Worlds 1994 (Milwaukee) Bertrand Lestrée (standard)
Why did these decks survive? What were the competitors' decks like at the time?
I believe that you can learn a lot about deckbuilding from studying the decks of the top players, just like you can learn about chess by studying the games of grandmasters. Hopefully, you'll find my thoughts on the championship decks interesting.
Bertrand's deck is the classic approach to playing
Channel
+
Fireball
. It uses a lot of very advanced techniques. At the time, he was about a month or two ahead of all the competition in Europe in his deckbuilding skill, and half a year ahead of most of the American players. Bertrand did a great job figuring out what decks were dominating the tournament scene and then he built his deck to stop them.
His plan was to kill the opponent as quickly as possible, ideally with the
Channel
+
Fireball
combination. In order to do that, he had to be ahead of his opponent on life. That meant he had to attack on turn one and not ever let up.
His deck had a lot of low casting-cost spells, similar to the "Sligh" deck developed two years later, so that he could be sure and cast a spell every turn. You'll notice that there are no cards in his deck with a casting cost higher than four, but that there are several "X" spells with variable casting cost. This is typical for an attacking deck.
He used a relatively high percentage of mana, so that he would be sure and draw enough to cast his spells early in the game -- since his deck was a quick attack deck, and he couldn't afford to wait to draw the land he needed. He included four
Mishra's Factory
so that he would have extra land against a land destruction deck but still be able to attack quickly if he drew a lot of land in his opening hand.
He chose very efficient creatures -- ones that can do a lot of damage for very little mana.
Kird Ape
,
Mishra's Factory
,
Whirling Dervish
and
Argothian Pixies
. He included quick sources of non-land mana, both creatures (
Birds of Paradise
) and artifacts (Moxes).
Surprisingly, he didn't include the
Mox Pearl
or the
Sol Ring
, opting instead for more offensive cards and cards that produced mana of the color of his spells. For his deck, this actually makes sense, since he has very few cards that require a substantial amount of colorless mana. In fact, only 10 cards in his deck need two or more colorless mana, and four of those are the
Fireball
that he plans on casting with
Channel
to end the game. This leaves only six spells (10 percent of his deck) where a
Sol Ring
or a
Mox Pearl
would do much good -- clearly a case where
Birds of Paradise
would be a better choice, since 28 cards (almost half his deck) requires colored mana to cast. Therefore, he takes three
Birds of Paradise
and makes sure that he has a lot of sources of green mana (14 other than the birds, almost a quarter of his deck) so that he can then easily cast them on the first or second turn.
One of the things that Bertrand did better than anyone else at the time was the "meta-game." He fine-tuned his deck to easily stop the main decks that were in style at the time. One of the strongest decks in Europe at the time was the
Juzam Djinn
(and/or
Juggernaut
) deck. This deck hadn't even been seen at the time in America, but sure enough, Dominic made it to the semifinals with a deck like this.
Bertrand included ways to stop this deck for very low mana, so that even if he didn't get enough mana to start the game, he would still easily have a way to deal with the threat. The
Argothian Pixies
could block
Juggernaut
and the
Whirling Dervish
could block
Juzam Djinn
. This gave him enough time to find the
Control Magic
or the
Channel
+
Fireball
combination or the
Icy Manipulator
or the
Chaos Orb
. Most people who look at his deck are surprised that he chose
Argothian Pixies
over
Elvish Archers
, but given the number of
Juggernaut
in play at the time, this makes a lot of sense.
There were also a lot of land destruction decks in play at the time. Bertrand's deck would typically beat them quite easily due to his high percentage of land, his alternate sources of mana, and his low casting-cost spells.
Blue counterspell decks were the another popular deck at the time. Bertrand would play the
Mishra's Factory
, which couldn't be countered, and then continually pummel the opponent with creatures and bolts, always waiting for them to be tapped out before playing
Channel
+card: di Fireball (LEA). If he came up against a deck with lots of counterspells and almost no creatures, he would also do very well, since only one card in the deck had to target a creature. At the time, most of the decks without creatures were reactive decks using counterspells and
Control Magic
-- this meant that his
Control Magic
was still good, since he could use it to re-establish control of his own creature if he was playing against a purely reactive deck.
Another clever thing that Bertrand did was to spread his damage sources out over several colors, so that if you got out a
Circle of Protection: Red
, he could still kill you with a green creature or a blue
Psionic Blast
. If you cast
Tsunami
to destroy all his isles, he could still hit you with a
Lightning Bolt
. This strategy made it easier to get around sideboards.
Inclusion of a fourth color was justified because each of the two cards included was key to his strategy and a potential game winner. The
Demonic Tutor
was necessary to find the
Channel
in a hurry. The
Mind Twist
was necessary to empty the opponent's hand of counterspells, big creatures, and creature removal cards. Also, it tended to win a lot of games if played early.
With three
Birds of Paradise
, a
Mox Jet
, a
Black Lotus
, and four lands that could produce black, it was relatively easy for him to get black if he really needed it -- nine sources of mana isn't too bad for only two spells. This ensured that he would almost always have the mana to cast the spell by the time that he drew the card.
It is interesting to note that even his defensive spells --
Control Magic
,
Chaos Orb
, Icy Manipulator (LEA) -- can be used as an offensive weapon, to take out a land or use a creature against the opponent. He was able to double up on offense and defense successfully by choosing offensive spells that could be used defensively if necessary, like the
Argothian Pixies
.
Bertrand's sideboard is also very interesting and well thought out. City in a Bottle was for use against decks with a lot of Djinns and Efreets.
Control Magic
was useful against decks that were able to quickly play a large creature using things like
Mana Vault
. Disintegrate would work well against regenerating creatures or against decks using
Mana Flare
.
Flashfires
would stop the white weenie and Circle of Protection strategies.
Forcefield
would also help against the large creature decks using
Berserk
.
Lifeforce
would stop the black weenie decks.
Serendib Efreet
would be sideboarded in against another bolt deck, or if playing against
Moat
.
Tsunami
would go in against the mono-blue counterspell deck. Unlike today, there were a lot of one-color decks in play at the time, so a lot of color-hoser cards made sense. There were also a lot of creature heavy decks, since most players were following the "one-third creatures" rule of thumb. This made anti-creature cards very good.
You might be wondering why Bertrand was playing 61 cards. Apparently, he had heard the same rumor that everyone else had heard -- that ripping up a
Chaos Orb
and flipping the pieces would enable you to destroy all of your opponent's cards, provided you scattered the pieces properly. He had planned for just such an eventuality, in case he should he reached the finals. That's why he played 61 cards -- so that after he ripped up the
Chaos Orb
, he would still have a tournament-legal 60 deck. I overheard him asking a judge about ripping up the
Chaos Orb
before the finals started, and it made me a little bit nervous, but the judge said that it wouldn't work -- once you rip up a
Chaos Orb
, it ceases to be a
Chaos Orb
. Fortunately, the subject didn't come up in the tournament, since he never drew the
Chaos Orb
against me.
One of the first things that I noticed about Bertrand's deck is that it didn't have
Timetwister
or
Wheel of Fortune
. At first, this puzzled me -- I thought if I was playing the deck, I would want to dump my hand quickly and then refill it immediately afterwards. However, if he was playing against another similar deck, it could just as easily give his opponent the cards that he needed to win. To top it off, he might draw those two cards (
Timetwister
and
Wheel of Fortune
) when he didn't have enough mana or when he really needed a
Lightning Bolt
instead. Since he was going all-out offense, those cards do nothing to directly kill the opponent, therefore they slow it down. Personally, I like them, and I would play them in the deck, especially given the low average casting cost of the cards in his deck -- but maybe that is a mistake.
