After revisiting MtG Type II 1995, I moved to Type II 1996 and its notorious "Summer of Necro".
Research was easier thanks to readily archived online reports (♥♥ thedojo.com ♥♥). On top of that, video recording of events added an extra cool factor.
In 1996 MtG was three years old. The pace of events was accelerating[1]. Besides the US National and the World Championship, that year saw the first Pro Tour ever[2].
Feb 16 : Pro Tour New York City. May 5-7 : Pro Tour Los Angeles. June : Alliances is released Jul : US National. Jul 6–7 : Pro Tour Columbus. Aug 14–18: World Championships. Sep 13–15: Pro Tour Atlanta. Oct 7 : Mirage is released. Nov 24 : Pro Tour Dallas.
The type II card pool evolved as follows[3].
Jan - Feb Feb - Apr Apr - Jun Jul - Oct Oct - Dec
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Sets:
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4th Edition 4th Edition 4th Edition 4th Edition 4th Edition
Fallen Empires Fallen Empires Fallen Empires Fallen Empires Fallen Empires
Ice Age Ice Age Ice Age Ice Age Ice Age
Chronicles Chronicles Chronicles Chronicles Chronicles
Homelands Homelands Homelands Homelands Homelands
Alliances Alliances Alliances
Mirage
Restricted:
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Balance Balance Balance Balance Balance
Regrowth Regrowth Regrowth Regrowth Regrowth
Ivory Tower Ivory Tower Ivory Tower Ivory Tower Ivory Tower
Zuran Orb Zuran Orb Zuran Orb Zuran Orb Zuran Orb
Mind Twist
Feldon's Cane Feldon's Cane
Recall Recall
Black Vise Black Vise Black Vise Black Vise
Land Tax Land Tax
Banned:
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Channel Channel Channel Channel
Mind Twist Mind Twist Mind Twist
The most important change is the restriction of Black Vise in February 96 which opened the door to Necropotence based decks. Necro could count on Strip Mine and Hymn to Tourach for disruption until they were restricted on Dec 31st 1996.
The first MtG Pro Tour ever was very well covered. There is even an extensive 1h30mn gem of a video with the full final games.
The format was bizarre with players having to mandatory incorporate in their deck a minimum of five cards from each of the last expansion. There is a great video, "The History of the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour: 1996, Pretty Deece", which explains well how garbage Homelands and Fallen Empires were.
I am not a fan of the restriction but the event had the merit of resulting in a Top 8 featuring a variety of themes and cards. I did not have to buy cards or build decks to enjoy this format. I just bought the Pro Tour Collector Set (which is drop dead gorgeous btw).
Overall a pretty sweet set of decks. Strangely there is only a single Necro in the set (by Leon Lindbäck). It seems players had not realized yet the power of the card. Noteworthy to me, it features one of my all-time favorite players, Bertrand Lestree.
The Pro Tour Los Angeles 1996 is not interesting for someone who likes Constructed. This event used a draft format. Here is the top 2 anyway.
The summer of necro starts with Dennis Bentley taking Nationals with a lot of land/hand (lhand) destruction. It was the first Necro deck to win a major tournament that I could find. I love the aggression level of his 
composition.
The three other players in the top 4 were George Baxter with Prison Titiana and two <PUKE> Turbo Stasis. The only deck shittier than The Deck were piloted by Matthew Place and Mike Long.
The ProTour Columbus was Ice Age/Alliances constructed and saw the victory of another favorite player of mine, Olle Råde. I love his proactive and aggressive strategy. Part of the final against Sean Fleischman (playing Gargoylhaups) was recorded.
There is another video of Olle playing against Peter Radonjic (seemingly also playing 4C).
Only the two deckslists from the final are known. I also found the Junior category deck list of John Finkel (Blinkie Post) and Patrick Chaplin (Sligh) in the book Deck DeConstruction companion.
The summer of Necro reaches its pinnacle with three decks in the Top 4 based on Necropotence. Andrew Pacifico wins with a mix of fast creatures with lhand destruction. Kyle Bigos and Adam Szura played similar builds. The one guy not playing Necro was Bill Macey with a 
WW .
Perhaps the most important tournament of the year was the modestly named 1996 World Championship.
Tom Chanpheng won with a 
WW famous for featuring an unplayable
Tom Chanpheng took home one of the rarest MtG cards, the 1996 WORLD CHAMPION. One video coverage of the event survived where Mark Justice faced Olle Rage in the semi-final.
We find in the Top 8 two players I appreciate a lot, namely Olle Råde and Henry Stern.
The Summer of Necro showed no sign of cooling down in Dallas. Paul McCabe is first in a top 4 with three Necropotence decks. Only Olle is apart in fourth place with a Counter-Hammer deck.
I absolutely love the aggressive Pikulapotence () by Chris Pikula which departs from the other two Necro control versions.
Henry Stern is a player that I first encountered when I was re-visiting MtG Type II 1995. I loved his Channel-Fireball deck but enjoyed even more how much effort he put into building the community. He wrote numerous tournament reports and was quite open about his decklists.
The year 1997 would be the last he was involved with MtG as a player. After his fourth place at the World Championship he started a prolific career at Wizard of the Coast where he subsequently became a developer, designer, and design manager[4]. He worked there from August 1996 to December 2008. He recently recorded a podcast to talk about his magical career.
While I was doing research, I was happy to read so many good things about Olle Råde. He appeared to be a very likable player. At the end of 1996, his performance made him become MtG first ever player of the year.
The Littlest Viking, as dubbed by his peers, kept on playing after 1996. We can find him with a top8 in PT Chicago 1997 (with a cool Extended Zila Good Thingy). He quit in 1997 but, according to mtgtop8.con, came back to the game later.
Using Rembrandt sleeves and boxes in my gauntlet were an homage to Olle. He can be seen using these shitty sleeves at Pro Tour Columbus 1996.
On top of having been the very first player of the year, Olle should have been the very first player to also design a card in 1997. But a funny turn of events made him only become the fourth to do so.
Sylvan Safekeeper is actually a very good card which has seen some renewed interest in Oath-Terravore decks in Premodern format. It is inspired of Olle's legendary win with junk spiders at Pro Tour Columbus 1996.
Olle has also enjoyed great success in the OldSchool format[6][7][8]. He recently played this signature deck at N00bcoM. There is even a video of him piloting an all-green fast-creatures deck reminiscing of his "spiders" deck.
Alike for my 1995 and 1997/1998 explorations, I built a gauntlet with several decks. I was inspired by Olle's final video to use Rembrandt Ultra Pro Clear Shield Deck Protector.
These sleeves are absolute garbage[9][10]. They don't allow double sleeves and tend to split in half when you shuffle. After I took the photo I quickly reverted to using KMC Hyper Matte Sleeves.
I put candies in every one of these decks. A candy to me is a special card that is exciting to draw.
The first deck I wanted to try was of course Tom Chanpheng's World Champion deck. It looks like a solid WW but I had reservations about the Sleight of Mind.
Boy was I wrong. Sleight is the MVP of the deck. I never had a problem casting it, even with only four sources of blue. Moreover, it is a super fun card. Not only can you use it on your own knights to protect them from whatever you need, you can also use it to remove protection from white on black knights. This card was an absolute gem..
In fact it was so good I removed a Pyrexian War Beast to have a second Sleight of Mind.
In terms of candies this deck got a playset of Beta Savannah Lions and two Beta Sleight of Mind.
Impossible to visit the summer of Necro without having a Necro deck in the pack. I first tried to use the list from Mark Justice in World 1996.
However I found it quite boring since it is mostly a control deck and these make me want to sleep. I researched Necro variations.
Pikulapotence is NOT a boring deck. The delicious is everything I love in MtG.
Being able to kill a Ernham with a bolt + first strike knight is a LOT OF FUN.
I could not build a set of decks without having an homage to Henry Stern. This deck is inspired by his fourth place in the World Championship but I added two sweet Sleight of Mind.
Not only Sleight of Mind is a MVP, it allowed the deck to be and have a set of Underground Rivers. This way all pain lands are in the gauntlet.
This deck still feels a bit off. Like not enough Necro and perhaps too much Disk? It has a hard time dealing with white decks. By the time the Disk comes online it is often too late. Any advice on how to make it better?
I love 
as much as I love . These are fast aggressive decks which fit the way I like to play. I had to have one of these in the set. Also Birds of Paradise is my favorite card ever. So I built a Good Stuff deck.
This is a fun deck to play where you never have a dead card in hand. There are both fatties and fast Archers. Dropping a 5/5 Hordes is almost as cool as casting a Juzam. For a while I tried to make Elkin Bottle work but it was too slow.
Olle Råde, another favorite of mine, had to be represented in this set. I picked his Erhnageddon from the World Championship because it is a well-balanced deck.
I was running really low on cards but I was still able to put a second Olle deck together. Sorry about the white border Cities Olle. I used his counter-hammer list from PT Dallas.
I love the baller inclusion of a single white card, Balance (arguably the most powerful card in the format), with only four cities to play it.
If you are also interested in this era and want to research it, besides the aforementioned resources, I also recommend these books.
There are plenty of more resources, from mtgtop8 decklists, to players showing their gauntlet, and Youtube videos (e.g.:Instant Deck Tech: 1996 Necro).
Besides thedojo.net, The Duelist was also a great resource with articles discussing Erhnageddon, Weenie Decks, Bestrand Pro Tour experience, and the science of playing Necro.
More reading about the history of Type 2 with my retrospective on MtG Type II 1997/1998.
