Fellow Oldschoolers

What a weekend – the N00bcon XI is in the books and everybody who was in Gothenburg last weekend had a blast. For the first time, there was a huge parallel tournament (hosted by Legion Urborg) in which everybody who did not qualify for N00bcon could play and try to sneak into N00bcon Top8. The winner of Swiss before Top8 of Urborg Feast got the 8th Slot from N00bcon. Here you find the winning Decks. And here some Facebook-content. Fun an Cool – isn’t it?

So we arrived at Friday morning 10am after a 90 Minute flight in Gothenburg. We still had time to Check in in the Hotel Quality Panorama, meet some guys and then went off to eat breakfast at “Le pain francais” next to our tournament location. We did meet up there with the american gang (DFB and friends) and some other well known players (e.g. Svante Landgraf, which went in 2nd at N00bcon – congrats). There i also received my handdrawn playmat which was done by Dan Frazier:

At 12 we started registration as we wanted to start at 1.30pm. The weather was great and the location was AWESOME – we received the whole Terrace of John Scott’s Pub as our playing area. Including a Bar with a special Beer price for tournament players. What else can we hope for? 🙂

After the registration (48 Players – impressive) we started the tournament at 1.30pm. I did chose to play with my beloved “Troll Disco” deck – i amended it to 3 Twiddles because i love this card and it is really useful in a Troll Disco Deck.

In the first match i faced Olle Brömsi and his fast Artifact aggro Deck. He played Black Vises, Bolts, Robots and the latter. First game is always tough against to fast Decks and if Robots have THE start, its even harder without spot removal. I managed to win the first game but then lost the second against an exact very fast hand. In the third game Olle kept a Lotus/Vise/Bolt/Bolt (no lands) hand and brought me down to 11 before my game even started. Unfortunately, i had Sol Ring, Bolt and Mana Vault ready to be deployed and his Black Vise did not do anymore damage. I won the first match and enjoyed a beer.

In the second match i played against Jesper Ejsing, famous mtg card artist and later Top8 participant of N00bcon :-). Jesper played also a Robot-variant with White, Black, Blue and Red. We had very tough games and i think Jesper did not exactly sideboard correctly (he told me that after he defeated another troll Disco later in the tournament) so i did win 2-1 against him.

Third match was against my co-organizator Elias Gröndal. Local hero from Gothenburg and memeber of Stockholm in a Bottle. His Deck containts 4 Shivan Dragons – i love it 🙂

Unfortunately for him, the Dragons are not disk-proof and everytime one landed on the battlefield, it got Twiddle-Disked or (after Sideboarding) Terror’d away. Still we had great games and interesting counter-wars. finally i managed to beat Elias 2-0.

Intermezzo – me doing pairings 😉

Fourth game was against Kristoffer Akkerö and his great GR Aggro. Kird Apes, Flying Sprites, Elves, Pixies, Giant Growths and Berserks – such a nice pile. I did not see any Ice Storm so i assume he didn’t draw them or he didn’t include them in Sideboard. Therefore my 2 (3 after SB) Maze of Ith are a real thread to this Deck. Paired with Disks and regenerative Trolls its really hard to beat. Kristoffer gave his best but finally i took away the victory with 2-0.

Did i already mention that the weather was great, we were allowed to drink and smoke at the Terrace? right – therefore everybody already drunk plenty after round 3 – including me 😉

Round five was against Timo Ikonen. Timo also has a great blog “quantitatively magic” and he and his Finnish crew did join us for Urborg Feast. His Deck you can find within the Top8 overview – Living Plane destruction. Also this time, Nev Disks are a real thread. A Deck like Living Plane which is highly in need of various permanents in play can be really distracted with a blowing disk. One time i even did blow the Disk with an active Living Plane on the Battlefield (this was the REAL Armageddon :-). No permanents and both players with 2-4 cards in hand – i managed to draw more Lands and took the win away. In the end in won 2-0 and my Trolls again did prove their value.

Before the final round everybody drank more beer and discussed about a possible Top8 attendance at N00bcon. For the moment i was the only one with 15 points and a victory would give me the opportunity. As we do not intentional draw in Oldschool tournaments (because we want to see “play magic”, not “sneak in magic”). Anyway an ID would give both players 0 points – so no additional value in doing it.

Round 6 (final round) was against Valerio Gregori. Valerio managed to go to Top8 in last years Noobcon X and knows what he is doing with his Deck. Its also well known that Troll Disko has a very bad matchup prior to Sideboarding as the Disco lacks in Speed and spot removal. Therefore the first game was over quick and i was back 1-0. Sideboarding Terrors, Shatters and Blue Blast to avoid getting eaten by a very aggressive Atog. Second game started quite decent as i managed to land a turn 4 Shivan Dragon onto the table (with support of Mana Vault). paired with a Maze of Ith it was quite hard to attack with anything for Valerio. To be fair, he missed out a red source for a long period of time and finally i managed to win this second game (also because he landed a blood moon and my dragon likes mountains a lot 🙂 ) Third game was really tough – we played our hands down, did beat each other hard and went to topdeck-modus with no cards in hand. He was at 4 life, i was at 10. A fireball on my side and i can close the deal. Unfortunately, he lands a blood moon which limits my options of additional card draws quite a lot as i do not have a basic island in play.. so any Ancestral or Braingeyser is of no use. i draw 3 Lands in a row and he did deploy a Juggernaut to the table. clock was set to two turns… I have quite a few outs with Maze, Shatter, Bolts, Fireballs, Twiddles, Trolls, Disk, Icy. But lady fortuna was not on my side and i did draw a mox and an additional land. Good game Valerio 🙂 We shall see each other again in Top8.

After those exciting six rounds of battling, we took a break of 45 Minutes before starting Top 8. Time for some beer and cigarettes 😉 Also, we had to determine the winner of the tournament to go to N00bcon Top8. With 6 players at a 5-1 standing, it will be interesting. Finally, Jesper made the cut as he did play all his matches against Top8 players and therefore had a great standing. Congratulations 🙂

1: Jesper Ejsing 15 66.67 78.57 58.67

2: Christian Reinhard 15 63.89 78.57 56.3

3: Valerio Gregori 15 62.96 62.5 61.9

4: Daniel Imfeld 15 58.33 76.92 54.16

5: Hercule Rottiers 15 56.48 83.33 52.72

6: Jonny Neverlucky Myrbacka 15 53.7 71.43 53.65

7: Timo Ikonen 12 72.22 57.14 68.14

8: Martin Skovgaard 12 66.67 64.29 62.98

9: Martin Jordö 12 60 63.64 54.73

10: Kristoffer Akerö 12 56.48 56.25 54.79

11: Mats Karlsson 12 55.56 62.5 50.94

12: Chri Alb 12 55.56 54.17 55.82

13: Tommy Aaren 12 54.81 56.25 51.74

14: Alex Myagh 12 52.78 57.14 52.84

15: Stone Rock 12 50 57.14 51.83

16: Michel Rojas 12 47.22 61.54 50.63

17: Simone Merlo 10 52.78 57.14 53.95

18: Peter Engström 9 65 50 61.57

19: Elias Gröndal 9 61.11 50 54

20: Mats Furby 9 58.33 42.86 55.9

21: Scott Latham 9 55.74 57.14 53.69

22: Nelson Alegi 9 55.56 54.17 50.45

23: Mick Evertsson 9 55.56 50 51.69

24: Allan Asmussen 9 52.78 46.67 51.89

25: Jan Eid 9 50 53.33 47.28

26: Christoffer Modig 9 43.52 50 45.96

27: Tomas Bjorkhaug 9 41.11 45.45 43.24

28: Jimmy To 9 38.89 50 42.05

29: Elias Wiger 8 46.3 53.85 45.65

30: Peter Bonthuis 8 42.59 48.72 46.41

31: Michael Bergner 7 50.93 42.86 49.69

32: Peter Monten 7 35.19 45.24 40.22

33: Manamonkey 6 56.48 46.67 52.72

34: Kalle Matero 6 53.89 35.71 51.91

35: David Strandberg 6 53.7 33.33 53.78

36: Robin Nestenborg 6 51.85 30.77 51.81

37: Lennart Stolpe 6 48.15 40 49.69

38: Olle Brömsi 6 47.78 20 48.64

39: Mattias Berggren 6 47.22 38.46 47.08

40: Kristoffer Eriksen 6 46.67 45.45 46.49

41: Algot Lünings 6 43.56 27.27 45.76

42: johan Reidel 6 40.74 47.06 42.62

43: Henrik Berntsen 5 46.3 38.89 48.59

44: Anders Ekman 4 41.67 23.08 46.12

45: Jacopo Mariani 3 50 26.67 46.37

46: Andreas Lövgren 3 43.33 16.67 41.43

47: Mika Nurmikolu 0 39.81 14.29 43.53

As in the spirit of “switching Top8 players” we also got one player. The decision was made from MG and he did send David Chambers as official Top8 player which represents the N00bcon. As he did not have a Deck on him, he received the famous Land’s Edge Deck from Mattias Berggren. We paired for Top 8 and my opponent was Jonny.

Jonny was playing a UW Robots variant which was quite aggressive. I saw a game in round 3 where he did deploy a first turn Mahamoti Djinn on the table – so he has skills to draw fast mana cards 🙂 Also without Spot removal pre Sideboard i need to deploy a fast Disk paired with Counter Backup or Twiddle. We started our games and it was a good one. We battled it out until finally my Disk did cleanup the table (but not my troll) and i managed to push through the lethal damage together with Lightning Bolts. Second game was also decent and also there we battled hard – also there was a situation with Two Icy VS one Icy on the table and both players tapped down the opposite City of Brass to push through more damage. Amazing 🙂 i managed to win this Quarter Final 2-0 and moved on to semis against Valerio.

We faced each other in the main tournament already and did know what we can expect. Unfortunately, i cannot remember anything so far as the beer count went quite high- paired with the sunburn level its quite deadly… Against all Odds i managed to win the first game and went to sideboarding. After sideboarding he had a quite explosive start and it was a short battle for the finals. 1-1 The final game was in my favour and i managed to play the finals against Martin Skovgaard.

There is not much to say about the final game… First game i mulliganned to 5 cards and did hold a hand with 2 Lands, Sol Ring, 2 Twiddle… i did not manage to draw any useful stuff and lost very quickly to Martin. Second game Mulligan to 6 and then we played good old “i play – you counter” haha. He had 3 counterspell paired with an active Icy – not much to deal against that ;-). Finally he managed to beat me 2-0 and was the deserved winner of Urborg Feast 2019 🙂 Well done Martin!

After the finals we went straight to Rotary Pub to drink some beers and watch the Top8 matches and to play Markus Lundquist’s famous “40K Ante tournament”. it was about 1 in the morning, everybody was tired and had quite a lot of beers 🙂 We arrived and i found some other strangers there, drinking and having fun 🙂

Also we had quite fun talks (also in front of the Stream together with Magnus and Gordon)… if you enjoy the Top8 Stream from Jesper, you can find the more or less intelligent quotes we did…

At about 2.30 it was time for the Ante tournament. 8 brave players did sign up for this quest – including me. Playing an RB aggro Troll’z list (Disks, Black Vise, Copper Tablet, Sedges, Uthden’s, Stone Throwing Devils haha etc.), i was facing Markus with his Ehrnamgeddon – and i lost. Maybe also because i drew 5 Lands in a row… Therefore i lost my Beta Swamp permanently. Second game was against Jonnie and his Artifact Aggro. My Ante was an Arabian Nights signed Mountain – which i also lost due to non-optimal draw phases… thats a pity. As the tournament was double elimination, i was therefore out. But we played another fun game (incl. Ante) against the Deck of Markus (not piloted by himself haha). There i managed to win the game and therefore earned a Jeweled Bird 🙂 By the way – have you tried to find any decent priced Jeweled Birds at Card Dealers or MKM? Not? Maybe because some stupid guys made a buyout – haha…

After some more beer and fun i closed the day at 4.30 – exact the same time i woke up the day before to catch the flight. So a decent 24-hour-party-trip, lots of fun interactions and nice meetings and of course amazing Magic games i took an UBER and went back to the Hotel.

More about day 2+3 in the next report

Have a nice day and may the moxen be with you

Christian aka “the Reindeer” (got this name at the ANTE tournament due to bad listening skills of Markus – haha)