Old School Mtg

Today we have another glorious guest. Svante Landgraf is one of the most prolific The Deck players in the format. Fresh of a top8 in the Stockholm Ivory Cup, and that's just after picking up a trophy in the n00bcon 9 top8, the dude knows his way around old school control decks. He is also an old Pro Tour player with a few success stories from pretty much all sanctioned formats. Svante likes his control decks, and seriously considered the impact of a Jayemdae Tome restriction last month. The Tome got a stay this time, but that didn't stop him from graciously sharing his thoughts with us here. Let's take the ride. Enjoy! /Mg out I love books and libraries. I love books so much that I spent the last six years getting a Ph.D in what essentially amounts to Comparative Literature (technically, it’s something called "Culture and Society", but wtf does that even mean), to the dual benefits of now being unemployed and being able to call myself a Doctor of Science Fiction...

It has been a while since I updated the Decks to Beat page, but I've finally managed to find most of the lists from the last few months. Check 'em out if you want some inspiration. One thing about decks-to-beat though is that they are by definition decks with winning records at tournaments. The X-0 to X-2 decks of the meta. At the last gathering I played, the Jumping Jesus tournament in Oslo, I e.g. got the chance to battle against an awesome Elephant Tribal deck in the swiss. I also got my only loss in the tournament at the hands of a powerless Red/White deck with Granite Gargoyles. There are lots of cool things to build apart from the "high end piles"; just try to find something that you enjoy playing with. Speaking of the Jumping Jesus tournament, here are some pics from the gathering: Black Vise had a decent showing here, with many different decks trying to make it work. From my experience so far it mostly seem...