Decklists from Alphaspelen 3

This will be the shortest post yet and mainly consist of images as I thought people would like to see what decks were played yesterday at the tournament Alphaspelen 3. So here they are in order of placement in the tournament.

I'm also working on a tournament report that will come up later this week and also an in-depth article about my deck with a couple of different variations built on the same theme. But you will probably need to wait a week or two for that one.

/Gordon

Ps. Thanks to Magnus Engdal who made it possible to photograph every participants deck.

Live: Alphaspelen 3

We will livestream the tournament Alphaspelen 3 here on Sunday the 15th of October from 11.00 am CET. After the tournament is over you will still be able to find the matches here.

  • 00.25.00 - First match
  • 01.35.00 - Second Match
  • 03.07.15 - Third match - guested by Joel Larsson
  • 04.26.00 - Fourth match
  • 05.47.00 - Semi final
  • 06.46.00 - Final

The power of Titania's Song

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This is the first of many “Single Card Spotlight” posts that will come and we begin with the versatile card Tinania’s Song. This card don’t see very much play in Old School but it has it’s decks where it usually makes an appearance. But let’s get to that a little bit later and start with what the card actually says because I think many people actually miss one thing that is pretty unique with Titania’s Song, so here is the oracle text:

Each noncreature artifact loses all abilities and becomes an artifact creature with power and toughness each equal to its converted mana cost. If Titania's Song leaves the battlefield, this effect continues until end of turn.

So, the card makes all NONCREATURE artifacts into creatures with power and toughness equal to their cmc. This part is the easy part and most people know about it. The second part is that the artifacts also lose all their abilities which means that a Jayemdae Tome becomes a 4/4 which can’t draw you cards.

The third part is what I don’t think everyone has noticed, because usually it doesn’t even matter. But the thing is that if You get rid of Titania’s Song it will still affect all the artifacts in play until end of turn. This is probably most important if you are staring down a lethal army of artifact creatures and want to disenchant the song. Then don’t try to do it on the opponent’s turn for some reason because they will still be able to attack you. Maybe not something that comes up all that often, but if it does and you do it the wrong way you will never forget it.

So what is this card good for? Usually it has two uses depending on the deck. Most often you see this card in Parfait style decks or other artifact heavy control decks where the Song is your endgame. After you’ve locked down the game with Icy Manipulators, Relic Barriers, Howling Mines and Winter Orbs or something like that, you drop this and swing for the kill.

As a side note I can say that I for one is not a big fan of this in hardcore lock down decks as it breaks your lock if you’re not able to kill them in one turn. And getting 20 cmc artifacts on the table could be quite hard. Usually you win anyway but why take a chance hehe.

The other use this card has is in mana denial decks (which is once again why Parfait is the deck that this sees play in the most). The reason for this is that Titania’s Song also can work as an Armageddon for moxen as they become 0/0 creatures and die as soon as it hits the board. So in a land destruction deck 1-2 Titania’s Song could actually be a thing. It also stops Mana Vaults and Fellwar Stones to generate mana but then you have to deal with them as creatures instead so be ready for that.

 

Titania’s Song, a wincon and mana denial card in one. With those short thoughts we end our first Single Card Spotlight 

Time Vault in Field of Dreams

Could Time Vault actually be good in this deck?

Could Time Vault actually be good in this deck?

One of my absolute favorite decks in old school is the not often seen Field of Dreams deck. Here in Stockholm we most often call it Kevin Costner after the movie Field of Dreams with Kevin Costner (thank you Per for coming up with that name!).

You can read more about the deck in the archetype section (here) but the main plan is to survive long enough until you can get both Field of Dreams and a Millstone on the table. After that you mill your opponent every time they have a card you don’t want them to draw on the top of their library. Two well proven strategies is to give them all mana or no mana (yes, this deck is pure evil (and yes, I like parenthesis)).

I’ve played this deck a few times before but never in a big tournament so I was thinking of taking this to the next big event in Sweden. Therefore, yesterday I once again sleeved it up and took it to our monthly pub gathering. This time with a new “super secret” tech, Time Vault.

This is the deck right now. Except for the Timetwister which I now have cut.

The plan with Time Vault was to help when you’ve got the lock in. Sometimes you only have one Millstone and if you mill away a good spell and two cards down there is another good spell you can be in trouble. Even with two Millstones this can happen so my plan was to use Time Vault to minimise the risk of the opponent drawing something good. So when I know the opponent is just going to draw a land or something else that doesn’t matter I let him take another turn and untap my Time Vault. Then if I’m in a spot later on when I’ve milled him but he still has a good card on top I can take another turn and another shot at it. It’s also quite good when you want to use all your mana for a Braingeyser or if you want to attack with Mishras but then have mana up for a Counterspell and some milling.

It worked a lot better than expected and with Field of Dreams the Time Vault actually became a good card, even without Millstone.

/Gordon

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