Aiiieeee!

Our annual 7pts Singleton 93/94 Old School MTG -festival took place this weekend. Hosted by Animated crew (https://animated.neocities.org/) in Helsinki.

The 7pts singleton format has a quite unique metagame that offers interesting play experiences and some weird interactions. I will attempt to write something about it and the Aiiieeee! -tournaments here.

This was a legal deck back in 2024. The winner from the first ever Aiiieee! MonoB piloted by Timo Ikonen. The design was a thing of beauty and took full advantage of all the card draw and creature removal in black. The deck was ahead of the field and deserved to take it down.

This was my UW with flying creatures and Moat from 2024 tournament. The picture is missing a Preacher and Old Man of the Sea that I borrowed from a friend. I only lost to the winning black deck. I did put some thought into the list back then and think I found some great cards with no points like Flood and Amnesia. Moat was great back then. Island Sanctuary was a stupid idea and I went to improve the deck going into the 2025 edition, but also the cards in my deck quickly got some points, like Amnesia (1) and Control Magic went up (3) Mana Drain (2) Old Man (1).

This is the winning deck from 2025 Aiiieeee! Piloted by a fellow Keldon Warlord Samuli Hirvonen. I feel like in 2025 people understood the importance of flying creatures and just how good burn and more aggressive approaches can be. UW cards got some more points and as Moat was not that often game ending card, so it dropped in power level.

This is the 2025 finalist Tony Nyström, another fellow Keldon Warlord on BG. Back in 2025 people continued deck teching and caught up to the power of the monoB list. Green splash gives some ways to cover up on blacks limitations in handling those powerful artifacts in the format. Hurricane is amazing X-point spell with no points.

Warlords keep the trophy! This is what is up in 2026. Erkka “Prote” Jouste went 8-0, undefeated and just destroyed everyone with this rather greedy pile. I think he just began developing from the UR base of Samuli that won in 2025. But decided to risk his manabase to get some good white cards. Armageddon is a i-win-button in a slow format when you are ahead on board.

This is the 2026 finalist Miikka Niemi on the breakthough deck of the year, monoR. Finally the dedicated red lists put up some results. There was another aggressive red list with Ankh, Manabarbs, Gauntlet of Might, burn that was knocking at the door of the top4.

The prison control lists were also doing great in 2026 edition. This is Tuukka Muroke piloted spice winner that also went 4-2 with a bye. Not relying on your creatures to win is a great way to dodge all the removal people are filling their lists with. There was another similar desing that also went 4-2 in the tournament.

Here is the top4 playing. All in all you could argue it was the year of red. Black cards finally got some points, weakening the power you can squeeze out of deep black pool. Unlike say black removal, the burn spells can also be used to kill you opponent dead, so they have more utility. Stuff like Ankh, Manabarbs combined with burn can make life difficult for your average slow midrange pile. Counterspells continued to be great.

So what to play in 7pts singleton these days? I was on ancient techology. I have not really thought about the format and it showed. I just show up once a year to this thing and slam something. It felt helpless against Tuukka’s prison control in the round 1, losing 0-2 as most of my cards are usually dead against him. Then I won 3 in a row against some other grindy creature decks as we just have more removal and card draw and good enough creatures. You can still expect to face a lot of these in the format. But then standing at 3-1 I ran into one of those aggressive red decks and just couldn’t keep up with them. Ankh and Manabarbs sealed the games with some quick creatures chipping in few points in the beginning and burn to finish the games up. I went to time and lost on orb flips against another prison control to finish 3-3. Sucks to suck.

I just want to showcase another unique deck that went 4-2. This is a monoG control by Veen. So I don’t know, I guess the decks are either slowing down even more or then trying to be as fast as possible. People are trying to one up all the grindy midrange piles with removal, by just not really caring about the removal and going over them or then just going under them. Counterspells were played in two of the top4 decks, they are really strong against against these control decks with only few wincons. Two top4 decks also packed red for burn.

White is doing fine also. This weenie one by Elk finished 4-2. White removal spells are as good as ever and here you can also see the Ankh, Copper Tablet, Winter Orb and Armageddon showing up, countering the slower midrange piles and slow control decks game plans.

Here is the view on murderers row.

Slow format will result in a lot of orb flipping. Here are couple guys going at it without protection. Sleeves off, more height, ready, flip!

Animated Crew and 7pts singleton format are both proxy friendly. Here is another nice booster of cool playtest style proxies distributed to all the participants.

All the tournaments have their unique feel. Aiiieee! always has some live music.

Take care people. See you soon! -Sloth