Old School Mtg

When Kalle and I first started playing some durdly games with Alpha Sea Serpents in 2007, none of us expected to compete in 40+ player tournaments in 93/94 in the future. I took a lot of passionate people and a few years, but here we are. Kalle and his most recent deck performed really well at n00bcon 6. How well you ask? He had a family engagement during the evening, and only had time to play five rounds. In round 6, he sat down and then quickly scooped. With that intentional scoop, he still finished 6th in the standings. As he didn't have time to play the elimination rounds, the 9th player in the standings took his place in the top8. The nice things with Kalle's deck isn't just synergies, or the fact that it made a virtual top8, or that it plays black bordered versions of most of the expensive cards in the format. What I like most about it is all his signed cards from different tournaments. In the sideboard, Kalle holds the first Giant Shark ever rewarded in a 93/94 t...

Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson has created quite a few odd decks in his years of playing 93/94. He won n00bcon 3 with a deck that used All Hallow's Eve to reanimate Colossus of Sardia, and he came second last BSK with a strange combo deck using Dark Heart of the Woods and 4-off Winds of Change. Other notable decks include a deck that relied on Field of Dreams, a Lich deck and the Drop of Honey / Living Plane deck. His deck for last n00bcon is one of his sweetest yet though. Viktor first played The Dragon at Pimpvitational 12/13, and wrote a report about it for this blog. He used a slightly modified version during Kingvitational 1, which he played 4-0 in the swiss; eventually losing to n00bcon 6 top8 player (and more recently Bazaar of Moxen Vintage top8 player) Mikael "Åland" Johansson. After some additional tweaks, Viktor created a third version for n00bcon 6. It's a fairly intricate deck, with Hurkyl's Recall as one of the most important cards playin...

This will be a short post, as I need to prepare for the national holiday in Norway tomorrow. I've celebrated national holidays in a few different countries; Independence Day in San Francisco, Bastille Day in Paris, Nationaldagen in the Swedish woods, and St Andrews Day in Edinburgh. Nothing beats the 17 of May in Oslo though. The entire city suits up. I was actually trying to write a proper introduction about the decks here. Muse about the Arvika players, and maybe add something about the spirit of the format, which these guys embodies with passion. Guest are coming over for the weekend in less than an hour though, so I'll let the decklists do the talking. What I will say is that I'm very impressed, and certainly hope to see more of these guys! Henrik Berntsson's Aisling Leprechaun deck. Synergy! Markus Guldbrandsson's UBR Sweetstuff. My kind of deck :) KungMarkus grins as he casts Inquisition. Who wouldn't? I hope to get some pics from Eudemo...

In many settings throughout the years, this card has been an amusing curiosity: Maybe because "volume of water displaced equals the volume of object submerged" has very little to do with mass-energy equivalence. There were some cases of people trying to build tournament decks around it though. Most of them looked something like the one in this German Magic book: Section "Type-I decks für fortgeschrittene", i.e. advanced tech. Now, this deck is pretty easy to dismiss; it only plays 19 mana sources, 17 pretty random fatties (e.g. three different Elder Dragons and a pair of Craw Giants), and a single Concordant Crossroads. Our next list from last n00bcon is a little harder to dismiss though. Sveby was one of the 93/94 format's first players, starting his tech back in 2007. One of his more memorable decks is the Shahrazad/Tormod's Crypt deck from n00bcon 2. That interaction stopped working after the exile zone was introduced to the game during the ...

Shortly after the release of Ice Age in 1995, a master deckbuilder named Mark Chalice won a 50 person tournament i Costa Mesa, CA. The deck he used for the tournament was was called Vercursion Recursion. Mark had previously built the Fork Recursion deck, a deck that consequently got Fork on the restricted list (and is the main reason we have Fork restricted in 93/94). When he couldn't use Fork anymore, he realized that Verduran Enchantess could be used as an engine, and went on to build the first known Enchantress deck. The Vercursion Recursion deck heavily relied on 4 copies of Forgotten Lore from Ice Age, and took good use of Mesmeric Trance and Zuran Orb from that same set. Turn 3, draws deck and wins with Channel Fireball. Last n00bcon, Mats Karlsson took the opportunity to build an Enchantress deck himself, and created a deck that, in terms of card pool, predates the first known version of Enchantress. Mats borrowed the deck to a friend of his, Kenneth Mossberg, who pi...

Many of the decklists from Worlds 94 have been lost. It was a single elimination tournament, rather than having separate elimination rounds after a swiss. Due to this structure, extra focus on a top8 was not really relevant. Also, as the saying goes, Wizards wasn't overly keen on showing the winning decklists in the Duellist or similar, lest other players would try to copy them rather than building their own decks. Time changes. We have a pretty solid idea of the lists from the top4 though; those of Zak Dolan, Bertrand Lestree, Dominic Symens, and Cyrille de Foucaud. All these players played blue and green; and everyone except Dolan also played red and black. Dolan was the only one playing white. The reason I though about this was because every deck in the n00bcon top8 also played blue. Maybe unsurprising. I still think that it is not as utterly dominant as it was a year ago, after all we had a monored Gauntlet of Might deck at 9th place and WW won last BSK. Anyway, lets look at ...

Winning is not everything, not even the main thing. However, getting to the n00bcon top8 is quite a feat. A great majority of the tournament players back in the mid 90s didn't have the same understanding of the game as we have today; with tempo, card advantage, who's-the-beatdown and whatnot. The players at our world championship are probably, on average, better than they were at the actual worlds 94. In the midst of our casual environment, we have players with backgrounds from national teams at Worlds, former Pros, the formerly consensus master of Legacy in Sweden, a former Vintage national champion, and players with impressive records from previous 93/94 tournaments. Amongst all the beer and laughs, there is a competition, and the competition is skilled. Building a deck in this format is hard, time consuming, and expensive. Winning with, and tuning, said deck is even harder. Getting to the top8 shows that you have what it used to take to be a champ; before it was called ...

The dust have settled after the world championship in Old School Mtg. Forty-four players came to play nostalgic magic in a casual setting. We saw players with resumes ranging from a few years of kitchen table play to players with multiple success stories from the early years of the Pro Tour. There are many anecdotes to be told, but for now I'll let some pictures do the talking. Players gathering at the pub to chat and trade before the tournament starts. Burken, our glorious scorekeeper, at work. A mostly casual but skilled player, with a résumé that includes defeating Brad Nelson at Worlds 2010, which lead to the Player of the Year play-off for that season. Round 1 has started. I faced off against Danish player Jimmy in the first round. Doppelganger doing good work against the Meekstone. We had to get some extra tables to the pub and move around the furniture to make room for everyone. The last tables are in a sofa area. A lot of power in this room btw. T...

I've been practising my Chaos Orb flips the last days, and I'm reaching a decent level. Two more players have signed up today, Jenny and Sveby. Jenny is a new 93/94 player, and Sveby was one of the format's first players from 2007. I, Honka, Freespace, Jenny and Åland gathered at my place tonight for some tech. I wasn't really in the mood to playtest that much with Project M, as I hadn't played "seriously" since Kingvitational, I was fairly tired, and the deck has decision trees that goes on for days. I did play a couple of rounds though, and I think the deck seems pretty good. Pictured: Teching Honka's deck is awesome and incredibly annoying to face. The round I saw him playing, he was gaining about 20 life each turn, and eventually comboed out and dealt 22 damage to his opponent on the spot. Jenny's deck is a Berserk deck that can win out of nowhere. Freespace's 5-color Machine Head has been updated since his top8 at BSK, and looks ...

It's getting close. We are now 43 players signed up for n00bcon. I wouldn't be shocked if this is the largest tournament that that allows Moxen in Sweden for the last five years. When we consider the fact that the tournament pretty much has zero price support apart from honor, this says something sweet about the people who will play. So what have we done this week in preparations? The pins are fixed, and I'm very happy about the service. When I first got them, there had been a misunderstanding about the layout. I sent an e-mail to CosmicWhale , who made the pins, and they sent me a new batch for free within a week. I used them for the pins last year as well, and if you're Swedish and for any reason wants to create pins or other merch, they have my highest recommendations. Professional, friendly, and reasonably priced :) Old batch to the left, actual pins on the right. I went to the pub last Friday to check out the selection and table spaces. It will be crowded, ...