Tournament Report – Overall Winner
The Beginning: More Insane Than You Realize
My journey to becoming the 2024 Uthden Troll Cup “People’s Champ” (and accidentally the 2024 Uthden Troll Cup Overall Winner) starts in early 2023. I catch some Timmy Talks videos from UTC 2022, and my initial investigation suggests this is no ordinary Old School tournament. The main event is standard Swedish, but a good portion of the tournament features limited formats: repack drafts, old booster drafts, and 2023’s crown jewel – 4th Edition, Chronicles, Fallen Empires Sealed Deck (with ante and weekend long trading). Sign me up!
A handful of Magic players seem to cross the Atlantic for Old School tournaments several times a year. These people flabbergast me, because I am not a savvy traveler. I have rarely gone on a “work trip,” and I have certainly never gone on one near a Magic tournament. I have never redeemed a single travel point, though the idea sounds intriguing. I don’t know how people do it other than how I do it – save up dollars and block off days.
By the time I have enough dollars and days saved to confidently register for the 2023 UTC, the main event is properly sold out. That does not deter me; it only makes the situation more hilarious. “Did you really save up $2000 and 5 days just to play Uthden Trolls in a Swedish tournament?” Of course not. I saved the money and the days so I could play Fourth Edition Sealed Deck for ante. Obviously.
Luckily, I am only the second most insane person at the 2023 UTC, as David came all the way from Tasmania. Ron throws his hands up in amazement and lets us both play in the main event, even though nobody else drops out.
The entire weekend is a blast. I meet tons of awesome people and have a great time. I also manage to finish 5-2 (26th) in the main event with an unpowered Troll deck, which is good enough for “Best Troll Deck” and “Best Unpowered.” Those awards convince my wife to approve a 2024 return to Leeuwarden “if everything works out.”
Oh boy, does everything work out…
2024 – Thursday
I land at Schiphol around 8am having not slept on the plane. I am funneled with the rest of the non-EU passengers to some fancy new kiosks. After scanning my passport, taking my fingerprints, and photographing me, an airport worker hands me a card and tells me to follow the line that matches my card. I assume this saves time, but the 10 lines converge to a single border patrol window. I don’t properly enter The Netherlands for 90 minutes.
I grab some breakfast and catch a surprisingly full train. I take a selfie of my “excited to stand for two hours” face and send it to the group chat. After a few stops enough people leave the train so I can sit down. Yay, trains.
My hotel will not let me check in early, so I take a three-hour tour of Leeuwarden on foot. Seems like a lovely city. At 15.00 on the dot I can check in a get a much needed nap.
I head over to the “casual meet up” around 19.00. I hang out with my Finnish teammates for Sunday’s event before joining Ivo’s Revised Mini-Master. Eight players receive two Revised booster repacks and have to build a 30-card deck. The winner gets to keep all of the loser’s cards and add them to their own deck; the loser goes home. The only notable cards in my pool are two Disintegrates, which are not enough to defeat Louis’s Serra Angel in Round 1. I hand over my cards, say goodnight, and head back to get some sleep.
Friday – Swaffle
Swaffle is the only EU format that allows Fallen Empires, so obviously I HAVE to play multiple Fallen Empires cards. Since Hymn is the best FE card, I settle on a mono black list inspired by BrightDays’s T16 Derby deck from a few years ago. Restricted Hymn means I can play my Lobstercon 2024 copy without the art mismatch quietly grating on my nerves each time I draw it.
I don’t have any notes from this tournament, as I wasn’t expecting to write a report. I finish 4-2, winning the games when Hymn/Hippy/Twist do work and losing games when they do not. I am briefly worried that 4-2 is good enough for T8 (causing me to miss the much anticipated Repack Draft), but luckily I finish 13th out of 62. Whew.
93/94 Repack Draft
After dinner, 127 of my closet friends and I head out to the tent for 93/94 Repack Draft. This is one of my favorite events of weekend (or maybe all time?), and I thoroughly appreciate all the effort Ron and the team put into making these drafts special.
P1P1 I take Serra Angel and follow with a disappointing Spirit Link (you only need Swords number 5 once you collect Swords 1-4). I am pleasantly surprised to find Fireball staring back at me from pack 3 (Ville took Disk over it, and Robert took Hippy to go with P1 Mind Twist). Apparently, no one wants to be red. I end pack 1 with Fireball, 2 Bolts, Serra, and a smattering of medium red cards.
P2 starts with Jayemdae Tome over Swords (possibly a mistake) and then Royal Assassin(!). I figure I’m obviously RB now, but that’s the last quality black card I see. Fair enough. I get a Pyrotechnics and bunch of filler in various colors.
I have no idea what my P3P1 was – my pool contains no card worthy of that slot, save cards I know I took elsewhere. I get passed a Serra Angel and then a Shivan Dragon, cementing me into RW bomb flyers. Works for me. Here’s the final deck:
Serra and Shivan are enough to defeat Hank from the Troll Crew in round one and Ville in round two. I have to wait for the table finals against either the world’s slowest Dane or the world’s slowest Dutchman (sorry, I don’t have names or nationalities – also, Svante’s label, not mine) who is playing a Combat Medic / Samite Healer deck and won his first two rounds 1-0-0. As Aegon II discovers in House of the Dragon, there’s only so much a healer can do against dragon fire. I channel my 2 drops of royal blood and ride into the T16.
Top 16 – UB
We use our pod decks for the T16. I know my deck is good, but I correctly assume everyone else’s deck is also good. My T16 opponent has an incredible UB deck featuring Moti and all the black removal. Shivan takes one game, Moti takes another, and then my opponent stalls out on lands for an anticlimactic game 3.
Top 8 – Jacob – Mono B
My memory is a little hazy, but I think this is another close match. Jacob has Ashes to Ashes to keep me from resurrecting my bombs while simultaneously bringing his Vampire back with Raise Dead. Fortunately, Order of Leitbur doesn’t care about any of that, and I’m on to the T4.
Top 4 – Bicycle Richard – Mono B
Richard biked 200 kilometers to the venue earlier that day, and upon arrival he drank approximately 200 liters of beer. Everyone around me whispers, “that only made him stronger…” I am appropriately awed and nervous. We split the first two games, and I fear the whispers are correct.
G3 Richard uses his Jalum Tome to dig through his entire deck, answering all my threats and eventually finding his Frozen Shade. He swings into my empty board, tapping out to hit me for 7. I draw a land and pass, at which point he says, “end step, Witches you for one.” I quizzically gesture towards the Shade and reply, “one to the Shade…?” Neither I, Richard, nor Ron – our lone spectator – can believe what is happening. Richard shrugs, bins the shade, and decks himself a turn or two later. We shake hands, and I move to the stream table for the finals, taking care not to question my incredible fortune too much.
Finals – Morten – UW Walls
An early Shivan Dragon wins game 1. Morten decides that looks like fun, so he Control Magics my Dragon in game 2 and wins easily. I draw the Dragon relatively early in G3, but knowing I have no way to beat my own card, I wait. I try to bait out Control Magic with my two Serras, but Morten has a Serra and a Clone of his own. Morten is ripping through his deck with Jalum Tome, so at some point I decide just to “wall up” and let him deck himself. With three or four cards left, Morten cast Volcanic Eruption for 5(!), killing everything except his Obsianus Golem. He kills me the turn before he would deck himself. After the game, he shows me the Control Magic that was the second to last card in his deck, but also the Blue Elemental Blast and Volcanic Eruption he had been holding most of the game. Well played.
Swedish Deck Tech
Before I sleeved my first card, I knew two things about my deck for the main event. First, it would be unpowered, since I continue to spend “power money” on plane tickets and hotel rooms. Second, it would contain 2 Uthden Trolls. Not only do I think Trolls are in the spirit of the event, but I also wanted to defend my “Best Troll Deck” title from last year.
Speaking of last year, I played R/G Blood Moon to a 5-2 record, which was good for 26th place and a sweet playmat. The deck performed reasonably well, but my instincts told me to go “bigger.” It feels terrible to land a T2 Blood Moon, only to give them 20 turns to draw an answer while tickling them to death with Llanowar Elves.
I tested out various medium red builds anytime NEOS was Swedish or Swedish adjacent. I also tried a “bigger” RG version at Lobstercon that felt awful and went 3-5. The morning of my flight to Amsterdam, I settled on this 75:
Deck Building Decisions
“Mono Red” – I started with a RG version, because T2 Moon off of Elves wins more often than a natural T3 Moon. You only really notice the upgrade, however, if you’re both on the play and lucky enough to have 2 land, Elf, Moon in your opening hand. In exchange for this occasional upgrade you get terrible mana. Relying on Blood Moon means Taiga often doesn’t tap for green, and you also can’t play the best green card, Pendelhaven. I conveniently own Badlands as one of my three sets of duals, so I get to splash Tutor and Twist JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE IN THE TOURNAMENT! I feel like a proper old-schooler! (For the record, yes, Mind Twist was good.)
3 Blood Moon – This is the whole plan, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a mistake to run 4. Topdecking Blood Moon when literally any other card would win you the game feels terrible though, so I settled on 3.
2 Earth Elemental – I landed on Elemental the same way Andres Hojman landed on Durkwood Boars. I wanted a creature that could do specific things – profitably block Su-Chi and attack into Serra Angel. Earth Elemental was the only application I received, so he got the job.
0 Chain Lightning – I run Chain Lightning in leaner versions of this deck, but with Blood Moon out, the opponent almost always has RR available to bounce it back. Sometimes that’s fine, and sometimes you die. I replaced them with Fireballs and Disintegrates, which had the added benefit of scaling up to kill Serras, Juzams, and opponents at more than 3 life.
0 Wheel of Fortune – I hesitated leaving such a powerful card out of the deck, but it’s only good in this deck if everything else has gone wrong. Plan A is “cast Blood Moon, kill them before they find their 1 or 2 answers.” Wheel gives them 7 more chances to find an answer. I replaced it with a Tome, which honestly felt fine.
Fellwar Stone vs Mana Vault – Either of these cards could work in the deck. I suspected I was a little soft to aggro decks, so I didn’t feel comfortable taking Mana Vault damage. I didn’t test this extensively, though, so Mana Vault may indeed be correct.
The sideboard seems like standard fare. I brought in everything at least once except the Crypts. I never faced Twiddle Vault or Reanimator, which was fine with me.
Swedish Matches
Round 1 – Table 87
Marco Da Rios – RWG Zoo
I start the day in the Party Tent, which is actually quite lovely. The games are less lovely, especially from Marco’s point of view. I play a Blood Moon, and Marco is unable to remove it in time despite playing a basic Plains, Pearl, 4 Disenchant, Orb, and sideboard Tranquility. I won the first game by swinging with Uthden Troll, Earth Elemental, and Shivan Dragon, as Garfield intended.
(1-0, 2-0)
Round 2 – Table 14
Morten Benzon – BWru Midrange
I feel like I owe Morten an apology, because this was honestly my luckiest match all weekend. He starts G1 with T1 Library. I hang my head in despair for all of three seconds before ripping Strip Mine off the top of my deck. Turn 3 Blood Moon does the trick, with Morten having to discard to hand size something like five turns in a row. He discards 4 Hippies and a Spirit Link.
The Spirit Link has a whiff of Juzam’s cologne on its collar, so I board in one City in a Bottle. I am ambivalent about seeing it in my opening hand, but it turns out to be the perfect answer to Lotus, Land, Juzam, go. Morten Mind Twists for 3 on T3, conveniently missing both Blood Moon and the third land to cast it. Blood Moon claims its second victim, and I claim revenge from last night’s draft final.
(2-0, 4-0)
Round 3 – Table 11
Svante – UWbr SSS(age)
Before this weekend, I only knew the names of about 10 people at the tournament. Despite having never met, Svante was one of those people. I know I am in for a tough match. I manage to steal one game with Blood Moon, but Svante wins one with Jayemdae Tome and another with Armageddon. It’s hard for my deck to deal with Serra Angel in any case, but it’s impossible without lands.
(2-1, 5-2)
Round 4 – Table 40
Sveegaard – RWG Zoo
With a loss I am exiled to the darkness of the Troll Cave. This is a functional repeat of round one. I play Blood Moon twice; my opponent does not remove it in time. City in a Bottle also helps keep Emerald-fueled Erhnams at bay in G2.
(3-1, 7-2)
Round 5 – Table 15
Johannes Kammler – Mono G Ghazban Ogre
I move back up to the sunny Catszaal, which I assume contains only a certain type of deck. Johannes plays Forest – Ghazban Ogre, quickly disabusing me of that notion. I kept a hand with Blood Moon and 4 drops, but I’m functionally dead on T3. Games 2 and 3 are both incredibly close. Johannes has Ankh of Mishra, a surprisingly good card against Earth Elemental. Fortunately, my Falling Star wipes the board both games (a pleasant surprise to me) and I squeak out another win.
(4-1, 9-3)
Round 6 – Table 10
MarS108 – Arabian Aggro
G1 he plays an early Serendib, but I have an Icy to keep it at bay. A Blood Moon and some medium creatures seal the deal. G2 I’m even better positioned with Blood Moon plus Bottle. He empties his hand with red burn, then casts Wheel of Fortune. His draw is 3 Moxen, 3 land, and something else that didn’t stop my 4-power creature.
(5-1, 11-3)
Round 7 – Table 4
DaaC – Deadguy Ale
American old school tournaments have a strict “no draws of any kind policy,” but I can tell from the standings that’s not the case here. Are people going to intentionally draw into the T16? I have no experience at top old school tables. If this were Standard, Modern, or even Premodern, people would be IDing. Everyone else appears to be playing, so I shuffle up and play.
My “win and in” opponent is Dan, a local player in his first old school tournament. He plays a Juzam, but this isn’t the Juzam Djinn Cup – it’s the Uthden Troll Cup. I block for a couple turns before Fireballing the Djinn and winning with Shivan Dragon.
I don’t remember what happened in G2. My scorepad has Dan’s life as 20-16-12-0, so presumably I swung with a bunch of unanswered 4/4’s.
(6-1, 13-3)
Top 16
Reindeer – UWb Serra Stuff
I’ve Blood Mooned my way into the NEOS playoffs enough to know how this story is going to end. Good players with good decks are going to dunk on me with their power. Maybe if I lose quickly enough, I can still make the Premodern draft.
G1 I get out a Blood Moon and that’s the whole game. Okay… G2 Reindeer Balances us both down to something like 3 lands and 2 cards. He keeps Serra and Blue Elemental Blast, which I only know because I keep Mind Twist. He is kind enough to draw nothing but lands in our top deck war, and I somehow move on to the T8.
(7-1, 15-3)
Top 8
Sandro – Lion Dib Bolt
The other three T8 matches are all Big Name vs Big Name, so Sandro and I get to play our match in a relaxed, spectator-free corner of the Catszaal. I don’t mind at all, since I assume part of my edge is people not knowing what’s in my deck (and being dubious I’m actually playing the rumored Earth Elementals).
I don’t love my matchup against LDB. Between Bolts, Chains, Vises, and Orcs, he can easily win under a Blood Moon. He doesn’t draw enough red cards in either game, however, and he also misses an Orb flip on Blood Moon. We take those – straight to the T4.
(8-1, 17-3)
Top 4
Thomas – UWb Flyers
My T8 match finishes early enough that I am able to watch some of Thomas versus SlayJay in the T8. Their match takes quite a long time, partly because two good players are playing complicated decks and partly because other Germans keep interrupting them with beers and shots. Prost!
Eventually, Thomas and I play our match on stream. G1 I have an unanswered Blood Moon which is enough to let a Uthden Troll attack for the win on stream at the Uthden Troll Cup. Achievement unlocked! G2 I mull to 5. Thomas remarks, “he’s mulliganing to Blood Moon!” That’s not 100% true, but this is not a matchup where “lands and spells” is good enough. I know my first 7 card hand of 4 lands, Su-Chi, Earth Elemental, and Shivan has a 3% chance of winning. My next hand has 0 or 1 land(s), so I go to 5.
Thomas starts with a basic Plains, which I have to Strip. He lands CoP: Red, which I have to Orb. He plays a Lotus just for fun, and I immediately Shatter it. That may seem strange, but the only thing that matters in this matchup is Blood Moon. I can’t leave him with access to white mana. Thomas has been telegraphing BEB or Counterspell for several turns, so I just hold my lone Blood Moon while we play draw-go for a while. Thomas plays out an Orb, so now I have to find REB and Shatter before I can Blood Moon. Once I do, we have the Moon – Counter – REB – Orb – Shatter exchange, and that’s all she wrote.
(9-1, 19-3)
Finals
Svante – UWbr SSS(age)
Svante points out that I’m the higher seed, so I get to play first G1. “Well, that’s something, at least,” I reply. I keep a good hand with Blood Moon and it just. doesn’t. matter. Svante shows the world why unpowered decks rarely make the top tables, bashing me into the ground with an avalanche of “good cards.” Sure, play blue and white cards – take the easy way out, see what I care!
G2 is at least moderately interesting. After 5 seconds of making pained faces, I decide 2 Factory, Strip, Fellwar, Blood Moon, Su-Chi, Juggernaut is a keeper. Svante mulls to 5. So you’re saying there’s a chance… Svante plays T1 Library, which I Strip before he gets up to 7 cards. I find a Mountain for Blood Moon, but Svante has Disenchant plus Strip for the Mountain. I must have drawn either another Factory or my lone Swamp, because I’m stuck looking at a hand of 4 drops and red cards. All I need is Svante to play any land that taps for colored mana and I’m off to the races. He draws Moxen and Factories instead, and I die the unpowered death I deserve.
We both head over to the stream. I receive my prizes for “Best Uthden Troll Deck” and “Best Unpowered Deck.” Svante receives his second trophy in two days and contemplates playing Trolls next year. I fear my chance of a three-peat may be in danger.
After much handshaking and well-wishing, I head back to my hotel, only to find my memorized route blocked by some kind of street party (or maybe bar queue?). I am one of the world’s most directionally challenged people, so I text my wife a final “I love you” before venturing off the path into what I assume will be certain death on the frigid streets of Leeuwarden. 20 minutes later, I accidentally find my hotel and everything is fine.
Sunday
I meet U40 friend Robert for a casual match with our Swedish decks. As predicted, Robert’s 10 basic lands and 4 Underworld Dreams make him the favorite. We chat about the deck, U40, and visiting Europe in general before he heads home and I head out to the tent for the Worlds Cube Draft.
My team for the event is Team Sauna Outfit of Finland, who thankfully are wearing sauna hats but not sauna outfits. Three cheers for cultural sensitivity! We forget to get a team picture of us in our hats, but that’s almost to be expected on the final day of a long Magic weekend.
I draft the 1997 cube and end up with a Necropotence deck featuring two Lake of the Dead and three Drain Life.
My teammates all end up with good versions of good decks: Erhnam Geddon, Howling Mine Stormbind, and ProsperBloom. I like our chances.
I finish 2-1, predictably losing to the mono red burn deck I hoped to dodge. Our team finishes 6-6 overall for no glory. So it goes.
I check out the vendors and watch some of the individual World Cube playoffs. One player who made it to the finals managed to draft 4 Strip Mines, carrying on the American spirit. Before that match finishes, Ron asks me to come back to the main hall. He and the rest of the Troll Crew present me with the “Winner Overall” award. Apparently my two second place finishes were enough to vault me to the top of the standings. The award comes with another cool playmat featuring sketches by Drew Tucker and AS Alters. Richard also mentions the award comes with a lifetime invitation, which I’m merely documenting here in case the event surges in popularity next year (I assume it will).
This report is already long enough, so I’ll skip over Monday’s massive train delay and just mention that I did arrive back in America safely. A huge thanks to Ron, Richard, Hank, and the rest of the Troll Crew for putting on another amazing event. See you all next year (probably)!
Oldschoolmtg-ish 