Old School Mtg

As a general rule, we try to play with updated rules and Oracle errata. From time to time players mentions missing mana burn (Power Surge is pretty bad with new rules), not being able to turn of Winter Orb with Icy, or being able to win using the Mirror Universe/City of Brass combo. However, as most of you know, many of the old rules were pretty strange. To quote my Beta rulebook I got from Viktor "Oldschool" at BSK 2011: "During the course of a game, a dispute that you cannot solve by referencing the rules may occur. If both players agree, you can resolve the difference for the current game with a coin toss. After the duel, you can come to a decision about how you want to play such a situation in the future. If the players don't agree to a coin toss, both players retrieve their ante and the duel is a draw." It of course got better a few years later, in the era of the newfangled tap symbol and whatnot, but it was still far from intuitive. I los...

During the n00bcon weekend, a second smaller tournament was held at the time of the world championship top8. This tournament was referred to by the participants as HUVUDTURNERINGEN ("The Main Tournament"). The winner was no one else than Robert Schram, aka the winner of BSK 2011 as well as the finalist of n00bcon 2012 (among other achievements). Robert wrote a short tournament report yesterday, and I felt it needed to be shared. This report was originally written in Swedish by Robert, and I can only take credit for the translation and image texts. /MG It was finally time to travel to n00bcon 5: World Championships 2013! This report is not about the world champs tournament however, but about the side event known as The Headless One's MAIN TOURNAMENT 2013. Due to conflicting schedules with my work, I wasn't able to get away in time to participate in the n00bcon tournament. Regardless, I decided to travel down to Gothenburg to drink a few beers, hang out with good pe...

It's been over two weeks since I updated here, which is fairly unusual. The main reason for the pause is me moving up North. I'm no longer a Bavarian, but now a Norwegian in Oslo. Not quite the feel of Sweden yet, but it's nice to have a name on the door again, and I know at least one old school player in this city I'd like to meet up with. The apartment here is awesome btw; I've really missed it and my roomates. So what happend the last few weeks? We're looking a date for the Pimpvitational, and the 93/94 format is becoming more and more visible in Sweden in general. On a personal note, I've gotten my first power card to my blue-black deck. I actually traded for it with a well-known player from Gothenburg as well, which has a kind of nicer ring than buying it from somewhere on the web. Gave quite a bunch of cards for it though. I also got a few more cards since n00bcon, these are my latest additions: One of Elof's old Drains btw, that gotta carry ...

I'm continuing with posts of n00bcon decklist for now, still lot of sweet tech to be shown. The Distress archetype was (as far as I know, and at the very least in our community) invented by Daniel "GaJol" Nilsson; the highest ranking non-shark in the last year's pwp standings. I've previously written about Nilsson and his great contributions to both the meta and the spirit of the format, so for now we'll just dive in to the tech. Distress was originally based on the assumption that no player can destroy more than 4 enchantments (as they only play at most 4 Disenchant). Hence, if a player can maintain control enough to not lose the game himself, it will be very hard for the opponent to handle multiple clocks in the likes of Underworld Dreams and Warp Artifact. The name is based on the "bleeding" feeling of the opponent, and primarily as an opposite of the word tranquillity (as the card Tranquillity destroys all enchantments). Distress has a fair...

I don't really remember when or how, but many years ago I read about a deck that was noted to have "playsets of both Juzam and Birds" ("birds" not "bop", as in the mid 90's people hadn't invented abbreviations yet; wog was still referred to as wrath and no one called wheel of fortune "wof" or something like that). As I recall, the deck was called Machine Head, a name that now implies a red-black deck, but back then created images of Terminator Juzam in my head. This n00bcon, a real old school hero showed me how it's done with his interpretation of old school land destruction. Roland Johansson have played this game since Legends, and he's been a mainstay in the Gothenburg eternal community. Roland defeated yours truly in the finals of the Gothcon Vintage tournament in 2007 (that game was decided by a coinflip btw, as both of us wanted to sleep), and also put me out of contetion for top8 at n00bcon 2012 when I missed a Chaos O...

Frequent readers of this blog may be familiar with the antics of Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson. He won n00bcon 2010 with a deck that used Millstone and All Hallow's Eve to reanimate Colossus of Sardia, went on to build the Land of the Lich deck, and most recently top8'd BSK with a deck that abused Field of Dreams. This n00bcon he was one duel from getting to the top8, again with some impreesive secret tech. The only thing he had said about the deck before going in to the tournament was that it could create a lock harder than Stasis, and that it used multiple copies of Fastbond. What is this? The deck uses Living Plane and Drop of Honey to kill all the opponents lands, and also make him unable to play any new lands (as they have summoning sickness, and will be destroyed before they can be tapped for mana). In addition, the deck supports Energy Flux to destroy all potential artifact mana. After it has achieved control, the deck can win using it's own lands to...

After n00bcon each year, a group of players and organizers take a hard look on the B&R list and see if we need to change it. Updates are based on what we hear from players, the last year's results and previous year's discussions. Many cards were discussed, here are five of them. Mind Twist: Mind Twist is insanely good, feels unfair, and have a history of being banned in Vintage. This year again we talked about it's impact on the format. Even though it can be a backbreaking card to face, we think that we should never ban non-ante cards from tournaments. Mind Twist is still restricted, and it seems highly unlikely that it will ever be banned. Power Artifact: Aside from some casual builds, Power Artifact haven't made much noise as a one-off. In the end it was however clear that it is far to easy to go infinite with the card if it's allowed as 4-off. It would be much less of an offender if it wasn't a blue card (as blue is both the best color and have access...