@@ollerade5769 Legend! det är en ära att få träffa på dig i kommentarerna. Och vilken vinst! Coolt att se magic från en svunnen tid. Jag var bara 6 år gammal då och upptäckte spelet några år senare 😄
Hell yeah brother! I remember playing Ivory Gargoyle back in the day because InQuest magazine said it was good, and my friend locking me out with Stormbind. Maybe you're why 🤣
Oh man, the nostalgia. I used to play with Olle and a bunch of other really good players at a club in Gothenburg back then. When he won the whole thing, it was insane, like, I remember it being on the front page of the local newspaper and stuff like that. We were all proud as hell of him.
No Magic deck exists in a vacuum. Every deck is part of a format with its own card pool and metagame. An *aggro* deck that can lock out the meta-defining control deck is a magnificent achievement.
Aggro decks are meant to beat control. Aggro decks that can't beat control are piles. The enemy of aggro is midrange and/or combo. Control beats midrange and combo. In the early days of magic the creatures weren't really good and the theory wasn't strong enough to consistantly build actual aggro decks. You start seeing good aggro a little later with the sligh and dead guy red figuring out the mana curve theory the virtual card advantage that burning out your opponent is (it doesn't matter if you make plays that are card disadvantage if your opponent doesn't have time to deploy theirs).
@@adamstewart5188 That's what beating control entails... Having threats that dodge their removal, refuse to engage in their plan, and beat them before they stabilize.
@@joseph1150 Dodging removal and beating them before they can take control is a very different thing than telling them "If you can't win with the cards you already have in hand, you can't win."
@@adamstewart5188 Who are you quoting? It's not me. Virtual card advantage is created by the aggro deck in question here because his threats can't be answered by the cards in the control player's hand. Or can't be answered in time. If the aggro player throws away 3 cards to storm bind that's -3 card advantage, BUT if it ends the game, it's not. The control player staring at his grip of spells he doesn't have time or mana to use (or can't answer the problem at hand) is actually suffering from virtual card disadvantage. In the long run, control will win if given time. They can start throwing double pyroclasm and use draw spells to offset the loss of advantage or even just get 3 for 2s. That's why it's important for the aggro player to end the game quickly. Once the mana comes online alot of those dead cards in hand become live. Once again, a good aggro deck should be able to lock out a control deck the majority of the time (what's the point of playing a deck that isn't significantly better than 50 percent against the archetype its designed to beat?). You should be at least 55 percent against control before even thinking about sleaving up aggro.
In other words, it wasn't a "terrible" deck. It was a counter to the format built specifically to answer the current meta. Simply put, he understood the assignment.
Absolutely. I won a National Championship in a different cardgame back in 2001 with arguably a bad deck but it was a meta choice based on what I knew to be what most would be playing. My opponent in the final I had already murdered in the rounds and he scooped without playing a card so we could go to the bar instead.
Yeah, but the deck is also a deck that would lose to plenty of non pro decks... that would lose against the meta. This is why "best in the room" becomes so important. His deck was in fact worse then the meta decks but it was good against them and that is the only thing in the room. Previous meta decks would just have overrun him... Like an oldfashioned White Wheenie. It might objectivly be the worst because its so bad outside the format.
Thank you. I was 3:25 into the video and nothing of relevance had been said. Just a bunch of fluff and filler to lengthen the video. I can't stand that nonsense. Get to the point.
I love how Olle's signature card combines everything about his deck into one card. Repeatable sac for benefits, land advantage matters, spell evasion matters, buffing your own creatures to cost your opponent a card, being cheaper than any control card short of Force of Will, and elves and spiders.
I grew up slinging cardboard at recess with my friends in the 90s. We would be playing cards that today cost hundreds of dollars without sleeves, on concrete, or dirt, or pavement. It was a glorious time to be alive.
@BouncingTribbles and isn't that a healthier mindset then treating them as 1000 dollar collectibles? These cards are supposed to be played, not used in an investment portfolio!
@@EbonAvatar yep, it made me laugh seeing how much my Sylvan Libraries would be worth, but i'll never sell them. They were in all my green decks for a decade, I'll never sell those memories.
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!
and this was back when they still had all the old school showmanship, it's kinda lost these days. Back in the day everyone big had their own flair, and even without seeing their face in a clip you could TELL who was playing, it wasn't the cards they played, it was HOW they played those cards.
Cards have gotten too strong. The overpowered spells mentioned in this video Are all answers, the answer is never stronger than the card it answered. Force of will is great, but not when it counters a grizzly bear
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.
Formats that have one clear best deck always spawn "bad" decks that are made to just counter that specific deck. Necropotence dominated Standard (or was it still type 2?) the same year and weird Howling Mine / Stormbind / Whirling Dervish brews saw some play.
I had the same reaction I had when I pulled up the deck list at the start, all I knew about OG magic was that it was insanely control heavy and I saw a buncha creatures with weirdly specific amounts of toughness and a creature with shroud and I'm like supposedly everyone knows aggro beats control but this deck is "bad' even though it won the pro tour?
I think it's just if you compare "bad" decks or just decks from every year you'll probably understand their place and you could move them about a bit I see that they would be effective at other times throughout Magic. This deck really seems at home at one specific point. But I'm sure we can find a few "bad" decks. I first thought of Eggs when I saw the title, the definition of bad is kinda open too 😅.
I'm with Tim, it's a bit unfair to call a deck bad after winning a tournament in the confines of it's rules. Another glaring issue I have with this is the blanked mindset of modern magic player evaluating this. Cards were much harder to evaluate then as they weren't printed with only upside like today, and metagames were difficult to know as the internet wasn't readily used. So it's definitely an unfair comparison between modern decks vs cards in this time as they were basically different games. That being said, I don't really call modern Magic a game anymore. It's all spoon-fed to the player at this point. You're going through the motions, sure, but there's no real skill or unusual lines of thinking involved anymore. I think modern Magic is closer to Candyland.
I think you just answered your own question. They call it bad because it was specifically designed to beat a metagame that, frankly, kinda sucked. 4x Swords does NOT sound like something I would enjoy, let alone the 4x forces that follow if you even thought about preventing that
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!"
sitting there and doing nothing until your opponent interjects and then telling them why im not doing anything is my favourite part of card games. yugioh with all its verbose text is the best game for this
@@nial1396 Spot on Nial :D and countless evening/nights back in the late 90ties/early 2000, no internet, discussing trigger , reaction, which effects goes first on what made us start playing more smooth card draw games where tiny details on a card text couldn't determine a game. We ventured to Star Wars. Not better in anyway to MTG. Just faster and much more easy to get. I know I'll get roasted commenting that in a MTG video :)
It was this video that taught me a new bonus fact slash easter egg to discuss with people about Olle's invitational card. I knew Safekeeper was him but I didn't know the significance of the spider mount and I LOVE THIS lol
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.
Yeah exactly. Olle sacrificed land slots in his deck to put in more gas, and his creatures were metagamed to be very difficult to remove. Hence the Safekeeper sacrificing lands to shroud creatures.
@@shuikkanen I hadn’t even thought about it like that, but that works too! I was talking more about the land wraths and the fact that Olle was playing that 6/1 with Shroud
It was not his original card. he submited an enchant world for I believe (R) with no game text but since enchant world was removed from the game it was never printed and had to make another card which is why it is the 5th invitational card that was released despite being the 1st winner.
he also didn't really understand how notable it was to have a card made for you at first, so he kind of blew off the assignment. It wasn't until Avalanche Riders was printed that he called back and basically said he understood now, and would like his card now if the offer was still on the table. It was, as long as he rocked the long hair in the art, and history was made.
I had vaguely heard of this deck being bad out of context, but like hearing it was a Block Constructed Tournament made it make it all sense. Even with years of improvement in deck building and set design building a deck with that a small of a cardpool you end with a lots of "Well we have to reach 60 cards somehow 😢" choices lol
It also lead to some really strange, quirky and niche cards seeing play. Like for example a specific mana cost (chimeric idol, trained armadon), a specific stat line (wildfire emissary) being good. Just like Olle's spiders. Hell, even one with nothing saw play as a sideboard card against owling mine decks.
Bringing block constructed back wouldn't be anything like it was back then. Today's blocks all have their block gimmicks that ties everything together like a precon deck where are cards are not only designed to specifically interact with each other via keywords but also cover all parts of a mana curve. Also, back than cards where mostly designed the other way round: Flavour and general idea first, rules, mana costs and place within the set second. And they did so for many individual cards. These days it's the other way round: They decide first about block mechanics, rules and such, come up with a mechanic, mana cost etc. and only then try to find a fitting flavour, artwork and such within the given styleguides. In other words: In modern blocks the decks more or less build themselves and you only need to look at a set for 5 minutes to see what people will play. It's not a set of mostly individual cards where most of card interactions, synergies and combos weren't intended. Only then you can actually explore sets. These days they all feel like precons.
I feel like we'd be doing a disservice to the game itself if we called it a bad deck with bad cards when it won the tournament. Even if the cards are awful by themselves, if they dodge removal and are left unaffected by most threats in the meta, then it's not that crazy that he won?
The 'bad deck' narrative is really a modern idea that's stuck with the deck because it turns out 30 years of cards changes a lot. As I tried to point out, the context of the choices Olle made within both the tournament format and what we presumed players knew about Magic is 1996 is actually INCREDIBLE.
If you had some sort of cross-time Pro Tour event where all the Pro Tour winning decks had to face each other and weren't allowed to change their sideboards, this deck is going to be in the bottom 10% of the standings every time. That's what's meant by it being a weak deck. It was obviously perfect for the tournament it was in, though! So yeah, it's fine.
Well people are looking at it through the lens of modern cards. What is good and what is bad is always relative to the card pool available. Now these are certainly not the strongest cards in Ice Age and Alliances either but they are specifically crafted to defeat the meta at the time. So people are calling it a bad deck because they're thinking about how easy it would be to beat with modern cards, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with these in 1996.
@@deeroberts8090 He's made some pretty infamous comments like the "This product is not for you" line, and I think essentially being a spokesperson for Wizards just because he's one of the only people communicating the reasoning for their decisions to us puts him as kind of a face of WotC which has a mostly understandably bad reputation right now.
@@deeroberts8090 You loved the main designer of BOTH mirrodin and new phyrexia blocks? Really? You guys really are suckers for punishment lol It's crazy this dude still has a job.
@@thejunecooperative Also, he somehow always has a job even though he almost unalived the game at least 5 times with his design decisions. He was there for kamigawa, he was the lead on the trashfire that was mirrodin and new phyrexia. It took years for the game to recover from those but he never lost his job. Keeps printing siege rhinos and Nadus and Thoracles and say oopsie on twitter, never faces any consequences.
The "you only have to be the best in the room" statement rings VERY true to me. See, when Pokémon TCG first came about, my brother was told (strangely enough by a Policeman who'd come round to the house to take a statement on a stolen BMX who just glanced at the pile of cards and chatted for hours) that there was official tournaments held in a local village's Town Hall. My Dad droves us out there on the weekend to go check it out, and my brother brought his deck and entered into the games. He lost ONE game on the first day, when someone counted his cards and called him out for having an accidental 1-too-many or 1-too-few, whichever, where he got an immediate loss on his record. But, after that, _literally never lost a game again._ At first, they were throwing gym badges and stamping tickets and giving promo cards... But, there came a point after a few weeks/months of constant winning, when they simply had nothing "new" to give him, so gave him boosters as prizes. I remember checking the rankings online at the time and he was like ranked... I cant remember if UK or Europe, but, he was 3rd, by literally just spamming tournaments against local village kids at the Town Hall.
At least a great story, made me nostalgic even though I never understood the game well enough to play back in the days so I just collected random cards
@@mfmageiwatch "he took part in so many tournaments he made top 3" "we didnt have the money to go to tournaments". Please explain it to me then lol because that looks pretty black and white, top 3 requires a massive time and money investment already, something doesn't add up 🤣far more likely his brother DID go but realised very quickly he was a small fish in a big pond outside the town hall and was too embarassed to tell his brother he got smashed and wasn't actually that good...but i guess considering all facts available and coming to reasoned conclusions is hard for you huh?
13:40 I love the attempted hand-shake. Fleischman thought he won getting his combo off, but little did he know that was just the beginning of the end for him.
Back in my college days, the top players playing Magic were all running Black decks that heavily featured cards that killed non-black cards. So, I made a Black deck geared towards taking down Black decks, either with protection from black, life gain when black spells were used, or could target all cards of a chosen color (Black, of course). People hated playing against it, since it killed their decks very quickly. If you want to make a good deck, find out what others will be playing, and make something to counter all of it.
Hey PastryTime, as an Aussie that's been playing Magic for 28 years and League for 12 years, I can't describe how happy I am to find out not only are you into Magic, but you're producing these high quality videos delving into the past. This is fantastic content and you can bet I'll be back for every video. Thanks again.
watching this vid, the explanation of these cards in their era, the tournament of said era and just what the games used to be like in that era makes me miss it that much more. A lot of people hate and dread how slow the game used to be, but it's changed so much and drastically that it's essentially not the same game most of us who can remember it that way that far back. I returned to Magic a few years after they had introduced Planeswalkers, removed mana burn, and , what felt like, a dozen or so articles of changes that I couldn't believe it was still Magic: the Gathering anymore. This was also well into the fact that deck construction and card awareness is so much easier now than the much more strained and mysterious discoveries of playing the game was like way back when as well.
I don’t play modern, but from watching streamers play, it seems like MH3 has completely warped the format. They should just unban a ton of cards and let the chips fall where they may.
Fun fact: Back in 2002, while searching for a deck to play at my national championships, I stumbled upon one I liked on MTGO. I managed to find a similar decklist online and decided to bring it to the tournament. It was a URG deck featuring cards like Call of the Herd, Flametongue Kavu, Repel, Fire // Ice, and several other card advantage and tempo cards. When I made it to the top 8, the other players laughed when they studied my decklist, but I got the last laugh and won the tournament. The deck was built by a Swede, possibly Ole (though my memory is a bit hazy). It had lots of single and double copies of various cards, while similar decks were much more streamlined, either missing my one-offs or having them in their sideboard.
Great video, A lot of videos and articles just do a quick look at the decklist, go "hurr hurr worst deck ever to win", and move on or "write" a quick article that looks like it was generated. Great job examining the choices and the context of the cards and deck, and showing why it worked.
Finally, spending my teenage years doing nothing but watching Magic coverage is paying off! But actually thank you, it's been so much fun making this stuff glad you're enjoying it.
The missing piece in this video is the explanation that Zuran Orb was banned in 1996 Ice Age-Alliance block play and all dual lands were Painlands. Life totals were a one-way elevator unless someone played Swords on your guys. Olle just had to deal ~17 dmg per game. Hitting once with Deadly Insects or throwing 3 carda with Stormbind was 33% of his win condition. A turn 2 Stormbind (thanks, Elves) was basically a win condition against U/W that didn't maindeck Disenchant.
Zuran Orb may have been banned later (I don't actually know), but Fleishman literally uses it before he gets locked under Gargoyle Stormbind so I don't think it was banned this event...
I feel like everyone is getting confused (and weirdly defensive) about why this deck is considered "bad" despite "winning a tournament". 1) the deck isnt "bad" in the sense that it "didnt deserve to win" or won due to luck. Its more that the deck is the worst "of all the decks that have won tournaments". So if you were to hold a tournament with each winning deck, this would be the lowest. 2) the deck doesnt really have any good/string cards and doesnt SEEM to have any sort of synergy. At face value, just looking at the decklist (as he said), it kinda looks like a random collection of cards. 3) even deck construction wise, it seems random with seemingly very little "consistency". However, the point of the video is to show that the genius of the deck is through the context of the tournament. The reason this deck, which in any other situation would be bad, ended up winning is because it took advantage of the meta of the tournament. When you take this into account, the deck was genius. Though it still doesnt xhabge the fact that , compared to the other decks that have won, it still sucks .
I don't know MTG at all but as you said, looks like it was exploiting/counter the popular meta + he got "swarm deck" to put constant pressure at the opponents
Mid-late 90s Magic decks where a fun world to be in. Before the internet was everywhere and no good game guides, those booster packs could have stuff no one had ever seen before.
This is the type of quality coverage I wish they had while analyzing decks on dem pro tour stream breaks! creature choice vs removal, how the deck wants to close out, tricky plays to watch out for, yippee! great video!
I remember playing a mono black deck in the ice age block constructed event in Sydney, made top 8 but lost in first round of finals. I have always loved the block constructed formats, my favourite being Invasion block constructed. Thanks for making this video
Wow, I didn't expect to find a video like this. Good description of the principles at play and explanation of the meta back then! Also, thanks for showing the cards you're talking about as Ice Age and Alliances was a while back. 😀
And yet, Merchant scroll found itself on the restricted list. Also, memory lapse is considered too good for standard - Which quite frankly is a big "WTF mates?" for me, considered all the overpowered cards available...
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 😁
@@HungryOnPlane Aslo worth mentioning on Thawing Glaciers. The power-errata that allows 2 activations per bounce was corrected, by moving the bounce to the cleanup step.
This is an amazing video. Thank you for sharing. I've always heard about this deck but never realized why it did the way it did. Thank you for the knowledge and inspiration for MTG!
Magic is not the same today as it was back in the day. I started around Revised and I miss those cards. Big creatures and longer games were so much more fun than setting up a combo and winning in a few turns. I will forever love my Shivan Dragon.
My first sealed was Ice age/mirage and I featured a stormbind. everyone talked about how broken it was. being able to turn land into dmg was nuts. I went 2-0 1-2 2-1 2-1. I was just a kid, however that helped me establish myself as the 2nd best limited player in my city... I didn't know I was ranked at all. magic back then was wild!!!
Every aggro decks dream is to hard counter the control player. The constant lock out of drawing a card must have been so frustrating. The fact most of the removal were whiffs against the creatures play...also frustrating. The fact your endgame Land engine is just removed at will...also frustrating. The control player got controlled....and it is poetry in motion. What a deck build. Sure its made of "bad cards" but they were the perfect synergy of cards to ice the Meta Deck of the time. Great video.
I think this is what draws me into magic so much. To be able to take cards and decks that people say are bad and turn them into something impenetrable.
Those ultra pro sleeves were the only options for sleeves back then. Eventually they came out with ones that had a black back and then a red back and then just about every color.
It was only good against the best decks at a specific event. It happens more that you would think. At PT Honolulu the deck "Owling Mine" was only possible because the most populous good deck was a ponderous GWB midrange pile. It eliminated all the midrange from the tourney quickly and allowed the finals to be aggro.
If you go into an Ice Age/Alliances Block Constructed event even now, I'd be willing to bet Rade's Spider deck would still hold up. The mirror match would be a nightmare though. 😂😂
@@adamminniear3984 Well yeah, what was good within that block then, would certainly still be the same. He literally solved that format. Now, you would have to add coldsnap because it's technically a part of that block, so the decks, I feel, would be much different.
His deck made perfect sense considering the meta at the time. It was literally a counter to everything. So as long as he got the right matchups, it would shine. Combined with excellent skill, it was a winner
It was a war of attrition. By being able to keep wiping the board, the was always the option of turning the game into "He who has the most cards, wins". The actual 'heap of cards' was a part of the strategy as well.
I believe this could be the moment that the game kind of began to suck (to me). I miss when I could play a card game and enjoy it more for the thematic elements of the deck (and still have a reasonable chance of winning) vs mastering the metagame. When I first started playing, the game almost had a sort of roleplay feel to it, but now it's just mastering how to piece together different blocks or rules text and creating the strongest outcome.
Thank you for this video. I was honestly baffled by the carelessness in the Cardmarket video and out of the decks featured, this one was definitely not one to laugh at. If there actually was a "bad" deck to win the PT, I'd call for the Miracles deck. It's a deck which works well when everything goes to plan; it has a lot of power spread through itself and it is likely that a strong Miracle will turn the game over. However, today, "likely" isn't enough, not for a serious contender. I have large tournament experience only with Pauper, but even there, if you aim for the win, what you want is a consistent deck which will allow you to win because of skill - you want every game to be winnable. If you're to play 13 rounds over 2 days, losing a match or two because you didn't draw the right thing will cost you the victory. It's a deck which allows itself to screw you over, and doesn't fix for it - if any of the winning decks can be called "bad", I'd pick this one. Explosiveness, inevitability, resilience and consistency - have these four and you have a great deck. For Miracles, the last one is lacking.
Not surprised to see anti-meta decks thrive. Back when I played Yu-Gi-Oh, many players used 3 copies of the scapegoat card for a solid defense. I built a deck where the monsters either dealt piercing damaged or could attack directly if the opponent had only defense position monsters. Whenever a scapegoat was played, I would effectively win the game.
Awesome video! This is the first video of yours on this channel I've watched, and I couldn't help but think "man this guy sounds a LOT like PastryTime". Imagine my surprise to find out it IS PastryTime! Hahaha! Great stuff!
Wow .. this bring me back when I was a young kid in the early/mid 90's playing MTG not knowing what I was doing. Friends and I would build all kinds of weird decks and try out silly strats. We all even entered a tournament at our local university, and being the youngest there by far it was probably a sight. We got absolutely thrashed and didn't know a lot of the cards that were played against because we were broke kids that could only afford a pack or 2 once in a while and didn't know much outside our little bubble.
I've played Ice Age limited with friends during the pandemic, and you are really underselling Whooly Spiders. They have been powercrept by now, but it actually took them until very recently to do so. As weird as it sounds, 2/3 for 3 was a pretty good body for a long time. It stills trades well with other common 3 drops today with 3/2 stats.
I played a couple casual matches against Olle Rade at the MTG Grand Prix Rio 1998. Cool dude. He did use to play unusual decks. He was indeed very smart, often beating type 1.5 extended decks with type 2 standard decks.
I set up a deck a while ago i was so proud of. The deck itself had zero win conditions, but the trick to it was “shared fate” which was an enchantment that basically forced you to switch decks with your opponent. Since my deck had no wind conditions I’d basically beat them with their own deck. It was pretty strong but kinda slow since shared fate had a mana cost of 5, but there was tutor’s and mama ramp. Still proud of that deck even though it wasn’t tournament strong.
This reminds me of playing in States during Invasion block+ Odyssey standard. I played a GBW midrange pile that utilized Spiritmonger, Pernicious Deed, Vindicate, Mystic Enforcer…and Coalition Honor Guard. Its a 4 mana 2/4 that mudt be targeted by your opponent's spells. the format had a lot of good targeted removal and also a few powerful auras like Armadillo Cloak and the Guard did a great job of holding the line for my deck. i came in 10th, missing the Top 8 on tie breakers, but it was a blast to pilot.
I piloted a version of this deck to the finals of an ALICE (Ice Age + Alliances) tournament (around 90 competitors) this past spring. It is better than appears on the surface, certainly. It was my first ALICE event and the top level ALICE players were stunned it beat so many decks that were favored against it.
What a great video! I think people are getting triggered by the words 'bad deck' but it's really more of a comparison to the power creep of today. It's clear that the writer really understood that Olle understood the meta game, was a great deck builder, and a great pilot.
I've recently discovered a card from Ice Age could be an interesting tech in one of my commander decks, so I'm now actually looking at Ice Age as more than just an abstract 'bad set/block'. And... wow, it really is a rough one. This deck truly is terrible in every format except Ice Age Constructed specifically. Ironically, that one card I'm seeking out is Freyalise's Wind, a card that could've really handily choked out an aggro strategy like this... if it wasn't in the color that only he actually brought to the event.
![โรงเรียนห้ามรัก โดนจับได้ตาย...!! [เอิร์นไดเม่]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4u02Sbr556Q/mqdefault.jpg)
It took almost 30 years, but finally a good summary! 😊
Are you THE Olle?
Indeed!
@@ollerade5769 Legend! det är en ära att få träffa på dig i kommentarerna. Och vilken vinst! Coolt att se magic från en svunnen tid. Jag var bara 6 år gammal då och upptäckte spelet några år senare 😄
Hell yeah brother! I remember playing Ivory Gargoyle back in the day because InQuest magazine said it was good, and my friend locking me out with Stormbind. Maybe you're why 🤣
@@M00nlordFett! Kul att höra! 😊
Oh man, the nostalgia. I used to play with Olle and a bunch of other really good players at a club in Gothenburg back then. When he won the whole thing, it was insane, like, I remember it being on the front page of the local newspaper and stuff like that. We were all proud as hell of him.
He’s in the comments here
No Magic deck exists in a vacuum. Every deck is part of a format with its own card pool and metagame. An *aggro* deck that can lock out the meta-defining control deck is a magnificent achievement.
Aggro decks are meant to beat control. Aggro decks that can't beat control are piles. The enemy of aggro is midrange and/or combo. Control beats midrange and combo. In the early days of magic the creatures weren't really good and the theory wasn't strong enough to consistantly build actual aggro decks. You start seeing good aggro a little later with the sligh and dead guy red figuring out the mana curve theory the virtual card advantage that burning out your opponent is (it doesn't matter if you make plays that are card disadvantage if your opponent doesn't have time to deploy theirs).
@@joseph1150 I'm not talking about beating control. I'm talking about locking it out of the game.
@@adamstewart5188 That's what beating control entails... Having threats that dodge their removal, refuse to engage in their plan, and beat them before they stabilize.
@@joseph1150 Dodging removal and beating them before they can take control is a very different thing than telling them "If you can't win with the cards you already have in hand, you can't win."
@@adamstewart5188 Who are you quoting? It's not me.
Virtual card advantage is created by the aggro deck in question here because his threats can't be answered by the cards in the control player's hand. Or can't be answered in time. If the aggro player throws away 3 cards to storm bind that's -3 card advantage, BUT if it ends the game, it's not. The control player staring at his grip of spells he doesn't have time or mana to use (or can't answer the problem at hand) is actually suffering from virtual card disadvantage.
In the long run, control will win if given time. They can start throwing double pyroclasm and use draw spells to offset the loss of advantage or even just get 3 for 2s. That's why it's important for the aggro player to end the game quickly. Once the mana comes online alot of those dead cards in hand become live.
Once again, a good aggro deck should be able to lock out a control deck the majority of the time (what's the point of playing a deck that isn't significantly better than 50 percent against the archetype its designed to beat?). You should be at least 55 percent against control before even thinking about sleaving up aggro.
In other words, it wasn't a "terrible" deck. It was a counter to the format built specifically to answer the current meta. Simply put, he understood the assignment.
Absolutely. I won a National Championship in a different cardgame back in 2001 with arguably a bad deck but it was a meta choice based on what I knew to be what most would be playing. My opponent in the final I had already murdered in the rounds and he scooped without playing a card so we could go to the bar instead.
Yeah, but the deck is also a deck that would lose to plenty of non pro decks... that would lose against the meta.
This is why "best in the room" becomes so important. His deck was in fact worse then the meta decks but it was good against them and that is the only thing in the room. Previous meta decks would just have overrun him... Like an oldfashioned White Wheenie.
It might objectivly be the worst because its so bad outside the format.
@@Spanner1971Bsure ya did
Thank you.
I was 3:25 into the video and nothing of relevance had been said. Just a bunch of fluff and filler to lengthen the video. I can't stand that nonsense.
Get to the point.
Well yeah, but it's called a terrible deck because objectively speaking all the cards in this block were underpowered and over costed
I love how Olle's signature card combines everything about his deck into one card. Repeatable sac for benefits, land advantage matters, spell evasion matters, buffing your own creatures to cost your opponent a card, being cheaper than any control card short of Force of Will, and elves and spiders.
"How can someone so small cause so much trouble?"
The best part about watching old tournament footage is seeing unsleeved decks at international tournaments.
I grew up slinging cardboard at recess with my friends in the 90s. We would be playing cards that today cost hundreds of dollars without sleeves, on concrete, or dirt, or pavement. It was a glorious time to be alive.
@@EbonAvatar yeah, it makes me happy thinking about how many moxes and lotuses were scuffed up getting played on the blacktop at recess.
@BouncingTribbles and isn't that a healthier mindset then treating them as 1000 dollar collectibles? These cards are supposed to be played, not used in an investment portfolio!
@@EbonAvatar yep, it made me laugh seeing how much my Sylvan Libraries would be worth, but i'll never sell them. They were in all my green decks for a decade, I'll never sell those memories.
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!
and this was back when they still had all the old school showmanship, it's kinda lost these days. Back in the day everyone big had their own flair, and even without seeing their face in a clip you could TELL who was playing, it wasn't the cards they played, it was HOW they played those cards.
Yep I started by getting the cards no one wanted and so I was green mainly. I had to add red for removal.
i love that he put himself on top of his 3 mana 3/3 on the custom card, such a power move
2/3
@@mathmoril2/5 if it blocked a creature with flying this turn ;)
Small typo, but we get your point. And yes, it was an EXCELLENT power move.
I loved playing during this era. I sincerely think bad cards forced more creativity and out of the box thinking.
Sheldon was right all along, restriction breeds creativity and its good for the game. RIP man.
Cards have gotten too strong. The overpowered spells mentioned in this video Are all answers, the answer is never stronger than the card it answered. Force of will is great, but not when it counters a grizzly bear
You have to do a lot more thinking nowadays brother. So many combos and rules. Leaves more room for creativity because more options.
@@gaweindegraafeverything depends on being able to withstand a turn 3 8/3 trample haste double strike before you can do anything creative
@@speedwaygamer perfect draw red? Sure, let's measure that against perfect draw blue white. Gg
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.
Formats that have one clear best deck always spawn "bad" decks that are made to just counter that specific deck. Necropotence dominated Standard (or was it still type 2?) the same year and weird Howling Mine / Stormbind / Whirling Dervish brews saw some play.
I had the same reaction I had when I pulled up the deck list at the start, all I knew about OG magic was that it was insanely control heavy and I saw a buncha creatures with weirdly specific amounts of toughness and a creature with shroud and I'm like supposedly everyone knows aggro beats control but this deck is "bad' even though it won the pro tour?
I think it's just if you compare "bad" decks or just decks from every year you'll probably understand their place and you could move them about a bit I see that they would be effective at other times throughout Magic.
This deck really seems at home at one specific point. But I'm sure we can find a few "bad" decks.
I first thought of Eggs when I saw the title, the definition of bad is kinda open too 😅.
I'm with Tim, it's a bit unfair to call a deck bad after winning a tournament in the confines of it's rules.
Another glaring issue I have with this is the blanked mindset of modern magic player evaluating this. Cards were much harder to evaluate then as they weren't printed with only upside like today, and metagames were difficult to know as the internet wasn't readily used. So it's definitely an unfair comparison between modern decks vs cards in this time as they were basically different games. That being said, I don't really call modern Magic a game anymore. It's all spoon-fed to the player at this point. You're going through the motions, sure, but there's no real skill or unusual lines of thinking involved anymore. I think modern Magic is closer to Candyland.
I think you just answered your own question. They call it bad because it was specifically designed to beat a metagame that, frankly, kinda sucked. 4x Swords does NOT sound like something I would enjoy, let alone the 4x forces that follow if you even thought about preventing that
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!"
it was as if the pyroclasm did nothing 🤣
sitting there and doing nothing until your opponent interjects and then telling them why im not doing anything is my favourite part of card games. yugioh with all its verbose text is the best game for this
@@nial1396because too much text and all players going from memory? (I even do this on Arena, heh)
What a great story!
WP Olle you little dork 😂
@@nial1396 Spot on Nial :D and countless evening/nights back in the late 90ties/early 2000, no internet, discussing trigger , reaction, which effects goes first on what made us start playing more smooth card draw games where tiny details on a card text couldn't determine a game. We ventured to Star Wars. Not better in anyway to MTG. Just faster and much more easy to get. I know I'll get roasted commenting that in a MTG video :)
That Woolly Spider moment is such a stomach sink. We've all been there but to feel it on such a stage is something else
"mistaaaake"
It was this video that taught me a new bonus fact slash easter egg to discuss with people about Olle's invitational card. I knew Safekeeper was him but I didn't know the significance of the spider mount and I LOVE THIS lol
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.
Yeah exactly. Olle sacrificed land slots in his deck to put in more gas, and his creatures were metagamed to be very difficult to remove. Hence the Safekeeper sacrificing lands to shroud creatures.
@@shuikkanen I hadn’t even thought about it like that, but that works too! I was talking more about the land wraths and the fact that Olle was playing that 6/1 with Shroud
It was not his original card. he submited an enchant world for I believe (R) with no game text but since enchant world was removed from the game it was never printed and had to make another card which is why it is the 5th invitational card that was released despite being the 1st winner.
he also didn't really understand how notable it was to have a card made for you at first, so he kind of blew off the assignment. It wasn't until Avalanche Riders was printed that he called back and basically said he understood now, and would like his card now if the offer was still on the table. It was, as long as he rocked the long hair in the art, and history was made.
I had vaguely heard of this deck being bad out of context, but like hearing it was a Block Constructed Tournament made it make it all sense. Even with years of improvement in deck building and set design building a deck with that a small of a cardpool you end with a lots of "Well we have to reach 60 cards somehow 😢" choices lol
That's the beauty of Block, I kind of miss it sometimes.
Not only that, but in the early block tournaments, you had to have at least x (i believe 5) cards minimum of each block in it.
honestly I miss block constructed, it feels like this weird mesh and middle ground of constructed and limited and I love it
It also lead to some really strange, quirky and niche cards seeing play. Like for example a specific mana cost (chimeric idol, trained armadon), a specific stat line (wildfire emissary) being good. Just like Olle's spiders. Hell, even one with nothing saw play as a sideboard card against owling mine decks.
Bringing block constructed back wouldn't be anything like it was back then. Today's blocks all have their block gimmicks that ties everything together like a precon deck where are cards are not only designed to specifically interact with each other via keywords but also cover all parts of a mana curve. Also, back than cards where mostly designed the other way round: Flavour and general idea first, rules, mana costs and place within the set second. And they did so for many individual cards. These days it's the other way round: They decide first about block mechanics, rules and such, come up with a mechanic, mana cost etc. and only then try to find a fitting flavour, artwork and such within the given styleguides.
In other words: In modern blocks the decks more or less build themselves and you only need to look at a set for 5 minutes to see what people will play. It's not a set of mostly individual cards where most of card interactions, synergies and combos weren't intended. Only then you can actually explore sets. These days they all feel like precons.
Such a wise player. He carefully studied the format and devised a deck to topple it perfectly. A well-deserved win.
The Ivory Gargoyle punish is just devastatingly good! What a meta call!
I feel like we'd be doing a disservice to the game itself if we called it a bad deck with bad cards when it won the tournament. Even if the cards are awful by themselves, if they dodge removal and are left unaffected by most threats in the meta, then it's not that crazy that he won?
The 'bad deck' narrative is really a modern idea that's stuck with the deck because it turns out 30 years of cards changes a lot.
As I tried to point out, the context of the choices Olle made within both the tournament format and what we presumed players knew about Magic is 1996 is actually INCREDIBLE.
@@HungryOnPlane No, Yeah, I agree! It's a cool essay : )
If you had some sort of cross-time Pro Tour event where all the Pro Tour winning decks had to face each other and weren't allowed to change their sideboards, this deck is going to be in the bottom 10% of the standings every time. That's what's meant by it being a weak deck. It was obviously perfect for the tournament it was in, though! So yeah, it's fine.
Well people are looking at it through the lens of modern cards.
What is good and what is bad is always relative to the card pool available. Now these are certainly not the strongest cards in Ice Age and Alliances either but they are specifically crafted to defeat the meta at the time. So people are calling it a bad deck because they're thinking about how easy it would be to beat with modern cards, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with these in 1996.
@@WoWisdeadtome this is like saying a hammer is a bad tool because it's not a wrench.
It's really amusing hearing Mark Rosewater's voice in the clips and being like "oh yeah, he used to be a commentator."
Nosewater.
@eightywight do people not like maro now? We loved him in 2014...
@@deeroberts8090 He's made some pretty infamous comments like the "This product is not for you" line, and I think essentially being a spokesperson for Wizards just because he's one of the only people communicating the reasoning for their decisions to us puts him as kind of a face of WotC which has a mostly understandably bad reputation right now.
@@deeroberts8090 You loved the main designer of BOTH mirrodin and new phyrexia blocks? Really? You guys really are suckers for punishment lol
It's crazy this dude still has a job.
@@thejunecooperative Also, he somehow always has a job even though he almost unalived the game at least 5 times with his design decisions.
He was there for kamigawa, he was the lead on the trashfire that was mirrodin and new phyrexia. It took years for the game to recover from those but he never lost his job. Keeps printing siege rhinos and Nadus and Thoracles and say oopsie on twitter, never faces any consequences.
As someone who got into magic only just last year, I love these historical analysis style videos! Keep 'em coming!
The "you only have to be the best in the room" statement rings VERY true to me.
See, when Pokémon TCG first came about, my brother was told (strangely enough by a Policeman who'd come round to the house to take a statement on a stolen BMX who just glanced at the pile of cards and chatted for hours) that there was official tournaments held in a local village's Town Hall.
My Dad droves us out there on the weekend to go check it out, and my brother brought his deck and entered into the games.
He lost ONE game on the first day, when someone counted his cards and called him out for having an accidental 1-too-many or 1-too-few, whichever, where he got an immediate loss on his record. But, after that, _literally never lost a game again._
At first, they were throwing gym badges and stamping tickets and giving promo cards...
But, there came a point after a few weeks/months of constant winning, when they simply had nothing "new" to give him, so gave him boosters as prizes.
I remember checking the rankings online at the time and he was like ranked... I cant remember if UK or Europe, but, he was 3rd, by literally just spamming tournaments against local village kids at the Town Hall.
At least a great story, made me nostalgic even though I never understood the game well enough to play back in the days so I just collected random cards
If your dad is driving him so much he made it to top 3 in Europe you had the money
couldnt get to the east coast super trainer showdown for same reason , won an invite but couldnt get my parents to fund the trip.
@@teekay851reading comprehension is hard for you, huh?
@@mfmageiwatch "he took part in so many tournaments he made top 3" "we didnt have the money to go to tournaments". Please explain it to me then lol because that looks pretty black and white, top 3 requires a massive time and money investment already, something doesn't add up 🤣far more likely his brother DID go but realised very quickly he was a small fish in a big pond outside the town hall and was too embarassed to tell his brother he got smashed and wasn't actually that good...but i guess considering all facts available and coming to reasoned conclusions is hard for you huh?
13:40 I love the attempted hand-shake. Fleischman thought he won getting his combo off, but little did he know that was just the beginning of the end for him.
Back in my college days, the top players playing Magic were all running Black decks that heavily featured cards that killed non-black cards. So, I made a Black deck geared towards taking down Black decks, either with protection from black, life gain when black spells were used, or could target all cards of a chosen color (Black, of course). People hated playing against it, since it killed their decks very quickly. If you want to make a good deck, find out what others will be playing, and make something to counter all of it.
Tha reminds me of the time when I was running Paralyzes and beating decks that were running Terrors.. ;)
Hey PastryTime, as an Aussie that's been playing Magic for 28 years and League for 12 years, I can't describe how happy I am to find out not only are you into Magic, but you're producing these high quality videos delving into the past. This is fantastic content and you can bet I'll be back for every video. Thanks again.
watching this vid, the explanation of these cards in their era, the tournament of said era and just what the games used to be like in that era makes me miss it that much more. A lot of people hate and dread how slow the game used to be, but it's changed so much and drastically that it's essentially not the same game most of us who can remember it that way that far back.
I returned to Magic a few years after they had introduced Planeswalkers, removed mana burn, and , what felt like, a dozen or so articles of changes that I couldn't believe it was still Magic: the Gathering anymore. This was also well into the fact that deck construction and card awareness is so much easier now than the much more strained and mysterious discoveries of playing the game was like way back when as well.
WotC thought we were missing Block constructed so much they went ahead and turned all eternal formats into Modern Horizons Block constructed lmfao
I don’t play modern, but from watching streamers play, it seems like MH3 has completely warped the format.
They should just unban a ton of cards and let the chips fall where they may.
@@GorillaRadio88 Lol I remember when deathrites shaman was banned for being too strong at one mana. Then they went ahead and printed ragavan lmao
Fun fact: Back in 2002, while searching for a deck to play at my national championships, I stumbled upon one I liked on MTGO. I managed to find a similar decklist online and decided to bring it to the tournament. It was a URG deck featuring cards like Call of the Herd, Flametongue Kavu, Repel, Fire // Ice, and several other card advantage and tempo cards. When I made it to the top 8, the other players laughed when they studied my decklist, but I got the last laugh and won the tournament.
The deck was built by a Swede, possibly Ole (though my memory is a bit hazy). It had lots of single and double copies of various cards, while similar decks were much more streamlined, either missing my one-offs or having them in their sideboard.
Great video, A lot of videos and articles just do a quick look at the decklist, go "hurr hurr worst deck ever to win", and move on or "write" a quick article that looks like it was generated. Great job examining the choices and the context of the cards and deck, and showing why it worked.
Awesome vid! Keep up the great work and thorough research. You are clearly so knowledgeable.
Finally, spending my teenage years doing nothing but watching Magic coverage is paying off!
But actually thank you, it's been so much fun making this stuff glad you're enjoying it.
The missing piece in this video is the explanation that Zuran Orb was banned in 1996 Ice Age-Alliance block play and all dual lands were Painlands.
Life totals were a one-way elevator unless someone played Swords on your guys. Olle just had to deal ~17 dmg per game. Hitting once with Deadly Insects or throwing 3 carda with Stormbind was 33% of his win condition.
A turn 2 Stormbind (thanks, Elves) was basically a win condition against U/W that didn't maindeck Disenchant.
I dont konw why but hearing "life totals are a one way elevator" gets me real excited. I must be an aggro player.
Zuran Orb may have been banned later (I don't actually know), but Fleishman literally uses it before he gets locked under Gargoyle Stormbind so I don't think it was banned this event...
“Thats my secret Tony *every deck is terrible.* ”
Honestly I should've just committed to the meme but I don't want Disney to come after me.
Seeing the old school solider tokens just made my week
I feel like everyone is getting confused (and weirdly defensive) about why this deck is considered "bad" despite "winning a tournament".
1) the deck isnt "bad" in the sense that it "didnt deserve to win" or won due to luck. Its more that the deck is the worst "of all the decks that have won tournaments". So if you were to hold a tournament with each winning deck, this would be the lowest.
2) the deck doesnt really have any good/string cards and doesnt SEEM to have any sort of synergy. At face value, just looking at the decklist (as he said), it kinda looks like a random collection of cards.
3) even deck construction wise, it seems random with seemingly very little "consistency".
However, the point of the video is to show that the genius of the deck is through the context of the tournament. The reason this deck, which in any other situation would be bad, ended up winning is because it took advantage of the meta of the tournament. When you take this into account, the deck was genius. Though it still doesnt xhabge the fact that , compared to the other decks that have won, it still sucks .
all his synnergies are with his opponants card
I don't know MTG at all but as you said, looks like it was exploiting/counter the popular meta + he got "swarm deck" to put constant pressure at the opponents
Mid-late 90s Magic decks where a fun world to be in. Before the internet was everywhere and no good game guides, those booster packs could have stuff no one had ever seen before.
I can only imagine man, I hate how "solved" everything is now
00:18 my old boss is standing in this picture and a few old friends sitting down .
This is the type of quality coverage I wish they had while analyzing decks on dem pro tour stream breaks! creature choice vs removal, how the deck wants to close out, tricky plays to watch out for, yippee! great video!
I remember playing a mono black deck in the ice age block constructed event in Sydney, made top 8 but lost in first round of finals.
I have always loved the block constructed formats, my favourite being Invasion block constructed.
Thanks for making this video
Ice Age brings back so much nostalgia it hurts lol. Something about seeing a Jester's Cap with the original frame just feels magical.
14:00 Also at the age I was then, I thought Ollie Raid was one of the coolest names on earth.
Wow, I didn't expect to find a video like this. Good description of the principles at play and explanation of the meta back then! Also, thanks for showing the cards you're talking about as Ice Age and Alliances was a while back. 😀
3:47 - Homelands: "Am I a joke to you? ... Wait, don't answer that."
And yet, Merchant scroll found itself on the restricted list. Also, memory lapse is considered too good for standard - Which quite frankly is a big "WTF mates?" for me, considered all the overpowered cards available...
As an on-and-off player since Revised this was a perfect video for taking me back, thanks!
We're so lucky that Magic had good video coverage in the 1990s. So ahead of it's time
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 😁
Minor mistake: 7:14 *5 mana 6/1. Really enjoyed the vid!
WOW it's even worse that I said LOL.
@@HungryOnPlane Aslo worth mentioning on Thawing Glaciers. The power-errata that allows 2 activations per bounce was corrected, by moving the bounce to the cleanup step.
What an AMAZING video, I loved this. Never knew old tournaments were this intricate!
This is an amazing video. Thank you for sharing. I've always heard about this deck but never realized why it did the way it did. Thank you for the knowledge and inspiration for MTG!
I barely touched Magic cards (briefly in 4th grade), but this video was surprisingly easy to follow. Nice work!
I love that he keeps talking shit about a "4 mana 6/1" which is a valid thing to say.
But it's a 5 mana 6/1 so it's even worse lol.
Magic is not the same today as it was back in the day. I started around Revised and I miss those cards. Big creatures and longer games were so much more fun than setting up a combo and winning in a few turns. I will forever love my Shivan Dragon.
Thx for explaining this. I have seen this decklist soo many times and never really understood what was going on.
Your videos are great. You research well, have a smooth voice and can tell it in a reasonable time
Knowledge of the format is paramount to success. I still remember putting Aether Flash in my sideboard for the squirrel-opposition decks.
My first sealed was Ice age/mirage and I featured a stormbind. everyone talked about how broken it was. being able to turn land into dmg was nuts. I went 2-0 1-2 2-1 2-1. I was just a kid, however that helped me establish myself as the 2nd best limited player in my city... I didn't know I was ranked at all. magic back then was wild!!!
I also ran 3 skulking ghosts... they were kinda good in this format
Stormbind dodging Jokalhaups makes it a whole lot better in this format.
Yeah that's true, I knew this but failed to mention this detail in the video. It is an even bigger reason why the 'Bind was such an inspired choice.
"You don't have to be the best you just have to be the best in the room." That line went so hard!
oh wow i spotted "dead guy red" listed as one of the winning decks, that brings back so many memories it was my favourite thing ever years ago!
One day we'll do a Deadguy Red video...
@@HungryOnPlane i'll be waiting!
wooly spider is STILL one of my favorites. don't shit on my fluffy lil guy.
I would never Wooly Spider is the GOAT
Easy include in any spider deck.
Every aggro decks dream is to hard counter the control player.
The constant lock out of drawing a card must have been so frustrating.
The fact most of the removal were whiffs against the creatures play...also frustrating.
The fact your endgame Land engine is just removed at will...also frustrating.
The control player got controlled....and it is poetry in motion.
What a deck build. Sure its made of "bad cards" but they were the perfect synergy of cards to ice the Meta Deck of the time. Great video.
I KNEW I recognized the voice of the legendary Pastrytime. I felt like I was going insane. Legend knows no misses when it comes to content like this.
The vibes in the old footage remind me of the early GDC videos
Great video! I've always wondered about the context surrounding this deck
"The Pro Tour we still know and love today", I had to pause to check the date of the video
Technically the Pro Tour is still around even though it kinda didn't exist for a few years around 2020...
I think this is what draws me into magic so much. To be able to take cards and decks that people say are bad and turn them into something impenetrable.
Those ultra pro sleeves were the only options for sleeves back then. Eventually they came out with ones that had a black back and then a red back and then just about every color.
Awesome story. Love all the vintage film included. Thank you for sharing and wtg olle!
Bro you're insane, Deadly Insect's art is phenomenal
For the one shown anyway. I've always loved it. The other version though....
Oh we're aligned on the art being killer for sure.
Great video. Thank you for putting this together.
Just recently got into magic and I love videos like this. Please keep making more.
I love watching old footage of mtg in its early years with no sleeves, lol. They have no idea that they are wrecking some priceless cards, lol.
I remember building Olle's Spider deck card for card after seeing it in an issue of Scrye about a month after he won. Was sooooo bad. Lol.
It was only good against the best decks at a specific event. It happens more that you would think. At PT Honolulu the deck "Owling Mine" was only possible because the most populous good deck was a ponderous GWB midrange pile. It eliminated all the midrange from the tourney quickly and allowed the finals to be aggro.
@@joseph1150 I'm completely aware now, you're preaching to the choir. This was 28 years ago bud.
If you go into an Ice Age/Alliances Block Constructed event even now, I'd be willing to bet Rade's Spider deck would still hold up. The mirror match would be a nightmare though. 😂😂
@@adamminniear3984 Well yeah, what was good within that block then, would certainly still be the same. He literally solved that format. Now, you would have to add coldsnap because it's technically a part of that block, so the decks, I feel, would be much different.
Which was why I specified Ice Age/Alliances only, therefore not including Coldsnap.
His deck made perfect sense considering the meta at the time. It was literally a counter to everything. So as long as he got the right matchups, it would shine. Combined with excellent skill, it was a winner
I haven't played magic in a long time, but this was a fun walk down memory lane! I recognize most of the cards in Olle's deck
It was a war of attrition. By being able to keep wiping the board, the was always the option of turning the game into "He who has the most cards, wins". The actual 'heap of cards' was a part of the strategy as well.
I think this just shows how far magic has gone and I don’t think it’s a good thing, I miss these days
I really miss playing the vintage tournaments at Neutral Ground. Thanks for showing that flag in the video.
This video was a wonderful trip down memory lane, thanks.
I believe this could be the moment that the game kind of began to suck (to me). I miss when I could play a card game and enjoy it more for the thematic elements of the deck (and still have a reasonable chance of winning) vs mastering the metagame. When I first started playing, the game almost had a sort of roleplay feel to it, but now it's just mastering how to piece together different blocks or rules text and creating the strongest outcome.
Thank you for this video. I was honestly baffled by the carelessness in the Cardmarket video and out of the decks featured, this one was definitely not one to laugh at.
If there actually was a "bad" deck to win the PT, I'd call for the Miracles deck. It's a deck which works well when everything goes to plan; it has a lot of power spread through itself and it is likely that a strong Miracle will turn the game over.
However, today, "likely" isn't enough, not for a serious contender. I have large tournament experience only with Pauper, but even there, if you aim for the win, what you want is a consistent deck which will allow you to win because of skill - you want every game to be winnable. If you're to play 13 rounds over 2 days, losing a match or two because you didn't draw the right thing will cost you the victory. It's a deck which allows itself to screw you over, and doesn't fix for it - if any of the winning decks can be called "bad", I'd pick this one.
Explosiveness, inevitability, resilience and consistency - have these four and you have a great deck. For Miracles, the last one is lacking.
Not surprised to see anti-meta decks thrive. Back when I played Yu-Gi-Oh, many players used 3 copies of the scapegoat card for a solid defense. I built a deck where the monsters either dealt piercing damaged or could attack directly if the opponent had only defense position monsters. Whenever a scapegoat was played, I would effectively win the game.
Awesome video! This is the first video of yours on this channel I've watched, and I couldn't help but think "man this guy sounds a LOT like PastryTime". Imagine my surprise to find out it IS PastryTime! Hahaha! Great stuff!
Good stuff and super glad for a new video. Great content 🖤
I always enjoy good videos from the 90s. Those were the days.
Wow .. this bring me back when I was a young kid in the early/mid 90's playing MTG not knowing what I was doing. Friends and I would build all kinds of weird decks and try out silly strats. We all even entered a tournament at our local university, and being the youngest there by far it was probably a sight. We got absolutely thrashed and didn't know a lot of the cards that were played against because we were broke kids that could only afford a pack or 2 once in a while and didn't know much outside our little bubble.
I've played Ice Age limited with friends during the pandemic, and you are really underselling Whooly Spiders. They have been powercrept by now, but it actually took them until very recently to do so. As weird as it sounds, 2/3 for 3 was a pretty good body for a long time. It stills trades well with other common 3 drops today with 3/2 stats.
Hey I'm a Wooly Spider enjoyer, everyone else was a hater.
the stormbind-gargoyle interaction is so nasty, i love it
14:50 you only have to be the best on the table 😎
I played a couple casual matches against Olle Rade at the MTG Grand Prix Rio 1998. Cool dude. He did use to play unusual decks. He was indeed very smart, often beating type 1.5 extended decks with type 2 standard decks.
When you see unsleeved cards and the nostalgia for playing at the lunch table in High School in '96 slaps so hard 🤗
I don't even play Msgic, but these documentaries are always fascinating.
I set up a deck a while ago i was so proud of. The deck itself had zero win conditions, but the trick to it was “shared fate” which was an enchantment that basically forced you to switch decks with your opponent. Since my deck had no wind conditions I’d basically beat them with their own deck. It was pretty strong but kinda slow since shared fate had a mana cost of 5, but there was tutor’s and mama ramp. Still proud of that deck even though it wasn’t tournament strong.
This reminds me of playing in States during Invasion block+ Odyssey standard. I played a GBW midrange pile that utilized Spiritmonger, Pernicious Deed, Vindicate, Mystic Enforcer…and Coalition Honor Guard. Its a 4 mana 2/4 that mudt be targeted by your opponent's spells. the format had a lot of good targeted removal and also a few powerful auras like Armadillo Cloak and the Guard did a great job of holding the line for my deck. i came in 10th, missing the Top 8 on tie breakers, but it was a blast to pilot.
For a time, Homelands was the third set for Ice Age Block Constructed until Coldsnap came out.
Unofficially yes, thankfully it fit right in being filled with similarly not great cards.
Love the look of old magic cards. The soulless stuff they print today doesnt come close.
I clicked cause of my beloved thawing glaciers. Its better than you might think
perfect example of 'function over form'.
Sometimes the thing that looks the worst performs the best...and then it's beautiful.
I piloted a version of this deck to the finals of an ALICE (Ice Age + Alliances) tournament (around 90 competitors) this past spring. It is better than appears on the surface, certainly. It was my first ALICE event and the top level ALICE players were stunned it beat so many decks that were favored against it.
This is a super great video man! I hope you make more like this in the future!
What a great video! I think people are getting triggered by the words 'bad deck' but it's really more of a comparison to the power creep of today. It's clear that the writer really understood that Olle understood the meta game, was a great deck builder, and a great pilot.
I think it looked bad in 1996 to most observers too, until the matches demonstrated otherwise
I've recently discovered a card from Ice Age could be an interesting tech in one of my commander decks, so I'm now actually looking at Ice Age as more than just an abstract 'bad set/block'. And... wow, it really is a rough one. This deck truly is terrible in every format except Ice Age Constructed specifically.
Ironically, that one card I'm seeking out is Freyalise's Wind, a card that could've really handily choked out an aggro strategy like this... if it wasn't in the color that only he actually brought to the event.