Playing oldschool magic is just awesome. The cards are great, most of the people who play it are great, and it is just fun. And nothing feeds my nostalgia more than playing it in game store. I started organizing Ancient and oldschool tournaments somewhere around 2004, and I've always found a local gamestore owner to help out with this. First the Spelkwartier in Arnhem, than the gameforce in Eindhoven when the Spelkwartier was taken over by a new owner who wanted it to be more like a general game and toystore and turned it into "de dobbelsteen" (this is die, for those of you who don't understand dutch). A couple of years ago however, Richard bought the gamestore and resurrected the Spelkwartier name. I like Richard and have know him ever since he had a video rental in a nearby village. He loves games and he loves crowds and, ever since I introduced him, he really likes the relaxed atmosphere of the oldschool magic community. So he was happy to help out again for my oldschool tournament with Swedish rules (with reprints however), the Camel Trophy. This is already the 5th time for this tournament in Arnhem, and the second time we play gentleman's rules, so without Mind twist and without Library of Alexandria.
Since I would be running around a bit between matches, I wanted a deck that would be straightforward, preferably fast so I would have some time left between games to take care of stuff that comes with organizing a tournament. Some time back I was told about a deck with the Robots core, but with burn instead of nifty stuff like Sage of Lat-nam. I really like Robots and although I love Sage of Lat-Nam in combination with Tetravus, my version of Robots is pretty good but tends to be rather slow-paced in some games. Taking out the slow part and adding burn for more tempo seemed like a good idea for a fast and hard hitting deck. Making this deck would be pretty straightforward with 4 Su-chi's, 4 Triskelion and 4 copy artifact. Add lands, burn cards and power cards with at least Timetwister and wheel of fortune to refill, and you're almost done because then there are just a couple of slots left. Abyss and shatter seem obvious then, and then your done since you're at 61 cards.
Since the trend here in the Netherlands seems to be that people are playing divine offering main deck these days, I would need gloom in the sideboard, so I started off with that. A lot of decks have white duals but not a lot of plains, so I also added Blood moon, which would also turn my lands into mountains, but since I'm playing a lot of colorless, red and blue cards, I would just need to add a couple of basic islands to keep this running. That was pretty much it, and I imagined this deck would do pretty well, but most importantly, not drag on games until the final minute. That way, I would have some time to do some organizing if need be.
On the evening of the tournament, I also tuned Peter's Enchantress deck a bit, changing the mana base, some of the main deck cards and adding mirror universe. That would turn out to be a good idea.
On the day of the tournament, I did some last minute coordination with Richard, setting up the streaming table for our Oldschool youtuber Timmy the sorcerer, the opening of the tournament and after the usual mishap because someone missed the starting time, we were off to round 1 with 32 players, with 2 of our players coming from germany after a 600 km drive for their first OS tournament! I was happy with 32, and even number even after some guys called coming off just the day before.
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| Prize support :) including a nice life counter |
Round 1: Wilco, with Reanimator
After we started round one, the first turn did not give a lot of clues as to what deck I was up against. City of brass was the first card to be played.
Knowing it would be a risk, but also that this risk would pay off if my opponent was not playing white, I just played a first turn Su-Chi with the Black Lotus I had in my opening hand. Coupled with the mishra's factory, this would have a lot of damage potential.
So, I had my fingers crossed for no swords to plowshares, and I was happy to see that my Su-Chi was not instantly removed. The second land was a bit worrying though: it was a Bazaar of Baghdad. Knowing that would mean really big creatures in a short time which I would not be able to get rid of without 2 for 1 card disadvantage, that was not a good sign. If an Animate dead would produce a Shivan Dragon for instance, I would not be able to break through that quickly.
To make things worse than expected, this did not even take until the next turn, it happened right away. There was a Mahamoti djinn there, ready to block my Su-Chi.
But Wilco chose to attack, which gave me the opportunity to attack also, and play my Chaos orb after that. I decided not to use that, because I also have the Abyss in my deck, and that should also work if there are not too many of those big monsters on the other side.
Wilco followed up with a Sylvan Library and Ancestral recall, but so far, no other big hitters. This meant I could stay ahead because of my factory that could also attack.
A turn later, played my Abyss, hoping this would end things rather quickly.
Wilco countered my attack with a well placed balance, and he also had a strip mine ready for one of the Mishra's factories in play.
This meant my lonely factory would have to finish off the game. Wilco meanwhile, was using Sylvan Library with Bazaar of Baghdad to filter through his deck.
He played a Nevinyrral's disk to be able to get rid of the Abyss, which I chaos orbed.
I then wanted to go for it, because Wilco was only at 3 at the time, so I cast wheel of Fortune, expecting a bolt or psionic blast. I got a triskelion, which was also good. 1-0.
Meanwhile next to me, Joep, the other organizer of Oldschool-in-a-gamestore was beating at his opponent with Su-Chi and elves.
My next opening hand was a bit weird. But I decided to keep it anyway and see what would happen.
The plan was to play a big braingeyser on turn 2 for 6, but that was not going to happen because Wilco had boarded in shatters.
To produce some more mana, I used copy artifact to copy mishra's factories. This was needed because of the lack of land. I played the braingeyser for a lot less, got some lands and Wilco in the meantime played his Bazaar of Baghdad. I wanted to make sure that nothing happened on the other side, so I played the Abyss and followed up with a blood moon.
This meant there was not a lot of action on the other side while I could wait for a creature to show up, and when it did, I could just attack with that for the win. This left me with some time to take some pictures of the rest of the tournament :)
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| Dancing Scimitar :) |
The second round I was up against Marten. Since he is very good player it would very much depend on luck and what kind of deck he was playing since there would be no mistakes expected from his side. Hoping for the best, I went for a first turn Su-Chi again. If Marten would be able to get rid of that, I would be stuk with a mana vault damaging me for 1 per turn.
Marten was off to a strong start with ancestral recall, but not getting rid of the Su-Chi right away.
Marten played an extra mox Ruby, meaning shatter would be possible next turn. I was able to duplicate my Su-Chi though, so I would be able to keep up the pressure.
But, the shatter did not show up, and on my side I was able to hit him with Su-Chi and the Mishra's factory. This was the most ideal setting this deck could get, and this very heavy (and lucky) start continued with another copy artifact on the Su-Chi.
This was just too much and we were off to game number 2, with me in the lead. My luch was about to change though, when I got a hand with one land, no mana artifacts and 2 triskelions. I mulliganed. Rinse and repeat, I got pretty much the same hand. So I mulliganed again, and after seeing my hand with again, just one land, I accepted this game was going to suck and kept this.
Marten started pretty well with a mox sapphire and ancestral recall, while I was waiting for my next land, which turned out to be a Mishra's factory. I did not dare attack with that though, considering it would be too much risk with Marten playing red.
When I drew time walk I used it as the worlds most expensive cantrip (untap 2 lands, draw a card) looking very hard for a land, which I did not get, so I discarded braingeyser. A turn after that I got a bit of luck with Ancestral recall, got an extra land and used copy artifact to copy my Mishra's factory while Marten played a Rukh Egg with Diamond valley on the table, so this was going to be pretty dangerous.
We exchanged removal, I played Abyss, he used Chaos Orb to get rid of it, I psionic blasted his Rukh, he shattered my Su-Chi. I drew a mana vault and felt a bit more confident I would be able to attack with factories.
Marten played another Rukh Egg, gaining him life and another 4/4 flyer.
I played The Abyss, and tried to attack with both factories, and both were destroyed. Marten was keeping cards in his hand, so I figured he was up to something.
So I shattered his mox Jet in his turn, and played my wheel of fortune. Looking at his hand with Time Walk in it, this was a pretty good gamble.
I could play Su-Chi one turn later.
Marten however, recalled his Chaos orb and dumped it on my Abyss, meaning he would be able to play more Rukh Eggs and the like.
When I used my Chaos orb on his Su-Chi however, he surprised my 2 Su-Chi's with an Inferno to get rid of them. Pretty awesome :)
Marten played another Su-Chi, and I got rid of his Diamond Valley and potential Rukhs with a City in a bottle. Then we were exchanging blows with Triskelion and Su-Chi.
While I was trying to win game 2, Marten surprised my by finishing this game by playing another Inferno and Forking it, making it a draw instead of a win for me :) I thought I had a picture of this, but the camera must have failed because I cannot find it. It was spectacular though. On to game 3, where I kept a very mediocre hand that I got rid of with a timetwister.
Marten used chaos orb on my factory after trying to kill it with Disharmony (great and unexpected card) but I used Red elemental blast to counter that.
That did not stop Marten from destroying more and more of my creatures, until one of them stayed on the board and won game 3. An exiting match!
After the second round it was time for lunch, which was brought into the gamestore for everyone. This was the first time lunch was included thanks to the organizational skills of Richard, and it was well recieved.
Since this also gave us an opportunity to speed thing up a bit, I think we will try this again next time.
The third round was against Tristan. This was after a re-pairing, because someone had accidently dropped themselves from the tournament, which I only noticed because there was an odd number all of a sudden. After we fixed that en repaired, it was Tristan I would play. He was playing a variant of the deck I've played against in earlier tournaments. Both those time I lost, but both times I was playing a deck which was not exactly there to win, and my current deck was much more aggressive then last times, so I expected to have a good chance, especially since the last matches I lost to Tristan due at least partly to Mind Twist and Library of Alexandria, and those were not going to be played this day. He was off to a pretty fast start again.
My start was not great, but at least I had Ancestral Recall to make up for that a bit.
I tried regaining some mana but Tristan destroyed my workshop before it could o much. Not that I had any other artifacts in my hand, but hey, it could have helped a lot later on.
While Tristan had a lot of mana on the board, I was struggling a bit to get more mana but fortunately, he was not doing too much damage.
This meant that by the time I was drawing creatures, I was able to just play them, even though some of them were removed, there were too much in the end and that left me 1-0 in the lead. Game 2 was quickly opened by a COP: red from the side of Tristan, with a Mox pearl, which quite effectively negated the advantage I was trying to get with blood moon.
And the plains he played 2 turns later. Or so I believed, because somehow he did not draw a disenchant, which
When one did show up, he opted to use it on my Triskelion instead.
Fortunately, I had another one. And, to top things off, Tristan opted to draw a card with his tome, but decided not to leave white mana untapped.
This gave me to safe chance to copy artifact my Triskelion without fear of it being destroyed, and that meant I won the game. He commented he did not have a swords to plowshares anyway, but I might have played it differently had he left the white mana open. It might not have made a difference in the end, but who knows? I was 2-0 and now and won 3 matches. Probably because so far I had not run into a lot of Divine offerings..
In the meantime, the reanimator deck was on stream producing lots of Djinns and Dragons. I really love that deck, it is awesome. Maybe if I get crazy enough I will get me a couple of bazaars to play it, but man, they are way to expensive for me right now.
On the stream it seems like Remko is in trouble when he topdecks the only card to save him. This game was also a nail-biting experience for those who were watching. You can watch it on the Timmy Talks youtube channel.
He was off to a pretty quick start though:
So, having taken some damage from the black vise there before I could even do something, I did what you have to do in a situation like this, play as many cards as possible to take as little damage as I could. I then decided to slow him down by strip mining his green mana, and see if that would gave me the advantage I needed.
He managed to get rid of a Triskelion and I got back from that with 2 Su-Chi's. Figurating that if I had a balance, he would lose of all of his cards in hand and since I was ahead, that would work out for me.
He did not have a balance though, and the Su-Chi's stayed an finished the game. The second game there was again a good start on the other side, with Argothian Pixies which are pretty great against my deck.
So I lightning bolted those, but there were more and more creatures coming on the other side. Fortunately for me, not very big ones.
And, he was able to get rid of my Abyss as well.
Noticing he was stalling on land drops and I was not drawing any creatures, I decided to slow him down with a Psionic blast on his birds of paradise and strip mine on his Savannah, hoping I would draw a creature somewhere soon.
I did get a Su-Chi, so I could now also use the copy artifact in my hand and make 2 of them. Also, with the workshop in play, there was mana to spare to attack with Mishra's factory.
Another Pixies showed up, which meant no more attacking with my Mishra's factory, but the Su-Chi's could take this, even though less damage would get trough, it was still taking life points.
Because now was not a great time to get a Balance or Divine Offering, I was happy that one of the 3 glooms I had sideboarded in showed up.
The gloom kept my creatures save even when a white mana showed up, and I was able to end the game with the Su-Chi's and the factory in the end. So, 2-0 and 4 matches won so far.
In the meantime, I was able to see a Juzam Djinn in action next to me.
There was also some time left to take some more pictures of matches going on.
Including some really interesting views that you do not see very often:
And a very, very experienced black lotus:
And some more animated dragons and djinns:
Going into round 4, there were only 2 players with 4 wins, so I would be up against Koen, who also previously went into the top 8 as the no. 1. That would was going to be a tough matchup.
The raffle prizes and the signed camel for the winner were waiting.
Going into round 5, Peter was on table 4 with the Enchantress deck. This was definitely an unexpected but great sight to see.
Round 5 I was up against Koen, who was playing a variant of his Deadguy Ale deck with 4 Juzam Djinns. That was going to be a bad thing, since my elimination consists mostly of cards that cannot get rid of him. And.. .there he was, on turn 1. Yikes.
And Koen followed up with a Time Walk, so I had pretty much lost before I really did anything.
But, desparate times call for desparate measures, so I took the loss of a card to get rid of the Djinn and used 2 lightning bolts to dispose of him.
Koen was not drawing extra lands, though, and this gave me time to build up and do some damage with a Su-Chi until...
This meant I would have to block the Djinn or get rid of him in another way, which presented itself with A Triskelion and a Psionic blast, so that took care of the Djinn, and I won the game unexpectedly. Wow..
Meanwhile next to me, Marten was playing Roelf in a flying contest.
So, 1-0 ahead, I hoped to have a less spectacular opening from Koen on game 2.
It was, but the very dreaded Divine Offering showed up :(
And, unfortunately for me, just as I thought I was compensated for that 4 life he just gained by Ancestral Recall, he had another one. 2 in 2 turns. Damn.
I was not drawing much threats after that, and attacked with my Factories, one of which Koen blocked.
I decided to go for braingeyser to see if I could find anymore threats.
But, the Triskelion was quickly disenchanted. Even though Koen had drawn much less cards than me, he just had all the awnsers, and then..
he destroyed my board with a balance.
I needed to use my demonic tutor to get an Abyss because another Juzam Djinn had shown up, which left me with a tapped mana vault.
After Koen had disenchanted my Abyss and played Ancestral recall, I faced another Djinn. But I thought I had a winning trick up my sleeve.
Unfortunately, no. Koen Swords to plowshared it, then played braingeyser with the help of a dark ritual and drew 4 extra cards.
From there on, I did not draw anything useful and was destroyed by factories. The balance had done it's thing. 1-1. The second game, Koen had another Divine offering for my quick Su-Chi, which he followed up with Sengir Vampire. I had an Ancestral recall, but did not draw more lands.
Koen made use of my not drawing more lands by first playing underworld dreams and then, effectively destroying my hand because I had not drawn into a gloom, with another balance.
This cost me 2 Triskelions and 2 lightning bolts that would have easily won me the game, but no mana was available a the time to play them, so the balance had done it again and I lost due to the disadvantage of that. My Abyss was not able to counter the loss of the trikes and after that Koen killed me again with factories.
That meant 2-1 for Koen and I was 4-1 in the swiss. The second balance made game 3 not much of a game, but hey, that is what balance does and I was comfortably in the top 8. And what was more great news, Peter had won his last match, so he was in the top 8 in place 4 with an Enchantress deck :) Awesome, 4th in a 32 player tournament with that deck is not bad, not at all. If you want to see some of the games Peter played, I think he was on stream a couple of times, so you can see the deck in action.
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| Peter in 4th place with Enchantress! Great! |
Then it was time for the raffle, and we gave away a complete Green and white deck built out of 4th and chronicles reprints that was legal to play in the camel trophy to the player that had placed last in the swiss. The rest of the prizes were randomly handed out, in which the life counter really wanted to stay with me because it was randomly appointed to me. I thought that did not really feel right, so I randomized again and it went to another one of the players, who I hope will love old life counters as much as I do.
I was up against Marten again, who had also made it to the top 8 with his really awesome deck with Inferno's. I was off to a reasonable start with land, mana vault.
I started hitting back with my Mishra's factory, to keep the score on life even. Koen quickly went for tutor into Ancestral Recall, to keep up the pace and the card advantage.
I was going a bit slow, having only the factory to attack. Koen was fighting back with a Hypnotic specter, which I could bolt, fortunately. But even though I did have plenty of mana, no creatures to play with them. I was slowing Koen down with city in a bottle though. And then he hit me with a Timetwister which meant I took 7 damage from the dreams. Ouch.
The timetwister did fill my hand though, so I could at least cast something:
One of the orbs got rid of the dreams, so I at least could breath a bit. Koen played a factory, so I needed something to block, and played a Su-Chi. Who Koen swords to plowshared and attacked with his factory. This was not going well so I bolted it. I played a Triskelion to follow up. Then Koen played another Mishra's factory.
He followed this up with Chaos orb, but I still had mine so I could play the waiting game here. I attacked with the Trike and Koen did not block. I thought I about playing copy artifact on the Trike, but decided not to, to not invite a chaos orb on my Trike. When Koen attacked with the factory, I Psionic blasted it. That seemed like overkill because he also plays vampires, but I wanted to stay ahead here. He followed up with a Specter.
But, he tapped out for that, so this was my chance, and I played copy artifact on the Triskelon. And, it gave me the option to throw my orb at his. And although I had missed a couple during earlier in the day, this one was a hit.
That was enough to take the game. 1-0. This was not an easy one, but at least I was one game ahead. Then again, I was also 1-0 in the game in the swiss and then Koen beat me after that.
Koen took my pretty good hand with a first turn timetwister, then Time walk, chaos orb and Ancestral recall, and I was left with a hand with no colored mana. He played a underworld dreams after that, and a Vampire. After destroying my Su-Chi and my Mishras factory, I managed to get out a Trike, but still, no blue mana, which is very frustrating if you have this..
I had The Abyss in my hand, but decided to not play it and lure Koen into playing something. Which he did, and it worked out as I wanted:
That took, his Djinn at least. My deck helpfully produced a Su-Chi. Which I copied.
Koen took one out with the dreaded divine offering though. And attacked with his factory.
I psionic blasted him in return and copied my Su-Chi, after which I played the other card I sideboarded in, since I noticed that Koen was not playing any basic plains. That made less of a difference than I wanted because he also had a Mox Pearl, but at least it would have to make him choose if he drew into another disenchant.
This meant he could not block with the factory on the next turn, so he played a Juzam Djinn. I fortunately was able to shatter the Mox Pearl right after this.
I could just wait for the Djinn to go away, and when I did pass the turn, Koen just went on and played another one:
I took my draw phase, attacked with both the Su-Chi's and then played what should finish the game in my favor:
Triskelion, while Koen was at only 3 life. That meant that was it. It turned out that sideboarding in the blood moons was a good idea, which helped me to win the finals. Joep was kind enough the take the role as tournament-in-a-game shop organizer and handed me out the coveted Camel Trophy. After this we went out for dinner with 8 of the guys and landed on a terrace outside of a full Italian restaurant. It was still pretty cold, but with our coats on it was doable and we had a very nice pizza and tiramisu dinner brought out to us by a real Italian who was very enthusiastic about the food in his restaurant. So were we, so we finished off a great day of cards with a great dinner in great OS company. As Marten pointed out at the table, isn't this hobby great? I think it is. Richard, our game store owner, remarked again what a cool and relaxed bunch OS players are, and how different the atmosphere is from other MTG formats, which are much more tense. This is why we all love it. Great people, nostalgic cardboard, having fun together. I love it.
It was another amazing day with great people and I hope that many more may follow. Thanks to all that showed up and played, and until next time!
Marten his opening was a bit more impressive, with this in his graveyard after turn one. Wow..
So, he had drawn extra cards, taken an extra turn, dropped 3 moxen on the table and a Su-Chi before I could do anything.
I was able to shatter his Su-Chi and Tutor for an Ancestral recall as well, and I got this for my trouble. Not bad, but not great either.
I decided to wait to see if some creatures would show up, and after a couple of turns, one did. A Su-Chi. This left me with bolting Marten a couple of times, planning to play Timetwister but then I drew Triskelion. Not wanting to waste that, I played it and went for Timetwister right after.
The Timetwister gave Marten some cards too though, and a diamond valley was really great against me.
My deck does have the City in a Bottle though, which is bad news for Marten his Arabian Nights cards. I knew a Rukh would follow, so I used lightning bolt together with Triskelion to get rid of it.
Marten shattered my Su-Chi, played time walk, and then regrowth on time walk. Also impressive, luckily for me he did not have the Rukh anymore, or I would have been in trouble.
I did some damage with the Triskelion and then Marten played wheel of Fortune. This cost me a Triskelion, a bolt and a Psionic Blast, but I got this in return.
Marten decided to slow me down with Strip mine on my Mishra's workshop.
In a way, that worked, but since the new hand had given me 2 mana vaults, that was plenty to play almost my entire hand in one go.
That was just too much to handle, and it was time for game 2. Ik was off to a ok start with mana vault, but nothing to cast it with right way and I chose to play it so I could play Triskelion on turn 3.
Marten took care of that plan by shattering the Mana Vault, so that slowed me down quite a bit.
Figuring it would hurt him more than me, I cast blood moon to slow him down some more. That way he would be able to cast Ydwen Efreets and Rukh Eggs, but at least would not be able to sacrifice them to a diamond valley.
But, Marten did have an awnser for my Su-Chi ready when it finally showed up. I love that Marten plays with fissure. I have tried it a couple of times and think the card is pretty good, but somehow it does not make it to my final 61 when building decks.
A couple of turns later, I was able to play the Abyss and a Triskelion, and that made things very hard for Marten, so in the end I won 2-0 and was on to the semi-finals.
By this time, people started to make jokes that a tournament organizer should not win his "own" tournament. The notion of a own tournament is a bit silly to me, since there is no such thing as my tournament without the OS community. No matter who organizes it, these events are made by the people that show up and make the great OS atmosphere. Next to that, people who end up in the top 8 or watch the top 8 want to have exiting games and I tend to play best in an environment were I can think and time my cards without having them wiped out all of a sudden by Mind Twist. So whether I was going to win or lose, I was not going to give games away just because someone thinks this is odd somehow.
Anyway, on to semi-finals, against Joep in a game shop loving tournament organizer showdown. I had a very, very good start against Joep with my first Mishra's workshop in opening hand of the day, and I made maximum use of it with a first turn Su-Chi.
Not that it mattered that much, but hey, that was one swords to plowshares out of the way :) Joep took care of it before it could do damage, and was going well on his mana with a sol ring.
That meant my Triskelion on turn 3 (with mana vault, no land drop unfortunately but on the upside, I did get a Mox) lasted longer, and that gave me an option for copy artifact the turn after that.
I used the counters on one of the triskelions to take out a factory, and kept hammering. I would need an extra land shortly though, or the mana vault would become a real problem.
And before I could really drive the game home, my trike that was doing damage was disenchanted. To be fair, it had done some damage, so not that bad I suppose.
After I got my 2nd land, Joep used Ice storm to take it out, and made sure I would keep taking damage. That was okay though, because I had also something to make sure he would take more damage, and he could choose what to do with the next disenchant, either take out the City in a bottle, or the Triskelion. This was too much in the end, and made sure I was up one game. On to game 2!
Since I was expecting a lot of divine offerings now, and since disenchant and swords to plowshares are already a problem while playing this deck, I of course boarded in the 3 glooms. And, I was happy to see one quickly.
Joep destroyed my one land with Ice Storm, and I just wanted to get rid of Joep before hoe would reach the critical 5 mana needed for divine offering. So even though I had no land, I was just going to have to for it, and I did.
Fortunately, I got a blue mana source in the form of Mox Sapphire, and used that to play copy artifact. Now we were talking. If he disenchanted the gloom, there were still 2 trikes. If he took out one of the trikes, the gloom would probably stay for another turn, meaning no way to play a Serra Angel. Joep played a tome to start looking for more answers and I was luckly he did not draw Erhnam Djinn. Even though I now had 3 The Abyss in my deck, that still would have been a problem.
The Elf he played I shot right away to be able to attack again, thinking more damage more quickly would be the only way to win this, because if I took too long, Joep would have too much of a card advantage.
In the same line of thought I shot the Mishra's factory and just kept going. Joep was helpfully given another City of Brass. It was good the see I'm not the only one who gets into trouble using this card more than once in a deck.
When divine offering did show up, there was nothing to do but shoot Joep for 2 and 1 at itself, 6 life was too big of a difference now. I just kept at it with the empty triskelion, shot Joep with Psionic blast to make it more difficult for him to use the cities of brass, and was happy to get a Su-Chi. Still no lands, but as long as Joep did not kill my sol ring, I was not complaining about that.
In the end, the gloom proved to be a game winner. Joep had Serra Angel in his hand, but was not able to play it. This meant my Su-Chi could go in for the win.
In the meantime, Peter was in the other semi-final! Wow, the Enchantress was doing well. This game is also on stream, so it should be on Timmy's channel soon.
Unfortunately for Peter, we would not be playing each other in the finals. This was mainly because Peter could not use his sideboard effectively against Koen, because these cards do not really complement each other, and Koen is playing BWU Ale.
So, this meant it was up to me to avenge our Enchantresses, and since Koen had beaten me 2-1 in the Swiss, this meant this was going to be a hard game. But, since he had won both games due to white cards, a Gloom would make all the difference.
This entire match is on stream on Timmy Talks, but some screenshots to show how it went. Koen started off with Dark Ritual, underworld dreams. That was not good.
I started hitting back with my Mishra's factory, to keep the score on life even. Koen quickly went for tutor into Ancestral Recall, to keep up the pace and the card advantage.
I was going a bit slow, having only the factory to attack. Koen was fighting back with a Hypnotic specter, which I could bolt, fortunately. But even though I did have plenty of mana, no creatures to play with them. I was slowing Koen down with city in a bottle though. And then he hit me with a Timetwister which meant I took 7 damage from the dreams. Ouch.
The timetwister did fill my hand though, so I could at least cast something:
One of the orbs got rid of the dreams, so I at least could breath a bit. Koen played a factory, so I needed something to block, and played a Su-Chi. Who Koen swords to plowshared and attacked with his factory. This was not going well so I bolted it. I played a Triskelion to follow up. Then Koen played another Mishra's factory.
He followed this up with Chaos orb, but I still had mine so I could play the waiting game here. I attacked with the Trike and Koen did not block. I thought I about playing copy artifact on the Trike, but decided not to, to not invite a chaos orb on my Trike. When Koen attacked with the factory, I Psionic blasted it. That seemed like overkill because he also plays vampires, but I wanted to stay ahead here. He followed up with a Specter.
But, he tapped out for that, so this was my chance, and I played copy artifact on the Triskelon. And, it gave me the option to throw my orb at his. And although I had missed a couple during earlier in the day, this one was a hit.
That was enough to take the game. 1-0. This was not an easy one, but at least I was one game ahead. Then again, I was also 1-0 in the game in the swiss and then Koen beat me after that.
The second game was summed up by 2 pictures:
Koen took my pretty good hand with a first turn timetwister, then Time walk, chaos orb and Ancestral recall, and I was left with a hand with no colored mana. He played a underworld dreams after that, and a Vampire. After destroying my Su-Chi and my Mishras factory, I managed to get out a Trike, but still, no blue mana, which is very frustrating if you have this..
To sum it up, no mana showed up, so I lost a game I would have easily taken if I had drawn only one blue mana source. That sucked, but it's all in the game. 1-1. At least we would have a 3 game final. In the meantime, Joep told me he was taking it personal I was only now starting to draw really bad hands and not against him in the semi-finals :)
The third game started off with the destruction of 2 of my factories, and one of Koens.
I had The Abyss in my hand, but decided to not play it and lure Koen into playing something. Which he did, and it worked out as I wanted:
That took, his Djinn at least. My deck helpfully produced a Su-Chi. Which I copied.
Koen took one out with the dreaded divine offering though. And attacked with his factory.
I psionic blasted him in return and copied my Su-Chi, after which I played the other card I sideboarded in, since I noticed that Koen was not playing any basic plains. That made less of a difference than I wanted because he also had a Mox Pearl, but at least it would have to make him choose if he drew into another disenchant.
This meant he could not block with the factory on the next turn, so he played a Juzam Djinn. I fortunately was able to shatter the Mox Pearl right after this.
I could just wait for the Djinn to go away, and when I did pass the turn, Koen just went on and played another one:
Triskelion, while Koen was at only 3 life. That meant that was it. It turned out that sideboarding in the blood moons was a good idea, which helped me to win the finals. Joep was kind enough the take the role as tournament-in-a-game shop organizer and handed me out the coveted Camel Trophy. After this we went out for dinner with 8 of the guys and landed on a terrace outside of a full Italian restaurant. It was still pretty cold, but with our coats on it was doable and we had a very nice pizza and tiramisu dinner brought out to us by a real Italian who was very enthusiastic about the food in his restaurant. So were we, so we finished off a great day of cards with a great dinner in great OS company. As Marten pointed out at the table, isn't this hobby great? I think it is. Richard, our game store owner, remarked again what a cool and relaxed bunch OS players are, and how different the atmosphere is from other MTG formats, which are much more tense. This is why we all love it. Great people, nostalgic cardboard, having fun together. I love it.
