Organizer’s Report

This past weekend, for the second year in a row, I was the organizer of the 93/94 tournament at the BSK gaming convention in Borås, Sweden. We had 26 players, running 5 rounds of swiss with a top 8, starting at 5 pm. In my opinion, 26 players is maybe the perfect size for a tournament. Top 8 makes sense, it doesn’t take all day, and you can talk to everybody you want to. It is a bit sad that BSK has fallen so much; two years ago, it used to be the second yearly Shark tournament after N00bCon and likely the second largest tournament in Sweden and the world before old school became a thing in the US and Italy. But it still exists and it usually brings out a lot of good people, including parts of the original Gothenburg crowd. There were a large number of Sharks in attendance, I can tell you that.

This is the final standings after the swiss:

Olle Råde decided to drop and have dinner instead (he was playing a straightforward UR serendib/atog burn deck), but these are the decks of the actual top 8:

Losing with Lich

Now, over to my personal experience with the tournament. First, the documentation of the necessary pre-event burgers and beer.

Now, this is the deck I played:

I have been brewing with Lich for a while and I believe this mirrorball shell is the best home for it. Basically, you just replace Mana Vault with Dark Rituals and play a few more black lands. Lich gives you a true combo finish against control, where the mirror plan is slow, clunky, and vulnerable, as well as another path to brokenness. I’m not saying it’s better than normal mirrorball but at the same time it isn’t strictly worse either.

However, after that round 1 win, the wheels quite literally soon fell off. I did have a combo turn where I went ancestral, wheel, recall wheel, drawing 17 cards and still not finding what I needed. I played against The Deck where he kept in 4 Swords when I brought in my creatures. I also did some grave misplays. These kind of combo decks are some of the harder to play in the format for sure. I ended on a 2-3 record.

I think the list is mostly fine although my cutting of Pearl and Balance are likely wrong. The real bad thing was however the sideboard. I went too deep here, trying the Erhnams against control, the Trolls as additional threats when transforming and also defense against midrange, and finally Disks to get rid of all the troublesome permanents like Underworld Dreams and Blood Moon. But that’s just not good enough. It doesn’t work the way it should. I probably ought to play some other removal, likely a combination of Disenchant and The Abyss, possibly with some Mazes thrown in, and then at least one Mana Short against control. And I need to do more work on how to board in different matchups. I could also see another Fastbond and/or Dark Heart maindeck. The slots are tight but some things will have to go.

I’m not unhappy, though. Maybe with my plays, but not really with the result. I chose the deck because I had played a bunch of very spiky decks the past few events (The Deck, Troll Rack, Dibatog) and wanted to combo a bit, and also that I didn’t really want to try to win the tournament I TO’d that much. Success in that respect at least.

Now a very busy period with 3 events in 4 weeks have passed, and I’ll write about some other things. If nothing else, there’s a half-written Rereading Centurion post laying around here somewhere. Stay tuned.