The n00bcon top8, part 2

Let's step right in.

Top8 players: Martin Lindström, Morgan Karlsson, Olle Råde, Seb Celia.

Martin "Fluffy" Lindström is one of the guys I'm more familiar with outside of the realm of Magic. Martin, myself and another guy spent a lot of time together during the second half of 2011 studying Hilbert spaces and functional analysis. It was a notoriously difficult course in graduate level mathematics, boasting a fail-rate close to 90% at the time. It would be my third try on the exam, and Martin's first. From that experience, I was to deduce that the man is a damn brilliant human being. In the end, we both managed to pass the course and I got to learn a lot from him.

I wasn't that active in sanctioned Magic at that time, but Martin's reputation had regardless gotten ahead of him when we started working together. He had been the top performing Eternal player (across multiple formats) at the Bazaar of Moxen earlier that summer; being rewarded the custom Mox Jet seen in his decklist as a bonus prize. When we started our study group, he was ranked #2 in the Pro Player Rookie of the Year race and no stranger to the Pro Tour. His resume in Magic is still going strong, more recently including e.g. a top32 finish a GP Brussels in November. He also won the n00bcon warm-up tournaments a few days before the Championships. This time he again sleeved up his The Deck and went to town, climbing his way all to the finals.

Fluffy's The Deck

Morgan "Farsan" Karlsson is one of those names that you read about in printed Magic magazines in Sweden 15-20 years ago. When you see a tournament report about the team Pro Tours around the turn of the millennium, Farsan's name inevitably pops up. Like in this match report from 2002, where Farsan, Olle Råde and Rickard Österberg (who e.g. won PT New Orleans 2003) are defeated by Kai Budde's Phoenix Foundation in round 7. A quick google check also hints about a bunch of other high level tournaments, like PT Venice 2003, PT New York 2000 and a slew of GPs in the late 90s. It is always really fun to see when the old pro players come out of the woodworks to show off at old school tournaments :)

Farsan was the only player with a perfect 7-0 record in the swiss, eventually getting his first loss of the day at the hands of Berlin in the semifinals. His deck of choice was Lestree Zoo, with the highly effective Argothian Pixies at his disposal to get an upper hand in the Factory wars. Solid tech with 4-of Energy Flux in the sideboard as well.

Farsan's Lestree Zoo. (One Volcanic Island and one Tropical Island missing from the picture.)

The other guy from the semifinals was none other than one of Morgan's old team mates from the Pro Tour; the man sometimes known as fusk-Olle. I think that most guys reading this blog knows who Olle Råde is. The guy has basically won everything there is to win in Magic (including the pro tour, grand prix, invitational, etc); he's in the Magic Hall of Fame; and he was "the first consensus best player in the world in Pro Tour history". He also won last BSK, and as such already has one Giant Shark in 93/94. He is, like, a super-duper good wizard, and probably the most skilled player I've met.

Olle hade made some changes to his Shark-winning UR Burn deck from BSK. In particular, he had followed the strategy used by Gordon Anderson in Arvika and added a set of Flying Men as "Lava Spikes". A really solid deck used by a really solid player, and the results speaks for themselves. His average finish in the three Shark tournaments he has played since November 2014 is 4th-5th place. That's pretty damn impressive.

Olle's UR Burn

And finally we have Seb Celia. I actually know fairly little about Seb. I know that he comes from Stockholm, and that he has helped organize Vintage tournaments in the capital. A sharp dressed man with a warm smile, slinging a brutal version of The Deck.

Stockholm seems very partial to The Deck and the players have help each other optimize the builds a whole lot over the last year. The capital probably has a higher density of skilled The Deck players than any other community. Seb's version looks really interesting, with no less than ten maindeck instant speed answers to Factories; in addition to his Strip Mine, Chaos Orb and Stone Rain. He also got a sweet The Hive in the sideboard :)

Seb Celia's The Deck

That's it for the top8. Next time we're treated to a sweet tournament report from our friend Constantine from Russia! Good times. Before that though, I highly recommend checking out Danny Friedman's recent tournament report from n00bcon at the Understanding Ancestral Recall blog. A very nice read with sweet tech and pics.