Lets hear about the stories behind interesting, obscure and funny names for Decks and nicknames of cards.
Names featured here should not be incredibly obvious like "The Deck is called Grixis Pyromancer because it has Young Pyromancer in it and plays Grixis colors" or "This Deck is called Dredge, because it uses the Dredge mechanic".
The Decks do not all have to be Vintage Decks, however the Names should have been widely used in the relevant Format or MTG as a whole to the point that people at the time could genereally understand what Deck or Card was talked about when the Name was used. Stuff should not be incredibly obvies, but you can definetly talk about generally well-knows like "Bob" or "Tim" as long as the trivia is interesting.
For example: Why is this weird Doomsday-Reanimator-Storm Hybrid Legacy Deck called "Tin-fins"? Whats up with all the famous breakfast themed Decknames?
I would love to have an example Decklist be included or a Picture of the card talked about as well as some context in the posts, so everybody can get the references. I hope we get some cool Trivia out of it and a thread to consult everytime a newer player asks what the hell kind of weird (Deck-) name you are talking about.
So lets start with some classics:
Nevinyrral's Disk
Context: The iconic and powerful catch-all, board clear saw a ton of play in early magic and is still a staple in Old School and EDH due to its ability to provide such an effect to colors that generally have problems dealing with specific permanents or lack the ability to whipe a board.
The Name: The name is one of the most tounge twister like mtg card names out there and in many playgroups people tend to pronounce it kind of like they want. To ease the problem you might hear some players refer to the card just as "Larry's Disk". Thats easy to remember and the sound kind of fits, but there is more behind that common nickname than just the ability to unknot ones tongue.
In the mtg Lore the Disk is named after Nevinyrral, a powerful Lich on Dominaria and mentor to generations of Necromancers after his demise though his work "The Necromancer's Handbook". Nevinyrral used the Disk in question to blow himself and Urborg up.
Nevinyrral himself was named by WotC (Probably Garfield himself) after Larry Niven (just written backwards). The US- Author not only coined the Term "Mana" in the context of a magical resource supplied by lands, but also had a Warlock character in his books that build a mana-draining disc, which was the direct inspiration for the card. This makes "Larry's Disk" not only a much needed shortcut for the staggering card name, but also an interesting reference to inspiration from the earliest days of the game.
TLDR: "Larrys Disc" is named after Larry Niven.
The Four Horseman
Finn
Context: The Four Horsemen is a Legacy Deck that people mostly know because it had some controversy around itself regarding slow play and shortcuts in tournament play. The Deck works by bringing Basalt Monolith and Mesmeric Orb together into play. This allows you to mill yourself indefinetly just by tapping and untapping the Monolith. While milling yourself you might just find your Emrakul and shuffle your GY back into your Deck using its trigger. You basically repeat milling yourself and shuffling your library back into your Deck until your find a very specific combination of cards making up your gamestate before the Emrakul crashes the party again: Have 3 Narcomoebas in play and Blasting Station, Sharuum as well as a Dread Return in your Graveyard. Now just cast Dread Return targeting the Sharuum, which in turn will bring the Blasting station into play. As soon as it is in play, keep going with the selfmill and have the Narcomoebas fill the two jobs of beeing a sac target and an untap trigger for the blasting station, shuffling them back into your library ad infinitum allowing you to deal an infinite amount of damage to your opponent. Not convoluted at all.
The problem the deck has is that the very specific combination of hitting 3 Narcomoebas, Sharuum, Blasting Station and Dread Return before Emrakul is not determanistic which makes the pilot unable to specifically name a number of times they want to repeat the demonstated self-milling loop.
In September 2012 at the SCG Legacy Open LA, the head judge was brought over to make a call on a feature match involving Jeff Liu on the infamous Deck. The judge, Josh Stansfield, had this to say about the game: "By performing the same loop of actions without changing the game, he was violating the shortcut policy outlined in the Magic Tournament Rules and the Slow Play policy in the Infraction Procedure Guide." (http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_four_horsemen_with_j.html)
The Name: This name is one of the most confusing and many theories about what cards it specifically references can be found online, mostly because the Deck changed quite a lot from its original form. I heard people say the 4 Horsemen where the Narcomoebas, others say its the 4 pieces needed to find once the infinite mill is established, this comes the closest to the original meaning of the name. I found the earliest mention of this deck in a mtgsalvation thread called "[deck] The Four Horsemen" , where a US User called Finn postet a List and explanation for his Deck idea originally in March of 2011. (https://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/developing-legacy/181684-deck-the-four-horsemen) The Thread now has over 13 Pages of posts reaching into 2017 with updates and a loyal playerbase constantly tinkering on the Deck. In his post Finn gave a clue about the Deckname in the following sentece explaining the decks win condition " If you milled 3 Narcos, a "Horseman" and a Dread Return before he does, great - Dread Return a fatties." Alone this sentence doesnt seem to make a lot of sense when you look at the post, where nowhere else (but the Title) Horsemen are mentioned, and reanimating fatties doesnt really seem to be the goal of the Deck. The Answer comes in reading the thread further and discovering that the original post was last edited in November 2011, and with it the Decklist changed. In the replies to the thread posted before the edits to the orignal post where made, you can find peoples own suggestions to alter the original decklist, which included exactly 4 fatties as reanimation targets for the Dread returns ushering in the end of the game if found. The Deck has gone through a lot of interations of reanimation targets called "Horsemen" of choice for specific metagame answers, safer comboing, resilience and speed after finally settling on cutting the fattie win condition as a whole and replacing them with the win condition described above. The name stuck, and now we have this wonderfully infamous combo Deck with a very confusing Name.
TLDR: 4 Horsemen refers to 4 specific reanimation targets in a proto version of the Deck.
Edit: fixed typos and grammar mistakes, added TLDRs
