The black lotus cup (BLC) is a invitational garden tournament which is hosted by Wouter and Fulco, and I was very happy and honored to be one of the happy few to be invited to play this year. It would be my first BLC. Even though one might be tempted to think that we would all be writing our signatures on a black lotus for the winner, don't worry. This is not the case, but there was another nice trophy for the winner to be had.
In the week leading up to the tournament, I was not sure what to play. The format would be core-set only (CSO) but without the power. And playing some beta cards was appreciated. This format seemed like a fun format, and I had several choices of decks that I could make that would contain some beta cards. I don't own enough beta cards to have a really working deck, even though it is possible for me to make a alpha/beta deck using my blue and white cards. If I would though, it would really suck without the beta power cards that I have, since it is already not great with them in it. I did not know what kind of decks would be played, though I heard some people would be playing more spicey builds. I was thinking about playing enchantress, but when I was looking at the possible cards to play, I ended up with something close to an enchantress/stasis deck. I was not sure I wanted to play that, and it also would contain very little beta cards (2 or 3 maybe, since I own only one beta enchantress). There were other choices, and I was thinking about just making another version of my revised only deck, which is a troll disco. Or counter burn maybe, since I have a couple of beta fireballs. The day before the tournament, I was still trying to decide and was on the fence between enchantress and trolls. In the end, I just let fate decide and my wife flipped a coin for me. It ended up trolls, so that was what I built. It would have to be a version with white and blue in it, since that would give me the most alpha/beta cards to play in the deck.
The tournament was starting at a relaxed 11.00, so I had time to do a fitness session before getting in the car and drive over to Eindhoven.
After I got there, I was pleasantly surprised not only by the nice garden and the familiar faces, but also meeting a cat in the garden. Since I love cats, this was good start of the day :)
After petting the cat on the couch for a short while, while other players were coming into the garden, it was time to start the tournament.
On the first round I would be playing Edwin, who is usually playing a competitive Erhnam/Armageddon deck. Since this was CSO, there would be no Djinns, but armageddon would definitely be something I would be weary of. I was able to play out a Savannah Lions on turn one, which was answered by....
A wall of wood. This is actually a pretty good counter against my lions. Together with the mesa pegasi, that also came out, I was not that worried, but would definitely not be doing a lot of damage. Since I had decided to go for direct damage in the form of lightning bolts and some psionic blasts, I was hoping to get some of those. And one of my 3 Serra Angels.
The game dragged on, and on, and on, with Edwin swords to plowsharing my Alpha Serra Angel, which left me open to the mesa pegasi. None of my bolts showed up, so I could not get passed the wall of wood, or get rid of the pegasi. As weird as this sounds, I would have probably had a better chance in this game with the AB deck :) I drew no awnsers this game, so I ended up losing to the pegasi after I missed an orb flip, which is surprisingly harder outside in a windy garden.
So, off to a next game we went. There was a small hope for some action on turn 3 when I played a troll, but that was quickly sent away from the game by Edwin. Fortunately for me, there were no accompanying pegasi there to hit me.
There was a war mammoth though, which could do some serieus damage if I did not draw any answers.
I tried with Serra Angel, but that was also removed from the game, which left me no choice but to play the balance I was getting later on in the game. After the balance, I was greeted by a wall of swords. This would take a really long time..
A little while later, the boardstate had evolved to multiple creatures facing off to each other. Even my next Serra could not do anything due to the bands of creatures opposing it.
Edwin was taking care of my creatures by killing them off with walls and giant growths, and swords to plowshares, of course.
The game dragged on, and on, and even though I had a Jayemdae tome and was drawing more cards, I was wondering if I would be able to take Edwin down before running out of cards. Since there was no timetwister or feldon's cane available, there was no option to prevent that.
In the meantime, he was playing more creatures to go on the counter attack.
I was happy to play my personal incarnation, in hopes that that would punch a hole in his defenses. This was after my Shivan Dragon had been also removed.
I mean really, how am I supposed to damage someone that keeps removing my creatures?
In the end, I just kept pushing and eventually prevailed after a really long and grinding game, just before running out of cards. The second game was also not going great when I played 2 Serra Angels, which were both taken out by Terror. There was just so much removal in there, that I was getting a bit desperate.
Also, my third Serra was removed, and so was my personal incarnation. Again. The game took forever, and in the end, I had a choice of playing either a Shivan Dragon when Edwin was tapped out, or braingeyser him for his library -1. Meaning he would have all his cards in his had except one, and one turn to use them. This was a risky move, but one does not play oldschool to play it safe all the time. I was just hoping there were no 2 berserks in his deck, since that would have killed me. But, there were not, and I won the third game while all the rest of the tournament was waiting for us to finish.
The next round started immediately afterwards, giving us no time to think about our game, we were off to round 2 immediately. I played Chris, who was playing troll disco. Although my lions would be pretty useless against that, i felt I had a good chance, especially with my sideboard with some extra removal.
Creatures were removed quite a lot in this game, and I shot at least one troll from the table when it was not able to regenerate.
The games were a lot quicker than against Edwin, since there were no walls to take care of. My Jayemdae tome did some work before being destroyed, and that meant at some time I had 2 trolls were my opponent had just one. That meant I could get ahead in damage as long as I would carefully keep plenty of black mana open to regenerate. That worked out in the end.
After Chris said something about hating armageddon, I was feeling a little bit sad for him, since I had boarded one in. I played some cards, he removed them.
After a really elaborate play where I first had to do some math, then think about how he would respond, I played armageddon with no creatures in play, after he had played hypnotic specter. I had tapped all my land, then played one extra, played control magic, after which he activated his orb, after which he activated his orb, which I disenchanted with my last mana. That left me with the specter in play. I figured that would be the winning play, but the specter was bolted one turn later. That meant the game had to go on a bit longer, with this board state in the end. Again, a really long game, which I eventually won. We made good use of the time for really loooong games. OS at its best. I was not sure how I would like this format without power, but the games are definitely taking a lot longer, and that also makes them more interesting, I think.
So, with 2 wins on the first 2 rounds that took forever, I had a feeling the deck was going to be okay, I was on to Frank, to see if I could make the Alpha Serra Angel and the personal incarnation do some damage in this next game. The first creature to try and do some damage was Sedge troll.
One of my trolls was quickly removed from the game. I played a tome, which was destroyed, along with some other of my permanents. I managed to get through a Braingeyser though, which would make for a good chance for a win, with my troll and lions on the board.
These were eventually also wiped out though, and there was a hypnotic specter staring me in the face. Fortunately, I had enough mana to play everything my deck could produce, including the personal incarnation. The other big creature I had in my deck showed up before that though.
The dragon proved a successful win condition, and we were off to game 2. And there, Serra finally got her chance to do some damage after being removed over and over again.
In fact, Serra was doing really well. Fortunately for her, there were not that many swamps at the opposite side of the table, so the nightmare was not big enough to stop her. Lucky Serra, and lucky me..
This meant that not only did she do some damage, she won me the game! That made up for all the time she was swept off the board by a terror or swords to plowshares.
This gave me some time to look around at other creations, like Roy's mono black playing a Serra/Stasis deck. That did not look too friendly and a real hassle to play against.
So, might there be a chance of me actually winning this tournament? At 3-0, the deck seemed pretty convincing so far. Then I had to play Edo, who is a) a really good player and b) was playing a CSO version of The Deck. That would be a hard one.
After having some cards countered off the board, I managed to pull through a mindtwist, while doing some damage with a savannah lions. Edo punched a Serra of the board none the less with some good topdecking. In the end though, the first game was mine.
The second game started off less promising, although I had a lions on the board on turn one, it was also removed turn one. Edo got his strategy working, and I was eventually down 1-1 after he had beat me with a Serra.
I did some extra sideboarding, since I had not seen a single creature on the first game I had not expected multiple Serra's. I boarded in control magic and an extra power sink, and we were off to game 3. The game started off reasonable well, but sort of landed in a problem situation when Edo took my Serra Angel.
Since I had no blue mana, my only hope was the red elemental blast. Since I expected Edo to have counterspells ready, I decided to try and wait for blue mana before using it. The mana never showed up, and neither did one of my 4 disenchants. I tried the red blast, and as expected, it was countered while I had powersink in my hand. Oh, and psionic blast. And control magic. Oh, and I forgot to mention, blue mana was produced by the most lands in my deck. They just did not show up. Well, as I know too well, you can't win this game without a bit of luck, but you sure as hell can lose it with bad luck. So 1-2 it was, and I was 3-1 and out of a chance of winning. Staring at the solutions in your hand without being able to cast them felt a bit bad, I must admit.
Oh, and when was the last time you saw a Serra Angel being spell blasted? That certainly has been years for me.
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| Smiles all around, OS at its best |
In the meantime, the stasis deck was still going strong, and this was the longest match of this round.
When that last really long match was done, it was time for the last round, where I could see if I could make it to 4-1, with a chance that if Edo lost his last match (okay, not really a chance here, but there's always hope) I could still win. Well, theoretically. We were off to a pretty quick start when I played a first turn lions and could actually start attacking with it for a change, since there were no bolts or walls of wood in the way. Even though that last option would be nice to see again, but I do not expect that anytime soon. One of my lands was quickly destroyed, but the lion could keep going.
I was happy with the plenty of lands in my deck, which let me cast more stuff. And even though plenty of my cards were destroyed, there was more where that came from, due to the small advantage of a small braingeyser in the beginning of the game. My tome did not get that far unfortunately, but it had been in play at least. Meanwhile, my trolls were on a rampage in a group.
The group of trolls was hindered a bit by blockers like other trolls and a bolt here and there, but eventually, they managed to get through and the first game was mine.
The second game, there was no blazing start from my side.
An icy had shown up just before my Shivan, unfortunately. But I was confident I would get rid of that due to my 4 disenchants in my deck.
I had kept one disenchant on hand, which was needed for another target than the icy, when control magic hit the board.
I managed to get rid of the icy pretty quickly as well (4 disenchants and a shatter should work, and it did). I was expecting swords and terrors from the colors on the other side, so I decided to not wast time and just attack for 10. If he topdecked an elimination card, I would have to play something else. If he did not, the game would be over next turn.
And it turned out, the elimination card did not show up! Swing twice with the dragon was enough for the win :) my inner Timmy was happy, though I was a bit disappointed at not damaging someone through the entire day with my Personal Incarnation. But hitting someone with a big Shivan feels like a really close second choice to that. Meanwhile, other games were still going, including this really "nice" vise matchup.
Kobus was of course, very happy with this. So was I, really :) How cool is that. I love spice like this.
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| A triumphant pair of Dingus Eggs |
And then it was time to announce the winners. Edo won, of course, since he is a phenomenal player wielding a really good deck. Kobus won the spice price, rightly so!
I was second, and I won the guy who was not first and not last - trophy. At least I would be taking something home :) The trophies were really nice branded wooden constructions. A nice addition to my magic-stuff.
Fortunately, there was time to play some more games, while snacks were being ordered for dinner. I played Roy, and finally got Personal incarnation into play without it being removed right away.
And I managed to do damage with it! At least it had done something this day :)
After a couple of games, the food arrived and we had dinner together with typical Dutch junk food.
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| Roy with a Frikandel speciaal. It is just something we eat here, don't ask. |
After dinner, some of the guys helped out clearing out the tournament tents and stuff, and then it was time to leave.
After which we played some more with a smaller group over at Robbie his house, which was also really nice for the rest of the evening. I got home pretty late, but it was worth it. It was a great day of playing oldschool again. Many, many thanks for Wouter and his family for sharing their backyard for this great event, and thanks to Wouter and Fulco for the organisation. I absolutely loved it and hope to be invited again some next time!
