Pictures of the 1994 Final rematch

Andrew decided to play like it is really 1994 and proceeded to remove all cards from their sleeves.


As if it is was not badass enough he topped it by riffle shuffling his deck: P9 and dual lands included:



Eventually we proceeded to play the final like it's 1994: France vs USA:




Two typical ways to finish the game for Zak Dolan's deck: Two Serra angels beating....or Ivory Tower at 41 Health Points:


Side time. Bertrand Lestree's post side deck is a BEAST. The addition of Serendib Efreet instead of the Birds of Paradise makes it so much more efficient that they probably should have been maindeck. The maindeck Birds remain a mystery to us:


Some more games:


And then we switched deck (at this point the score was 6-4 for Bertrand Lestree's creation). And it was my turn to WIN !


Two opening hands came close to be a first time win via the famous combo: Channel+Fireball+Black Lotus+Land....but we still managed to pull one of those in mid-game:



Andrew decided to let the skills do the talking and managed to wipe my board and beat me with angels:


Andrew's deck:

Post-mortem

In total we played 18 games: Bertrand Lestree: 11- Zak Dolan: 7.

Zack Dolan's deck was not as bad as it looked on paper but It should never have won the final in 1995: The manabase proved unstable and it lack dedication: Trying to be Prison/Stasis and also Control but doing none of them consistently. Sometimes you can get an Angel out and clone it for a victory but it is a rare occurence.

The win condition seems to be Library of Alexandria. If you read the 1994 report you will see that having the Library in starting hand is a HUGE advantage. In the end it is probable that Bertrand Lestree should have been the first MTG champion in 1994....but destiny decided otherwise.

Additional reading

If you like old school deck or just want to learn more about the first MTG World Champion, here are a few more articles:

• A Starcitygames.com exclusise: "Untold Legends Early Days".