Raging Bull 2023

As some of you know, I live in the small city of Linköping, Sweden, 2-3 hours away from Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö. The city does have an international airport, however, which currently has only one connection: KLM to Amsterdam. Therefore, I have flewn through Schiphol more times than I can count, and I used to play numerous Grand Prix events in the Netherlands, probably at least 5-6 times in total in Amsterdam and Utrecht. I had never played 93/94 in the Netherlands, though, so it was overdue I rectified that. I seem to recall I was planning to do so before the pandemic, but then it got all delayed and last year got filled up quickly, both the actual events and my travel schedule. But this year I managed to get a spot at the Raging Bull tournament, organized by Richard Veenman.

I left home late Friday morning. While the flight was one hour delayed, I got word of that before heading to the airport, and with no connection to catch I wasn’t worried. I blazed through security in the minimal airport and had a free coffee at the gate, along with a sandwich and a cinnamon roll I had picked up on my way to the airport.

Aiming to capture everything I eat during the weekend. I fail twice (pancake late Saturday, sandwich lunch Sunday) but you get the rest of it.

Once I landed in Schiphol, I took a train to the city, catching up with Will who was hanging out with Malte and the Spanish guys. I debated getting some Dutch herring I had heard about but decided against it, instead just having a sandwich on the run, as I took a walk instead of the tram the last part to get to stretch my legs a bit after the journey. Once there, we hang out for a while, took a nice walk in the sun by various canals, discussing hot Ante40k tech I might get to test out next week as of writing this.

The Spaniards finished off their Brother’s Highlander Two-Headed Giant decks, which looked fantastic, then we eventually headed to the venue. Will and I weren’t playing; I didn’t feel like being occupied with a tournament all night, instead going for some off-site food and hopefully ante games or regular OS games later. Unfortunately, the games didn’t really materialize; I hadn’t realized that we didn’t have any Dutch Ante players, and so few other ones were in attendance, but I had fun anyway, having good beers, watching Åland and Jordan crush the tournament, chatting a bit on stream and generally enjoying the atmosphere at the 2 Klaveren gaming cafe.

It was really a nice place. Though, as I knew I would be eating there the next day, as I said we picked this offsite restaurant instead, on recommendation from Evert. It was really excellent.

Will was a bit jetlagged and left earlier, but eventually I also walked half an hour to our airbnb, quite a nice place, located in a very quiet neighborhood, with good beds and decent bathroom. I wasn’t able to sleep for as long as I had wished, but I seldom am; Will recovered a bit, so much that we were a bit late in getting breakfast before the tournament started at 11. It was good, though, and we did get there in time.

The 2 Klaveren gaming cafe was even better in daytime. People were sitting outside in the sun, drinking beer or coffee; we could watch the nearby canal; the beer was excellent and food was fine, and both of them very cheap.

Richard made some announcements, then we were off.

After N00bfest, I wanted to play something smoother, even less midrange, with less complicated sideboarding plans having to decide whether I wanted swords or not. I settled on this, built on a UR base splashing lions, basically, which allowed me to run fewer white mana, even losing the 4th City. I also ran less than 4 serendibs in this kind of aggro deck for probably the first time, trying out that 4th psionic blast instead. This was the list:

In round 1, I played against Frenk Van der Meij on a white robots list. I start with a mulligan to 4 and him mind twisting me for 3 on turn 2, but the one card it leaves me with is my Wheel, and two turns later I draw Lotus. Still, he has way too much mana at this point and just beats me down with a su-chi and then a copy. Game 2, I get in damage with an orc until he finally lands a trike. After attacking me, he lets it kill the orc and itself, following up with an Animate Dead, to which I respond with Disenchant, explaining (after I first had to think this through myself) that I could kill the enchantment before the creature comes into play. (Yes, it works. Read the Oracle text.) I finish the game with some burn, after getting to 2-for-1 a Tetravus+Copy with my Divine Offering (the mox he copied being basically meaningless at this point). Game 3 is interesting. I keep a hand with two mana only but a ton of gas, including t1 lion, counterspell, disenchant and burn. Frenk has the strip mine which scares me a ton, potentially killing off my plan of having counterspell mana up and later getting to psiblast mana, but he’s also stuck on mana, saving it for his own higher curve, and also using his chaos orb on my creature. I eventually draw out of the mana slump before he does, and I also need far less mana. Interestingly he had a Diamond Valley in play which isn’t bad against burn but never really got online here.

Getting a win here was really important, as the bottom half of the tables were located in the dark basement while the upper half were in natural light close to the bar. So up we go! Match 2 is against Cristian Houweling. Game 1, on the draw, I play turn 1 lotus dib lion. He has a bolt for the lion but the dib basically goes the distance along with some burn. I don’t know what he’s on, though, having seen city, underground sea, bolt, basically. So I board very little and am somewhat unprepared when it turns out he’s on some robots build. We get in a tight race, with him having abyss killing a dib, I disenchant after a while, eventually drawing my second dib (that card is good, maybe I should play more of them). He has a few creatures, then decides to take a point of city damage to go to 9, animating a trike to have lethal next turn with me on one card. That is a bolt, and I do draw the second bolt for lethal. I had a bunch of redraws too (and a whole game 3 if worst came to worst), but still got my heart racing.

Round 3 I play against Hunter Prendergast. He starts on some mountains, apparing to be on mono-red goblins, but later plays Island into Timetwister. I stabilize when he attacks Goblin King and Mons Goblin Raiders into my Orc and I bolt the King. He’s flooded a bit, and I counter a Disintegrate for 8. But his second Disintegrate for 8 takes me to 4, and he finds a Psionic Blast before I can kill him, having traded so much of my resources for his threats. I win game 2, probably with a Serendib based on my lifepad. Game 3, on the draw, my starting hand is Su-Chi, Lotus, Factory, Jet, Plateau, Lion and Balance. I draw Bolt for the turn. He went mountain go. I could just go lotus su-chi lion, which is very good unless he has Shatter but means my Balance is likely to never be good. I could also jet lotus balance, using the balance to kill a land and make him discard a card. Or play plateau too and bolt him, letting him keep land but take two more cards. I think this is what I settle on, and also play the lion. I figure I can still cast the su-chi within a few turns. This does leave him a bit mana-light and I get there despite missing the mana for the su-chi for many turns. It then turns out he’s actually running alpha-beta only, the format of the Dwarven Warriors tournament in NL! I had totally missed this, despite seeing no factories for example, being somewhat worried about moon. Duh.

Round 4, then, I play against my good friend Florian von Bredow. I know he’s on The Deck, so I mulligan a hand with a bolt and not enough threats, I think. Then I mulligan again, but I Ancestral to recuperate. I don’t get much damage in though, and we’re both pretty much out of action. I have 3 or 4 mana sources, and I resolve Demonic Tutor. The problem is, I’ve played Ancestral already, and I’m behind on mana and Florian is also on 1-2 cards so a draw-7 isn’t fantastic, and neither is mind twist. I decide to get timetwister anyway; a few turns later I mind twist for a few cards, but the twister still isn’t great. But at some point, Florian decides to start attacking me with two factories, killing one of my two creatures so he takes 2 on the backswing. It’s something like my 19 to his 13 when this starts, and while it does seem like it’d favor him, I have a burn spell and then finally that timetwister to get enough burn to kill him. Then game 2, it seems like I get in with a quick dib and just finish it, but I don’t remember much. Might have involved some kind of power on my side.

Somewhere around this point, I also get late lunch/early dinner I ordered from the cafe. Besides the unimpressive bread, it was surprisingly good.

In round 5 I face Rob Van Dijk. He’s on UWB juzam/serendib/white removal. I don’t remember all of the details, but in game 1 I get into a situation where I have a dib and a lion and am behind on life against his juzam; I was planning to maybe chump and race and finish with burn, but when he plays a serendib I can’t really. I attack lion into his dib, and if he takes it I have some other plan, but when he blocks I have to bolt it, and then double bolt his juzam. That leaves us both low on gas, with me on a dib and his board empty but me on 9 life to his 16 or so. Unfortunately, he draws a dib of his own soon when I just draw lands, and eventually I just lose to that standoff as I never draw the bolt I need to be able to start racing. And in game 2, my dib is dominated by his Sengir. I have two lions in play and Balance in hand, completely useless. I also have 4 mana sources, two of which are two of my three Cities, and when he sinkholes another land, I just take too much damage to win the race. With two cities and a mox as the mana, I could have tutored for Swords and stabilized at 3 life, but I don’t play any and thus just lose instead. I guess I can’t always run hot.

Time for a win-and-in against Ole Rustad. Game 1 is some of the worst magic I’ve played in a long time. Ole is playing Eureka Robots, although I just see robots cards, sylvan and ug sea early on. Nothing much is happening, we might trade some cards, I bolt him once, then I draw-7 into a hand of 3 psiblasts, 2 bolt and probably a mana drain. I go to work bolting his face, ignoring the su-chi he plays and then copies as I have lethal anyway, but somehow find myself with having to cast 2 psiblasts for the win but only 5 mana, so I have to topdeck either a land or a bolt and don’t. Then I choose to play an orc instead of leaving up factory as a chump blocker, further giving up the small chance I had. I could very likely have navigated this into a win, I don’t know how I planned there at all. But I try not to let that get me too hard. Blaming beer, maybe? I then manage to win the other two games though I don’t remember the details. Might have involved Mind Twist.

So top 8 it is. In the quarterfinals, I play against Thomas Nilsen on his insane robots/chains deck that he also t8’d with in Arvika in February. I’m on the play from being higher in the swiss, and lead with plateau lion ruby chain. Thomas plays something like land mox mox sol ring twister, into mox lotus chains wheel. So neither of us has a hand, he has 5-7 mana, I have two mana and a lion. But none of us draw anything, until I get a factory and then another one, and the lion and later the factories after the lion has been bolted just takes it down. Game 2, Thomas starts on library lotus wheel and takes it from there. In game 3 it’s my turn to get an insane starting hand, with land mox mox twister, but then Thomas mulligans to 5. So, do I go for it turn 1? I am a few cards ahead there, but it would give him the advantage right away. Still, the odds of him getting chains winds isn’t that great on exactly the first turn as that would involve two pieces of mana acceleration, and then I can likely empty my hand enough. However, in the rest of my hand I have a mana drain (though I can’t cast it t1 as sapphire isn’t among the moxes). I choose to wait, drain his t2 play whatever it is (turns out to be The Rack), then twister t3. But I flood out heavily post-twister whereas Thomas first gets the chains combo, then topdecks Shivan. Game over. I’m not sure what I should have done here. Probably just t1 twister. Oh well. Can’t complain too much about a t8 anyway.

I can complain about too few ante games, though, even if I did so already. I do manage to lose a bird to Reindeer and that’s extent of it. Didn’t watch the rest of the t8, just heared about the finals being a Juzam mirror. The rest of the evening consisted of laid-back beers, eventually at the bar across the street as the gaming café closed. Then Will and I made our way back to our airbnb a bit post midnight.

The next day, I slept a bit later, and we had less of a strict schedule. Still a time to meet, though, as we had booked tickets for the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum. I had been there before, but as it was Will’s first time in the city it made sense to go there. First we had breakfast at a bagel place.

Then we got to see some fantastic pieces of art.

Much later, we met up with Åland for early dinner at a Nepalese restaurant, Sherpa restaurant, which was just fantastic. Highly recommended.

Åland has a much better photo of this on his blog, but I stick with the photos I took myself.

And then it was time for Åland and I to take the train out to the airport and leave.

It was a fantastic weekend, short and sweet, jam packed of good magic, good friends, good beer and good weather, in one of the truely unique cities of the world. Thanks all who joined and made the weekend so good (way too many to mention), and thanks Richard (and crew) for organizing. I hope I’ll be back!