Tech from L.I.G.G.

Last weekend Alexander "Talad" Midjich and the L.I.G.G. crew in Stockholm organized their first 93/94 gathering. 20 players showed up to battle with the oldest of cards, and when the dust settled Martin Berlin and Gordon Andersson faced off in the finals. Wasn't it the exact same finals at Nebraska's War in Italy in December btw? Those guys might have something going on.

Berlin with his spoils of victory

Eksem with his spoil of last place

If anyone of you who participated in the event would like to write a short report, I'd be happy to post it here. In lieu of a tournament report, let's check out some tech from the top8 of the tournament.

Pefken's BRW Menagerie

Most of the players in Stockholm are fairly new faces for me (only four of them had previous Pimpwalker points from 93/94-gatherings), but Rickard "Pefken" Samuelsson is surely a name to be reckoned with. Pefken hasn't showed his face at 93/94 Gatherings for a year or two, but he can count winning n00bcon twice (2010 and 2012) and a staggering number of top4/8s among his achievements in the format. This time he left his blue cards at home (obv apart from his Giant Shark from n00bcon 4) and went all guns blazing with Juzam, Trolls, Vampires and Dragons. The deck looks surprisingly fair and straight forward, without any cards like Berserk or prison components, but beating down with a menagerie of the hardest creatures in the format is clearly a solid strategy.

Berlin's Artifact Aggro

As far as I know, Berlin has played two 93/94 tournaments during the last season and won both of them. Apart from this win, he hoisted the trophy in the 58-player Old School tournament at the Nebraska's War convention in Italy in December. It has been quite a while since he sleeved up a deck in the format before that, I think we last saw him at n00bcon 4 in 2012. His deck of choice looks really solid, and is not something we've really seen before. It does have some resemblance to Elof's winning Artifact Smash deck from Sehlskapsspelen 2015, but Martin foregoes green and races without Berserks, so I would assume that the decks play very differently. Instead of Berserks and Juggernauts, Berlin goes all in on huge artifact 6-drops and adds a set of Serendib Efreets. Very sweet deck!

Mikael Karlsson's UWbg Skies

On a first glance, Mikael Karlsson's deck might look like just a variation of The Deck with its high number of restricted cards backed up with Swords, Disenchants and Counterspells. Then you realize the the wincons aren't something like two Serras, a couple of Fireballs, or a set of factories. Mikael goes full throttle with complete sets of Serras, Efreets and factories. This is a very, very aggressive control deck. Every now and then, The Deck tries to just play a turn one or two Serra and "goes for it", hoping that it'll stick. This seems to be the main game plan for this deck; get a wincon down and defend it, as opposed to defending yourself until you get to resolve a wincon.

 Jonas Rebenius's WWr

WW has been a deck to beat since the start of the format, and this build has a few interesting tweaks. Jonas splashes red for a set of Lightning Bolts and a Wheel of Fortune, but cuts commonly used cards like City in a Bottle and Dust to Dust. This seems to make the deck even more aggressive, and having Bolts to back up his Thunder Spirits makes combat a nightmare for all creatures south of Mahamothi Djinn. With his extra off-color mox, he also has some extra outs to cast Armageddon already on turn two or three after having resolved a couple of threats.

You can see the rest of the lists here. I hope to add the lists from a few other tournaments from the last few months in the coming week as well.

On a different note, it's less than seven weeks left to the eight edition of n00bcon and the World championships now. Really looking forward to meet you all! And sorry that we are short on space this year; the pub can only hold 80 people including staff for legal reasons. If you signed up in December but for some reason know you can't make it anymore, please send me a message and we'll take in someone from the wait list. There are weirdly much people interested, in particular considering we're playing a format with a huge barrier of entry and pretty much no prize support. Gonna be good times though.

Potential n00bcon 8 pin design

Speaking of good times, the second edition of the Arvika Festival tournament will take place in just two weeks. A record-breaking 32 players have signed up so far, making it the largest non-shark tournament in the Scandinavian countries yet. And if last year is any indication, it's gonna be a sweet gathering. Spacious location, incredibly cheap beer and passionate players with solid tech.

Damn, I need to take a step back and just appreciate the fact that there are over 30 players travelling to Arvika to play 93/94. That's awesome. Three or four years back, you were hard pressed to find any Eternal tournaments of that size even in major cities in Sweden. And today we get not only to cast Moxen at a regular basis in six-round swiss tournaments, but to use them to cast first turn Black Knights while drinking beer.

There have been some sweet posts about the format in the last couple of weeks I recommend checking out. Danny Friedman recently updated his blog with some fresh tech. Fab Sanglard wrote a great post where he built decks inspired by the four seasons of Mishra's Factory. Gathering Magic published an article about the format where they interviewed Christoffer "Stalin" Andersson, Sigmund Ausfresser and Fab Sanglard. And as always, it's a pleasure to immerse in the world of Shaman Ben's MtgUnderground blog.