Article: History of The Spoils Constructed - part 1

[botounami]

I remember pretty much all of these decks in Tulsa. Mono-banker was exceptionally strong for a while during our "meta development" stage.

Once you get to Bile/Writ/Gold Summit, I'll have to tell you the story of how Bin was introduced to that deck the night before GenCon in our hotel room

[Terence Jason Dorman]

I have to admit, the decks mentioned in this article are from what I remember seeing from my limited travel at the time, Yes, I fully give Dan credit for the Open Beta super-deck as that is what I remember. I didn't get to play a lot of Open Beta outside of Grasshopper's due to usually working at Hopper when Dan was traveling for events (he had seniority, can't blame him) and his results (which were good) dictated my view of the Beta scene. Also, I recall seeing that deck pop up in a few tournament reports AFTER Dan was in his first, so I may be wrong, but I'm making the jump that Dan created the deck as I have no reason to believe otherwise. Plus, I saw him physically put it together and playtest it haha.

As for the Part One stuff, those decks weren't Team Hopper specific. I remember Derek and Ehrhart fooling around with Deck Murder, as well as people dabbling in mono-Banker or tokens (I dabbled in tokens myself), but my impressions of Part One came from what I saw when I personally traveled around. Deck Murder in particular is what I remember a lot of the top players messing around with at New York Comic-Con the year Spoils was there, each with their own variations on the deck, and that was one of the last "majors" before Part Two was released. If I remember correctly, actually, Josh had the full Part Two spoiler on hand at the event but was only letting bits and pieces of it out.

So yes, sorry if this seems a bit New York/Hopper centric, but there really wasn't a National meta like there was when Part Two was released. Part Two saw the launch of the bus tour, the Web Blarg, regular tournament reports, and the 13ks, so the info was much more available for that era. As such, Part Two of this feature will have a lot more decks mentioned in it.

And yeah, SiN was certainly viable in Part One, I just still lean towards the idea that it was better in Part Two and therefore used my creative license to save it for this week's article.

Glad to see everyone discussing this, though. If there are more "old" players reading the article/this thread, be sure to post what you remember as the "big decks" from the Open Beta and Part One eras.

Nah, I was really only playing Limited before Seed 2.

Nothing wrong with that, but this does give me an idea for articles in the same style as this one but for Draft and Sealed strategies. I, however, am an AWFUL Limited player, so I am probably not the one qualified to write those articles.

[Hans]

Sadly i have to agree that your vision of the Part1 Meta is NOT accurate.
I travelled to all the big events in the US, while nobody played in europe. So my vision isnt blurred by any local metagame. Here is what i remember: First there were Mono Warlord, Mono Rogue and Warlord/Rogue lists dominating (at Gen Con So Cal Mono Warlord won in the capable hands of Alex Shvartzman), later on (Comic Con New York) there was Rogue/Gearsmith abusing Luteoderm Goliath recursion. The best deck at NYCC actually was Mono Gearsmith beatdown including the Nodes Engine (I used that deck to reach the final. The final couldnt be played but was split with Jason Tian, because the hall was closing down.).

[Michael (Arcane Tinmen)]

Next part of the history tour is up:
http://www.thespoils.com/spoils/view.php?pg=article_history_of_constructed_spoils_ pt2

[botounami]

Nice! It's fun to see the meta game through the different lenses here. As I remember, at least for our part, there was an EO combo that had something to do with Randolph von Macovawitz. I don't remember the specifics, but I know at one time he was put on my side of the board and then all of my resources got destroyed. I'm pretty sure it involved Mercenary's Creed.

[Michael (Arcane Tinmen)]

Third installment of this two part series is up
http://www.thespoils.com/spoils/view...ted_spoils_pt3