Dawn of Drammen

About a month ago, I visited Drammen for the first time. It's the 9th most populous city in Norway, still a fairly small place with a little over 60,000 inhabitants. For some reason, one of my favorite Swedish political skate punk bands from the 80s, Charta 77, had recently released a new album and decided that Drammen would be a good place to tour. So Øyann and I found a train, booked the most punk hotel we could find, and went for some springtime mosh pits.

She's the girl with her left arm up in the center of the picture btw. I'm lost somewhere in the shuffle. Good mosh was had.

Last weekend another group of ragtag sinners gathered in Drammen. Not for punk this time though, but for the first old school mtg gathering in the city. The Drammen community is spearheaded by Erland Petersen, an eternal viking and community organizer who e.g. placed second at last autumn's tournament in Moss. Erland sent over a bunch of pictures and deck lists from the tournament.

Stian takes a turn one Mind Twist for six in the Semi-finals with surprisingly good humor :)

Mia holds off a horde of black magic with ease using a good ol' Circle of Protection. On her left, the veteran Svetzarn of Arvika who traveled from Sweden to show the Drammen community who's who.

17 players gathered for good times, good beer, and good Magic.

Audun vs. Jimmie. Jimmie has moved on from WW to some black red pile with Greed and Black Vise. Also he has apparently misplaced his bottle ;)

One of the two WWs who made the top8 are looking at some slightly bigger fish on the other side of the table. Really nice playmat btw.

Can't beat that Tolaria...

Jhoval vs Mia and Artelas vs Kenneth. Some veterans vs relatively new members of the community right here.

Jhoval's 3rd place deck. No unnecessary synergies or recursions here, just Forking restricted stuff and doubling fireballs :)

Organizer Erland's 2nd place deck. A really, really sweet pile of monoblack. Royal Assassin and Kormus Bell? Check. God damn Cursed Rack in the sideboard. It's almost as if he don't even need the Juzams ;) Erland btw got to unlock the achievement of killing a Serra Angel with Royal Assassin during the tournament (with a little help from Paralyze).

Audun's winning deck. Yet another pile of awesome. Sweet one-ofs like Basalt Monolith, Stone Rain and Armageddon; combined by hard artifact beatsticks; and some unconventional non-blue control cards. Very impressive brew that won him a glorious Adventurer's Guildhouse.

The rest of the lists from the top8 will come soon. In lieu of those, I also got an unofficial tournament report, ghost written by Nils Håkon Delphin on behalf of the winner Audun Døssland:
"So I played Old School this weekend. I didn't take any notes, so I'll have to try to pull from memory how they went.

Round 1: Smash face. Twice.
Round 2: Smash face. Twice.
Round 3: Smash face. Twice.
Round 4: Smash face. Twice.
Round 5: Smash face. Twice.
Top 8: Smash face. Twice.
Semi-finals: Smash face. Twice.
Finals: Smash face. Twice."

A true Master of Magic Cards.

It looked like a really sweet gathering, and I hope I get the opportunity to join next time :)

In other news, I recently read an article at Nomad Gamer about Old School Magic. I think it's a nice post about the author's initial reaction to 93/94, and how her idea of the format evolved after she started playing it. I've never had any interactions with the player, but it gets me happy to see these kind of articles. On some social media sites, it can occasionally feel easy to find drama or even hate about different approaches or house rules. But a majority of the community don't really care about that, they are mostly players who want to dust of old cards and just enjoy nostalgia and casual gaming outside the conventional structure. It's sometimes nice to be reminded :)

Danny Friedman has updated his Understanding Ancestral Recall blog about his showdown at the Clash of Carousers, and some interesting thoughts about the most recent B&R update (as he's coming from a place where the most common rules are those of Eternal Central). As usual a good read, with some solid deck tech.

At a darker place in the blogosphere, our Shaman of the Mtg Underground Ben Perry just updated his hexing mtgunderground blog with another take on the Rabbit Hole. Take the ride.