Alpha Castle 2019 was a lot of fun with almost 100 players, so I wanted to repeat it.

Alpha Castle returned to Castle Frankenstein as Alpha Castle 2020, with 30 players on August 16th. Corona required some limitation on the amount of players.



Location

Prizes

Rulest, Errata & Ante

Premodern & Sideevents

After throughout thoughts, the mainevent on Sunday will have “almost regular” JK rules (Artwork Reprints, IE/CE allowed, Fallen Empires allowed) with some Ante cards allowed. No player will be asked to give their own property away for ante, not even temporarily. See the “Prizes” Tag below for details how that will work.

Location:

Castle Frankenstein is a castle ruin on top of a small hill. The area includes a restaurant and a chapel. Often, it’s used for wedding ceremonies. The part of the restaurant where we run the tournament is separate to the public restaurant area, can host up to 100 people and, with good weather has views beyond Frankfurt (45km), Mainz (50km) and a gigantic batch of the river Rhine area.

A 2-3 course buffet will be provided during the day. Beer and other drinks can be ordered à la carte.

Distances: Airport Frankfurt 35 minutes, Darmstadt main station 20 minutes

Prizes:

At the start of the event, every player receives an amount of marked Revised or 4th Edition cards. These cards will be used as ante pool. Before every match, you chose a card from your opponents’ ante pool. The winner of the match wins both cards. Whoever loses game 1 may also decide to “raise the ante by 1” for the rest of the match.

At the end of the event, you can trade in those Revised/4th cards for sweet beta and similar cards:

* Beta Contract from Below to whoever has most ante cards

* Beta Channel to whoever has most wb Channels

* Beta Craw Wurm to whoever has most wb Craw Wurms

..

The list of prizes is longer, but ultimately depends on the number of players. With 30 players, we had Beta Contract from Below; Antiquities Mishra’s Factory; Arabian Nights Jeweled Bird; Alpha Craw Wurm, Frozen Shade, Castle; Beta Mesa Pegasus, Raise Dead, Nettling Imp, Paralyze, Evil Presence, Mons Raiding Goblins, Channel, Celestial Prism, Plains, Island, Swamp, Forest, Mountain; Signed Rocket Launcher, Dragon Engine (Hallo Vincent), The Brute, Orcish Mechanics, Fallen Angel, Spectral Cloak, Pearled Unicorn, Divine Offering.

At some point, through the use of Demonic Attorney, Contract from Below etc, one may lose all their ante cards. In that case, players receive another batch of cards as ante, Revised Basiclands and Mons Raiding Goblins, giving you a second chance to win.

Ruleset, Errata & Ante

The event will be done in semi-Swiss mode. Last time, I did pairings completely random. With the feedback received there, I want to pair the undefeated players against each other, so we can determine a “most skilled player”. The remaining pairings will be created at random again.

We will play with the Frankfurt-local JK Rules.

That means a wide Reprint policy including 4th, Chronicles and International Edition.

Two is the maximum amount of Strip Mines a deck/sideboard may have.

Additionally, several Ante-cards are allowed with event-specific errata: Contract from Below(1), Rebirth, Demonic Attorney, Darkpact, Jeweled Bird(1).

Ante cards will have an errata.

Rebirth:

Each player may ante t he top card of their library a random card from their antepool. If a player does, that player’s life total becomes 20.

Contract from Below: (restricted to 1)

Discard your hand, ante the top card of your library , a random card from your antepool, then draw seven cards.

Demonic Attorney:

Each player antes the top card of their library a random card from their antepool.

Darkpact:

You own target card in the ante. Exchange that card with the top card of your library.

Exchange target card in the ante with a random card from your antepool.

Jeweled Bird: (restricted to 1)

{T} : Ante Jeweled Bird. If you do, put all other cards you own from the ante into your graveyard, then draw a card.

Every player will be provided one Chronicles Jeweled Bird at the start of the day.

{T}: Put Jeweled Bird into the ante pool. If you do, put another card from the ante into your antepool, then draw a card.



Bronze Tablet and Tempest Efreet are banned.

Premodern & Sideevents

One Saturday (15.08.) before Alpha Castle 2020, we’ll do the 3rd German Premodern Championships. The main prize in Premodern is a big Pernicious Deed print.