Fountain of Youth Open 2023

This is my perspective of the weekend full of magic in early June at Tampere.

I can’t say that I have any clear recollection when we got the ball running, but after celebrating Old School Magic at some amazing larger events in Sweden and Netherlands, the Finnish community needed to have a gathering. I knew the Finnish Nationals for Premodern were coming around again in June, and so I just needed a venue and a partner in crime. I needed someone who loves Old School as much as I do and gets shit done, when need be, so few seconds after realizing this I contacted a man I trust like a bother, Erkka it is. I shared my vision for the Old School tournament, and he was in. I also have a secret weapon, the best hostess/maid out there, Pasi! I knew it would be really convenient, that some international players could just stay at Pasi’s place and avoid some of the hefty hotel and Airbnb prices. He loves to meet up with great people, drink some fine beverages and play some Magic. Love you too, weird hairy freak.

We immediately began to organize and plan. Quickly we had a loose timetable ready for the whole weekend. Everything went really smooth as we did what was agreed upon and without delay. Just like that I had arranged a bar for our Friday draft and venue for the Old School on Sunday. A friend made a meme worthy picture for the event (thank you Ave!) and I created the Facebook pages. Erkka made sure that the registration forms were up and working. Then we just decided upon and gathered all the prizes for Sunday. My contribution to the Premodern Nationals was limited as I knew that I had a psychoanalytic psychotherapy seminar for the whole day on Saturday. Lucky for us Erkka was on it and had a team of great people around him helping for that one (more on that in his own blog of the weekend). So, months of traveling, playing and promoting later, we had clearly broken our targets for attendees for both the PM Nationals and FOYO OS (Fountain of youth: that’s what OS tournaments are - and theres a fountain, maybe even of youth in Tampre!). It is time to party!

Thursday

The lovefest began with early bird arrivals on Thursday evening 8.6.2023 when Giamma and Valerio flew in. We met up with few local figures at a great Belgian beer place (Gastropub Tuulensuu) with some proper food for a dinner. Then we slammed some games of Premodern and Old School, before I had to leave for another appointment and the guys went to rest at Pasi’s house. I was also still a bit worried for my health, as I had been sick for a week and just started to feel better. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Friday

Friday began with the unofficial main event of the weekend in my backyard. After sleeping in and hitting the market for some food and drink stock. I had a message that a player representing Bavaria was at Tampere airport, so I quickly went and gave him a ride to my place. I got an amazing Sloth -shirt as a gift from the guys, lovely! When we got back, some local Team Kettu crew members had already arrived, and people started to open up beers. Pasi’s international hostel and lodging arrived via taxis and just like that it was all happening. We just took in the day, floated in the tub, had some barbecue, chilled and played Magic. Giamma made sure we also had some of his family owned butchery meats and their local bread from Italy to enjoy with the ordinary sausages, burgers, salad. Too bad the Technoliga guys from Spain did not have time to join us at the garden, maybe next time. It was a perfect day among friends, but at some point, we realized that we had to get some cabs and get to the city center for the IPA draft. Ok, may as well play some Magic too.

We gathered at the bar Save File for our draft with 14 players, two 7 player pods and then a mixed pods tournament. The place is a local nerd sanctuary full of arcade games and such. One of the owners is a Magic player, so it was super easy to agree on booking some tables for our players. The format was Invansion block draft, so Invasion-Planeshift-Apocalypse. We secured the sealed boxes from a very special cabinet in my mancave. I held the draft and realized midway through, that I am still recovering from a terrible streak of cold, so my memory on the draft itself is hazy. I drafted black, blue and red with Void, couple of Recoil and some reasonable 2-3-4 drops. Then everything changed and I had to add green to secure enough creatures in my deck. Dead Ringers was my power move. It was truly a 4cmediocrestuff.deck. I lost r1 against Martin Berlin himself on a totally unfair bounce your shit blue and something pile. Then I somehow won two rounds and lost the last one, again against a way better deck than mine, piloted by Stefan Riegg. Some Skyfolk and stuff just flew over my defenses. Shout out to the Helsinki Premodern crew arriving at the place to meet people. Same goes for the Techoliga guys! I needed to sleep, badly, so right after I got the last results in, I just made sure the players had results for the swiss and left my cards for the pick prize pool. I took a cab directly home and crashed.

Saturday

Not that much to write about Saturday, as this is not the audience for psychotherapy. But right after I was done with the mandatory seminar stuff, I took my bike and cycled to the venue. Great timing, last round of the swiss was about to start. We spectated the beginning of top8 and then went to have some dinner and beers at that Belgian place, Tuulensuu. As Mitja and Martin arrived later, so that the guys missed out on the garden party, we quickly decided a little sauna was mandatory before sleeping. I cycled back home after my food and started to warm up the sauna. The guys followed me later with cabs and we had a night of pinball, 8bit and sauna. Around midnight it was decided we need some rest before the real main event of the weekend. Mitja finished up the meat master’s pizza. I called a cab for Martin and made sure he got to it. Unfortunately, the few pictures from this mayhem are a bit too much. Here are a couple pictures of the festivities prior to sauna madness.

Sunday

I was so looking forward to playing some Old School on Sunday and when I got to the event site, I was greeted by a crowd of morons with a similar mindset. Perfection. The venue was a bit tighter fit for our players than anticipated, but everything worked out perfectly. We were aiming for 20 players, and it was ambitious for us. When it was time to start playing, we had 27 players for the first ever Fount of the Youth Open. Great turnout for the event. We were playing at Plevna, it is a local brewery and restaurant. The place had good local beer and great food.

First things first, we handed out the community award to Tuukka Muroke for all the work for the Finnish Old School community. I think some of our crew got into Old School via WakWak streaming and meeting up the Swedish guys by playing Premoder some years prior Covid, but Tuukkeli was one of those active Old School guys back in Finland, gathering all the players around big cities together during Covid. I don’t think we would have a Finnish Old School scene worth mentioning without those webcam games and small live events to finally meet up. I finished up the announcements by making sure that all the new players have an idea what Old School is about, no ID, be friendly and let’s have fun. 27 players began battling for the eternal glory of being the first ever FOYO winner and to get and bring back home the original art piece by our local player/artist Juha-Matti Vanhatupa. There were also some altered prizes for great feats durign games made by Ville Saari.

Choosing a deck is never easy. After playing DFB Green at Uthden Troll Cup 2022 and 2023 at Arvika Festival, Noobfest and also at The Raging Bull, I was unsure if I would continue with the pet project. I have decent results with the deck, 9th place at Uthden and Raging Bull and somewhere around the top16 at Arvika and Noobfest, I feel confident piloting the deck in all Old School events. However, I did feel like there might be a lot of newcomers arriving and people might bring a lot green, this should also result in people playing sideboard cards against wheenie aggro. Having that in mind is also a bit boring if there is too much of the same deck around and I felt like trying to win your own tournament is a bit borderline. I decided to play a theme deck for the tournament. And when I play a deck, going original expansions and beta only is a priority. So, let’s take a break from DFB Green and delve into the world of dreams.

Playing dreams with triple black and sinkholes on double black for turn two puts a lot of pressure on the mana. After deciding on dreams, I also locked in going mono black. I do not own any Abysses yet, so I asked if Tuukka could borrow them. My immediate thought was to play rituals to make up for not having access to all the broken blue stuff and great white cards. I wanted to punish the aggro stuff I was expecting with playing 2 Abyss and 2 bottles in main. When you combine these with couple of mazes, terror and a full set of drains, the opponent should have a difficult time keeping pressure on the board. Relic Barriers are necessary against robots and all those Su-Chi's running around. I have seen some builds with both Barrier and Howling Mine in them, providing a nice card advantage combo and providing another way of winning the game with stuff like Black Vise and Winter Orb. I just hate how often Mine ends up being great for your opponent also. You know when they get your Barrier and can play all the moxen and lotus down, yeah. My build would simply squeeze the will to live out of the opponent. My card draw would be Tome and Greed. Greed is one of those pet cards that I simply love. In theory I figured it would be great with a full set of Drain Life and the Fountain. Little did I know it would prove to be true in live games too. Only thing I regret is that the four Black Vise in sideboard are Fbb. I didn’t have time to get them in Beta. I loved the build and was ready to enjoy some games with it, fully suspecting running into a lot of white and blue, getting beaten, badly.

Round 1 I was playing against “my deck”, as it was Mikael Vahtera on DFB Green. Unfortunately he had 2 or 3 Giant Growth to save some of the creatures from small drains midgame with a flurry of creatures. I didn’t have enough time to stabilize the board. Ice Storm took a Maze. Eventually he got there and even when I buried him in G2 with Dreams down as a clock, then Terror, Maze, Abyss and start Draining, I simply did not have sufficient time to wrap up game number three. I felt confident I could take it, even as green does have some great answers for my permanents. 1-1-1. (L-W-T)

Round 2 It was Lauri Vallin with UR Orcs. Always feel a bit nervous when I see burn as it does make things more complicated, even when I can control the board. The thing is Bottle is still really strong as is Abyss with Terror. Dreams combined with Maze handling a Efreet is a beating and just fast enough in combination with some life gained from Drains. I think I also managed to attack the mana pretty well in some of the games, just Bottling a Efreet and Brass or something and then keeping him of functional mana with couple Sinkholes. I think I lost game 2 to Orc without an answer for some turns and a bunch of burn spells. Game 3 was the way I wanted to write it. Dreams down, board in control and my opponent sitting with some useless counter magic in hand. 2-1 (W-L-W)

Round 3 I face the Italian stallion, Valerio Maggio on BR Trolls with dreams. These were non games. I think my opponent had some bad luck with draws and I just had the answer for his creatures. Terror for Trolls and Maze or finally Abyss for Hypnotics. We both played some land destruction also, but mine got there. In addition as my opponent could not develop any pressure really, Greed drew me oh I don’t know how many cards. 2-0 (W-W)

Round 4 for sure it is my partner in crime, Erkka Jouste on fully powered UBR Trolls. First two games went really fast, I think in one Erkka just runs away with it by getting some threats down with counter magic backing it up. In the other one I turbo out a Dreams, Bottle, Maze and he couldn’t pull himself out of it. Game number three is wild and entertaining, going back and forth for a while. We hold no punches but eventually I have the board with the Dreams clocking. All in all, I would say that Trolls seemed to have trouble getting enough pressure on my deck. Terror and Maze are great against those few creatures coming at you. Disk is great and a timely one can take the whole game, but I realized playing this that my deck is full of great permanents. I think I won a game where Erkka blew everything with the disk twice. Fine, you will not have Trolls because of Terror or it will do nothing because of Maze and I will just play another Bottle and another Abyss and another Dreams and so on. 2-1 (W-L-W)

Round 5 against Mitja Held on UW sort of Triple S. I know this will be difficult. He steamrolls me in the first by having t1 sapphire and tundra for counterspell, then just adds pressure until I cave. G2 is similar, and the same damn mana opener from him. But I can fence off the early creatures, then eventually he lands a book and I do not get it or a Greed, gg. He resolved like two Divine Offering and two Disenchant in the last game. It was a bit hard sideboarding this one as all the UW decks are so close in builds, but the subtle difference really counts. I should have brought in all Juzam and both Sylex. I did bring in the Glooms, but my turn game 2 Gloom from the play was just eventually answered and he turned the game. He wins sideboard games with Su-Chi and Factories and the Barriers with Mazes is not enough answers to them. I also need to be more proactive in the matchup. Well, we were all really tired at this point. Good chat on the theory after some clean cool Old School. Against the odds, my top8 was secured. 0-2 (L-L)

At the end of the swiss the top looked like this.

5-0 Mitja UW Triple S

4-1 Ville UW Skies

4-1 Erkka UBR Troll Disco

3-1-1 Antti MonoB Dreams

3-1-1 Valtteri Goblins

3-1-1 Mikael DFB Green

3-2 Stefan RUG Stompy

3-2 Martti MonoB Dreams

3-2 Juhis UW Triple S

3-2 Pasi Tax Edge

Too bad Mitja was not feeling great and was planning on catching a train to the airport hotel with Valerio, they had really early flights back on Monday morning. Also Martti did not expect to make the top and had booked too early train. With these two concessions, our very own Juha-Matti Vanhatupa got in from the 9th with his UW Triple S and then from the 10th place moving up was a drunken ass Pasi with Tax Edge. We kindly reminded that if Juhis would win his own painting, he would have to bring it to each Mätkymökki to hang it on the wall. Mono black dreams had 100% conversion rate to top8. Martti was playing a more Manipulator oriented version with the forementioned Barrier and Mine combo.

Valtteri Yli-Länttä won the life counter for the highest newcomer finish in the swiss on Goblins. Giamma won the Dark booster for last place finish in the swiss with no drop. Players could promote opposing decks to us all day, if they saw something cool. Promoted and in the running were the Lich by Hannu, my and Martti’s mono black dreams and Tuukka’s enchantress. Hannu won the coaster slab of False Orders for the coolest deck. When he slams a beer on that coaster, he should know where all the misplays are coming from.

In top8 I face the Bavarian devil himself, Krampus! Also known as Stefan Riegg or Teppich on fully powered RUG on a beautiful rug. What can I say, my deck is designed to tear these apart. After two rather fast games full of Bottle and Abyss and stuff we continued chilling with beers. He did show the Tanquility he drew in the sideboard game without green mana on board, but what can I say. When my Bottles will not let you have City of Brass, Sinkhole is a hell of a drug. The burn was never going to get there as I began drawing and Draining. 2-0 (W-W)

Top4 against Erkka on UBR Trolls again. It was a rerun, but it was a good one. Again we had lopsided first two games, maybe a bit more close than in the swiss. Then we had an amazing third one that I was again able to pull out. I make my first gameplay blunder of the day in the last game as I did not take a free attack with the Factory, the weekend was starting to get to me. Always pleasure to play you! 2-1 (I have no idea on the order of these)

Finals against Valtteri Yli-Länttä on MonoR Goblins. Mono black and mono red in the finals, because white and blue suck. And green is too mainstream these days. It is all a blur. I was feeling sick again. What do you know, after you have been sick, you need to rest and not go and party and play Magic for four days. I know Valtteri is a great player, so I am trying stay alert, but feel like I have a great shot in winning this. I think I just need to answer the board in a reasonable manner and then stay out of the bolt burn range. G1 he gets some early points in with goblins and I was unsure did he have Ball in the deck or not. I decide on a line where I leave my Ritual in hand for a larger Drain Life later but open myself up for his 3 mana spells when I land a Manipulator without mana to activate it, his board was like 2 mountains. Sure enough he is playing a full set of balls. 6 damage from the Ball combined with all the bolts is enough in the end. Didn’t have enough time. Creature control did not carry me.

Game 2 I make sure I have the early game under control and always keep a Maze or some other answer ready for Ball. Abyss arrives and keeps him off the board. He plays all the 4 or 5 goblins from hand at some point just to attack for like 2 and then 1 damage at some point through a Maze and Abyss. I slam a Fountain, feeling good. Start gaining life. He answers with Copper Tablet. He conceals Land’s Edge well and I only suspect there is burn in the hand. I play some Sinkholes and then later Drain Life for 6 for buffer. I took out two Relic Barrier as potential blanks against him. Not sure if there are Juggernauts or Su-Chi there, especially after the board. Bottles also came out. Added two Juzam, for trying to catch him by surprise from the play with rituals, yes, my sideboard was a bit lacking against pure burn. I also hoped I could go for a fast Juzam and I could also just decide to play the Abyss later if things got out of hand. These were all stupid ideas provided by a very tired and feverish mind. Maze and Terror also came in, those were great.

Surely when top decking with Land’s Edge in play, I draw 1 Swamp (now with the information of the Edge), I throw it to his face without thinking about it as my dreams has taken him really low. You should always keep them in hand before the final blow just so you have the option to respond to your opponent trying to Edge you down. Well, it did not come down to his decision, so all good, it is just fine. Sure enough, I draw the one Relic Barrier and a Juzam when my Abyss is down, total blanks. My brain was probably melting when I was doing the sideboarding, not good at all, I just couldn’t find enough cards that I liked. He draws enough lands and bolts to finish me off. The game ends with him being on 1 life, responding to my Dreams trigger by drawing a land/bolt for total of 3 lands and 2 bolts and 12 total, or as they say in the business, the “exacies”. I was dumbfounded as I felt we go to game three in his draw phase, and I was getting ready to destroy him in the last one. What an awesome ending, for the whole weekend, GG!

Final thoughts on the deck. I had never tried the strategy and the whole list was just all theory crafting. I was positively surprised by how well the deck performed. You just hate to see White Knight, Karma, CoP: Black, Divine Offering and Disenchant. To some extent I suspect robots to be a problem also. You love to see aggro strategies and Arabian Nights cards. Final additions to the sideboard were 4 Juzam Djinn and 4 Black Vise. I decided I do need the vise to take some random control/prison matchups, perhaps like to have another angle at The Deck and something like Tax Edge and stuff, perhaps the mirror if someone is as mad as I am. Juzam was my transformational card to give me some proactive beef. I think it might still be ok for the slot to provide some beats if Abyss and Bottle miss. Also feels like Moat is not that much around and I usually show the Bottle myself in g1. This being said, they really didn’t do a lot in the tournament. Usually, it was just better staying on Abyss and Bottle. Perhaps I just should have played Su-Chi there so that I could have successfully mixed it up with still playing Abyss. Two Sylex with additional Barrier was my plan for Robots, but amazingly there were none around. Gloom is what it is, decent as the black and artifact pool just doesn’t deliver on that front. One fountain and 4 Drain Life was not enough against committed burn list. My initial sideboard plan had another Fountain in there, that would have been sweet.

Theme and name of the deck was “Tampere nights”, because of Baywatch Nights of course. Mitch Buchcannon and this deck both do fuck. You travel to the swamp. Face all sorts of Terrors and Barriers. Drink from the Fountain and get Drained. Grab a Bottle and get lost in the Abyss. All this while being manipulated by the icy cold weather. Remember kids, it is a greedy city! I will be getting my Beta Black Vises and two Abyss shortly.

Right now, I am really tired and extremely happy. It was a pleasure having all of you guys in for the weekend. I hope you had as much fun as I did. I hope to see all of you soon. Fountain of Youth Open will be back next year.

- Slotherine