Banshee Cup 2 Retrospective
Banshee Cup 2 was played in Hämeenlinna on the 7th and 8th of August. The tournament started with the side event day with 7-points and Premodern, and ended with the main event on Saturday.
The tournament was played in a century-old historical barracks area at the officers’ club.
On Friday, the team was setting up the main hall for the players, and stocking the bar with more beer than the players had time to drink.
On Friday, both side event tournaments were played simultaneously.
The 7-point players were competing for a Heartbreaker Prodigal Sorcerer figure from 1994 and some Renaissance and an ITA Dark booster, while the Premodern players got a Urza-era Duelist magazine and pick from a batch of boosters from Apocalypse to Scourge.
The winner of the Premodern event was Aaro Raita-Aho with The Rock and the 7-point winner was Hannu Toppinen with Mono White Aggro.
After the swiss rounds were done in the main event, it was time to hand out some of the prizes.
During the tournament, players had 10 tickets each that they could drop in any of the 10 raffle cups, each corresponding with one of the prizes. The players could distribute their tickets any way they wanted, and some items were more sought after than others, making them harder to win.
We also had a Power Raffle for charity with IE Mox Emerald on the line. All proceeds from this raffle went to charity.
When we got to the semi finals, we had noticed that a fun battle of the local clubs was setting up. One one side, two Juzam Raiders players were facing each other, and on the other table, two Keldon Warlords players were pitted against one another. This meant that no matter what, we had a Juzam vs. Keldon finals to look for.
The two finalists were Ville “manatonttu” Viherä representing Juzam Raiders and Samuli “ansn” Hirvonen from Keldon Warlords.
The winner, Samuli Hirvonen.
The Top-8 decks were all very powerful and the games were tight.
Interestingly, though, the field was full of very strong lists, and there weren’t many wacky lists. We handed out a spice prize, which was literally spicy, but finding a spicy deck was not the easiest thing. One of the players had brought homemade chilli sauce for the spiciest player made from chillies he had grown and bred himself.
The Spice Prize went to Vincent’s Power Monolith combo with no fireball.
One mystery player from the USA was also listed in the tournament, Leon “Lenny” Tisher. For most players, it was a little surprise that our own Antti “Slotherine” Turtiainen was visiting us from Oxford and made an anagram name for himself for the tournament.
By the end of the tournament, everyone was a little bit Lenny.
