Falling Stars

This is not something I thought I would get to write but I’m glad that I get to put some of my experiences and thoughts down.  

Roll back to this old deck from February 14th 2024…

Episode 39 – Simon Christie, Festival of Friendship

56:39 – “I have one event, I’m going to Europe in the summer. One event on the schedule.”

I was very serious about this but roll forward to February 19th 2024…

Well this is a bit inconsistent but things change (over ~5ish days!!!) apparently. My timing was good/bad, a few people from the US had dropped out which is part of the reason I had asked but also was bad because some invites had gone back into the pool in Europe. Also I had notice that there were also a bunch of flights which I could purchase with air miles making the cost much more affordable and I already had the Friday off work… Either way, I was rewarded and ended up having a great weekend, which was really never in doubt. 

I managed to get to n00bcon once before in 2022 and had an absolutely barn stormer of a time (I discussed this previously on all tings considered). I assumed I would be very unlikely to get back again but since I was going to I wanted to try and find something sweet to play. By sweet I mean competitive enough for me to do well (with top 8 as a lofty goal) but also in my wheel house. Unfortunately, the one factory meta game didn’t leave too much room for activity (despite what some people might think), a few people have already discussed this but the meta forces a lot of folks into – the deck, twiddle vault or some sort of mid-range deck that probably has Su-Chi. If you have ever seen any of my decks you will know that none of these are my preferred way to play Magic. While I do have fully Swedish legal power I don’t have every Swedish legal card available to me, so I would need to figure something out without having to buy a bunch of cards in a relatively short time period. The two decks that I usually play in Swedish are DFB green and LDB. My gut told me both of those were really bad – a testing session with friends and an online NEOS event proved me correct on both of those fronts. This was also feedback I was getting from others whose opinions I trust like Svante and Wheel. I did build a kind of spicy 4 Atog + 4 Su-Chi + 4 Copy Artifact + 4 Fireball deck which was surprisingly good but wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing, so I ended up shelving it since I really wanted to play my Swedish Lions playset in Sweden.

With the pride pretty much locked in but feeling like LDB losing Mishra’s Factory was too much of a negative for that deck I went to the drawing board and eventually found a card which I kind of hate but gave me some of the positive variance that I thought I would need in order to beat some of the best decks. I was also kind of high on Atog after my Atog + Fireball deck games, a lot of folks were dismissing Atog but he was consistently quite good for me.

That variance booster was Black Vise – additional bonus that I had an awesome Crimped Beta Black Vise that I got from Pez a couple of years ago and had only played in a few local meetups. Being excited to play my cards makes me excited and gives me a lot of joy during the matches. My test games were a bit mixed but I felt like this deck was doing most of what I wanted to be doing so I was locked in (mostly). The addition of Copy Artifact meant that I would need to acquire a couple of new cards since I only had miscut revised ones and the last minute realization that Detonate is actually pretty good in this format pulled this deck together in the end.

Note – the plan was to play this deck at the Fortress and then a slightly different deck at n00bcon if this shit the bed but since the Fortress went well and I was not in any state to make any changes on Friday morning I ran back the same exact 75. Though I did try and fit in a pickup from Friday night, it ended up not making the cut but was VERY, VERY tempting. Again I like to be excited to play the cards in my deck.

Fortress

5-1 which was good for top 8, lost in first round of t8. 

Props

• I got a very high roll on the way to the event by getting a row of 4 to myself, which was particularly broken when there were 4 people sitting in the row behind me! These things matter on a 9.5 hour flight.
• Reindeer for being accommodating and making me lock in my list a week earlier than usual since I would have to play my match ahead of time, not having to waffle about my sideboard saved me so much mental energy during the leadup to n00bcon, also I got it pretty right which was a nice feeling. 
• Secret fortress tech – getting our taxi driver to drop us off at the top of the hill since we were already 90mins + late and would have had to venture up the hill!
• My deck being playable, some folks who I trusted were complimentary about it beforehand but nobody thought it was that good, so I was glad that it played how I thought it would. 
• I lost one game to a Swedish guy who was playing twiddle vault where he killed me with Mishra’s Factory, after the game he told me he never usually plays Mishra’s Factory but thought it would be funny to play it since it was restricted, immediate high five from me.

Slops

• I had ordered stickers but they came in just as i was boarding my flight and so I didn’t get to hand them out during the events as planned. 😦

• I Had a 4 hour layover at Amsterdam but thankfully I found the free shower at Amsterdam airport + got some caffeine and pancakes in the lounge before meeting up with Scott, DFB and Kramer brothers. 

• Getting an uber for more than 4 people – uber saying it would take ~5-7mins and then it taking 20+ mins each time (this happened several times throughout the weekend).
• DFB wanting to stop at his airbnb instead of going straight to the fortress.
• I don’t really remember any of my matches in great detail because I had been travelling for the whole day + went straight to fortress and just jammed matches. 
• Losing to Levi – on UW.
  • Recurring theme of losing to UW through the weekend, who knew those colours were good. 😉

Rotary 

Pre-n00bcon hangouts with the best set of folks. I went with the primary idea to play ante but things went off the rails. 

Props

• Being at the hallowed ground of Rotary Pub. 
• Decent selection of dry cider, though I ran them dry as they mainly have fancy beers in stock.
• Actually having a halfway decent idea for an ante alter for a change + almost being able to accomplish it (seriously, I am a terrible artist).
  • Me, land + guy – go
  • Opponent, land + Ivory Tower go
  • me, land + guy – go
  • Opponent, land + city in a bottle go
  • me,…well that turned off the rest of my hand and my birds…
  • a million turns later, me….guess I will blow up city in a bottle and bird…opponent, got the chant….fffffff

Slops

• MGs drinking cube, I do not recommend if you need to do any other stuff. This was a huge punt.
• Losing the only ante game I played over the weekend but couldn’t have been to a better guy/the world champion of Ante Bonnie. 

• I was not in a good headspace after joining the drinking cube and so I sort of missed that the ante event was ongoing, so I ended up leaving about 30 mins before the ante finals when I could have been jamming games…

n00bcon 

Props

• Spirits/Liquor at the event site so I wasn’t forced to drink beer all day.
• Shivan Dragon chumping my Atog.

• My opponent shattering my Lotus in response to my Copy Artifact, me adding red mana, copying his mox pearl + playing a Savanah Lions and then triple bolting him from 18 down to 9.
  • Must not listen to https://alltingsconsidered.com/
    • Never shatter the lotus!
• Me playing Lotus + Copy Lotus + Copy Lotus + Demonic Tutor for Balance + with 1 card in hand and casting Balance when I had 1 mox and 1 land in play and my opponent had 5 cards in hand + 5 lands (including a maze of Ith).
• Beating the OG – Olle Rade in the last round of n00bcon for what could have been a win and in if my opponents who I had a loss and draw hadn’t lost all their matches after I played them.
  • I tapped my mana wrong one turn (badlands instead of a volcanic island) to cast a BEB on his Lightning Bolt vs. my Factory, not sure I will ever hear the end of that from Olle.
  • Mulliganing a lot during this matchup and Olle telling me I mulligan too much…I’m not keeping this though…

• Doing commentary for the finals with Olle and Svante.
• Being asked if we were going to a rave – I don’t know that anyone in our group looked like they were going to a rave except for maybe Wheel.
• Halloumi wrap which we got on the walk back to our hotel at some wee hours of the night/morning.

Slops

• Being woken up at ~8:30 am by construction work being done on our hotel…we figured we would be safe on Good Friday…but was not to be.
• Having to pay for drinks with PayPal each time was a little clunky but not the worst thing in the world.
• Having a draw, we didn’t play slow but we did play 4 games. I win if we have 1/2 more minutes…
• Having an unintentional draw, this was sloppy play from me, I have the cards to draw at any point but there is not point in drawing, I simply fucked up. I was in a commanding position and can win this game in a couple of turns if I simply hold off, I probably should have rolled back here but didn’t want to ask that of my opponent.
• Losing to Shane on UW Serra in some brutal games.
  • G1 – He goes T1 LOA and has to play all 4 Serras to beat me
  • G2 – He goes T1 Serra on the draw but I get there because of Balance
  • G3 – I mulligan to 2…every hand is 5 lands + mox + a card (but not a creature) all the way down to 2 when I get the LoA + all spells hand but it has an ancestral so I keep it, I play LoA go and he plays t1 Serra…again, I draw a Island and ancestral then he plays ancestral on his turn and I draw a Psionic Blast but he has the counter…rough games.

Mellanmjölk

Props

• Scott for letting me raid his ante binder + deck from n00bcon so I could play something different for the day since I hadn’t really planned on playing in this event. 
  • The cards not in sleeves are from Scott 🙂
  • Please don’t sell my socks pic.

• I had consumed most of the dry cider the couple days before but they managed to find a giant bottle of cider which I drank while I was there.
• My opponent going turn 1 Guardian Beast, me going Mox, Sol Ring, volcanic island and go, my opponent going Chaos Orb + go to activate and me backing him up so I could spell blast his Chaos Orb.
• Killing one of my opponents with Shivan Dragon. 
• Playing against David who had travelled from NZ and chatting about some of his past work which included making props for the Matrix including the Nebuchadnezzar!
• Getting to see another piece of original alpha art in person.

Slops

• Being woken even earlier today! They started at ~7:30 am, so much for Saturday being a day off.
• Having a draw against the deck, again I win this if we have a couple more minutes to finish the game, oh well.
• Losing to Mitja on UW.

Last night meetup

Props

• Great venue as always, crashing the Alpha guys setup.
• Rum with FloVo.
• Getting to hang out with these guys.

• Discussing Scryings with MG.
• Discussing some ideas with Kalle for future MTG Swag.
  • Stay tuned.

Slops

• Was kind of tired and couldn’t bring myself to play more mtg but I really should have been jamming ante.
• I was pretty bad about getting swag, giving swag and remembering to bring cards to get signed, etc.
  • Not that big of a deal but it always feels good when you accomplish some subgames on the weekend 🙂
• Leaving the bar at 3 am since we needed to be at the airport for 4am, to get our 6am flight to Amsterdam.
  • Really punted by paying for a hotel for this last night which we didn’t use except to store our bags for a bit.
• Getting so carried away that I missed doing my Duolingo practice!
  • Not the worst but time zones can make this challenging.

Swag Haul

A little lighter than usual but some sweet pickups still and I dispersed some TakkleMagAZine, bandanas, stickers and other various falling stars swag!

I’m not a huge beer fan but people making stuff like this is awesome!

I am bad at taking photos while at events so I shamelessly stole photos from multiple sources and gave credit to absolutely nobody, please let me know if you don’t want me to use any of your pics and I will take them down.

Cheers,

@mtgmisprint

NOTE – If I owe anyone money for drinks/Ubers, etc. please reach out and I can PayPal you. 

NOTE 2 – I wanted to the set the bar high in case Ty ever goes to a n00bcon. 😉

NOTE 3 – Shoutout to Mitja and Reindeer for all their great work!