Pro Tour Collector Set
The best Pro Tour decks of 1996, eight in total were released alltogether in a Pro Tour Collector Set. Only 20,000 of these sets were produced. The set originally retailed for $125 US and became available in May 1996. They were the first of a series of high profile preconstructed decks for experienced players. Carefully chosen, they are imitations of the eight most successful deck archetypes present at the 1996 Pro Tour in New York. In order to avoid printing legal top rated tournament-level cards, all cards were made illegal for tournament play by printing them with a non-standard backside. Additionally the cards feature a golden border and have a gold signature of the deck's creator. The back of the cards feature the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour logo and are labeled "Inaugural Tournament New York City February 1996."
Part of each deck is a bio card which provides some background of each player and a deck list card which lists the content of each deck. Additionally blank cards were added to raise the number of cards per deck to 90.
This Pro Tour used an interesting deck construction format, a variation of the Standard or "Type II" format. In addition to the usual restrictions for Standard decks, each deck was required to contain at least five cards from each of the legal expansions. Meeting this requirement without lowering the efficiency of the decks gave the deck-builders an interesting challenge.
These cards were written under Fifth Edition rules.
- Deck I - Michael Loconto (champion)
- Deck II - Eric Tam (quarter-finalist)
- Deck III - Bertrand Lestree (runner-up)
- Deck IV - Shawn "Hammer" Regnier (quarter-finalist)
- Deck V - Leon Lindback (semi-finalist)
- Deck VI - George Baxter (quarter-finalist)
- Deck VII - Preston Poulter (semi-finalist)
- Deck VIII - Mark Justice (quarter-finalist)
These cards are not legal in any DCI-sanctioned tournaments.
1996 Pro Tour Collector Set Decks
Michael Loconto, Champion
“Loconto, a 26-year-old social worker from Grafton, Massachussets, played a blue-white Millstone deck that generally defeated his opponents by running them out of cards. One innovative concept was his addition of Hallowed Ground, which he used to protect himself against Armageddon, to activate his Land Tax, and to save his Mishra's Factories from destruction.”