A casual report of BSK 2013

Weekends like this really warms up the cold November rain. It included a tour back to the pubs of my old university, learning Roborally with my girlfriend, an awesome Vintage tournament at BSK, and finally getting my hands on the most powerful of the Power. Most of all though, it was time for the annual Old School Shark tournament at Scandic Plaza in Borås.

Hard to see most of the players' signs, but the sign in the text box is Tom Wärnerstrand's. Now that's rare.

I was planning to stay with Honka and Freespace. We were to compete as the dreaded Team Lederhaups, but Honka could unfortunatly not make it due to exams. Instead the third bed in our suite was filled by the amazing deckbuilder and all-round good guy Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson.

Freespace making some last minute adjustments; adding some Vampires to battle City in a Bottle and changing unl Swords to beta dito.

I'm still building on my Project M deck, and I had some new additions for this tournament. Since Kingvitational, I'd added Terror, Time Walk and Forcefield to the maindeck, and updated my sideboard. Turns out that Abomination stops most creatures in the format, and that Copy Artifact is awesome. This is what I had sleeved up:

Abomination is the new The Wretched. Sorry for the blurry pictures btw.

Due to a combination of bad timing and a hard time planning for the event, there were fever players who could make it to the tournament than the last two years. The people who could join were however awesome. Elof has recently become a father, and it was great to see him for the first time since the occasion. Gajol has been away for a long time in Iceland and Greece, and I hadn't seen him since before the summer. Tournaments like this is a great way to meet people. It may also be the best kind of Magic.

Flashed mob

Before the tournament started, the Lederhaups suite got a visit from old school collector Mats "Ottifant" Karlsson. He didn't have the time to stay for the tournament, but he wanted to try out the format and test his deck. Ottifant btw owns about 85 alpha Thoughlaces. As there exists very few alpha cards, that's almost 8% of the entire print run of the card. It's kind of daunting to consider that all copies ever to exist of any alpha rare could fit inside a single long box. Mats proved to have quite a few more alpha cards than laces though.

Sedge Troll might survive the Disk, but Control Magic still works. A few more Trolls from Mats unfortunately turned the tables on our hero later on.

After about five hours of pre-game beer, the tournament was afoot in the Lederhaups suite. Since the restriction of Mana Drain, the format has become much more open. Pretty much all Shark tournaments before this one have ended in a final between two The Decks with 8 Mana Drains between them. This time both creature decks and combo decks had the opportunity to do well in a whole different way. In the swiss, I faced a ponza with Roc of Kher Ridges, a reanimate deck with Bazaar of Baghdad and Priest of Yawgmoth, a Book Deck, a very strange Draw7 deck with multiple Dark Heart of the Wood and Fastbond, and a good stuff Djinn/Efreet/Birds deck. I managed to go 4-1 in the swiss (losing to Elof and the Book Deck), and was off to top8. Rather than writing a proper tournament report, here are some pictures:

First game about to start. Team Lederhaups and new player Axelsson in the couch.

An altered Library gets the Ice Storm. Fair response.

Kungen contemplates his keep.

Pretty stacked graveyard. The Tutor fetched Island btw :)

New player Macensi's Savannah Lions vs Oldschool's Dark Heart of the Woods.

GaJol looks sad after I copy my Chaos Orb with Copy Artifact, and go nuts with help from Guardian Beast. I won that one.

GaJol looks even more slumped during the next game, when I use Tawnos's Coffin on his Colossus of Sardia and attack with a swampwalking Sol'Kanar. Magic!

Kungen managed to place last in the tournament, and was awarded with a playset of each Kobold.

12 players ahead of him in the tournament singed one Kobold each (with a lot of friendly trashtalk about his mediocre skills).

The glorious Top8; Axelsson, Mg, Oldschool, Brorsan, Jokemon, Jhovalking, Elof and Freespace.

Oldschool and Brorsan; finals between the radest dudes on the block.

Erling and Axelsson scorekeeping the finals.

WW facing a seemingly random pile of cards. Oldschool's deck was incredibly well built, and horrible to face.

Brorsan take the trophy after an amazing performance! The newest Shark-winner repeats his dominance from Kingvitational, and shows that powerless WW is a real threat in the right hands.

What else? Elof easily won the swiss with his Book Deck, but lost in the quarterfinals against Axelsson's hasty UG beatdown. I lost in the quarterfinals against Oldschool, and I mean really lost. Oldschool's insane deck left me utterly defeated both factually and mentally. Jokemon lost in the semifinals against a traditionally unfair Channel-Fireball. There are lot's of more anecdotes between the lines, but I guess that some things that happens at BSK stays at BSK ;)

I'll post some more deck tech during the coming weeks, as well as a summary of  interesting discussions about the legal sets in the format. It was a great weekend with sweet people, and I'm looking forward to the next time we'll meet!