I was around back then, and I don’t remember why the odd custom of naming decks after breakfast cereals started, or caught on. Of course, my favorite deck didn’t follow that custom, and was simply called “Academy,” after the key land. One of the odd things about extended back then was how WotC made an exception for the Dual lands when revised rotated out of extended. They rotated all cards from revised out of extended, except the dual lands, and I think that they did that twice. Players argued that the Duals were integral to the identity of the format, and that they needed to stay legal, even if revised wasn’t. It is something that, to the best of my knowledge, was never done again in any way, shape, or form. That is an odd part of Magic history that I find interesting at least.
Fruity Pebbles Is the earliest I'm aware of. It popped up in standard when Tempest released, so I think it started the trend. Cocoa Pebbles was a variant that came later in extended and added Necro to the list. Full English Breakfast came later and it's name was a bit of a jab at the cereal decks. A Full English Breakfast is better than cereal after all. Full English Breakfast created a new naming convention that led to decks like Cephalid Breakfast. The breakfast food theme would continue with decks like Sunny Side Up, Eggs and Cheerios.
The name is actually more relevant to the deck than most decks named after cereals, because the art on Illusions of Grandeur features a "silly rabbit" riding a dragon.
These historic deck dives are now my fave series on UA-cam. All the pro mtg stuff I heard about as a kid were from card game magazines, during the time when magic was the most busted. But I never got to play. Being able to re-live that era now and reconstruct these decks as collectors items is a thrill
Probably the most perfect combo deck of all time. Going through the list, almost every card on the 1999 list is either banned in Legacy or still a staple in the format.
IIRC, Trix exemplified not just the Combo deck archetype but also the other 2 main basic archetypes (Aggro and Control) by how they interacted with each other. Trix was fast enough to beat Sligh (the RDW Aggro deck of their time) but was at a disadvantage against Control where the latter could specifically take out Trix's key cards. So at the time, those top decks defined the 3 basic archetypes' interactions with each other in a Rock-Paper-Scissors manner: Combo usually beat Aggro, Control usually beat Combo, Aggro usually beat Control. That's not set in stone, of course. In any game, victory and defeat will still depend on the specific deck and the particular cards drawn. That said, Trix's part in MTG history is in truly representing Combo decks as a type, shaping later game strategy and theory.
This is why most Trix decks sideboarded in Phyrexian Negators against Control. Mono Blue control could not deal with a turn 1 Swamp, Ritual, Negator play. Trix turned itself into a pseudo-aggro deck to beat control.
Great summary. Only one tiny critique: The version of Trix decks that were ran after DR got banned, bit before Necro itself got banned were interesting decklists on the own simply because everyone (to my memory at the time, at least) predicted that with DR being banned and Mana Vault getting the axe, that Trix would still dominate because it would switch over to using Mox Diamond and lean even harder on cheap and/or free spells... Which it did-- banning DR surprisingly made the deck even better (and mono black decks running Necro much worse) because now you could run duress, unmask, FOW and even Misdirection. The versions that splashed red for Firestorm were brutal in their own right as they could board clear PT Junk decks which were their nemesis at the time. That was the version I ran with until Necro finally got the ban hammer- complete with SB Negators, and Pyroblast.
Towards the end of Trix's reign, I switched over to Oath decks and quickly latched onto Zvi's Turboland Oath, but Horn Of Greed's and Explorations were hard to come by at my local store. Right before a GP in PDX, I bought a pack of Stronghold and a pack of Exodus and ripped a HOG and an Exploration back to back and ran an anti-trix package where I went 2-0 against Trix but lost 2 games but to RDW because I couldn't flip a spike feeder to stay alive. RIp Trix. Hated playing against it almost as much as I hated playing it.
IIRC the "naming combo decks after cereal names" trend started when one of the original pilots of the Enduring Renewal+Goblin Bombardment combo registered the deck and was told "you'd have to be Fruity Pebbles to play this" (this from an issue of Scrye or TopDeck from like 2000/01
Back in the day I played around with a deck with a similar theme. I used donate/forbidden crypt. Along with Jesters Mask and a few more components, the goal was to use something like thran foundry to shuffle the opponents graveyard into their library, then cast and donate the crypt. Counter spells were use for the set up, and the mask was a nice finishing touch. After the donation, end turn and opponent loses on the spot.
A few articles have named Trix as the #1 deck in extended history. It makes sense, the deck was competitively successful, powerful and absolutely unique to Extended, it was the only format that has ever had anything like it show up consistently.
I played (and lost to) Kai Budde who was playing Trix at GP Florence in 2000, I played a sweet Survival of the fittest deck. He went on to make top 8, while I finished 17th, I was pretty happy with that 😊 Trix was by far the best deck, and in fact, there were 4 Trix decks in the top 8! I guess land - ritual - necropotence was pretty hard to beat 😅
I actually took Trix into a MTGO competition, the deck ran Academy Rector for Yawgmoth's Bargain, Cabal Therapies, Force of Will, and Tinker for Blightsteel Colossus. People kind of didn't know what the fuck i was even playing, and MTGO listed my deck as a Storm deck even though i had 4x Donate and 4x Illusions of Grandeur main deck and wasn't running Tendrils. The first match i combo'd out on turn 2 with Academy Rector sac'd for Yawgmoth's Bargain, i drew like 18 cards, cast Illusions of Grandeur, drew another 18 or 19 cards, my opponent was at this point very annoyed, telling me to, "get to the point.", at which i Donate'd the Illusions and t hey were unable to pay for it with their Mishra's Workshop. I later lost to a aggro/hate deck. I'm actually surprised you don't mention Rectal Trix in your video, but you do mention Cat Pact so all is forgiven.
Nine Lives is a pretty recent take on the same strategy. Stack it up with counters, give it to the opponent, one burn spell and there you go. Alternatively you can just give it away and then use non targeted removal to make them lose
I was like "how the hell is this deck considered one of goats in its format?" And then you said, "Necropotence." I laughed out loud; you can win with Wood Elemental if you have 4 Necro in your deck.
Trix is one of my favorite combo decks and I wish there was a better way to apply it into pioneer or mtg arena currently(it's nine lives or demonic pact which makes me hurl when it comes to deck building). In fact, w/o Trix you don't get Alan Comers "Miracle Gro". Why is that significant? Many deem Miracle Gro as the precursor to Delver, Deaths Shadow, and Faeries. Maybe even as far as the 1st grindy tempo deck. Hope Nizzahon does a video on it soon if not already.
Takes me back to the time I got a win vs Trix with my Sligh deck because I drew multiples of my sideboard Red Elemental Blasts and was able to destroy my opponent's after he paid lots of life to draw his Donate. (Not pictured in this memory: the myriad of times I lost to Trix...)
After being legal in extended, I remember Trix was the deck to beat in Vintage (then called T1). Isn't that reported here because Wizards didn't enforce the format, back then?
the card does not leave the battlefield when you cast donate on it, so you get the 20 life for it entering under your control, and they lose the life for it leaving the battlefield under their control when they can no longer pay for the cumulative upkeep cost
In Magic, “the battlefield” is one zone shared between the two players. So it’s not leaving one player’s battlefield and entering the other’s. It stays on the battlefield and just switches which player is controlling it.
I fought this deck once in the only tournament I've played and I found it plain boring. I was only there because a friend invited me, so I was thinking I would have a fun time. since I didn't have a deck, I borrowed a melfork build from a dude who had a few spare decks for people who wanted to join. it was decent, but once I saw that dude playing the enchantment, I just thought "wait, something fishy is about to happen". in the second game, I added removals and counterspells, but these kind of bs combo decks always comes with a toolbox sb full of answers. to someone who's used to tournaments and playing with friends, I understand the fun, it just didn't looked like that at the time I was seeing it happening.
This is a hard dislike for me. Type 1 and Type 1.5 were not money formats so I can understand the omission. The Mono-Blue versions should have been shown as it's important for the overall evolution and that the UR Kai Budde version didn't spring from nothingness.
The troll face the mage makes on Donate's art is legendary.
I was around back then, and I don’t remember why the odd custom of naming decks after breakfast cereals started, or caught on. Of course, my favorite deck didn’t follow that custom, and was simply called “Academy,” after the key land.
One of the odd things about extended back then was how WotC made an exception for the Dual lands when revised rotated out of extended. They rotated all cards from revised out of extended, except the dual lands, and I think that they did that twice. Players argued that the Duals were integral to the identity of the format, and that they needed to stay legal, even if revised wasn’t. It is something that, to the best of my knowledge, was never done again in any way, shape, or form. That is an odd part of Magic history that I find interesting at least.
It might have started with Full English Breakfast. Then, the US players stepped in with tongue-in-cheek sugary breakfast cereals.
Yes full English definitely came first. I don't recall any other examples though besides Cheerios.
@@TheJacklikesvideos there was Cocco Pebbles (the enduring renewal, zero cast, goblin bombardment deck)
Fruity Pebbles Is the earliest I'm aware of. It popped up in standard when Tempest released, so I think it started the trend. Cocoa Pebbles was a variant that came later in extended and added Necro to the list. Full English Breakfast came later and it's name was a bit of a jab at the cereal decks. A Full English Breakfast is better than cereal after all. Full English Breakfast created a new naming convention that led to decks like Cephalid Breakfast. The breakfast food theme would continue with decks like Sunny Side Up, Eggs and Cheerios.
For some reason revised duals is legal in 93/94. I have heard the explanation, but never gets it.
The name is actually more relevant to the deck than most decks named after cereals, because the art on Illusions of Grandeur features a "silly rabbit" riding a dragon.
Technically the rabbit is imagining becoming a large dragon, but you are correct.
Idk, Cheerios is pretty relevant.
These historic deck dives are now my fave series on UA-cam. All the pro mtg stuff I heard about as a kid were from card game magazines, during the time when magic was the most busted. But I never got to play. Being able to re-live that era now and reconstruct these decks as collectors items is a thrill
Trix is definitely in the top 10 decks named after cereal.
We need a top 10 decks named after cereal
Probably the most perfect combo deck of all time. Going through the list, almost every card on the 1999 list is either banned in Legacy or still a staple in the format.
This combo is the absolute representation of the sentence "haha die"
Cat Pact is one of the funniest decks ever! A worthy offspring of Trix.
IIRC, Trix exemplified not just the Combo deck archetype but also the other 2 main basic archetypes (Aggro and Control) by how they interacted with each other.
Trix was fast enough to beat Sligh (the RDW Aggro deck of their time) but was at a disadvantage against Control where the latter could specifically take out Trix's key cards.
So at the time, those top decks defined the 3 basic archetypes' interactions with each other in a Rock-Paper-Scissors manner: Combo usually beat Aggro, Control usually beat Combo, Aggro usually beat Control.
That's not set in stone, of course. In any game, victory and defeat will still depend on the specific deck and the particular cards drawn.
That said, Trix's part in MTG history is in truly representing Combo decks as a type, shaping later game strategy and theory.
This is why most Trix decks sideboarded in Phyrexian Negators against Control. Mono Blue control could not deal with a turn 1 Swamp, Ritual, Negator play. Trix turned itself into a pseudo-aggro deck to beat control.
Last deck should obviously have been called Trixis!
Great summary. Only one tiny critique: The version of Trix decks that were ran after DR got banned, bit before Necro itself got banned were interesting decklists on the own simply because everyone (to my memory at the time, at least) predicted that with DR being banned and Mana Vault getting the axe, that Trix would still dominate because it would switch over to using Mox Diamond and lean even harder on cheap and/or free spells...
Which it did-- banning DR surprisingly made the deck even better (and mono black decks running Necro much worse) because now you could run duress, unmask, FOW and even Misdirection. The versions that splashed red for Firestorm were brutal in their own right as they could board clear PT Junk decks which were their nemesis at the time.
That was the version I ran with until Necro finally got the ban hammer- complete with SB Negators, and Pyroblast.
Towards the end of Trix's reign, I switched over to Oath decks and quickly latched onto Zvi's Turboland Oath, but Horn Of Greed's and Explorations were hard to come by at my local store.
Right before a GP in PDX, I bought a pack of Stronghold and a pack of Exodus and ripped a HOG and an Exploration back to back and ran an anti-trix package where I went 2-0 against Trix but lost 2 games but to RDW because I couldn't flip a spike feeder to stay alive.
RIp Trix. Hated playing against it almost as much as I hated playing it.
IIRC the "naming combo decks after cereal names" trend started when one of the original pilots of the Enduring Renewal+Goblin Bombardment combo registered the deck and was told "you'd have to be Fruity Pebbles to play this" (this from an issue of Scrye or TopDeck from like 2000/01
Back in the day I played around with a deck with a similar theme. I used donate/forbidden crypt. Along with Jesters Mask and a few more components, the goal was to use something like thran foundry to shuffle the opponents graveyard into their library, then cast and donate the crypt. Counter spells were use for the set up, and the mask was a nice finishing touch.
After the donation, end turn and opponent loses on the spot.
A few articles have named Trix as the #1 deck in extended history. It makes sense, the deck was competitively successful, powerful and absolutely unique to Extended, it was the only format that has ever had anything like it show up consistently.
Illusions of Grandeur has a bunny on it.
so much cool art in this deck, both the combo cards and necropotence in particular
I made a deck that was built around the illusions/donate combo back in the day. I also added in a couple of winter orbs to be more of a villain.
I played (and lost to) Kai Budde who was playing Trix at GP Florence in 2000, I played a sweet Survival of the fittest deck. He went on to make top 8, while I finished 17th, I was pretty happy with that 😊 Trix was by far the best deck, and in fact, there were 4 Trix decks in the top 8! I guess land - ritual - necropotence was pretty hard to beat 😅
One of my favorite decks when it came out. I loved it so much, it definitely has a place in my heart.
I actually took Trix into a MTGO competition, the deck ran Academy Rector for Yawgmoth's Bargain, Cabal Therapies, Force of Will, and Tinker for Blightsteel Colossus. People kind of didn't know what the fuck i was even playing, and MTGO listed my deck as a Storm deck even though i had 4x Donate and 4x Illusions of Grandeur main deck and wasn't running Tendrils. The first match i combo'd out on turn 2 with Academy Rector sac'd for Yawgmoth's Bargain, i drew like 18 cards, cast Illusions of Grandeur, drew another 18 or 19 cards, my opponent was at this point very annoyed, telling me to, "get to the point.", at which i Donate'd the Illusions and t hey were unable to pay for it with their Mishra's Workshop. I later lost to a aggro/hate deck. I'm actually surprised you don't mention Rectal Trix in your video, but you do mention Cat Pact so all is forgiven.
I always wanted to use Thougt Lash and Donate.
Trix is beat by Healing Salve, lol
That's really cool, I like this sort of deep dive on a more narrow deck.
Glad you like it!
Nine Lives is a pretty recent take on the same strategy. Stack it up with counters, give it to the opponent, one burn spell and there you go. Alternatively you can just give it away and then use non targeted removal to make them lose
... and if you give it away with Harmless Offering, there's even a feline flavour to it.
@@ROMANTIKILLER2 Cats go brrrr
I thought this was "history of taxes" at first. Never heard of this deck before!
I played the U/r version a lot. It was fun and powerful. Thanks for the video.
Excellent video. Keep up the good work Nizahon!
Thanks a ton!
Great rundown!
I was like "how the hell is this deck considered one of goats in its format?" And then you said, "Necropotence." I laughed out loud; you can win with Wood Elemental if you have 4 Necro in your deck.
My first mtg pack crack was an Ice Age Fat Pack and Illusions of Grandeur was one of the rares. I remember thinking how horrible the card was!
Trix is one of my favorite combo decks and I wish there was a better way to apply it into pioneer or mtg arena currently(it's nine lives or demonic pact which makes me hurl when it comes to deck building). In fact, w/o Trix you don't get Alan Comers "Miracle Gro". Why is that significant? Many deem Miracle Gro as the precursor to Delver, Deaths Shadow, and Faeries. Maybe even as far as the 1st grindy tempo deck. Hope Nizzahon does a video on it soon if not already.
Takes me back to the time I got a win vs Trix with my Sligh deck because I drew multiples of my sideboard Red Elemental Blasts and was able to destroy my opponent's after he paid lots of life to draw his Donate. (Not pictured in this memory: the myriad of times I lost to Trix...)
imma resisting a breakfast cereal related joke.
Criminal that Chris Botelho didn’t name his deck ‘Trixis’
What a fun deck!
I was so tyred of this deck back in 1999/2002 😂
Chris Bothelo should have named his deck Grixis Trix.
After being legal in extended, I remember Trix was the deck to beat in Vintage (then called T1). Isn't that reported here because Wizards didn't enforce the format, back then?
Donate looks like some Titan from AOT
¿Estoy que no quepo en mis energías? Culpad al Amor 😇
Correction to your video, Zoom into the picture of the illusions card, then you’ll see what it was called a “trix” deck.
wait so giving it to opponent will not trigger the leaving and enter ability ?
the card does not leave the battlefield when you cast donate on it, so you get the 20 life for it entering under your control, and they lose the life for it leaving the battlefield under their control when they can no longer pay for the cumulative upkeep cost
In Magic, “the battlefield” is one zone shared between the two players. So it’s not leaving one player’s battlefield and entering the other’s. It stays on the battlefield and just switches which player is controlling it.
@E-V @chrayez Thanks for the help!
lost a big opportunity on grixis donate by not naming it trixis
Big missed opportunity not calling the new deck "Trixis"
I fought this deck once in the only tournament I've played and I found it plain boring. I was only there because a friend invited me, so I was thinking I would have a fun time. since I didn't have a deck, I borrowed a melfork build from a dude who had a few spare decks for people who wanted to join. it was decent, but once I saw that dude playing the enchantment, I just thought "wait, something fishy is about to happen". in the second game, I added removals and counterspells, but these kind of bs combo decks always comes with a toolbox sb full of answers.
to someone who's used to tournaments and playing with friends, I understand the fun, it just didn't looked like that at the time I was seeing it happening.
I play a land, gain 1 life, pass.
Trix player left the game
This is a hard dislike for me. Type 1 and Type 1.5 were not money formats so I can understand the omission. The Mono-Blue versions should have been shown as it's important for the overall evolution and that the UR Kai Budde version didn't spring from nothingness.
First. So disappointed and angry with community for not voting aluren
Why do such videos not show the cards as played at the time and instead show the most recent prints.
Why do all channels feel compelled to show their face? It has worsened your video quality. Rip.