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The following is the oldest quote made by Jay Schneider on The Sligh Principle

Concepts and observations on Sligh Deck w/Jay Schneider, July ‘96:

The original Sligh deck, called “Geeba”, was created by Jay Schneider, using the following guidelines -

Concept #1: The most important one. The Mana Curve. A true Sligh deck (and any good active deck) is optimized to use the mana curve that comes from playing one land per turn, and using ALL of it's mana on every turn. This is done using a "tiered" system. When you look at a Sligh deck you should see “slots”, not specific cards. Taking this approach Sligh looks like this:

   1 mana slot: 9-13
   2 mana slot: 6-8
   3 mana slot: 3-5
   4 mana slot: 1-3
   X spell: 2-3
   Lightning bolt (critter kills): 8-10
   mana 23-26 15-17 of color

In a deck designed to use it, it is highly effective to use all of your mana each turn. Think of how often Sligh's 1 casting cost critters do 5 - 10 points of damage before they are neutralized or dealt with.

Concept #2: Card Advantage. It doesn't look like it but Sligh is built on card advantage. The key is selective card advantage. All of the cards in Sligh are effective by themselves. Sligh is very effective at killing all of an opponents creatures, thereby rendering creature support cards useless. Orcish Artillery represent the culmination of this principle, i.e. a useful card in and of itself that also gains card advantage if it’s special ability is used just once.

Concept #3: How the attack progresses. First on the ground, which an opposing deck should eventually stop. Then in the air. If this attack is stopped then finish them off with direct damage.

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How The Sligh Principle was spread

This is one of the most controvercial stories in magic, and it's history is filled with many rumors and historically distortion. The version listed here will always be flavored by public oppinion and the "Truth" May never really be known.

Somewhere in 1996 Paul Sligh came in second with a new decktype called "Geeba" (or "The Goblin Librarian Deck"). It was designed by Jay Schneider using The Sligh Principle which he had invented. As Jay himself tells it, he and his wife were scheduled to go to on vacation the weekend of the Pro Tour Qualifier in Atlanta, so he gave the "Geeba" deck to Paul Sligh. Paul went on to perform extremely well at the PTQ, and tournament reports and players outside of the Atlanta area caught on to the power of the deck, which came to be named "Sligh" after the man who played it, not the man who designed it. (See A* link at bottom).

At that time magic games were a lot slower, most decks starting to work at turn 4 or later, except for some few weenie decks. Mike Flores have written several articles about this beginning and offers detailed descriptions of the current Deckscape/Metagame. The earned secondplace gave Jay Schneider enough public focus through Paul Sligh to explain his invention and it lead to many decks using the philosophy later named Sligh. There is some irony in the fact that the concept is still named by Paul Sligh even though Jay Schneider was it's inventor. This can be witnessed in one quote: “All Paul Sligh did was to qualify for the Pro Tour with the deck and post it on the ‘Net. It bothers me, it boggles my mind why this guy is so famous… I think people having their names on the deck is a bit silly. It isn't a big deal that I don't get any credit for the deck, as long as Sligh doesn't either.” -Dave Price

A concept in need of an update:

There are several things needed to be considered when The Principle is being used.

First of all, it only offers a guideline on what a mana curve should be. There are no actual Mana Curves offered by it's inventor. That means that the author technically takes credit for any mix of Curve that the guideline can produce. It is statistically unlikely that ALL of these "mixes" are good, so the guideline is not flawless.

Secondly, if we design a curve with the minimum possible ammount of spells we get a total of 29 and when added to the maximum of lands (26) we get 55 cards total. This can be interpretted in two possible ways. Either the inventor never thougth the concept through thoroughly enough, or the time the concept was invented it was allowed to build decks below 60 cards.

Regardless of the interpretation the only conclussion possible is, that the Sligh Principle is outdated, and needs a renovation.

So far there have been no updates on The Sligh Principle.

Possible solutions

Magic is connected with more and more "Tools" like mathematical equations or simulations running on computers. Many of these offers deep insigth as to how manacurves functions and perhaps in time there will be a "New Guide for Sligh"...

Public sourcess

The Slighbrary: http://www.angelfire.com/realm/magic7/ A detailed site on all things Sligh

Detailed "Sligh" Article about how it all began: by mike flores: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mf39

• a* A quote about why Paul Sligh got the fame: http://www.wizards.com/sideboard/article.asp?x=sb20001005a