Old School Mtg

Next weekend we'll have the BSK tournament in Sweden, but there are also a lot of interesting things happening across the ocean. A group of Magic '95 players in Florida have created an amazing old school Magic page. It hits all the right buttons for me, both as design and old school spirit goes. Words wont do it justice, just check out this match video: This is a very amusing video even if you are not that familiar with mid-90s tournament Magic, but if you are, there are many details that puts it straight into master work territory. The clothing (Zak Dolan style denim jacket and bandana), the lingo ("trick deck", "summons", etc), and the narration of the sneak preview (including the pronunciation of Ulgrotha) are some hilarious details. Check out the LandLotusJuzam homepage for more videos and inspiration. Kicking it since '93 In Philadelphia the large Eternal weekend convention is currently in progress. Apart from the Legacy and Vintage ch...

Earlier this month the Arvika players gathered for a playtesting tournament. Markus "Kungmarkus" Guldbrandsson wrote a short report of the evening and sent over some sweet pictures to post here. Thanks a lot Markus, looking forward to see you all in two weeks at BSK! Now that my fiancee is asleep, my son is in a good mood sitting next to me in his high chair and the dog is sleeping on my feet, I think I have the time for a short report from last weekends playtesting tournament in Arvika. Five people showed up, myself playing UBR Control, Jimmie "Polers" Magnusson playing RG Beatdown, David "Svetzarn" Strandberg playing mono black Colossus, Per Pettersson playing White Weenie, and Peter "Strutsen" Berndtsson. Strutsen is an old school player who hasn't played magic in many years but recently joined us again. I'm glad too see him back in business! He talks about building a mono black aggro for himself but today he was borrowing an mono ...

As usual during early autumn, there have been some very hectic weeks. It's starting to calm down, and I've found myself taking rain-checks on evening seminars and cancelling breakfast meetings before work to get some more free time. I think it is important to plan a little extra downtime after intensive weeks to take care of mental and technical debt and get in shape for next time. "When in peace, plan for war", as Sun-Tzu wrote ;) We're not really preparing for war (in the strictest sense) though, we're preparing for BSK. In less than three weeks from now, Juzams will be battling in Borås. We have run into some speed bumps with the location though; the one we thought we had recently got cancelled on short notice, and among the other dozen alternatives we've checked out, none has panned out well yet. Wherever we land, there will surely be sweet magic with good people. We have random prices, some pins, and soon some trophies. Players giving casual ...

The early days of Magic goes hand in hand with the early days of the web. The web became publicly available in august 1991, two years before the release of Alpha, but it wasn't really something the general public knew about or would use at that time. I got internet access at home in 1995, as the second person in my class to get it. The other one was also a Magic player, but we still didn't use the web for looking up cards or strategy. Some advanced players knew to use Stephen D'Angleos early web page for rule references, but the easily obtainable knowledge sharing of today didn't exist. In its infancy, Magic strategy and ideas was shared to the world via printed media. The very first examples of printed Magic strategy was geared towards more novice players. If we would read e.g. the strategy article on how to use circles of protection from The Duelst #1 today, we would regard it as very basic advice which anyone would understand after playing the game a few times. The...

Last weekend a few players gathered at Freepace and Jenny's apartment to playtest, trade, and drink beer. I got the chance to meet Felipe Garcia for the first time, an old school player from Seville, Spain, who moved to Sweden last winter. Felipe is an architect, and his artistic talent have recently made quite a few of the Swedish old school players go to him for playmat alterations. Before this evening, all I knew about him was from seeing his alters, but I must say it was a real pleasure to meet him. Very nice guy :) One of Felipe's works, this one was recently made for Axelsson. Now this is a really cool mat. Do you spot the card in the design that's not shown among the cards above it? Felipe had been playing Legacy and Vintage in Spain a few years back, but when the tournament attendance declined he opted to trade away a lot of his collection to finish a long time goal; completing his Beta set. This made his collection for deck building in 93/94 pretty interestin...

" This is just an expansion, so I'm not going to worry about balance. People will just play it for flavor, and when they get tired of it, they will stop playing with it ."  -Richard Garfield, Email to Dave Pettey, late 1993 Arabian Nights turned out to be a wonderful expansion; not the least considering it had the shortest development time of any set, a development team of only four people, and a design team of one. There are many gems among the 78 different cards, and the stories are plentiful if you dig a little. Today, we dig. Serendib Efreet is awesome. It is so good it supports strategies on its own, and strong enough that you should look for reasons not to play it in blue decks, rather than look for reasons to play it. The card was actually banned in extended in 1995, as it is a bolt-proof moat-jumper for the cost of a Devouring Deep. It may not be as iconic as Juzam, but then again, what is? The card itself has a colorful history of reprints. The most famo...

And when this land is barren, where will we go? You can already feel it in the air, and see it in the faces of friends. The dark months are approaching, and the Nordic countries are becoming a much different place than just a few weeks ago. In six weeks, the trees will be barren and sunshine will be a rarely seen luxury. In six weeks, we will have All Hallows Eve, and the old school players will gather for BSK. The BSK tournament is traditionally one of the two largest 93/94 tournament each year, occurring around six months after n00bcon. It is named after the convention, Borås Spelkonvent, taking place in the same city at the same time, but is not actually related to the convention in any way. It does however make for some strategic travel arrangements, as BSK holds e.g. the Swedish national Vintage championship that same weekend. For the last four times we've had tournament at the time of BSK, we've used hotel suits to play in (well, actually the hotel bar in 2010). ...