VIENNAGEDDON 2024
Austria’s Biggest Old School Tournament
May 2024
Last Saturday, May 11, 2024, the Lions of Austria organized their yearly (with a small break) VIENNAGEDDON! For those of you out of the loop: The VIENNAGEDDON is an annual Austrian MtG Old School tournament where people from all over the world come together for some fun games of Old School Magic, have a good time and enjoy fine beverages!
The VIENNAGEDDON 2024 was the very first time that Three for One Trading has been chosen by the Lions as the lucky sponsor of the event. We helped out with the organization and the prize pool. Of course, we have also been on the place to sell and buy cards!
To complete the trifecta, popular YouTuber Timmy the Sorcerer was there to stream the top tables with live commentary!
Getting Ready to Rumble
After around 40 people pre-registered online for the event and most of them also knew how to capture a deck picture with their phone (come on guys, it’s not that hard!) it was time to meet at our designation:
The Long Hall Bar in the 8th district of Vienna
The authentic Irish bar with its great selection of different beers and drinks as well as the hearty cuisine was the perfect location to tap some Duals! At around 11 am, registration started. For registration, everyone received an exclusive VIENNAGEDDON 2024 playmat, a patch with a dorky Savannah Lion and Three for One goodies in the form of a life pad and pen.
Timmy Does His Magic
After a bit of technical difficulties (damn you, card reflections!) Timmy got his streaming setup going and the first people got to know the man behind the camera in person, and everyone got the same impression:
What a cool and friendly dude!
He even prepared an MtG trivia quiz for everyone, where people clever enough could win a Timmy pin! Now, these questions were no joke, but some people walked around wearing that pin with proud at the end of the VIENNAGEDDON.
Those who already know Timmy from his Youtube channel know that he’s doing excellent commentary. But did you also know that he can do it live for 10 hours at a stretch? What a powerhouse of a man!
Rewatch the Viennageddon 2024 Stream here:
Setting Up Booth
Our very own Ricardo was on location during the whole event until the Top 8 started to do what he does best (besides playing Magic):
Buying and selling cards!
Huge props to him for setting up that card booth inside a cramped space in an Irish Pub. As the time went on and the beers started to show some effect, Ricardo remained professional, while also having to fight the battle of his life against a laptop with the worst battery life ever.
If you missed buying any cards you wanted during the event, you can still do so here!
Rules and Deck Building Restrictions
Before we are getting to the games and prizes, a quick overview on what decks people played and what deck building rules the VIENNAGEDDON imposed upon the players:
Ravenna Rule Set (A, B, U, ARN, ANT, LEG, THE DARK, FBB, FWB, REVISED, CHRONICLES, RENAISSANCE, IE & CE) plus Italian, French and German versions of those sets. M30 and Time Spiral wasn’t invited, but nobody would bet an eye if 4th edition was being played for budget reasons.
THIS IS WHAT A REAL DECK PIC LOOKS LIKE:
Stefan Deck by Jonathan W.
Overall, there’s been a great mix between powered and unpowered decks. You could tell people were going for that sweet Unpowered Prize for sure. More about that below! There was a bit of everything among the 39 decks, skipping through the pictures you could summarize it with:
- Lots of Swords and Disenchants… ouch!
- White and Green Weenie for the win!
- Only one person played mono red burn, why?!
- If powered, you need to play Su-Chi or Triskelion apparently, who knew!
- Disco Troll and Erhnamgeddon, way too underrepresented.
- Only one deck picture with pet, super disappointing.
- Just a bunch of FREAKIN’ COOL LOOKING DECKS
Disco Troll by Oliver D.
Enchant the Worm by Chriso
Good Old Mono Red Burn by Marc F.
Tax Edge by Luca O.
The Prizes Were Right
There’s been prizes over prizes for the players at VIENNAGEDDON 2024. Most importantly: There are big prizes for the winner of the best performing unpowered deck, as well as a prize for the most creative deck!
So foremost, let’s take a look at the prizes for Top 8. We got a really cool selection of cards here, hand-picked by none other than our chief in command:
Now, you might think:
“Well, how can the prizes for the best unpowered deck and the most creative deck compete with these?“
They 100% can! The prize for the best performing unpowered deck is a (unsigned) Revised Plateau and the prize for the most creative deck is, hold your horses, an original Will-o’-the-Wisp repaint by Jesper Myrfors himself!
Now, if that’s not an incentive to think outside the box and leave your Beta Power at home, we don’t know what is!
Go Time!
BEST UNPOWERED DECK
Mono Green Weenie by Pavel Humpolec
MOST CREATIVE DECK
Karma is a B**** by Jakob Beran
Before we move on to the Top 8 and our finalists, let the sun shine on the winners for the categories “Best Performing Unpowered Deck” and “Most Creative Deck”!
Pavel Humpolec did a fantastic job showing the working class how to push back properly with his Mono Green Weenie deck! What a solid performance! He has been rewarded with a Revised Plateau, so now he can finally get out of that mono-prison.
Jakob Beran did leave his pencils at home, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be creative. Even the deck name was creative: Karma is a B****. Jakob was rewarded with an original Will-o’-the-Wisp repaint by Jesper Myrfors. So lucky!
Mono Green Weenie – Pavel Humpolec
Pavel was shooting pretty straight with this one: Lots of small creatures, lots of artifact hate in the form of Scavenger Folk, Argothian Pixies and Crumble. This and a full playset of Pendelhavens and Ice Storms meant Pavel did not beat around the (green) bush! Spitting Slug seems a bit weak at first, but with the right backup (Giant Growth) that little slug becomes a scary card to block with your Angel.
Karma is a B**** – Jakob Beran
Okay, let’s see if we understand Jakob‘s deck correctly: He’s turning the opponent’s lands into swamps with Cyclopean Tomb and then dealing damage with Karma. On top of this, Jakob is playing Magical Hack to change the text on Karma to any basic land type he seems fit! And if the base strategy with the swamps is going strong, he got an Angry Mob to make even more pressure. The 1-off Acid Rain is also fantastic in combination with Magical Hack.
Eight for Mortal Men doomed to… win?
After 6 rounds of games and even more rounds of drinks, it was time to see who the best (still standing) players of the VIENNAGEDDON 2024 were.
Let’s break it down:
Jakub Miloševski – 5c Goodstuff
Martin Hatlak – UW Flyers
Filip Milosesvsky – UWRb LionDib
Alexander Klöckler – Troll Disco
Oliver Polak-Rottmann – Robots
Philipp Socher – Tryhard.dec
Thomas Dorner – Roböter
Josef Málek – UG Deck
Viennageddon 2024 – The Glorious Top 8
And then there were only two…
It was all fun and games until the Top 8 started, and then it became fun, games and party! Not everyone was staying inside watching the games while the weather was beautiful outside, so the party people split for a while. Which was fantastic for the Top 8, because they for sure wanted a bit of peace for their games!
Overall, the Top 8 games were over quite quickly, and we were soon left with the two finalists:
THOMAS DORNER VS. OLIVER POLAK-ROTTMANN
Before the two Robot enthusiasts were going to battle it out, the rest of the Top 8 already got to pick their prize cards from the previously shown pool!
Here are the cards now with their new lucky owners:
CONGRATULATIONS YOU GUYS!
Hopefully you’ll find a way to integrate your prize cards into your next VIENNAGEDDON deck (Actually, one prize picture is missing, but we swear everyone got their card)
The Decks of The Fantastic 8
5c Goodstuff by Jakub Miloševsk
Roböter by Thomas Dorner
UW Flyers by Martin Hatlak
Tryhard.dec by Philipp Socher
UWRb LionDib by Filip Milosevsky
Troll Disco by Alexander Klöckler
UG Deck by Josef Málek
Robots by Oliver Polak-Rottmann
And the winner of the
VIENNAGEDDON 2024
is …
OLIVER POLAK-ROTTMANN
Congratulations on ending up on top of roughly 10 hours of Old School madness against the high variety of decks VIENNAGEDDON 2024 had to offer!
We hope everyone had a blast at the VG24! Thank you all for making it a day we’ll not soon forget, and thanks to the Lions of Austria for hosting such an amazing event!