Lich has been around since the very beginning of Magic. Due to its flavour and mystique, it is one of the cards I have always been very curious about. Since 93/94 has become a thing, it’s at last become possible for me to give it a try.

we paid extra for the quality meme

I picked up a couple of Unlimited Liches at Magic Fest Toronto this year and have been brewing with them ever since. Let me tell you, if you enjoy winning games (which I do), you will hate the card Lich. If you enjoy playing really cool cards and messing around building decks (which I do even more than winning), Lich may be the card for you.

There are two main win conditions available to a Lich deck. You can take your pick of Mirror Universe (slow and steady) or Fireball (a turn faster, but with more moving pieces, so even more rickety). Both of these are fun options and possible to build decks around. One can even attempt to cram them in the same deck. Which I did.

Decklist #1 – Classic Lich

The main problem with Lich is once your opponent is “on to you” and figures out that you are playing Lich, if they are any good at Magic at all you are probably going to lose that game. All your opponent has to do is hold a Disenchant or Chaos Orb, wait for you to resolve Lich, and then take it out. Even a plan as simple as holding a couple of Lightning Bolts until after Lich resolves can be devastating when they start forcing you to sacrifice 3 permanents at the cost of 1 mana.

Lich does have some good synergies in Old School. These include:

– The Abyss – Matches colour, and we’re not playing creatures.

– Avoid Fate – Protects Lich from Disenchant, but not from Chaos Orb.

– Fastbond – Where we’re going, we don’t need life, just an excessive amount of mana and some forests to sacrifice.

– Sylvan Library – Same deal as Fastbond. Find those combo pieces, who cares if you pay life, it’s going away anyways.

– Dark Heart of the Wood – Buy some more time, or start drawing those cards.

– Mirror Universe – Main win condition.

– Channel – We don’t need life, and we do need 6 to cast Mirror Universe. We can also win on the first turn by accident 1% of the time.

– Dark Ritual – BBBB.

– Mana Vault – Helps cast Mirror Universe and can be sacrificed to Lich afterwards.

– Time Walk – Great way to get to your next upkeep step without anyone blowing up your combo.



Decklist #2 – Lich Switch

In light of what I learned from playing the “classic” version of Lich, for the Tundra Wolves Challenge II this year I decided to bring a transformational sideboard Lich deck. The deck attempted to steal game 1 with Djinn and Efreet beatdown. The goal was to trick my opponent into side-boarding in creature removal for game 2, hopefully removing some of their enchantment removal. Meanwhile, I took all the creatures out of my deck and replaced them with the cards necessary for Lich combo alongside anti-creature cards like The Abyss.

The plan worked surprisingly well up until I was matched up against Tristan from this group, who unfortunately knew what I was up to before we started playing. I lost game 1 and decided to not sideboard in the combo since he already knew exactly how to beat it, and then lost game 2 anyways. Creatures that slowly deal damage to their controller are not great against burst damage decks like Atog, especially when they are packing several copies of City in a Bottle, but I digress.

Main Enemies of the Lich

– Disenchant

– Chaos Orb

– Tranquility

– Counterspell

– Tristan

Decklist #3 – Lichless Lich

After the tournament I decided to try one more version of the deck, which basically had the same game plan of damaging myself to eventually win the game via Mirror Universe, but this time using Lightning Bolt as the finisher as opposed to having 0 life due to Lich. The deck is a lot stronger, doesn’t randomly die to a stray Chaos Orb, but is arguably more of a knockoff of The Deck than anything resembling a Lich deck.

While writing this article I discovered a slightly odd and cool piece of Lich trivia which I think adds even more to its mystique. The multiverse ID for the original Alpha printing of Lich is #69 (nice), and the multiverse ID for the Unlimited printing is #666 (hail Satan!).

To summarize:

Lich Pros

– You don’t lose the game for having 0 or less life.

– If you gain life, draw that many cards instead.

– Art & flavour is undebatably sweet.

– Alpha printing is card # 69, Unlimited is card # 666.



Lich Cons

– Casting Cost is BBBB, a tall order.

– You lose all life.

– For each point of damage you suffer, you must destroy one of your cards in play. And it has to be a non-token permanent, by the way.

– You lose if this enchantment is destroyed, or if you suffer a point of damage without sending a card to the graveyard.



If you want to win games, never play the card Lich. If you want to brew some cool decks and have fun, give it a shot sometime.

