Old School Mtg

Once, I was pretty decent in mathematics. Using an almanac as temporal verification, it wasn't even that many years ago. You get unfamiliar with your tools if you don't use them. I'm sure there's fortune cookie wisdom in there somewhere. But avoiding this excellent excuse to write Haiku, I'll just state that if someone asks me about functional analysis, measure theory or reading some paper in French today, I'm sure to nod nostalgically. I might hold up a conversation about the subjects when I'm drunk, but I have no real working skill in graduate level mathematics anymore. Anyway, Magic. This is still somehow related to the history of Magic. Very old school stuff though. Like before Alpha playtest cards old school. Like Richard Garfield January 1991 old school. There have been a bunch of articles out there about most aspects of the good doctor's life and the early days of Magic. How the company got founded, how he proposed to his wife, his struggle...

Today I have the great pleasure to share the story of Matt Shields from across the ocean. Enjoy! /Mg out "Expect my visit when the darkness comes. The night I think is best for hiding all." Much gratitude to Mg for posting this. My opinions of Old School Magic don't carry more weight than anyone else's. But to a format so entrenched in stories and perspectives, I wanted to contribute my own. If anyone takes any inspiration or enjoyment from this at all, then it was worth writing. ... I beat Library tonight. Sean had it first turn, on the play. I countered with double Dark Ritual into Sengir; it got Psiblasted after eating a chunk of his life. I had Land Tax early and he died to a board of 2/2s, fourteen basics, Maze of Ith, Sol Ring, and a dozen cards left in my library. Icy Manipulator did serious work. After the game I managed to acquire a NM Juzam Djinn for my deck. Psiblast that shit. ... I was introduced to the game in the first half of 1994, at 15 ye...

A little over a year ago, WotC made a change in the Friday Night Magic policy allowing every format viable for FNM-play. This gave our flute-playing invoker and former DCI-manager of Sweden Mikael Mällroth good incentive to organize the first sanctioned 93/94 FNM in a local pub. This is his story. Enjoy! /Mg out This is a little summary of the first ever 93-94 FNM. It’s late but work, family and life got in the way. It started in the car towards the World championship in the format last Easter. We had some loose talks about doing a 93-94 FNM. Would be nice to hand out some FNM-foils in a 93-94 tournament. A day or few after the championship I checked some dates and found a Friday that’s lodged between a Swedish holiday Thursday and the weekend. Much more chance for people to get of work and such. I talked to our local magic friendly pub in Karlstad, called The Leprechaun Pub, and they gave their approval (we host like chaos sealed there, of and on). We had a go. The tournament w...

I'm on a plane. If all goes well, and that is a big if, I'll meet up with my girlfriend in Ethiopia in about 24 hours. I'm going to the middle of Africa to spend a weekend with Netflix in a hotel room. If all goes well. She's in South Sudan. It's not place one simply goes to. A month back I looked into to it at length. Even if one should manage to get a ticket and a visa, and all the clearances and vaccinations, actually landing is no piece of cake. The airport in Juba got closed yesterday due to political turmoil. It's never open during weekends. A majority of the planes that flies there are forbidden to enter European airspace due to the high risk of accidents. And if all that would work out, the country is a serious danger zone. The tribal wars isn't exactly a game of Elves vs. Goblins. Travelling in the country without soldiers looked like a bad idea. And I probably needed to to learn how to bribe. So if I was going, I wanted to get gold. No insuran...

During the holidays I had the opportunity to visit Erik "Sehl" Larsson's house in Åsa. Eight mages of ill repute had gathered to draft Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson's new 93/94 combo cube. Limited brewing It was a great experience. The cube contained pretty much all the possible combos and tricks in the format, and fairly few creatures in order to make the combos more powerful. I started out trying to build Transmute/Field of Dreams, but didn't get to wheel my Millstones and ended up with UR Transmute Artifact. There were some truly insane decks and matches, but I won't spoil to much in case Viktor wants to write a report about the cube later. I will however say that I unlocked the achievement of pinging an opponent from 20 to zero with a single Prodigal Sorcerer as my only offense. Tim achievement about to be unlocked. But that was not the only event to take place at Casa Sehl during December. A few weeks ago, Sehl hosted the second yearly S...