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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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!!!
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
A lot of times they intentionally avoid reprinting high value cards, because it's part of what keeps the demand for their products up. It's the same reason you're never going to get a fully functional tournament deck out of a box for a set price; because they want to keep demand up for things like boosters that are a bit of a gamble and make them money. There is an interview floating somewhere around the internet with the creator of Magic The gathering, by some sort of financial magazine. He get's a lot of credit for being very tactical about how he designed the game and marketed it.
After leaving magic for 10+years. I dug out my cards and made a order online to complete a 2001 Champion set with real cards. Was a great deck to play and so excited to have the full proper deck finally. Thanks to 25 the 4 rihsadon ports i needed have come down
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.
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.
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.
Ah the good old days, I remember working on a deck very similar to John Finkel's (2000) Could never find the gold-bordered decks in my local shops, except finally after Onslaught/ Mirrodin (worst meta ever) and that ghastly astral slide deck finally showed up. I only bought it because it was cheap.
Had one of these decks since 2002. It was a quarterfinalist from sydney 2001. I couldn't give the thing away. Finally sold on ebay for $10 with shipping. No one wanted it around me. It was cool but I couldn't play with it. I think i bought it for $10 new. Played it once.
i had gotten 2 of these off of a $200 collection i bought alongside 70 or so snow-covered lands and plenty of other goodies. i was not dissatisfied with that purchase at all :)
I severely miss these...along with the casual reviews of Ertaislament.com. The best analogy that comes to mind is playing a precon deck is similar to testdriving a car off an automobile museum lot. You get an insight into the chronology and designer's intent. Those World Champ decks are F1 cars by comparison.
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.
Professor, i really enjoyed this retro review, could you do more these, please ? I play with 2 Gaea's cradle from the 1999 World Championship Deck. Great proxies, but expensive ones.
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.
wouldn't it be great if stores gave away proxied top tier deck to the winner of a championship. hmmm Maybe we are on to something.
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 wish they had kept doing this, at least for finalist decks.
progste these cards are also perfect for cubes
Lots of people use the blank Proxy Cards to get them drawn on by Magic Artists, which is really cool.
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.
Pokemon started these in 2004... Wait... That's when the magic ones ended...
...and they still exist.
OG Magic must have been amazing. I wish I was playing at that time.
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...
Ahhhhh 1997, my mother had just pushed me out of her womb, good times good times.
you are 20-19 years old.
Was it the last time you were inside a woman? Ayooooo
How is she, these 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.
I loved the ending very funny.
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!
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 And then you wake up and see a playset of Tarmogoyfs, costing each one 110€... :(
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.
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!
I own the 1999 Kai Budde World Champ deck. It's been a ton of fun to play over the years and I never regretted the purchase.
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.
Andros Check out the Collectors Edition, or Collectors set, something like that. They have a black border front, but a gold border back.
I remember when you only had around 5,000 subscribers XD. Now your reaching as far as 10,000! Good job professor!
5 years and he’s multiplied it 5000%. Good job Professor indeed. 🤔😏
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.
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.
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!
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!
I loved playing with Brian Selden's RecSur deck when I first started playing. I also liked the video that accompanied some of them.
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 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.
Oh wow, I had completely forgotten about those! Great find!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I have no idea how often I've gone through trade binders and found cards from these with the gold border colored in black.
That’s so sad. ;w;
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 lvoed these so much. Sorry they left and I hope they bring them back, Great video thank you
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!
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!!!
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!
These should replace Duel Decks.
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
***** That is just your opinion ;)
***** it's more logical than the stock market tbh
I have a scroll rack from one if those decks, I love that thing to death!
Epic, Thanks Profesor I asked what these were and you did a video.
You realy are the Number 1. Magic the Gathering Source and teacher on youtube.
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.
Randy Buelher is one of the casters you see during PTs. He used to play pro but not anymore. Google him.
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.
I had the 2003 Peer Kröger deck. Was looking it up just now. Man time flies
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.
I love these decks, my cube has so many gold bordered cards and all the swamps are gold bordered!!
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 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.
it's a net deck in a box!! XD
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.
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.
These decks are just awesome. I so wish they would return!
I guess you're not the only one. These aren't from wotc, but they're close.
www.etsy.com/shop/ChampionshipDecks
Loved these products. My friends and I always rolled a die to determine which deck we will play. It was really fun.
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.
I was a huge fan of World Championship Decks. It gave my friends a chance to play high level Magic that we only read about in the Duelist...
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.
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.
I still got my Brian Selden and Svend Geertsen Championship decks. Nostalgia!
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!
Nice to see the Dean is keeping you in line.
i think it would be neat to see these again. the top 8 of the pro tour, or the standard modern and legacy champions.
As a paid up Patron, I vote for more of this kind of video.
Just noticed your copies of Lev Grossman's The Magicians and the sequel. Great taste!
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.
I remember buying one of those. takes me back...
I got the 1999 ones way back when, a monstrous Red-Artifact deck by Kai Budde and a monoblack Control by Jakub Slemr - VERY cool decks!
we used to pick these up in comic shops for $ 10.00 . it was a lot of fun to play these decks.
Peer Kroger's reanimator deck was given to me by my art teach when I was getting into magic in the 6th grade back in 2001
Such a great idea for a video. You keep bringing the great content Professor.
These Retro Reviews are the best content ive seen anywhere I love the nostalgia thank you.
1997, the year I learned to play Magic, using the Portal Starter Set with my brother. I managed to find a BRAND NEW copy of that set online for $40.
I've always wondered why the hell they don't still make these, just keep them nonlegal and they'll still sell just make limited print runs.
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
I miss these... They really helped with getting better.
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.
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.
This video was insane! Such a cool product! It would be very cool if wizards brought these back.
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 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 played once against the BR Goblins deck. Geez, it was such a beating! and now Piledriver is in standard again!
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.
Our LGS has a champos tournament where each player gets a random champion deck each round! I haven had a chance to do it but I hope to soon!!
A lot of times they intentionally avoid reprinting high value cards, because it's part of what keeps the demand for their products up. It's the same reason you're never going to get a fully functional tournament deck out of a box for a set price; because they want to keep demand up for things like boosters that are a bit of a gamble and make them money. There is an interview floating somewhere around the internet with the creator of Magic The gathering, by some sort of financial magazine. He get's a lot of credit for being very tactical about how he designed the game and marketed it.
I was roaming the halls of middle school in 1997.
It was nice of them to stamp the sideboard cards with a little SB at bottom of the cards.
After leaving magic for 10+years. I dug out my cards and made a order online to complete a 2001 Champion set with real cards.
Was a great deck to play and so excited to have the full proper deck finally. Thanks to 25 the 4 rihsadon ports i needed have come down
I loved this decks, they were perfect.
Ways ahead of todays duel decks
yeah these are fun to play. and you can mix up the years it doesn't matter they play well against each other. great video prof.
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.
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.
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.
Ah the good old days, I remember working on a deck very similar to John Finkel's (2000)
Could never find the gold-bordered decks in my local shops, except finally after Onslaught/ Mirrodin (worst meta ever) and that ghastly astral slide deck finally showed up. I only bought it because it was cheap.
Had one of these decks since 2002. It was a quarterfinalist from sydney 2001.
I couldn't give the thing away.
Finally sold on ebay for $10 with shipping. No one wanted it around me.
It was cool but I couldn't play with it. I think i bought it for $10 new. Played it once.
I had thwaw decks. I hardly knew how they worked but I loved them.
I really really wanted to see that game, my mouse jumped to the video time to see if it was going to go down lol!
Nice touch on the end of the video.
i had gotten 2 of these off of a $200 collection i bought alongside 70 or so snow-covered lands and plenty of other goodies. i was not dissatisfied with that purchase at all :)
I severely miss these...along with the casual reviews of Ertaislament.com. The best analogy that comes to mind is playing a precon deck is similar to testdriving a car off an automobile museum lot. You get an insight into the chronology and designer's intent. Those World Champ decks are F1 cars by comparison.
Me and some of my friends had some of these decks and we always played if your deck was sleeved you could use the cards in kitchen tabletop magic
I wish they would bring these back, it would be great for commander players
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.
Professor, i really enjoyed this retro review, could you do more these, please ? I play with 2 Gaea's cradle from the 1999 World Championship Deck. Great proxies, but expensive ones.
Wizards printing these again would be the only way they could get me to return to playing Magic.