Old School Green & Black Beatdown Deck - 1997 Worlds Card Pool (Standard)

This deck uses the card pool from the MTG World Championship that happened in August 1997. It performs extremely well against the other 4 top decks.

Card choices:

Coercion: I was using Stupor at one point because card advantage, but I switched to Coercion mainly because I found the 2nd card from Stupor was usually something like an extra land or a dead card. With Coercion I can pick off stuff that's in my way (counterspells), stuff that will really mess me up, or threats that are very difficult to remove (Frenetic Efreet, Jolrael's Centaur).

Contagion: This is a fantastic card in this pool, even against black decks. It pretty much annihilates any Black Knights of Stromgald. Most of the creatures are pretty small. Really the only thing it's not useful against is Ophidian or Pro Black creatures.

Mind Stone: This deck is very mana hungry and it needs mana quickly. I once had Birds of Paradise in this deck, but I removed it and replaced with Mind Stone mainly because Birds are susceptible to creature removal and once you draw more lands, they're pretty much useless except as a chump blocker. With Mind Stone, you can dump it to draw a card, so you essentially reduce the overall deck size to 56 as well.

Sylvan Library: I didn't want to use more than one because it becomes a dead card, plus it's not totally necessary. However when you do get it into play, it helps the pacing tremendously.

Creatures in general: The common removal spells in this card pool are Incinerate, Swords to Plowshares, Nekrataal, Contagion, Pyroclasm, Pyrokinesis, Earthquake, and Nevinyrral's Disk. So, making as many of these ineffective as possible was one of my main priorities. The second big priority was being able to consistently block the biggest threats in the pool. These are really Frenetic Efreet, 2/2 flanking creatures and Ophidian.

Catacomb Dragon: Evades Incinerate, Earthquake, Nekrataal, and Pyroclasm. Requires all 4 damage from a Pyrokinesis to remove it. Swords will get you 4 life. Beats most other creatures in combat, especially when attacking.

Giant Mantis: This is probably the weirdest choice in the deck, but Giant Mantis is actually AWESOME in this card pool. It can successfully block and survive or attack and kill the majority of creatures in the pool. Totally shuts down Frenetic Efreet, also. Evades Incinerate and Pyroclasm, requires all 4 damage from a Pyrokinesis to remove it, and of course Swords gets you 4 life.

Jolrael's Centaur: Amazing creature. Evades all removal except for counterspells. Can kill most non-flyers in combat.

Nekrataal: 2 for 1 card advantage. Basically this is a simple Terror with an extra bonus of a 2/1 first striker. Evades Nekrataal, but we don't really care about evasion here.

River Boa: Not great at evasion and regenerate is useless vs flanking creatures, but it can be a huge pain against U/R decks if they don't have incinerate. Regenerate is useful vs Pyrokinesis and Pyroclasm. Can also block Ophidian and regenerate.

Wall of Roots: Evades Incinerate and Pyroclasm, requires all 4 damage from a Pyrokinesis to remove it, and Swords gets you 5 life. Also serves as a green mana source very early in the game and you can activate the ability on the turn it comes into play on your side because no tapping.