The Early Days of Type I, Jul '94 - Aug '95
| The early deck-building skills were a
bit crude compared to todays rapid proto-typing and building, but in
many ways the same... find the broken cards and use them untill they
get restricted or banned. To be sure, the great MTG centers
at Costa Mesa and Neutral Ground were not yet in place, with the collection
of good players and regular sanctioned tournaments that put new decks
through the wringer on a daily basis. While crude, the earliest
championship decks all displayed a good degree of internal continuity,
and a strong use of the broken cards (Mind Twist, Balance), and were
built upon secret formulas now taken for granted today (card advantage, creature
removal, permission, paths to victory, etc.). Indeed, the first winner
of the U.S. Nationals, Bo Bell, was (in those days) bold enough to put four
Mind Twists in his deck... and was justly rewarded with his tournament
win. He was also instrumental in getting the Mind Twist put on the
restricted list (it took Blumke's win, plus half of the players on the Pro-Tour,
to get it banned).
Bo Bell's U.S. Nationals Winning Deck:
Bo had these comments on his deck: Now at the Nationals that year they were only allowing Alpha/Beta/Unlimited and Revised. No expansions. This saved me. I had just about every restricted card you could think of in it. After removing them, I put in the Control's, the Assassins and Queens (oh... and the 1 Phantom Monster; I was scrambling for ANYTHING to go in). And it's funny... the Phantom Monster won me the 3rd game of the Finals (we only played a best of 3). The creature control stuff I added helped a lot (back then decks were nothing but creature threats), so in hindsight, they weren't that bad. The Force Field also helped; you wouldn't believe the amount of Shivan's and Fat Moti's that came at me. Most of what I saw there was burn, counter-burn and fat critter decks. In the Finals my opponent played a WOrb, black/white weenie deck. All of the decks using Chaos Orbs somehow lost in the opening rounds.
-Bo Bell August '94, World Championship
The final showdown was between Zak Dolan and Bertrand Lestree, with Dolan
running a slightly off-kilter Control Deck (hereafter dubbed "Dolanesque")
and Lestree running (what has now become) a farily standard R/G/U deck
ala "The Zoo". Dolan ended up winning (and was the last American to
win a World Championship). Lestree swore both that he was the better
player and that he would avenge his loss... unfortunately he could not compete
the following year because of an altercation with a judge.
Zak said of the deck, "It's not a fast deck, but it can take on just about everything."
Betrand said "It wins alot." Type I play had a bit of a dry spell as the major Pro-Tourney format shifted from Type I to Type II. Brian Weissman's "The Deck" became quite popular at this time, especially in the S.F. Bay Area, but other deck types were being played around the country. The next deck, Chip Hogan's, won the TI tourney at Origin's '95. The deck is also quite similiar to the deck Chip used at AndCon to take the TI World Championships, a month later, in his title match with Dennis Bentley. It is a deceptive deck which concentrates on control and Mana -Denial. About the Glasses of Urza: At the time it was legal to take notes during a match, so Chip would fastidiously write down the contents of his opponents hand with each use.
Chip said that the competition at Origins was the toughest he's encountered, before or since. Chip also commented that he won many matches because his opponents did not understand how his deck worked... a deck that emphasized complete Mana-Lock Down, but had no LD. This style was soon to be translated - very successfully - into the TII arena by Chris Cade with his "Prison" deck. Looking at all of these decks, it is clear that each utilized, to varying degrees:
1. Card-Advantage. The Magic Dojo© 1997-1998 Frank Kusumoto. Please report bugs or problems to webmaster@classicdojo.org.
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