I play Old School and in casual games we have a house rule that we draw two each turn, with no discarding required in the first turn only. It has several advantages:

• dramatically reduces the likelihood of mana flood/screw.
• it speeds up games, since you generally play a land and cast at least one spell per turn. Otherwise, with typical draw one, players tend to empty their hands quickly and the game slows down dramatically.
• it decreases the effectiveness of control decks like The Deck, which aren't fun to play against anyway. It increases the effectiveness of Aggro styles, which are more fun. Creatures are really janky in Old School and they need as much help as they can get.
• it reduces the advantage of Library of Alexandria, Braingeyser, and Jayemdae Tome, and reduces the disadvantage of Mind Twist, any of which can be nearly fatal in Old School matches.

There is even an Old School variant called "Gentleman's Rules" that bans Library and Mind Twist because they are so powerful in single-draw. In double draw, they are not a problem.

The only downsides:

• cards that punish card draw get much stronger. Chains of Mephistopheles and Underworld Dreams become very strong, almost problematic. If enacted in a tournament, it would definitely change the meta (maybe that's good!). We would likely have to restrict these.
• Sylvan Library becomes very strong, and may need to be restricted.

Some of those factors may be relevant to Commander. Definitely try it out!

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.