I have been kind of stubborn regarding not playing webcam magic. I have always said that I would not play magic if I could not hold the cards and the company of it all is a big part for me regarding the experience. Then, a couple of months into the pandemic and no clear end in sight, after finishing Nexflix and thinking about how even Moses had a tablet that connected to the cloud, I came to the decision to get more into this online thingy.
Starting out I managed to squeeze in the social aspect by getting together at the same place with three-four people playing the same one-day online tournament.
Hanging out with the X-files Crew playing MobsterCom 2020 at Slanfans country house and getting down some games at Wak-Wak headquarters with Gordon and Thai playing the unified MobsterCom tournament 2020.
Then we started having smaller tournaments online with the locals that you usually get to grab a beer with. Seeing my friends up (even though it’s online) and playing with real cards is something that makes me whole. I am not a depressed person really, I have a family to tend to and I am not complaining but you need some time to get the stress out of your system and relax, and just be. That’s magic for me.
Gordon has put a real amount of time and effort putting together good streaming setup and the possibility of doing stuff on the Wak-Wak Twitch and now we get to hang out online with the great old school people all over the world also. I think I have seen more clearly what the great OS community is doing to get people together. Seeing things falling into place is the best feeling in the world after seeing them fall apart.
My unified deck for MobsterCom and the Atog deck with transformational sideboard that I got into top 8 with for LobsterLom (sadly had to drop bc of family and stuff)
I will end all my ramblings with some decklists from two of our local online meetups. The first one we had the yearly Lucia tournament that Gordon put together. We decided on doing Singleton with LoA and Mind Twist banned and only 5 restricted cards. We also played it out with Round Robin BO1 and one free mulligan.
The best part of the tournament was hanging out in the room were we drank beer and chatted away between rounds. I also think there is a lot of fun to be had with restricting stuff so you really can get your brew on. The first time I played singleton was before Ivory Cup 2019 and the takeaway for me then was that you just cram in all the combos in one deck and win. I didn’t do that and tried to play a more control kind of deck and just ended up not really liking the format. This time I won so that was way more fun. Gordon streamed his matches (found here) and I think his takeaway is that maybe streaming and hosting took some fun out of the experience as he couldn’t really slack off and have as much of a good of time as we were having. I tried to lighten up his spirits by muting him in the room and play vulgar Swedish music on repeat (Onkel Kånkel which can be translated into Uncle Dingleberry. If you want to check out the song it is called “Smek mig Guran” and entails an encounter of The Phantom and his friend Guran). Gordon tried to talk to all of us, since he also was the TO and I think he thought that Åland was the culprit so, yes- It was the best of times (for me) and kinda the worse of times (for Gordon)- a great tournament!
My (WINNING!) deck from the “local” Lucia 2020 singleton tournament.
The other small tournament we had tried to do something fun with the part of us being fewer participants. As I said, the hangout in the Lucia tournament was the sweet spot for the evening and there is probably a cap on how many players you can be in an online room before things just get either messy or real silent. My friend learned me one time about the “bystander effect”, where you are less likely to offer help to a victim the more other people being present. This is actually also true for things like small message groups and why we do group work in education. The more people that are doing something, less of them are actually participating.
So a local here, Wille, put together “Moose Cup” and for the second installment he had every player report a card to him that should be banned for the tournament. LoA and Mind Twist got banned on top of that. The banlist we ended up with was:
Mind Twist, Library of Alexandria, City in a Bottle, Mishra’s Factory, Triskelion, Energy Flux, Black Lotus, Maze of Ith, Disenchant and Swords to Plowshares.
I thought that it would be fun to take out an “auto include” card that sometimes made the games swingy. So I ended up choosing the Black Lotus. But I later regretted my decision and actually think I should have picked Demonic Tutor instead. I just need to sidestep to get my thought process through here … The last tournament I played last year was Reindeers and Mitja from the Urborg Crews “Charity Battle” and for that tournament he had people playing “Gentlemen‘s Monocler‘s ruleset”.
Reindeer created the “Oldschool Gentlemen” where if you are a member you agree on having a talk about whether or not you should take out LoA and Mind Twist before your games.
With the Monocle rule set you add Ancestral Recall to the earlier Gentleman’s Club agreement that Mind Twist and LoA could be taken out before your games (If a tournament has the rule set you clearly don’t even have them in to start with). I played Mirrorball and what I felt with the banning of Ancestral was that my deck in the tournament missed the power of getting together something that could make me go off in a turn or being explosive at all. Mostly due to needing a few pieces combined to really go off. And if we go back to the Moosecup discussion of the bans I do think that Ancestral isn’t actually the culprit but Demonic Tutor is due to letting you have an “extra” copy of it. That is of course also true for all of your restricted cards and all the one offs you play in your 75.
Playing a non-blue deck in the Moose tournament made me really feel how I got behind with my opponents using their Demonic Tutors to grab Ancestral in four games. I do not know the right bans overall but I had real fun brewing for this one.
I did manage to set up a nice pile in the end trying to use the knowledge of what people MIGHT play due to their bans and what I could play that was powerful due to the different band. I think City in a bottle got me going into Erhnam territory. But I didn’t want to play a spiky Arabian Aggro deck so I ended up brewing together a green deck splashing red for Blood Moon, Wheel, Fireballs and some cool big creatures.
My Mirrorball deck from the Charity Event late last year that Urborg hosted. I really needed Dark heart of the wood and the deck felt too slow to go off with.
Reindeer actually sent me a couple of Dark hearts with a lovely picture that went up on my wall after the tournament! <3
The Moose cup games with my RG Green Master Control were a lot of fun. The deck actually over performed. Disenchant and Energy Flux was banned. I had to be aware for Crumble and Shatters but the Howling Mines and Relic Barriers really enabled the deck. Best thing I remember doing was against Fredric on Blue Fish when I got to Trackerkill some Merfolks. Otherwise the Blood Moon really shined and I got to close out some games with a Shivan breathing fire all over my opponent. I had a real blast and went X-1 and since we were a small group of players we only did finals and no top8. I actually missed out with 0.8% worse tiebreakers. Ah well, you win some, you lose some. The Janitor took down the tournament in the finals against Wille. Here are the decklists from the tournament:
Seb on RG Green Master Control, Fredric on Bad Fishs and Flux, Johan on 4c Arabian Aggro, The Janitor on Tricks, Korova on UG Aggro Fliers, Björn on 4c Juzam and Erhnies and Wille on Arabian Tap Tap .
We actually had 12 Juzams and 15 (!) Erhnies between 7 players. That’s just some stuff that can happens when CiaB isn’t around to spoil the fun. Korova told us that Juzam will be chasing him in his dreams after this.
I just registered to the Dutch ODOL League and sat down to put together my deck for the month. This is the first time I am trying out a league instead of a one day tournament so we can say I am learning to play online. But I do miss hanging out with you guys at a bar and just be there in the moment of it all.
If you managed to get all the way here, thank you for your time! You can check out the Monster of the week where I talk decks with Åland or the Wak-Wak stream that Gordon slaves away with if you just can’t get enough of me, me, me! He and I are probably doing the commentating on this years NoobCom also so be sure TO SUBSCRIBE AND THANK YOU FOR THE FOLLOW AND CLICK THE * click * * BOOM! * …
That is all, bless!
I AM SEB