Retox and rants

It had been a long time since I last played. Life gets in the way, other things get prioritized, and suddenly you're looking at two months since you last touched a Magic card. That's a good thing with old school though. I don't need to play that often if I don't have the time. It's not like the format will rotate or drastically change with new additions to the card pool in a couple of months. Or a couple of years for that matter. I've played 93/94 for almost 10 years now, and I plan to do it for 10 more. But we all have the ups and downs in Magic activity. We never stop, we just take breaks of different lengths.

It was time to relapse. As luck would have it, one of my good colleagues at work is Bjørn Einar Bjartnes, not only an excellent human being and brilliant developer, but also an old school afficionado. Yesterday we decided to play some lunch break Magic at work.

First turn Land-Lotus-Bottle of Suleiman. Some Magic right there.

With the help of some amazing skill, I win the flip and get a turn two Djinn. Thanks a bunch to Constantine Prishvitsin for the sweet tokens :) The Russian old school scene is awesome.

Post the lunch brawl, I was smitten. Magic is a damn good game. After watching some big screen UEFA soccer in a sunny park, I joined up with a few of the Norwegian old school players at Outland to get in a few more games. Michael Kjebekk, one of the early adopters in Oslo who works at the local game store, was trying out streaming a few of the games on twitch.

McGuyver setup.

There will be a 93/94 tournament Sunday this weekend in Olso btw, during the annual Arcon convention. The Arcon convention is as usual placed during Midsummer's Eve weekend in Sweden, which often prompts me to travel south and celebrate with native countrymen, but as I have been on the road every weekend for the last seven weeks it's time to take a couple of days home in Norway. Checking out the pride parade Saturday and playing 93/94 Sunday. Feel free to join if you're in the neighborhood :)

On a slightly different but similar note, last weekend marked the first annual Ivory Cup in Stockholm! I didn't have the chance to go there myself, but I've been promised a tournament report by one of the tournament organizers, Gordon Andersson, by next week. I can give a small spoiler though. I know that there were around 30 players competing, and that these were the decks in the top8:'

1 - Troll Disco
2 - Goblins
3-4 - The Deck
3-4 - Parfait (Winter Orb Prison)
5-8 - Power Monolith
5-8 - TwiddleVault
5-8 - The Gun (RGw Berserk)
5-8 - Arabian Aggro

Apparently Goblin Sligh is playable without Fallen Empires. Impressive stuff.

Who even needs Grenades when you have Ziggy at your side ;)

Speaking of Fallen Empires, I took the time to update the Banned & Restricted page with links and descriptions of the most commonly used local variants of 93/94. To quote the Alpha rule book (page 35):

"Be prepared to encounter house versions of this game when you play someone you haven't played before. These rules are a framework from which to start; after you know how to play, your play group may develop local rules, new ways to play particular cards, or other variations. Just be sure before you start that everyone is playing the same game."

Local variations is old school as fuck. This should be seen as one of the perks of playing an unsanctioned format, no one can tell you what to do to best embrace the spirit of the format but yourself. What we do here works for us, and for most of the scattered players around the globe, but it doesn't by any means mean that you have to follow what we've been doing here. Maybe ChannelFireball rules or BoM rules works better for you. Or maybe you want to come up with something yourself.

Let's end today's rant with a couple of sweet decks seen at the tables of n00bcon 8. Courtesy of Axelsson and Macensci:

Machine Head White

Eel-less Eel.

Oh, and two more things! Check out Nomad Gamer's new post about Legends and the even newer one about Red-Green Aggro. Good stuff.