The format is growing and we have a quite nice number of 8 players showing up. Still, since the tournament is played online on webcams and people are on very different schedules and time zones it seems not very feasible to do swiss rounds, so we use the championship format, where everybody plays everybody. 7 matches for everybody for a total of 28 matches !

For my part I play my MI:RoR deck.

Round 1 : Gumgod (WW Vise)

Gumgod has a deck that can give the impression of being a White Weenie deck with Black Vises, but really only has so few small creatures that he can afford, apparently, to play Balance and Wrath of God. With 3 Winter Orbs and Armageddons he makes me happy as that’s precisely the kind of cards and strategy that were missing previously, and made the metagame a bit strange, where you could play Shivan Dragons without much of an afterthought and something felt like it was missing. The great thing about Gumgod’s deck too, is that it’s a good matchup for my deck : I play 8 mana-dorks maindeck, so I’m quite happy to see him play a Black Vise turn 1 on the play. I answer with a Rack, which looks quite poor right then but ultimately proved more useful. For the moment it helps me dump my hand. It doesn’t take long before I play a Hymn and he’s the one losing life to a single mana puppet-torturing device. I win game 1 helped by three hymn to touraches and two racks, and get the luxury of finishing my opponent with two “piles” ! Fair enough if I say so myself. Game 2 my lucky star continues to shine on me as he plays again a Black Vise turn 1 ! Thx man. This time still no mana-dork and not even a rack so it looks like I’m suffering but I’m not worried. I resolve a Gloom after an Order and things start to look bad for him and I’m down to 5 cards in hand. I’m not sure a Winter Orb could save him, but he doesn’t play one anyways. So that’s now the time for a second Gloom to make an apparition and remember people that it’s not easy to play mono-white in old school formats. In the end despite all his land oppression I’m the one preventing my opponent from playing his cards.

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Match 2 : Dave Firth Bard (Zero Ankh Red)

Dave this times plays no Ankh of Mishra so that’s how he’s decided to call his deck, but it looks more like an Atog-Burn deck to me. Anyways, I’m a lucky star, Bard, as I start with two Hymns.. and good “picks” too ! Still he manages to assemble a nice army made of a Dragon Whelp and an Atog backed by two Mana Vaults so things don’t look that pretty. It seems like he should have pumped his Dragon more as I had no way to remove him and was getting hit turn after turn, but he gets the win anyways as discard isn’t everything and he has a much better board position. Game 2 no hymn for me and in fact he’s the one getting virtual card advantage thanks to a mean Maze of Ith + Nevinyrral’s Disk combo, with on top of that a Mana Vault-backed Atog forcing me to overextend. I finally manage to make him pop his disk after a Hymn. He then casts a Wheel of Fortune that gives me another Hymn and it could look like I’m super lucky to get his two dragons (a Shivan and a Whelp), but really Dave was a bit too generous dumping mana-artifacts he didn’t really need on his wheeling turn and was left with three cards in hand. Despite that mistake he still could have won later had he untapped his mana vault earlier or just waited a turn to untap it to play a lethal Fireball. Instead we’re off to a third game. I guess Hymns are a bit like Counterspells : if you worry too much about them you give much too much power to cards that often aren’t even there. Last game I play a Crumble on his Mana Vault and he must have counted on it for his game-plan as he’s now mana-screwed. Too bad he didn’t get a second mountain as he could have forked my big Mind Twist.. He doesn’t get back from that one and I “steal” a win from what could have been a smashing defeat.

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Dave Firth Bard’s “Zero-Ankh Red”

Round 3 : Kalle Nord (Creature Control)

You might know Kalle as a multiple Shark winner in the old school 93/94 format, or maybe as its co-creator. He also has an incredibly pimped deck according to what I hear, and if you think you see some not so pimp white-bordered cards in his decklists that’s because you don’t know enough about pimpin’ 🙂 His white-bordered cards are most likely all from the “Edgar Summer” print, one of the absolutely rarest and most expensive mtg release. As for me while I don’t care much for the pimping, I’m very happy to have a good control deck player that I know for playing very well tuned “The Deck” lists, and expect him to play some blue-white based control, something else that I felt was missing from the metagame. It turns out I’m not too wrong, although his build his way more aggressive than I imagined, and his twist on control in ogt2 very interesting. I don’t think this is a good matchup for me, but things go right for me and an Order gets me there game 1. Game 2 he plays a Balance turn 4. I lose three creatures, he loses his Balance, a land and two cards from his hand (including another Balance) : good deal ! Thx Kalle. But my deck has a lot of mana sources and small creatures and I don’t hurt him fast enough to seal the deal before he gets to cast a big Braingeyser. He wins with Serra Angels and a Control Magic.. Not a control-Millstone deck then : interesting. I’ve always considered Millstone to be the “natural” wincon for control in this format (no Feldon’s Cane, no Timetwister, no way to shuffle your graveyard in your library afaik), so I’m a bit surprised and do get valuable information from that defeat. Rack into turn 2 Hymn : things start great on my side game 3, excepted I’m stuck with black mana and much green spells -I end up discarding spells.. I took my chances on that hand and lost : he has the time to expand, play, use and abuse his Jayemdae Tome. And now a new figure : Derelor. Well, it’s no news to me that Derelor is great, but I hadn’t seen him play one. Makes sense though, he splashes black so the drawback isn’t much of a drawback in that case. Still I’m seeing some hope when I draw a Forest and can play a timely Tsunami, as he hasn’t got counterspell mana. He loses three lands and can’t use the Tome no more. But he has a lot of cards still and plays lands after lands while I scramble to get enough mana to put my Order in range to block his Derelor. I cast an excellent Hymn, crumble his Tome and get the mana I need, but it’s too late. In the end I cast a Ring of Renewal ! Did I tell you I’m playing a Renewal deck ? Well that’s the first I see of it and I don’t get to do anything else with it than casting a crumble on it..

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Match 4 : Seth Roncoroni (Trollcake)

I don’t have Seth’s deck pic this time but he only made a few changes to his former decklist. He plays an early “Hyppie” that I don’t have any answer for. I cast a Hymn but he has the better board position and solidifies it further with a Serendib Efreet. My deck is badly equipped to deal with the Serendib and it drives him all the way. Game 2 I develop super fast with 1/1 that do stuff on the side, while he seems stuck with limited mana and the Maze of Ith looks a bit dumb against an army of 1/1.. and so does Clone. But he still uses that to survive the onslaught as I can’t seem to draw a meaty creature or something relevant and he threatens to stabilize around 5 life. When I can I finally cast too many cards, not expecting his Nevynirral’s Disk, even though it could have been foreseeable as in the early turns it was clear he made his best to get rid of my Scavenger Folks. I pay for that oversight as he regenerates his Sedge Troll and disks and hymns my world away. He finishes me with only 2 life. Great game !

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Match 5 : Florian von Bredow

Another match and another newcomer, this time from Germany. Florian isn’t nearly ready with a proper ogt2 deck, in fact he has adapted a “ABU” highlander deck in a hurry. Still he takes it easy and is a great sport all along the tournament. He takes the prize for the most original deck of the original type II tourney, hands-down 🙂

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Match 6 : Pelham Bleu (Monobog)

We already played some highlander games so we’re not total stranger although he’s new to the format too. I call his deck monobog as it’s a monoblack deck with some Bog Imps and it became a running gag about those damn Bog Imps

and how worrisome they are (if you play them you’ll worry about them not pulling their weight, if you play against them, you might have to worry about losing to them). Game 1 we both play an Hymn and it’s mostly down to our creature quality, where I’m above with an Order of the Ebon Hand and a Hyppie. Game 2 I think I’m generating card advantage by regrowthing for a second Hymn to Tourach, but in the process I’m tapping one of my creature while he’s just played a Royal Assassin. Now the Assassins aren’t incredible but ignoring them entirely is pushing things a step too far. Anyways Racks have haste, so to speak, so I can stay in the race. Still with all that he’s definitely the beatdown, and has me down to 6 before the deal is sealed. We play an extra one and I get swamped by a double-Unholy Strengthed Will-O’the Wisp. What ?

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Match 7 : William Larson (WWu Salve)

Despite playing some blue, he deploys ideally Savannah Lions into White Knight. I’m overrun and the hymn doesn’t do much more than giving him yet another turn of unimpaired attack. Game 2 despite playing some blue, I decide that I will take my chances and side in my Glooms despite the risk of possible Sleight of Mind, cause it seems like I need for things to go my way considering how fast his deck was last game. Thanks to a mana-dork I have a turn 2 Gloom. No Sleight of Mind so I can play the second next turn. And then he plays a Wall of Air. Who plays a Wall of Air ? He does and that’s quite annoying for my deck that plays so many x/1 creatures ! It doesn’t take too long before he plays a Serendib Efreet and things start to look worrisome. I do my best to get the mana to get through the wall with my pump knight. And now comes another blue card, a nice one too : Control Magic ! Nice to have some glooms in play when your opponent is curving in blue.. On the other hand he had 4 white cards in hand he couldn’t play so it looks like the glooms did their job, on the other, other hand, they would have been of little value considering what I had.

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So that’s it for my attempt at playing a mostly casual deck in a tournament. I end up with a sort of flattering 4-3 result considering really I got lucky now and then, some opponent were barely starting in the format and I basically should have ended 3-4 (sorry, Bard !). I wish I could say it was a fun experiment but I don’t think that’s the good setting to play such a deck. When I won it was with the serious half, the Hymns, the Orders and so on, mostly the black. And when I lost it was because of the green part, the little green guys that could be great but just aren’t enough, and the key card of the deck I never benefited from and it was completely out of place. So while I’m not giving up completely on the card and pretty much knew that already, it still seems to be an impossible mission to make a competitive deck based on Ring of Renewal.

You can see other recorded matches there.

But there was much more to be happy about. I feel lucky to be part of such an active and positive community, and I consider reaching the symbolic 8 people threshold a milestone, and at any rate it is a promise of a healthy, challenging and diverse metagame. Not only the numbers were there and give use a better, bigger player base, the deck variety improved greatly, and although Kalle Nord after a great 3-0 start had to drop for lack of availability, we still had a clear pair of leaders to qualify for a final : Gumgod faced off versus Seth Ronconroni in a best of 5 match that unfortunately wasn’t recorded. We’ll do better next time and we actually plan on streaming the next final. Despite losing in the championship match, Seth Roncoroni won it hands-down 3-0. Seems like Black Vise still requires some work to terrorize the ogt2 metagame, but that was a great first, Gumgod. Congratulation to Seth Ronconroni !