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!

Dadbodcon II 2024

Dadbodcon is a tournament invented by David in Utrecht, the center of our country. It is hosted in the "denksportcenter" which also hosts chess, checkers and bridge tournaments. Its central location and the focus on people playing al kinds of games makes this a perfect venue for a game of OS. This year, it would be with a twist, playing OS93, meaning only ABU+AN cards, with 10 reprints max allowed. 

Thinking this format would be great to play enchantress, I immediately started thinking about how to replace the different legends cards in one of my enchantress builds (see the deckpics from Camel Trophy for a picture of this deck), until somebody disappointingly pointed out to me I could play only one control magic because it is restricted in this format. That makes the deck very vulnerable so that idea went down the drain fast.  I am not sure that restricting control magic is really necessary in this format. It is not that different from swedish os, and there you very rarely see decks with multiple control magic in the finals. Also, it kills the chance of playing my enchantress deck to any degree of success, so I can only be against that decision :). 

That meant having to make some choices. Go for a deck with all the usual suspects? White support with 4 disenchant en 4 swords and a balance? With Serra's, Erhnams, Serendibs, or maybe Lions. Or lion/dib/bolt/counter. So with either counterspells or burn. That would probably make a pretty good deck, even though I figured that disenchant would probably less necessary in this format, with less factories and stuff like Robots and Abyss and the like. Making a control deck was pretty tempting, or something resembling an Erhnamgeddon or Erhnam Burnem. But all of these options felt a bit stale. 

I thought of playing a Juzam/Troll deck, but since most of the parts of that deck are revised with me (my revised only deck is a troll disco) that would not be possible. Mono black with Juzams (even with the 3 I have pretty good) also did not wake my enthusiasm. Even though OS93 is a "new" format, a break from the normal Swedish OS, it still felt like I would be playing the same sort of decks. 

So with playsets of Serra's and swords en Erhnams on the table, I decided to go for something else. Figuring there would be bolts and deserts and lots of Serra's and Juzams, I wanted to have something that would be reasonably quick, but with more heavy hitters and decided to start the curve with Serendib efreet (well, actually llanowar Elves, but they are only there for acceleration. 

I ended up with a with 30 manasources, lands, artifacts, a playset of birds of paradise and 2 elves. I thought that would make it possible to pretty quickly play serendib efreet, Erhnam Djinn, mahamoti djinn, shivan dragon and force of nature. I chose one of the first 2, and 2 of the forces, since I would need to hit harder than other decks to win. To either supplement my creatures or do something against quick Juzams, I added 2 clones. The day of the tournament, I would face exactly 0 Juzams, but I did not know that when I build this deck. I added some power, 1 disintegrate, one control magic and 2 disenchants and 2 swords to plowshares. And an armageddon. And 1 King Suleiman. That should do something in this format, right?

On the day of the tournament, it was good to see all the familiar faces. And I could make myself useful by helping David with the interface of the tournament program, which I had used a couple of times before. 

On round one, I played Tristan. He played a troll/disco/beast deck. I Mulligan'd, he started off with time walk and ancestral recall and beat me quickly because I could not come back from that. I tried, but he also played a quick disk with a mana vault, and with a permanent heavy deck like mine, I could not get back from that. The next game, I managed to draw a hand with both the Shivan and the Mahamoti, but only 2 lands, and no acceleration whatsoever. So, I Mulligan'd again, and was again unable to cope with the disadvantage. He had a cabal ghoul and a troll quickly; I had nothing worth noting. I managed to get rid of the troll, but drew no mana for a couple of turns, which left me too late to do something against the ghoul. The game was over so quickly I didn't take any pictures. It did leave me time to witness something great that you don't see often enough in OS:

This format gives Kird ape a time to shine. I was really hoping for a Kird ape deck winning. I was also noting that more people had thought of Troll disco with eggs. 

My next match was against Thomas "Timmy the sorcerer" Meddens. He was playing mono blue flyers. Not his signature Timmy deck, but he is an expert mono blue player, so that would be a challenge. Knowing he had only one control magic, that eased me a bit. Also, playing against Thomas is always a pleasure. He's just one of those really great OS guys to hang out with. 

In the first game, my quick Serendib was countered. Understandable move. 

I then played King Suleiman, thinking he would probably have Serendibs as well. That stayed and played a Timetwister after Thomas was playing his book, after I played another Serendib. The Timetwister gave me another Serendib, and things were looking bad for Thomas.  

But, he tapped 4 mana, and went for my King Suleiman. That was a really great move. 

Fortunately for me, I could get rid of it with swords to plowshares and then the Efreets made the game finish quickly. The next game, I got a pretty unfair start. Thomas played a 3rd turn Serendib, which I was able to swords to plowshare, followed by ancestral recall. 

Then, Thomas played a lifetap from his sideboard. Yes, lifetap. I had not thought to see that today. But it works great against my deck. Most of my duals in this deck are also forests. 

good move, Thomas!

Looking at the lifetap and taking damage from my Serendib efreets, I could only keep playing more stuff and hope to beat through it. In the process, Thomas gained at least 11 life from his lifetap, so not too shabby, that card. But in the end, my creatures came to fast in a row and I was lucky enough to get my control magic to take his phantom monster. That meant the Serendib's came trough a bit later, with a Djinn, and that made for 2-0. 

In the meantime, I noticed some games where the expected Juzam Djinns were present. 

Round 3, I opened with a King Suleiman. You never know when that would come in handy. I did 1 damage, before my opponent played a Sedge Troll. 

And then I got stuck on 3 mana, and drew 2 forces of nature in 2 consecutive turns. Great :P 

After my mox was disenchanted, and still no Serendib's were showing up, or something else that could work, I had to balance in turn 6 to prevent myself from losing against the troll. 

Then, my opponent played mana flare a couple of turns later. I had drawn one extra land. That was a though decision. Leave the flare and hope to get a bigger creature than he would draw, or disenchant it? I went for leave it, played timetwister on the next turn and that gave me a force of nature. Unfortunately, no other big ones. 

The force was quickly disintegrated, leaving me with pretty much only mana. Well, with one 1/1 mana elf, but since my opponent had played a Sengir, that would not do much. 

Helpfully, my deck provided another land. 

That did not do much, so I was behind 1-0. Next game, my deck did its best a bit more, and it was 1-1. 

We were not able to finish the third game, which was a shame because I was pretty confident I would win that game with 1 or 2 more turns. Then I was paired against Koen. I mean, how does that happen, with a 1-1-1 standing. Knowing koen he was playing something with black, with Juzams, and this really should be his format. How did he end up on table 11? I would need to work really hard here to get something done. 

Koen was off pretty quickly, with quick tutor and Ancestral recall on turn one and 2. 

I was not really getting my quick mana I was counting on with this deck so I was a bit stuck with my hand, which gave Koen time. 

Then, when the mana did show up, with an Ancestral recall from my side, I could get to work. 

Or not. Because as soon as I had my creatures out, Koen had balance. This felt a bit like earlier games. I think it was Tristan who did the same thing, not sure. Could also have been in match 3. 

Fortunately, I could get Koens Rukh (he had bolted the egg before the balance), but Koen played a disk to get rid of it. 

After a really, really long and grindy game, I just could not find the big creatures to beat his Trolls and Rukhs. A Shivan or a Force of nature would have really shined here, but Koen countered my Shivan and neither force nor Mahamoti Djinn showed up. After this first game, Koen really hit the ground running with a first turn troll. I played a turn 2 Serendib. 

After a timetwister in which Koen had drawn 2 counterspells (I lured him in to countering one card, then played a better one and he had another) and an Armageddon which Koen had not seen coming but proceeded to draw 3 lands and a sol ring in a row made it no problem for him. My creatures were again balanced away. There was no playing against these draws, so in the end I lost 2-0. Koen said something along the lines of that my plays were good; he just had the answers every time. So, 1-2-1 it was. 

On round 5, I was feeling a bit grumpy, then drew this had. I could have mulligan'd again, or drawn 3 cards with the braingeyser. Instead, hopeing that I would be finally playing against someone who did not play white, I went for the agro option and played a first turn Erhnam Djinn. The odds were I would draw another land, I had white for the swords to plowshares, why not?

Well, that is why not. 

After the balance got my Djinn, I did not drew land or another source. I got swords to plowshares, and Mahamoti Djinn. 

That was too slow. To make a long story short, I boarded in a disenchant and another plow + another armageddon, figuring I would be facing COP green and Serra's. I just hoped to be quicker. Unfortunately, none of the 3 disenchants showed up any time soon, it took too long to win the second game. 

The third game was the same story, with another circle, but it took too long to get going after a quick COP green. 

I played braingeyser for 4, hopeling for more pressure in the form of a mahamoti or shivan, or even one of the 4 serendibs. Helpfully, I got a diamond valley, and 3 mana sources. This took too long, and the match ended in a draw. I was pretty sure that with a disenchant or armageddon on the way, would have won, but then again, that did not happen, so it was a moot point. 

Round 5, I was up against Frank, and thought I would have a reasonable chance with  3 lands, a birds, and a timewalk. All I had to do was draw a Efreet or Djinn, and I would be in business pretty quickly. 

But no. I got another force of nature and clone, and no extra mana. So I was stuck with not enough mana to play the force, and the clone was pretty much useless. 

After I had clone Frank his Serendib efreet, he psionic blasted that. Pretty desperate, I played timetwister, but that did not bring me much, except another bird to block. One Erhnam was not going to cut it against 2 efreets. Not enough big creatures in play here. 

The second game, the Djinn did show up pretty quickly, and I was able to do a round of damage before Frank tapped out to play a Juggernaut. I was able to control magic that (which was in my hand) and had the extreme luck to have the best topdeck in that situation, a time walk. Frank was very sportsmanlike about it. Thanks for that, Frank! That game was over quick so 1-1. 

The third game, I got this pretty weird opening hand. I could play everything there, and Frank was not playing disks. So, risky, but with the COP and the swords, I would have time. Even a juggernaut was covered. So I opted to keep it, because in time, my creatures would be bigger than his. 

The strategy paid off, my first draw was a land, then Serendib. From there, I could get rid of his creatures and play another djinn, which finished the game. Again, not with a really big creature. 

The last round of the day was against Wouter, where my deck did what I had in mind when I built it. It produced a couple of big creatures, and I was pretty quickly at 1-0. The second game I had boarded in COP green, an extra swords to plowshares, and I got the cop pretty quickly. It also looked like the King Suleiman would finally do something here, but it was not meant to be. 

The king was disintegrated, but that left me with a forestwalking Erhnam Djinn, so not a bad deal. But, my opponent Wouter was going for a stiff solution there and took his only forest with an Ice Storm. 

Naturally, that is not a great position to be in. I managed to keep his creatures behind the circle and had no problem with the sprites. In the end, I got some more pressure and that did it and I was 2-0. 

So, after 7 rounds, I had done no damage with either force of nature, mahamoti djinn or shivan dragon. And no djinn was killed with King Suleiman. The conclusion was obvious, had I wanted to win, I should gone for a more hardcore approach. But since the balance was (even though barely) positive with a 3-2-2 record, with one of the draws and one of the losses giving the feeling they could have gone my way with a bit more luck (or in Koens case, a bit less on his side :)) I was feeling pretty okay about how the deck had done, even though the fast mana approach had failed in most games. 

Looking around at the higher tables, I noticed that trolls would not have been a bad idea, neither would have been control. 

The game Koen against "broodjesboer" ended in Koen being decked! I had not expected that in this creature heavy format. 

In the end, Gideon won with a deck with Serra's, Erhnams, juggernauts, 4 plows, 3 disenchant and 4 bolts, so I was not far off in that expectation. Also, Gideon is an excellent player with a lot experience in playing GWR with a couple of blue power cards, so a well-deserved win for him. 

I went home with these, after winning an Earth elemental for with my other Magic memorabilia, a patch for joining the tournament and I managed to trade for a demonic torment. Yes, trade. With no money involved. I love it when that happens. The torment will find a place in an Enchantress deck sooner or later. 

The spoils of the day

So, not a top 3 finish like last Dadbodcon, but a positive result with a lot of great people to hang out with. What is not to like :) Well, I suppose some of the draws this day. But that comes with this game, and in the end, meeting all of you and staring at old cardboard never gets old. Thanks to David for organizing this great day and hope to see you all soon!