Joy Pad Open, blags, and California tech

Just a quick heads up.

This Sunday my roommate Hardy and I will host the first non-proxy 93/94 tournament in Oslo. It will take place in our apartment, aka the Joy Pad. We decided on the time last Sunday, and are hoping for around 6-8 competitors, given our meticulous planning and early heads up.

The tournament starts at 14:00, Sunday the 7th. There is no tournament fee, but betting is encouraged and there will be some kind of price for winning. Bring beer.

So what beer you ask? Personally I recommend to match the beer with the deck. You e.g. don't want to be binging Red Stripe playing Stasis, as it would cause problems with bathroom breaks and rounds going to time.

MonoGreen. Works great with American Pale Ales

Creatureless TaxEdge. Something spontaneous fermented and sour, in particular if you don't run Land's Edge and have Feldon's Cane as the sole wincon. Alternatively some kind of hipster beer geek stuff like 2nd edition Red Horizon.

Distress. Horizon Tokyo Black seems like a good choice. 16% ABV, 100 IBU. Darkness in a glass.

If you are in Oslo and want to try the format, I'll be happy to lend out the TaxEdge or Monogreen. Might also be a Trick Deck up for grabs. I'll post some pics and a short tournament report here after the event.

Speaking of smaller and local events, I just got a mail from a Will in California as I was writing this. Will and his friends had started playing pretty close after the beginning, and had been ripping AN-boosters back in the days. I got some nice anecdotes from the past, and a few sweet pictures from the present, when Will and a few friends had brought their cards along on a family vacation to play with them again. It is always a great pleasure to hear that this blog can be a small inspiration for former players across the world to dust of their old cards :)

Eureka beats down with Nicol Bolas, Force of Nature and Lord of the Pit on turn 4. Beer of choice is 805 ale.

Greed gets close, but Eureka steals another victory in California.

I also want to give a shout out to two new blogs. As of last month, this is no longer the solitary old school blag in the webosphere. Two champions of the format across the ocean, Danny Friedman and "Shaman" Ben Perry, have started blogs with coverage on Old School Magic.

Danny's blog, Understanding Ancestral Recall, contains "musings, tournaments reports, information about Old School Magic, and pictures of luxurious cardboard". It also contains a section with Chaos Orb flipping videos, and rad old school design :) Go ahead and send him your best flips.

Shaman Ben's blog can be found at mtgunderground. The focus of the blog is not 93/94 Magic per say, but rather the underground casual scene of Mtg which 93/94 is a major part of. To quote Ben what #mtgunderground is all about:

"[Your DCI-number] keeps you from playing in high stakes Vintage and Oldschool house games with larger buy ins, better pay outs, illicit and allegedly illegal substances, better music, better company and above all better MAGIC. While you were playing FNM last week somewhere in Detroit six men of ill repute were sitting in a basement drinking Scotch passing a pipe and laughing maniacally as they battled out a sealed Ice Age tournament with a $500 prize to first place. While you were cursing under your breath at last Sunday’s Premiere IQ about how awful and lucky your opponent was and about how stale the format was there were sixteen guys in Archbold, Ohio (I had never heard of it either, do not feel bad) playing Oldschool MTG with the Swedish 93/94 Ban/Restricted list in a tournament for a Chaos Orb and a Mirror Universe (the latter of which I won for placing 2nd) and enjoying themselves so much that the guy who finished last is currently reading strategy articles from Scrye #3 and scouring eBay for a good deal on uncommons from The Dark."

That's it for today. Go check out the American blogs, and I'll update with a tournament report from Norway after the weekend.