2020 Winter Charity Battle - All Matches

Running a stream every week with extra tournaments every now and then takes a fair but of time. Especially when also fixing with this site and all that goes into that. Because of this I’m “a bit” behind on publishing earlier stuff on YouTube. But we have now started to publish all old matches there so please do subscribe to the channel. Today we published all of the matches from Mitja and Reindeers amazing Charity Battle tournament!

You can also find all the decks from the event here!

A lot of great matches there for you to dive into and just so you know, we also have 2 more OS tournaments and 2 Premodern ones coming soon! While still also publishing all the matches from the weekly streams (8pm cet every Friday).

Btw, right now we are just publishing the matches themselves. If you want all the nice fluff in between and talking to the players about their decks and discussing brews you need to catch the stream or watch the replay during the 14 days it stays on Twitch.

Taking on the ODOL with Robots

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

A full circle or spiral or something

Hi al! Today we have a guest post from Slotherine on our Discord server. So I’m just gonna just going to leave the word to him, here you go! /Gordon

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 2020 - what a year huh, oh it's 2021 already and this is a continuum. Negativity, financial turbulence and social distancing, we have faced hardship and are still struggling through some hard times. So with that in mind I thought the good people playing this game could use some positive vibes out there. Here are some nostalgic remarks and random musings from an all new player to the 93/94 Old School Mtg and a sort of an public greeting to all of its local communities.

A full circle or spiral or something

Magic: The Gathering - what a peculiar thing it is. This collectible card game has been a huge part of my life since the summer of 1995. I can vividly recall when I and a very good old friend of mine bought our very first cards in starter decks of the 4th edition after another classmate with his big brothers introduced the game to us and some peers. Kalle got a copy of White Knight and I opened a copy of Black Knight, but more on that later.

What a wonderful game we found, it really hit home with us, as we were already involved in everything nerdy from pen & paper roleplaying to playing with Commodore 64 and Nintendo. Jumping back to present day and the global Mad Max scenario that we are currently LARPing, January 22th 2021 was the date I got the deal made and became an owner of Unlimited Edition Black Lotus. It took me 26 years to get my hands on the card of all cards, what an amazing feeling. All this got me feeling rather nostalgic, warm and fuzzy (truth be told, this gin and tonic that I’m sipping while writing this might enhance these sensations). So, how did I get here.

Early Dark Ages: It's all black

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Oh sweet summer child, didn't win many games.

Black has always been my color, ever since I got that Black Knight and thought it's way cooler than my friends White Knight. I loved the black cards aesthetically, with their gruesome pictures of power, pain and sacrifice and livid depictions of nightmares. It all felt a little forbidden, bad and extremely metal. However, I really didn't see how anything could beat a Craw Wurm or even better a Scaled Wurm! So I played a lot of subpar green aggro decks. We really didn't know how to play, house ruled interactions and rulings on cards when we weren't sure how to progress and couldn't consult the older players. In the beginning there was just kitchen table games and real scarcity of cards, I remember trading for basic lands and with no understanding of the value or rarity, so I think we got pretty hosed by the older players. I remember Kalle trading a Tropical Island from Revised for some cards he needed for a deck (can't remember what they were, but it's safe to assume it was a steaming pile of bulk).

Revised was still on shelves when we started but of course we didn't want to buy too much of the old shit, so we cracked open loads of 4th edition, Fallen Empires, Homelands, Chronicles and Ice Age. So, we spend our first years losing to the likes of Erhnam Djinn and Armageddon or Llanowar Elves and Force of Nature and after the release of Ice Age to that big bad Necropotence or just getting drilled by a Juggernaut of a Sol Ring.

Eventually we found some other players and playgroups in our region, learned the game more and finally evolved into Type 2 players that did some occasional drafting too. Our old playgroup was going through a lull when Urza block arrived and I remember a shift in our local player base. All the powerful combo decks and cards of that era pretty much drove us out of competitive play, but the appeal to compete was growing and I remember at least attending the Nationals last chance qualifier in around the year 2000, playing a last minute trade binder brew rogue black that didn't have all the cards I wanted. I think it was sporting like 3 Rishadan Port, some number of Trashing Wumpus and a playset of beats by Phyrexian Scuta and yeah, stuff. I made it to 4-0 and table #1 and all the way back to 4-4 and one of the first cuts. What a blast.

But eventually people move on in life and the playgroups in little towns or more remote municipalities are easily dissolved. People had new interests, girls, pc-gaming and eventually mandatory military service here in Finland and then of course studying in the bigger cities. Somewhere around 2003 I thought Magic: The Gathering is something adults don't do, sold pretty much anything of value and left the game for 13 years. By that time I was a passionate Extended player that occasionally dabbled with some casual Type 1.5 , but what I was really playing was Extended with some sort of Oath of Druids builds and a Counter slivers deck if I recall correctly, that's XXU right? I remember having well over 20 copies of Revised Dual Lands, Italian Legends Moat and The Abyss with some other stuff. What an uninformed douche I was.

Getting back and discovering Legacy

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The amount of snow is too damn high! This goes for both my backyard and Legacy

When I got back to the game in 2016 I quickly connected and integrated with this fantastic local Legacy based community here in Tampere, amazing people. I think I made my first good decision involving this lifestyle and bought into the format in one big swoop. Now with everything good comes the bad and in this case both the bad & ugly are the Wizards of the Coast with their FIRE-desing philosophy and mismanagement of the Legacy format. The good here is, that even though most of the format staples are not Old School cards they are mostly reserved list cardboard and appreciated extremely well in few years sort of keeping the gap or leap manageable to Old School. So, while I have not really enjoyed what has happened in Legacy lately, I have had some good trading pieces and stuff to sell and therefore decreasing the amount of new cash I needed to raise. Even after trading and selling a bunch of stuff, I still have too many Legacy decks to actively play them all.

Could have, would have, should have. I am not going to get too deep into finance here as it is quite boring and somewhat beside the point of this article, but as there are some serious concerns regarding the price of these old cards and I feel this needs to be acknowledged here. I for one am not going to defend the price increases or even spikes of sorts we are seeing with the original first editions and printings of these Mtg cards, but there are myriads of different factors affecting the collectibles market inflation that we are witnessing and can be at least reasoned with. I believe the most important thing here is to take perspective on value of things and not be too much hung up on price memory.

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Upfront Ville (left) Erkka (right), im looming in the far-right corner behind couple of half-naked dudes.

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Peksi demostrating that there is always room for players at Mätkymökki

The wild price spikes and following increases can be really worrying for communities, because I'm pretty sure many of the players enjoying the format and playing it are worried of the increasing price tag for new players or even old players wishing to build a new deck to try something different and cool. I have firsthand experience in this as the price action has been pretty devastating for many Legacy communities, or at least very worrisome, some new players are always interested but just opt not to get involved as it might be too pricey for them or all together unachievable. On the other side, we really don't know where we are with our reserved list formats until live tournaments and travelling are an option again.

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Life is good, let's keep slamming cardboard!

We all have our subjective resources, budget and a way we value things, so the way I'm looking at all this is simply from my perspective. For me personally the current prices mean that I will never be able to reasonably build something like an Old School Reanimator which I'm a bit salty about of course, because its build around some of the coolest cards I have ever laid eyes upon like Bazaar of Baghdad and All Hallow's Eve, but we can't have everything can we? Perhaps I can borrow the deck live someday to get to tap that bazaar and mill nothing but lands.

Financially I think I've made all the big mistakes in this hobby, missing the great entry points for rare and valuable cardboard and of course quitting the game and selling off at one point. However, I am extremely lucky to be in this position right now, I have a steady job with decent income, pretty successful career and I have accumulated my stock portfolios for years now. Just to be clear, I'm also married with two kids and we have a house with mortage, so by no means am I rich, there are some real expenses.

Getting in to Old School in 2021

But after buying into legacy, how can I justify allocating thousands and thousands in something like Old School Magic. Simply put, these cards as rare collectors’ items and nostalgic game pieces that have real value for me. But even more than the game or the cards, I value the gathering - that is the communities that make up for what this whole collectible card game is. If there is something good that came with this pandemic, it's that it became apparent how much I miss and enjoy getting together with people to play this game. After Premodern and Old School gripped my attention few years ago, I have been keeping myself in the loop enjoying all the great streaming, blogs and other content.

We have played Swedish b&r Old School with open reprint, so I guess that's basically Ravenna Rules policy, on two of the last few summer cottages located Mätkymökki tournaments and are pretty constantly playing a monthly Premodern in our weekly tournament schedule in Tampere. There is some added appeal to true eternal formats for a player with work and family stuff to manage. The sheer amount of new sets, ludicrous card designs and metagame shifts have slowly turned even formats like Legacy into quite quickly rotating and quite exhausting, something hard to keep up with. There are some clear cut reasons I felt like I can, would very much like to and did actually decide to collect my first Swedish legal 75 that's all ABU & The Four Horsemen original printings. First off, I started adding up all the expenses that I usually have consuming services, culture, travelling or even just going to the movies or restaurants and to experience live music. With the pandemic all these actives just stopped and I noticed that there was abundance of cash on my account every month and nothing much besides the stock market to allocate it to. Now if you are lucky enough to keep your job status secure in these times, accumulating wealth is great, but I personally think it's pretty pointless if you can't spend it in something that you enjoy.

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Recliner of rage, steady supply of books to read and new drinks, also insert your local sports teams’ woolen socks here

So, I put things in perspective, ensured myself yet again that I had all the essentials in my life, felt safe and free to again spend a portion of my cashflow and even some savings in this hobby, or perhaps we ought to call it a lifestyle, and started accumulating a card base. Now I have to admit that at first, I was sure I'm just going to construct some sort of powerless pile or two for tournaments allowing open reprints, but I was quickly tempted with some more iconic and exclusive parts of this games history that I had long-coveted.

When we were planning to make some tournament trips in 2020 sometime before the pandemic hit us, I actually went through my old bulk and binders. I was happy to realize that I actually have a playable 75 for Troll Disco for the updated Ravenna rules. But what I really wanted to go back to was black. What I really wanted to do for the first time in my life, was to swing in with a Juzam Djinn. Oh god, I can still remember us dreaming about owning these cards back in the day. 5/5 for just 4 mana, that’s just not fair (looking at you Uro). Those iconic cards were pretty much unobtainable for little kids that could only buy a single booster pack a week or something like that.

So I got my first all new Old School cards in 2019, my first Juzam Djinn in early 2020 in a deal from Netherlands and my first piece of power in Unlimited Mox Jet in the summer of 2020 as we made a local deal in person. The price spikes got me really worried and at times I was feeling a bit overwhelmed in all of this, contemplating in between should I really go for as much pimp that I can or should I settle for something less. Eventually the fomo got me and as I had the means, I helped 3 more Juzam Djinns to escape the Boris Johnson regime and the looming Brexit from England late 2020. You bet I'm going to play them way too much! After I got a deal on a playset of Beta Hypnotic Specters, just waiting to eat a bolt, I was sure that I want as much black bordered cards for my deck as I could muster.

By the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 I decided to move fast so I didn't have to worry about the crazy price action anymore. With the last spike in the old school cardboard in the beginning of 2021, the price was right for couple of sellers in Finland and we did an in-person cards + cash deal for the Black Lotus. Some decisions were made, some high flying stocks positions were decreased, legacy staples were offloaded and a goal was achieved. Still waiting for few post packages to arrive, but when they do I will have an all Swedish legal 75 mono black. It's going to be far from perfect but I will be playing with what I got and with some cards that I think are cool.

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Foil Eldrazi, Goblins for just about every format, Elves for PM and Legacy and a bunch of other decks/staples for variety of formats

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Work in progress.

You choose how much you want so spend

Financially I have pretty much accepted that talking strictly ABU & The Four Horsemen original printings lists, mono back will be my brew space and there appears to be some ideas that I am looking to test out at some point. Some lists people have tested seem involve more control elements with disks, more manipulators, royal assassins and meekstone or something. I could try to convince myself that I don't need any expensive cards, but we all know how this is going to end up and I'll be hunting down those Guardian Beast's soon enough, if the price doesn't go completely bonkers that is. We'll see if have to the appetite to get some Unlimited duals at some point and yeah, just forget about that silly monocolored limitation.

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Background in Legacy unlocks some Ravenna legal mana

I'm so glad that reprint wise the Ravenna Rules variants appears to be pretty popular in Europe, that will allow for more brewing today without committing ridiculous amounts of money. I would also encourage other Legacy players to look into the format as most of the active players have loads of Revised or Foreign Black Bordered Dual Lands so they already have the manabase covered for multicolored brews in more open reprint policies. With open reprints (usually old frame and original art) I'm looking to tinker around with my Toll Disco. I also think Atog is one of the most flavorful creatures out there with Juzam and could fill my need to get some aggressive red beats in at some point.

I don't mean to dismiss the purists wishing to keep their tournaments all pimped out, but new players are like a breath of fresh air for communities, even formats and the Swedish b&r still ensures the same appealing dynamics that were originally indented. Atlantic rules also look interesting and something I would like to try at some point. Only variation that I hold some prejudice against are the ones allowing 4 Strip Mine. About the open reprint policy, I really feel like I'm not missing anything if my opponent is slamming Revised Swords to Plowshares and Fbb Savannah Lions with 4th Armageddon, the gameplay is still there and I am free to drop and enjoy my Lotus. And we know how Mtg players are, when we get the taste for something, we buy in and start to pimp our decks. Variety of local and even tournament specific b&r modifications, gentlemen’s rules, mad brews and unofficial expansion sets like scryings are a great way to keep the 93/94 scene from getting stale.

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Unfortunately it's mostly Revised or 4th, but it's something

Timetable is uncertain, but we will make it

We like many others had grand plans for 2020, many of us planned to attend yet another Magicfest in Europe with a Legacy main event, the Finnish Nationals for Premodern and Legacy, Alphacastle for some Old School Magic and the German Nationals for Premodern on that same trip, yet another rush with haste and trample to the Swedish Nationals for Premodern. Perhaps some bigger Old School tournament somewhere. Now all these events have been postponed and the outlook for 2021 is uncertain at best, but I’m sure we will get to play live at some point. I'm looking forward to getting that beer or two with Jens and Philip. And unfortunately, I didn't make the great Finnish raid to the Swedish Premodern Champs in 2019, but I've heard all good things about the local community and the mainstay figures that have roots in Old School. From what I have learned, they are my kind of people.

Oh, and there is murmuring that Gordon and perhaps some other jolly vikings could make it to the Mätkymökki tournament when we are safe to travel again. That would be grand. And by the way, I'm not the only local player interested in 93/94 Mtg. From the local Tampere Kettu Crew, I happen to know that Erkka is also looking to finish up a cool Ravenna legal BRU-control and he just agreed to buy an Unlimited Ancestral Recall. Also, Janne has almost completed a Ravenna legal White Weenie. Great things are afoot. Looking forward to meeting you all. But until then, I should really get a webcam to jam some games with yall!

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I swear I was not drunk, even though academic celebrations can be a bit wild :)

P.S You can find me on Discord with the nickname Slotherine and on Facebook with my name Antti Turtiainen. Feel free to message me if you have anything to ask or just want to get in touch.

Sebs online adventures!

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.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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!

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My (WINNING!) deck from the “local” Lucia 2020 singleton tournament.

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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 .

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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

Christmas Lockdown Tournament VOD and Decks

During the holidays 2020 one mister Florian “FloVo” von Bredow organized an amazing webcam tournament that we got to stream. Here you can find the VOD for that one in all its glory together with all the decks as well. Or just sorta, you need to click here to check out the decks hehe.