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:
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| 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!
