Going to Rag Town at the Ivory Cup

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

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


Rag Town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Screams of horror rended th' affrighted skies.

/Seb

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

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

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

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

Ivory Cup 2

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Game on!

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

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

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

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

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

And now to the top 8!

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

 

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

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

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

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

Here are some more pictures from the event:

/Gordon