Old School Mtg

Less than half a year ago, Dyan de Rochemont gave us our first peek into the Dutch 93/94 community . Since then, it seems like the community has exploded. In just a few months, the Dutch mages are already reaching 20 players in their sweet and laid-back tournaments. The Knights of Thorn have truly become a band to reckon with in the world of old cardboard. Today I have the great pleasure to share the story from Erwin Demmer, organizer of and player in The Knight of Thorn tournament in Voorthuizen. Enjoy! /Mg out In the beginning of this year, I had a playset Unlimited Plateaus for sale and an interested buyer came to my place to see the cards. Normally a sale like this takes half an hour or so; but not this time! We started with coffee and small-talked about Magic and the buyer was talking enthusiastic about his Old School cards, which he played with a couple of buddies. The idea of Old School Magic was growing on me. After years of collecting, this was the time for me to create a ni...

June 1995 was the cruellest month. Breeding snow out of the dead lands. Mixing memory and desire. I was there when it happened. I never saw the snow as relics, it was always nostalgia from a distant present. 22 years has passed since I opened my first booster packs at Tradition in the lower levels of Nordstan in Gothenburg. Almost a quarter of a century. Maybe it's time to look back. Erik Sundberg has played the format for as long as most of us remember. He has a solid streak at n00bcon and started the first 93/94 Cap Magic community. He developed the idea of 93/94 Rotisserie drafting. He's one of those guys that don't make to much noise at social media but is a pillar in developing casual old school tech. He wanted to delve into the Ice Age. And if someone should break the 7-set limit we usually hold here, I guess Sundberg is the guy. This is a story of the black summer. This is old school. Enjoy! /Mg out An invitation; to the past, the present and the soon to be pr...

Today we have another glorious guest. Svante Landgraf is one of the most prolific The Deck players in the format. Fresh of a top8 in the Stockholm Ivory Cup, and that's just after picking up a trophy in the n00bcon 9 top8, the dude knows his way around old school control decks. He is also an old Pro Tour player with a few success stories from pretty much all sanctioned formats. Svante likes his control decks, and seriously considered the impact of a Jayemdae Tome restriction last month. The Tome got a stay this time, but that didn't stop him from graciously sharing his thoughts with us here. Let's take the ride. Enjoy! /Mg out I love books and libraries. I love books so much that I spent the last six years getting a Ph.D in what essentially amounts to Comparative Literature (technically, it’s something called "Culture and Society", but wtf does that even mean), to the dual benefits of now being unemployed and being able to call myself a Doctor of Science Fiction...

It has been a while since I updated the Decks to Beat page, but I've finally managed to find most of the lists from the last few months. Check 'em out if you want some inspiration. One thing about decks-to-beat though is that they are by definition decks with winning records at tournaments. The X-0 to X-2 decks of the meta. At the last gathering I played, the Jumping Jesus tournament in Oslo, I e.g. got the chance to battle against an awesome Elephant Tribal deck in the swiss. I also got my only loss in the tournament at the hands of a powerless Red/White deck with Granite Gargoyles. There are lots of cool things to build apart from the "high end piles"; just try to find something that you enjoy playing with. Speaking of the Jumping Jesus tournament, here are some pics from the gathering: Black Vise had a decent showing here, with many different decks trying to make it work. From my experience so far it mostly seem...

Today we have a treat! Our guest Greg is probably known to most as @oldschoolmtg. He is the guy that started the first (and most popular) 93/94 Instagram account , posting daily updates to share old school anecdotes and deck techs with his over 10,000 followers. He also started the 93/94 subreddit and was an early adopter of showing the format to a larger number of nostalgic players at different platforms. Today he takes a step into the blogosphere to guide us through the history of ante. Enjoy! /Mg out Hello! My name is Greg. Some of you may know me better as the guy who runs the @oldschoolmtg Instagram account. I’ve been meaning to try and write an article for “The Blog" for several years now; discovering The Blog back in 2014 was what reignited my love for this great game. In chatting with MG a while back we discussed me writing a post about one of my favorite aspects of early Magic, which has been absent since Homelands in 1996, a mechanic lost to the annals time - of cour...

It's that time of the year again! Still something a little off with this picture... Last weekend we talked a little about the current meta . But rather than ranting on about the updates here, Gordon Andersson asked if I would like to talk about it on an extra broadcast of the Flippin' Orbs podcast. That sounded like a fun approach, so that's what we did. You can check out the episode here . For those of you who can't or won't listen to podcasts for some reason (random cool fact; the national deaf Italian record holder in 50-100-200m breaststroke is an active 93/94 player), here are the changes: Darkpact is restricted* Contract from Below is restricted* Black Vise is unrestricted Maze of Ith is unrestricted *Note that Ante-cards are still banned if the tournament/game you play isn't played for Ante. There haven't been a tournament played for Ante yet, but as casual Ante games have started to slowly rise in popularity, we felt it was importan...

I ran a mudrace called Råskinnet yesterday. Now everything hurts and I keep finding new wounds on my body. Should probably not have topped it of with a pubcrawl. Damn traditions. Anyway, did you guys follow the latest B&R update from Wizards a couple of weeks back? They banned Sensei's Divining Top in Legacy which made people very upset, both due to the fact that it was banned and due to the fact that it hadn't been banned earlier. And they didn't ban the CopyCat combo in Standard, which made people super upset. Then they decided to ban it after all, and people on social media got even more upset. The yearly B&R update here is by far the post that promotes the most reactions. Some people go full tilt over the fact that the consensus isn't aligned with their own gut feelings. It is fun to see that people care so much, but my day job isn't douche bag whisperer and it's impossible to cater to everybody. If we would just follow all the suggestions recei...