The first weekend of November equals The Uthden Troll Cup! This year marked my third year at this wonderful event. I say “event” but truth be told its more of a festival, a celebration of everything that is old school Magic the Gathering and its awesome community. A true adventure that every person who is very interested in and involved with Magic should experience at least once in his life. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the work that went into organizing an event like the Troll Cup. This multi-tournament report is a testimony to the awesomeness that is Ron and his team of trolls. I want to start with thanking Ron and his team for a truly wonderful weekend. I don’t know how you guys do it but every year is more fun that the year before.
Roadtripping with my favorite ally
The Uthden Troll began…well, it began as you might expect, with a roadtrip!
A somewhat delayed roadtrip because a storm raged over The Netherlands the day before the event and the postman was unable to deliver my new Edge-Man playmat because of it. I really wanted to bring the playmat to Uthden Troll.
I decided to wait for its delivery. Much to the annoyance of my travel companion and good friend Edwin, who was anxious for his first Troll Cup and wanted to start driving as soon as possible. In the end it all worked out fine and after a 3 hour drive, some cokes and a quick lunch we arrived around 17:00 hours at our hotel.
In the lobby of the Post Plaza Hotel (great hotel btw!) we ran into Richard and Bob who also just arrived. After we dropped our luggage in our rooms the four of us decided to have dinner together before going to The Uthden Troll cup. We had dinner in a restaurant next door to the tournament venue, which was perfect considering the rain. After a few beers and a good hearty meal we were ready to go trolling!
♫ Its friday then ♫
For me the Uthden Troll adventure started with a 93/94 repack booster draft. I was seated at a very cool draft-table made out of Benja, myself, Roy, Arnoud, Thijs, Arthur, Edwin and a great guy from Israel whose name I forgot (I am so sorry!). We were all handed 3 repacks to draft with. The first booster I cracked contained a Juggernaut, which was an easy first pick.
Combined with some Lightning Bolts, Ironclaw Orcs, a Shivan Dragon, a few Terror’s and some Murk Dwellers I eventually collected a nice pile of black and red cards. It was evident that alot of time was invested in the cardpool of the repacks. It was well balanced yet packed with recognizable staples. In the end I got mixed results with the deck but had a great time non the less. In the meantime an other event was comming to its end. Jeff won The Swaffel tournament and had an obligation with “de Oldehove” later that night. I will not go into full detail but suffice to say the tower now leans over just a little bit more.
While Jeff did his thing the rest of us were handed out an 4th Edition Starter deck, 2 boosters Fallen Empires and 2 boosters of Chronicles in preparation for Sunday’s Special Sealed Event. The basic idea was that for the duration of the weekend you were allowed to trade with other players or play for ante and collect cards for your sealed deck. You were encouraged to interact with other players through multiple “optional quests”. Examples of different quests are “trade with 16 people”, “play against 10 different players” etc. Completing quests granted you levels. For each completed quest you were allowed to hand pick one card of your choice from a cardpool. The higher your overall level, the better the cardpool. It was a very unique and effective way to make sure people interacted with eachother. The beers did help aswell.
The main event
After a good night sleep it was time for the main event! Good ol’ Old School Magic! In the weeks prior to the event I was set on playing “12 bolt burn” at Uthden Troll but had a last minute change of heart and decided to go for Machine-head instead. I figured the Troll Cup is all about fun and 7 rounds is a long time when you are playing a competitive deck that you don’t necessarily enjoy that much. Machine-head may not be competitive but it’s so much fun!
This build is slightly different from the version that I won the ODOL tournament with. I decided to go for extra speed with 4 Dark Rituals and added a Twister and Wheel of Fortune just because I wanted to play with most of my favorite cards. If you are going for fun, better go all the way then!
Speaking of fun…
I got to meet Jeff A. Menges at the event! Jeff had a huge influence on my Magic-life, which I talked about in a previous blog. He was kind enough to sign my beta playsets of Bog Wraith and Swords to Plowshares. I also bought the art-book he made with the other original Magic the Gathering artists around Magic’s 20th anniversary and an limited art-print of Kjeldoran Outpost. Jeff was such a nice guy but he wasn’t the only artist at the event. Both alter-artists Anders Schmidt and Buddy Jonkers were present at the event. Speaking of cool alters, I ran into Nicolai von Stromberg who is doing something really cool for the upcomming Edge-Man Championship!
Tournament Report
Without any further ado, let’s dive into my results with the Machine-head build.
Round 1
My first match of the day was against Erik. He played an UW Lion/Dib deck that completely ran me over. He had all the awsers and at the same time I simply was unable to out play the pressure he was putting on the board and lost 0-2.
Round 2
After losing the first round I decided to focus less on results and just enjoy the ride. The basic plan now was to have a great time playing matches while drinking lots of beers with my opponents. My second opponent of the day was Arnoud which I drafted with the night before, so that was fun! Arnoud was playing a reanimator deck that featured a playset of robots. We had crazy matches in which we both Mind Twisted eachother, played Time Twisters, Ancestrals, etc. It was all over the place. In the end it was a close 2-1 win.
Round 3
After winning against Arnoud I had some more beers with Wilfred who was playing the table next to me. Before I knew it the third round started and I had to play against Olof’s mono green deck. Olof his Shanodin Dryads turned out to be very nasty against me and chipped away a considerable amount of life while his Mazes of Ith kept him safe. It was at that point I realized I made a mistake while constructing my sideboard. I forgot Armageddon! Luckly the Ice Storm’s did the trick but Armageddon is definitely going into my sideboard at the next event. I won the match-up with another 2-0.
Round 4
For the first time ever I was paired against my good pal The Dwarven Warrior himself, Demmer! So that ment more beers! Erwin played a deck that ran Robots, Su-chi’s, Copy Artifacts and Dibs. An awesome deck but he just didn’t find the answers to my early Juzzam’s and Sengir’s. 2-0
Round 5
At this point I was seriously getting drunk and kinda lost track of what I was doing. Lucky for me Machine-head is kinda of a dumb deck that actually gets better the less you think about your plays. You just go all-in, all the time and you should be fine. The legendary Aland was my opponent for round 5 and lucky for me he was a great sport about my drunk play and we had some great talks while playing. At least that’s how I remembered the round 🙂 Another 2-0 victory for Machine-head!
Round 6
Another mono-green deck, this time piloted by Stephan! I was supriced to see so many mono-green decks ranking so well during the course of the tournament. Just like the match against Olof I had a rough time dealing with the Mazes and the early pressure. In the end I should have lost but luckly Stephan made critical error. He could have won if he blocked the non-leathal attack of a Hippy but he forgot I was running Berserk and what should have been a loss turned out to be a victory. Again 2-1.
Round 7
The final round on the Swiss phase was against Koo….I mean Nick Cramer! Nick was playing Koos his tournament winning version of The Deck. During the first match-up Nick made the gamble by Tutoring for an Ancestral in hopes of drawing an answer against my early Juzzam instead of searching for an awners. The gamble did not play off and I was able to win the first match. The second match was lightning fast. A turn one Juzzam attacked for 20 damage (Beserk, Beserk!) in turn two. 2-0 against The Deck. So that ment more beers to celebrate.
The Swiss phase was now officially over and after 7 round my deck was ranked #4 out of 134 players. Machine-head has absolutly no right to rank this high even less so considering my drunken state of mind. But I was very happy.
Look mom, I’m on TV!
The 7th round as a very short round for me and I had loads of time to kill before it was time to play the finals. I don’t remember exactly how but I ended up on the epic Timmy Talk stream! I had such a great time. I got to meet Reindeer, who is just the kindest guy you can imagin. He told me everything about the Reindeer-event, which sounds totally awesome! And I got to catch up with Henk later on. I remember my cousin sending me a message asking if getting drunk was part of the reason he had these kind of events. Well, it’s not the main purpose but it is a welcome bonus.
Before I knew it was time to play the finals! Again I was paired against Nick but this time it was a completely different game. I lost 0-2 and Nick progressed to the semi-finals. At this point most of the players gathered in the Troll Cave downstairs and started trading for the Special Sealed Event and more beers. The event was won by Leo Bruder who bested Antti in the finals. A well deserved overall winner in my opinion. After the Troll Cave closed most of us dived into Leeuwarden’s nightlife. I ended up with a group including the dynamic duo Demmer and Wilfred and others legends of our kind at Scooters, a nice 80’s dance-cafe. We had a blast!
The very special Special Event
After three days of trading I ended up with a white blue deck for the Special Event that focused on flyers and included two Karma’s and a Magic Hack becasue, why not?! Truth be told I had a massive hang-over and was kinda dreading the rounds that needed to be played. My results were not that great and I decided to focus on completing my optional quests instead.
By adding a tri-colored legendary creature to my deck I managed to complete the “4 color deck” quest. That gave me enough points to get the final rare card I needed to complete another quest and before I knew it, I only had one more quest to go in order to advance to the next level, “God-Tier”!
By removing all white cards from the deck I played mono blue and completed the final quest on my list, win with a mono-colored deck. Robert was kind enough to keep playing against me untill I finally bested him. It wasn’t easy but I managed to complete it in the end.
After the Special Event it was time to say goodbye to everyone and get back to reality.
Final thoughts
There is so much more to tell about the 5th edition of the Uthden Troll Cup but in the end I feel words just can’t describe the experience. It was such an awesome event and I can’t wait to find out what Ron is planning for next year’s edition. Once again, thank you Ron! You are a most gracious host and an inspiration to many other tournament organizers. I can only hope The Edge-Man Championship will one day be half as good!
The Edge-Man 
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