CIC Decks

Since you should "impersonate" the original player of the deck, it is a good idea to pick a deck which matches your own play-style. Do you prefer a simple "straight ahead and attack" deck, or would you rather slowly build up your game around an elegant combo? To help you decide which deck to play, here I reproduce all the official release notes which were used to describe the decks we currently play with.

1997
Jakub Slemr 1st place		Janosch Kuehn 2nd place		Svend Geertsen 3/4th place		Paul McCabe 3/4th place
	Slemr's deck features a horde of fast, black creatures. Strengthening the speed kill are a variety of spells from all five colors. Master the deck that ruled the Worlds.				Geertsen's extremely fast monocolored deck is loaded with an army of green creatures. Giant Growth, Bounty of the Hunt, and Winter Orb provide the only noncreature power. Control the creature deck that overwhelmed the competition.		McCabe's fast red-blue deck puts the opponent on the defensive. A large number of inexpensive efficient creatures creatures overwhelm the opposition. See the inner workings of a relentless attack deck that stood strong at the Worlds.

 

1998
Brian Selden 1st place		Ben Rubin 2nd place		Brian Hacker 5/8th place		Randy Buehler 12th place
	Selden's deck conquered the field by using Survival of the Fittest to put creatures into the graveyard and Recurring Nightmare to bring them back into play. The deck employs more than twenty creatures and dips into blue for Lobotomy.		Ben Rubin's archetypal red weenie deck took him all the way to the World Championship Finals. This aggressive Sligh deck consists of roughly equal parts direct damage, aggressive creatures, and land.		Brian Hacker's white weenie deck rolled over competitors with more than twenty aggressive creatures. This horde relies on creatures with shadow and the en-Kor to overwhelm the unprepared, with the threat of Cataclysm looming large.		Randy Buehler's Draw, Go deck is pure control, with over twenty counterspells and eight card-drawing engines to dig them out. The decks offense is limited to Stalking Stones and a Rainbow Efreet, but the best offense is often a killer defense.

 

1999
				Matt Linde 3/4th place
					Matt Linde's speedy mono-green deck contained 26 low-cost creatures. Supplementing this nasty creature assault were four Rancors and four Giant Growths. If his opponent wasn't smothered by turn five, Linde's Cursed Scrolls would pick up the slack.

 

2000
Jon Finkel 1st place		Janosch Kuehn 5/8th place		Tom van de Logt 5/8th place		Nicolas Labarre 5/8th place
	Jon Finkel's explosive, monoblue deck used artifacts such as Grim Monolith, Metalworker, and Voltaic Key to generate huge amounts of mana. The mana, in turn, put large creatures into play to finish off stunned opponents.		Janosch Kuehn's red-green deck used Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves to build up mana early in the game. Kuehn then delivered the finishing punch with mana-denial cards such as Stone Rain and Plow Under.		Tom van de Logt's "Replenish" deck used cards like Attunement and Frantic Search to put powerful enchantments into the graveyard. Then he used Replenish to put all of the enchantments back into play at once and pound his opponents.		Nicolas Labarre's combo deck, called "Chimera", used searching cards to fetch Fecundity, Saproling Cluster, and Ashnod's Altar so he could generate unlimited mana. With this mana Labarre used Blaze or Whetstone to plow right over his opponents.

 

2001
Tom van de Logt 1st place		Alex Borteh 2nd place		Antoine Ruel 3/4th place		Jan Tomcani 5/8th place
	Tom van de Logt's aggressive, black-red "Machine Head" deck used the good ol' "blow stuff up" method. While creatures like Plague Spitter wiped out his opponents' smaller creatures, more ferocious beasts like Flametongue Kavu aggressively cleared the board of larger threats.		Alex Borteh's monoblue combo deck contained twelve 1-toughness creatures. These helped hold the board until his Static Orb-Opposition combo could lock down his opponents' permanents - clearing the way for a horde of Merfolk to pour through for the victory.		Antoine Ruel's blue-black-red control deck survived the pressure in the early game with its almost overwhelming card-drawing capability. And in the end, Nether Spirit kept rising from his graveyard to take down his opponents.		Jan Tomcani's green-red-black "Fires" deck used mana-producing creatures to play a quick Fires of Yavimaya. Shortly thereafter,Tomcani's hasted big creatures pounded opponents' life totals to dust.

 

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Palle Møller - pmoller[at]eso.org
Last updated: 14 Oct 2002