N00bcon 2025

I have never made a blog post on my previous N00b weekends, so here goes. Third time’s a charm.

Finnish Old School represents. 6 magnificent beasts. From left: Sloth, Ville, Hannu, Pasi, kidsofthedeadworld and Prote.

Picture of a picture. The Finns landed a bit late on Thursday, so we were paired against each other and played R1 at Helsinki Airport. I squeezed out a win against Erkka 2-1. He was on interesting powered up DFBGreen. I had other plans, my deck for Thursdays 100 player tournament at the fortress was DibAtog Sloth style..

I was feeling frisky that day, so I adjusted some sideboard plans and added two Control Magic in there. Let’s go! I had a lot of fun just slamming with my pet deck. I was feeling lucky and went to continue winning also against Simon Rokkjaer on The Deck (little did I know what sort of a weekend he would have after this), fellow Finn Hannu “tulipekka” Toppinen on White Wheenie, Elias Gröndahl on UW midrange with two spicy Rasputin! Marc Heider on WGU aggro, maybe geddon? And Heinz Rottmann on powered up Juzam. In the end it was good enough for 6-0 and #1 in swiss. Top8 I got paired against Jens-Ole, last years N00bcon champion playing UWb Bots. My great run ran into a wall of talent, piloting a great deck that is a difficult matchup. GG. I was super happy to add Siab00rg top8 to the decks resume of 2024 Fountain top4 and 2023 Uthden finals. Weak performance.

I joined a new club. Later it was hangs at the Rotary. There was a gathering. We had beer. It was great fun.

Talking about beer, here is a crew member down. This guy had few too many strong beers at the Rotary and we ended up taking him to hotel with us to get some sleep. Next day he would only show up at the last minute, with a headache.. and play himself into the top8 of field of 150 players, finishing #2 in the swiss and losing in the top8 to Jeppe on The Deck.

Great showing by Finns with a pair of top8 finishes. But in the end we were beat by the Danish crew both days. Jens-Ole went on to win the fortress and Erkka lost to the guy that would end up losing to a fellow Dane Simon R. on the Deck in the finals of N00b. There was 4 Danes in a N00bcon top8, insane! I think it’s worth mentioning Leo made top8 both days as did Jens-Ole. Some people are pretty good at playing magic.

My N00b deck for 2025. I know, it is a bit surprising. I was feeling frisky, so I decided to play with the black splash. I also felt like the day was right for singleton Hurkyl’s Recall and two Earthquake in the side. But..

It was the opposite day. I lost R1 against my friend Mari on UWb Bots, still a really difficult matchup. T2 I continued losing against Odd Anders on UW Mitja style, as you do. My opponents just had the power cards this time and I didn’t get great topdecks to save me. GG, my tournaments was over before it started. I will admit that I lost the spark here, but tried to keep on enjoying the day. After all, I am still on my pet deck and Old School is great!

So then I even lost to Chenyang on Stasis on Stream in R3, with Atog, I lost to it with Atog. G1 my hand just didn’t line up well against him and he locked me out. G2 I had him at the ropes trying to tie it up fast and kill him in g3, but he draw to a really slim out. Not my day. He played great, like everyone I faced, good job. R4 more friendly fire with the great Doctor Boyle beating me down with UW midrange. We were not at our best. R5 bye and then one win in R6 to end the day on a positive note against Kristian on Juzam. 2-4 drop and I went to talk with Jeff and to get some signatures, enjoy spectating some games and chatting with friends.

Friendly salute by Mike. Factory setting Mano face. Some nerds playing old cards. Mitja and Reindeer really outdid themselves with the help of some locals, great venue for the main event and a fantastic N00b experience.

Fluffy playing Wheel at the feature match.

Jeff Menges was present, doing alters, selling cool stuff and signing cards. Here is Florian harassing the poor man.

Shovel Fighting championships happened. The weekend was moustache friendly. Here we have the champion Jordan with shovel enthusiast Christian. The gents are showcasing some shovelry.

When the playoffs commenced at the shark tournament, Ante40k World Championship was about to start at Rotary Pub. Here we have Svante and DFB playing Ante. Wheel won Jason in the finals, congrats!

On Saturday we pilgrimaged back to the pub. We got to spend a lot of time on holy ground this Easter. People enjoying shovel fight the boardgame. It is great fun, you should try it.

Saturday was the Rotary Hangover tournament, the best tournament of the weekend. The Wizard’s tournament (Alpha40) happened at different restaurant at the same time. Hope to get there one year. But at the Rotary, magic was played at the place, like it should be. People played some fun stuff, so it was time to brew..

I was feeling frisky, so I really let the creative juices flow. It was time to play DibAtog with geddon. White splash hits the spot, I decided on additional Swords, Geddon and Disenchants on the sideboard. Some times you just want to land some Vise and Ankh, turn friends sideways, drink some beer. I went 2-1-2.

R1 draw against Danny on crazy Void prison. I think I had him, but we run out of time in g3, fun start! R2 I mauled a fellow Finn again, this time Pasi on TaxEdge. R3 I got to play Kalle Nord on Trolls, what a pleasure. We had amazing games, maybe the best I had all weekend. We went the distance and I just lost 1-2 on turns. There were some bizarre board states and decisions happening here, swingy back and forth, some real Old School. I missed my first and last Orb flip of the weekend in this match, ending up like 8/9 that is great for me with at least one being on feature match for the fortress (I think Farmstead will release these games later on Youtube). R4 Brother Jonas destroyed me with RukhValley, nice pile against aggro and well played indeed. I almost made a comeback in g2 mull to 4 with mox, land, double vise into draw7. The weekend was starting to get to me, I was feeling tired. R5 I managed to scrape a win against Gordon on Chains. He had a sweet double Rack kill in G1 just in time, but I took the sideboarded games. Cool deck.

Here is the loot. My Old School drinking cabinet got some new additions, man those are some cool gin bottles. I will put them right next my Juzam Gin and Battering Rum.

To recap, I was very happy with our crew results, both me and the Atog continues to be good enough to get decent results down in some fun tournaments, with some luck! I was so happy for my friend Erkka doing so great in the shark tournament, and not just any shark tournament. Shark tournament is different and N00b is different. The level of talent and skill of these big tournaments keeps on amazing me. Some players truly are masters.

I was very happy with my play overall and I think I made a lot of great plays, but then did lose the fire after 0-2 in N00b on friday, maybe tilted a bit and began keeping loose hands and making some bad plays. Saturday I was operating ok again, but being tired is a factor. The deck is still a lot fun, but for sure it has a lot of variance. You can expect to have a hard time against Robots and UW midrange. If you are shark hunting, there are better options, but I love the deck so, I’ll do it my way.

Things never stay the same and Old School has grown. Some of these storied tournaments have become big in size and filled with talent. When there is a shark on the line, people bring their best stuff, so except a lot of the Deck, white and blue and maybe Robots. Deal with it. You don’t have to play in the tournament. And hey, fellow countryman and Keldon Warlord Erkka was the peoples champion, making the top8 with Trolls.

I can only talk from my own perspective towards the whole thing and it is, that I think I will never try go for with the Deck. For me what is great about the shark, is some things around it. Also people need to be realistic about their expectations. And you are better off setting yourself some reasonable expectations, where you can achieve a goal and also enjoy the way there. The required work might be very different. I got to hang with the best community and to meet my friends. I also enjoyed several great games of magic and drink some good beer. Be honest to yoursef. I can’t enjoy myself just losing all the time, so I was really happy to also have one good finish for the weekend. I guess my sweet spot is a mix of socializing, getting to play what ever I want to play and at least some wins in there. I still want to build some spicier decks and am adding to the collection to get there.

Organizing a large tournament weekend like this is so much work and stress levels are high. Thank you to Mg for fathering the N00b and for Mitja and Christian for all their hard work. I only run The Fountain and some other smaller things with Erkka, so I can really relate to responsibility of running a massive show like this. You and everyone helping are awesome for making this possible for all of us. Growth and change are never easy to deal with. The more people are involved, the more priorities, expectations and ideas clash.

Competition at the top of a huge shark tournament is extremely intense and people are a bit shaken by the Half-Life incident. There has been some turbulence in the community lately, but I am sure all the good people can hug it out and remember that it is about everyone around you, not you. In the end, we had a good clean tournament run on combined Swiss-German precision. Yes we cut. Thank you for making this not a thing anymore, it doesn’t mean that we don’t trust and respect each other. If anything, it shows that I respect you. If you win me, congratulations, that was Old School.

Done: trades, sleeveless Alpha40 at Rotary, shovelry. Need to get done: finish up my Ante40k deck, play the game.

Thank you everybody, it was a great gathering. Hope to see you all soon, it is so sad when it ends. It was my privilege.

-Antti “Slotherine”