Joining the ODOL League
Every month the Dutch community arranges an Old School League with Mr HW “Henk” Mtg at the helm. I haven’t played any leagues but wanted to try one out and when I had a chat with Åland about it he had some good pointers and suggestions.
First and foremost, the leagues with people in your timezone are to be preferred. The time difference can be dealt with and when a lot of people are at home working they can usually spare an hour around lunch (your evening time). But the hassle of trying to get all those games in your group done is way, way harder.
The other thing to do is have all of your games planned as soon as possible. Reach out to the players you are meeting and give suggestions for dates and time to play. The sooner you have your matches in order the less of a hassle the whole ordeal with finding time to play for you and your opponents is.
With that all said, let us talk about what I decided to play.
Seb Celia - The “Machine Gun”
What to play
“The Machine Gun” as the creator, Berlin named it, is a nice little piece of deck with robots in it.
Since we are playing Swedish rules, we do have a restricted Workshop and that sets it aside from the Sushi infested waters that you might have to swim in if you are playing with Atlantic or Eternal Central. Those decks are waaay more explosive, but only in a way though.
What The Machine Gun does is use Hurkyl's recall to “reload” the Triskelions and even more importantly let you unleash with all of your artifact mana sources. By picking up some Moxen and Mana Vaults you can either play all of those Trisks that went back in your hand with the moxen and vaults from the Hurkyl. Or you can just cast a huge Fireball for the win. Trust me, it’s scary passing the turn with that much mana on the opposing side if you do not have an answer.
Even if you do not have anything to deploy, the Mana Vaults can become a problem. If you use them early game, being able to use them again is very necessary. This is what you give playing the deck, the problem being that you do take a lot of damage from the Vaults, Serendib Efreet and the four City of Brass’.
You need to plan ahead and really think about how your win would look like a few turns ahead and what path you should take to get there. Sure, if you are lucky you can just play some Trisks or Su-Chis and copy them with Copy Artifact and yes, then usually your game plan is not that hard to figure out. All of the fun comes at an expense. More often than not, you deploy an early creature that might instantly get removed. And then you sit there with your tapped Mana Vault just ticking away at your life with a hand full of 4-6 cmc cost cards and only a couple of lands in play.
I played this deck way back at Noobcon X and then, I missed top 8 with just one game. This time around I felt I needed some sort of revenge. I also wanted to play a deck where a Mind Twist in your starting hand almost always is good. You have sooo much mana real early in the game usually. And I haven’t played Mind Twist in what felt like forever because the tournaments I have been playing have gone the Gentleman route with banning Library of Alexandria and Mind Twist. After my journey in this league I can still say that both of those cards are really, really good. I did have more LoA games than Twist games though and was probably a bit more lucky than my opponents in a bunch of the games regarding having either of them.
I did have a chat with The X-files crew and Will Magrann regarding the deck while putting it together. We talked about Atog or Sage of Lat-Nam. I am still on the fence about which one is better but decided on playing Atog since I felt I needed to be the aggressive deck usually. According to the intellectual elite it probably comes down to if you will be facing Lightning Bolts or Swords to Plowshares. Tog is better against bolts. Florian von Bredow had some insights later on about the deck. And he thought that you should probably have Animate Dead in it and I would maybe have one or two instead of a Black Vise in main or something is I had a do-over. Will told me to put in a City in a Bottle in the SB and that was probably a good decision. I knew I wanted 3 of each blast and the Abysses. I need some amount of shatters and at least one Mirror Universe. I did figure that a turn one Hypnotic would be a problem so I put a couple of Lightning Bolts in the sideboard also. Maybe someone is able to fit them into the main but I just didn’t. The miser Mirror Universe was for the Underworld Dreams or if I met some other really aggressive decks and I went for the Abyss plan. I do think that maybe I should have had a Balance instead of the Mirror and another Bolt instead of one shatter. But all of that is in hindsight.
Regarding sideboarding with the deck overall It’s pretty straight forward. Vises and probably the Wheel can come out if you are on the draw and if you are meeting aggressive decks. Bolts, REBs and BEBs come in alongside the Abysses. You probably keep some amount of non-artifact creautures even though you go the Abyss Plan. If you play the bottle and the abysses, you will take out all of your Dibs. This deck is VERY explosive so I like keeping one wheel effect in no matter what you are facing. A turn one re-draw seven is not unusual. And it makes your mulligans way, way better. Braingeyser can be clunky if you are meeting REBs and counterspells. And if you are facing untapped mana, it is usually good to have multiple targeta for your Copy Artifacts. Trisks are the MVP copy target but Mishras is actually a close second sometime. An optimal way of playing would be deploying a Su-Chi or something and the turn after have untapped mana so you can copy the Mishra if they decide on destroying the Trisk or whatever you wanted to copy in the first place.
But let us check out some games and what I met!
Martin Purrio - Dead Guy Troll
Match 1 - Trolls!?
In my first match I had Ålands words echoing in my head: “Playing ODOL, you will be meeting a lot of deadguy ale”.
But seeing a Bad Lands and some Sedge Trolls from my opponent I did not really know what to expect in the first game. I did have an early LoA and Martin had an early answer but as I remember it I managed to win game 1 with a mind twist and maybe some robots or something being deployed. Going into game two I did not expect the disenchants and in that game Martin actually got to play the LoA game. I think I took too much damage from my Mana Vaults and he won with having some Trolls dancing the Disco. In game three he was unlucky with his mana and I managed to snag my first win in the League.
Playing Troll Disco you usually go the nevinyrral's disk route but with Martins build he goes for more permanents and have answers in Disenchants and Swords instead. The main problem playing this kind of build is that you might draw the wrong side of your deck, either sitting with all answers or all creatures when you need the other stuff. Disk cleans up and let you regroup and usually two-three-four for one and having more answers in the one-for-one category you very often want some card draw to get ahead. Or you go for a more tempo-oriented strategy. With that said, I do like what Martin is cooking and I would like to see where he is going with it. I would probably go the aggressive route with more Hyppies or the disk-controlling route with either splashing blue or shutting down your opponent with stuff like Blood Moon.
Erik Olstad - Black Snake
Match 2 - Scary black stuff
I was kind of happy not to see too much of the early Hypnotic and Underworld Dreams action from Martin. This matchup looks kinda horrendous on paper actually. Playing 17 lands where only 10 of them is colored mana sources, the Sinkholes in Eriks deck can strand many spells in my hand. The main problem would be a turn one uncontested Hypnotic or a Underworld Dreams that I would not be able to race.
I do not remember my winning plays from the match but I do remember losing one game to dealing too much damage to myself and not be able to do anything with the aforementioned Dreams. An I think I were in luck not seeing that much white removal at all during our three games. It ended 2-1 and I felt after the games that I had were kinda lucky in my draws.
(Mostly) Black builds is underplayed in Swedish old school. I do think that mono black do not cut it if you are not playing Fallen Empires. Splashing seems like a good choice and having white as the other color seems more than reasonable. I haven’t seen that many aggressive RB underworld/hypnotic builds but I can see that as an option also since you can have more direct damage and can close of the game earlier. Vise don’t go well with Hypnotics but it’s those type of effects you would like to have going early to really get into a scenario where Underworld Dreams obliterates the possibility of having time to get back on track.
David Croom - Kobold Deck Wins
Match 3 - KOBOLDS EMERGE!
If this ain’t your favorite deck in the lot, you are wrong. So many things to love here. I had no idea what I was facing at first but when the Kobolds started to hit the battlefield, I knew I was in for something out of the ordinary. At first I actually felt a bit overconfident, Kobolds can’t be that good? Right? Wrong.
If a couple of Taskmaster (+1/+0 to all Kobolds) get to join the fun things escalate quickly. And playing only red and Triskelions as removal the Drill Sergeants (+0/+1) actually made things more difficult for me to handle to. A couple of Overlords gave them first strike and that is basicly the Kobold package. David has probably made the right decision to skip the 0/1 Kobolds and go for Ball Lightnings and direct damage instead. I did not get to see the Dragon Whelps or the Sword of the Ages. I guess Sword is especially sweet with Ball Lightning. Blood Lust is a bit of an underplayed card, I’d say, and in magical Christmas land we get to Ball Lightning, Blood Lust and then activate the Sword for 10+10 dmg.
The games were more of a nail biter than they might have seen being played out. The power of the Davids deck is that he can do so much damage in one single turn and he did get me one game with a bunch of Kobolds one game. I had the overhand with my explosive early turns and I remember having Abyss in play one game basically making it hard to go as wide as you might need to facing a Su-Chi or two.
Pablo Vera-Lisperguer RG Zoo
Match 4 - RG beats
Looking at my first three games, we haven’t seen one blue powered deck. I wonder if that will change as we go forward. RG Zoo has one of my favorite and most flavorful cards in magic; Kird Ape. Playing RG with apes I feel that this is your core and center. This is where you go from, going forward building. The only thing I am kind of missing here are a couple of blood moons, they go so well with elves and gives you some free wins also. Problem is that there are many good non-basic lands in the format, and even playing only two colors, we can see that we can’t fit that many basics in then. I like Pablos build. If you have a couple of Erhnams maybe you can swap out those Su-Chis for them. But Su-Chi is a way around Abyss at least for the deck. That is actually how I won the match. Abyss is very powerful and with only Tranquility to manage it, you might get stuck waiting with a bunch of critters in your hand, waiting for a solution to the card. If you can, you might just overrun your opponent early anyhow and deal the last damage with burn. Whirling Dervish helps as it can’t be “targeted” by The Abyss. I would maybe put a couple of Crumble in the sideboard or maybe even a Shatterstorm or two (Especially against my deck).
HW-MTG - Jordanfish
Match 5 - Swimming with the fishes
So far I’ve had a good run. There were some really tough games early on but 3-0 going into my fourth match felt good. HW, the TO himself was waiting for me. One fun part about playing ODOL or Leagues in general is that you usually have no idea what your opponent is playing. HW wrote to me about scheduling our game earlier and he was real keen on playing. For me, it felt like, and I remember it as he had won his games up to that point and made me believe it was up to him or me to take down the group stage for a spot in Top8 at this point. I still had one game to go after our match and I did not feel as confident about it all.
I kinda put HW on something blue/white-ish but seeing basic islands the first few turns I soon got to learn what he was actually playing. In game one I was lucky with him not drawing any lands. He did deploy some creatures but that gave me the opportunity not to play into his counterspells that I thought he was holding. My biggest fear at that point was multiple Lords with islandwalk but I managed to end the game before that happened.
I did not know about the fluxes in the main. But I did know that he was probably taking in a few of them. I packed some bolts, Rebs and Abysses. Figured that Braingeyser might be too clunky and took out some of the creatures that would die to Abyss. Rather early on in the game HW managed to play one of his Fluxes but I did have the answer in Red elemental blast. I played an Abyss and managed to get out a couple of Su-Chis. He played two more fluxes and I started to sacrificing one Suchi to pay for the other and played another one and took him down a bit on life. He did not play anything else and we had a staring competition since I did not want to play my lethal Fireball into his counterspell and had no real follow-up plays. He managed to pull Chaos Orb and dealt with my Abyss and then I was starting to worry because he had a full grip and I figures a few pesky fishes would soon be able to kill me off.
However, he did not deploy anything and I managed to get some more spells so I could play a few of them in the same turn. HW shoed me his hand and he had a bunch of Dibs, stranded there due to his low life total and a Psi-Blast or two.
Jazon Schwartz - Juzam Dreams
Match 6 - Bad, bad dream
Going into my final match in the group stage, I have managed to go undefeated. NOW I felt confident. Jason is one of my favorite people in the community. And I was really happy to have a nice little game to look forward to left, probably able to win my group no matter what the outcome would be. HW had told me during our game that he actually lost the game before so I was the only X-0 at that point and out match sealed the fact that I would make the top8.
In game one against Jason I played a couple of Black Vises and he did not actually do so much that game. He tried to get back into the game but had to play a Howling Mine to “draw out of it” and since he couldn’t deal with the vises he died a couple of turns later.
Going into game 2 I did not actually know what to expect. I knew he played blue, black and I think I saw a Badlands game one. With howling mine being played that game I figured he would be on some sort of Underworld Dreams deck with Winds of Changes. I did not sideboard too much, left the City in a bottle and the Abysses in the sideboard but did not think to take in a bolt or two for Hypnotic Spector.
And what would you know! With a very early Hypnotic and my hand a bit more clunky, Jason soon got to pick of my hand. He took all of my answers and I even tried to get a fireball with Demonic Tutor to kill it off but needed the Hypp to find another card instead of it during the following attack. Alas, that did not happen.
In game 3 I came prepared. But a very early Hypp almost got me this time around also. I did manage to kill it this time around and with a very explosive hand the game went my way.
We had a long chat about Juzam Djinn Decks on Moster of the Week but I do like Jasons build alot. It has Underworld Dreams and Hypnotics that can be played real early. It also uses Howling Mine and skip the Relic barriers and instead goes for damage or top it of with Sinkholes that can stumble your opponent. I always tend to go the Mid-Range route when building decks and Juzam is as Mid-range-y you can go probably. I dont know how the other games went for Jason but a couple of Lightning Bolts could probably be good in main. Maybe take out a howling mine and a Sengir or something.
Audun Døssland - GoldenBoyz.dec
Quarterfinals! - Golden boys and gals
Top 8, here we go! And just look at this beauty. Audun is playing proper Old School magic with 12 Legends and 3 Karakas to help them stick around. With the Birds of Paradise and the Moxen ramping it up, and the usual suspects in the white answers, he can hopefully get some big creatures hit a cleaned up battlefield not too late in the game. The magical christmasland here is the Juxtapose action that can be done and get back the creature you gave with Karakas. Giving back the creature you stole with the Rubunia Soulsinger just to untap her and take it right back is also something that no one will ever forget happening.
The games, sadly, were a bit one sided though. Audun drew mostly answers in game 2 and the whole match was streamed on Timmys youtube channel with HW as a co-commentator:
Ron Dijkstra - Rukh Valley
The semis - Hard mode
In the semifinal I was up against Ron. He had brought a sweet Diamond Valley brew. Disk goes nicely with the eggs besides the Diamond Valley and the Dibs and burn with the Counterspells makes it a bit of a counter-burn deck. I think that the disks also can let you reset everything if you want to regroup and that let you set the pace of the game a bit.
I was lucky game one. Ron really had me in a pinch and I had to try to get back with a Timetwister which I actually did. The Disks were devastating in the match for me. And he won game 2 but we both had a back and forth going on with LoA action. I even got to Mind Twist for 5 but ended up with not being able to untap my Mana Vault and got killed.
I had no idea what exactly to expect at this point to be honest. Would I be seeing Sedge Trolls? How good is City in a Bottle. Looking at the deck now, it seems obvious but in my mind I felt like he might be transforming his deck after sideboard. It did not really matter in the end since I was very lucky with my 7 starting game 3. LoA into Ancestral kinda sealed the deal. At some point in the game I felt I could’ve lost to a Mind Twist but I was lucky not to see it. Ron have been doing very good finishes in his other tournaments and I was very happy to have this match in the bag, going into the finals!
Florian von Bredow - Deadguy Ale
FINALS - Nightmare Mode
So, we went all the way. I can honestly say I did not expect to get this far. I had been streaming some of my games and Florian was more than gentleman-like and sent me his list as mine had been revealed. I do not know however if that would help me in the end. Just look at it.
Once again, I had been told by Åland that I might expect a bunch of deadguy decks. And still I chose to play a deck that could not really manage an Underworld Dreams or a turn 1 Hypnotic Specter. Not only is the match-up horrendous for me, Florian had a very tough group, is an excellent player and has won one ODOL league before. Safe to say is that I did not expect much winning going into the match. I knew I had to be out the gates before Florian. After sideboard he have around 11-12 removal and a CoP Artifacts just to top it off and taunt me.
Even if I am explosive enough, he might as well be out the gates before me with a Hypnotic or an Underworld Dreams. And if he is to land a big dude I don’t really have the resources to manage it. I need to be ahead all the time. I need to draw the right cards and I need Florian to draw the wrong cards. He will have to stumble on mana, or draw the wrong kind of mana. He is splashing blue and even playing a Jayemdae Tome so I can’t rely on him flooding. To conclude; there is many-a things to be scared of and I am very much not in favour here.
So, that is all folks! I will not spoil the fun for you. You can check out the finals above and me and Florian have a chat on stream with Gordon about what did happen after our games.
Til’ next time.
I AM SEB