The Surprising Genius of the Worst Deck to Win a Pro Tour

What's the worst deck to ever win a Pro Tour?

While I'm pretty sure it's still this one I think Magic Pro Tour Legend Olle Rade doesn't get nearly enough credit for how innovative his deck really was.

While sure, it's an absolute pile that no one would be caught with in 2024 back in 1996 for how much Olle was doing wrong there's a lot right about this deck.

At the heart of the first win of one of the greatest Magic players to ever play and a first class Hall of Famer this deck spoke at length about how good Olle was at playing his style, metagaming and honestly outplaying everyone back in the early days.

Looks like Block Constructed got broken again and you won't believe the creatures that get it done.

Move over Bloomburrow, there are some old school monsters ready to take you back to the third ever MTG Pro Tour.
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Credits:

- This video features the songs 'Title' and 'The Void' from the game 'Orb of Creation', used with permission. Thanks Marple for being awesome.

- Footage used is presumably owned by the WOTC and the PlayMTG channels. Everything was used with the intention of sharing the great stories of competitive Magic and credit was attributed as best I could.

[ollerade]

It took almost 30 years, but finally a good summary! 😊

[Jonas]

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.

[adamstewart]

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.

[therealbahamut]

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.

[TimeSpinner]

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.

[BouncingTribbles]

The best part about watching old tournament footage is seeing unsleeved decks at international tournaments.

[djbobilicious]

I loved playing during this era. I sincerely think bad cards forced more creativity and out of the box thinking.

[Dasein]

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!

[BigNonsense]

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

[lucianpayne]

i love that he put himself on top of his 3 mana 3/3 on the custom card, such a power move

[timothyvandenberg]

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.

[Ariamaki]

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."
mistaake!"

[robertphillips]

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.

[yawg]

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

[kharkarus]

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?

[mantidream]

Such a wise player. He carefully studied the format and devised a deck to topple it perfectly. A well-deserved win.

[Lumpyrox]

The Ivory Gargoyle punish is just devastatingly good! What a meta call!

[GrizonII]

It's really amusing hearing Mark Rosewater's voice in the clips and being like "oh yeah, he used to be a commentator."

[makenshao]

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

[zubrhero]

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.