Dwarven Warriors 2024

I wasn’t planning on writing something about this year’s Dwarven Warriors. But after finishing 1st in the tournament, I felt that I had to dedicate some words to it.

That feels a bit strange since Dwarven Warriors is foremost intended as a casual event. The winner of the weekend isn’t necessarily the #1 finisher. The winner is the person who Erwin deems worthy to receive the “Fuck You Dwarf” statue. Benjamin won this year’s edition of Dwarven Warriors, and the sheer joy and look on his face when his name was announced by Erwin’s daughter Tess was priceless. While Dwarven Warriors is a social gathering, let’s not kid ourselves. When the cards hit the table, almost everybody tries to win. What started with enjoying Alpha/Beta decks mostly existing of cards like Giant Spider and Frozen Shade has ended in a lot of players owning black bordered power and duals. And trust me, these cards are not only bought to enjoy their looks.

After several years of playing the AB4K format at Dwarven Warriors, last year, Erwin changed it up by making it two-headed giant tournament. This year, it was decided that we would play A40L rules, with Beta cards allowed. This makes it easier for people without power to be more competitive, myself included. While I do own plenty of Alpha & Beta cards, I’ve refrained from buying any black bordered power. Especially after selling my Beta Lotus a couple of years back. Personally, I’m more than fine playing Dwarven Warriors without Power, but using A40L rules for this year’s edition did increase my chances to do well. Another big factor was the fact that I quit drinking alcohol at the beginning of August for a period of 3 months. I’ve proved in the past that I can play drunk pretty well, even past the point of being able to shuffle my own deck. But of course, not drinking any alcohol gives another small advantage.

Deck choice:
I have an A40L deck, which I’ve been carefully carving for the past 2 years. It’s Red/White and singleton. While a big portion of the fun of A40L is being able to play 6 or even an unlimited amount of certain cards, I prefer a different approach. I only play A40L in a non tournament setting, and singleton offers me the greatest variety of play within a single deck choice. Being able to cast a wide variety of card nostalgia in each game, brings me a lot of joy. While it started with mainly commons and uncommons, I’ve slowly upgraded to the point of even owning a Plateau and Savannah Lions. The 3 cards remaining on my Alpha wishlist are Chaos Orb, Shivan Dragon and Wheel of Fortune. This made my deck choice pretty easy. I grabbed my A40L deck and added 3 Beta versions of the cards on my wishlist and behold!

Card Considerations:
1) I don’t own a BB Tome because I find it a very boring card. That’s why I’m not playing any card out of the “Draw” group.

2) My 40th card was either White Knight or Jade Statue. Jade is hard to get rid of and is sort of a counter for decks that play Wrath/Balance with either Jade and/or Black Knight. Since both white cards do not destroy the knights under A40L rules. I wasn’t expecting anybody to play the Knights, potentially the Jade variant, but still put the chance to very low. Emiel did play the Knight version and made it to 4th place. Well done to him!. The White Knight is great against Mono Black. Mono Black is a deck made by many people as their first deck in Swedish, AB4K, and also A(B)40L, so I expected many matchups against Mono Black. That wasn’t a big guess and proved to be right.

3) The worst card in the deck is Reverse Damage. You basically never want to have it early game. It’s only useful when you are about to die, and in a lot of cases, you just die the next turn. But 1 fun-off can’t be that bad, and by playing it, I could tell myself I didn’t opt for the most optimal 40. Look at me, I’m playing a casual deck!

4) 17 land + Sol Ring. This sentence is just for Evert 😉 Although I had to take some mulligans in the Top8, my mana base and thereby curve was the basis for many game wins. Going down to 16 would have been a big mistake 😉

Friday:
I hardly ever play on Friday and this time it was no different. Actually I think other than 1 real-life ODOL match, nobody played any magic. Like I said earlier, this is as much of a social gathering of friends as it is a Magic tournament. We do the usual, drink beer and play loud 90’s music. This time I didn’t drink but still made it till 04:00. 5,5 hours of sleep not counting the moment Henk tried to enter our tiny mobile home quietly around 06:30 in the morning, trying to unlock an already unlocked door after which he tried to lock the door because you never know who tries to break into a tiny mobile home at 06:30 in the morning with 2 adult men sleeping right behind it.

Tournament:
I didn’t keep any notes. And while you might expect I would remember a lot because I was sober, that isn’t really the case. Before the tournament Hunter has a present for everybody, handing out personalised playmats, designed by Juan. Edo awards patches to the newcomers and I receive my AB4K veteran patch for being a 5-times participant. The only other patch is the AB4K Legend for those who have been 5-Times and have finished 1st in the tournament. Now that’s something to play for!

My first opponent was Anies. Now that’s a fantastic opponent with a great deck! Drudge Skeleton/Pestilence with 5 Drain Life. That Drain isn’t restricted to 3 is surprising as it’s such a strong card.I remember curving superb against Anies. And while both Pestilence and Drain gave me some troubles, a well-timed Fork on a Drain won me a game.

Next was Nick. Another player on Mono Black. This time without Drudge/Pestilence but with Sengir, Nightmare, and Demonic Hordes.Luckily for me, both games were over very fast. A fantastic curve made my life easy. Being able to cast good creatures T2/3/4/5 and sometimes even T6 is definitely 1 of the great features of this Singleton deck.

Ron is up next. Ankh/Vise Land Destruction with Burn. I’m not sure if this was game 1 or 2, but strange enough, my Resurrection/ Fork combo was enough to win the game. There’s a first for everything and the fact that my 2 best creatures were in the graveyard didn’t hurt 😅

Purple plays Mono Black the first game. But that was only because he didn’t draw any islands. Game 2 he does better by being able to cast some blue cards but it didn’t matter, my deck was on a stampede.

With 24 players I’m the only 1 that’s 4-0 and Martin Purrio is uppaired on rats. He’s on rats, because his normal AB4K deck is Zombie’s. Zombie’s are crap, but even worse in A40L since Zombie Master isn’t a Zombie. So Martin bought rats…. A lot of them (since you can play an infinite amount of rats in A40L). Now a rat deck might sound like a fun deck, it’s a lot better then most people think. With some Drain Life’s and Dark Rituals, this is a serious deck and I lose my first game of the day. I do win the other two.

5-0 and next is T8. That means 2/3 of the field is now gone, but basically you have to start all over. Ron, Nick and Purple all made it into T8 but it’s Dyan in 8th place. I haven’t played Dyan that often, partly because he doesn’t play a lot. However he always plays at Dwarven Warriors and normally does really well. He’s playing a Singleton deck as well, with blue and black added into the mix. That means he has Psionic Blast but also Air Elemental,  Sengir and Mahamoti Djinn. He plays more big bombs then I do, which should give him the advantage mid/late game. In game 1 I have a Serra while Dyan has a Jade Statue. Since Serra was winning me the game, I was trying to protect it at all cost. That meant not blocking Dyan’s Jade and also not using my Chaos Orb on his Jade, because I wanted to be able to remove any potential blockers for my Serra. Since I was ahead, I took my chances but after attacking with his Jade, Dyan played Time Walk/Fork. I did Orb the Jade but it was just to much. Fork has been a MVP for me the whole tournament but being able to Fork a Time Walk is such a power move. While perfect curves in the Swiss happened against almost everybody, I have troubles against Dyan. The same happened in game 2, no perfect curve but I’m keeping up with Dyan. Another Time Walk/Fork and I thought I was done but luckily Dyan doesn’t get any real benefit out of it other than card replacement and possible 1 land drop. I take the game eventually and in game 3 I have my godlike curve back.

Semi Finals and it’s Martin again. Damn those rats. I know that I can beat him but he has beaten me before and I’m not so certain this is going to end well. I remember seeing my Artillery and White Knight at least in a couple of games and they are of course great against his rats. He does get to kill my Artillery eventually each time but after 2 games it’s 1-1 and we go for an exciting 3rd game. Early game we get to trade things mainly and I know that mid-game I can draw anything from Savannah Lions till Shivan Dragon. While Martin can consistently draw rats that gets bigger and better each time. My Shatter and Disenchant are wortheless and my Wheel of Fortune is 1 big gamble. I draw the Wheel and I’m very well aware that at that moment he can get 2 rats out per turn, so it really depends on what he draws. Obviously it also matters a lot what I draw and it wasn’t the worst 7 cards I could imagine. I remember the last 2 turns very vividly. Martin has 5 rats in play, so they are 5/5 each while I’m on 12. It’s my turn and I have an Artillery, White Knight, Dragon Whelp and a Shivan Dragon that I will put on the board later. Martin is on 18 and the question is what I do here. I think I’ve calculated it a dozen times but eventually I attack with my Dragon Whelp for 2+1, play my Shivan Dragon and leave 3 mana open for my Reverse Damage. Now I haven’t seen my Reverse Damage a lot, luckily I would say. It had no impact in any games so far. But this game it was the perfect card. Martin attacks with his 5 rats, I can block only 2 leaving 15 damage for lethal, but Reverse Damage saves the day. Martin looks at the board, thinks he’s dead but realizes I have to do 15 damage next turn, else he still wins. He counts, I have 1 White Knight which survives, 1 dragon Whelp, 1 Shivan and 5 Mountains for 14 damage in total. So he passes turn and hopes for the best. Luckily that’s why my math was so important, I already have the mountain in my hand, play it and attack for the victory. Damn, that was close!

Nick is being able to win against Emiel in the semi-finals which means I have to play Nick another time. Now my victory in the Swiss came pretty easy but Nick obviously didn’t make the finals because he plays a shitty deck. That Nick knows how to play Magic is pretty known as well so I’m up for a tough match. Game 1 the deck does what it has done all day. Or at least that’s what I remember. Game 2, Nick’s deck does what it’s likely has done all day. Sengir into Sengir into Hordes is a bit hard to get rid off. I get annihilated and now know that anything can happen that third game. There’s no time for mistakes now and during the game I have some serious paths to consider at different stages of the game. I decide to put pressure early and keep going at it and this eventually leads to the win! Damn, I’m now a AB4K Legend!

Aftermath:
Damn, this was maybe what I hoped but not what I had expected. Just after the final my smartwatch notifies me that I’ve had a stressful day. I’ve been sitting on my ass and not drinking, but it shows how intense the ride has been. The peak of my stress level was during my final match with Nick. Yes, I definitely wanted to win. Being in a room with such a fantastic crowd gives a lot of energy. I would have definitely felt gutted if I would have lost the finals after winning all my previous matches.

The party continues with Benjamin being awarded the winner of the day. I get to play some ante games with Bonnie and continue on my streak for the day after which it is really time to quit playing cards and play some more loud 90’s music. Around 02:00 I head to bed since I had to cycle 92 kilometers home the next day. A great 4 hour ride home after a nice breakfast served by Marijke, in which I can relive the whole weekend! Thank you for another great tournament Erwin, Marijke and obviously also all the participants! I’ll be back next year, with a beer in my hand and a smile on my face (unless I fall asleep early again).