Tax Edge

Tax Edge is probably the deck I've played the most with in 93/94. It's a fairly cheap and competitive deck that relies on the interaction between Land Tax and Land's Edge. My older versions of the deck were mostly an upgrade of white weenie; cutting the weeniest of the cards, but playing 10 or more creatures to support the combo. This list (with a minor change) placed top4 at last years Warcon:

Sideboard is Moons, Blasts, Circles, Karmas, Cities and an Angel

This is a very fun list to play, but it's far from an optimal one. It lacks e.g. Shahrazad and Wheel of Fortune, the Swords are far worse than Chain Lightnings here, and it is kind of unfocused when trying to support both combo, aggro and and hate in a single deck.

"What is this strange card type? Cre-a-ture?". Stalin is confused during Gråberget Champs 2012.

A creatureless version of the deck was first shown off by Gustav "Tysken" Schmidt at n00bcon 4. This deck supported Howling Mines and Ivory Towers, and used Feldon's Cane to avoid running out of cards to throw at the opponent. Gustav took the deck to the top8, and the story goes that he only lost games where his opponents managed to activate Mirror Universe.

The creatureless version has evolved more since then. Hjalmar "Honka" Backlund played a creatureless hate version of deck at n00bcon 5. This is probably the coolest versions of the deck yet:

When he can't play Juzam himself, at least he got his Sol Ring altered to a Juzam.

I'm fairly certain that it's correct to play Howling Mines in the deck regardless if you want to support a few creatures or not. Honka's choice of playing no creatures maindeck but having access to 4 Ball Lightning in the sideboard is very nice and techy. I personally like to have a few panic buttons like Serra Angel in the deck, but it's probably a smarter move to make all the opponent's creature removal dead.

It looks like there will be a 93/94 tournament at Warcon this year as well btw! Varberg is the hometown of players like Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson and Elof Gottfridsson so I'm sure that it will be a sweet gathering in six weeks!

More tech from n00bcon 5

We'll step right in.

If the 93/94 format would have a hall of fame, Pefken would be an auto-include. Apart from winning n00bcon twice, he also looks one step beyond the meta, and finds non-traditional powerful decks that can beat the field. At n00bcon 2 he won with a zoo deck, and at n00bcon 4 he reinvented Parfait to take him to the top. Last n00bcon he lost in the top4 against Elof (the Varberg Juggernaut) with a creature heavy deck I henceforth will refer to as Moon Midrange. Moon Midrange relies on under-costed and powerful creatures combined with unfair spells. It has some relation to the Ehrnam Deck, but supports cards like Blood Moon and Detonate, as well as playing a double digit amount of creatures.

Note the sideboard shark :)

Next up is the Power Monolith combo deck, courtesy of Kingen (the guy who took time to take pictures of all the decks shown here). Power Artifact combined with Basalt Monolith will generate an arbitrary large amount of mana, and Transmute Artifact can find both the Monolith and wincons like Rocket Launcher. This deck also supports the Howling Mine/Relic Barrier combo, and most of the power cards. With Power Artifact restricted, and only Demonic Tutor to find it, the deck may have issues with assembling the combo; but with a decent opening hand it's still a force to reckoned with.

Plan is to board in one Ehrnam and one Fat Mothi against good decks.

Next we have white weenie. White weenie is a fairly competitive deck, even though it's very cheap to assemble (by the format's standard at least). WW uses cheap creatures, land tax, city in a bottle, and a handful of disenchants/dust to dusts to overwhelm the opponent and gain tempo. This is one deck that was played last n00bcon:

Land Tax is too obvious

I also feel the need to show off my old WW (top4'd lots of tournaments with this one, including 2 n00bcons and 1 BSK). As I couldn't afford to buy the deck all black bordered, I decided to pimp it out by whiteboarding the entire deck instead (yes all cards are 93/94 legal, they just look like 4th because of acetone):

I don't care. I love it.

Lastly we have Kalle Nord's insanely impressive and unfair Prison deck. Kalle ended up at 9th place in the World Championships at n00bcon, and then second place in HUVUDTURNERINGEN that same evening, to make him miss glory by an inch in both tournaments. This deck is solid lockdown control, and is a pleasure to look at as well as horrible to face.

Again a Shark in the sideboard means a though matchup.

n00bcon tech and GP shoutout

It's been a hectic week and a half. I just started a new assignment in Oslo, and the weekend included both a birthday for a two-year old and a bachelor party in Gothenburg. It's quite a bit easier to travel to Gothenburg from Oslo than from Munich btw. Speaking of Munich; Alex, one of the Bavarian heroes that I played 93/94 with in Regensburg, asked me about additional lists from n00bcon. On that same note, a Philadelphia (Philadelphian?) old school player named Brian had that same request today, so I figure that it's high time for some more lists. I'll post four sweet decks today, and try to update with four more before the end of the week. I apologize that some of the pictures may look a little blurry, it is possible that the photographer had a beer or two during the event.

We'll start out with Glenn's RG burn list. This deck had the distinction of being the highest placed non-blue deck in the tournament (yeah, restricting Mana Drain was probably a good idea). The deck is incredibly fast, and relies much more on the early game than other traditional RG beats (which pretty much always supports Ehrnam). It lacks the power needed for first turn kills, but it can reliably win on turn 3-4. The deck handles lategame fairly well with bolts, and the fact that you never want to let a creature trough as long as Glenn has a few cards in hand a few mana up.

Turn three Channel Fireball is still Channel Fireball.

After the tiny dudes and small spells, we go big. The Eureka deck is kind of funny in this format, as there aren't any particularly awesome creatures (at least by the last 15 years' standard). Resolving an Eureka is still a very strong play, but it's not like the deck's pilot JhovalKing can win with Eureka and a single other card. Here it's more a strategy of overwhelming with multiple fatties than casting a single unbeatable monster. The deck is awesome regardless; what else could it be with cards like Sword of the Ages and Concordant Crossroads alongside Nicol Bolas and Colossi?

And Juzam. Good decks play Juzam.

Up next is one of my favourite strategies, the Deck-hater known as Electric Eel Aggro. The main idea is that Electric Eel is clearly an underplayed card, and the unfair decks will have real problems beating Energy Flux and Blood Moon. Add burn, serendibs and access to blasts of both colours, and you'll end up with a hate deck that can stand on it's own. A sweet thing with the deck is that it works well with few (or no) power (unlike e.g. the Deck, that relies on power). It can hence be a good budget alternative to start building on, and is easy to improve whenever opportunity to get expensive cards comes up.

Ancestral and Time Walk would probably be better than the moxes, but you play what you own. Don't miss the super-techy Inferno in the SB.

Lastly today we have the Dingus Egg Ponza. As some of you may know, Dingus Egg was on magic's first ever restricted list due to it's interaction with Armageddon, and this brewer combines it not only with Geddon, but with Kudzu as well. The deck eventually wins with the mox-killer Titania's Song, or with Underworld Dreams (or just with Dingus Egg, harsh stuff).

Land destruction from turn two, combined with both Swords and Terror. Everyone except Black Knight is in for a rough time.

In my next post I aim to show white weenie, power monolith, prison and Pefken's top4 ugr midrange, all from last n00bcon. I'm also looking forward to post some history and evolution of the Tax Edge deck in the near future.

Finally, there's a GP in Gothenburg this weekend! I wont have time to participate myself, but I will be in the city during the weekend. If anyone is going to the GP and want to play some old school at Saturday night, send me a mail and we'll sort something out :)

Rule anecdotes and a slight errata

As a general rule, we try to play with updated rules and Oracle errata. From time to time players mentions missing mana burn (Power Surge is pretty bad with new rules), not being able to turn of Winter Orb with Icy, or being able to win using the Mirror Universe/City of Brass combo. However, as most of you know, many of the old rules were pretty strange. To quote my Beta rulebook I got from Viktor "Oldschool" at BSK 2011:

"During the course of a game, a dispute that you cannot solve by referencing the rules may occur. If both players agree, you can resolve the difference for the current game with a coin toss. After the duel, you can come to a decision about how you want to play such a situation in the future. If the players don't agree to a coin toss, both players retrieve their ante and the duel is a draw."

It of course got better a few years later, in the era of the newfangled tap symbol and whatnot, but it was still far from intuitive. I lost a game in a tournament as late as 1998 against a deck that got infinite Dark Rituals by playing a Yawgmoth's Will, as the replacement effect of the Will was slower than the ability to play Dark Ritual from the graveyard (as the Ritual was a Mana Source). At one point in the game, there existed a place called "in-between turns" (where extra turns and skipping turns effects "stacked"), as well as a "before-the-untap-step step" (where Power Surge had effect). Most players agree that the rules got a great improvement when 6th edition came along with the stack and state-based effects (among other things). As it is very hard (and also not as fun) to play with old rules, we've always chosen to play with the latest comp rules. This is btw how you played a spell before 6th edition:

Note e.g. that if someone plays a spell, and you respond with Ancestral and draw a Counterspell, you can't use that to counter the first spell.

In this same vein, we usually stick with Oracle errata on cards; the only exception up until now has been Chaos Orb which has got errata to prevent people from spreading out cards (while still getting to flip it). This idea of using current errata has in particular made White Ward playable and Relic Bind worse (on the other hand, Basalt Monolith used to have power level errata that made it impossible to combo with the Relic Bind back then as well).

So, what's the new errata you ask? The card in question is City in a Bottle, and for all purposes concerning 93/94 magic, this is the new text on the card:

Whenever a nontoken permanent from the Arabian Nights expansion other than a basic land card or City in a Bottle is on the battlefield, its controller sacrifices it.
Players can't play cards from the Arabian Nights expansion other than basic land cards.

Welcome to 93/94, Mountain v78!

Pimping out the Goblin deck just got harder

I'll end today with a sample hand from BSK 2011:

Snap keep!

A casual report of HUVUDTURNERINGEN

During the n00bcon weekend, a second smaller tournament was held at the time of the world championship top8. This tournament was referred to by the participants as HUVUDTURNERINGEN ("The Main Tournament"). The winner was no one else than Robert Schram, aka the winner of BSK 2011 as well as the finalist of n00bcon 2012 (among other achievements). Robert wrote a short tournament report yesterday, and I felt it needed to be shared. This report was originally written in Swedish by Robert, and I can only take credit for the translation and image texts. /MG

It was finally time to travel to n00bcon 5: World Championships 2013! This report is not about the world champs tournament however, but about the side event known as The Headless One's MAIN TOURNAMENT 2013.

Due to conflicting schedules with my work, I wasn't able to get away in time to participate in the n00bcon tournament. Regardless, I decided to travel down to Gothenburg to drink a few beers, hang out with good people, and perhaps get the chance to turn some magic pictures sideways.

Pictures like these, brah!

 I arrived at Rotary Pub just before 6 PM. The last round was just finishing up, and the cut for top8 was soon to be announced. Me and some of the players who didn't make the cut decided to hold a side event tournament, which we simply called THE MAIN TOURNAMENT. For this tournament, we also decided to play without sideboards. My deck of choice was one of my simpler decks, aimed for casual gaming (I currently support 10 different 93/94 decks).

CREATURES(19) 4 Kird Ape 2 Dragon Whelp 1 Force of Nature 3 Scryb Sprites 2 Scavenger Folk 2 Elves of Deep Shadow 2 Erhnam Djinn 3 Llanowar Elves SORCERIES (12) 4 Chain Lightning 3 Fireball 1 Wheel of Fortune 1 Mind Twist 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Channel 1 Regrowth

INSTANTS (9) 4 Lightning Bolt 1 Fork 2 Giant Growth 2 Berserk ARTIFACTS (2) 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Ruby LANDS (18) 2 City of Brass 4 Taiga 4 Forest 5 Mountain 1 Strip Mine 1 Hammerheim 1 Pendelhaven

"We may have missed the t8, but you're still MY BEST FRIEND!"

Game 1: Opponent: GaJol
The deck immediately showed that it was capable of winning. I won the last duel with Force of Nature into GiantGrowth-Berserk-Berserk. Game 2-0!

Looks like GaJol is on top of this game though.

Game 2: Opponent: Glennisch
The deck worked like a charm once again. These duels were even tighter than in the first Game.
We also drank quite a bit of Fireball during this game.

"I may have beaten you this game, but nothing can beat OUR FRIENDSHIP!"

Game 3: Opponent: JhovalKing
And once again the deck delivers. In the last game JohvalKing is killed by his own Juzam. This game was nothing but really tight duels. 2-0 again.

JohvalKing on Fire!

Three rounds and 3-0 takes me to the top4. I celebrated this with a beer.

Semi finals: Opponent: Glennish
My memory is giving up on me here, but I do remember that we had a hilarious match. We also drank more Fireball. This was a very tight game. I won with 2-1.

At this point of an evening, you may start referring to Kird Ape as Kidr Ape.

Finals: Opponent: Egget
Duel 1: It starts with me playing small guys and Pendelhaven. When egget finally gets some answers (like Icy), he's in bolt range. 1-0.
Duel 2: It get an awesome Channel-Fireball start, but egget responds with a Lightning Bolt and I lose. We laughed quite a lot here :)

Not every Fireball serves you well.

 Duel 3: I'm the beatdown, egget is on a dangerously low life total when he stabilizes and starts his own Mishra beatdown. Egget is on 1 life, with me on 7, and he attacks with three mishras to hit me for 6. For some reason he didn't attack with his 4th Mishra... :) I'm down on one life, and egget plays regrowth for Fireball, and casts Fireball for 1. I respond by tapping my only two mountains and play Fork. Egget realizes he doesn't have mana up for a Mana Drain and I manage to win!

The glorious prize!

 I'd like to thank everybody for an awesome tournament, and I really hope we'll get together for some 93/94 again soon!

//Robban "666killer666" Schram

Bay area sweetness and some new cards

It's been over two weeks since I updated here, which is fairly unusual. The main reason for the pause is me moving up North. I'm no longer a Bavarian, but now a Norwegian in Oslo. Not quite the feel of Sweden yet, but it's nice to have a name on the door again, and I know at least one old school player in this city I'd like to meet up with. The apartment here is awesome btw; I've really missed it and my roomates.

So what happend the last few weeks? We're looking a date for the Pimpvitational, and the 93/94 format is becoming more and more visible in Sweden in general. On a personal note, I've gotten my first power card to my blue-black deck. I actually traded for it with a well-known player from Gothenburg as well, which has a kind of nicer ring than buying it from somewhere on the web. Gave quite a bunch of cards for it though. I also got a few more cards since n00bcon, these are my latest additions:

One of Elof's old Drains btw, that gotta carry some luck ;)

I'll keep it short today, but I'll update later during the week with some random tech and what the 93/94 scene in Oslo looks like. For now I will however show one of the most pimped decks I've ever seen in the format. Dustin from San Francisco sent me a picture of his friend's Erhnam Deck (after the restriction of Mana Drain). This is about as impressive as it gets :)

Bay Area is looking strong

Distress

I'm continuing with posts of n00bcon decklist for now, still lot of sweet tech to be shown.

The Distress archetype was (as far as I know, and at the very least in our community) invented by Daniel "GaJol" Nilsson; the highest ranking non-shark in the last year's pwp standings. I've previously written about Nilsson and his great contributions to both the meta and the spirit of the format, so for now we'll just dive in to the tech.

Distress was originally based on the assumption that no player can destroy more than 4 enchantments (as they only play at most 4 Disenchant). Hence, if a player can maintain control enough to not lose the game himself, it will be very hard for the opponent to handle multiple clocks in the likes of Underworld Dreams and Warp Artifact. The name is based on the "bleeding" feeling of the opponent, and primarily as an opposite of the word tranquillity (as the card Tranquillity destroys all enchantments).

Distress has a fairly good matchup against the Deck; another version of the deck ended up in the top4 of last BSK, and this n00bcon GaJol just missed the top8 on tiebreaks. Apart from Glenn Johanssons RG aggro deck (that also missed top8 on tiebreaks), this was the highest placed non-blue deck in the tournament. With Mana Drain restricted, the blue decks may lose some of their utter dominance, and decks like Distress may shine even brighter in the near future.

No power, no library, still second highest placed non-blue deck. Gajol knows.