Tales of the Ante40K community

Since N00bcon 2019, playing for Ante is kind a thing – during various Tournaments we tried to organize a “REAL Tournament after the Tournament” and play for real Ante (including all the nice Ante Cards of course 🙂 )

Maybe you asked yourself nowadays “why do they do that? Are they crazy?” Short answer would be: Yes, they are. They are completely insane – but this would be a way to easy shortcut. Truth is, that the Oldschool Community is an incredible fair, nice, lovely, caring, sharing, drinking pulk of various people around the world. We (obviously and of course!) do not care about race, gender, sexual orientation or other exclusionary things (despite the fact that anbody in the community should love the game, should be friendly, polite and fair and wants to have a great time). This is what we discover in various places and locations around the world.

I for myself found within this amazing Community a lot of new Friends around the world. Some friendships around them are outstanding and we try to meet at as much Oldschool-happenings as possible to have a great time and play our game we love so much. I am in this Community since mid 2018 and had a very warm welcome, especially by the members of this small Ante40K-Club. I met Jason in Genova at the Breakfast table. We talked about Magic and have become close Tournament buddies since then 🙂 Also in Genova, same year, Bonnie played against me in round 5. He told me if he is playing to slow due to his intoxination, i should tell. As my Level was also quite high, i did not even understand his sentence haha. Ben and the Brothers of Fire have been opponents in our first Team Worlds in 2018 – we had very nice talks. Markus is the bringer of the Format and we played at N00bcon 2018 (respectively, grandmaster Paul da Silva had to sling the spells as Markus was, hm let’s say “currently unavailable”…) Allan hostet DOS 2.0 in which i was guest and he cared very nicely for this foreign guest of Switzerland 🙂 Svante was a known Name for me due to various Tournament reports i read through this time. We also met in Genova and had some talks about “restrict to two” that time. I think we actually never played against each other at a OS Tournament – is this true? Bryan was also playing N00bcon 2019 and he missed Ante40 action due to his Top8-matches – but we had a very nice talk and All Tings Considered Episode together. Magnus is also part of this group – we met in real life at N00bcon 2019 and instantly knew, that we connect very well 🙂 And finally Slanfan – i could write books about this wonderful Person but i Keep it short: Great human being and great OS friend 🙂 We expanded just today in the USA with 3 nice Oldschool-Gentlemen (DFB, Eliot Davidoff and Scott Bradley) – a warm welcome to you guys.  So a big hug and thank you Ante-Friends to be part of this amazing Ante-Community and for your Oldschool Friendship! Rock on!

So after N00bcon 2018, where Markus and Mighty Magnus played an Ante Match with their real Decks (yes!) a Llanowar Elf changed side to Markus and the Idea of Ante was born in his head. He needed one whole year to plan, organize and handle everything for the great Ante40K N00bcon Aftermath Tournament (just joking, i assume he did that in a couple of Hours haha). There was a quite decent announcement and 6 fellow Madmen gathered together to play for – hm, i can’t really remember? a Contract from Below? a Darkpact? i really don’t know anymore… We agreed that a Card which switches Sides of course has to be signed and properly altered (if you are an Artist like i am, you will receive veeeery Beautiful altered Cards haha).

We discovered that the Ante40K format opens up for quite some interesting Deck Archetypes – mostly because the lack of Power9 and fully teched out decks. Also, normally you include 4 Jeweled Birds so you Need some space for them.  So far, everybody was more or less happy or at least not devastated as one lost Dual Lands, Ehrnam Djinns or even a Chaos Orb – we all know that this Card will be taken over by a friend – not some random foe. Also, the Cards will be included in OS-Decks for actual Tournament play 🙂 Everybody wins 😉

So if you ever again ask yourself, why there are reasons for Ante:
– being insane could be a good one
– Altering cards and hand them over to friends
– love all facettes of the game and playing Magic overall

So may the Moxen be with you and don’t forget:

Shuffle

Cut

ANTE!

See you around
Reindeer