You forgot one very important aspect of these decks. I won one of these at the first tournament I ever played at and it taught me a lot as I used it against my own deck and saw how it crushed it.
Liber Khaos Agree, as a very casual player sitting down with Brian Seldon's Survival of the Fittest, Recurring Nightmare deck, I could barely figure out the point of some of the cards when I first played it. Taught me a lot about rules and potential synergies.
I remember picking up Gabrel Nassif's 2004 WU Control deck, and I actually got it for a very specific reason, that I only really knew at the time how to build simple aggro decks and I wanted to expand my knowledge, and it really gave me an idea how to play and build far more complex decks, especially at 13 years old and with little access to proper MtG resources. I admit, I still prefer simpler decks today, but being able to actually play with the physical deck of a pro really helped expand my knowledge of the game. It would be incredible to see these come back in some way.
I remember I bought the Randy Buehler deck when I was like 11, came with a VHS of "the road to worlds 1998" (the world championship was broadcast on TV on ESPN 2)... the video can be found on youtube. Still have it, in good condition.
I'm Brian Hacker! Actually that deck helped me when I was learning the game because I could feel how a good deck worked, in that case I could feel the mana curve. My friends also learned that feeling the pain of an awesome mana curve! I miss those days...
It bummed me out when they stopped producing these. My best friend and I bought these and played with them. He even used them in his normal decks, since we were casual enough to not care.
You have impeccable timing. I started getting back into Magic a few weeks ago and have been loving your videos. I was thinking about these old World's decks just yesterday, and then you make this! Amazing!
Wow I had no idea this product even existed! I'm so excited to look for one now! I just made my first cube after watching your videos on it (and some of Milo's as you recommended) I thought it would be a pretty quick and easy job :P took me over 20 hours to just sort through cards that would be a good fit, and then another 10+ to cut down to the right number of cards :P These cards would be amazing additions to my cube!
Man, I want them to print some sort of product that features non-tournament legal versions of many old/expensive cards. Something like that would make casual lives and cube building so much easier.
I have some of these! I loved playing the Jon Finkel 'Tinker' deck and Matt Linde 1999, It has four Gaea's Cradles! Mine stayed together but I had many offers from people who wanted to pull them apart.
Could you just imagine though? Everyone is happy, there are affordable cards. People that aren't just rich who can actually go pro! Holy smokes! Don't forget that they would still have the player's signature on them, so they would technically still be a different print! Prices would drop, wizards would make mad cash, there would be so many players who like economical Magic actually on the scene! Modern would be a beautiful place. If Duel Decks were truly like that, and /actual/ cards, I think Magic would be in a really great place. That would be the Boon of Magic. Playing for Skill and playing for Fun! No barriers. We can dream!
TheCaliger You are completly rigth. Some people dont want to grind to get top cards or play to win prizes. We just enjoy the game and want to be able to play with "pro cards".
Rambo Jesus The barrier has increased significantly though for modern and eternal formats. Mana bases alone cost hundreds of dollars. I started playing modern in 2011 and tier 1 decks were a couple hundred dollars, but now we're at the point where tier one decks are 1 to 2 grand depending on the deck. The grind wouldn't be so bad for newer players if Wizards would be more generous with their reprints of staples. It took maybe a few months of grinding to build a competitive deck a few years ago, but I see guys at my LGS that regularly top8 at tournaments often grinding for closer to a year.
Rambo Jesus Partially agree. But with similar level players, the one who has access to better cards will potentially win most of the time (with luck interfering). I still remember not so back in the time, the 1999/2000 era when the most expensive Revised dual land was Thundra and costed $20 alone; the other ones went cheaper. Force of Will costed $15. And while I know money got a bit devaluated over time, I can understand why younger lads feel frustrated at eternal formats like Legacy when those staple cards are so insanely expensive. When I was a kid and MTG reached my country with a late 4th Edition, I was the same when I learned of older sets and saw Black Lotuses at $350 and people from US who played as soon as it was released in '93 telling how they were up to $11. But alas, it's mostly especulators and big internet vendor's like STG's fault. And Wizards cashes a bit on them by selling products that have cards that are expensive on second hard market.
Acuiasa That'd be cool but it would be unfair to the players who actually spent a ton of money to get these harder to get cards. Wizards is really good about making sure that if you spend money on their game, MOST of the time you'll be able to get at least that money back. That's why they'll never reprint black lotus or any of the power
Benjamin Botwin They really haven't made it easy to earn the money back you spent, maybe if you are reselling a card off the reserved list but even then its very difficult to sell those high cost cards at full price.
JungleWith Me I'm not too sure about standard but for modern they for sure try. They don't work toward player profit, but they work to avoid massive player loss... In non rotating formats at least... I've never played in standard so I have no idea about that :3
I had tons of cards at one point, especially a championship deck, which I vaguely remember as a kid drawing on my blanks with a ball point pen, creating my very own cards to use! Very fun, and very collectable!
my first deck and intro to magic was the reanimator back in the 6th grade. sold all my yu-gi-oh card, started grabbing mirrordin boosters and never looked back since. thanks for the walk down memory lane professor!
My friends and I LOVED these back in the day. We even made our own cards out of the blank ones...still have around five gold bordered cards in my cube.
i own every single one of these decks (with the exception of a few cards, like force and gaea's cradle) and i love love love them! they are all that is left of my former collection. i couldn't imagine ever selling them, i love them that much.
You really made me appreciate these championship decks far more, Professor. They are indeed perfect proxies for a cube. And the cheap duel experience with flawless but instantly identifyable proxies seems enticing as well. In fact, I'd now even like to see ready-to-play decks from the latest championships. It would be really handy to have cheap access to proxy deck of the Modern Decks-to-Beat for playtesting purposes of your actual deck you want to go to tournaments with. It'd also be quite cool to get gold-bordered bling of the latest staples. Also from a cube perspective, haha.
I knew a kid who showed up with the championship version of Jon Finkel's "Tinker" deck, long ago. We banned Tinker in our playgroup after seeing it's ridiculous power.
I bought the Carlos Romao Psychatog deck from the 2002(?) World Championship Decks waaaaaay back in the day when I was just learning Magic, it taught me so much about what a top-tier deck looks like and plays like.
Dearly miss those decks. The B/R Reanimator of peer Kröger from 2003 was what gave my friend an ultimate upper hand in our matches, and thus a huge boost in our own play, as we had to get behind what the cards were actually thought to be played like. This ultimately lead to us really picking up on competitive play some more, and also boosting and building our own decks over time. It really would have been nice to have had Decks from the time of my active play to think back of these years, as it really were fun times: Mirrodin, Ravnica, Timespiral... Heck, i even would like to know what won when i took a time out within Theros, Alara etc. But thank you wizards, that these possibilities were taken from us :(
I loved these... The deck by aeo paquette was so much fun to play.... And that's when I started net decking and thus brewing decks of competitive nature
I know this is an older video, but I do appreciate the old champ decks. When I was young I could afford one and it gave me a cool deck that I learned how to play winning magic and deckbuilding with. Brian Kiblers D2k was great, def one of my favorites along with psychatog!
I had picked up the Buehler back when it was released and mine came with a VHS tape packaged along with it. Back in the golden ESPN days haha. At any rate it featured Randy's game play. I thought that was a REALLY nice touch. Especially considering this was before things were being uploaded to youtube, unless you caught the broadcast of the championships and recorded it, there wasn't really a reliable way to reference, or enjoy the matches. Like a lot of others have posted, it'd be really nice to see these types of decks be released again, and given the digital age, a link to a video of them using the deck.
Azreal Dragon Also I dont know if anyone remembers that comment I posted about the World Championship card I picked up in the UK at my local store but it was marked, Seattle 1998 Championsips on the back and the card was called Hydroblast and the Pro name is Randy Buehler? Is he a good player? Do I own a bit of MTG History? Edit: Oh, I am watching the video as I typed this and noticed the exact same name, Place and year on the Championship cards the Profesor is opening, I guess these are not as rare as I had imagined.
Hi Prof! This was a blast from the past for me! I have a few of these decks. I have Brian Seldons, Randys draw go, Ben Rubens red sleigh and Brian Hackers white weenie decks. All of the ones from 1998. They play against each other great, all is fair and even. I bought them when I was 16 and they have held up great with sleeves. Thank you for this video, and I vote Wotc bring these back!!!
After I sold my collection back in 2006, a collection that dated back to 95, I got the itch to play again around 2008. I found a few of these online for cheap and snatched them up. My friends and I decided to have a tournament featuring some of the greatest decks of all time. UG Madness, RUG Opposition, BR Machine Head, Affinity, Recurring Nightmare, Tinker, and Stompy. Tons of fun had by all. UG Madness won it all with Affinity right behind it. Still have them, and still fun to pull them out and give them a whirl. Reminds me of playing Type 2 back in the day, or as it is known now "Standard"
The more I play Magic, the more I want to learn about its history. From discovering new cards in old sets to watching past pro tours and learning who played what. It adds another layer of depth and ups my game. I am also starting to build a cube and these cards are fantastic!
I still have Sim Han How's Squirrel-Opposition Championship deck. It's a very fun casual deck to play. At that time, I was truly amazed by how the champions thought of constructing a very unique but powerful decks like these.
Also Professor, they made a very rare 1996 world championship deck series. I believe the decks were from the first ever Magic the Gathering tournament in NYC.
Man, I remember these. My friend brought a few of them to school and we played them against each other after school in our gaming club. Of course, at the time, we were terrible, and so we didn't think these decks were that good because we didn't know how to pilot them. We also, not knowing their value, played them unsleeved on the lunchroom tables. Regrets aside, I'll never forget my first introduction to Birds of Paradise...
I really miss those! When I started Magic, my buddy and I would buy one each, battle each other and have NO clue whats going on xD every player has stories of how they misinterpreted rules or mechanics and these stories get amplified when you put a "pro level" deck into the hands of new players. I'm very fond of my memories, surviving the game until you've cast 2 Mirari's Wake and hardcasting Decree of Justice.
I bought an ancient tomb from one of these decks for my commander deck payed less than half the price of a tournament legal one but let's be real my deck is never going to see a tournament so who cares it's still a real card
A real shame that these were discontinued after 2004. IMO these were the greatest WOTC products and - even in the general category of board games - beat anything else I've played. The most beautiful aspect of these is that they represent some of the best 75-card combinations of cards among the 7 sets they come from. Players had total freedom to generate their strategic and tactical visions to compete at the highest level and you get to experience and play them from their perspective.
Although that also does have its shadow sides, as you mentioned. I remember that about a decade ago, I used to _hate_ championship cards with a passion: When you planned to buy the _actual_ cards, you always had to carefully watch out for the article description: Some sellers loved to get sneaky about selling gold-bordered cards as the real thing by depicting the real card images and rather casually mentioning that they're not selling the tournament legal ones.
It may be nice to see the duel decks come out after every pro tour mirroring the finals match, but have them staggered back 1 set. To explain instead of getting the red burn/red-blue ensoul from origins we would get red agro/blue-black control from dragons of tarkir. I think this might be the best set up because it would give players a competitive deck that they could then spice up with the cards from the new set to their own liking.
Really loved this video. I never had a chance to play with these back in the day so seeing them now with such enthusiasm about them makes it feel like they're brand new. I really wish Wizards of the Coast would start doing this again.
Prof, I understand where you are coming from. I still have my copy of Peer Kruger's reanimater deck, along with David Humphry's Madness, Daniel Zink's Wake, and Wolfgang Edgars R/B Goblin deck, though I play the reanimater more than anything.
Because playing Randy's deck was just flat out fun back in the day, especially since 6th Edition hadn't killed the powerhouse that was Interrupts. Was always shocked it didn't go further, but I guess he just hit a few too many of the aggro RDW and WW carriers vs. the Survival/Nightmare combo.
I was in high school when these were printed and didn't have the money to buy them, but they were highly sought by my group! Hell, one of us actually got one and it was quickly banned from play because it was too good. Thanks for this video I had forgotten about these decks!
These decks were made in 1997. You know what else is made in 1997? Hong Kong 97 as in the AVGN review in my suggested videos. Coincidence? I think not.
I still have the Brian Seldane deck - the construction of it is genius, but you'd not understand exactly why without being able to play it. This was a great idea by WoTC and I have never regretted the purchase.
My friend had the Recurring Nightmare / Survival of the Fittest Deck. I hated playing against it so much. It's also the reason I'm building a legacy R/B Reanimator deck now. The nostalgia is too real.
If they made the duel decks with decks from the pro tour I would definitely love it. Of course that's most likely on the condition they weren't proxies.
I love these for EDH. Can be a really great way to pick up some staples without dropping huge amounts of cash. Plus the gold-stamp signatures just look sweet.
For any EDH player these cards are mostly regarded "legal" as they are no officially sanctioned events anyway. Proper sleeves ofcourse and then these "proxies" do a really good job for any cube/edh deck you might ever build. As a real newbie back at that time, the decks where fantastic to get a hang on building actual "real" decks. Color printings of each card to make proxies in that quality isnt even that much cheaper at all ... It really was a reasonable product for its time.
I personally was and am still interested in Julien Nuijten's Astral Slide deck, though if I had to pick one card to get from it it would be Eternal Dragon. Signed by a champ and suited to my eventual Dromoka EDH/Commander deck? Pretty sweet.
Don't forget the 1996 pro tour top 8 set.. was cool too. Ya I really hate how these stopped getting made in 2004. I once had all that were made and would take them to my local shop on non tournament nights and a lot of us had some good times when a dozen of us grabbed different years and had at it. Good times.
I have three or four of these, whenever i want to test my own decks i battle myself against them, since they're the best of the best. They're really good for deck testing, specially the blue ones, since you know, blue is kind of op (Black is also pretty good, it has phyrexian negator and plaguelord, which can and will become a pain in the ass if you're not careful. And green is tough too, but since i have a black/white deck it isn't as bad of an issue).
I recently acquired cards from championship decks for use within my EDH/Commander decks and the variance is nice in the look of the cards. They were also cheaper than the regular cards seeing as these aren't tournament legal, perfect for casual play though!
I played my uncle with the one that uses millstone and it was amazing fun, at the time, I was just starting magic and it taught me different things about the game.
