Old School Mtg

This is my mecca: It's been so many years since I first layed my eyes on Juzam. I've attempted to get one at least five times; the first time I really tried to trade for one was almost 15 years ago. In some way, I understand that the monetary value of my foiled Mind Sculptors are about the same as this dude, in all other ways they are miles apart. I feel kind of an awe towards Juzam, and that is nothing I can say about most of my cards. I bought my first yesterday. This is a hard format to get into, and an emotional way to play magic. As we grow, more ideas of what old school magic should be are voiced. How do we maintain rules while still maintain feeling? When can we break the 7-set rule, the ban/restricted list, or the idea of competition without eventually breaking the spirit of some of the players with different ideas of nostalgia, or with different goals of why they play? These are very hard questions, and after additional feedback from players it's something t...

I first though about writing a post on the Ali from Cairo deck from my German Magic deck books, but after reading the first few chapters of Stephen Menendian's History of Vintage ( http://www.eternalcentral.com/?p=3289 , well worth a few bucks), I felt that I wanted to share Mark Chalice awesome Fork Recursion deck: Instants(9) 4 Fork 1 Ancestral Recall 2 Mana Drain 2 Storm Seeker Sorceries(12) 1 Demonic Tutor 1 Mind Twist 1 Braingeyser 1 Recall 1 Time Walk 1 Timetwister 1 Channel 1 Regrowth 1 Stream of Life 1 Wheel of Fortune 2 Fireball Enchantments (5) 1 Copy Artifact 3 Fastbond 1 Dark Heart of the Wood Artifacts(13) 4 Howling Mine 1 Chaos Orb 1 Mirror Universe 1 Black Lotus 1 Mox Emerald 1 Mox Jet 1 Mox Pearl 1 Mox Ruby 1 Mox Sapphire 1 Sol Ring Lands(21) 2 Bazaar of Baghdad 1 Badlands 3 City of Brass 4 Taiga 3 Tropical Island 3 Underground Sea 3 Volcanic Island 1 Library of Alexandria ...

Last Friday, I attended what is here known as Starkbier fest. The lederhosen was on, the maß was drunk, and the beer was stark. I'm the dude on the left, the beer is a Löwenbräu doppelbock. So far good times. Strangely, I had a slight hangover during Saturday. I spent the evening doing the perfect thing for a slow day, playing me some old school in Regensburg! I had collected a few new cards since last time, in particular a Vesuvan Doppelganger. Fun fact about Vesvan: if you let it copy itself, it'll get more instances of the copy ability. Hence, you could potentially play a really strange sequence if you combine it with creatures with activated abilities which you could use during your upkeep; or with Xenic Poltergeist to do shenanigans with different artifacts. Martin played a new build, a clearly unbeatable Elemental deck, with 3 of each of the Fire, Water, Earth and Air. When your Serendib Efreet and Su-chi stares down at an Air Elemental and an Earth Eleme...

Five weeks to easter and n00bcon! I'd like to mention a few cards that haven't really seen any play at all yet, but might make a splash this year. Last n00bcon we saw Relic Barrier make a huge impact, and during BSK we saw Haunting Winds take a player to the top4. We also had Petra Sphix and Field of Dreams in the top8 :) 1. Gaea's Avenger Last year's winner played 24 artifacts maindeck, and it's not uncommon for the control decks to play 1/3 or more of the cards in their decks as artifacts. Facing a couple of Moxen and a Sol Ring, this is a 4/4 for 3, and it grows with your opponent's mishras as well. The fact that it's immune to City in a Bottle, and many times can play around lightning bolt, may make this guy fairly playable. The issue is of course that your opponent needs board presence to make him big, but as long as those artifacts are mostly mana I think this guy could make the cut. 2. Hyperion Blacksmith This dude is a reasonable cheap 2/...

The first 93/94 invitational will be held during Easter sunday. The invited are the top8 in the pimpwalker standings, currently these guys: 1. Kalle "egget" Nord  2. Rickard "Pefken" Samuelson  3. Elof Gottfridson 4. Robert Schram  5. Daniel "GaJol" Nilson 6. Magnus "Mg" de Laval 7. Hjalmar "Honka" Backlund 8. Jocke "Troligt att jag är top8" Almelund The invitation list is then in falling order, so if anyone can't join, #9 in the standings will be able to take his spot, and so on. As is customary with invitational tournaments, we will shake up the odds a little by playing the format in an unusal way. After long considerations about how to play the invitational, we ended up with classic 93/94; but with Fallen Empires as a legal 8th set. Will Hymn to Tourach give the black decks the final push, will Goblin Grenade make sligh viable, and would River Merfolk put monoblue at top as a new tempodeck? So, wha...

Easter is coming up, and with that the world championship in Old School mtg! It's a gathering of beer, good friends and awesome magic, and it's the most prestigious tournament in the format. Last year 34 players gathered to cast turn 1 Juzams and tap Howling Mines with Relic Barriers, and anyone who's got a deck should appreciate this competition! What : n00bcon, aka the World Championships in 93/94 magic. This is the fifth n00bcon, and it's traditionally held during Gothcon (Sweden's best gaming convention), adjacent to the main convention site. The first ever tournament in 93/94 was held at the Gothcon site in 2008, since 2009 we've used an adjacent pub as tournament location. Where : Rotary Pub, about 8 minutes walking distance from the Gothcon site (in Gothenburg). We've rented the pub for the duration of the tournament, so only players will be allowed at the site. The pub hosts a very impressive selection of beers from around the world, if that...

A few months ago I mentioned that a German player had contacted me about old school Mtg. Since I'm currently working in Munich, which is about an hour and a half away from Regensburg where he lived, we decided to meet up. I met Martin at the station and we walked through the beautiful city, passing by Catherdral and the Bridge, chatting about nostalgia and good times. We came home to Martin's place and I met his family, got a beer and had a look at his amazing collections. It hard to explain the feeling properly, and my few pictures are horribly blurry, but among other things a got to see the serra angel statue, pretty munch everything done by Rebecca Guay, and a complete collection of He-Man figures. Moxen! He-Man! After about an hour we went to the local pub to play. The pub was called Die Tankstelle, a place with wooden interior, rock music, beers served at the table and mostly a few regular as customers. It felt very much like Rotary Pub in Gothenburg, definit...