Deckmasters Garfield vs Finkel

Deckmasters

Deckmasters 2001 is a box set that was released in December 2001. Richard Garfield and Jon Finkel were tasked with designing decks to pit against each other.

The card pool was Ice Age and Alliances, and the reprint policy had to be taken in account. Each could only use four rare cards in the deck, and no more than two copies of any one card. Color hosers were not permitted. The resulting decks are showcased in this set.

Obviously meant to be a series, referring to the Deckmaster brand, a follow-up set has never been published.

In the actual match, Finkel beat Garfield 2-0. The first game was fairly even and was lost due to Garfield making a number of mistakes based on rules that had changed since he invented the game; game 2 wasn’t even close.