Tournament Report - COPcon VI, 19 May 2018 – by Brother Stebbo

~~ Breaking News ~~
Our illustrious founder Brother Jonas has left London for a trip to the New World of as-yet-unknown duration. Amongst the spare copies of Fork scattered around his flat, we found some parchment saying he has gone in search of new sweet tech, and to preach the word of a solitary Strip Mine amidst myriad Mazes of Ith.

Filling in for Sir Alex

With the assistance of Brother Ben, I am ostensibly the ‘caretaker manager’ of COPcon in the interim. Ahem. To continue the football analogies, the bad news is that history tells us that replacing great leaders can be pretty tough (see: Sir Alex Ferguson, or if you’re reading this in after the winter of 2018, see also: Arsène Wenger…). The good news is that this is the perfect excuse to peer-pressurise your cardboard fanatic mates to take the plunge into Old School!

For COPcon VI we returned to our spiritual home of a pub serving-up amazing beers and greasy burgers in North East London. The day had the feeling of one with a special significance to it – it was the same day as the FA Cup Final AND the Royal Wedding. Even better than all of that, the pub’s playlist was seemingly stuck on 80's College rock – early REM and U2 aplenty. It soon becomes evident that throwback indie music is the perfect soundtrack to throwback magical cardboard.


The Tournament

We had 9 players – an excellent number given that it was also the third Old School tournament in four weeks in the UK! This meant that a few of the regulars were absent with their families, partners or, heaven forbid, other interests…

Brothers Karl, Ben, and Stebbo, and regulars Graeme, Shawn, and Matt, were joined by two COPcon newcomers. Phil, who has played for around 15-20 years but was only attending his second Old School event, and Joe, who has played for around 10 years. Joe was also attending his second Old School event, but notably he also attended the first ever event on UK soil, in autumn 2015. A reluctant founder of sorts!

Joe using his Sylvan Library to great effect

We played 5 rounds of Swiss, with some great pick-up games of Premodern and Brothers’ Highlander – our very own 100-card singleton format with its own points list.

As always we were playing for some sweet brags and the epitome of sweet brags in cardboard form:

COP: Artifact for the winner of most matches, accompanied by the real first prize: Spirit of COPcon 
We even got Mark Tedin to sign this extra-special Brothers of Fire, although Mark sadly couldn’t make the event itself due to other commitments…

Action Shots

A shameless attempt to curry favour with the Spirit of COPcon judges, but it worked! 
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Phil walked away with the Spirit of COPcon for this beautiful maindeck inclusion. Not everyone can say they managed to upgrade a card in their deck to black-bordered with an Old School tournament prize, but Phil can!!

Match Report and Decklists

I’d managed to come third on breakers at Brass Man, and lost the finals of Flying Man in a URb mirror. I took some advice from a Swede who I know has a bit of experience with the deck I’d been playing, and made a few upgrades to give myself a better UR mirror match.

As a result, and much to my embarrassment, I managed to reign undefeated. COPcon was awash with UR decks this month, and my newly-tuned deck beat three of them on my way to victory in the Swiss…

I’ll keep the crowing to a minimum, but to make up for it here is a great shot from my game vs. Joe.

A stacked stack (Joe had a Disenchant in hand, btw)

Some Deck Pics

Brother Stebbo’s URb Counterburn

Brother Ben’s Mono Green Glarefest

Damian’s URb Counterburn

Joe’s GWb Geddon

Matt’s UWR Prison

Phil’s UR Counterburn

Epilogue

Thanks to everyone for coming along and for a great event of Old School played in fantastic spirit. We’ll be hosting COPcon VII in a few months’ time so stay tuned for the announcement once we’ve finalised the date.

For Brother Ben and I, the fun didn’t quite stop there. We gamed into the evening with some Brothers’ Highlander. Perhaps the only format where you can still cast Lich on 1 life!

A Lich amongst all his books, a natural habitat of sorts

What’s all this about Brothers’ Highlander, you ask? Well you’ll you just have to keep reading this blog…