Old School Mtg

The tech at The Camaiore Fishliver Oil cup was plentiful to say the least. The first time since the mid 90s I stared down at a Stone Giant on the other side of the table.  And at decks like Matteo's MonoGreen at the table next to me. Damn! The top8 was home to eight distinctly different strategies, though with some preferred card choices among them. Seven decks played blue, and seven decks played red. Six decks had maindeck Lightning Bolts, five decks played Fireball, and five decks played Mishra's Factory. But in the eyes of most, this is what we would call a very diverse top8. In other places in Europe though, there has been some voices raised about the perceived dominance of The Deck in the last couple of weeks. The Deck took five spots in the top8 at the European Eternal Weekend , as well as five spots in the top8 at Ovino XI . This has in turn led to some resentment towards The Deck, and new rallies for restrictions. And in some cases animosity towards The Deck play...

Ragazzi! Last Sunday I went on my first ever proper Magic trip. The Italian community in Liguria, spearheaded by Lorenzo Novaro and Domenico Megu Chionetti, was throwing the first edition of the Fishliver Oil Cup; a tournament described with "Italian rules, Swedish style". It was clearly time for Hardy and I to pack our bags and fly down to the Continent to see what the Liguria scene was all about. And hopefully win a Fishliver Oil. "Good combo with Giant Shark." One thing that has become clear is that this is no ordinary format nor a single community any more. It's a grand organism of autonomous parts, and 93/94 Magic has become network of families. I kinda felt it already a couple of years back, when I first visited the Arvika community during the first Arvika Festival, and then again during the summer when I got to stay with Paddan in the Stockholm community. And here, way down south thousands of kilometres away from Gothenburg, in a different...

The 93/94 scene in Italy has exploded in the last couple of years, with strongholds of old school players in Ravenna, Milan, Liguria, Tuscany and Veneto. A few weeks back, the Ovino XI tournament in Milan gathered 60 mages from Italy and neighboring countries. This is the Ovino XI story, as told by Valerio Gregori. Enjoy! /Mg out I discovered Old School Magic 93/94 thanks to this blog, two years ago, following a link shared on one of my friend's Facebook page. And since that first reading, I have been time twisted 20 years back to the Golden Age of Magic, when it was a very different game than now. After some browsing on the page, I guess it took just half an hour before I called my brother Mario, who lives in our family house 400 km away from my place, asking him to start scavenging old card boxes in our closets and look for ancient treasures. From there, we built a couple of decks to playing during the rare weekends when I was visiting my family. And we have started collecting ...

Last weekend a group of mages gathered at CrowCon to fight for that glorious Moss Monster again. The Machine vs WW. Last year, former World Champion and co-founder of the format Kalle Nord took down the fight . This time, it was the 2015/2016 rookie of the year (and first Norwegian to play in an old school tournament) Thomas Nilsen who claimed the Moss Monster. Dude's on a really impressive run. He wrote an awesome tournament report from his second place finish in Drammen a month earlier btw, check it out if you haven't :) The Master of Magic Cards. The last opponent for Thomas this time was Erland with his MonoBlack deck. Erland has been on an insane run as well, and is currently ranked #3 in the PWP standings after Martin Berlin and Thomas himself. Erlands average finish from his tournaments since last winter is something like 2nd. This while playing a monoblack deck, occasionally sporting cards like Kormus Bell, and playing Su-Chis over Juzam Djinns. He also spear...