Starkbier and Goats

Ah, Bavaria!

Me to the left, the friend we squatted at to the right. Good times.

Starkbierfest lives up to its name. The beer is stark and it's clearly a fest. Germans in lederhosen lifting rocks and chopping wood, dancing on tables and drinking 9% ABV beer in one-litre maß glasses. I'd highly recommend anyone to give it a try.

Morning after then. Woke up at a friends place with Hardy and a next level headache. Still worth it though. We went to Munich best burger joint, the legendary Burger House to nurse our hangovers. A few burgers and vanilla shakes later, we were back on track. The next step was to meet up with Andreas "Custer" Schneider, a local old school player who had invited us to his home for some weissbier and card slinging.

This is one of my absolute favorite parts of old school Magic. It may be a small community, but it's tightly knit, and the players I've met around the world are always so friendly and inviting. Maybe surprising, but the shared passion for the origins of Magic opens a lot of doors.

Andreas met us at Thalkirchen before we went to his place. He'd built his deck with the EC B&R list, and this was the first time he got to test the deck live. Andreas expressed an interest in updating the deck for the classic 93/94 B&R, and hopefully visit n00bcon next year. That would be awesome, we haven't had any Germans at the event yet!

Custer's monoblack.

Custer, Hardy and weissbier.

Winning with the Drain Life, posing with the Juzam.

Exchanging some signed cards as memorabilia of the event. Hardy got a Kobold, Custer got a Lord Magnus, and I traded one of my Winds for a signed one from Custer.

Mox Emerald vs Xenic Poltergeist.

I actually did cast that Emerald after my opponent had played Xenic Poltergeist. Not the best of my many great plays, as it got eaten about a second after it hit the table. Speaking of eating presumably inedible stuff, goats are known to be eating a lot of things. Tin cans, ivory cups, candelabras, rocket launchers and such. Also, goat is an anagram of Atog.

In the summer of 1994, Atog wasn't really a popular card. The ability seemed narrow and unimpressive, almost like a drawback. If you wanted to destroy one of your artifacts each turn, Yawgmoth Demon looked better than a 3/4 without flying. Combine that with the fact that it was the most common card in Magic during the summer of 1994 (c4 in Aq and then immediately a common in Revised), and you can understand why it wasn't considered a powerhouse.

"The bane of all artificers, the legendary Atogs devoured intricate tools to further their own twisted growth."

It was iconic though. The flavor of the card and the artwork was still pretty cool, and it was one of the very first "Magic-only" creature types. Creatures before the Atog built on the lore of Dungeons and Dragons or 1001 Arabian Nights. It was also instantly recognizable due to its prevalence, and became the predecessor of cards like Foratog, Necratog, Psychatog and, of course, Atogatog. Another interesting trivia about Atog is that about 1 in 4 Atogs from Aq have a print defect of an 'x' in the artwork. As it was a c4, it seems like there was a problem on one of the copies on the print sheet. Those in the know call these misprinted Atogs "crossed Atogs". So there's some useless knowledge for you ;)

Anyway, Atog decks. They started showing up about 6 months after Mana Vault was unrestricted here last year. Last autumn, Felipe Garcia and Freespace tore up the Swedish meta with their Atog Smash and Atog Flare decks. More recently, Artelas, a player from Karlstad, created a monored Atog deck which he took to the top4 of StabCon two weeks ago. It looks like a blast to play. If you are a vintage player with a set of power to spare but without that many duals, this could be a sweet deck to try :)

The monored Atog Burn