school-9394-lion-dib/

Sometimes players splash red to add burn, called Lion Dib Bolt, see example: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/liondibbolt-1/

Players can also add more creatures via Serra Angel. This variant is called Triple S: https://mtgdecks.net/Old-school/triple-s-decklist-by-gwen-de-schamphelaere-1800147

Players can also add even more creatures via Su-Chi and drop the Counterspells, going more aggro. Example: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/uwb-aggro-control-3/

But regardless of the variant, the core is always Savannah Lion + Serendib Efreet and often contains Counterspell, Disenchant, and Swords to Plowshares, a mid-range combo I think. Lion Dib variants are always at the top of recent OS tournaments.

Sligh ====================

I think I agree with you that Sligh is the predecessor to Red Deck Wins, but I'm not familiar enough with the newer deck archetype. Sligh is almost always mono red aggro with lots of creatures and burn. It almost always contains goblins. Here are a couple references, you can check them and decide for yourself if you think Sligh is distinct enough for its own hub: https://www.wak-wak.se/9394decks/sligh

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/famous-red-decks-magic-history-2004-07-22-0

Here are some example decks: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/old-school-sligh-3/ https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/old-school-9394-red-budget/

RG variants start to bleed into Zoo, I think. https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/11-04-24-rg-sligh/?cat=type&sort=name&cb=1712892416

Honestly, Sligh is not very popular at the OS tournaments, so I leave it to you to decide if it should have its own hub.

Robots ============================

Robots is like Lion Dib in that it has a consistent core: Su-Chi, Triskelion and Copy Artifact. The star is Triskelion, which is both a creature and a bolt in one. The goal is generally to get as many Triskelions on the board as possible via casting them, copying them, or reanimating them. Kill opponent with combat damage and direct damage from the Trikes. Triskelion is arguably the strongest creature in Old School.

The simplest variants are mono-U. But there are also UR (add burn), UB (add reanimation), URB and UWB (add denial via disenchant/swords) variants. Examples: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ubr-robots-winner-uthden-troll-cup-v-2023/

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/skynet-winner-of-danish-old-school-dos-2022/

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/old-school-9394-monoblue-robots/

Robots is a consistent deck archetype at the highest level of OS competition.

Hope those descriptions are helpful. Let me know any other questions. Cheers.

Balaam__ thanks for that. Definitely give OS a try. I recommend using a proxy service to get playtest versions of all the best old cards, and then just make some decks and see where that takes you. There are so many good OS decklists here on T/O, and you can check out my Tournament Winners folder for the latest tournament meta (although jank decks are a ton of fun too!). Cheers!

legendofa great, thanks for that, so we're only concerned with the rest that don't currently have hubs.

There is a surprising amount of variability in these old archetypes. Searching here on TappedOut for OS decks with Sedge Troll + Nevinyrral's Disk (the core combo in Disco Troll) turns up about 35 diff decklists with RB, RBU, RG, 4c, and land destruction variants. Not all will be competitive, but even at the competitive level there are RB and RBU variants.

Erhnamgeddon is the same, about 35 decklists just on this site. GW, GWU, 4c and 5c. There is a sub-variant that replace Armageddon with Ice Storm for targeted land destruction, called Erhnam on Ice, which also has mono G, GW, GU, and GR variants.

It is Old School, so the cardpool is pretty narrow (>1000 with FEM) and there are a lot of auto-includes (e.g. Ancestral, Time Walk, etc.), but there is still a decent amount of variability within each archetype.

Hi legendofa I'm interested in 93/94 Old School and don't see many hubs for common deck architypes for that format. Would you consider adding some? The most common are: Robots, Lion Dib, The Deck, Deadguy Ale, UWX Skies, Disco Troll, Counter Burn, Erhnamgeddon, White Weenie, Zoo, URX Atog. These architypes win OS tournaments frequently. Less common are: Reanimator, Parfait, Sligh, Tax Edge, Twiddle Vault. Would you consider adding some of these as new hubs?