The BSK top8, part 1

In terms of mid-90s tournaments, 40 players are a bunch. Even by today's standards, it is larger than any sanctioned Scandinavian Vintage tournament in the last five years, and 2/3s of the size of last summers main Vintage tournament at GenCon. Quite impressive for a casual format where the first price is a $0.05 card. Winning or having "the best deck" are not the the main reasons why most people play 93/94, but I guess top8'ing a tournament in a format very close to the original version of the game still comes with some nerdy bragging rights ;) Today we'll look at the first half of the BSK top8.

Erik "Sehl" Larsson, Rano "Rafiki" Zangana, Joakim "Jocke" Almelund and Magnus "Mg" de Laval

Erik "Sehl" Larsson relapsed into the game, after a decade and a half, playing Erhnamgeddon at Kingvitational earlier this year. He then took a monoblack deck to a 2nd place at the Warcon tournament this summer, and have since been teching on a "Next Level WW". Rather than splashing red for Bolts, Sehl opted to go for a blue splash to get access to both direct damage with the PsiBlasts and his new blue Power. Like with his monoblack deck from last summer, this deck looks very solid and well built.

Double King Solomon in the sideboard is pretty wizard.

Rano "Rafiki" Zangana worked as the bartender on n00bcon 5, and have since gone deeper and deeper into the old school mire. He holds the distinction of being a pretty good Magic player in Standard and Modern, where many of us old fogeys rarely go past Legacy in terms of newer formats. When he is not studying for his master in physics, he works in a local game store, imports beer for a pub and judges local events. Most important for me though, he is a great friend and a guy I never mind having a beer with. Rafiki has borrowed decks in a couple of tournaments before, but this was the first time he showed up with his own deck. As a self-proclaimed "Spike even in casual formats", he went for the Electric Eel Aggro plan.

One of three different versions of UR Burn in the top8. Time to add Ivory Towers to the sideboard I guess.

Joakim "Jocke" Almelund is easily top3 93/94players never to have won a Giant Shark. He has 4 n00bcon top8s to his name, along with a Pimpvitational win and a pretty sweet 3-0 drop at BSK 2012. He rarely plays in tournaments outside n00bcon, but when he shows up he has something like a 70-80% win rate with The Deck. All in all, he is clearly a very lucky guy ;) His latest update on The Deck looks solid with some new interesting tech. E.g. sideboarding in Ali from Cairo against WW after they've boarded out their Swords to Plowshares seems like a great plan.

Maindeck Time Vault (with 4 Books) and sideboard Sage of Lat-Nam looks wizard as well.

And then there is me! This was actually my 8th time in the elimination rounds of a Shark tournament, so statistically speaking I should have won one by now ;) The deck I played is the same deck I've been building on and playing for over two years. I though I lacked two cards for the deck; alterations of an Underground Sea and a Volcanic Island. I opted to play with the full playset of unlimited Underground Seas rather than go for an all-black bordered deck, as I didn't considered it to be finished anyway. After playing with it this tournament though, I actually think that it is finally done. Not because it managed to win the swiss (5-1 with good tiebreakers), but mostly because I felt that the deck was the pinnacle of what 12-year old me wanted to achieve with a Magic deck in 1995, even with the wb duals. It has been a long journey.

Wouldn't mind a Giant Shark for the deck though ;)

Pretty different strategies here, but it's worth noting that there are 15/16 factories in the 4 decks; by far the most played non-basic card in the top8. This could be one of the reasons for monoblack's success in recent tournaments. With 4 Sinkholes to support your own factories, monoblack have a big edge in the Mishra war.

I still lack one of the decks from the top8, and I might be getting a report from the 2nd place player to post here before I show his deck. If I don't have it by the end of the week I'll post the last three decks I have by Sunday.