In November 2022, sometime after the Uthden Troll Cup, me and Antti (slotherine) received a Facebook invitation from our good friend Åland for an event called Arvika Festival 2023. Antti decided that he is going nonetheless but I was hesitant due to the difficult and expensive travel options available.

About a month passed and I was talking with Antti about DFB Green and I decided to check if I could use my 15 000 Finnair reward points for free flights paying only taxes. I found out that I could fly in with Antti on Friday, but I’d have to stay until Monday use the points. This meant one extra night in either Arvika or Oslo which definitely would be less than 300 euros. After confirming with wife that the trip was on, I immediately got the flights. Antti had already arranged his hotel room with Anton and Jokemon so I got to enjoy my room by myself, luckily Arvika Festival organizers had managed to get a discount code for everyone.

After committing to the event, I contacted Åland to ask if he had his Unlimited Bayous available to borrow and maybe a Mox Emerald. As he said yes, we agreed that I could borrow those five cards. Antti added me to the “Svinland” Arvika 2023 discord group chat that had us, Örnsköldsvik crew (Anton, Calle and Jansson) and Jokemon.

Necessary preparations done, Antti and I started to hone the DFB Green list in anticipation of what we could face. As the tournament was for the Shark and a lot of people all over the world would attend, we knew that we’d have to prepare for really powerful decks. On the other hand, due to Swedish reprint rules there would be also bunch of more budget-y decks around.

First our list looked like this:

I had played a bit different list in Finnish OS Tolaria tournament in November/December having +1 Spitting Slug and -1 Crumble.

After doing few iterations, we decided to up the creature count a bit by adding Emerald Dragonfly and have that third Spitting Slug. With the Slug and Dragonfly opponent’s Mishra’s Factories wouldn’t be such a problem so cutting fourth Crumble was our choice and Mind Twist had been underwhelming so that could go from the maindeck as well.

As Mishra’s Factories didn’t really feel like a problem, we also removed the Scavenger Folk from the SB to have room for Mind Twist there. We wanted to have 4 Terrors for the Serras and Dibs etc in the 75 so adding that to the SB would require another cut. It came down to Maze of Ith and Regrowth but Tsunami was also an option in the last slot. In the end, we settled on Regrowth, so the list looked now like this:

Soon after locking up our list, Arvika crew announced that there would be a prize for the best unpowered deck – a Legends booster! I had already felt that even if Mox Emerald makes the deck better, in a lot of situations it is just a basic Forest. Antti decided to stick to his full beta/original black border printings version and play Mox. After talking with Åland I decided to try to go for the Legends booster, so I didn’t need to borrow the Mox from him. I told Åland, Antti and our Arvika group chat guys that if I win it, I will open it that night.

Being pumped up for another international tournament, Antti and I start our travel on Friday 24th February by waking up around 6am to get to the train leaving Tampere at 8.00. When we get to the Helsinki Airport, we have a quick Subway breakfast/lunch around 10 and head for the Security check.

Åland asked me to bring some Jaloviina for him as it had ran out and apparently it can’t be bought from Systembolaget so I got 2x 0,5 liters from Tax-Free while Antti bought Salmiakki for the evening as we were going to play my Premodern era kitchen table cube. As we were flying to Oslo and outside EU, we got our booze tax free too! Time for some traditional beers at Oak Barrel while waiting for boarding.

Flight was uneventful and we had bought our train tickets in advance so had to just get local train tickets to Lilleström transfer station. We arrived at Arvika about 16.30 and had a good 1,5 hours to check-in, have some food and socialize with people before cubing. We had originally 8 people for the cube, but a couple of guys had gotten sick and couldn’t travel. Mitja joined us as seventh player and we couldn’t get more so 7 players it was. Everyone enjoyed the cube a lot and said that it was well balanced which I was very happy to hear. I drafted a UWrg draw-go control deck and had mana issues with 17 lands in too many games going 1-2. Winner was Mitja going 3-0 with a cool BWr Reanimater/Aggro list. Here’s a link to my cube list: https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/pm-kitchen

After cube I played some 7pt Singleton with Alex from the Netherlands and Åland and had couple of beers with others before heading to bed way too late.

Waking up surprisingly fresh on Saturday and after huge breakfast I was ready to battle for the Shark and the Legends booster. Before the start I did some trading with Mitja and Alban, getting rid of all my foils to have a CE Black Lotus and bunch of other stuff for Old School. Later on in the evening decided to get some prints from the guest artist Drew Tucker and settled on High Tide (my favorite!), Plateau and City in a Bottle.

I first got a BYE on first round but our champion Olle Råde and organizer David Strandberg were having unfortunate no-shows so I chose to play and got paired against Olle. There wasn’t really much to remember about most of the matches except me being a lot of times just terrible with Chaos Orb flips. Still managed to hit a couple of critical ones in a couple of games. I guess I had a success rate of probably something like 40% in the tournament! All the opponents were super nice to play against and chat with and a lot of tight games were had. Here are the matches, opponents and what they played:

• R1 0-2 vs Olle Råde on UR Counterburn with Orcs


• R2 2-0 vs Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson on BWU Midrange with Juzams


• R3 2-1 vs Robert Heimroth on UR Counterburn without Orcs


• R4 2-1 vs Trygve Ørjansen on Erhnam on Ice

• 
R5 2-0 vs Steen on Skynet


• R6 0-2 vs Svante Landgraf on The Deck

• 
R7 2-0 vs Carl Olzon on Fantasy Zoo

I saw few other unpowered decks in the top room so after last rounds I was super pumped after winning that I actually might get the Legends booster! I had already made a promise to open it up on stream. After top8 announcement it was revealed that I got it and received not only the Legends booster but also a glass trophy and --- Thorn playtest card style power 9 proxy set, not to mention all the hugs from DFB after he found out what I played and all the other congratulations from people I knew and didn’t know!

I stayed up for booster opening and few rounds of chats, returning borrowed Bayous to Åland before heading to bed. I was staying in Arvika until Monday morning so on Sunday I just decided to watch TV-series on laptop and get some rest. The tournament was organized really well; the venue was superb, food break needed and only hinderance on Saturday was Tolaria crashing. Loved to hang around between rounds with our group of friends or having random conversations with new friends drinking beer! What a community! Thanks for all the love!

Erkka “Prote” Jouste


Discord: Prote#9536


You can find me on Premodern, Wak-Wak and OldSchoolMTG discord servers and of course on Facebook!