My first opponent was Edo, who opened with a howling mine, which probably meant he was playing his stasis/twiddlevault combination deck. That would be a challenge, since my deck does need a lot of mana. Also Edo is a good player, so I would have to do a lot of thinking about my moves to make sure I could make it.
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| after boarding, I had a couple of disenchant to see if that would help |
The games were really long, drawn out, with in one game made me actually thinking of just discarding my ancestral recall to prevent myself from being decked. The match was taking up so much of my attention and thinking carefully about my moves that I did not take a lot of pictures. Also, some other players passing by were thinking something along the lines of "oh great, 2 combodecks, boring" but actually, it wasn't. The maneuvering and trying not to be caught by our combo's was probably my most interesting and engaging matches of the day. It ended 2-1 in my favour, but could have gone either way.
My second match was looking pretty interesting since I saw tropical island, birds and savannah, so I was anticipating something like an Erhnam Djinn, when this happened. That, I did not expect.
Also, the mind twist was followed up my a ancestral recall, and then disenchant on my sol ring.
As expected, a 6 card advantage in 2 turns was not something you get back from, so I was down one game. The second game opening was also not promising.
I was just up to 3 lands and felt okay about having drawn and played ancestral recall, then my opponent played balance. This was obviously one of those matches that is completely dominated by powercards. That is fine of course, but losing 2 lands and my transmute artifact while my opponent was on 3 mana due to the moxen was not very promising.
Because I had everything in my hand for a powermonolith finish, I kept playing while being beaten by an Erhnam Djinn. My opponent had a good draw after the balance, with a city, Sylvan library and Djinn. He played a an Elf. After which he had no white mana left. After which I went for it. And discovered this was one of those games where my opponent needed to read the cards, because he had never seen this.
He seemed somewhat taken aback by the very sudden reversal in the game, went for his sideboard and it was time for game 3.
Thinking there would be more disenchants and divine offerings coming and since he had not seen my creatures, I figured he would board out swords to plowshares for those. Which is why I boarded in my guardian beasts. I had to mulligan to 6 and then decided to keep these cards. I mean, this had potential of doing something I had never done before in oldschool, and there are not many of those things left.
I should have cut my opponents deck though, since he was off to another pretty good start.
To test the waters, I decided to play the orb so I could destroy a turn 2 djinn or Serra. Waiting would not be good idea if that happened. No disenchant followed, probably because I would use the orb then anyway. Maybe he just did not have one. So I played the monolith.
Still, no disenchant. He played Sylvan Library. That lifted my spirits up a lot. Because that meant I could do this, with 2 blue mana open for my mana drain, which led to something I had never done before in OS. I could play Guardian Beast, and activate the orb to destroy the library. A tapped orb in play, ready for another turn next turn. My opponent looked taken aback again and asked if this meant I could do this every turn. When I said yes, he was not happy.
This meant I was 2-1 in games, 2-0 in matches. With 4 to go, I thought a 4-2 would be very possible. It also gave me some time to take some pictures around the venue.
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| Peter Bonthuis still playing without a playmat |
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| a forcefield, also something you don't see every day |
So, my 3rd opponent was from Finland I believe. Although my opening hand was not great in the combo parts department, there was a lot of mana and a tome, so I decided to keep it.
In retrospect, that was not a great idea. He had a super, super fast deck with lots of fire and weenies. And I just did not draw anything useful. A fireball would have been nice for the weenies, but that did not show, which meant I was down 0-1 after just a couple of minutes. I kept a hand with 2 monoliths and a balance after boarding in the Ali package. If I could slow him down with the balance, that might work.
Well, no. Not if he has Ancestral recall and manadrain on the first 2 turns.
And even though I got rid of his Serendib efreets, he just kept coming with regrowth on the ancestral. Fortunately, he had not seen this coming.
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| say hello to Ali |
Ali was a problem for him, fortunately. Even though it took a loooooong time to show up, I got a mirror universe. That also was promising, since Ali was still there. We exchanged life totals a turn later.
when the fireball finally showed up, it felt like ages had passed. But it was 1-1, so all was not lost.
The 3rd game I had to mulligan, while my opponent opened with factory, mox jet. I played island. He attacked me with the factory, then played ancestral recall.
He then, in the same turn, played black lotus and serendib efreet. I played another land. He attacked for 5, strip mined my second land, and then played lightning bolt and chain lightning on me. I was sitting there, with one land, and I was already on 7 life left. I played another land, hoping to get to the 3rd and play a monolith, which I did, but I lost with power artifact and fireball in hand, before I could play them. This opening was just too much. Damn, that was bad. 1-2 in games, 2-1 in matches. It was over so quickly I had plenty of time to look around and take some pictures.
Next up in the next round was Erwin Demmer, who I have had the most crazy games against in the past, with moxes, timetwisters en wheels of fortune flying around from both sides in just a couple of turns. Even though this was not as spectacular as that, my library in opening hand with sol ring, was pretty strong. But this would not be a Demmer game if Erwin not also opened with a library :)
What was less apealing though, was the strip mine that followed on his turn 2, so gone was mine, and Erwin was still drawing extra's.
I played basalt monolith on the next turn, after which Erwin played a mana vault and a demonic tutor. This probably meant he went for mind twist from there. But, I beat him to it. I had played the monolith to play a massive mind twist from my side on the next turn to keep his library from working. And of course, not being mind twisted myself. It was a good call. Erwin was indeed going for mind twist on the next turn. And then a braingeyser after that.. so I was just in tame. Still a pretty insane game though, worthy of our earlier crazy games.
That gave me a couple of more turns to assemble a lot of damage from the combo, and I was ahead 1-0. Let's see if the next game would be just as nuts.
In the spirit of really nuts games, we both played ancestral recall and sol rings in our first turns. That was crazy enough for me :)
Erwin started hammering me with a Su-Chi, while I played Guardian beast.
And, with the help of my monolith, mirror universe.
in a cool turn of events, I was able to make it until I was on 2 life, exchange life with the mirror and attack for 2 with the guardian beast, which, it turned out, had saved my mirror from the disenchant Erwin was holding. How cool is that :)
This gave me time to do some trading for my "assemble a full falling empires set without the use of websites like MCM, only by getting the card from other players" with Buddy, who was also doing cool alters while being at the edgeman. I still love trading for cards like it was 1994 :)
On to round 5, against Gideon. I had kept a hand with library being the only interesting card. I am still wondering if that is a good move in general, but I tend to keep thinking that getting 1 or 2 cards from it before it is destroyed is still better than taking a mulligan.
Turns out, it was indeed just 1 extra card, because there was a first turn orb showing up on the other side.
Also, helpfully for him, Gideon had drawn another mox, putting him on 4 mana against my 1 after he destroyed the library. Not a good outlook.. he also played a Serendib Efreet after destroying my Lib, great :( But, you have to try something, so I just played a basalt monolith so I would be able to play Mirror universe. If the monolith was not destroyed. If it was, I might just make it to the mirror in time, but that was not something I could really count on, so I was hoping this would stick.
Which it did! When he did not destroy my mirror universe, I was pretty sure he did not have a disenchant ready, which was good for my next move.
The powermonolith combo got there first, before mirrorball combo.
After some sideboarding, after which it would probably be raining disenchants and divine offerings, we were off to game 2. Which had a start like a normal game of magic, just playing lands for a while, while you build up to do something.
When I played guardian beast, that got a lot of interest. I
I tried to save it from death with my mana drain, but it was not good enough, because that was countered with red elemental blast. Fair enough.
In the end though, I managed to squeeze out a win for game 2, with another fireball. So, 4-1, the deck was really feeling like it had potential. If I would win the next match, I would be in the top 8. Even though I had not planned for that, it would be fun to see if I could get an Ali on the table in a top 8.. The next match was against Saul, with a red/white deck. This is a hard matchup, but not the hardest. I would say I had pretty good chance of winning this.
There were a shitload of awnsers from his side though, with orb for abyss, disenchant for monolith, city in a bottle for the lib and then armageddon. I had the mirror in play though, so I still had a chance.
Meanwhile to the left of us, a graveyard with only restricted cards was showing some gratuitous powerplay. But, back to the match.
After the beating I took, I still managed to win game one due to the mirror. The next game I had to mulligan to six and kept a hand with 2 lands, fearing it would only get worse if I had to go to 5 against a quick deck. However, the strip mine on turn 2 that destroyed my underground sea and the fact I did not draw a single land after that made sure I lost to mana screw and weenies.
The next game, I again mulliganed to 6, but kept a hand which was somewhat promising, with mana drain, monolith, abyss, power artifact and 2 lands, one being city of brass.
I managed to use the manadrain, get the monolith in play and with it the Abyss. I was feeling good about my chances.
But after that, I drew... nothing. The Abyss was disenchanted, I never drew a third land, or a fireball. So I just sat there, did nothing with a hand full of powersinks which did absolutely nothing because i could not untap the monolith, and just lost to manascrew again. That felt really shitty, but hey, it happens. I was this close to top 8, and then manascrew made sure I did not make it. Fitting, I suppose. When I was at a table with Thijs and Martijn from Arnhem, they told me to go do something called the library challenge, in which you have to guess a missing part of information from 10 oldschool cards. For instance, the power and thoughness of an Ironroot treefolk, the manacost of a morale, that kind of thing. I managed to get 9 in a row correct, than said that you can only play Goblin Shrine on a mountain, but that was slightly off, because that says it only works if you play it on a mountain. But, 9 out of 10 was good enough to get my official librarian's badge. I have to get something to put those badges on..
By that time, I was feeling kind of hungry but also wanted to see what the top 8 would look like, so I waited around a little longer. Which also meant I got to win a really weird looking alter from the raffle.
Since I am not the biggest of fans for alters and neither a big 70's B-movie fan, I might try to trade this away for an alter which is a bit more fitting to my style, but who knows. Maybe I will play it first.
The top 8 was holding a lot of counterspells and serra angels. Oh, and Su-Chi's. But, also Saul with his red deck and the other guy from finland who beat me with his weenie/burn horde. I am not sure who won. It was getting pretty late, so after most quarterfinals were played and a controldeck vs controldeck matchup was taking forever to finish, I decided to get some food and go home. It was a satisfying day, I traded for cards, made 4-2 with a real chance of top 8 so the deck was good, and won an alter, all as a bonus on top of playing OS with a lot of nice guys present. So, thanks to all for playing, showing up, making OS wonderful. Till next time!
