Old School Mtg

How about this for a start: 100 000 NOK. Well, actually 99,287, but I added a few hundred more to get a rounder number. The #MtgForLife campaign gathered well over $12,000 in a little over a month. That is awesome, and it will make a difference. And players from around the world keep the mindset going; just a few days ago Chris Cooper and players in the UK held a charity evening for MSF raising nearly £250. It makes me happy to be a part of the community. All the "thank you"-cards have been shipped btw, so hopefully you have them in the mail by now. Rotary Pub in Gothenburg. I think I've said this every year, but 2015 saw some big growth for mages interested in the origins of the game. Last year I stated that I thought that this blog and the format had grown about as much as was possible, and showed a graph of growth over the last few years. But it's been doubling season yet again, and we're looking at about about twice the number of visitors compared to ...

Perception is a fickle beast. Reality is shaped by subjective senses where one man's victory is another one's demise. What really happened in Drew's house that day? These are two accounts from our friends across the ocean in Toronto. Enjoy! /Mg out The first witness Games night was at Drew’s house for a second time.  Snacks and a 6 pack of sprinkled donuts were provided but never made it out. Poor Joe, he loves a good sprinkled donut. By the way, I had two today and they were magnificent. Bryan arrived early-as per usual. He was wearing his favourite - insert Toronto sports franchise throwback jersey based on season -, in this case it is winter, so he was wearing a Leafs Vintage Jersey Sweater. The only people still reping Leafs gear are B, 11 year olds and Carlos-from Gotham Central Comics-who sells me comics and drives a lunch truck on his off days. Needless to say it was good to see B. Adam and Joe followed. Joe barrelled into the house with a ...

MtgForLife ? Over $7,000 now. It's a humbling experience. I'm proud to be a part of it. It might not change the world, but we're doing something. We'll help someone. ---- In the last couple of weeks there have been quite a few gatherings for old school mages across the globe. In the wake of BSK, let's see what's the hottest tech in other parts of the world. If we go back a little over a month, we have the first French champion from the first non-proxy event in Paris; Céderic Germain. Damn sweet Deck. I guess that many of you are thinking one of three things. First: The Deck with only three maindeck Disenchants? It's not a mistake, but rather a pretty clever design. As the 93/94 scene in France is still fairly young, and building many decks in the format takes all the time in the world, the current French meta has a lot of beatdown. A maindeck Wrath of God can hence be a much more appropriate card than the fourth Disenchant. Second: Yes, a couple o...

I have a plan. Bear with me, and I might give you a Mox. At the very least, I'll give you the chance to pimp a Magic card for a good cause. We hear the news. We feel some kind of empathy for whatever war-torn country is the "flavor of the week", eventually shut down the tv, and go readily to sleep at night. But god damn. Fuck people shooting tear gas at boat refugees trying to find harbor, and fuck people who thinks owning a cell phone makes your home bomb proof. The amount of refugees today can only be compared to the time of the Holocaust and WW2. Nearly 60 million people were forcibly displaced in 2014. That's one out of every 122 on the planet. Of these, the confilict in Syria is the single biggest one. 250 000 dead in the civil war so far, and Doctors without borders has reported that suppliers in Syria refuse to sell essential medical supplies such as gauze and surgical threads to doctors due to government intimidation. Stay with me, duals and curses ahead...

Last weekend Jason Jaco and the guys at Eternal Central hosted a major Old School tournament in Philadelphia. 54 players came to battle, including a couple of guys from Norway who visted Philly to sling cards at the Vintage and Legacy championships at Eternal Weekend. The EC players have a few local rules that sets them apart from the current meta in Sweden and most of Europe. Cards like Strip Mine, Black Vise and Fork are free to run as 4-ofs, Fallen Empires is a legal set with the Hymn being unrestricted, Mana Burn is enforced, Power cards are more abundant with the CE/IE proxies legal, and Winter Orb has errata stating that it gets "shut down" when tapped. So which decks would end up on top? One could argue for monoblack. It's a tier1 deck that consistently shows up at the top tables at our larger tournaments , even though it's usually only played by a small part of the field. When adding 4 Hymns, 4 Strip Mines and additional pump knights, it could be a real j...

Those last two posts with Danish tech are hard to follow up! Very entertaining and innovative decks. It's nice to see how other local groups approach the format. I think that Hans and his playgroup are the only ones who actually puts even more constraints on legal sets and cards than us, with their ban on P9 + LoA. The Norweigian players, who are hosting the first tournament in Moss in six weeks, go for the standard Swedish approach. A few other groups in Europe, including many of the Italian, French and German players, allow Revised and in some cases Renaissance and Chronicles. The main difference between the groups outside of the US is however if the allow Revised or not. E.g. the Russians stop at Unlimited like us, while e.g. the Australians have a very open reprint policy. Russian tech, UG aggro vs. Brw Control. Watch it!  Australian tech, Eel vs. Monoblack. Yep, there's a 93/94 scene in Australia :) They hosted their first tournament at their yearly Et...

Let's continue with some more sweet tech from Hans Henrik Rasmussen. If you missed it, you'll find the first part here . Enjoy! /Mg Old School Lands We don’t have a lot of toys for a lands deck, but we have Fastbond which is a lot by itself. Also, this deck includes the coolest win combo I’ve ever discovered: Hazezon Tamar plus Karakas which works in a very odd way. Hazezon Tamar comes into play with a trigger, but a so-called “delayed trigger”, so if you play him and then bounce him with Karakas the trigger is still there and will be resolved during your next upkeep where you get a bunch of sand warriors with no danger of them being removed in one swoop by your opponent removing Hazezon (since he is already gone). When your sand warriors have dwindled in number you can then replay Hazezon and do the trick again to make a new bunch. Old School Lands Sideboard The second advantage of playing a lot of lands is that Nevinyrral’s Disk can be used quite ...

Today we have a special treat! Hans Henrik Rasmussen started playing Magic around Antiquities, and a couple of years ago he was the first Danish player to contact me about 93/94. Since then he has been brewing a lot. His playgroup has a few house rules, but all the decks are legal within "official" 93/94 rules as well. I think they look awesome, and I hope I get the chance to see them in action some day! Enjoy! /Mg So, for the last I don’t know how many months, I’ve thought about sending you some Danish tech – since I, exactly like Elof, make a constant stream of decks that I think others could get some fun out of seeing – and of course when I saw his post on your blog recently, I just had to finally get this thing done (and I’m thinking the more deck lists the merrier!). And with the Danish summer being even more disappointing than usual, I will send you a bunch here while I have the time to do it. Another reason for my wanting to send you this, is also that...