Old School Mtg

Last weekend Playoteket hosted their second 93/94 tournament. The attendance had grown since September, and a lot of new tech was represented in the wake of BSK. The eventual champion was none other than our artistic friend Felipe Garcia. This is his story. Enjoy! When I moved from Spain to Sweden I thought I would deeply miss the old school booster drafts from Sevilla's Vintage scene. We used complete collections of CE Beta, Arabian, Antiquities, Legends and Dark to create boosters and play 8-man drafts. The games were surrounded by beer and an amazingly fun ambient. It was a great surprise when I, in the beginning of 2014, discovered that there not only existed a great oldschool scene in Sweden, but that this scene was one of the most active and interesting in the whole world. I became a hardcore Magic collector three years ago when I made an important decision. By that time Legacy was huge in Spain, and Legacy GP Madrid had been the largest Magic tournament to date. As many ...

"Worzel felt the telltale prickling at the back of her neck; her domain was being challenged!" Magic rules used to be fairly fluid. The idea was that players would find their own interpretations on how to play. Many cards were intentionally worded ambiguously to force players to make their own conclusions. The rulebooks noted that you should discuss your interpretation of the rules whenever you played with someone outside your local playgroup to "make sure that you play the same game". When I started, we e.g. though that "X" represented the roman numeral 10. In hindsight, that may not the brightest of interpretations. I still played with Word of Binding in my deck though, as the Ron Spencer art was far to sweet to pass on. You decide if this gives all Goblins flying or only itself. It was expected that most players would buy a starter and maybe a few boosters to build their decks. Not surprisingly, the playtesters realized that the blue "boon...

Today we have a guest report from Kristoffer "Myfz" Karlsson, finalist at BSK and all-round good guy. Enjoy! A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... That's how the soon to be nine part long Star Wars saga begins, or at least the first six episodes. This nine round 93/94 story starts in April of 2014 when I first started to play Hearthstone. After a few hours I realised that it was Magic I really wanted to play. Every move I made in Heartstone made me longing for turning real cards sideways instead. So after a 2 year long break from Magic, and with no cards left but my black 93/94 deck (without Juzam and power), I embarked to svenskamagic.com to check how things were going. I set out to build a cheap deck for Legacy to pass the time while waiting for some new 93/94 tournaments. I've always loved the 93/94 format, but only played in a tournament once before. That was the annual n00bcon of 2012. I managed to top8, losing only to Jocke Almelund with The Deck i...

In terms of mid-90s tournaments, 40 players are a bunch. Even by today's standards, it is larger than any sanctioned Scandinavian Vintage tournament in the last five years, and 2/3s of the size of last summers main Vintage tournament at GenCon. Quite impressive for a casual format where the first price is a $0.05 card. Winning or having "the best deck" are not the the main reasons why most people play 93/94, but I guess top8'ing a tournament in a format very close to the original version of the game still comes with some nerdy bragging rights ;) Today we'll look at the first half of the BSK top8. Erik "Sehl" Larsson, Rano "Rafiki" Zangana, Joakim "Jocke" Almelund and Magnus "Mg" de Laval Erik "Sehl" Larsson relapsed into the game, after a decade and a half, playing Erhnamgeddon at Kingvitational earlier this year. He then took a monoblack deck to a 2nd place at the Warcon tournament this summer, and have since...

Today we have a guest report from one of the true legends of old school magic. A list of his achievements would probably be longer than the report itself, so I'll just quote a line from his Hall of Fame profile, and state that he was "the first consensus "world's best Magic player" in Pro Tour history". Or as he introduced himself in the report: "Pro Tour Player of the Year 1996, Pro Tour Hall of Famer, but still an apprentice in the format of formats, 93/94." Let's give the word to Olle Råde. When you sit down at the table for the first old school tournament of your twenty or so years Magic career, what could be a more rude awakening than staring down at the classic opening of Plains, Mox Pearl and Two Savannah Lions? The first time I went to BSK was, fittingly enough, in 1994. Back then I had dropped out of high school to spend my days selling Magic cards at the local gaming store Tradition. I had picked up Magic during the summer, and alt...

A weekend with good Magic and great people has passed in Borås. This was one of the largest old school tournament thus far, and we saw a lot of new faces and creative decks among the 40 players. I'll be posting player profiles and deck techs during the coming weeks, and hopefully we'll also get a tournament report written by one of the participants in the near future. For now, lets look at some pictures from the event. Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson giving a peek of his new tech; Glasses of Urza and Killer Bees. Felipe Garcia studying Mastering Magic Cards to get some last minute hints on how to win. Long time collector and first time 93/94 player Mällroth shows up to battle in a kilt and Serra Angel t-shirt. The Arvika crew looks ready to battle. Rad dudes with cool decks. Three-time Shark winner Elof, and behind him the Swedish national Legacy champion Vigo (who btw defeated Elof in the finals for the title.) Sveby, one of the formats ...