Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Or: Taking the Atog to the zoo

I played the following list in the New England Old School October monthly tournament (8 groups of 7, round robin within the group, winner advances to top 8, one tournament a month, seasonal standings for each 5-month season, Atlantic format) and some online games. Having gone 5-0 in the group play (one player unfortunately had …

On Fishliver and (not) writing

I was at Fishliver Oil Cup last week. Hung out with good people:   Played in the EC event: Finished 3-2, lost my win and in for t16, faced some sweet brews like Cyclopean Tomb/Icy/Kismet/Karma, lost to variance. As you can see, I played a bog-standard Hatog list. Did commentary on the main event with …

Rereading Centurion, issue #8

Time for another one of these. Since it's been a while since the last one, I might have to do a quick introduction: Centurion is an old Swedish gaming magazine from the mid-90s, mainly focused on Magic, and I'm rereading it one issue at a time. Today: issue #8, May 1996. After a page of …

Spice Rack Deck Tech

Editor’s Note: Second guest post in a row, Jared Doucette returns with part 2 of his Summer Derby experience, this time a deck tech on the Spice Rack archetype he took all the way to the top. Enjoy! I won’t be able to totally stay away from commentating this time around, though. /Svante   Since …

Racking the Summer Derby

Editor’s Note: Today, I present to you a tournament report from the winner of the 2019 Summer Derby: Jared Doucette. Enjoy! /Svante out   The Old School 1993-1994 Magic community would not exist without the internet. It is a funny thing to say as we purposefully chose to play a format that predates the modern …

Ivory Cup 4

Has it really been two years? My very first tournament report on this blog covered Ivory Cup 2, and a couple of weeks ago, I played Ivory Cup 4 (having missed last year's tournament due to vacation-based scheduling conflicts). Apparently, yes. Two years. Time flies, huh. Ivory Cup is Gordon Andersson's annual large summer tournament in …

Magic Island Tour IV

A bit over a week ago, Stockholm in a Bottle organized the fourth annual Magic Island Tour: King of the Archipelago. This year, I was a small part of the organizing group, but the absolute majority of the workload was done by Elias Gröndal. He handled everything concerning logistics or economy, whereas I just gave …

Living on Borrowed Time

I hope we didn't fuck up. Last Friday, I played some Swedish 93/94 at the Danish Old School 3.5 event in Copenhagen, a side event at the Grand Prix taking place during the weekend. This meant no beers, the location being the event hall (and even in Denmark no beers on site, what is up …

Mobstercon Mixtape

These are some random thoughts about the whole Mobstercon experience. For a more comprehensive account, see Will's report. I am still quite disappointed that we didn't do better, and all of that is due to my deck-building and playing. I failed spectacularly at building a good The Deck list for the format. It was too …

Mobstercon Quick Hitters and Highlights

Editor's note: Today we have a guest report by my friend Will M, with whom I teamed up for the Mobstercon tournament. I might say something about the format later, but probably not. In the meantime, feel free to take a look at my instagram @svantelandgraf if you want to follow my travels. /Svante I …