24 Hour Party People (aka Easter Week in Gothenburg)

I have played n00bcon five times before this year and have enjoyed them. This year I made a totally different approach and started hanging out with OS people on Wednesday and even stayed at the Panorama Hotel from Thursday-Sunday. "I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now."

I had the whole week off and had been grinding Elden Ring (which might be the best game of all time) but decided to skip doing that to meet up with "The Happy German" Flovo for some shopping (he needed fashion advice from me), meatballs and Swedish fika.

Meatballs from Tullen, solid Swedish meatballs available from morning to late evening.

Flovo disappointed he ordered something small "my diet is 67% sugar". First outdoor fika of the year.

The evening was spent with Flovo, Jason and mg playing Pinball and some other various arcade machines. I didn't play that much but enjoyed the company. Tried to go home early but mg backstabbed us by buying another round. Also got to catch up a bit with mg on the bus ride home to #mölndaloldschool

Apparently Medieval Madness is a thing among pinball players

On Thursday it all started going a bit bonkers. I'm a guy who likes my beer so I spent most of the weekend very drunk so I will obviously miss a lot of stuff, but this is something you should experience and not read about it right. Had a can of tuna for breakfast, checked in at Panorama and met up with Wheel M, Bonnie, Lorenzo, and some more people. Took a walk in the rain to Tullen again today, Wheel needed some meatballs. Then had a walk up to Skansen Kronan, the site of the event today. I have never been up there even though I lived 17 years in Gothenburg, it sucks a lot to walk up there. "I scale a slope I hope the tracks won't lead me down to dark black pits or places where we fall to bits"

I'm not sure this view is worth the walk up to the tower

View from the other side, apparently you can ride up a car to Skansen Kronan

I decided to try out Landgraf's build of UR Counterburn for this tournament. If I liked it, I would play it at n00bcon, else I would go back to Fantasy Zoo. Apparently, I just took the wrong deck this day as I played so many robots list and Blood Moon was very bad. I've now tried UR Counterburn, two different RUG lists and Fantasy Zoo in the 12-bolt space. I think I can stop trying the other versions, I like Fantasy Zoo the most.

I'm not sure the age of men is over and the time of the has come

I'm not gonna dwell on the results but here is what happened:

Round 1: 2-1 vs Florian (Robots)

Round 2: 0-2 vs Henk (Robots)

Round 3: 2-1 vs Megu (Deadguy Ale)

Round 4: 1-2 vs Seb Celia (Rukh Robots)

Round 5: 0-2 vs Jordan (Merfolk)

Round 6: 2-1 vs Dyan (AB Midrange)

3-3 in total was not utterly trash but still not good. I had a great time this evening, catching up with a lot of local folks from Sweden that weren't going to play n00bcon. I also got to hang out with all my newfound Dutch friends, which had the second greatest number of competitors this year after Sweden. Also tried to convince my good friend Christoffer to go on International OS trips. Erwin and Nick also gave me a hard-printed copy of the "the best picture of the weekend" from Groningen.

One of two pictures I took the whole evening

Apparently my only other picture was stalking Wheel

After hanging out late in the pub with Reindeer and some other guys (I remember Reindeer because he fixed taxi and beer, I owe you man!) it was time for Friday. Got up around 10 to eat the only S-tier breakfast in the world: Pancakes with jam and whipped cream + bacon. I always have this if it's available, it's got the best taste and it also keeps you full for the longest. Too bad I also had to eat a kebab pizza at Pizzeria Peperoni as that's a tradition, but I hade enough food in my stomach to last until 06 am. If you want to meet some true OG old schoolers Pizzeria Peperoni is the place to be before n00bcon.

Fantasy Zoo version 4.0

I ended up 5-2 and in 13th place which is better than last time I played Fantasy Zoo (my only finish that wasn't top 16):

Round 1: 0-2 vs Legendary Jonas Twitchen (RW Midrange)

Round 2: 2-1 vs Blazer (Mono Red Burn)

Round 3: 2-0 vs Sveby (Eureka)

Round 4: 2-0 vs Seb (Trying to be Mano)

Round 5: 0-2 vs Veenman (Robots)

Round 6: 2-0 vs Artelas (Black Midrange)

Round 7: 2-0 vs Stebbo (Fantasy Zooish)

So much stuff happened this n00bcon apparently the soup thing was not a joke and most people got well fed by the soup. I didn't need any food after the pancakes, bacon, and kebab pizza. Going to have to try to make some other decisions next year. 

Seb playing Erwin in the pub area

I had a bit of a mission this weekend was to get some proxies for my Twitch friend d0314. So, I managed to get a The Abyss alter from Paddan, a Nether void from Seb and a Juzam Djinn from Juan. I think these will go great in d0314's collection.

That work with text is insane

I also had one of my first incidents where my opponent placed his beer bad, and Blazer's backpack was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was mad for about like 5 minutes, mostly because I had to use napkins to remove beer from every single sleeve before I could play round 6. I don't want to play anything unsleeved in these environments. 

mtgmisprint got a picture of me cleaning up my cards

JhovalKing/Pixelmtg got a great picture of the disaster

Had Blazer sign the playmat to remind me of what happened

So many things were happening while the top 4 was going on. Joel Larsson played his first ever OS tournament and took it down with The Deck. Shane Semmens won the ante40k final against mg, Britain took down the Ryder cup. I drank a lot of beer and did a ugly Jeweled Bird Åland alter for Mari.

What is Veenman saying or doing to get these reactions?

I was really excited to hang out with mtgmisprint, think Seb is a bit jealous?

Somehow, we got home, I had to ask Mari to take care of me. But this was surely the best n00bcon ever? I can't imagine the ones I missed or the ones before I played my first one in 2013 was better. Great people around, people been covid lock downed so they brought their A-game (and I don't mean A-game as in playing).

Wheel took a picture of us going back to the Hotel. These guys are some of my all-time favorite guys.

Usually, this time of Easter I tend to give up on OS and go for the Swedish Vintage Nationals but I had to catch up with people yet one more day. After trying to build a deck and having some more pancakes + bacon I was ready. Most people were going to the Wizard's Tournament 3 but I met up with some Swedes, some Dutch and two from Spain at John Scott's Avenyn. "To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you"

I bought a bottle of Juzam Gin, great quality product by Ruaro and art by Kalle

I thought this was going to be a slow day, but Juan and Jordi started buying my beer directly as we got there and I just sat and talked with them for a couple of hours while Joel conned some OS players to play a tribal cube with new cards. I played some DFB Green against a Beta-only deck.

"wtf does these cards do?"

Seb really likes being in my pictures

On the roof we found some techno music to the delight of the Dutch (and me), and we proceeded to play a small eight man three round tournament. I was rocking DFB Green which has become one of my absolute favorite decks. Been playing this version for a while now and thinking about starting to change up some cards.

My pub crawl deck, picture is even crooked and blurry

In this small gathering I had the best matches of the whole weekend and the finals being an insanely tense match ending on him beating me while at 1 life. There is so much more play to this deck than the 12 bolt decks. Also getting revenge on the Henk/Veenman Robots was amazing.

Round 1: 2-0 vs Henk (Robots)

Round 2: 2-0 vs Blazer (Stasis)

Round 3: 1-2 vs Alex (Tax Edge)

I think this Instagram clip from Seb Celia kinda explains what went on on the roof of John Scott's.

After the tournament we just hung out for a couple of hours, drinking, and enjoying ourselves. I forgot to eat and when I was to order food they didn't sell anymore. This was a bad mistake as I hadn't had any food since breakfast 12 hours ago. I ended up guiding Peter Monten the wrong way until he made the only reasonable decision to take a cab (I'm happy he let me in the cab at that point). I think this was my worst punt of the weekend and I hope I will make this up to you some day :) I at least got to hang out a bit with Berntsson and KungMarkus when I got back to the hotel, a great end to the day.

This is the stuff I got with me home. Thank you everyone that gave me all this sweet stuff.

On Sunday I was done, I had some more pancakes and bacon but after that I was not going to be able to do much. Mari gave me some kraken which helped me to delay the hangover. I stayed at Panorama a while but waved goodbye to everyone and just went home for some sleep. Monday was also a slow day with some unpacking and restoring the playmat. I really liked the new look of the playmat but the smell was unbearable.

A faucet and ordinary water is really good at cleaning playmats

Well, that's it, another n00bcon and another great (extended) weekend hanging out with some of my best friends. I can't really start namedropping, but you guys know who you are. Looking forward to seeing some of you at Viennageddon in less than two weeks. I will sadly have to cancel Raging Bull tournament due to too many events and too expensive. Glad I got to meet the Raging Bull in Gothenburg at least :)

Just a random UNL Bolt signed by some of the best people around