BR Drain Life / Earthquake from August 1997 (Type 2 / Type II) (Standard) [Revision 32]

This is a BR deck build from the August 1997 Standard card pool. It looks a lot like an aggressive deck at first glance, but the burn is really intended as creature removal that makes room for an eventual Djinn or Knight, so it functions a little more like a control deck.

Each removal card serves multiple purposes. Coercion can get rid of anything, the primary targets being Frenetic Efreet, Rainbow Efreet, Kjeldoran Outpost and Winter Orb. Burn/drain life can always target a player, etc.

Pillage is included because this deck really runs into a lot of problems against Winter Orb, particularly Svend Geertsen's green deck. When I only had 2 Disks in the maindeck and there were no other ways to deal with artifacts, it would just get absolutely crushed once Winter Orb was out. The big targets for Pillage are Winter Orb and Thawing Glaciers.

I also chose to use Mind Stone instead of Quicksand because the point of this deck is really to remove creatures. Quicksand is really more of a deterrent to attacking rather than actual removal. Also the combination of Mind Stone and Undiscovered Paradise can occasionally get you 1-2 extra mana per turn under Winter Orb, which makes a huge difference.

Earthquake is extremely useful in this card pool because there are very few flying creatures and the most useful ones are difficult to remove anyway - Frenetic and Rainbow Efreets.

Pyrotechnics is a great and underrated card because it can pick off multiple small creatures more efficiently than Fireball, which is great in this format (Aug 1997 Standard). Or, you can pick off one creature and spill the extra damage over to your opponent.