Its allready two weeks since GP Gothenburg has passed, for a first i found some time to write about it. Sweden was a really nice place to stay. The food was good, the center of Gothenburg looked nice. Things to remember are on one side “girls with way too short jeans and cans of beer on the streets” and on the other side “women with baby buggy’s hanging around in shopping malls”. Also for a country where alcohol is very expensive we noticed a lot of really really drunk people on the streets at night, but the one guy coming out of taxi and then stumbling in to the bar instead of his bed was really interesting.

But of-course the most of Gothenburg we saw was the inside of the convention center. My sealed pool was pretty decent, but somehow not good enough to make day two, so i would like to share a very fun five color control deck i drafted during the day two side-events. Read the rest of this entry »

Since 2004 i am playing Pro Tour Qualifiers trying to win a seat in one of the biggest prestige Magic tournaments around. Every year i was making the PTQ’s top-8 atleast once, but never i was able to take the slot. Time has changed. Last weekend i won a PTQ and qualified for Pro Tour Amsterdam 2010! Awesome! This is like every competitive magic players dream, playing the Magic Pro Tour. How did i get there?

The White Weenie deck can be a uber agro and beat most decks if they have a subpar draw (Luck for the win?). Its a very consistent deck and after adding Elspeth it started to take off, but still it was loosing a lot to Jund and U/W Control. After going 0-2 in PTQ Aachen, i cut the Kor Firewalkers for more flyers and replaced Path to Exiles with Harm’s Way to make the deck even more agressive, this is the way to battle Jund, more pressure then they can remove.

My PTQ decklist:

Toleria White(RoE Standard)
4 Steppe Lynx
4 White Knight
4 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Kor Skyfisher
4 Student of Warfare
3 Kor Aeronaut
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Brave the Elements
4 Harms Way
4 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

13 Plains
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arid Mesa

Sideboard:
4 Devout Lightcaster
4 Silence
4 Oblivion Ring
3 Day of Judgment

Read the rest of this entry »

Games, I like playing games. The thing is most games are only for Windows. Everyone knows Microsoft created a unfair advantage over other computer operating system providers in the 90′s. They are a trailed and accused monopolist, but time is changing and other platforms are gaining momentum. So, why aren’t most games being developed cross-platform? Does the gaming industry really think there isn’t any money in the other 6-7% computer platforms? Maybe they are right, but this really going to stay a chicken or the egg problem. If nobody develops the games for the other platforms then they wont grow as a gaming platform at all. Keeping me stuck on Windows.

This got me thinking, how are the game console developers handling this? They have to program games for at least three different consoles. Wii, PS3 and Xbox. Those don’t share a lot in the architecture department, meaning they need to be programmed differently. You’d figure company’s like Electronic Arts have to know how to create cross platform games. Take a look at their Need for Speed product page and see which platforms its supports: iPhone, Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo DS, PSP. Why is Mac OS X and Linux missing? How hard can it be to support another two major platforms? Makes me think, is Microsoft telling them not too? Lets not get too paranoid…

Come on gaming industry lets get Mac OS X and Linux into the mix! If a Indy gaming house like Guild Software can develop a game (Vendetta Online) for three platforms, why aren’t the big boys doing this then?

But there is also some good news. Valve recently announced Steam is also going to support the Mac platform. Also Blizzard has a good reputation of supporting the Mac OS X platform. So some are heading into the right direction although Linux could use some more love.

A lot of people are daily using Macs and Linux for both work and entertainment, but for gaming most of the time they need to switch to Windows. Windows is still the biggest gaming platform. I don’t understand why the gaming industry keeps betting on one player. They are helping Microsoft to stay the biggest player in the market. Don’t they know Microsoft is a competitor of them in the gaming field? Fools i tell you, just plain fools…