The Arvika Festival 6 Top8

A large and kinda competitive tournament with Scryings in Arvika a couple of weeks ago? High time to dig into elimination round tech for us netdeckers and spikes. Spice ahead. Let's go.

Thomas Nilsen's MirroBall. 1st place.

The goal with MirrorBall is to use Sylvan Library and City of Brass (alongside natural damage from the opponent) to get down to a very low life total, switch life using Mirror Universe, and then throw a Lightning Bolt or Fireball to win. It is not really the kinda deck you borrow to a new player who want to try out old school. Mirror Ball rarely give free wins, and the addition of Lat-Nam’s Legacy - while very useful - has only increased the number of decision trees. Zuran Orb and said Legacy have however made the former tier3 deck much more consistent. Before you were pretty much limited to Dark Heart of the Woods as a safety net on the low life total the deck demands, and as such you were forced to play a very high percentage of forests in the mana base. And the draw + shuffle effect of Legacy alongside Sylvan Library makes you much more likely to draw the cards actually needed to go off.

Hardy's MaskNought. 2nd place.

MaskNought is a fully new combo deck in the Scryings format. Perhaps not surprising, as the payoff part of the combo didn't really exist before. Basically the idea is to use Illusionary Mask to remove any “enters the battlefield”-abilities from creatures and then cast undercosted threats with huge ETB drawbacks without said drawbacks. The golden standard is Phyrexian Dreadnought (which can hit the table as soon as turn one), backed up with a couple Lords of Tresserhorn for consistency. The Lords also survives most all spot removal save Swords to Plowshares. This is a really cool deck in my opinion, and one I'm looking forward to try out myself.

Norton's Black/Red Midrange. 3rd place.

Norton's BRg Beatdown won the swiss portion of the tournament, just missing out on the finals this time. From the first looks, it is a fairly straight forward B/R deck with almost all the sweet cards, splashing green for a couple Sylvan Library maindeck and some Tranquilities in the sideboard. Perhaps notable, we have maindeck Terror and three Shatter, two effects that have been bumped up a notch in the Scryings format. The coolest thing with this deck is however that it is "everywhere-legal", following the restrictions of both Swedish, Atlantic, EC and most every other non-highlander rule set. As such, it is also the one deck in the top8 without any Scryings cards. One could argue that midrange has become a fierce contender in the current Scryings meta, perhaps as a side effect of control being less played.

Gajol's Disaster. 4th place.

Speaking of midrange and black cards, continuous wild card and dark wizard Gajol turned up with a new take on Disaster (with a hint of Distress) to claim the last spot in the top4. I unfortunately failed to find a deck picture from him, so this pic above is a reconstruction I made based on his written deck list. The hand disruption plan is in full effect here; having the Hyppies complimented by Mindstab Thrulls and Funeral Charms. Juzam is back in full force as well, as City in a Bottle has become a much less played card with the more diverse creature base. The reason for having a Black Knight over, say, Order of the Ebon Hand may be due to the fact that it can be pumped by Funeral Charm. And yeah, this is like 63 cards ;)

Constantine's ErhnamVoid. 5-8th place.

Constantine is known for his Black/Green creations and love of Nether Void, and this tournament was no exception. The basic idea of the deck is not that far off ErhnamGeddon; deploy a though threat and then disrupt the opponent's ability to respond by attacking their mana. Maindeck Titania's Song looks very solid; not only as disruption against artifact mana, but also a combo breaker against things like Time Vault, Basallt Monolith, Illusionary Mask and Anvil of Bogardan.

JhovalKing's PowerVault. 5-8th place.

Now Jhoval's deck is pretty wild. I remember seeing three different Time Vault decks at the tournament, and this one appears to be the most bizarre by some margin. Four Time Vaults and seven Twiddles/Emerald Charms is a good start to go broke. Then there's some debate whether or not Elder Druid is needed TwiddleVault and if you actually need the ability to go fully inf (Svante played without it, and e.g. Ole played with it at Arvika), but that one is of course included here. We're going big here after all. And then there's the small thing of Jhoval also including the full PowerMonolith combo with Magma Mine, making this deck attack with two fully separate inf-combos. And a transformational sideboard into Snakes and Serendibs (or Guardian Beast+Chaos Orb shenanigans if the maindeck combos somehow isn't enough). This is a strange pile of broken stuff. Extra credit for the Summer Magic Demonic Tutor with the censored forehead pentagram :)

Nelson Alegi's UR Burn. 5-8th place.

Ah, UR CounterBurn. Nice to see a somewhat familiar face, though with some pretty significant updates. Deploy quick threats, counter big answers (or bigger threats), and burn for the win. Nelson's take on UR with Scryings take particular stock in the artifact-hating goblins from the set. Also Hammer of Bogardan for the sweet, sweet inevitability. It is by the way refreshing to see a deck like this without the black splash for Demonic Tutor and Mind Twist. If this is due to simple availability, or to the fact that Dwarven Miner and Primal Order makes the splash far more risky, I don't not. But I enjoy it regardless.

Nils Håkon's Snake Disco

And finally we have Nils Håkon Delphin's Snake Disco. Cast a bunch of Trolls/Snakes with regeneration abilities, keep a Disk around to activate whenever the pressure is on, and be the sole player with more than just lands on the board in the aftermath. Of particular note here is probably the four Nature's Lore. Mana fixing, ramping and shuffle effect all in one, and not the least ramp that stays in play after a disk activation. The sideboard Miners look really solid, as lands are the only permanents the deck can't readily blow up.

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So that's the Arvika Festival 6 top decks. Some brand new brews, some spiced up older brews, and one fully old style brew that had more to say in a new environment. A sweet mix of combo, prison, aggro-control and midrange. Maybe this will actually be my largest Scryings tournament this year. With the covid-19 pandemic showing no signs to slow down, it is hard to predict anything about the fate and form of n00bcon 12 next month. Until then, please wash your hands.