By the time I had graduated high school in 1997, I had already been playing Magic for about 3 years and watched the game try to find its footing after stumbling through a series of expansions that left players hoping for more. It would be many, many years before I learned about the limited and standard formats that were just beginning to take shape with the advent of block-based expansion set design. It was my senior year that the first true block rolled out with the release of Mirage, Visions, and Weatherlight. Instead of discovering how Limited formats would change the game forever (and for the good), my interest in the game began waning, exacerbated by the fact that my friends wanted to play the Star Wars CCG instead.

If I could go back in a time machine, this is the battle box I would tell my 18 year-old self to build. Every card is from a printing before I graduated high school, which leads to a very restrictive, uneven card pool. Many of the best cards from this era are not battle box appropriate (I'm looking at you, Demonic Tutor!), making the design challenge even greater but the nostalgia no less fun to indulge in.