Going to Rag Town at the Ivory Cup

A note from the editor: As might be familiar to some of you, it is custom to bestow the title of Rag Man on the person who finishes last in our tournaments. One person has skirted the abyss more times than any of us. To celebrate Seb's third Rag Man, it was decided to transform him into Cosmic Horror. Eureka, he screamed! This is his story.

A not from the second editor: After Seb’s amazing story there is also a short bit about the Ivory Cup as a whole.

Rag Town

”Oh my! Oh lord.” The woman jumped back as she saw his apparition in the alley. There, hunched over the waste of man.

”Eh, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure!” He said. Like a sick bird he strutted around his treasured pile of garbage.

”Er, stupendous and unheard-of splendours await me below!” The hooded figure yelped as he pulled out something from the pile and put it in the sack. There was a slight dribble from the sack; drip, drip and his tattered clothing was greased, probably with the fat from the discarded bones he gathered.

"Aw, he's just a silly, dirty little man. What's to be afraid of?" said the gentleman that accompanied the woman as he hurried them along.

”Eh, the Rag man, he hunts what might have been!” The Rag Man said and a sad smile appeared under his pulled up cloak.

”Er, and now my sack is full. Ah, a sack lasts long, but a ten pound filled sack is longed for.” He said as he slung it over his shoulder and started to walk.

Editor’s note: That Fallen is actually a Rag Man but was given out at a time we didn’t have one.

The room had all he needed. There was a pot, two small bowls and something that resembled a bed in the corner. And there it was, the door. Bolted and shut. He cracked the bones and threw them in the small pot. And as he poured the stew into the bowls the light turned on in the other room. There was a keyhole and it invited him to look but the dared not, no. As a matter of fact, when he slid the bowl under the door he made a conscious choice not to look.

”Er, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” he said as he averted his gaze. But still, he stayed there, hunched over by the door.

And then the music started. Hideous sounds, yes, to some. Vibrating and assuming a symphonic quality for him now, yes. And as time past, the playing grew wilder.

”Ah, fait accompli!” The Rag man cried out. And then he looked.

Screams of horror rended th' affrighted skies.

/Seb

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The Ivory Cup VI… or was it the Pesticup V?

So then it was time for Gordon to write a bit. This was the fifth (I did however write VI in invitation hehe) Ivory Cup and was supposed to be a bit of a celebration. As you all may have guessed that did not happen because of that plague thing going around. So instead of our usual 30 people gathering of amazing people from all around we decided to have an even smaller event with maximum 16 people playing outdoors in a field to avoid the Pestilence. The Ivory Cup became the Pesticup and we also continued with our american theme as the tournament was held July 4th.

But then it all fell apart once more. Yes, after a week of 30 degrees Celsius that one day we where supposed to play, the rain came. Of course, it is Swedish summer after all. We then diecided to do the lazy thing expecting some drops in attendance and moved it to the pub (yes, we can actually go to the pub here). We ended up being 9 players playing 4 rounds of swiss and a top 4. Also the bottom 4 played for the elusive Rag Man as told above.

Yours truly never did have time to build a deck and took an old list and just exchanged white for red as white is the most boring color of all. But as usual when building your deck (deckpic below) half an hour before the event you are bound to do some mistakes, like not adding any artifact removal haha. I however managed to end up in the finals even after losing against Jonas Stattin’s mono green with Titania’s Song (yeah, i probably should have played white as it destroys my deck completely in) and a cool singleton deck piloted by Micke Magnusson, both unpowered. And then I lost in the finals (as usual I can’t ever win a tournament) to Knaz how took home the Pesticup with the deck below. Btw we did play with gentleman’s rules.

4c Mono Green

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Most people who know me, probably associate me with playing either a stupid combo deck, or UR CounterBurn, and they are not wrong as those decks are some of my favorite decks. I have however one more pet deck, and that deck is what I will write about today.

I call the deck 4 Color Green, which may sound a bit stupid, but there is a reason for that. The mono green ramp deck is almost as old as the game itself, but it is most often seen as a budget deck. Why? I don't know, but I decided to see how good the archetype could be if I removed the budget part. The first thing the non-budget version gets is of course the moxen and the Black Lotus, which of course helps the ramp plan quite a bit. The second thing is that we also can play with duals to splash things like blue power and other restricted cards that aren't green, like Mind Twist, Wheel of Fortune and more.

The foundation of the deck is however the same as the mono green budget build, and that means mana dorks and big creatures. So let's now take a look at what cards are in the deck and why I chose those specific cards.

Creatures

Let's start with the creatures. One of the big problems with ramp decks is that you need the perfect mix of mana and creatures. Otherwise you either sit with only mana in your hand, or only big creatures that you can't cast. To lessen this problem I decided to add some cheaper creatures to fill out the curve a bit in case the main plan doesn’t go as you want.

I knew I wanted some number of 3-drops as they are so good when you play Elves and other cheap ramp spells, because that means that you almost always can play it on turn 2. That helps the deck put out some early pressure and not die if the opponents can disrupt the ramp plan. For the same reasons I also wanted a couple of 4-drops and to be completely honest this deck can play a 4-drop on turn 2 a surprising amount of times. I decided that a playset of both should be fine.

These creatures also helps against decks with swords to plowshares because the opponent often need to answer them straight away before they win the game by themselves, and if the opponent kills your early creatures, your big creatures will be able to stay on the battlefield when they arrive. The hardest part was to decide on how many creatures that cost 5 or more mana I wanted to play. After some extensive testing I think 5, or maybe 6 creatures is the correct number. If you play more, you often sit with them in hand in the early game, and if you play fewer you don't draw them when you have the mana to play them. This means that the deck plays 13 to 14 creatures, and together with some of the restricted cards the deck has a lot of threats that just needs to be answered by the opponent. Against many opponents Braingeyser, Mind Twist, Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune absolutely can be seen as threats in this deck.

Avoiding removal

One thing I wanted was to avoid as much removal as possible and the easiest removal to avoid is Lightning Bolt by choosing to only play creatures with 4 or more in thoughness. I chose Serendib Efreet and Erhnam Djinn for the 3- and 4-drops as they are some of the best creatures around. The big problem here is of course that the both die to City in a bottle but I don’t know what else I could play. Maybe Spitting Slug, but that one just “bounces” on Mishra’s Factory isn’t really that big of a threat with only 2 in power. Gaea’s Avenger is also an alternative, but when playing it turn 2 it is probably small even against heavy artifact decks. As an alternative for Erhnam we have Su-Chi, but then we turn on the opponents Disenchants as counterspells. Also it dies to Psionic Blast and trades with Serra Angel instead of beating it.

Then we had the big creatures and you may ask yourself why I play all the strange legends in those spots? I promise you that there is reasoning behind it. At first I actually played Craw Wurm (Got to love me some Craw Wurm!) in the 6 mana slots, but the wurm trades with commonly played cheaper creatures like Serra Angel, Sengir Vampire and Su-Chi. That is of course not very good when your plan is to go bigger than the opponent and you spend more mana on each of your creatures. Therefore I started to search for creatures with both power and toughness 5 or more, that way they only trades with Juzam Djinn.

I also didn't want to my big creatures to be blue as the opponent probably will side in Red Elemental Blast against this deck, because of the Serendibs and Power. That means that I can’t play Mahamoti Djinn or Sol’Kanar the Swamp King. Also, creatures like Juzam Djinn and Shivan Dragon are out of the question as they cost double black and double red which is a bit of a stretch on the mana base.

This creature configuration means that most control decks only will have four Swords to Plowshares and five counterspells for all of the decks threats. That is the main plan of the deck, play more threats than the opponent can answer. And I almost forgot, none of the creatures in the deck can be blocked profitably with Mishra’s Factory.

The three problem cards the deck faces are the classic anti creature cards, Moat, The Abyss and City in a Bottle. We’ve already talked about the city so let’s take a look at the other two. Moat is an absolute beating as we only have 4 flying creatures, but at least we have some flying creatures at all so we can still win with them and a well timed Fireball. I would however like to play one more flyer. The next card is The Abyss, a card that actually isn’t that amazing if it isn’t played super early. Mostly because we have a lot of cheap mana dorks to sacrifice. I would however like to play answers to these cards and therefore I have now started playing five colors to be able to play Disenchant.

Big mana = Big spells

Having a lot of mana also makes some non-creature spells really good. For example X-spells are amazing in this deck. Braingeyser is more often than not one of the MVP:s as it can give you a new hand without problem when you have run out of threats. A common situation is that your opponent needs to swords your early creatures, counterspell your later threats and then be blank when you play your Braingeyser to refill your hand.

Also, of course Mind Twist is super good when you can play it for a lot really early.

At first I only played one Fireball in the deck, but I it’s too good to only play one. It is not uncommon to be able to do 10 damage with a single Fireball and just end the game on the spot. Two Fireballs is probably the most you can run though, as you can’t cut to many creatures from the deck.

Two other spells that really shine in this deck in the same way that Braingeyser are  Timetwister and Wheel of Fortune. The reason to this is that you often empty your hand super fast with all the cheap elves and then some threats. More often than not you do that faster than the opponent. Also, after you have played a draw seven for three mana you probably still will have a lot of mana left to play with so that you can use the cards first.

Flex slots

After ramp, creatures and restricted cards have been added to the deck there aren’t many more slots left, especially if you want to play a couple of Fireballs. The first thing that comes to mind for these flex slots is some sort of removal, but not for creatures as the plan is to overpower your opponents creatures, not kill them. But some answers to problem cards should probably be added.

I started out playing a couple of Crumble as there are almost always targets for some artifact destruction and it kills problem cards like Icy Manipulator and City in a Bottle. They do however not kill Enchantments, so I also played a Desert Twister in my first version, even though it is very expensive and actually quite bad.

I still don't really know what the correct choice is here, so I would absolutely see these slots as flex slots still. Right now I’m trying to play five colors and some number of disenchants main deck.

Other cards that I have on my radar is Sylvan Library, Concordant Crossroads and Berserk. Sylvan is quite good against control decks, but I already like that matchup quite well as long as they don’t play too much hate in the form of Enchantments. Concordant Crossroads is also good against control decks and also kills The Abyss, so I could see playing one of those in the main deck. It is however quite bad in many matchups. Berserk is the most fun of the above cards, and you can end a game from nowhere with it. But truth be told, it is probably just worse than one more Fireball.

Conclusion

There you have some of my reasonings behind this deck and as you may notice it is far from finished. Therefore, I won’t do an analysis of matchups and things like that. Neither will I talk too much about the sideboard except for a few last notes.

  • The deck performs way better than expected, especially against The Deck. You do however need a plan against the hate cards, those are the only cards the deck win with, not by countering and swording. If you don’t play white, Tranquility in the sideboard is a must.

  • Fast Juzams is a problem, but only if they also play Lightning Bolts and Sinkholes to disrupt your mana development, otherwise you run them over. But that matchup may need something in the sideboard.

  • Blood Moon is of course a bit annoying, but mana dorks and a bunch (3-4) Blue elemental Blast in the sideboard help a lot here. Combo decks can be a pain so pack some action in the sideboard for that.

  • Icy Manipulator is a hell of a card against Force of Nature!

  • Have a plan for decks with multiple Maze of Ith. I play one Armageddon main deck right now.

  • Any questions? Just comment below.

All the decks from n00bcoM

Because of that damn virus everyone is talking about, this year’s n00bcon was sadly cancelled. But hey, we old school players won’t let something like that come in our way when it comes to the traditional Easter fight! As soon as countries started to lock down and people needed to cancel their trips to Rotary Pub the amazing Florian Von Bredow decided to organize an online tournamentnamed n00bcoM for all of those people to play at Good Friday instead.

When it became clear that n00bcon wouldn’t happen at all the tournament instead became that closest we got to a replacement and also the biggest “live” online tournament to date with 70 players. Of course n00bcon was sorely missed, especially since I(Gordon) was actually going to play this year! But if I can say it myself, n00bcoM was a worth replacement in times like these!

Below you can find all of the decks except one that the players of this amazing tournament played. They are sorted in alphabetical(first name) order. If you want to know who went top8 and more about the tournament there will be a blog post written by Florian and Mg on the old school blog in the near future!

Last but not least, thanks to Florian for organizing, Markus Lundqvist for being a great producer, Seb for helping me with commentary and Slanfan for doing all different kinds of cool things! And also of course Mg because without you this wouldn’t happen.

Ivory Cup IV Retrospective

The fourth Ivory Cup is over and left are just the memories, and the videos! Yes, two weeks ago we organized the playset edition of Ivory Cup, Stockholms first annual tournament following the likes like n00bcon, BSK and Arvikafestivalen. This year 29 brave souls showed up to play, which I believe is the same amount as last year and also a number we are very happy with as we don’t really promote it.

Old School has grown so large since the first cup and there are tournaments all over the world all the time. When we started the cup this wasn’t the case and we saw a part of the year where there were no tournaments, especially not in Sweden. Today you could play an old school tournament at least every month if you travel a bit (just as Jason Schwartz!) and it also seems every tournament try to make it cooler than the next in some way. The Ivory Cup however, will stay the same with non of that extra spice, except for our beer list.

We play at a community hall in the outskirts of Stockholm (a whoopin’ 15 min by metro from the central station) where we sell beers and have a couple of moderate prices. That’s it. Still, for some reason people from outside of Sweden travel here and we are deeply honored by that. So a big thanks to Åland, Brother Karl, Brother Stebbo, Constantine, Anya, Timo, Jason and Mitja who made it so that we had more guests from outside of Sweden than swedes outside of Stockholm (Arvika, Gbg and more, what’s up?). With that said, a special thanks to Kalle who both travelled from the other side of the country to play and painted an amazing price for us!

For the international guests and the ones who found a link on the tournaments webpage and asked me about it we also held a special invitational tournament the day before. A singleton tournament without all the bannings most people do. A fun format to play every now and again, but not really a format. If you want to read more about that, check out Svantes report from the event.

But now let’s talk about what you probably here for, the decks and the videos!

I’m actually not going to say much more than here are the top 8 decklists and under them you will find video coverage. We didn’t stream the cup this year, but we did however record a feature match every round. And as it is not much fun to watch a match with no sound Gordon, Seb and Paddan sat down to drink a lot of beer and do commentary (that’s why it has taken some time to get it up).

Without further ado, here it is!

Decks:


Videos:

The above is a playlist with all 5 rounds+top8.