2014 Retrospective

2014 was an impressive year for old school Magic. The interest in the format has grown both locally in Sweden and internationally. Starting on a personal note, this is the curent state of Project M:

It's actually somewhat finished. One might argue that I could use more duals, but with their current price tag, that seems like a long shot. I have the Unlimited versions of the UGs and Volcanics should I want to play them, but I think I prefer to keep the deck BB for now. It's nonetheless a pretty impressive pile compared to the version of the deck I played in Regensburg two years ago:

Did not have the cards for a sideboard, but the main was actually pretty solid.

On another personal note, the nerdy side of me thinks that this is pretty sweet:

Full A/B power on a 1994 Khalsa-Brain mat. Checking it off the bucket list I guess ;)

So, raising our sights a little to the Swedish tournament scene, we can in good conscience say that it has been a good year to play old school. We've had 12 tournaments in Sweden this year, and the major ones have really been major. Both BSK and n00bcon attracted 40+ players, and Freespace's Frippan Open tournament attracted 27 players, being the fifth largest tournament in the format yet (after n00bcon 6, BSK 2014, n00bcon 4, and n00bcon 5). I personally had even more fun at Frippan Open than at BSK 2014, being able to drink at a tournament and upholding the casual ambience feels important to enjoy playing 93/94 fully. There used to be more beer in Magic. Long gone are the days where each GP had their own bar, or when Mark Justice got to casually drink beer in the semifinals of Worlds (check the first 10 seconds of that link if you want to see Justice drawing his opener from an unsleeved deck right next to a beer at the table).

One of the best things with the evolution of the format in Sweden during the last year is the emerging groups of old school players in other towns though. I hope to travel to Scania at some point this year to battle Arkanon and his playgroup at their own turf, and I'm very much looking forward to travel to Arvika to play in a tournament against Kungmarkus and the Arvika players in February. Great excuse to meet new people.

So, looking at an international scale, there are actually quite a few non-Swedish groups by now. A year ago, the only tournaments outside of Sweden had been in Canada, but last year we saw players organizing tournaments in France, Italy and different parts of the US. There are also players in Germany, Russia, Denmark and many other places. There are a lot of people who does a great amount of work to keep the format living and create opportunities to play. Without people like Jason Jaco, Dustin Espersen, Greg Titcomb, Manuel Sternis and Jacopo Borrelli the format could never have grown internationally the way it has during the last year. Thanks, people like you gives me a lot of motivation to keep this blog going! :)

Dustin's deck from last week's tournament at Eudo Games in Berkeley. This is just ridiculously sweet.

The format has also grown over social media last year. If you haven't checked them out, have a look at Greg Titcomb's Instagram or Kalle Nord's ditto. There's also a subreddit for Old School Magic now, also started by Greg. The traffic to this blog is about double of what it was a year ago, and a year ago I was almost certain that we had peaked. It's pretty cool to see that other people shares your passion for 20-year old playing cards :)

Monthly pageview trend since March 2012. The monthly views have now passed the total number of Unlimited Lotuses ever printed. There actually seems to be an interest in old school tech ;)

Good netiquette holds that I should mention a few of my favorite posts from the last year. Among my own posts, I would probably pick these as some of the better ones (in no particular order):

• The return of The Deck. I've written a few short "deck techs" during the year, and this is probably my favorite of them. Very impressive deck, with an interesting background.
• All in good timing. This is the only post I've written yet where I go well beyond 1994, and discuss rules and decks up to Urza's Saga. It started with me trying to write a "Magic: The Puzzling" quiz post using rules from 1994, but evolved into a rant about how odd timing used to be in the mid 90s.
• The Fire of Sri Lanka. A post about the card Serendib Efreet. It's a cool card :)
• Cut from a different Cloth. A nostalgic post about the first Magic play mats and the history of Khalsa Brain games, with comments from Japji Khalsa. Japji is an awesome craftsman, and he does some great work. "Fun" fact: after this post, the cost of early Khalsa-Brain mats on ebay tripled.
• Priorities and Luxury. A post about why we prioritize to spend so much money on our cards, and why we play an expensive card game with little to no price support.

There have been some great guest reports during 2014 as well; e.g. Olle Råde's report from BSK, Felipe's report from Playoteket and Heiner Litz's report from Eudemonia, among many others. Thanks a lot, they have been very appreciated! Please keep them coming :)

All in all, it has been an exciting year for old school Magic, and I'm happy to be a part of the great community. It's a fun hobby to have, and has helped me wind down when life has gotten stressful.

Here's to a great 2015!