Old School Mtg

Last weekend I played in the fourth annual Arvika Festival. It was a glorious gathering, and a report is on its way. Hopefully one from the winner, alongside some rants about my own foray with The Deck. But today I'd like to quickly first step out and look at surprisingly strange, and perhaps unsettling, trivia from the mid 90s. Tinfoil hats on. A few years ago, I wrote a short post about the backlash towards Magic by religious groups that deemed the game blasphemous. Beware of Magic the Gathering . 25 years ago, that was kind of a big deal; iconoclasm and heresy were far more frowned upon just a quarter of a century ago. These days most of us find a card like Lich fairly harmless. Someone at Wizards finds the casual satanism in this card hilarious enough to give it Multiverse ID 666. There's an Easter Egg for you. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=666 Now, being the heathens that we are, WotC and the great majority of players aren't...

Today we have a special g uest with us. Zack may be mostly known from another corner in the world of old Magic cards; spreading ideas from the first decade of Magic over at his Ancient Mtg blog . The brew master Zack has written around 80 deck techs for the Ancient format in the last four years. Today he looks back even further in the card pool and shares some glorious tech in the 93/94 format. Enjoy! /Mg out Hey guys and gals, I thought I'd start today’s article with a quick introduction; my name is Zack and I started playing Magic back in 1995 when I was 8 years old. My buddy taught me how to play(ish) and I immediately adored the game, the art and just the plain awesomeness. I know I know, isn’t that everyone’s story? Well, then Weatherlight and Tempest came around and the 'lore' changed, as did my interest in where the game was going. While I think 'real' Magic concluded with Visions, I absolutely love the Swedish Old School card pool and B/R. I decided to ...

"Nevertheless, by the time I had buried the last of my companions my stock of provisions was so small that I hardly thought I should live long enough to dig my own grave, which I set about doing, while I regretted bitterly the roving disposition which was always bringing me into such straits, and thought longingly of all the comfort and luxury that I had left. But luckily for me [...] an idea struck me. [...] Why should I not build a raft and trust myself to its swiftly flowing waters? If I perished before I could reach the light of day once more I should be no worse off than I was now, for death stared me in the face, while there was always the possibility that, as I was born under a lucky star, I might find myself safe and sound in some desirable land."  - Arabian Nights: The Sixth Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor And so Sindbad set out on his raft and woke up in the land of Serendib. A place that was twenty-four parasangs long by twenty-four wide, and held the high...

These days we can find a good amount of gatherings where a community spot for the n00bcon championship is on the line. While it sucks that we can't fit everyone at the championship, it is really sweet to see communities around the world find yet another reason to gather and play. This is a story from Arvika, from the pen of David "Svetzarn" Strandberg. See you at n00bcon Svetzarn! /Mg out I'm not used to this writing stuff, but as the winner I had to write some kind of report so here we go. The day that many of the oldschool players in Arvika was waiting for were getting closer. My schedule was tight, working away from home during the weekdays and celebrating Christmas like 3 times. I managed to use some time to playtest with Markus 'Kungmarkus' one or two times and one time with Jimmie 'Polers'. After some testing with my ponza deck using Evil Eye of Orms-by-Gore as win condition - trying mono black with splash blue power as one version and Serend...