A MTG channel focused mostly on Commander. Videos every week including deckbuilding challenges, thoughts on the format and whatever wild adventures I end up on like the time I asked an entire MagicCon to help crowdsource build a Commander deck.
Remembered in that time had mono blue illusionary forces, gargoyle/haups and also a r/g lookalike just had more balduvian hordes and lava burst. Also those days were the best still for hand manipulator magicians. Colored sleeves weren't allowed yet as well as alpha cards because of their different corners. Easy to mark any cards. Thawing glacier was also like a vampiric tutor... You look for a land and prepare your next draw. 😅 The only way was to have a good judge next to you. That would like turn draw normal after a jokulhaups instead oh drew land... And a land how lucky. 😂
I love this. This is the type of Deck I love: weird, outside of the established Meta and a lot of fun to play. I think Ole would be (probably is, don't know) and amazing Commander-Player 😁
The very excellent and very understated moment of the Pyroclasm misplay into Wooly Spider: Fleischman casts Pyroclasm Ollie sets aside his other blocker Fleischman points at Wooly Spider Ollie just sits there silently going "Yeah, and?" Commentators / Judge: "+0/+2 when it blocks a flier." "Ooooooh, mistaake!"
Oh I loved your casting in the LCS. I didn't expect banger magic content as well. Both the Block Constructed have been awesome.I gre up with the game but never knew much of the pro scene.
I'm always baffled by how people call this deck bad. It won a ProTour and was perfectly metagamed to win....because he did. And then proved how genius he was by winning or placing highly (Top 8) in several future ProTour/World Championship events shortly thereafter. Olle Rade (and his deck) were legit....for its time. I actually played in a PTQ in hopes of playing in this very same Ice Age Block Constructed Pro Tour (that Rade eventually won), and even placed fairly highly in that PTQ, missing Top 8 on tie-breakers. Scott Larabee himself (of the Commander Rules Committee today) was even the Head Judge, so this was a legit event back in 1996. What I remember from then is exactly what you said: Decks back then WERE bad, by today's standards. And Rade's deck, with his efficient card choices and cantrip effects to "tighten" his deck list, were really ground breaking for his time. And then along came Buehler, Finkel and Budde (among many others), and the game's stars shifted in a very different direction.
I didn’t know that was how we got Safekeeper; the ability, in regards to the finals match, is a bit of a flavorful mesh of the way the match itself went.
As someone who was playing then (and mainly playing RG), this was an absolute pleasure to watch. Love these slices of fascinating MtG history. More videos like this please!
You know Nadu is bad when you have to compare a Modern Pro Tour to a block Pro Tour to find an example of a more homogenized PT. Especially when you consider that Modern is marketed as a non-rotating format that your decks will remain viable for a long time
“There was no way to know how impactful it would be, until the card was final”. Except, as soon as it was spoiled, everyone except those that misread the card, immediately knew how impactful it would be and predicted it would without a doubt ruin the pro tour… which it then did.
Wizards seems to have a serious problem with designing cards that cost specifically 1UG (Oko, Uro, etc), perhaps there should be an indefinite moratorium on rares with that cost lmao
wait, they played block constructed only when the whole block wasnt even out? and this happened multiple times? who thought this was good enough to run with even for a single second?
LOL welcome to Block Constructed! The OVERWHELMING majority of the Block PTs were this way since literally the first year of the Pro Tour. Maybe one day I'll do a video on all the different Block PTs and why the format was so wild because it seems to attract a LOT of the most interesting stories from the Tour.
Overall, I agree with the choice of PT Rebels over PT Elves. Though Berlin does seem to be a magnet for bad top 8s. It also played host to what might be the most boring single game of PT top 8 magic ever in game 1 of the finals; a Mirari's Wake mirror match that took over an hour.
In March I finally decided to build Braids Arisen Nightmare. It has become my favorite deck. It started as a 50 buck deck and now is between 80-100 with only upgrading slot for slot stronger versions of cards. The deck is just so amazing. Turn 1/2 you play your creature fodder slot card that comes back from graveyard to battlefield. Turn 3 bring out our Goddess Braids end step sacrifice fodder. You burn each opponent for 2 damage and draw 3 cards. The main goal of my version of the deck is that it is full of edicts. No one is allowed creatures aside from me. That is cause my opponents aren't members of our cult, uhh I mean religion! Braids combines my two favorite parts of magic. Burning faces and controling the board. All in a cute waifu mono black package. My version is budget but if you focus on optimizing it you could easily make it a swamp matters goodstuff as your filler cards. My friends all hate the deck cause it is insanely strong and competes with their $200-400 decks and my alternate wincon of nontoken creatures dying triggers means you can't reliably keep me from doing my thing. Either I draw and slowly burn you dead or I get insane value from aristocrats while still controling the board from creatures.
This was my third PT and first constructed PT. This exemplifies how awful the format was: I ran a black-green deck heavily metagamed against white creatures, including four Massacre main. 2BB, Sorcery, all creatures get -2/-2 until EOT, you can freecast if you have a Swamp + they have a Plains. Game ONE in a day 2 match, I drew an opener of Forest, Rishadan Port, 3 Massacre, 2 other spells. On the play. Unknown opponent, closed decklist, no scouting (at least for or by me). I KEPT. I drew another Port on turn 4. I drew my first Swamp on turn 6. Freecast two Massacres to wipe their board. I won the game. I went on to win the match.
Oh hey Sol! I didn't know this was your first Constructed PT that's hilarious. I was actually wondering how good Massacre would be given the event's metagame so I'm glad someone tried it. Also I might want to do a video on The Rock at some point so good to know where to find you if that comes up!
I think PT Berlin gets a pass, because while there were 6 elf decks in the top 8, they at least had some variance in their win cons and their sideboard tech. There were 4 Predator Dragon variants, 1 Mirror Entity variant, and 1 storm variant if I remember correctly. We also saw a variety of endings to the game. Game 1 was naturally a race, because sideboard tech wasn't in the deck yet, but even some of the game 1's were interesting. One semi-final game 1 ended with a 118/118 Predator Dragon hanging back to block a 116/116 Predator Dragon so that they could deck their opponent. 1 Game had a guy going infinite, only to be hit with a Brain Freeze, which led to a funny moment where they had to try and think of what the storm count was. A couple of games ended with a player building a board and icing their advantage with Ethersworn Canonist. Then you had LSV winning some games on the back of good ol' Thoughtsieze and a couple of attacks. Another thing that I like about PT Berlin was the featured QF match of choice, LSV's storm elves versus the artifact prison deck designed to slow down the elf decks. Kenny Öberg was the initial "hero" of the top 8, as I saw it anyway. His final 6 matches to get to the top 8 were 5 elf decks and a fairy deck. When he lost to LSV though, LSV became the hero, being the only elf deck in the top 4 that didn't use Predator Dragon. He was also faced the most top 8 elimination games of anybody, at that time, to win that tournament, going down 0-2 in the QF and SF before rallying back to win each match 3-2. So 6 elimination games in 2 matches before winning the finals 3-0, PLUS he made the top 8 on tie-breaks, sort of making him the underdog, and who doesn't love an underdog story?
It's more "balanced" in commander for sure, but I will note it's currently extremely popular in competitive commander tournaments. There is still a ton of diversity in commander tournaments though. Despite this I wouldn't be upset at all if they banned it, because oftentimes the combo win is extremely slow to actually play out due to "technically" being non-deterministic. It's certainly not the best card in commander, but it's definitely not particularly fun. Another thing to note, it's almost impossible to build it "casually" which seems to be the primary goal for a lot of commander decks.
