"I'd really love to play Serra Angel again." - Danny Friedman 2012





The next time Old School MTG came within my purview was when I was living in Oakland, California sometime during late 2013 or early-mid 2014. Steve Menendian had recently become interested, and was looking to drum up interest for a Bay Area contingency. At the time we were testing Vintage regularly at his apartment, and I clearly remember him uttering something to the tune of " Jayemdae Tome is the Jace of 93/94" (note that there was no Vintage-relevant Jace aside from JTMS at the time).





I ended up buying a handful of random Alpha and Arabian Nights playables over the next few months and thinking about decks. Steve set up the first NorCal Old School MTG tournament at Eudemonia in May of 2014. Unfortunately, I was in the process of moving from the Bay Area to Chicago, and couldn't make the tournament (it was the weekend before I made the drive from Oakland to Chicago in my self-built car {for the second time}, and was busy getting my life in order prior to the move).









Interest Turns to Obsession After moving to Chicago, I immediately started playing Vintage regularly with my good friend Jason Jaco (of Eternal Central ). Jaco had already been brainstorming 93/94 decks, and it wasn't long before we were slinging Old School cardboard multiple times a week. Within a few months we had a regular playgroup of degenerate nerds who now refer to themselves primarily as "Old School players" above any other MTG-related affiliations.

Since the summer of 2014, I had been vigorously playing Old School and buying cards at a financially unsustainable pace. By the winter of 2014, I had a collection that could put together most blue-based decks as well as a decent collection of Unlimited dual lands. Jaco even ran the first Eternal Central Old School tournament at Eternal Weekend 2014









By early 2015, Magnus and I had started talking back and forth about the idea of traveling internationally to battle with "$20k decks for a $0.10 card." The seed was planted, but n00bcon 2015 was slightly outside of of the realm of possibility with work and finances.





Over the remainder of 2015, I continued to play and promote the format, including the creation of this blog. I played in a Old School '95 tournament (the "Conference of Professionals") in NYC with my friends from Land Lotus Juzam . Jaco held the 54-person Eternal Weekend 2015 Old School tournament attracting a diverse group of players from first-timers and likeminded nerds like myself, to Randy Buehler (who eventually went on to win the event).









Preparations for Civilized Dueling My interest and enthusiasm for this format continued to grow with each game I played, and it became all too apparent that I'd be venturing to the Cold North to duel for a Shark . When cheap plane tickets and an invitation from Magnus surfaced, there was no question.

After purchasing airfare to n00bcon 8, I started brainstorming deck ideas. After throwing around a few ideas and soliciting some input from my local play group, I started testing a UWR control deck harnessing main deck Blood Moon as a way to combat five-color mana bases and Mishra's Factory (the most common win condition in the restricted- Strip Mine -metagame in Gothenburg).





I tested builds, each with reasonable success, at both the recent Chicago Old School tournament and Card & Board Old School tournament in Archbold, OH. It was no surprise that my biggest losses were to decks that were either largely unaffected by Blood Moon , or decks running 3-4 Disenchant













It was my thought that in a metagame that seemed to have so many copies/variants of The Deck in the top eight (in my own belief due to the restriction of Strip Mine in the Swedish meta ), that a deck predominantly composed of answers, and in itself had an answer to Mishra's Factory as well as the whole The Deck mana base, that this deck would be a strong Shark contender.





The final UWR Control list I decided on for n00bcon 8





With a deck list decided on, airfare purchased, and accommodations secured (thank you Kalle!!!!), I was ready to fly 4,100 miles to play Magic to ***AT BEST*** end up with a card that would serve to make my Old School sideboards worse going forward.



Journey into the Abyss

Initially, my flight to Gothenburg had a layover in Brussels. That being said, two days before my flight out of Chicago was scheduled to leave, the recent terrorist attacks at the Brussels Airport and the Maalbeek metro station occurred. Not only was this a window into the depths of horror that humanity is capable of, but it also put a severe dent in my travel plans. Fortunately, after a couple calls to the airline, I was able to re-route my flight through Frankfurt, free of charge, and only arrive two hours later than initially scheduled.









Nothing more quintessentially Swedish than Volvos in the airport

After finding Kalle, I got myself some Swedish kronor(s?), and we took a bus into the city to meet up with Magnus. Kalle was extremely prepared and brought beer along, which was immediately consumed.





After meeting up with Magnus, we ventured to one of the few state-owned liquor stores ( Systembolaget ). Sweden has a government monopoly on liquor and higher-alcohol-content beer, so it was important for us to purchase our beer for the weekend while the Systembolaget was open, given reduced holiday hours due to Easter. All the beer we purchased was sold as individual bottles/cans, so we ended up leaving with our hands pretty full between beer, luggage, and n00bcon prizes that Magnus had with him.





We then took another bus to Kalle's apartment to assemble some of the n00bcon supplies, drink, and game a little. We manually cut the n00bcon name stickers, I lost many consecutive games of Vintage to Magnus's "white weenie" deck, and I got a glimpse of Kalle's amazing collection of cardboard.





The pimpest of white borders

You may recognize some of Kalle's previous work

After sleeping in until past 2PM, Kalle and I started thinking about the Vintage tournament soon approaching. Kalle had a control deck running Deathrite Shaman and Dack Fayden at its core that seemed really strong. I had brought a 61-card Grixis Thieves build that I had sitting around at home that I had liked in testing. The inclusion of Mind Twist , and Impulse made the deck a bit more interesting than the average build.





















Anyways, after Kalle tweaked his deck a bit, we left for the tournament being held at the University of Gothenburg campus. We commuted with a combination of bus rides and walking, and I got to see some of the city on our way. Gothenburg is a truly beautiful city to walk through and I was continuously blown away by the architecture. It feels nothing like anywhere in America due to the age of the city along with the density of green space (at least from what I saw).









The tournament site itself was also pretty interesting, and looked like no university I have ever been in before from an architectural standpoint.





Interesting ceiling

Interesting mural

I had the judge check my alters and he ok'ed everything except for my two altered Mana Drain s. Fortunately, we figured this would be the case and Kalle lent me one, and I took an unaltered one from my Old School deck. We then quickly wrote out our deck lists and the tournament began shortly after.





Brief Tournament Synopsis





I also cast a Mind Twist for six against DPS (piloted by none other than the great Joakim Almelund) when my opponent had mulliganned. He had his Library of Alexandria in play, just needing one more draw step for activation.





At the start of the final round of swiss, I still had the highest record in the room and drew with my opponent again. This gave me time to play Old School with Nikita, who was at the Vintage tournament (not playing) with Constantine who was playing in the event. Nikita's mono green aggro deck was good, often winning games by wide margins.

My third match at table one for the day

Constantine's feature match against my Oath opponent

At the end of the final round, I went into the top eight as the third seed. I was matched up against Joakim with DPS and I was on the play. Seems good!









Luck was not with me in my games against Joakim, and he beat me in two fast games. Sadly, I cannot report that I became the Swedish National Vintage Champion, just a six place finish. I was awarded an FNM Brainstorm , then Kalle and I left the University, had dinner with Hardy and his brother, Erik, then walked all the way back to his place. Gothenburg was so nice to walk through, and the walk had me in great spirits.





Vintage Side Event at Gothcon

In the spirit of marathoning MTG, Kalle and I got a couple hours of sleep and ended up back at Gothenburg University to play in the Sunday Vintage side event. I brought the same 76, and Kalle had a new U/R build packing Goblin Welder s and Intuition s—cooler than Mind Twist . We caught the bus and walked a bit to get there. Gothenburg continued to be beautiful.









Kalle and I both did very well overall. The tournament was five rounds of straight swiss. I ended up with one loss to Erik Andersson, a Swedish Vintage player slinging Pyromancers , and Kalle ended up with two, one being to me). When I sat down I noticed his Neurosis hoodie, so we talked about music and discovered we both were fans of Slint . Our games were awesome and broken, with him coming out on top.





Crazy trades from Midstage's Old School binder

My last match, against Kalle, was very broken and felt very close during the first two games. Game three ended early with the most broken start into a turn one (technically turn two with the Time Walk Mind Twist for seven. I ended up playing Jace into Time Walk on the first turn, and Jace-storming into the only cards that would have allowed for a seven-card Mind Twist on Kalle. Got very lucky.

There's no feeling like a turn one Mind Twist for seven

(on either end)

I ended up getting third place, winning a bit of store credit from Mindstage, and picked up a Land Tax and an Alpha Karma

Spoils of the weekend

A gift from my host

After the tournament, Kalle and I met up with David Chambers and his girlfriend, Shakrah for dinner at The Old Beefeater Inn in Gothenburg. Beers were consumed, good conversation was rampant, and the fish and chips were the perfect sustenance. The walk to and from again showed the inherent beauty of the city, and I find myself itching to go back already.









Somehow, after constant MTG for four days, Kalle and I went back to his place after dinner and jammed more MTG (playing with EC B/R and legalities) until 4:15AM, when my cab showed up and took me to the airport, headed back to Chicago by way of Frankfurt.





The four days I spent in Gothenburg were an absolute whirlwind and I enjoyed every minute of it. I'll definitely be going back next year! I wanted to quickly thank all of the friends that made this possible:

Kalle Nord for letting me stay with him and making my stay the best it could be

Magnus De Laval for being the steward this format, setting everything up for me, and being a total badass

Marc Lanigra for the most ridiculous story I have ever heard, revolving around mountains of $20 bills and buying $100 steaks

Finally, all of the amazing Swedish and international Old School MTG'ers that I met during this trip—you were all incredibly kind and it was an honor to meet and hang out with all of you Until next time, //Danny

I first saw Magnus's blog back in 2012, and (in severe retrospect) I can now say that my initial reaction was pretty far off the mark. I don't remember exactly how I found my way to the Old School MTG blog, but after paging through the existing content, my only thought was about my first favorite creature in Magic. Rather than taking a more active interest in 93/94, I dismissed the format/blog and returned to complaining about the printing of Blightsteel Colossus While I had to scan my passport just to move between the A and Z gates of Terminal 1 in the Frankfurt Airport (not even to exit), Landvetter in Gothenburg didn't even have any security/passport-checking required to exit to the city. No complaints there. Kalle 'Egget' Nord , who was gracious enough to allow me, a near-total stranger, to stay with him, met up with me at the airport.I was matched up against Hannes Löfgren, my round three opponent from n00bcon, for round six. We had the two highest records in the room and chose to draw. This gave me some time to drink some water and watch Kalle's feature match.