Video: Playing Field of Dreams

A couple of weeks ago I talked about the deck Field of Dreams. It’s one of my favorites and I always come back to playing it every now and then. Therefore, I tried making some videos for those of you who wants to see how it plays. So here we have a couple of videos (completely unedited as I didn’t have the time) where I play against local player Johan Råberg and his Eureka and UWB Aggro decks.

If I may say so myself the best game is absolutely game 4 against Eureka which took so long we needed to split it in two.

Here are the list I played:

At the bottom of the glass – 4 lessons from a loser

Today we have a blog post from Flippin' Orbs host Seb Celia where he tells us about 4 very special cards that he has had the "honor" of winning during the last couple of years. Each card comes with its own stories and lessons that have made Seb a wiser man, and a better player, or at least we hope so.  /Gordon

Lesson I

Lesson II

Lesson III

Lesson IV

Lesson I – The Rag Man

The dark side of the moon

It’s a card right? I mean, you win when you play it … sometimes. Blood Moon is a deceptive card though, it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling but you are a blind fool. And a deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths. Let’s lay down some of those truths.

I sometimes use Fog as an example of a deceptive card that lets you really remember winning. You won that one time when all the stars aligned and, clearly, should’ve died that very turn if it were not for this and that. It does not, however, remind you of all the times you sat with the card in your hand, doing nothing. Cards need to do things for you to win, we could probably agree on that right? I think in many ways Blood Moon qualifies here. Sometimes it just flat out kills all opponents’ upcoming plays. Other times they have a Fellwar Stone when you decided to play with plains in your Blood Moon deck. Other times you slam it when you have an opening around counterspells and whatnots but strand a bunch of your own cards in hand due to playing three colors in your Blood Moon deck.

So for the tournament where I won the Rag Man (A price given out to last place in all our tournaments, Ed.) I played a Blood Moon deck with Savannah Lions, splashing for blue power (because I am not a peasant by position, nor by nature). To make a long story short, it did not go well. I even met a Merfolk deck where my Blood Moons just did everything that is close to nothing.

 

Lesson II – Sorrows Path

(Put the lime in the) coconut

I did not plan claiming all these trophies, to aquire them you have to be ready to be beaten a lot, like a lot a lot. But it’s also a bit like in that Fight Club scene where they are told by Tyler Durden to go out and get beaten up by complete strangers. It’s not as easy as it seems. I claimed this little gem by coming 5th place just out of range for the top4. I actually won the Sorrows Path in the raffle just before the top4 and it seemed fitting to say the least. Råberg signed it when he beat me in the win and in. Anyway, I played this:

Arabian Aggro is a great deck. Recently we have seen a lot of creature based decks popping up and in that meta, you probably win playing Swords over Lightning bolts but hey, I feel that if you put a lion and a gorilla in a cage fight… the monkey will beat the shit out of the cat. I did try playing three sylvan in the sideboard in this event because I had seen “Farsan” go unbeaten in the swiss at n00bcon, and he won against like, at least two-three The Decks (including mine) with them, as a sort of Ancestrals. But they did not serve me that well, and I don’t like that card as much as other people do. I think I had control a bit too much in mind building my deck and let that be a lesson to you all, you probably will never meet the decks you plan to meet anyhow.

Seb's Arabian Aggro

Lesson III – The Fallen

What a wonderful world

So, if you play Eureka, you lose. At least that’s what LSV says, but let’s not delve too much into what’s good or bad with the deck in general. I did some very sweet plays and that’s what you want, slinging the most badass creatures in the game, like playing a turn one Lord of the Pit. There got to be some kind of achievement unlock just doing that, right? I had a real blast the whole tournament … but I lost. I like the possibility to ramp out big dudes and to be able to live the magical christmas land from time to time playing eureka. Unload your hand, slam Concordant Crossroad and hitting for a ton. Moat is a problem though… and a bunch of other crap are problematic too, but who the fuck cares when all you want is to win more, rather than win?

(The Fallen was also the price for a last place finish, Ed. )

"So you say my Library might be too slow?"

"So you say my Library might be too slow?"

 

Lesson IV – Blaze of Glory

Where is my mind

Seb's n00bcon deck - The Machinegun

I can’t really complain that much about coming 9th place in this year’s n00bcon. The deck felt solid, I got mind twisted three times in the games that I lost that eventually put me outside of competition and that is a crappy feeling. I remember when I played against Olle Råde for the win and in and had a Library in my starting seven. “This is the first time I get to play library turn one!” I declared. Olle mind twisted me the following turn for a bunch. The bigger picture of the whole tournament for me was a bunch of really fun games and I try to keep that in mind going forward.

I love playing Atog decks. The main problem with Atog is that you really only need one, that’s true for a bunch of cards, like the ones I’ve mentioned earlier (Blood moon and Sylvan Library). But you need to make it stick which means you have to bait out a counter or two and/or keep it around. The reason why I think small creatures are, and have been good lately is that all the control decks skimp with their removal. Right now, in the age of lions, I’m playing at least 2 bolts with my 4 swords in my The Deck because those small lifepoints add up. U/R has like 8 creatures, and 4 of them are Flying Men. They are really, really good. Especially if they bait out swords so you can slam your Serendibs. And even though you might feel that the Lions get smashed by Mishras, white has both Disenchant and Swords so those factories have to dodge a lot to stay alive

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.

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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.

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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.

 

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.

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!

Max-Weltz.jpg

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.”

Cermak.jpg

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.”

björn.jpg

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).”

Rosen.jpg

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