6 days left: The BSK top8, part 2

Six days left for the #MtgForLife campaign. A few days back we reached the $10,000 milestone we sat out at the start, but we keep charging. Right now, we've raised $12,052. We're at at a level where it sends a signal to and from the Magic community at large. Sometimes we need to raise our eyes from our playmats, and when we do, we have the opportunity to make a small difference. Ball Lightning if I ever saw it. Thanks for being awesome.

With the last week of the campaign in mind, let's check in on the rest of the mages from the BSK top8.

Hannes "Halo00" Löfgren, Andreas Rosén, Olle "Rolex" Råde, Martin Jordö.

Hannes "Halo00" Löfgren holds the distinction of being the youngest player in the format; at 22 years he's only slightly older than the cards themselves. That does not by any means say that he is low on experience with old cards though. Quite the opposite. Hannes slowly bought in to Legacy a bunch of years back while in school, and showed impressive results at the tournaments in Gothenburg early on. He started his transition to Vintage around 2011 (I think), and have since then become one of the arguably best players in the format in the North. After a usual string of great finishes, he convincingly topped the standings in the largest Swedish Vintage league last year (with yours truly quite a leap down at second place btw). He is a known quantity in the elimination rounds of eternal tournaments, this year including e.g. the Vintage nationals. Hannes started playing 93/94 a little over a year ago. After missing the top8 of last n00bcon on tiebreakers, this time his take on The Deck would take him to the top of the standings at BSK. And there's some solid tech right here! In particular his win conditions are a 3/2/2 split between Serra, Factories and Fireballs. The 3/0 split between main deck Books and Scepters and a few MD Lightning Bolts seems to have become conventional wisdom in later versions of The Deck.

Halo00's The Deck

For our next guy, Andreas Rosén, I actually know very little about him. I've heard that he comes from Norberg, a smaller city in Sweden, and visited BSK with a friend. But I'm surprisingly blank. A stout man with an arm covered in tattoos, smashing faces with second turn Juzam Djinns. Solid description of a 93/94 player for sure.

Deck of choice in his first 93/94 tournament though? Deadguy Ale. A really cool deck for those who dare pick it up. It combines the power of an early Juzam or Underworld Dreams with the best spot removals in the format; Disenchant, Swords to Plowshares and Sinkhole. It also has the ability to go first turn Hypnotic or just blow out the game with Balance or Mind Twist.  5-1 in the swiss. Who said you had to have blue power to get to the elimination rounds? Juzam has god damn five power on his own.

Andreas's Deadguy Ale

Olle "Rolex" Råde was "the first consensus 'best player in the world' in Pro Tour history". He was the first player with five PT top8s, the first Player of the Year, the first DCI Invitational winner, and got inducted in the first class of the Magic Hall of Fame. If you ever looked for a real old school Magic pro, Olle will fit your bill. About a year ago, Olle decided to show that he's still the man to beat when it comes to the oldest of cards. He first came to play 93/94 at BSK 2014, finishing with a 4-2 record and missing the top8 on tiebreakers with his The Deck (you can read his excellent report here). This year, his Efreets, Djinns and burn spells took him all the way to the top. "Feels like there's not that much more left to win now", as the new Shark-winner said with a smile.

Olle's deck is a next step in the evolution of UR Burn/Electric Eel Aggro. He's down to just five creature spells, all hailing from the island of Sri Lanka. Instead he's going strong with the burn suite and counters, and more control elements than we're used to. His pair of maindeck Blood Moons are complemented by cards like Amnesia, Disrupting Scepter and maindeck Red Elemental Blasts. A very solid tempo deck with few bad matchups.

Olle's UR Burn

Martin Jordö has pretty much always played Magic, at least for as long as the Nordic Magic scene is concerned. His story is tightly knit to the history of Magic in Sweden. He started playing in the spring of '94 with a pair of tournament packs and friend, playing ante for three months before before opening the door to boosters and other players. After getting his appetite for higher competition, he first appeared at the Pro Tour in 1996. He played a few PTs, top8'd a GP, and then became the first DCI manager of Sweden in 1997. Apart from a dispensation to play at PT Chicago in '97, that meant an end for his high level tournament play. He later became the first Level 3 Judge in Sweden. In 2002, he put his Wizard duties aside and started SvenskaMagic with two friends. With his new-found opportunity to play in tournaments, he started casting spells a little more competitive again and qualified for the Pro Tour during Kamigawa block. He then went on to open the gaming store Vasa Gaming (current Mindstage) in Gothenburg. And that's just a few of his milestones Magic-wise. Dude has done a lot of things, and the Swedish community would look very different without Martin in the picture.

Deck of choice? "Enchantress-less Enchantress". A Mirror Universe combo deck of sorts. Inspired by Mats Karlsson's Enchantress deck, but drawing on the power of the recently unrestricted Mirror Universe instead of the creatures of Verdura. The deck looks really sweet to play, and grossly unfair to play against.

Martin Jordö's MirrorBall

It is fun to see how both of the cards we unrestricted after n00bcon 7 make a big impact on the meta, and that both decks using Mirror Universe and Power Artifact show up in the top4 of a 55-player tournament six months later. Last year, it also took about half a year before we saw the full impact of unrestricted Mana Vaults in Atog Decks (as well as monoblue, combo and Nether Void). The ninth place deck was a really sweet pile as well btw; a BRG Land destruction deck without Nether Void. We also have quite a few other sweet piles that just missed out on the top8, including Time Vault combo and WW. Next time we'll take a deeper look at Vault combo with Felipe Garcia.

Six days left for #MtgForLife. Over $12,000. This is the spirit of the format.