Friday 12.05: Two Headed Giant unified
Saturtday 13.05: Oldschool, full swedish
Location: Spelletjescafe “2 Klaveren” in Amsterdam
During UTC tournament in november of 2022 i received my invite from Richard for the Raging Bull Series (RBS) 2023. In the past i heared and read great stuff of the event, even with it’s corona break, whith only the finest people and oldest cards as possible. Immideatly i was fullfilled with happiness to once take part of this event.
This article will mainly sum up my remaining memories of Magic the Gathering games i played during the weekend. I really enjoyed the weekend and writing about it. Hopefully u will enjoy reading it. Also i hope u catching up the great vibes this community has and get hyped for ur own next gathering whereever u are heading to.
Before i finished and finally posted this article, Richard published his organizer report (link on the bottom), so i was able to collect and edit indeckpics of my opponents
Also don’t promise a report, else Richard will text u “constantly” 😛
After five hours traveling by train my friday startet wits meet & greet in the sun, first beers (u could choose from all sorts pictured in the sumbnail), a burger and relaxed talking to each other in front the venue.
The friday event was schedulded as “Two Headed Giant- Brothers’ Highlander- Unified”. U probably ask urself what this is, but i can encourage u to grab a friend start brewing and play it! Ruleswise it is a best of one match with ur teammate against two other people. Each team needs to have a 100cards deck where every card is a singleton, even if u stack both decks on top each other. For deckbuilding u have some points to spent as u maybe know form Xpoint or 7point OS formats. For detailed ruleset go to:
https://brothersoffire.home.blog/brothers-highlander/
As a great opportunity to meet new friends i teamed up with Ben alias ForeignBlackBordered. I never met him before, but we already had a good amount of tradesales and chat via discord.
We brewed our decks in a google spreadsheet during multiple weeks and a long but one single hourlong phonecall the week before RBS. Not going into detailed thoughts, but we both agreed without never played nor saw a game of this THG format before, that playing two colour is an absolut maximum, running enough manasources is crutial, splitting artefact /-ramp gonna be hard and that our colors will be RG and UB.
Thanks to Benja for borrowing me a Rocket Launcher and gifting me needed Islands to have a playable deck.
At 19.30 Richard gave a warming welcome speach, reminding us on some THG rules (like ea Inferno deals 12dmg to a team, as 2×6 equals 12) and funnily encourages us to NOT ask judging stuff to him as he plays himself. If something happens all four players can’t figure out together, they should do flip Orbs, do a beer drinking contest or do whatever helps as it is freaking casual friday!
For the winning two headed team an iconing two card combo of Channel+Fireball is waiting.
28 players transformed into 14 giants and went for battle.
If u want some live impressions and videocoverage of the games, go to Timmys Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikerqnpo0Q8
Round 1 vs ?? and Christian
…or no match as Rheindeer was carriing both decks with him and got couple flight delays so he arraived much later then expected. While he probably used his switch to play some more hours of Zelda, we took the opportunity and grabed another beer, talked with ?? and checked out first impressions of THG gameplay around the room. Sorry for forgetting ur name, please chat me at the next event and a beer goes on my tap for this.
Round 2 vs Florian and Richard
Florain and Richard were both on mono red with early creature pressure. We managed to removal them or stall them out mostly because Ben got his mana right and lay down some creature after creature in form of Rukh Egg, Su-Chi, Orcish Artillery and even an Gaea’s Liege. The Egg got transformed into a birds as my Royal Assasin run out of tapped creatures on the opposing side and i couldnt force them to be tapped without a second Island and my Flood. Gaea’s Liege transforms five or six Mountains into Forest which massiveliy crumbles a Dragon Whelp and Florains gameplan overall. While both lifepoints are melting in an interesting back and forth it comes to a final showdown as Storm World enters the battlefield. Within two turns Ben and i figured out a killing line, including eot Artillery them for 2 us for 3, upkeep response to Storm World with Artillery again and Aladins Ring them to death while leaving us at a healthy 1 life point. In a total of six opponents handcards they didnt had a final instant burn spell, onyl a Fireball which couldnt be cast for leatheal the turn before.
Round 3 vs Jordan and Mikael aka Ã…land
Time for a feature match! Hopp to timestamp 2:38:41 and watch the full game till 3:01:00!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikerqnpo0Q8
Spoiler alert:
Match round timer is 70minutes, we were done in 20 – something is happening.
I was forced to keep a hand with double Swamp and only blue cards, Ben startet with a Mountain and Forest hand. We both never got into the game.
Funmatch vs Hunter and Thomas aka Timmy
If u watched the match before and hang around a little longer u find us playing funmatch between rounds. Hunter and Thomas just walked by and are seperaded roaming heads as they originaly belong to other giants.
Earlie creatures get cleaned out with a THG busted card Earthquake, followed up with Prodigal Sorcerer, Vesuvan Doppelganger into Triskelion.
I liked to see one of our included “ping ping ping” strategie went off here. Also i have to admit, i am very impressed of Hunter playing an unsleeved mono green deck, while his collection contains all the powerful cards he then played on saturday.
Round 4 vs Martin and Malte
After Ben took five gentelman mulligans he found himself with a hand he was forced to keep as it contains more than one land, sadly only mountains. My hand with Terror, Power Sink, Apprentice Wizard and lands of both colors going into non stop mana sources draw. I looked dump at a stick the whole game not knowing to do with my mana. This lead to me not having another actual game. Ben attemts of fighting with his self also failed as he never found a green mana source. Even against my removal and an early Earthquake we still got drowned by Black Nights, Nettling Imp, Llanowar Elves, Elvish Arschers. Martin gave us a chance by stumbeling having his second color for a while and playing only with black mana. He even fixed his mana by turned his Desert into Swamp with Evil Presence.
This Two Headed thing has a great balancing and the gameplan is huge fun! If only there was at least one normal mulligan so u are not forced to keep absolutly unplayable hands.
Ben and i talked about our decks during the weekend again, and came to the conclusion that (of course!) they werent build perfectly. A bit more mana sources should be included, doing one main color and one off color, avaoid double casting cost spells, aswell as maybe ditch green for white.
Anyhow i found myself in bed at 2:30 and catched sleep till 8:30. Not to bad amount but i felt realy hangover even after shower and a lovly bagle breakfast at nearby street cafe.
The saturday event with 76 players (capped) was also streamed completly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsF3JU2ruA0
Raging Bull Series is held with swedish only reprint policy. For me that meant i have to build a deck without duallands as i only own revised, fbb and fwb except a single Badlands. Concidering i am also cutted in third leaving me with three Moxen and losing the remaining to the no CE/IE restriction.
I double and tripple checked my collection what i have and what fits together. At the end following four big attampts are mentioonable:
My brewing process startet from mono u tron based robots, but that felt realy week without any Copy Artifact, a single Sage of Lat-Nam and not even enough legal basic Islands.
Before the event i still owned couple Hypnotic Spectors and Sengir Vampires so my next direction was BR midrange. Together with some two Sedge Trolls that deck layed out look like classic non blue TrollDisco but in a horribly worse version. Straight up from the manabase again aswell as only 1 to 3 offs.
Before i sleeved up above Blood Moon Robots i also concidered some mono green. I tried to trade missing cards but wasnt succesfull in time. With only a single Llanowar Elves, one Giant Growth, no Ice Storm, no Hurricane, no Wherling Dervishes and only 2 legal Forest i ditched the idea aswell.
While not shuffled up the Blood Moon Robtos once, i was happy with what i came up with. Sure replacing some basics with more Badlands, switching Jalum for a Jayemdae Tome, not playing a Howling Mine or overall not playing this deck would have been good, but … whatever it looks realy pretty with this many original prints. Containing 1 Alpha, 29 Beta, 9 Unlimited, 5 Arabian Nights, 16 Antiquities, 6 Legends, 9 The Dark cards.
Lets see how many Robot players, full powered – full pimped dualland players or just Blood Moon haters i can annoy. Beside the usual goal of “beer a round” (which by the way ended up as with cider a round and some sidebeers) i set my a goal for the day to 4-2.
Ooho i nearly forgott to mention that alot of prices where announced, like obtaining the RBS Ring as a winner, a Wood Elemental for spice price, a Demonic Tutor artistdrawn on a blanko card for finishing at 38/76, something for the best placed not winning The Deck player, beta Grizzly Bears for finishing 9th place, some Dwarven Warriors in 4th-revised-unlimted-beta-alpha and potential Summer as Erwin needed a motivation/headhunting aswell as a big fat raffle.
Round 1 vs Mari
Game 1:
Wining the dice roll allowed me to do Mountain, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby with Lightning Bolt, Triskelion and Su-Chi in the pipeline. Mari tinkered for a while what powerfull stuff he wanted to do in his first turn. He decided to do a Volcanic Island, Mana Vault, Black Lotus and a Wheel of Fortune – discarding four cards including an Ancestral Recall. My fresh hand gave me the option to do a small Mind Twist or an Blood Moon. Of course i let the moon rise. Mari dropped a Library of Alexandria Mountain another Mana Vault and a Triskelion. I build up some more mana and riped his remaining hand. The following turn i used Shatter to destroy his Trike before assambling my own threads beside his own ticking build up shocksystem.
Game 2:
After we both go down to six cards i start with an Library of Alexandira which draws me a single card next turn, before Mari uses Demonic Tutor to find his Strip Mine. As my plan A of riding the value train got destroyed i start to unload my hand of couple Moxen and a Blood Moon. While beeing cast it gets countered wisley of an Blue Elemental Blast. The follow up pressure of Su-Chi, Su-Chi, Icy Manipulator and couple of Mishra’s Factory where enough to overload his Psionic Blast Removal and overall stumbling game.
Time to pack it in and toast with a beer for both of us on my cap.
2-0
Round 2 vs Geer Van Dijck
Game 1:
Keept a hand with turn one Howling Mine into turn two Blood Moon. Sadly Geer came prepared by playing Ernham Burn’em list featering the full burn package (4 Fireball+Channel!). That meaned my hope of another win trough Blood Moon got stifled. By Chaos Orbing his Forest i tried stop him at least from casting green spells . Sadly he found one of his remaining four Forest immideatly afterwards and run me over with multiple Giant Growthes plus Lightning Bolts. My Sedge Troll holding the ground wasnt a fan of it either.
Game 2:
Boarding eight cards seems appropiate to compensate bad cards as Blood Moons and Relic Barriers. Geer startet with an early Sylvan Library and couple Lightning Bolts to my face. Sadly i only have pointless creature removal inf form of Terror and two Lightning Bolts of my own in hand. On of them could be cast at him before he spins the Wheel of Fortune. My defense plays against Mishra’s Factory and an Erhnam Djinn came always a turn to late as my first Maze of Ith gets destroyed by a Strip Mine before it could be used once. Second Maze of his holds back his Erhnam and allows me to build up aswell. A forest walking Su-Chi snacking his live points while Jade Statue avoids the Erhnam trigger aswell as doing some blocking duty against an growing army of Geer. While the groud is fully covered i get blown out from 9 life of Magic oldest two card combo “Channel Fireball”. This was possible as he was on three mana sources and 10 life himself, and i havnt reached six mana for my double Triskelion in hand.
0-2
Round 3 vs Resti González
Game 1:
Looking back i probably made a loosing decission on my mulligan to six hand. It contained Mountain, Mishra, Mox Ruby, Blood Moon, Blood Moon, Disintegrate and a Triskelion. Putting down a redundant Blood Moon instead of the Disintegrate made the game. What happend was that i Resti responded to my Land Mox with a Tundra into Savannah Lion. My turn two Moon resolved and sticked as planed and i noticed some shoulder shrugging across the table. Passing the turn once and the Moon is gone beacuse Resti has a Disenchant and his 1 off basic Plains either in his starting hand or drawn into. (edit: after seeing his decklist i know he hast two basic plains beside Mox Pearl and Black Lotus). From this point i got rolled over by the Lion and double Serendib Efreet. My Disintegrate even got countered and a Sedge Troll removed via Swords to Plowshares so the Lion and Mishra still can attack.
Game 2:
This game was realy nice back and for with trading cards evenly. At one point i used an freshly drawn The Abyss to face Savannah Lion and an Serra Angel. After both die and couple turns pass Resti again gets rid of my enchantment and summons a new Angel. With my Icy Manipulator and a Maze of Ith i keep her at home and also start nibbling his lifepoints with a single Mishra’s Factory. My Mishr gets a Swords to Plowshares and the games stalled out a bit while i only drew left over shitty cards of my deck like Blood Moons and some Triskelions on five manasources. With no attackers left over i tap him down of double blue in each endstep until i found my needed mana for a long time waiting Triskelion. Playing this line on 2 life(me) vs 5 life(him) would reward me next turn with a game win, but my Icy Manipulator shields are down and i am only left over with a Maze of Ith. Resti this chance and do a Time Twister out of his two remaining cards in search of Chaos Orb, Strip Mine or a Demonic Tutor to find one of those. He found two out of three cards he needed and swang for the win.
0-2
Round 4 Pasi Savolainen
Game 1:
After a mulligan to Swamp, Mox Pearl, Su-Chi, Lightning Bolt and a Library of Alexandira on the draw I felt pretty solid of having a fine gameplan by finding more mansources including a red one. Pasi started the game a Library and so did i. On his second turn he thought a bit about his play pattern and i got some flaschbacks of todays round one. But this time it weren’t any blue cards. Pasi decided to kill both libraries with going land, Sol Ring and a maindeck City in a Bottle. Turns out this was a hard choice as his game plan stumbles slot afterwards. Only a Mishras Factory and a Sedge Troll coming within the next turns. Myself is crumbled as well, but I eventually drew into manasources, use my Chaos Orb to destroy a Niv. Disk and deploy my first Su-Chi. With some math done and a calculated risk I use my first bolt to tap down the Sedge Troll via his regeneration ability. I and attack and cast my second Su-Chi. Next turn i repeat this process with a second bolt. To finish it off I use my Fireball to tap the Troll for the third time and Strip Mine his Mishra which provided the last possible blocking creature.
Game 2:
We both mulliganed to six and I kept Swamp, Mishra’s Factory, City of Brass, Lightning Bolt, Demonic Tutor and a Shatter. Against RB Troll disco my game plan on the draw here is boring but powerfully. Play the slow game with an Library. Turn two i tutor it up and generate to much advantage of it. Pasi tries to race with double Mountain and double Mishra. The race stopped with an concession after I Mind Twist his remaining four cards, including an Demonic Tutor and a Mind Twist of his own, as well as a Triskelion afterwards with LoA still active.
2-0
Round 5 vs Koos Carmer
As Koos is a known person u already recognized that the picture is not him. I am sorry that i missed to snap a foto duirng our match. Now u guys need to live with a selfie of me instead.
Game 1:
I am once again allowed to have a Library of Alexandria against. Turns out it is even better when u facing Field of Dream + Mill Stone combo/control. We trade recourses like multiple Shatter on Millstones and Swords to Plowshares against my Mishras and Sedge Troll. His Disenchants finds their targets in Su-Chi and Blood Moon. Overall this one for one trades benefits the LoA player.
Boarding: No picture either, so I have no clue what I done. Only thing I know it differed from both sideboarding as at least Terror went IN and OUT.
Game 2:
Uff, i remember that I made this game from potential easy to hard mode. I missjudged and then misplayed my Demonic Tutor as i didn’t went for another LoA play. Instead i grabed a Stone Rain to get rid of his Plains and win via my Blood Moon. I must be deaf not hearing all warning bells in my head…tutoring a Stone Rain…trying to resolve all this against UW player…winning with Blood Moon…not getting LoA in a slow matchup… Well of course this didn’t worked out. My spells and threads gets Blue Elemental Blasted, Disenchanted, Counter spelled. An unanswered Serra Angel goes the distance while I couldn’t find Terror neither a x spell for her.
Game 3:
My gameplan gets twisted up side down from a quick beat down starting hand as my first drawn card was LoA. This card is such a stupid one as the game now takes a complete other direction. We once again trade off cards, while I keep LoA up and Koos uses Ancestral, Manadrain into Braingeyser to draw at least the same amount of cards. After that he once again begin to fall behind on cards but skuplting a hand with Balance into Serra Angel. I needed to go down on lands and cards as well so I kept a Su-Chi. Both creatures run by each other until Koos is at three life and needs to block. Good for me because I was only at two life. Within three intense draw steps i found a Demonic Tutor for Lightning Bolt.
2-1
Round 6 vs Jaap B
Game 1:
By standing 3-2 i smelled the incoming 4-2 record while I saw my six card opening hand of City of Brass, Mountain, Blood Moon, Mox Jet, Mox Ruby, Triskelion. Only thing missing was the bloodmoonplayers best skill – being on the play. Jaap goes first and does Library of Alexandria, Mox Pearl, Black Lotus, Time Twister! While I drew a new hand of fresh seven shitty cards, he wasn’t finished yet. Activate LoA, Mox Sapphire, Time Walk. Now he plays and uses a Bazaar of Baghdad into Mahamoti Djinn and Triskelion. I play a Mishra’s Factory with another land and Relic Barrier in hand hoping he animates the Trike and a miracle happens so I come back into the game. But he wisley Animated Dead the Moti and wins with it.
Game 2: This was a really fun game under a turn two Blood Moon. We both take a while and apply more Landdrops and Moxen. Jaap then starts with a Triskelion wich gets Shattered. Now it’s time for my Triskelion and he found a Regrowth to combine with his Mox Emerald to get his Triskelion back. This new Trike gets toasted by Fireball which makes the path clear for my Trike to win.
Game 3:
On the draw again i keept a five card hand with Chaos Orb, Terror, Mox Jet, Mountain and Blood Moon. Looks solid by handling early threads and high chance of turn two Moon. But once again Jaap had other planes and started with a Bazaar, Mix Sapphire, Mox Ruby, Black Lotus, Timetwister. He was happy to have this opener again as it was his first event with Timetwiser under his belt. He also apologized for it, but man all good – for this crazy shit happening we do play Oldschool. After his twister he goes Time walk again. In his follow up turn a Demonic Tutors up something (which he tells me later was a Blue Elemental Blast). My not so impressive first turn was just playing Sol Ring. He now does Bazaar stuff and Animate Dead a Shivan Dragon which I can Terror. He Bazaars again but nothing more happens. I feel confident as a second Blood Moon sticks, after the first attempted gets countered. Games goes on for a bit and he finds his Mox Jet wich now let’s him cast Sol Kanar he Swamp King…under a Blood Moon, and 5/5 is huge, and block is a problematic color for Terror. At least I could cast two Triskelions with the plan of shooting the king. Instead indeed five counters to handle an again animated Shivan Dragon. Luckily I do find Triskelion number three, but so did Jaap. Trikes trading off, chumping the King to generate time. At the end it was not enought as i couldn’t find my Red Blasts, Chaos Orb, The Abyss, Icy Manipulator nor my Jade Statue. What a great game just happened!
1-2
My record of 3-3 puts me on place 34 out of 76. Not reaching my goal was a little bummer, as i had multiple good shots in different games to seal a win. Would have loved to see my crippled brew doing well. On the other hand i had a hughe amount of fun seeing so incredebly many old cards today. On top of that all my opponents were friendly and made every second worth the trip!
Fun fact:
If my opponent score would have been a little bit worse, i could have placed 38/76 which received a price for beeing man in the middle. Not often that someone “complaining” about having a good opp score.
After swiss rounds where finished a group picture was set up outside. Note that the picture aint fit all competitors of today.
So far i have not toId yet, that the RBS crew hat a lot of raffle going on during the day. Everbody who entered the event received a ticket, plus a ticket for each Raging Bull u bring in.
U threw all ur ticket in beneth beerpongcups during swiss rounds and crossed fingers to get drawn later on.
A Raging Bull hoodie in XXL, XL and L, a boosterpictured T-Shirt, two Raging Bull beerglasses, some The Dark&Legends/Antiquities wrapper + fresh Fallen Empire Booster aswell as a homemade Triskelion lifecounter.
Boom here we go! My lucky ticket with number 901 got drawn during the raffle. I actually won the Booster wrappers which i realy wanted after seeing them at the beginning. Three out of four are actually missing in my one-off collection binders and will find a absolutly lovly and cosy new home at mine.
Opening the packfrash Fallen Empire Booster barley gave me a feeling how it must be to open the other ones. Loved it! After professionaly revealing them from the back and facig downwards i got asked if i can name the rare. Well i couldnt, until i got enlightened. Maybe u guy are cleverer and can figure it out faster.
Last official event was called “Angry Mob” where everybody who wanted to participate ques up and gueses random The Dark cards in a heads off battle. If u win, u receive the card and put urself at the end of the line again. If u lose, ure out. This reoeacts till a winner was found. I was fast enought to firgure out my duelling card of Dust to Dust against Anne. Lost immideatly the very next round with a card i didnt know excisted and cant even repeat anymore.
I do finish my report by beeing thankful to received an eventinvite, the great organasation with their visible and hidden teammembers, the oldschoolcommunity with old and now new fellas aswell as a picture of my LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT from the weekend.
ps: Top right is some truffle cheese i bought during a cheese tasting nearby, it was jammi!
Bye, bye, see ya next time!
Meddling_Maxe
Not only to get more content of Raging Bull Series i recomment to check out, follow and subscribe to:
– Eventcoverage with another report and all the deckpics!
– https://ragingbullseries.com/
– https://www.instagram.com/oldschoolmtg_nl/
– https://www.youtube.com/@TimmytheSorcerer
– and something on facebook, but as i am not active over there u need to figure it out by yourself.