The Cave People Cup I (updated)

(edit: small update on the winner in the end section of this blog)

The cave people cup was a first time tournament in the Arnhem region, where I live. It was organized by Matthijs and Charly in a venue called the Pukkel (which means pimple in Dutch, not sure if that makes it an attractive name for most, and I forgot to ask where the name comes from). Anyway, the pukkel is a nice small venue where I have played oldschool magic several times, not in a tournament setting but just in a relaxed kitchen table kind of setting. 

This was the first time a tournament would be held in the pukkel, and it would be one of those rare tournaments where I would be able to travel to by bike, which was nice. But first, I would need a deck. The format would be X-point swedish, so no FE, but with the same point system. Which fortunately meant also no 4 workshop decks, which although I really love artifacts, I still think is a really stupid idea. I started off thinking about how I had not played black/green Juzam/Erhnam/Sinkhole/Icestorm for a while (actually, I don't think I have played that for more than 10 years now) but than Johan helpfully pointed out that in the whatsapp group, there had been a call to try to play some more spicy decks. So, okay then. A bit more spicey, but what then? I started flipping through binder I keep my cards in, and stopped at Sindbad. I later on stopped at Hell's caretaker. Hey, why not, I could just try for Sindbad reanimator. 

the thinking process

Initially, I added some more blue. After some thinking, I just skipped on most of the control elements of that idea, and thought that 4 moti's where not spicy enough, and this was my final build for the deck.

My Goals with this deck would be not to at least win one match, but winning more than losing would be nice. Also, I wanted to play all hallow's eve, have lord of the pit in play, and surprise someone with the transformational sideboard. I thought about having a normal sideboard with glooms and stuff, but decided to go for the more spicy option of transformation into full creature mode. I had 14 extra creatures in my sideboard, most of them small to get my opponent off balance. 

On the day of the tournament, the weather was really nice, so the bike ride over there was great. After some announcements, we were off to 5 rounds of swiss. The first match was against mono black. My opponent started off with 2 sinkholes and a blight. That was not good for me, but fortunately I had Sindbad in play. I just used him as often as I could which was also a bit frustrating, because it meant stff like ancestral recall and Sylvan library ended up in my graveyard. It also meant I could get some land in play to compensate for the extra blight that also had showed up pretty quickly. In the end, I also got some lands from sindbad, which gave me an advantage. Unfortunately, after my lord of the pit also landed in the graveyard, I had no animate dead or hell's caretaker. So I had to just cast my creatures and win with that. 

I went for transformation in the sideboard, thinking I would need some cheap creatures to make sure I could get something in play against the landdestruction. One fun move was blocking a hypnotic specter with 2 sprites, then animating the specter. It was not enough though, in the second game I could not get enough pressure and my opponent started with land, ritual, underworld dreams. That sort of kills the entire sindbad idea, so I lost that one. We were not able to finish the first game, so the first match was a draw. 

My second game was also not against a lot of spice, against a pretty fast and efficient Erhnam/Dib/blast/geddon deck. 

I tried to put up some resistance, but spice is just not able to win a matchup like that. 

After I was down 0-1 in a game where I animated a trike, then shot 3 damage at serra, then transmuted the trike into another trike and shot again, I at least got that off the board, but that left me with a Trike to block the Djinn opposing me, which I used to block, than sac to the sage, but it was just not enough. I was psionic blasted to death. The second game was a turn 2 dib with an elf, turn 3 Djinn. I missed a land drop on turn 3 even though I had played Sylvan library on turn 2, so that was that. The game was over in less then 5 minutes. 

I took some pictures of the matches around me, to see if I could find something spicy and found Wouter playing his Arboria deck without Arboria's :) 

Even though not very spicey, a meekstone keeping a troll and Su-Chi locked in was also somewhat spicy I guess. 

After round 2, there was homemade lunch made by the organisation, who were very busy behind the bar making great sandwiches for everyone. There was something for all tastes and they tasted great. 

I faced off match 3 against David, playing mono red. A pretty efficient mono red, just a very good deck. I faced a turn 2 Su-Chi which started hammering. I had Sindbad and Sylvan Library so had some faint hope I might get something big in play to block. 

Something bit I did not get, so I just tried to stave off the onslaught with blocking with small creatures and then animating them. 

That was not enough though, when I finally did get a moti in play, all david had to do is attack with the Su-Chi and the Atog, and when I blocked the atog, sac that and the sol ring for the win. His deck was just to good for mine. Maybe if I had been able to get out the djinn early, but I doubt that would have done enough. 

The second game was not much better for me, it was over so quick I did not even get to take pictures of interesting board states. So, a draw and 2 losses, and none of my goals achieved with only 2 rounds to go. Also, not a lot of spice against me so far. It was nice to see this board state though, having a mana vortex taking out forests so that aspect of wolf does less damage felt spicy to me. 

Next up, for round 4, I was paired against Remko, who I had earlier borrowed some cards for his living plane deck with prodigal sorcerers, pyrotechnics and triskelions. Not a great prospect if your main strategy is to rely on 1/1 creatures like sindbad and hell's caretaker to do something for you. So, my expections were not high, but Remko is an overall super nice guy that is always nice to play a game against. I was able to get out an early sindbad, and just started drawing because I wanted as much lands as possible against the coming landdestruction. I turned over a Tetravus in de process, which I animated and started attacking with, before Remko destroyed my Sindbad with a Triskelion counter. 

I managed to get out all hallow's eve and discard some more creatures, (not that much, but a Trike and a Triskelion and a Sindbad should do something, right? And kept attacking with the Tetravus. 

Before the all hallow's eve went off, I activated the Bazaar (my hand was already empty, so why not) and that gave me another mahamoti Djinn in the graveyard, gaving me this pretty awesome boardstate. 

Suffice to say, I won that game. Cool! Now lets see if we can keep that up. My next game I had a lot of mana to start with, with Sindbad, and I was able to play Triskelion on my 4th turn. Still not very fast, I know, but fortunately for me, Remko's deck is not exactly a speed demon itself. 

A bit later on, I was able to get out Sylvan Library, with Sindbad still in play. That looked promising. 

And it was, two of my turns after that, I was able to draw one from my draw phase, then 2 extra with the 2 sindbads and get through a land clump pretty fast. 

Later on, I used my Bazaar to ditch 3 lands for 2 new cards. The draw engine was working overtime, giving my 2 extra sindbads, but no big creatures or animates. Not that that would have worked, because of Remko's lifeforce. I was not complaining though, because I still had Tetravus to attack with. 

I had to wait for a while to use my powersink from the sideboard to tap out Remko, who had a life force in play since turn 3 or so. Then I was able to play my Hell's caretaker. Now all I had to do was hope for one more turn in which he would not destroy it. And it made it! I sacrificed a Tetravite and got back a Triskelion. Yes! And I also won the game with that, so finally, win! I would not go home totally defeated. 

Somehow though, I was paired against Charley, who had an x-points version of the deck he used to end first in the Swiss of the Camel Trophy earlier this year. That was also not looking hopeful. I played Sindbad. 

He bolted sindbad, played mox en fellwar stone on his next turn, so I faced off a Swamp King on the next turn. I animated my Sindbad, hoping to turn over a Djinn and be able to do some damage with that. 

But all I got was another Sindbad, and Charly played Juzam Djinn. 

As one would expect, I was crushed in that game. On to game 2, let's see if the Transformational sideboard would work. I started off with Sryb Sprites and started doing some damage. A sindbad and another sprites joined, while Charly was playing Su-Chi. Now I really needed something bigger to keep up the damage. The 2 cities of brass were not helping. 

In a cool play, Charly shattered his Su-Chi after attacking, giving him 4 mana, which he used for fireball and then cleared my board with that. That did not help. The trike that showed up after also did not help much. Fortunately for me, my sideboard had provided Argothian Pixies. 

I also was able to play Serendib Efreet. 

Which Charly took from me using control magic. But, what he had not seen coming was my Triskelion, and he was on 4 life. He was not playing white, so no risk of Sword to plowshares. So I just shot the counters at him, and waited for him to lose his last life. That worked! Another goal achieved. Charly had not seen the weenies coming. 

On the third game, I kept a had with Sindbad, Sprites, Pixies and Serendib. I figured I would be able to race him with that, especially since he only played Shivan Dragon als a flyer the last time I saw him playing this deck. Eventually I would start blocking the bigger hitters, and still would have a fair chance of racing him. 

On turn for 4 or 5, he played falling star. The person who ruled that you could potentially destroy 6 creatures should never have anything to do with rules in oldschool, because that is just completely insane and stupid. Fortunately for me, I had kept counterspell in my hand against creature destruction, which was put to very good use here. 

Charly played Juzam Djinn on his next turn, but I was still able to attack with the flyers, and chump block with my other creatures if needed. A second pixies would even give me a chance to block and kill his Su-Chi by blocking with both. 

In the end, I was able to win that one as well. So 2 wins, 2 losses, one draw. A 50/50 score, against 4 pretty spikey decks and one spicy one. Not a bad record. Unfortunately though, Lord of the Pit never made it to the table. There were some times where he was in my graveyard, but then I never got a way to animate him. So, that goal was not achieved, but all the others were, so I am satisfied with this result. 

In the spice division though, Johan's Land Equilibrium was facing off against wouters arboria-less arboria deck. Ivory towers against black vises. Nice :P 

Because my weenie games against Charly were fast, I had some time to snap some more pictures. It seems like most of the field had decided to not go the spice route. 

What was cool though, was that Johan at one time had 2 mana vortexes in play. I can't remember I time when I saw someone do that :)

So, the Top 8 was announced, and I had some time to took some pictures of those. 

Red Atog against Lion/Dib/Bolt

Mono black against Erhnam/Dib/geddon

Red/white Agro against white/blue LionSerra control

Mono Red Atog Valley against Triple S

Semi final Liondibbolt against ErhnamDibGeddon

Semi Atog Valley against Triple S

Final: Triple S against LionDibBolt

Okay, so the top 8 were not exactly surprising decks, Davids Atog Valley was the most original if you ask me, and the Final was definitely nothing surprising. Roelf won in the end with his Lion Dib Atog Bolt deck with white knights. 

The winner

The winning deck

Some of the guys wanted to stay and order dinner, and I decided to join in the food. While we waited, David played my own make-a-FBB-mono-green-deck-that-does-not-suck-only-from-binders-of-other-players deck against my sindbad reanimator. This was a pretty good game because I had an early sindbad and sylvan library, and I was able to stabilize just before dying. Facing off 3 djinns was still not a pretty sight though. Winning that game also was a nice feel for the deck, because I meant I had won more than I had lost during the day with it :P 

After dinner we all went our ways, signalling the end of a great day with great people. Hope to see you guys on the next tournament! And special thanks to Matthijs and Charly for the organization of this first Cave People Cup. I hope that many may follow! Till next time! 

Old men of the sea cup 2025

Small starting disclaimer, because of a lot of work and some pretty bad migraines, I can't remember all of this tournament in detail unfortunately, and I had this report only half finished when the extreme work kicked in. So somewhere in the middle the detail goes down a bit. Sorry!

I visited The old men of the sea cup last year, and it was a really nice experience at a great place run by volunteers in The Hague. There is something about places that are run also for the love of it. And when you get to play in a place like that, it is more special. So when I heard they were being closed down and there would be just one last chance to play there, I asked Tim and Ivo if I could join. Fortunately for me, there was still space for one more. 

A while back I thought of building a deck that was aiming for playing a quick bigger creature and then use sylvan library and Jalum tome to get to wheel of fortune or timetwister, fill my hand and go on. To make it not to much of a standard deck, I wanted to go for land, mox, fellwar stone and then play Su-Chu or Erhnam Djinn. I added 2 copy artifacts for land, mox, copy mox effect. I got to play first in the first game, and them kept a hand that could go for it. I got a turn 2 Su-Chi off that. 

My opponent started destroying my land in his turn by playing sinkhole on the city, then blight on my savannah. 

End then sinkhole, and drain life on my Su-Chi with drain life. So, 3 lands destroyed, plus my creature, in 5 turns. That was not good. But I had the Sylvan Library and the tome, which did not produce any land any time soon, but I could at least filter. 

Helpfully, I was also mind twisted for my entire hand after I had the chance of playing one land. 

But, since I had fellwar stone and a mox, I could play another fellwar stone. My opponent played a factory, I played a Su-Chi. He then played a skull of orm for the blight. Even though it felt like his deck was sub-standard, it was performing pretty well. 

He got back the blight and played it. 

Then, he drew into another drain life. Fortunately, I had seen shit like that coming since he was drawing basically everything he needed all the time, so I had tutored for balance, just waiting for him to drain life the Su-Chi, which was one turn after I had one chance to attack with it. So, I tapped my blighted land, which was gone, then played balance with no cards in my hand due to the mind twist, then stripped his last land. 

After a turn I played timetwister with the lotus to get going, figuring I would build up faster with the mana I had. Which worked. He was getting some land back pretty quickly but not quick enough before I could get in damage with Su-Chi. And a factory later on. So, 1-0, even against that onslaught. I was happy to have included balance in the deck, because after having all your land destroyed and your hand mind twisted, there really was not much I could have done otherwise. 

To prevent myself from dying from something like Juzam djinns or hypnotic specters, I had boarded in COP black and greater realm of preservation. Strangely enough, something else showed up. 

Never before in an OS game have I thought about using swords to plowshares on a wall of bone. However, since I had Su-Chi and wanted to break through, I did. And then another showed up. So I went for a copy of the Su-Chi and attacked with that. 

That was eventually enough to win the match. I was left with a really weird feeling about that first game. Had I almost lost to a deck with wall of bone in it? Really? Fortunately that did not happen, otherwise I would have really doubted my ability at playing this deck. The next game I was up against Tim, on mono green. Tim is of course THE mono green player in our country, with the best results playing a mono green deck. This was not going to be easy, unless I could have a big creature on the board quickly. 

Su-Chi was quickly removed but not before I could copy it, but I was taking damage quickly from factories and Argothian pixies. 

Eventually an entire swarm was building up, with a playset of factories. 

On my side I was able to balance things out a bit, and use Erhnam Djinn and Serra Angel to keep things from going really bad. Tim was ahead in life, but I could use the Serra to do some damage. 

Eventually Tim went for it to try and do the final points of damage. It was a really big creature battle in which I was using my factory and strip mine to the last of my ability to not be crushed. Fortunately, I was able to win this one with the Serra, even though I was really low on life. 

My Second game, I was quickly greeted by a forestwalker. I got a demonic tutor, for which I had to use my lotus to get Ancestral recall, and Su-Chi on the board quickly. The game was very fast paced from the start. 

I was able to use triskelion and Erhnam Djinn to keep away the onslaught from the other side, and was using Jalum tome to get rid of all my forest-lands. This was a really nice advantage. 

Eventually, the Serra Angel was the winning card again, which I would have gotten a lot later had I not had the Jalum tome. I am not sure I would have won without it. 

After we were finished, lunch was being prepared in the background, and the sandwiches have a MTG oldschool theme :)

Anyway, I was happy to be at this table after my matches so far :)

And, I was able to play my first turn fellwar stone as was my target while building this deck. My opponent could start, played a forest but not a creature. So, no mono green then? Not sure. 

I wanted to copy my sol ring for some more additional mana, but that was destroyed. And, all of a sudden there were more creatures turning up. 

An Erhnam Djinn showed up, together with some sprites on the next turn. So definitely mono green then. I played Serra to keep the onslaught away from me. Well, at least a bit. 

After taking a hit from the Djinn, I went for Sylvan Library and time walk, and then for regrowth and time walk, and then for Su-Chi and copy artifact. This was pretty crazy. Regrowth on time walk with Serra in play is phenomenal. 

When my opponent attacked with his Djinn, I wanted to get rid of it so blocked with both Su-Chi's, and was greeted by Djinn which was complete berserk. 

That killed off both my Su-Chi's, but not my Serra, so in the end I could keep attacking and win with her. So, on to game number 2. I played a first turn factory, and a second turn workshop, unfortunately, I could just use it for an orb, because there were 2 scavenger folk in play. 

I was not going that well, and 2 disenchants were not doing much, so after 2 more creatures turned up and I had nothing, I decided to balance it out. Not really happy with that, it felt more like a emergency break. 

After using psionic blast for another creature and the orb so I could keep being alive, I eventually got a Su-Chi in play with 2 factories. All I needed now was no pixies showing up. 

And there were not enough creatures on the other side to keep the factories and Su-Chi down, so I could just go all out on the attack and win game 2 as well. I then asked if my opponent felt like playing a game against my all-FBB deck which has been completely built from cards from binders. The challenge I set myself was to build an all-FBB deck without the use of the internet, so no MCM or ebay, or the likes of them. I'm pretty happy with the deck as it is. It could use some more spitting slugs, but when did you see those in italian anywhere? If someone has them, they're usually at home in a box somewhere. I also want to add more city of brass to be able to play some black cards. 

Eventually, the FBB deck was triumphant :) I was really happy with that, considering it cannot play Su-Chi or Ice storm. I have noticed it could use one or two Kudzu's to even that out, but when was the last time you saw those in FBB? I have been looking in binders for the last 2 years now, so far have not found them. Oh, remember how I said that there was a magic theme on the bar? You could call our awesome bar lady by summoning her with this magic bell :) 

on to the next match, my opponent was going really well from turn one. 

I had kept this, hoping to get out a quick Su-Chi, copy it and by then draw another land, to psionic blast any blockers away. 

My opponent just decided to draw an ungodly amount of cards after playing Su-Chi on his turn 2 and on turn 3 fill his hand with braingeyser with his lotus. 

The second game was not much better, starting off with lots of power. 

I am not sure how bad it was, but from the looks of it, I'm pretty sure I lost at least one of those matches, but to be honest, I am not sure which one it was. I don't think I lost both, because I managed to get into the top 8 later on. 

What I do remember, is the exceptionally, extraordinary awesome Faye, who prepared drinks and food for us gamers all day, in a place where she had been volunteering for years before this last tournament there. Many, many thanks, thanks, thanks! 

I also took some pictures of the other contenders for top 8, like Richard. 

When I did get into top 8, I was happy with my opening hand. 

My opponent however, was not doing that bad either. 

But hey, a few turns later, I could pull off the wheel and see what would happen from there. This was what my deck should do. 

The match was taking a really long time, with removal going up and down, after a time I got to play mind twist. Not for that many cards and they were not that interesting, but it made sure I could play a Su-Chi and a copy without risk of a disenchant or swords to plowshares. 

That was not entirely enough, though, since on of the 2 was blasted off the table and there was a Serra to follow up . Fortunately, I had another creature up my sleeve, which could work well against the Serra. 

Also, that was not really necessary, because Serra decided to come my way with the control magic I had been holding for a long time, and that decided that game in my favor. 

The second game I felt like my opponent was going too quick for me, so I decided to slow him down with a divine offering on his mox. 

But, that did not do much, because after a time walk, mana drain on my ancestral recall and disenchant on my sol ring, I was not getting back easily. 

Oh, and his ancestral recall did resolve, unfortunately. That was a pretty bad advantage. 

Also, not drawing more lands was a problem. So, 1-1 it was. 

I still felt I should have a pretty good chance in this matchup, but as soon as you reach top 8, draws are very important. The sol ring on turn one was not foreboding a lot of good.  

What was also bad, was not getting that fourth mana. Or a blue mana. Or a black one, for that matter. 

Just one mana more, and this could really work.. 

After a while, the fourth mana did show up, and I could play some of the cards in hand. A lot of them were removed or destroyed, but at least I was doing something. 

Eventually, I had the 3rd djinn and a su chi on the board, and could keep going. 

So, a pretty heavy match, but 2-1, on to the semi-final. 

The first game against Richard started up pretty good. 

Even though he had Ivory tower, I could play Su-Chi, then chaos orb and timetwister. 

The timetwister though, had also given Richard quite some good cards, to take care of the Su-Chi for instance. 

Actually, his draw was pretty awesome. swords, chaos orb, followed up by braingeyser. 

After removing some of my creatures and destroying one, I managed to get Trike and Serra out, and went for another refill. 

I followed that up with a mind twist. As noted before, draws sometimes matter more than playing in top 8's. And this was drawing really well. Even with this draw though, the game as a whole was not an easy win. Or at least it did not feel like it was. 

The second game I had some quick mana on my opening. 

That was met with a lot of removal though. My copy mox was destroyed, my tropical island stripped and the my mox destroyed. It was like I was playing a mana destruction deck. With a lot of time I managed to get Su-Chi out. 

But that was also met with more removal. This time, the balance of the draw was definitely on the other side. 

I was beaten by a djinn eventually. 1-1.

The third game was opened by Richard with a Library of Alexandria. After which he destroyed my fellwar stone and my mox. 

On turn 10, I still had only 3 mana and was stuck there. Richard however, was doing really well, with his 10 card card advantage and lots of land :) So no surprise that he won there, well deserved. Too bad I could not end this day with an exiting game that was exiting till the end. This definitely wasn't, but that also part of how it goes. 

3 lands against that active library... eh... nope! not working!

I took some pictures of the final and the beautiful sandwich signs before going for the drive home. 

In the end, after some missed orb flips from both sides and mind twists here and there, Richard won the tournament, congrats! I went home after an amazing day, in an amazing place, with amazing people. To bad it was the last tournament over there. An atmosphere like this is just not found somewhere easily somewhere else. Thanks to all, especially to Faye, who were there. It felt great, like OS should be. Till next time!