Old School Mtg

Many of the decklists from Worlds 94 have been lost. It was a single elimination tournament, rather than having separate elimination rounds after a swiss. Due to this structure, extra focus on a top8 was not really relevant. Also, as the saying goes, Wizards wasn't overly keen on showing the winning decklists in the Duellist or similar, lest other players would try to copy them rather than building their own decks. Time changes. We have a pretty solid idea of the lists from the top4 though; those of Zak Dolan, Bertrand Lestree, Dominic Symens, and Cyrille de Foucaud. All these players played blue and green; and everyone except Dolan also played red and black. Dolan was the only one playing white. The reason I though about this was because every deck in the n00bcon top8 also played blue. Maybe unsurprising. I still think that it is not as utterly dominant as it was a year ago, after all we had a monored Gauntlet of Might deck at 9th place and WW won last BSK. Anyway, lets look at

Winning is not everything, not even the main thing. However, getting to the n00bcon top8 is quite a feat. A great majority of the tournament players back in the mid 90s didn't have the same understanding of the game as we have today; with tempo, card advantage, who's-the-beatdown and whatnot. The players at our world championship are probably, on average, better than they were at the actual worlds 94. In the midst of our casual environment, we have players with backgrounds from national teams at Worlds, former Pros, the formerly consensus master of Legacy in Sweden, a former Vintage national champion, and players with impressive records from previous 93/94 tournaments. Amongst all the beer and laughs, there is a competition, and the competition is skilled. Building a deck in this format is hard, time consuming, and expensive. Winning with, and tuning, said deck is even harder. Getting to the top8 shows that you have what it used to take to be a champ; before it was called

The dust have settled after the world championship in Old School Mtg. Forty-four players came to play nostalgic magic in a casual setting. We saw players with resumes ranging from a few years of kitchen table play to players with multiple success stories from the early years of the Pro Tour. There are many anecdotes to be told, but for now I'll let some pictures do the talking. Players gathering at the pub to chat and trade before the tournament starts. Burken, our glorious scorekeeper, at work. A mostly casual but skilled player, with a résumé that includes defeating Brad Nelson at Worlds 2010, which lead to the Player of the Year play-off for that season. Round 1 has started. I faced off against Danish player Jimmy in the first round. Doppelganger doing good work against the Meekstone. We had to get some extra tables to the pub and move around the furniture to make room for everyone. The last tables are in a sofa area. A lot of power in this room btw. T

I've been practising my Chaos Orb flips the last days, and I'm reaching a decent level. Two more players have signed up today, Jenny and Sveby. Jenny is a new 93/94 player, and Sveby was one of the format's first players from 2007. I, Honka, Freespace, Jenny and Åland gathered at my place tonight for some tech. I wasn't really in the mood to playtest that much with Project M, as I hadn't played "seriously" since Kingvitational, I was fairly tired, and the deck has decision trees that goes on for days. I did play a couple of rounds though, and I think the deck seems pretty good. Pictured: Teching Honka's deck is awesome and incredibly annoying to face. The round I saw him playing, he was gaining about 20 life each turn, and eventually comboed out and dealt 22 damage to his opponent on the spot. Jenny's deck is a Berserk deck that can win out of nowhere. Freespace's 5-color Machine Head has been updated since his top8 at BSK, and looks

It's getting close. We are now 43 players signed up for n00bcon. I wouldn't be shocked if this is the largest tournament that that allows Moxen in Sweden for the last five years. When we consider the fact that the tournament pretty much has zero price support apart from honor, this says something sweet about the people who will play. So what have we done this week in preparations? The pins are fixed, and I'm very happy about the service. When I first got them, there had been a misunderstanding about the layout. I sent an e-mail to CosmicWhale , who made the pins, and they sent me a new batch for free within a week. I used them for the pins last year as well, and if you're Swedish and for any reason wants to create pins or other merch, they have my highest recommendations. Professional, friendly, and reasonably priced :) Old batch to the left, actual pins on the right. I went to the pub last Friday to check out the selection and table spaces. It will be crowded,

Spent my weekend in the Austrian Alps. I've never been there before, even though it's less than two hours drive away from Munich where I worked for six months last year. Helles and skiing is as good a combination as ever though. We're now 38 persons signed up for n00bcon in two weeks! It will be awesome. At least three nations are competing now (Sweden, Norway and Denmark), so we've actually got multiple countries represented for the world championship this time ;) The player base has grown during the last year, and there's something like 15 players participating in their first 93/94 tournament this Easter. One of the newer players I'm looking forward to meet again is Axelsson, who first started playing oldschool at BSK last year. During BSK, he went top4 with a powerless Berserk deck, beating Elof in the quarterfinals. He also placed in the Vintage tournament at BSK, with a pretty random pile of black cards from the 94-98 era. I myself had a pretty good run

The discussion on legal sets in this format is truly a vivid one. The arguments on Fallen Empires is the most commented post on this blog, and the third most read (after the two more general posts on fake cards). From that discussion, it's clear that many players want to add some additional cards to the format, but at the same time many players are sceptical towards the FE expansion. Another issue that commonly comes up is the lack of mana fixing, and the problems with finding duals that are format legal. After some consideration, we've come up with a great solution which handles all these issues. There is after all another expansion that really can vitalize this format, and that is not a part of modern block structure. The people who are sceptical about legalizing Fallen Empires wont have to worry about Hymns wrecking their meta, and the people wanting to have access to new tech will get their fair share. This set even have some "triple-lands", giving the most gri