Welcome to our new website: a fresh start for a magic year!

A lookback at 2025 and up for an exciting 2026 with Bolt The Bird

With the launch of the new website www.bolt-the-bird.nl, Christmas and New Year’s, it was a good moment to write my first piece as TO for Bolt the Bird. This is an ideal moment to look back at 2025 and also glance forward to new exciting things. English.

What a year 2025 was! We saw the Dutch Premodern Community expanding and growing. From our tournaments, we observed people traveling from far to Apeldoorn and Laren to join and participate. We always asked the question: Why is there no premodern tournament in the south or west of the Netherlands? Our typical response was: Organize one! And that’s what we did!

We are quite proud to see that formal Bolt the Bird attendees are taking this to the next level. Two groups are organizing tournaments in the Groningen Area, one group is organizing in the south, Heeswijk, and I know that very soon a tournament will be announced around the west of the Netherlands, “Randstad.” A very loyal and steady player base is attending monthly tournaments in Essen already, and now Bottrop, 15 kilometers away, launches a new monthly series in addition.

So instead of only the Uthen Troll Cup and Dutch Nationals, we finally have a great number of tournaments in the Netherlands, spread all over the country. If you are a player, you can play almost every week or once every few weeks/months close to your location!

Just before the Christmas period, the new room in MTGO Contraption was launched with the new premodern leagues. During this Christmas period, the leagues were packed and jammed as ever. More and more players are jumping in, and an exciting new time is approaching. I think the MTGO launch will bring more awareness to the format, and the level of deck tech and competitiveness will grow. On one hand, that’s a good thing; on the other hand, we might see more and more netdecks being played instead of the nostalgic decks that started premodern for me.

For this reason, I also look forward to the four brewer events we announced, as there is a lot of room for creativity! I can proudly say we already have people signing up for all four brewer events, and they are thinking already of four new creative decks to bring.

For myself, I plan to attend a few of the Essen tournaments and hope to have one or two weekends where I combine old-school magic with premodern. The combination is great and exciting; I see a significant overlap between the player base. With old-school, I can jam Land Tax again, which has sadly but wisely been banned in premodern! Everybody who knows me knows I love prison decks, so in Old School people can expect long games...

With the upcoming tournaments, we will write additional blogs and stories about activities and remarkable or fun events during these tournaments. All Bolt the Bird fans and participants are welcome to write something for the blog, in Dutch or English.

I would like to close by wishing everyone a great 2026, best wishes, and plenty of magical joy in the upcoming year!