A true history of the orginal Keeper?

[David Mills]

Hi guys.  I was just given the name of this site by a friend of mine who subscribes to my (relatively new) strategy site, and I've been enjoying it.  Quite a huge forum =)

Mike Long had told me that the Keeper (his name - I originally called the deck "The Incinerator" as a sort of joke and mind-trick based on the fact that I had 1 incinerate in the deck), a deck I invented in Nov of '95 for a beta set tournament (which I ended up winning, followed by 2 unlimited set tournaments during the following spring and summer, in the Virginia/North Carolina region), had stayed popular, after he made the deck known by playing it in an invitational.  I found that a bit surprising, since I considered the deck to be somewhat outdated about a year after it was made, but I was happy to hear that the concept had caught on.

I didn't think much about it then, but Mike and myself started a membership strategy site several months back, and one of our subscribers, in particular, recently stressed to me exactly how well known the deck had become; he actually told that he considered it quite an honor to be corresponding with me, which surprised me quite a lot, as of course I consider myself quite a normal guy.  Also, I had an experience, when helping Mike out at a dealer's table late at night at GenCon 2 years back, of a guy talking to me about Type 1, and then he told me proudly that he had a full copy of the Keeper.  I said, "oh, I invented that deck," and then I realized that I probably sounded rather ridiculous.  I was right - heh.  He hadn't heard of me, although he may have believed me. <chuckle> It was hard to tell. But I have made the finals of two professional tournaments, so that might lend some credence to what I am saying.

My subscriber/friend also showed me the following quote by Brian Weissman (whom I respect and who has always been cordial to me) that is flatly untrue, historically, which made me begin to wonder about what sort of interest might exist for a true history of the original Keeper. 

Brian wrote, "You might want to mention that the Keeper deck was originally called that because its kill mechanism was a combo involving Millstone and Elemental Augury. The idea was that every turn you'd use Elemental Augury to Sylvan yourself, while at the same time manipulating your opponent's draw and basically denying them the chance to ever draw anything useful. You would get them in this soft lock, and 'keep' them there through a combination of counterspells and deck manipulation.  This combo was awesomely effective once it was up and running, but I'd imagine the players of 'The Keeper' eventually realized that Augury (and especially Millstone) only really helped when they were ahead, so they dropped those elements in favor of more 'come from behind' type spells."  (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/2253.html )

What?!?!?! I, and definitely Mike, never even considered putting a Millstone in the Keeper, despite the fact that it has 'Mills,' my last name, in the card name.  That would be like putting Terravore in a Tooth deck, so that after you cast Sundering Titan, you can lay a Terravore and _really_ beat your opponent. I found it rather shocking that such a comment would be stated and posted.  The Keeper has a year of history that almost nobody besides myself knows about, particularly the months between Ice Age and the release of Alliances (and that was before Wizards released a new set virtually every week). I find it odd that Brian, who didn't know me during the time I was playing the Keeper, and who never played against me, would make such a statement.

As a side note, I was literally undefeated in approximately a zillion (possibly a zillion and one, I can't remember exactly) matches against 'The Deck,' although that certainly does not mean that I would have defeated Weissman himself.  People often didn't fully realize the 'draw-go' concept, or, as my friend John Slaughter would put it, "stick your thumb up your ___ and LEAVE it there." They would be sitting there in control vs. control waiting for the moment when they could resolve a Sceptre, the result of which was almost invariably them getting Mind Warped or Amnesia-ed right after the counter/disenchant war that always killed the Sceptre. The main advantage that the Keeper had against The Deck was that the Keeper had all blue lands, and that the Keeper had Merchant Scroll, and that The Deck played 1 mass discard spell back then, to my two, in most builds; they relied more on the Sceptre, which was typically not good in the matchup, for the reason I explain above.

The Keeper is a fascinating deck, because it was incredibly dominant during its time. Even before the play/draw rule, I was winning virtually every match I played; I went literally undefeated in matches for a couple of months with it after first making it.  In the first tournament I played it in, a $100 tournament that I drove 2 hours to Virginia Beach to play in to test my new deck that I was excited about (and to check out the new card I had just purchased that nobody else seemed to be playing at the time, that seemed really cool, even though it was expensive, called Mirror Universe...) I won literally every single game, and became, humorously, a sort of instant celebrity there, and played many matches with people after the tournament, and finally lost 1 game, after dozens of them.

I'm curious what sort of interest there would be in a real history of the Keeper, by the person who was there.  These days, when somebody invents a deck, because of the net and the larger number of great magic players, there are other people inventing and playing similar decks, and also the deck becomes known and/or obsolete relatively quickly. But the Keeper was made even before the Dojo.com, when there was basically no internet, so I played the deck for nearly a year before anybody (including Mike) was playing it.  It may or may not be well known that this is the case, but there are enough people that do know, that you can verify it for youself.  I'll try to find references for anybody who is skeptical.

I remember how we used to make fun of people who claimed to have invented this deck or that deck, but in this case I make the claim because it would allow us some fun historical stories to enjoy and learn from together.

Regards,
David Mills
http://www.mtginsider.com

[Hi-Val]

I'm gonna toss this out, and it may just be rampant speculation, but could it be possible that you and Weissman developed similar decks without hearing about what the other was doing? I know Weissman was in California when he was playing, where were you? Without BBS and messageboards, a significant geographic distance could support my theory.

The Deck played 1 mass discard spell back then, to my two, in most builds; they relied more on the Sceptre, which was typically not good in the matchup, for the reason I explain above.

I had always thought that the Deck ran Amnesia as well as Twist.

[PipOC]

Why did he call it keeper?

[Danzig]

Brassman invented Magic: The Gathering.

[PucktheCat]

I recall seeing somewhere that Weissman's deck was really one particularlly successful variant on a theme that was well known on the West Coast at the time.  I think it was called the 56 card deck by some because it consisted of all the best control cards and some random win condition.  Although this is mainly my impression, I think Weissman's name became associated with the deck because his version first appeared on the internet message boards and so on.  I know my interest in T1 control decks and my association of the concept with Brain Weissman both come from the same source:  Rob Hahn's article Schools of Magic.  Because of that article a proxied version of The Deck was probably the first tournament caliber deck I ever played.

I had always thought that the Deck ran Amnesia as well as Twist.

My recollection was that Amnesia replaced Mind Twist after the later was banned.

Leo

[David Mills]

Weissman and I would probably both take offense to our decks being called similar <grin>

First off, by the way, I was completely clueless about 'the Deck' until a month or two after I made the Keeper.  I made the Keeper before Mind Twist was banned (by about a month).  Before Mind Twist was banned, nobody at all, of note, was playing Amnesia.  It wasn't until after the banning that people started looking for other spells to substitute... except I made the Keeper with 1 Twist and 1 Mind Warp.  Eventually, some people with The Deck started playing 2 discard spells, generally 2 Amnesias.  I played an Amnesia and Warp, for variety, and because Warp didn't get Elemental Blasted.

The Keeper had ALL blue land for its non-artifact mana, and this wasn't a small thing.  It constantly won me games when they would lay a plains (or non-blue dual land) or two, because that was nearly identical to missing a land drop for the Mana Drain war.  I had 2 mana vaults main deck, and 2 Deflections (which stopped counters), I had Merchant Scrolls and they did not.  I actually don't know if they had 4 Strip Mines at the time; many control decks did not run many Strip Mines, believe it or not, back then.  I have no idea what Weissman himself was running.  And, of course, I had Elemental Augury, which all by itself was quite a lock. I don't remember ever once losing a game in which I resolved an Augury.  It was generally better than Sceptre, even against control decks. I had 2 Fireballs and a Mirror; they often did not have Mirror back then, although perhaps Weissman had it.  They used Serra Angels and Moat; I had Moat and Abyss.  And... <grin> I had an Incinerate.  Sedge Trolls had no chance (and it was quite good with Mirror to have the Incinerate, and it killed Pump Knights that were pro white for Stp, etc.).

For the other question, Mike called it the Keeper for this reason: Mike generally thinks in terms of stories, and he would often make a sort of mental story for a deck.  When he saw the Incinerator [Keeper] (which is how we met and became friends, when a mutual acquaintance showed him the Incinerator and he was blown away) he imagined a sort of Evil Wizard who didn't care about his own life or health, who kept amassing more and more power [by, in Magic terms, gaining land and cards/spells], and he called this evil wizard 'The Keeper.'  Mike's personality is such that his ideas tend to stick and spread; I am more of a coach/teacher sort of person than a marketer, so my name went away and his stayed =)

[jcb193]

I don't doubt that it is possible that you invented the deck, and i defintiely recognize your name from the old days, but i think in the Magical world, whomever invents the deck is irrelevent.  More importantly, whomever publishes the deck or wins with the deck will always get the credit (read: Sligh).  Some people on this site have become quite popular "tightening" decks that they didn't invent.  Who cares?  I doubt anyone really ever invents a deck.

That said, i think the reason Weissman gets credit for The Deck is because of this article that was floating around the internet, long before thedojo, etc.

http://www2.mozcom.com/~deadlock/mtg/strat/thedeck.html

I remember reading this a LONG time ago.  First credit=first publish

[David Mills]

Jcb, I appreciate your reply because it allows me to notice and clear up a possible misunderstanding from my post.  And... hah - that _is_ an old article you posted.  Wow. I would have been better off if I had known about that post 10 years ago, although it may have encouraged me to put Serras in my deck, which I am quite glad to not have done, although, to my embarassment, I did have 2 Jade Statues in the original build, and I managed to win the big beta set tournament with them, but they came out the next time I played it. I kept sideboarding them out and just going down to just Mirror and 2 Fireballs to win with; it was hard to conceive of playing with so few win conditions back then - I had to see it to understand how well it could work.

I didn't write my post so that I could re-claim credit for inventing the deck; if I cared about that I would have been on forums talking about this stuff 8 years ago. I posted to see what interest people had in hearing the real history of the Keeper.  I do this because it has recently been emphasized to me that many people have a sort of nostaligic affinity for the Keeper, and I thought that it might be fun for people to know its real history.  Obviously, for me to offer that, I have to explain that I invented the deck.

Furthermore, I didn't just invent it; I was the only person playing it for approximately a year, except for a few friends who copied it once or twice. I did, as you have suggested is a necessary criteria, win with the deck, as well - I won the 3 major tournaments (technically, in the 2nd of the 3, I made it to the finals, along with Mike, and we split and didn't play it out) in my region that year. Mike also didn't read about the deck somewhere and then play it in the invitational; he got the deck directly from the fact that the two of us had worked on it tuning it for the past year or two, by the time the invitational rolled around.

To further emphasize my point, it was told to me that Oscar Tan has written over 100 articles on the history of the Keeper for Star City.  If that is correct, then he is missing a year or two of its original history (because that history resides solely in my head).  For that reason, it becomes particularly relevant to anybody who is interested in the topic that I invented and played the deck, with great success, almost exclusively, during that time.

I managed to do that because I have the sort of aura where virtually nobody copies me (maybe I come across like an idiot or something - heh) except for a few random people, so I was busy winning constantly with several unique cards, such as Merchant Scroll, Elemental Augury, Mana Vault-in-a-control-deck, Mind Warp, Fireball-in-a-control-deck, virtually no win conditions (Mirror Universe and 2 Fireballs), etc. for a long time without others using the same cards. I remember once beating a guy who was playing red 7 matches straight for ante, and he kept insisting that I was only winning because I kept getting lucky and drawing Mirror Universe right when I needed it... and virtually everybody who saw me play Merchant Scroll and Augury told me that I should take those cards out of my decks... right after I just cast Ancestral off Scroll or right after I would beat them with Augury. It was kind of eerie.  Mike told me that, over the years, he has received about 50 emails with various potential Keeper builds, and every single one of them took out Augury - heh.

[jcb193]

I personally would LOVE to read another history of Keeper, and i definitely think you came to the right place as far as keeper fans are concerned. Almost anyone who has played T1 for some time, has at least a small soft spot in their heart for Keeper, not to mention the people who have continued to play it- even today!  Everyone loves a keeper-on-keeper match, as long as you are playing it, not watching it.

That said, i think you would have no problem getting your article published on StarCity (they love Keeper there), though if not, you would have a rapt audience here as well.

Looking forward to your story.......

JB

[rakso]

David,

I for one would love to hear the history from your perspective, for old times' sake. My apologies if there were inaccuracies. I wrote an initial two articles on the history, about four years ago when I began writing for Star City. I didn't have much to go on -- I'm not American -- and relied on Dojo archives, my personal email correspondence with Brian Weissman, and commonly believed details on the old Beyond Dominia boards. I corresponded with some other old school players like Scott Johns, and I did email Mike Long, but the only time he answered me was to very briefly reveal that "Glory Hound" in his Invitational mono black Necrodeck was Juzam Djinn.

Link to history article:
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/2366.html

Feel free to clear up what you feel are inaccuracies in an overdue Star City article; it would be great to have something other than a Bay Area viewpoint and no one from your circle wrote a Type I control article until much later. Of course, since my eight Bar exams will eat up the entire September, I'm not in a position to write anymore.

-------------------------------------------

jcb: Giving Frank Kusumoto a bit more credit, the post by Paul Pantera you linked was most widely read on The Dojo. It was followed up by early commentary by Frank and Brian Weissman.

[David Mills]

Oscar, thank you for your gracious reply.  Jcb, thank you also.  I will most definitely write one or, more probably, several articles with early decklists and stories about the original Keeper. 

I did not imagine, at the time, that I was enjoying the pleasure of being the sole player of a deck, for many months, that would eventually be played and liked by so many.

My friend Gabriel Kirstein, who is much better at finding old articles than I am, sent me these two old old articles from Rudy Edwards that are relevant, and, at least to me, very funny:
http://www.classicdojo.org/tourney/t1.970707rud.txt
http://www.classicdojo.org/school/SoM54.html

[Dante]

As an aside, people from Chicago hadn't really been exposed to that variant of Keeper (i.e. not "the deck", but using the mirror/fireball version) until this tournament.  After that, I won a lot of cards/money with variants of this deck after Rudy (who is awesome) showed me a few things after the tourney. 

FYI I was this guy:

Round IV

Keeper Style vs. some fruitiness

This guy had a deck that busted out with Lions and and control. I wasnt
really sure what was going on with his deck, sometimes it looked Zooish,
and sometimes it looked kinda Fringeish, and sometimes it looked kinda
Weenie controllish. I did, however, have no problem beating this deck.

Despite this beating, I did, however, have no problem making Top8 along with Rudy and most of ACD.

[David Mills]

Rudy Edwards is SO hilarious.  Just reading that exerpt from his post made me laugh out loud.  It might not be as funny to people who don't know him, but just him calling your deck 'some fruitiness' and his subsequent description of the match - oh my. It sounds like Rudy did a lot to spread the deck around. 

An interesting historical tidbit: The first time I met Mike Long (who was to become my friend, teammate, and now partner for our strategy website with daily videos, http://www.mtginsider.com), he was playing Rudy Edwards with a copy of my deck (the Keeper, of course).  My roomate John Slaughter (who was one of two other people, basically, who knew about the Keeper besides myself at that time) had shown Mike the decklist, and Mike was in the middle of trying it out for the first time.  The first thing Mike said to me, that I remember is, "I can't believe that you are playing with BONE CRANKS (his name for the Ice Age picture of the Icy Manipulator) [I had 1 Icy in the deck]."  The really funny thing about that statement is that he didn't mean that the card was bad - he actually [mistakenly] thought the card must be really important in the deck, and he had cast Copy Artifact on it, so he had two in play... he was referring, with indignation, to the version/picture of the card. 

Furthermore, he actually had 'real' [beta] Icy's with him, in his shirt pocket, oddly enough, so he pulled one out to use instead of the Ice Age ["bone crank"] version. So, my in my first minute with Mike, I see him playing my deck, with an Icy copied for basically no reason (which, for those who understand the deck, is sort of funny), with my 'bone crank' set aside and his beta Icy in play.  Heh.

Although Mike had very little idea what he was doing when playing a control deck at that time (Mike tells the story the same way; I'm not disparaging him... well - at least not much... heh), he did manage to win somehow.  Rudy was quite dominant in Type 1 (actually, Type 1 was basically all there was then), so he took notice of the defeat.  It wasn't until several months later, I believe, that Rudy finally gave in and began playing a Keeper variant of control, however.

The Icy came out of the deck rather soon after that...

[onelovemachine]

All I know is this is the coolest quote evar:

What I believe really sets "The Deck" apart from its competitors
  is its overall objective: survival.  "The Deck" virtually forgets about
  its opponent, and concentrates only on establishing itself and building
  card advantage.  Since it is only trying to survive; a goal that every
  deck has to achieve, it only has to do half the work and is not
  vulnerable to the billions of cards that hose offensive strategies. I am
  not going to lose to Moat or Abyss or Blood Moon like Handelman's deck.I
  am not going to lose to Blood Moon, Moat, and COP Red like Kim's Deck. I
  am not going to lose to Ivory tower and COP Red like Chang's deck.  All
  these decks suffer the same problem that if a threat arrives that is
  beyond their measure to deal with, they are finished.  To me, it seems
  that Magic is very inclined in the direction of defensive/card advantage,
  and that is why I chose that path when building a competitive deck.  You
  simply concentrate on survival and drawing cards, and winning, through
  two angels or a braingeyser, takes care of itself

[Dozer]

It is a good idea to dig deeper into "Keeper's" history, especially since Paul Pantera is the name that mostly goes under on the Weissman side of the development history. It'd be great to get a comprehensive history going, since the deck (or rather "The Deck") is the one deck that has dominated, patronized and monopolized Vintage before the great eplosion of 1999. Tracing the deck from its first tournament appearence and the first dojo articles all the way to the Franchise and the great Will-Blessing debate on BD sounds great, and people with a historical interest in the game like me should love to read it.

"I can't believe that you are playing with BONE CRANKS (his name for the Ice Age picture of the Icy Manipulator)

As we all are aware, the "bone crank" is the name given to the machine by the Soldevi who first found it, and quoted in the Arcum Dagsson flavor text on the card. The nickname was quite popular at the time for that reason.

As good as your intent may be, I find the plugs to that ominous website very annoying. It makes me feel that instead of a true history of Keeper, you are trying to plug those links into TMD. I for one already know the website exists, and I feel no need to be reminded here. But don't let that distract you from uncovering more of Keeper's roots. Maybe Rakso could activate his old feelers towards Weissman to get the other opinion?

Dozer

[xrizzo]

The most important thing to consider when you (or anyone) writes a new history of keeper is to do it with comprehensive research from all sides of the development.  David, don't go out there and write an article covering only the earliest part of keeper's development when you were the only guy playing... tie it into what was being played before, tie in what was happening on the west coast while you were doing what you did, and be sure to put it all up against a backdrop of timelines to make it clear.

Any 'history of keeper' that doesn't include all those elements will be incomplete and wouldn't provide as much value.  A writer who successfully researches everything and presents it well would really set him/herself apart....

[rakso]

http://www.classicdojo.org/tourney/t1.970707rud.txt

Whoa... this was really obscure. I missed it the first time I combed what was left of the Net for old Type I Usenet postings.