Knights of Thorn XII

Ah, the knights of Thorn. For over ten years, this tournament has been organized by Mari to get a nice day out playing Oldschool. This year, no less than 70 people attended. I don't know if that is a record, but it certainly is a large number compared to some other KOT-tournaments I have been to. I tend to make a lot of different decks over the year to play with, and this time was no different. After selling off some other cardboard, I decided to just go for it and make my playset Juzam Djinns complete with the fourth one. Fulco had a couple on sale, and I got it from him. 

That meant that I wanted to celebrate finishing this playset by playing with it, of course. I started off by trying to build a deck that used to make a big impression on me in 1994, called "The house of pain". It was a very feared deck in the day and it had also done very well at the time. When I tried to put it together though, I ran into the problem that black is my least favorite (other than splashing some black cards that I love, like hell's caretaker en Yawgmoth demon) color. That meant that I have not invested enough in the black duallands. Also, that deck had 4 Sedge trolls in it, and since you have to play that with black, I only have one unlimited Sedge troll. I wanted to make that playset complete this year, but since the price spiked to above a 100 euro's per Troll, I no longer felt like doing that. To make a long story short, I could not make black/red decks with the reprint policy at the knights of Thorn. It is rather lenient with 10 reprints, but that was not enough to finish the decks I wanted to build. So, I went on to see what I could build. With some help from Johan who was kind enough to provide me with some of his cards, I would be able to build a deadguy ale build (which is DGA for short, which funnily is also abbreviation for a director of a company who is also a major shareholder in Dutch. This is why the first time someone texted me with DGA I was confused as to what that meant in a oldschool context). 

Anyway, with the reprint policy covered, I could go on and play with my 4 Juzam Djinns! There was a bit of doubt if I would be able to go, since one of my good friends is in very bad shape, and I offered help if needed. In the end, that was not necessary for that Saturday, so KOT it was. After meeting the many familiar faces, Fulco handed me my 4th djinn which I added to my deck. After a speech from Mari, it was time to start. 

My first opponent had quite a blazing start. I opened with an underground sea, he opened with land, lionx, mox, sol ring. Okay. Well, not a Serendib is good I suppose.. 

I used my time walk that I wanted to save up for later to get alongside with the mana, and with Mox Sapphire I cast my first Juzam of the day. Now let's see if I can actually damage my opponent with that before a swords to plowshares hits. 

And the swords to plowshares did not show up. A couple of turns went, with my opponent countering some stuff, I played mind twist to lure a counterspell, which happened, then cast hypnotic specter so he would have to choose between Juzam and Specter when the swords showed up. 

After some exchanging blows with the Su-Chi, I sacrificed one of my factories to stay way out of psionic blast range, and the Juzam and specter went to win the first game of the day, accompanied by a mishra's factory. Well, a good start then. Juzam in play, doing damage. Cool. 

My opponent opened with another sol ring in game 2. I did not have Juzam with my lotus, but I did have a specter, so I went for that. The demonic tutor also helped. 

I quickly got some damage through, costing my opponent valuable cards. I played another specter, followed by an ancestral recall. My opponent used his disenchant on my mox before losing it, only to face my chaos orb a turn later. 

It was quite a one side game, this, and then Juzam Djinn showed up, which meant activating orbs, and mine got the better of his, decided the game in my favor. 

I am not a very experienced DGA player, this hand seemed slow to me, but also not the worst. I decided to keep it against Remko, who was playing his living plane deck. 

Remko got on great with first turn fastbond, then playing some lands. My deck was kind enough to give me an Ancestral recall on turn 2, which I played, and was countered. Next turn gave me a dark ritual. I used that to speed up the process a bit, since otherwise Remko might use an elimination card on my lands. Unfortunately, my Juzam was met with Swords to plowshares. 

I retaliated with Hypnotic specter, and sinkhole on one of his lands. 

The specter proved very problematic, due to the loss of cards, so I won the first game. The second game Remko opened with Land tax, I opened with Library of Alexandria. That would be an interesting experience. I could just keep the library and optimize my hand for bigger blows later on, or just let hem take the extra lands and be confident that the library would do it's work. I chose the latter because of the rest of my cards in hand, although I do not remember exactly what they were. 

I kept Remko low on land with a sinkhole here and there, and started attacking with my Mishra's factories, because Remko had played greater realm of preservation, so black cards would not do much. 

I eventually got disenchant for both land tax and greater realm. 

I played Su-Chi, Remko played living plane. I also got disenchant for that. The next turn I was facing an interesting decision. Would I do the sensible thing, and play Ancestral recall on my self, and Mind twist on Remko with my lotus. Or, I could do the cool thing, and play Juzam Djinn and Armageddon. Definitely not the best play in this context, but much cooler, so.. 

That proved to be enough to win the game, so I was 2-0 in 2 rounds. Nice!

The game was over pretty quickly, which gave me some time to take pictures around the tournament, including Thomas "Timmy" playing his mono blue Timmy's Spellbook deck, and Marten playing an absolutely cool mono blue deck with both steal artifact and control magic. 

And fellow Arnhem resident Thijs, playing an original Green/Black/White deck that did really well. 

After lunch it was time for round 2. I was facing Thomas playing his mono blue deck, which opened with Library, giving him a quick advantage over my deck. Since I did not have a ritual or lotus, I was slower and played the Chaos orb to get rid of the library. 

I managed to get out Juzam Djinn when Thomas played Prodigal Sorcerer. Unfortunately, Thomas got an Ancestral recall after that, meaning I was in for a tough game, since his deck also playes Maze of ith and control magic. 

All I could do is keep up the pressure, so I played my Sengir Vampire after he played Maze for my Juzam Djinn. 

He was still way ahead of my with cards in hand, and played a wall of air. Which is a cool card, but not if you are trying to win with a Sengir. 

He took my Sengir after that, with diamond vally in play and started hitting me with factories. It was completely hopeless unless I would draw into a timetwister or braingeyser. 

That did not happen, so I was down 0-1 in the third round. I decided to keep a dark ritual hypnotic specter hand, hoping Thomas would not play a wall of air on turn one so I would at least have a random advantage of taking a card from his hand. 

That worked, I took braingeyser, which would have given him some way to make up for card advantage later on in the give, if we would get there. I much rather have taken a control magic or wall of air, but hey, there was still more time. Also, the time walk I had in my opening hand helped to force the issue. 

I kept going at Thomas his hand relentlessly, hoping to make sure he would not get to a wall of air of worse, control magic on his turn four. 

I played underworld dreams to keep going, but was a bit nervous when he tapped four mana on his turn four, which was... 

An Icy manipulator. Pfew.. that meant another attack and another card lost by Thomas on my turn, and that was enough to seal the game. 1-1. On to game number 3! Although my third hand in this match was not as good as in the second game, it did have land-ritual-hypnotic specter, so I decided to keep it. Thomas played a turn 2 time walk. Oh-Oh.. 

I managed to play sinkhole and his Maze of Ith, and terror on his wall of air. He played another Maze, I played a Juzam, which meant he would have to choose between lots of damage or losing cards. Thomas decided to play diamond valley before playing control magic, which makes sense, but he was unlucky enough that I was able to get to that with mind twist before he could play it. 

There was still a maze of Ith though, so even though the game had swung greatly in my favour, a topdecked wall of air or control magic would still stop me dead in my tracks. A chaos orb was able to get rid of the maze though, which my work much easier. 

The turn after that, I was able to get another Juzam Djinn through, which was too much, even though Thomas kept playing valiantly, blocking a Juzam with a factory, pumping it to 3, then sacrificing it to the diamond valley to gain 3 life. 

It turned out it was not enough, and I won 2-1. So, 3-0 in 3 matches, which meant that even if I would lose the rest, I would still go 3-3, so not a bad result either way. Next match however, I was paired against Koos, who is a great player who plays combo decks and the deck to great results. I kept a hand with turn one Juzam Djinn, to see if that would work quickly enough against a combo deck. I probably would have played it anyway. Why play Lotus and Juzam Djinn in one deck if you cannot use them when you get them. Koos however, was doing pretty well for himself. Playing a volcanic island and 3 moxen, followed by a Sylvan Library. Wow. I remember thinking that if he is playing twiddlevault, I may only get one more turn after this. 

Koos was visibly very satisfied with his first turn :)

I attacked with the Juzam, but Koos was not done with his powerplay. He paid extra life for the Sylvan Library, than proceeded to play Ancestral Recall. 

While Koos was dropping a sol ring and another mox, and a tropical island, I was looking at my hand, unhappy that neither of my lands produced white mana. 

Koos played balance, destroying my Juzam, and then countered the underworld dreams I played on the next turn. 

He then played braingeyser for a enormous amount of cards, and won with powermonolith combo. My next hand was reasonable or even pretty good if I would draw into underground sea or city of brass or black lotus. A 16% chance. A black mana source was a close to 30% chance. Just not enough to go for it, so I mulliganed. 

Looking back, I should have just kept that hand, because my next hand was even worse, so again, mulligan. 

I ended up with these 5 cards, not great. 

The second turn, I drew a a ritual that I used to play a specter, hoping to disrupt Koos his game. 

Koos played a mox, a land and fireballed my specter. He just played his game while I was putting on some pressure with the factories. 

I tried forcing the issue by playing Juzam Djinn, which was countered. I don't exactly remember what I played next, but I did decide to play something because I did not have a disenchant in hand. Koos had a power sink, tapping me out in the process of countering me. He then played timetwister, and won with the combo he drew out of that. 

Should I have waited, and not played anything? Maybe. He might have played Timetwister anyway next turn since there was not much else to do, and still won. Anyway, on to the next round. I was 3-1, so I should not be complaining. I thought I had a pretty reasonable opening with dark ritual and vampire in hand, together with a factory. Well, when I started, it looked that that would work out if my opponent would not draw into a giant growth. 

My swords to plowshares took care of impending bigger threats, while I could attack with the vampire. 

However, an Armageddon and a swords to plowshares from the other side took care of that idea. 

It took a long time, a sinkhole on the white mana and a hypnotic specter to take care of the rest of the game, but boy, this took way longer than I had expected. 

The second game, I was in for a problem, because even though I had lots of power cards to start off with, there was a whirling dervish staring at me that I could not get rid of quickly. This is where the red cards I would have liked to play would have come in handy, but hey, you play with what you have. And what I had, was apparently 3 cities of brass and and nothing to take care of the dervish, which made me lose in the end. The third game was not much different, a mulligan from my side, a whirling dervish on the other side with a couple of turns, no swords to plowshares or balance, so I just ended up losing. This was the one game I was really missing out on the missing red duals, earthquake would have been so good. Or a Troll, for that matter. 

So, with all hopes of a top 8 lost, I was 3-2 going into the last round, again facing a deck with lots of green. From the last game against dervishes, that did not bode well, but one has to try something, right?

With a third turn specter, a fourth turn Juzam Djinn, I was feeling pretty okay of my chances. So long as no Erhnam Djinn showed up, I would be okay, or at least, that was what I was thinking at the time. 

I had not expected a force of nature, however :) wow. Okay, that was unexpected, but still awesome to see. 

In the end though, I was able to get rid of the force of nature with swords to plowshares and though that took a lot of time to get back from in life numbers, I had help from underworld dreams. That decided the game in my favor, 1-0. 

The third game I decided to board in the spirit links for the first time, mainly as an extra weapon against dervishes, but also to get ahead in life quickly and stay on top of things. Even if a force of nature were to attack me, I would still be able to even out life with a spirit linked Juzam Djinn. So, hoping for not to many giant growths and factories, I went for that option. Unfortunately, I only got to attack very little times before 2 factories showed up and stopped me dead in my tracks. I now had to wait for a disenchant or swords to plowshares to get me through. 

Or, I could just go for another Juzam Djinn and than hope for a win with own factories. 

The extra Juzam Djinn proved enough to win the match, making me end 4-2, 12 points, one short to be able to make it into the top 8. Looking back, the terrible hands against Koos made me feel that I had a chance of winning that match with a slightly better draw and against the dervishes... well, that was just too quick. Without extra's to get rid of the dervishes, I would probably lose that matchup more than I would win them. Still, both lost matches were 1-2, so not a bad chance. Overall I was pretty satisfied with the decks performance. I could take some more pictures, so I could take another picture of Marten playing that fabulous mono blue build of his. 

I also took a lesson from the master of Juzams, playing a casual game against Roy, who has been an awesome black player for years now. 

It turned out to be a loooong grind game, with all most of my Juzams removed from the game, and in the end, I ended up losing because I ran out of cards before Roy did! It was a really long, grinding game in which all of our Juzams had been in play and either destroyed or removed. Absolutely epic grind :)

also, there was no way Roy was going to win with creatures :)

Koos had been kicked out of the top 8 in his first round, even though he went undefeated in the swiss. The curse of being first in top 8, I suppose. In the end, Robbie won out in the finals, in which some very interesting plays were made by his opponent. Leaving him with an active library even though you had the option to strip mine it, was quite the decision and I was not sure what to make of that. I suppose it was really late in the evening, and one's decisions get worse with fatigue. Robbie was the obvious better player in the finals, so he won deservedly. Congrats, Robbie!

After the top 8 there was a raffle, in which I won a print of the artwork of living plane. This is a card I love to play with, so really happy with that. Thanks to Mari for organizing a great tournament, and for all that showed up to make for a great day. Thanks to you all, and see you next time!

Dual Brews III: Fallen Angel

Welcome back to The Dual Brews, a series where we shine a light on Old School Magic: The Gathering cards that never quite made it out of the binder. Along the way, we might uncover a hidden gem—or more likely, just confirm why these cards were forgotten in the first place. Either way, Bjorn and Johan are up for the challenge. In each episode, they independently brew a “budget” deck (by Old School standards) built around a single, underappreciated card.

Last time we explored the card Enchantment Alteration (link here, thank you for all the feedback), now we are taking a closer look at Fallen Angel.

Bjorn’s take on Fallen Angel

When we were talking about a new card to pick, Johan suggested we take a black card, and then just go on with every color of the color wheel. That seems as good as any way to organize this series of articles, so black it was. After some options, we decided on Fallen Angel. This is one of those cards where the rules text has not changed that much. 

Currently, the rules text reads: Flying - Sacrifice a creature: This creature gets +2/+1 until end of turn.

So. pretty straightforward, then. We need creatures to feed to the angel, and have the Angel beat our opponent. My first inclination would be to take out one of the decks I actually played the Fallen Angel in in a tournament, but since that deck is loaded with expensive cards like power, I toned it down a bit. But I simply could not resist the pull of 2 other cards that I love to play that seem to be made to work together with this Angel. 

I mean, do I even need to explain? Tetravus turns into more creatures, which you can both feed to the Fallen Angel, and the Hell’s caretaker to get more of them. Is it really that simple? Well, no, not really. Since all of these cards have a really big bull’s eye on their forehead, and all of them take quite a lot of time to get in play. So, when thinking about other colors to combine with these lovely creatures, it would have to be green. Green has small creatures that give mana, which ramps up the engine, and when they are no longer needed, you can sacrifice them to the Angel. This deck kind of builds itself. 

Since people will want to kill all of these creatures, we will need something to make sure that does not happen. At least, not too soon. So, let’s add some spell blasts, just in case. If you do not want a list with 12 duallands, you can also forgo the Spell Blast and go for Avoid Fate. This is not as good, but good enough in most situations, since bolt, disenchant and swords to plowshares will be the cards you want to counter most. I also added a Hypnotic Specter, since they’re just very good, and they will draw the creature kill cards so your angel has a better chance. 

Since this deck wants to kill its opponent with a big Fallen Angel, you do not want a Maze of Ith on the other side, so I added some Ice Storms to take care of that. Icy and other artifacts are taken care of by some crumbles. Some carddraw and utilities that are really good but don’t break the bank fill out the rest of the deck, and then you end up with this:

Though not tier 1 by a long distance, I am pretty sure you will not go 0-7 on the next tournament if you were to try it. It can both block pretty well if you get the machine engine going which will give you lots of Tetravites. Also, winning with a big, berserked Angel is also a nice option to finish off with. Enjoy!

Johan’s take on Fallen Angel Perhaps Fallen Angel is played more than its predecessors Personal Incarnation (link) and Enchantment Alteration (link), I would argue it is still underplayed. Like the iconic Juggernaut, it suffers from the same glaring weakness: three toughness makes it a very legitimate target for all the Lightning Bolts and Chain Lightnings flying around. That said, any creature with an activated ability that requires no mana deserves closer inspection. At a fundamental level, there are two extreme ways to approach a typical Fallen Angel deck. The first is a creature-heavy build packed with perfect sacrifice fodder. Remember the Kobolds from Legends? It takes very little effort to flood the battlefield with them and quickly turn Fallen Angel into a serious threat.

If not for the Fallen Angel, Ashnod’s Altar and Fireball make good use of the ‘free’ Kobolds.

However, I would like to take a different approach. Unfortunately I fell the victim to an infamous ‘Jeroen’ brew that completely knocked me over, but luckily gave me inspiration for this edition of Dual Brews:

Yes, a mono black deck that dares to gamble on a Kormus Bell to make the Fallen Angel shine even more. Just keep your fingers crossed that your opponent does not cast Triskelion or Earthquakes before getting an opportunity to attack with Fallen Angel. I know that Living Plane can fulfill the same role as Kormus Bell, but at least the latter can be one sided (which is definitely not always beneficial).

With our own set budget constraints in the back of my mind, I have managed to stick to a Mono Black configuration. Red would be the first color I would add, not only the likes of Lightning Bolt and Shatter (and Blood Moon in sideboard), but especially Rukh Egg and Disharmony. Nothing feels better than stealing and sacrificing the stolen goods!

Still in Mono Black, we cannot escape the general good cards. Looking at you, Hypnotic Specter, Demonic Tutor and Mind Twist (not very gentleman like, I admit). To properly put the spotlight on the card at hand, I will include the full four copies of Fallen Angels in the deck. Triskelion can tag along with the creatures in the deck, serving two purposes:

I) Shoot down any opposing Swamps;

II) Deal three damage, then gets devoured by Fallen Angel

All in all, that leads to the following:

This may not be the most radical build, but the mono-black core is powerful enough to support a creative twist. Fallen Angel’s ability inevitably invites comparison to the GOAT of Old School Magic—Atog. While Atog remains the superior card, largely thanks to the abundance of cheap artifacts most decks already play, Fallen Angel’s evasion is the sweet cherry on top. Give it a try—you won’t be disappointed.