The deck that took Hovi to his win at Pro Tour Rome was of a type that is now considered the most powerful and "broken" in the game's history: The Academy Deck, named after its key card, Tolarian Academy. The card can be tapped to add 1 blue mana to its controller's mana pool for each artifact under that player's control. Decks of this type rely on large numbers of mana-producing artifacts (like Mox Diamond, Lotus Petal, Grim Monolith, and Thran Dynamo), mechanisms for repeatedly untapping the Academy and/or those artifacts (like Voltaic Key and Mind Over Matter), and ways to get more cards into the player's hand (like Stroke of Genius). Time Spiral was a particularly abusive card in this deck type because it replenishes the player's hand, recycles the graveyard, and untaps the Academy at the same time. The game ends when the Academy player generates enough mana to cast a 60-point (or so) Stroke of Genius on the opponent, resulting in the opponent getting "decked" and thereby losing the game. This deck type was so powerful that almost every card in it was put on the Restricted list, and even then, it continued to survive as "Neo-Academy".
Other notable deck (co-)created by Hovi was the Turbo-Stasis deck, which won him the Finnish Nationals in 1996. This deck got worldwide attention when several top spots at the US Nationals 1996 were playing copies of it.
Finnish