Gordon's Old School Archetype Cube

A couple of cards in the cube... and one Lord of the Pit, don't know why he is there.

A while back we had a tournament in Stockholm that was a bit special. The tournament was an invitational where all players that had placed last in an earlier tournament were invited, the Stockholm Rag Men.

The price for the tournament was an invite for this years n00bcon and as that was a pretty sought-after price I was afraid that some players may become to competitive for my liking. Therefore, I decided that we would do a cube draft, that way people wouldn’t build UR Counterburn, The Deck and more just to compete. Then there was the question of how to build the cube as I didn’t want it to be just another Old School Cube, we already have one of those in Stockholm.

Then I came up with the idea idea of an archetype cube. What I mean with an archetype cube is a cube built on old school deck archetypes where you not only draft the best cards, but instead need to try to draft an existing deck archetype in the format. Decks like Sligh, PowerMonolith, Eureka, White Weenie and more.

As the old school card pool is quite small this wasn't possible if you did it in the standard highlander way of building a cube. It's pretty hard to build PowerMonolith in a cube with only one Power Artifact and one Basalt Monolith.

Building the cube

So I started by listing a bunch of archetypes I wanted to support and then added the important cards for those archetypes. The next step was then to change at least some of the cards to less played alternatives. Like changing a Counterspell to a Power Sink, and things like that.

Then I cut some of the archetypes that used too many narrow cards, one example is Atog, that needs a lot of cheap artifacts to work.

Last but not least, I tried to trim and correct the specific numbers of each card. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have 4 of each dual to make it easy to splash and play multiple colors. I also wanted to have 4 of each widely played staple as their would probably be more than one player at the table who wanted to draft those. A couple of examples are cards like Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares and Serendib Efreet. Then we had cards like Millstone, that isn't a staple but can be played in very many decks. It is a great wincon for control decks, it is a must in Field of Dreams combo and Sylvan Library players would probably also want one. Therefore I needed more of them than I first thought.

The plan after that was to have 3 of each card that was important for an archetype, and 2 of each good card that neither was super important or a staple. The cards that only got one copy each were the fun offs, cards that don't really see much constructed plan but are cool and fun old school cards that should be in the cube. A few examples are Dragon Whelp, Royal Assassin, and Desert Twister.

I also decided to only have one of all the restricted cards, except for Chaos Orb. The reason for that one in particular was that some decks need answers to things like Moat, and also because it probably is the most old school card there is. Also, as Guardian Beast is in the cube I wanted it to be possible for people to get that combo.

And talking about Moat, there are some evil cards like that one, that many decks almost can't beat. So I decided to only have one of each in the cube. For example, you will only find one The Abyss and one Ali from Cairo.

This was the first plan at least, but it didn't really end up like that after I started to cut down the cube to 360 cards. After the cuts there weren't many cards that had 4 copies of them in the cube. I just didn't have room. The staples that got 4 copies each were Counterspell, Swords to Plowshares, Disenchant, Birds of Paradise, Sinkhole, Lightning Bolt and Fellwar Stone. I also needed to keep 4 copies of Savannah Lions and White Knight as white just has to few good creatures without Fallen Empires. 

The archetypes that I ended up supporting in the cube were the following: 

  1. Field of Dreams Combo
  2. Reanimator
  3. Eureka
  4. UR Aggro
  5. Sligh
  6. White Weenie
  7. Green Ramp
  8. Machine Head
  9. Ponza
  10. Guardian Beast/Transmute Toolbox
  11. Parfait
  12. Trick Deck (Underworld Dreams)
  13. Zoo/Erhnam Burn'em
  14. UG Berserk
  15. UW Control
  16. Artifact Aggro
  17. PowerMonolith
  18. CandleFlare
  19. Deadguy Ale
  20. Erhnamgeddon

You can find the cube list here. That is how it was at the time for the tournament.

How it played out

I wont write a tournament report but here are at least some pictures from the gathering and also 7/8 of the decks that were drafted. I'm pretty happy with the turnout and think the cube worked as I wanted with clear archetypes like Zoo, White Weenie, Ponza and Field of Dreams/CandleFlare (yes, that was mine) being played. 

The decks

Some pictures from the tournament

 

 

So, that is the story about the first version of the cube and how the first draft ended up. There are probably a lot of things that should be changed, and I have some ideas already, but I will keep them for myself for future blog post. Except for a couple of things: 

  1. TaxEdge probably should be an archetype in the cube.
  2. Some combo cards may need to be cut to 2 instead of 3.
  3. Maybe 4 Strip Mines, 4 Sinkholes and 3 Ice Storms are a bit borring according to some people (you can see what Seb thinks about that in the pictures hehe).

 

Do you have any ideas or suggestions for the cube, or just want to say what you think about it, please comment below.

Here is a link to the cube as it was for the tournament.

And if you want to do a test draft, you can do it here.

 

Lucia Legends - a Tournament Report

Old school Legends

Pretty Lucia Legends 

Once again I will try to write a small tournament report, with both a couple of lines about what I played and also the tournament itself as I am one of the organizers. The tournament this time was named Lucia Legends because it happened the same week as “Lucia”. Lucia is a strange celebration that happens in Sweden and a couple of other countries. It includes a girl with candles in her hair and guys dressed all in white with long pointy hats (they could easily be mistaken for a group of very bad people). We had nothing of the sort, except for a poster with legends with candles in their hair.

In the prize pool we had one of the highly sought after invites to n00bcon X, but we were not going to give it to the winner. We had been pretty clear on that part since we announced the tournament as we don’t want too much of a competitive feel at our tournaments. Instead we just told all the players that everyone would have a chance to win the invite, that it would not me a lottery and they would get to know exactly how during the tournament.

Quiz Time!

Do you know the names and casting cost of these legends? Click to enlarge.

So how were we going to give out the invite you say? We decided to do a small side competition that were magic related, but didn’t include playing the game. Before the tournament started everyone got a paper with a quiz. The quiz was about legends of course as the tournaments name was Lucia Legends. We had six pictures of legends that hadn’t been reprinted in Chronicles and the players then needed to write down the legends name and also mana cost. The 4 players who got most names right then later got to compete for the invite.

It may have been so that we made it a bit hard as two people with only two correct answers got to be among the contestants. The best one though was Jesper Holm who was playing his first 93/94 tournament with his own deck. He got five rights and also got almost all of the mana costs correct, both CMC and what colors. That was a bit crazy.

This was announced after the swiss and the four contestants then got to continue to compete against each other. First Jesper got one point for winning the quiz and the others got to start on zero points. Then it was time for some Falling Star Flippin’! I had placed a bunch of creatures in a pattern on a table and all the contestants then got to flip the star and get one point for every creature they hit. Sorry to say I don’t remember the exact scores here, but Jesper was still in the lead before the last part of the competition. The last part was a quiz where the contestants needed to raise their hand first to answer the questions I asked them. A correct answer gave them one point, but if they answered wrong they got a penalty point. The contestants were Yann Franzén, Svante Landgraf, Jesper Holm and Johan Råberg.

Want to try the quiz and some bonus questions? Here it is!

(You can find the answers at the bottom of this post.)

  1. Which expansion in order is Legends?
  2. Tell me the names of the three different 0/1 Kobolds in Legends?
  3. What happens if you have Chains of Mephistopheles in play and play Winds of Change?
  4. Which sorcery in Legends have one time been erratad to an Enchantment?
  5. There was one big problem with all the booster boxes from Legends, what?
  6. Which of the Elder Dragons have the colors White, Green and Blue?
  7. How many creatures in Legends have the ability “Bands with others”?
  8. How many cards are in a Legends Booster?

The above were the questions the contestants got but I had some others lines up so here you can have a couple of more to test yourself with:

  1. Gray Ogre has a functional reprint in Legends, what is the name of that card?
  2. Name one mechanic except “Bands with others” that was introduced in Legends.
  3. Which color didn’t get an Enchant World?
  4. What is unique with all the non-basic lands from Legends?

After this we had a winner and the winners name was Svante Landgraf. He completely crushed in the quiz and it didn’t even seem fair, but hey, that’s just how it is sometimes. Congratulations Svante! You can by the way read his tournament report from Lucia Legends here.

wakwak-4823.jpg

The Decks

Back to the tournament now! We were a mere 17 people who battled it out and you can find all of their decks here below. Sorry to say I was a bit stressed out both playing, organizing and doing the quiz part (also a bit drunk) so I didn’t really get what everyone was playing so some of the decks miss their pilot and also what position they ended up in. If you recognize one of the decks and know who piloted it, please comment and we will fix it.

The Tournament

We played four rounds of swiss with a short pizza break before a top 8. Yes, almost half of the players got too play again, but more magic is always fun isn’t it? I was one of the lucky ones who got to play more and now I’m going to segway into a couple of words about what I played and how I did.

My Deck

(Picture above in the slider.)

I had really started to miss my favorite deck, my beloved UR Counterburn, but I really didn’t want to play it as it is. So the night before the tournament I decided to cut all the creatures and instead put in two main deck City in a Bottle. Overall I took some inspiration from across the pond and made it into a control deck instead of a tempo deck. I played more mana sources and more control oriented cards, I even went down to only 2 Chain Lightning so I could play more cards in instant speed.

wakwak-4884.jpg

A couple of the choices were not made because they were the best possible though. They were made because I also put together a deck for my friend Egil so he could play in his first 93/94 tournament ever. That’s why you don’t see the black splash in my deck. Last but not least I needed a wincon and it couldn’t be from Arabian Nights so I went with the ever powerful Mahamoti Djinn and Shivan Dragon. Not the best choices but as with Fork, very fun choices! The Earthquake and Orcish Artillery were there because a lot of players in Stockholm are playing Zoo, White Zoo and more small creatures.

It went fairly well (I did top 8 after all) and the deck played as it should most of the time. Except for when I met Yann Franzén on Eureka. This is where I realized I probably should have some more control elements or fast clocks in the sideboard. I don’t think I would have won anyway as Yann was on an amazing roll this day! He steamrolled me because even when I stopped him in the beginning I couldn’t finish the game until he got enough mana to cast every creature he drew. Yann only lost one match the whole day and that was against Egil in the semi final. That was a bit sad as it would have been cool to see Eureka take it down. But the story about the eventual winner was also a really fun story!

I also need to point out one of the stupidest things that happened to me during the tournament. I had an opponent on 11 life, played a Braingeyser for four and drew exactly four Lightning Bolts! Crazy.

By the  way, the top 8 consisted of the players Gordon Andersson, Svante Landgraf, Yann Franzén, Jesper Holm, Egil Salomonsson, Leo Saucedo, Micke Thai and Jocke Falk.

In the quarter final I met Jesper Holm who was on Blue Green Berserk and played it beautifully. He is a former Legacy player who just converted to 93/94 and the play style and expertise to play around removal and counters showed it. The problem was that my deck is probably not the best for him to meet and a slew of bolts and counterspells put Jesper down. The semi final was against the quiz master Svante who played a UWr fliers deck which I thought was built completely different than how it was so me and my drunkenness probably gave him the match. It was a fun and intricate match however. But at least two times I should have slammed one of my big monsters but didn’t as I thought he was playing a bunch of Swords to Plowshares, which he wasn’t. So I scrubbed out. I must however say that I did like the deck and maybe I will play it again, but with a couple of main deck Blood Moon for maximum hate.

The Finals

So Svante who won the quiz also went on to the finals where he met Egil. This was probably the most amazing story of the day as Egil only has dipped his feet in the format before. He is however one of the better Legacy players in Stockholm and also a name you can see on net decking sites from online Vintage tournaments. He and I often have heated discussions about the format so I made him play this tournament with a Machine Head deck I put together and he tweeked after he was able to borrow two more Juzam and City of Brass. And as the cherry on top he won the whole tournament after a close match against Svante. I also think it was one of the best ending plays in a long time as Svante didn’t think he was dead and had lethal the turn after Egil won. The reason? Egil had a Berserk which Svante had no idea Egil even played. It really came out of nowhere and that’s always fun to see.

Player stories

Now for some extra spice! I got both the winner, Egil, and the Eureka player, Yann, to write a couple of sentences about their experience from the tournament so here are their words about it all:

Egil

This was my first 93/94-only tournament as I don't own any 93/94 cards. This time however, I was fortunate to be able to borrow a deck and attend the tournament. The people and the atmosphere was amazing and I had a lot of fun the whole day and evening. The deck I borrowed had a very straight forward game plan, I pretty much never had to care about what my opponent was doing (which is very good for me since I knew nothing about the other decks of the format). I presented a large threat by turn 2 or 3 and just continued to deploy them until my opponent was dead.

I had to read a lot of cards during the event and it baffled me that cards can have so much text and do so little against Juzams and Erhnamns. I had a game where my opponent played Eureka, which to a Legacy/Vintage player means that you lose to large Yawmgoth's Bargains on legs, but all they had was 5/5s and an 8/8 which did a lot of damage to themselves (thanks for that game, strip mine), just like me! I just had more of them.

I would like to thank Gordon and Daniel for this great event and I hope to attend more of these in the future!

Yann

A playset of Shivans was my fist thought when building this deck. Secondly, I wanted to have creatures with 7 power so that 3 hits would do at least 20 damage (even if Shivan is a 5/5 it can breath fire), that led me to adding the Elder dragons and one Lord of the Pit. Having this many flyers in the deck also turned my eyes to Moat. Because with so many fast creatures like Su-Chi, Mishra and Juazams in the meta I thought it would be a good answer to have in main deck. Since I wanted to have CoP: Red in the SB adding some extra white mana was already on my mind. 

I ended up going 4-2 in the tournament and here are some of the highlights. My best game was probably in the first match, when I could finish the game with Eureka on turn 3 against w/b prison. I Eurekad out a Concordant Crossroads 2 Shivans, 1 Elder Dragon and 1 Force of Nature which was a bit much for the opponent to handle. 

The 2 main deck Concordant Crossroads together with 1 in the sideboard seemed enough to be able to break any control deck. As soon as Concordant is out the opponent needs to handle every creature I put into play with instans. Of course, 2 Red Elemental Blast or Divine Offering/Disenchant also helps a bit against control, but what do you take out besides moat? Both of my two losses were actually against the same player, Egil, who also later went on to win the whole tournament. He simply played better than me and I was a bit over confident in one duel which I lost by taking 16 damage from my own Force of Nature after Egil top decked a strip mine to make it impossible for me to pay the GGGG upkeep, but I blame myself for giving him the opportunity to do so. His deck, with so many large creatures and lots of instants like Swords to Plowshares, my Concordants wasn't that effective. Not sure if I should have kept them and also add 2 Avoid Fate for his removal and hope to gather a swing for 20+ before he kills me. I decided to take them out and I lost every game by taking hits from hyppies and fast Djinns.

Not having full power yet I was fortunate to borrow a lotus for this day, and I would say that the lotus helped me to win at least 2 games. One game it helped me hard cast Shivan on turn 3, and another game it made it possible to play a Mindtwist after a Time Twister. Since then this has kept me from buying new cards, restraining myself not to buy anything before the crown jewel, Black Lotus.

The correct answers to the quiz:

  1. 3
  2. Crimson Kobolds, Crookshank Kobolds, Kobolds of Kher Keep.
  3. Both players shuffle their hand into their library and mill that many cards.
  4. All Hallows Eve
  5. The uncommons were divided in two sets and you could only get cards from one of the sets in one box
  6. Arcades Sabboth
  7. Zero, there are only cards that grant the ability or create tokens with the ability.
  8. 15

Part two:

  1. Raging Bull
  2. Rampage & Poison
  3. White
  4. They have a unique gold border that hasn't been used on any other cards.

 

Ivory Cup 2

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Game on!

So, this is a report that I should have written many many moons ago but as we say here in Sweden, “den som väntar på något gott väntar aldrig för länge”. And for you international readers the literal translation reads “one who waits for something good never waits to long”. Therefore, I now give you a short report on organising and playing the Ivory Cup 2017 in Stockholm earlier this summer.

2

Let’s start with a short throwback and backstory. 93/94 may have originated in Sweden, but that was on the west coast, while Stockholm is on the east coast of the country. Historically Stockholm haven’t had as big of an old school community as the west of the country so last year’s Ivory Cup was actually the first dedicated 93/94 tournament being held in the capital. Then we had 29 players and considered it a big success, so of course we organised another Cup this year.

This year the tournament was held in the suburbs of Gubbängen in Stockholm as I was able to get an empty venue for free there. The “for free” part gave us an opportunity to give away some more expensive prices than we otherwise could have which was really nice. Other than that, we did as we usually do, buy a lot of nice beer and set up our own bar where they players could get anything from a simple lager to oak aged sour beer. One new thing was that we also invited the store Mindstage to come and set up a popup store with only old school cards.

The tournament got 35 players from all around the country and some special guests from Norway. That meant that we played six rounds of magic and then cut to top 8. As we are not much for giving out expensive prices to the winners we had a special price structure set up for giving away all the cool stuff we had. First of all, every player that had pre-paid the tournament got to pick a random card from a Legends lottery with only playable cards. The big prices where a Mirror Universe, Land’s Edge and a Sol’kanar the Swamp King. The fixed prices were an altered Alpha Ivory Cup for the winner and a green Duelist Abacus Life Counter still in the blister for second place. We also awarded 9th place with a signed Abomination on which Mark Tedin has written “9th place isn’t that bad”.

Then we did two different lotteries, one for all the players who didn’t top 8 and one for the ones who did. Kalle Nord donated the price for those who didn’t top 8 and that was a one of a kind test print of this year’s n00bcon playmat. The price in the top 8 lottery was a rare Black Lotus playmat with the original Black Lotus art.

And now to the top 8!

First of all, here are the decks and players who made it through the swiss:

 

When the dust settled after the though quarterfinals Jonas Lefvert, Paddan, Micke Thai and Kalle Nord where the ones left standing. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the time to keep track of the matches very well so I can’t give you any details of how they played out. But I can at least tell you the ones who made it to the finals which was Kalle Nord on “restricted cards+four drops” against Paddan with his 4c Deadguy Ale, two strange, but amazing brews. It really was the battle of the four drops but after quite a quick final Kalle Nord stood as this year’s champion. He was actually so happy that he took a bite of his own Black Lotus(!). Ok, maybe not a bite, but almost! He is one crazy dude.

This isn’t the most comprehensive of tournament reports but it was mostly written to have a reason to show you guys the nice decks people brought to this tournament. So, I hope you can forgive me for that.

3

But at least I have one more thing to say about the tournament and that is the amazing match for last place! We always give out a price (a Rag Man) to the player who comes in last but as we had two people with the same points we let them battle it out. In the pot was the Rag Man for the looser and an invite to next year’s World Championship of 93/94, n00bcon. Now that is a match with high stakes! The match was between the Norton Fantenberg and Joakim Askenbäck and we are happy to say that Norton now is one of the amazing Stockholm Rag Men and Joakim Askenbäck will be able to compete with players from all around the world next year.

Here the plan was to have a small report on how I did and some words about my deck but I'll leave that deck tech for later.

Here are some more pictures from the event:

/Gordon

Starting up the CandleFactory

Old School Eureka deck

Eureka!

How about an Elder Dragon in your face?

Last Sunday we had a small tournament here in Stockholm with 12 participants and I decided to write a small tournament report about it. Mostly because of the deck I chose to play, a new brew I call CandleFactory. I got the idea for the deck just a week before the tournament just before my friend Johan Råberg was about to come over for some play testing. The plan was to play test a new build of my Field of Dreams deck to have it ready for the next big tournament I’m going to go to but I just needed to try out this idea first so we played a couple of games with me on this deck first.

Choosing the deck

CandleFactory v.0.3b

The day before the tournament we played again and I decided to give it a shot as I didn’t have the energy to build my Field of Dreams deck. I actually didn’t even build a sideboard for Candle Factory as it was only an idea and not meant to be played yet. The morning after I took 15 cards in 15 min to make a sideboard so please don’t judge me for the stupid choices there. I was just too tired to do anything else.

I’ll write a couple of words about the deck now but I will post a “deck tech” or more of a brewing post later on describing my thought process, card choices and also publish 2 - 3 more iterations of the deck. And all except one of them are probably a lot better.

The main plan of the deck is to use the interaction between Candelabra of Tawnos and Mishra’s Factory to make your Mishra’s BIG. It is not uncommon to be able to have a 6/6 Factory. 4 Copy Artifact is mandatory because they essentially let you play with 8 factories or get another Candelabra if needed. That was the foundation that got me brewing and this time it ended up with also playing Maze of Ith (super with Candelabra), Guardian Beast combo with two Transmute Artifacts and also a couple of artifact threats that are good to copy with Copy Artifact. But I’ll leave it at that for now and get back to you with a more in depth post about a couple of ideas and how it actually works but I’ll give you a short tournament report so you can read a little bit about how it worked this time at least.

And now to the tournament

It will actually be my first “real” tournament report as I seldom have time after a tournament to get my thoughts down or I was to drunk to really remember anything. But this time no alcohol was allowed and I’m home sick because of my chronic tiredness (yes, it’s actually a thing but a little more complicated than that) so here goes.

Decklists for all of my opponents and the other players at the tournament can be found here.

Round 1 - Böte on a Trick Deck - 2-0

My first round was against the newbie Böte who had put together a Trick Deck. The first game he lands two Howling Mines quite quickly but he can’t find a Underworld Dreams after I Mind Twist one out of his hand. After that I’m well ahead of cards and have a better board so I drop a Icy, copy it and start to tap his Howling Mines so we just draw one card each. My Factories then finishes the job with the help of a Candelabra to make the two of them hit for 6.

Game two I play and early Ivory Tower that works wonders against his Underworld Dreams. After that he tries to destroy my board with a Energy Flux but I can pay for everything except a tapped Mana Vault and then after it destroys his own Fellwar Stone I disenchant it. After that I copy my Icy a couple of times and tap down all his lands until a 7/7 Mishra runs through his Maze of Ith. I attacked with two, he mazes one, it pumps the second one to a 3/3 then I untap them both two times with two Candelabra to make it a 7/7

In one of the matches I also get to use Candle on my Library of Alexandria before he Sinkholes it. That was fun and exactly what the deck wants to do.

Round 2 - Magnus Engdal on Erhnam Burnem - 2-0

Sorry to say that this became a feature match as Magnus doesn’t do much for both of our games. The first game I play an early Su-Chi and he got stuck on mana. Later I end the game by playing a Triskelion and copying it.The second game he plays a couple of small creatures but I have a couple of Maze of Ith and Candelabras so I’m not that afraid. I play three(!) Copy Artifacts on my single Factory to make it a playset instead and with the help of Icy Manipulator and a copy of that I get past his Argothian Pixies to get the kill. One time he triple block my Factory but got the math wrong as I could pump it to a 6/6 and kill all three creatures.

Round 3 - Christofer Lindholm on BRG Aggro - 0-2

This is where I started to become too tired to play as I hadn’t slept well for a weeks or so because of reasons. But I don’t think my misplays actually mattered and the match would have ended in the same way anyway, at least that’s something. The first game I keep a hand with almost all mana and hope to draw good things. I also draw quite good but he has all the answers he needs and Crumbles my Icy and everything else I try to muster. I stabilize but it’s too late and he just need to wait for a burn spell.

Game two I get stuck on four mana after being one turn late with my Guardian Beast and he gets a Fellwar and Mox with a Shatterstorm. I never draw more mana and died with cards in hand without ever drawing a Maze of Ith.

Round 4 - Andreas Cermak on UW Midrange - 1-2

Don’t remember much of this as I mostly wanted to go home. Game one I know he rides a turn one Serra to victory after also hitting his Chaos Orb so he can destroy my Maze. Game two I get to copy my Triskelion two times but they don’t do much against his Personal Incarnation. I trade a little, get in some damage and it looks good but I need something more for the last push. I draw my Reconstruction, pick up an Icy and it’s over.

Game three is the game where I really doze off and don’t remember. I think he just had all the answers to what I did and my Mazes kept on hiding in the library.

On to the top 4

That concluded the  swiss portion of the tournament and as I was 2-2 I was expecting to be able to at least take it a little easy, even though I needed to stay because I ran the stream. But, it happened to be so that I had the best tie breakers and made it to top 4 anyway. Always fun to top a tournament but this time I would have rather been able to stop playing for the day. I may seem a bit negative here but I was not feeling to well this day. In the top 4 I got to play against my two losses from the swiss once again.

Semi Final - Christofer Lindholm BRG Aggro 2-1

So, let’s see if I can draw a little bit better this time as I think a creature deck like his is a good matchup for me. This match was on stream so I can tell you what happened as I watched it afterwards.

First game I mulligan to 5 and want to give up, I don’t have the energy for that. He starts by Strip Mining my land and Crumble my Mox and Fellwar. Fun times after a mull to five. I’m still able to put up a fight by starting to copy his Su-Chi with my only two lands. It trades for his Factory+Bolt and I get to play a Triskelion the turn after thanks to a Mana Vault. It trades for his Su-Chi and then he’s down to just a Factory. After some back and forth he deploys a bunch of threats which I'm able to fend of with my Candlestick and two Maze of Ith. Then I topdeck a Demonic to get Balance and kill all of his creatures. Maybe I can get this to work anyway? Sadly no, he topdecks Wheel the turn after and gets three rituals and a Fireball to close the game.

After that I take down the next two games by assembling the Guardian Beast and Chaos Orb combo quickly. It all went fairly quickly and I was so happy for that but I still got one more match. I should also add that I board in the third beast and board out a couple of expensive artifacts as his answers are so cheap for the artifacts but he has problems removing the beast. So this was the plan. 

CandleFactory

Now I just need a Candelabra

...and why not a Chaos Orb as well

Final - Andreas Cermak on UW midrange - 1-2

Before the game starts everybody except us leaves which makes it a little boring and as I mostly want to sleep I’m about to scoop. I ask Andreas if we can play the match at another time as no one is left but we decided to play anyway. Something I regret hehe. But that’s part of playing a tournament, you need to be able to focus all the way through.

In the first game here I get a Mana Vault and Mind Twist away his hand turn two, such a fun card, not. He still is able to almost win with a Factory as I draw nothing. But I stabilize with a Book and a Guardian Beast to block with.Then I end the game with a Triskelion and Copy Artifact. Oh, how I love that card!

Game two he get’s a crazy start with Time Walk and Timetwister and I draw no fast mana at all. I still am able to catch up and later assemble the combo for the win. But I need to hit one important flip to do it. I miss because of my sleep deprivation and he takes the game. In this game I also decide to board in the 3rd Beast tro try to win that way. I do however keep my other creatures in hope of overloading his plows.

Game three he draws perfectly by playing two Lions and then an Armageddon against my land centric deck. I still have a chance as I’m on 5 mana with a Mox and two Sol Ring (thanks to Copy Artifact) and have a Triskelion in hand. One land and his Lions will die and it will look good again. He follows it up with a Dust to Dust and I pack it up because I just want to go home.

Some last words

So that’s how the deck plays. It’s a pretty bad deck but it was tons of fun as it plays out so differently all the time. A big part of this is the Transmute Artifacts and Copy Artifacts which can be uses as many different things depending on how the board state. Either you make a bunch of Factories and Candles and win that way, or you copy Icy to control the game hard, or you go aggro by copying Su-Chi and Triskelion or you just assemble the Beast combo for the win.

Photos by Magnus Engdal.

A Report from the Scandinavian Championship

And also, We have a blog now!

Yes, you read that correctly. From now one we will try to give you guys even more old school content. How often will we update the blog? Who knows, but we promise to do our best to at least update once a month. Most of all, we just wanted a place where we could share our thoughts that don’t end up in the podcast or other places. That means you will mostly find short posts here, but we'll start it of with two longer posts and here is the first one.

In our first blog post ever, we’re going to have a look at a couple of decks. More specifically we’re going to take a look at all the decks which the Stockholm crew played last weekend at the Scandinavian Championship of 93/94 in Arvika with over 40 players. Some of decks also come with a short story from the player who played it. But without further ado, here are the decks!

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Max Weltz – White Zoo

Earlier tournaments Max have played either Troll Disco or PowerMonolith but this time he went for an aggro deck, and as you can read in his story, he didn’t get much practice in before the tournament.

“I played the deck for the first time on the train there but got some help from Andreas Cermak, who usually plays this style of deck, to tune it a bit before the tournament started. I ended up going 3-3 after losing 2 matches against early Blood Moon and then against fellow Stockholm crew member Andreas Rosén who just was to aggro for me to handle.”

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Andreas Cermak – White Zoo

Andreas hasn't played old school for long but has put up amazing results during that short time. As usual he played his signature White Zoo deck and his only comment from this tournament was “Died to Mono Black”, which is a shame because I would have loved to see his two Karma in the Sideboard to do their thing.

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Jonas Rebenius – White Weenie

When Jonas started playing this format White Weenie was his go to deck and now he’s back! Here is his short story from the day.

“Right before the tournament started Kung Markus (the organizer) announced that there would be a price for best placed unpowered deck and as WW doesn’t play much power I decided to remove the Lotus and the Pearl from the deck. I just got a couple of minutes to do the change and without two plains to put in the mana base got a little bit unstable but who cares, right?

Instead Björn Myrbacka lent me two Tividar’s Crusade and maybe that wasn’t bad because the deck who took home the price for best unpowered deck was a Goblins deck.

I started out 3-0 and was feeling good! The wins where against White Zoo, a mono black Pestilence deck (which should just not happen) and then Troll Disco. But then my luck ran out, turn one Gloom into Black Knight spelled a quick death when I realised I didn’t have a Chaos Orb in the Deck. And in the last round I lost against Gordon Andersson which is almost a tradition now.”

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Peter Engström – UWR Control

Peter is one of the Stockholm crew’s newest players but he has been able to get quite the 93/94 collection in a short time as he had a lot of Modern staples. The deck he’s been working on is a blue, white and red control deck with a lot of basics so he can play two Blood Moon main deck. Just before the tournament he was able to get hold of a couple of Underground Sea so this time he also splashed for Mind Twist and Demonic Tutor. A cool deck that will probably end up as The Deck as Peter get more cards.

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Johan Råberg – Machine Head

Johan has sold almost every non-old school card he had to instead invest in old school cards. And what a collection it has become as he is trying to get everything black bordered. Here is his story.

“The idea behind my deck was that I wanted to play all the cards I love. That meant every color, at least one of each dual, Birds of Paradise, restricted cards and a nice selection of big monsters. I ended up going 3-3 after losing to fellow Stockholmers Björn Myrbacka and Yann Franzén. The worst moment of the day was probably when I saw a lotus hit the board on the first turn, being sacrificed for red and then all lands where mountains for the rest of the game. No, I did not win that one.”

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Björn Myrbacka – Dreams Control

Björn first played 1,5 years ago after trying to sell some old cards and met an old school player who told him about the format. He’s been hooked ever since and is now buying black bordered cards like there is no tomorrow. And it is the black border that decided his deck for this tournament.

“The reason why I played the deck and build I did was because I really wanted to use my newly acquired black bordered Howling Mines. That made me build a more controlling and slower version of the classic Trick Deck. The plan was to control the game and keep my Howling Mines tapped with Icy and Relic Barrier until I could win the game with a draw 7 or when I had more than one Underworld Dreams in play.

I ended up going 3-2-1 after I lost to Andreas Cermak and the winner Jimmie and got a draw against Kalle Nord. Other than that, I would say Balance was a MVP as always.

And as a fun fact, I won ALL of my pre-boarded games the whole weekend, from when we got on the train until we arrived in Stockholm the day after (we played a lot on the train). That must mean that I can’t sideboard for s**t so at least I know what to practice now and why it went so well later in the night in the Hövveturnering (a single elimination tournament for those who didn’t top 8 where you only play one duel).”

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Andreas Rosén – Arabian Aggro (Lestree Zoo)

Andreas has been playing for quite some time now and he usually does fairly well. This tournament was no exception.

“I didn’t want to drive to Arvika all by myself so I asked a friend if he wanted to play and luckily he said yes. That meant I needed to put together two functioning decks with my cards and that decided the deck I played. I built one White and Blue Parfait deck for my friend and copied Martin Berlin’s Arabian Aggro list from a couple of tournaments ago for myself. I went 4-2 in the swiss losing against The Deck and a Red, Black and White deck that was too aggressive for me. Then I sadly lost in the quarterfinal against Jimmie who later won the tournament.”

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Yann Franzén – Eureka!

Yann is probably Stockholm’s craziest and most fun brewer and you never know what he will show up with. Last time it was Lich Mirror but for Arvika he came with a more classic (but just as fun) deck, Eureka! The picture is a little bit wrong though, he took out one Colossus of Sardia and one Fellwar Stone to ad his two newly bought Concordant Crossroads, a card I think is essential for the deck. Sorry to say I only think Yann got two wins in the time but for a first time with the deck that isn’t so bad. He probably should had have at least one more win because he played me (Gordon Andersson) and it is a horrible matchup for me, but more on that soon.

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Gordon Andersson – Fork Recursion Combo

And then we had me, going there to at last play the deck I’ve been brewing on for many months. Some of you may have seen the development on Instagram or read about it when it got its place in the Deck Archetype section of the site a couple of weeks ago. The deck for the day was Fork Recursion Combo and it actually went much better than expected. I actually think this is a “real” deck even if we’ve never seen it at a tournament since Mark Chalice played it in 1994.

Step one for the deck is to play Howling Mine, Sylvan Library so you can draw your restricted cards, then play Fastbond to be able to utilize all the extra cards better than the opponent. After that you start to Fork restricted cards and try to loop Time Walk over and over again until you either switch life with a Mirror Universe or get to 13 mana for a Fireball+Fork win.

First, I got to win against Stasis, then just barley lose to Kalle Nord after I scooped so we could get a third game in. He won the fifth turn in time with my worst matchup Parfait. After that I won against my second worst matchup, a Trick Deck, because I had playtested A LOT against that. My forth match was against Andreas Rosén which is supposed to be a great matchup but I didn’t draw anything and he steam rolled me. My last two wins was the most interesting ones. First against Yann Franzén on Eureka which is a faster combo deck so I was in a world of trouble. Luckily for me I was able to find Mana Drain in all of our games and even recur it to stop all of his Eurekas. Sorry Yann!

The last match was against Jonas Rebenius on White Weenie, a matchup I think I have a slight edge in as their clock isn’t that fast. But the Disenchants could be a problem. When Jonas had two Circle of Protection: Red on the board and my only wincon is two Fireballs it looked grim, but forking his Disenchant on my Mirror Universe and then Chaos Orbing the last one got me through it.

/Gordon