Knights of Thorn 2024

The knights of Thorn need no introduction for the OS scene of the Netherlands. Mari has organized this tournament for a good ten years now. Time flies indeed. To go to the Knights of Thorn, I unfortunately had to forgo the also great tournament by Peter Monten in Belgium, the Gaea's Avengers, since due to some coincidence, they seem to fall on the same day the last times. I chose to go to KOT due to many of people I regularly play OS with, also the chance to see Bryon Wackwitz in real life was appealing. 

As always, I needed a deck to play and I was in doubt what to play. The last couple weeks had been very busy with mostly work but also some other stuff, so did not have a lot of time to play. While I was in de car driving home from work, I was thinking about what decks I would like to play in Oldschool which I had not played yet, but were at least attainable. There are a few decks that are possible in OS that I have never played, some because I don't want to, some because I can't because I don't own the right cards, like a chains deck. Or an Ali from Cairo deck, and though I don't care much for Chains (and I also think they're way to expensive for the fun I would get out of playing them) I do wanted to play with Ali from Cairo. It is just that I had only one. And then, on a whim, I bought a second and told Johan I was going to build a deck at some time. I thought that would take quite some time before I would get the other 2, as Ali's are not cheap. But then, some days later, Johan alerted me to a black friday sale where OS cards were 5% discount and fedex shipping for free. And they had 3 Ali's on sale. I fiddled a bit with the thought, but since I only have a few great Fedex experiences (contrary to DHL or our national post office which both seem to find pleasure in either butchering magic card or losing them) I went for it. I was already in talks with someone to sell some other stuff, so I would have the funds for these and I bought them. Now I had 4 Ali's. My first deck design was rather convoluted with both Ali and some other wincons including guardian beast and chaos orb. After some thought I tuned it down a little bit, so I would have a pretty interesting Ali/cloak/auro/mirror/ball/monolith deck. What I thought would be interesting is that not everyone sees this coming. It also had a millstone in it in case I would need to deck my opponent. Not exactly a top tier deck, but I also thought there would be a decent chance of winning as much as losing. So, when knights of thorn was on the horizon, I had to make the choice of playing a barely tested Ali deck, or something more decent. I went with the first. I had 4 Ali's now, so I wanted the chance to play them. 

My goals for KOT were pretty simple: get at least 3-3 record, have someone scoop after I had Ali/cloak on the table, and win with every wincon possible in the deck, so mirrorball, powermonolith and decking someone. And have Ali in play as many times as possible of course. 

Having to choose between going to Knights or to Gaea's avengers was heartwrenching, but in the end there was just to much lure of finding all the dutch guys I like to see on tournaments in Deventer, so KOT it was. 

When we got there, most of the familiar faces were there and it was a great pleasure to see them. Mari, the great Knight opened the tournament and we were on our way. Turns out, I was playing him for the first round. He was playing a quick and very agressive small creatures with burn deck. Or as he called it, just all good cards. The first game was very quick, with me getting all kinds of blasts on my head while being beaten by pixies and factories. I did not even get a chance to get something in play. What also did not help is that I drew mostly mana sources and not much else, so the suffering was over pretty quickly for game one. 

The second game Mari was off to a pretty fast start again, with both sol ring and timewalk. I was also going pretty quick with mox jet and mana vault. 

After a couple of hits and burn from Mari, I used the mana vault to draw some extra cards, and that gave me Ali from Cairo, but no protection from a cloak or aura. I was able to counter some burn on him though, which gave me enough time to get into power monolith combo mode and it was 1-1. 

My third game I kept a opening hand with 2 land, a Lotus and Ali and cloak, combined with a power sink and braingeyser. I figured I would draw a land or a mox in the first two turns, so I would be able to powersink something, then drop Ali and the cloak with the lotus all in one go, since it was hard for Mari to get rid off. It was not meant to be, the land did not show up in turn one, two or three. So in desperation, I went for the braingeyser with the lotus, but that only gave me one land. I stalled while Mari was beating me with a really quick serendib due to a mox and sol ring and that meant I had to play Ali to just stay alive. That failed of course, Ali was bolted and I was soundly trashed by a new dib after I had destroyed the first with chaos orb. It was just to quick. 

My second opponent told me this was his first OS tournament. So nice to see new people giving this great format a try! He had taken a serious deck though, mono black with a Mox Jet, so he had started out in OS with a very decent deck to play and played first turn black knight. I had first turn library of Alexandria. That did not stay very long due to a sinkhole, so only one extra card for me. But I did have a Sol ring to keep up the pace.  

When I first played Ali from Cairo, he had to read the card to see what it did. I then played spectral cloak on it, which also was something he had not seen before, so had to read. 

That meant I had a few seconds to take a picture of Bryon Wackwitz, who had started on my request for a drawing on my oldschoolmtg.nl playmat with original drawings. This would be the fourth sketch by an original mtg artist, after Douglas Schuler, Jesper Myrfors and Jeff Menges. The mat is getting more filled and I love it. 

I just kept annoying my opponent with cards he had not seen before. I was on one life, still protected by Ali and played mirror universe. Which also meant some more reading. 

Meanwhile, on the right of me, Joep was giving Koos a hard time, crumbling his lotus while Koos only had cities of Brass in play. That did not end well. 

My opponent was beating me with a hypnotic specter in the meantime, which is really annoying as damage does still occur in this scenario. There was a time the damage was simply prevented, but under the current rules, you still lose a card from the attack of the hypnotic specter, which is reall annoying if you really need a counterspell to keep your opponent from playing his Nevinnyral's disk. He asked me before if that would work, and and I told him that yes, that would get rid of all permanents, including the Ali with the cloak. In the end, I finally got the fireball to get rid of my opponent, but it was a long wait. Phew! If that disk had shown up with me holding no cards, that would have been really bad.  

The second game, I was able to land a COP black, but my opponent also had a Su-Chi, so I had to work fast to not be beating here. Fortunately, I was able to assemble the third combo piece of power monolith ( I had kept a hand with 2 parts), so that worked. 

After the match, Bryon handed me my playmat. Wow. The pendelhaven he added was really, really stunning. Awesome. This is the most detailed one of the sketches, so I was really, really happy with it. To keep this safe, I might have a new one printed with the sketches printed on them, like I did with the first two, just to keep the mat safe. Or maybe I will do that as soon as the void in the middle is filled in. 

My third game I was on stream on Timmy Talks so I think you will be able to find that there. The first game I was drawing a lot of mana, but not a lot of other stuff, but managed to draw a lot of card with the basalt monoliths and braingeyser. 

That drawing of cards was kind of necessary due to my opponent also drawing a lot of cards with the Sylvan Library/Sindbad combo, and with his lands he could quickly play stuff like Erhnam Djinn. Once there was a spectral cloak on my Ali though, that was hard for him because I saw only blue and green cards, so probably the only thing he could do is flip an orb on the cloak to get rid of Ali. Meanwhile, I was using the millstone to get him through his deck more quickly. This was a bit bad because of the Sylvan Library, but hey, I would have to win one way or the other.. 

Ik kept milling my opponent for a while, but in the end I just drew into a mirror, switched lives and then fireballed him. So the plan for winning with all the wincons was not working out here. No complains here though, the deck was working so I was happy. The second game my opponent got off to a quick start with a birds, then sol ring and sylvan library and sindbad. All there in 2 turns. And there I was thinking I was doing well with my first turn sol ring. Apparently, some decks are even quicker than that. 

In the end though, it did not matter because I was able to get Ali out again, and protect him with counterspell while I was playing the cloack on him, and then the game was basically mine. When I played another Ali though, there was something interesting happening, because my opponent tried to control magic him, and that would have been quite a problem. Fortunately, I still had counterspell ready, so I would not have to deck my opponent to win this one. Winning that match, I was on to the next round, playing Kadoendra with a robots deck. I thought I would have like a 20% chance of winning that one. And after a spectacular opening from Kadoendra on his first turn, those chances were even less. 

wow, this is spectacular even bij OS standards.. 

The followup was a complete disaster for me. I was trying to do something, but even though I had opened with Library of Alexandria, there was no way I could keep up with this. 3 Trikes on turn 3 was just impossible to get back from. Even if I had played Ali, he would have died instantly before I could do something. 

The second game was a bit more normal. Even though my opponent had a mox and I took some beating from a factory, there was enough time to do something before being completely crushed. 

I eventually got to the point where I could have power artifact on my monolith and then play mirror universe en remove the remaining cards in my opponents hand. That meant I had a chance now, if I would topdeck something to use the power monolith with. 

The factories were beating me though, so I needed to swap lives to stay alive until finally Ali showed up. 

That got a good wtf look from my opponent who was contemplating how to get rid of this thing, but he was not sure how. 

Eventually, there were 5 trikes and a Su-Chi in play, but none of them could touch Ali so I was able to deck him by casting braingeyser for 80. Wow, I was 1-1 against a robots deck. I honestly had not thought that would happen against robots, but it worked out. 

After some ferocious sideboarding in which my opponent was asking some advice where someone said: "yes, that would work", i decided to sideboard out most of the Ali's and go for the mirrorball game. 

I was able to get the mirror out after countering some stuff, and managed to pull off a win of that. 2-1 against robots. Wow. 3-1 with an Ali deck. This meant that even if I lost the next matches, I managed the goal of not losing more than winning, I had won with decking my opponent, with mirrorball and with power monolith. All I needed was someone scooping in the face of Ali, and then all the goals were met. 

Looking back, the "yes, that would work" was an Abyss, which, for the record, does not work against the spectral cloak, because you have to target the creature, which is impossible with the cloak on it. Just in case someone wants to try that against another person playing a spectral cloak. It gave me some time to take a picture of someone close to us playing a regeneration deck with clay statues. As a fan of clay statue (there was one in a version the "stuff" deck I did okay with on some tournaments alongside a two-headed giant) I applauded this guy on playing the statue. It does not see enough play if you ask me. 

I was then paired against Evert, and that was not promising. He is just such a good player and the decks he plays are often both original and strong. His opening on turn one was also not promising. 

I was taking some pretty heavy hits and also bolts in the face, so I went for a desperate try with a lotus and a counter on hand to play Ali and hope I could counter whatever fireworks Evert still had on hand. 

I had anti-magic aura on hand, which I was now not a fan off, since it meant I would have to wait a turn. 

But amazingly, I got to that next turn and was able to play the aura. Evert looked at it, thought about it, and then scooped. Yes! The final goal of the day was reached. 

The next opening was also not promising, with another first turn Su-Chi. 

That was just too much. So before long, we were on to game 3. And again, a pretty quick start for Evert. 

I was able to squeeze in Ali with the cloak and managed to stay alive for a while. 

Actually, quite a long time. I was hoping very much to just draw into a mirrorball or powermonolith win, but that did not happen. 

Eventually, a chaos orb showed up, and I was not able to counter that with artifact blast or counterspell, and since I had not drawn a win, that was it. Ali was shot off the board by a trike, and I lost. Damn, it really felt like I could have won that one. 

The last match of the day I was playing black with a lot of sinkholes and spectres, which is probably my worst matchup. Random discard really sucks for this deck. I was able to get out power monolith eventually though. 

And I fireball, so wow. I was able to win game 1. 

The rest of the games were a bit of a haze, since sitting in the noise all day was getting to my concentration a bit, I guess that will never go away after the head injury I suffered some years back. What I do remember is that in the last game, I let my opponent destroy the blood moon I had boarded in, thinking it would not be a big deal, and I would use my counterspell for countering when I would get power monolith or the mirror. That was a bad call though and looking back I really don't understand why I did that. I think my chances of winning the last game would have been a lot better if I had not. 

Anyway, I was 3-3, had decked, mirrorballed and powermonolith-ed my opponents and I got at least one scoop from playing Ali, so all the boxes were checked, and I was pretty happy with the results of the day. I think a 4-2 would have been in the cards with a little more luck, so I will keep trying to improve this deck a bit. It is kind of funny. 

I took some photos of the top 8 playing, and of the playmats that were on display. 

Also this one of a kind playmat which was drawn by Bryon which was acquired by Wijnand from Power 9. He also has some of those beautiful playmats available since he bought the remaining stock so if you want one of those (I could hardly resist the winter pendelhaven, but I already have so many playmats...) you can get them at Wijnands. 

Then, with the usual headache kicking in, I took a picture of the finalists and decided to go home. 

Arabian Agro on the left, a control deck on the right. A classic matchup! I hope the final was a exiting match. 

It was, like always, a great experience to meet all the players and see all the old cardboard again. You guys are the best. Thanks to you all, and especially to Mari for creating this great tournament. I hope you all have a great change of the year and hope to meet you all again in the next! 

Old men of the sea cup 2024

Sometimes, Oldschool magic can come to you unexpectedly. On friday, I had no idea I would be going to a tournament on saturday. It was only when a message came there would still be space for a not widely announced tournament that I thought of going. I contact the organizer via Signal, since I had no phone number, but initially got no reaction, so I made other plans for the day. Later in the evening, I was on the phone with Johan, who told me he had contacted Ivo and that I could come. That left me in a bit of a tight spot, since I had made arrangements to play cards with a friend from Germany the next day. But since he did not fancy going out, we would play online, and he was totally okay with me not going. I only heard from him the next morning. I did not have a lot of time, so I grabbed the deck I had used in Hilversum a bit earlier off the shelf and got in the car on the way to The old men of the sea cup. The old men of the cup is a tournament in The Hague organized by Ivo in a local café there, which was exclusively open for this event this day. The funny thing was, we talked about his deck on Friday before I knew I was going. I needed a parking spot, and since I had no idea where to park, I asked Johan, who was in the train on his way there, to look for one. He found me one reasonably close. When I got there it was a gate controlled by an app, which left me into a parking space. The weird thing was, I had a hard time getting out, since the gate would not open unless I left by car. Fortunately, I could get out when another person was leaving and had to run to get there only a little late. By the time I got there, the opening speech had started and it was quickly time for round one. I think I played Edwin on the first round, who was playing a deck resembling Erhnam on Ice, but not exactly the way Joep, the original creator of this deck would play it I think. Anyway, he started aggressively attacking my mana sources on the first game and then dropped a Djinn, but I was able to come back by copying mishra's factories to get more mana, which enabled me to play Su-Chi to start hitting back, and then a trike after I was able to mind twist to get some of the destruction out of my opponents hand. 

Unfortunately for me, the next two games where not as good. I was able to get out some stuff, but my opponent had Ancestral recall and was quicker. Also, getting dust to dusted with this deck is not fun. 

One interesting moment was when he had both a Djinn and a Serra Angel out while I only had a factory and city of brass and a mana vault in play after the disenchant on my animated Triskelion had left me with not much else. I did something a bit flaky, but it was pretty effective. I tapped the mana vault, played Chaos orb, copied it, and then activated both to get rid of both the Djinn and the Serra Angel. I still think Chaos orb is a stupid card, but it worked pretty effectively here. 

Unfortunately, I did not draw lands after that, and another Djinn showed up and I was down 1-2. 

My next match I was up against a goblin deck. I had kept an okay hand, which was mainly okay due to the library of Alexandria in there. The was not much in the threat department but I figured with some time, I would be able to pull off a win drawing more cards. But then, before I could play the library, a goblin showed up. And I was hit by a bloodthirsty goblin, and then by Ball Lightning. There was no way I was getting time here, so I gave up the library plan and played a Tetravus and copied it. 

This slowed down the whole thing a bit, but I was taking damage from the mana vault. I took off Tetravites to block, and eventually I got there, winning while I was only on 3 life, so that was close and could have gone the other way. On the next game, a quick blood moon showed up, but my version of the robots deck does not mind that. In fact, I had 2 blood moons in the sideboard. So, not bothered by the blood moon, I managed to get the goblins under control and left a trike with one counter open I would not be surprised by a ball lightning again. That last thing was a good call, since my opponent had one in his hand. 

So, 1-1 in matches. On the third match, I had drew an opening hand which had the potential for being great, but it could also suck big time if my opponent would open with a land containing white. But hey, since I am playing Oldschool and my robots deck behaves a bit like a roulette table, sometimes doing great, sometimes sucking pretty bad, doing nothing, I decided to spin the wheel on this hand: 

This is pretty cool right? Even though it is risky. 

So, I went for it. First turn trike. Attack. Time walk. Attack. recall time walk. Attack, time walk again. The game was over pretty quickly. If my opponent had played a crumble with that forest on turn one, I would have sat there and probably lost. But the wheel of fortune had spun in my favour, so on to game 2. That game took a bit longer, but a well time triskelion is just brutal against mono green, , so I did not even need the Abyss that I had sided in. It did not show up, but it was also not necessary. Even the tranquility that destroyed 5 of my cards including 2 copies and an animated trike, was not enough. I drew more cards due to my tome, and pulled out the win. 2-1 in matches, while next to me, Richard was playing an unsleeved revised mono white deck. Also something you don't see often in OS tournaments, a deck with no sleeves and no playmat :)

Next to us, Tim was showing his opening hand for game number 2. Of course, you keep this hand, right? You have 4 lands, 3 Juzams. What is not to like :)

In the meantime, I spotted an earth elemental battling an Erhnam Djinn, which I thought was pretty great. 

For the 4th match, I was up against Thijs, who was playing his lovely G/W/B creation with Ifh-Biff efreets, Erhnam Djinns and spirit links. That deck is just a beauty to behold. After a couple of turns I had 7 cards in hand and a library. I could have tutored for a mind twist, and made sure I would win, but I thought that would be unfair to such a nice deck to look at. That came back to haunt me, since this disenchanted one of my artifacts, then tutored, and balanced with no cards in hand. That cost me 7 cards, including my timetwister, ancestral recall and recall. After which my deck went into not so convincing mode, which left me facing Thijs his Djinns and Efreets, with which he killed with, a couple of green mana at a time. Drawing more cards with the tome did not do the trick, I just lost game one due to my failure to play the mind twist. 

The next two games, my deck, helped by the boarded in Abyss, did a lot better. Even though the Abyss left the field after only taking down one Serra Angel, that still gave me time to produce artifact creatures, which quickly left me 1-1 in games. On to the 3rd game, which felt like a pretty stressy situation, since there was not much time left. Fortunately, I was able to press out a Triskelion, a copy and a Su-Chi, and then another, so on the 3rd of the last 5 turns, I was able to win 2-1. 3-1 in matches, and I was moving up a bit up the ranking. 

For the 5th and last round on table 4, I was paired against Evert. Playing against Evert is always both a pleasure and a challenge. He's a super nice guy, but also great and serious player who likes to try things out, but mostly plays powerful decks. This was going to be a challenge. What also was a challenge was that the music was pretty loud, and some pretty psychedelic lights were dancing in front of my eyes. 

It turned out Evert was playing mirror universe, which I had not expected. But game one I managed to push him to use the mirror pretty quickly by attacking with Su-Chi and using my Icy Manipulator to tap his city of brass. 

It turned out that tapping the city in game two was also pretty good, since it kept Evert from playing his mirror universe a turn later, after which I could shatter it with the extra shatter I had boarded in. Evert stabilized a bit and played another city of brass, which was instrumental in my winning. At the time I had no creatures in play after he had destroyed them all, but I was able to squeeze out the win by tapping both of his cities and a psionic blast. That did the trick. 4-1 in matches. Really cool deck by Evert by the way. When he opened the second game with a first turn Sylvan Library, I thought I might lose, but I was quick enough and managed to get through. 

That meant I was in the top 8, 4th place. Johan had also managed to get into the top 8 with his Blue/Black/Red Robots, but decided not to play because the entire trip home by train would take a really long time. Even my offering to drive him home later on did not convince him, which was a bit sad since I could see a real possibility of him winning today. 

On to the quarterfinals, against Hans I believe. I totally forgot to take pictures during the quarterfinal. The noise and the flickering lights had gotten a bit to me because I can't handle them that well after having a major concussion a couple of years back , so I had to concentrate to play a normal good game, which when you are in the top 8, you sort of have to. Hans playing white/green with trikes, and a managed to pull off a 2-0 there. One of the games was close, the other one I won pretty overwhelmingly. One to the semi-final then, against LionDibBolt. The first game I was able to win, due to a well timed mind twist. That had to wait for a while, because I needed to make sure it would not be countered. When a Serra Showed up, I played chaos orb, expecting it to either be countered, of disenchanted on activation. It was the second scenario and because there were now no more 2 blue mana available, I could take the entire rest of the cards with help from mana vault. That left me with the possibility of animating a Djinn, which, with help from my 2 icies, helped secure the win. 1-0. 

The second game was also tight, but went to my opponent while I was a bit low on land which kept me from playing the 2 trikes in my hand. That meant I had to go on to game 3. I mulliganed, kept a pretty uninteresting but decent hand, my opponent did this on turn one. 

He followed this up with braingeyser for 4, so was ahead 7 cards in 4 turns, which was just not something I could get back from. I tried playing cards, but while we were exchanging cards for cards, I never was able to get even 1 card of advantage anywhere, so I lost due to lack of cards while my opponent still had plenty. 1-2. Damn, I really would have loved to play a final again, but it was not to be. I managed to get 3rd and got a nice fridge magnet and a sticker for on my deck box for that :) great reminders of a great day playing cards. 

Most of the games during the day were pretty exiting though, and all of the guys that were there were great. A great many thanks for this day of cardflopping, especially to Ivo (also thanks for organizing a great lunch and also special thanks to Tim for getting pizza's later on!) and all that were there! Special thanks to Faye behind the bar who managed to find a box of tea without flavor, which left me able to drink normal tea during the tournament. Tea? Yeah, for those that do not know me, I am one of those rare Oldschool guys that does not drink beer. Or any alcohol for that matter. So if you see an OS tournament with a guy wearing lots of buttons drinking tea, that is probably me. Hope to see you soon on the next tournament! Thanks again to all and till next time!

ps: for those that are thinking, did he get back into the parking, I almost did not. I spent 15 minutes in the pouring rain in front of the gate on the phone to customer service from Parkbee which was spent mostly waiting and going through menus while not talking to a human, when another car showed up. That opened the gate for the customer rep could help me and I just rain in in front of it. So I was happy to get into my car and turn on the heat while pretty much everything including my underwear was wet from the pouring rain. Even after an hour and a half driving home, I still was not dry yet, but it was very much worth it. OS always is. Till next time!