Fabled Triple Crown Report


by Nonbasicland · Link

Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. You shouldn’t meet up with 16 sweathogs on a cold Saturday morning in Rosemont, Illinois. You shouldn’t get on a BYOB limo bus with a predetermined route of multiple suburban chain restaurants. You shouldn’t play six rounds of Middle School split across three venues without reservations or even advanced notice. You shouldn’t eat Chili’s, Arby’s and Red Lobster all within six hours. But we pit dwellers cut our teeth on the things one shouldn’t do, so why start now?

Enter, the fabled Triple Crown. The amalgamation of an ill conceived tournament series concocted by the rancid minds of Moss, Mullen and yours truly. We ideated three separate tournaments based on the run-and-gun casual events from earlier in the club’s history. A return to the Rosemont Chili’s dubbed WW4, the Arby’s Roast Beef Bash, and last but not least, Red Lobstercon. With Lords champing at the bit and friends coming in for Magiccon Chicago, I made the executive decision to merge the three hypothetical events into one foul combo meal.

The calm before the storm

To pull this off, there were logistical considerations. In order to reliably access the three “venues” and avoid drinking and driving, official round-trip transportation was secured. This necessitated a rare cost of entry for the tournament. When I reached out to Chili’s, I was informed that under no circumstances could they produce a reservation, regardless of how many idiots I had coming via party bus. This could’ve spelled the end of the event planning, but I quickly decided: Fuck it. We’ll do it live. It was dubbed a guerilla event. We were unwelcome and unexpected. Who knew how it would go over? I was pretty well convinced we would get shown the door, or unable to get enough tables, or something similarly disruptive to a tournament. That fateful morning I warned those who assembled that they knew what they signed up for and should therefore lower their expectations.

Yuck

At the very table of the Rosemont Rumble 2

For me, deciding what to play was easy. I had been on various SquirrelCraft Enchantress lists for the last two full years. Deciding what to drink was similarly easy, as Jaco brought a bottle of the delicious Probitas Rum (along with Warhead flavored FourLoko, which I of course did not drink.) Spicy margaritas were flowing at Chili’s and the Lobster Punch was extremely tasty. Deciding what to eat was another matter. I had committed myself to eating something from each restaurant. I landed on dry rub ribs, a jamocha shake, and shrimp scampi. I’m still shocked no one ended up with food poisoning, which only makes me assume that alcohol kills E. coli.

Arby’s about to get rekt

In terms of the tournament, the meta was extremely black heavy, and I was victorious against four such opponents. Shout out to the black color pie for not interacting with my enchantments. Matt B and I were both 3-0 going into Round 4 when his land destruction was too much for my Squirrel Nests, giving me my only loss of the day. I found myself again at the top table in Round 6, where Lorien and his Mono U Dreadnaught deck pushed it to three games. In the end, a resolved Humility spelled doom for his former 12/12 creatures. We had made it through the tournament without incident, something I could never foresee happening.

The Fabled Triple Crown Participants

It’s considered poor taste to win your own tournament, but everything about that day was poor tasting. The prize for first place was winning back my own donated Beta Mountain, now upgraded with the signatures of the bravest 17 souls in Middle School. The other prize awarded was a copy of From The Vault: Annihilation, fittingly awarded to the player with the biggest combined check total across the three restaurants. That was claimed by my great friend Rajah who absolutely decimated the competition, having enjoyed many margaritas and even a full lobster dinner. I’m told he specifically directed the server to get the sad looking lobster out of the tank in order to put it out of it’s misery. Check the photos below for the full story there. Biggups to Rajah for being our spiritual leader for the day, as well as the farthest traveled. He came all the way from Ohio by riding the rails through the dead of night. Hardest of hardcore. Also, a quick thanks to those that registered but couldn’t make it out last minute and generously helped cover the transportation costs for those that could.

Brie, the Champ and Rajah, the Annihilated

Before you ask, I don’t expect to ever run this one back. I don’t think we could top it. Next on our docket is a return to Swedish rules Old School 93/94 at Relic War V in late April. I’ll be defending my victory at Relic War IV where I proudly defeated our Swedish rules end boss Lord Semmens in the finals. As usual we’ll be running the authentic Swedish rules set with the merciful Lords of The Pit reprint/proxy policy (play whatever you got i.e. magic is dead.)

Finally, I want to recognize and show my appreciation to the great Lords, Thrulls and friends who have actively given me support and empathy during my transition, even if just being kind or offering the same treatment you normally would. It’s probably no surprise to say that I’ve been through a lot over the past six months, so it’s been extremely meaningful to receive your positivity and love. At times it’s been the difference in making this a beautiful experience overall. Until next time, Cheers!

Rajah’s totally normal Margarita

DECKS GALLERY

Andy

Aubrey

Ben

Brandon

Chet

Enrique

Greg

Ian

J.P.

Jaco

Jimmy

Lorien

Matt B

Moss

Rajah

Rob

Tim

CANDIDS

Get on the bus!

Chili's Sprawl

Mean Mugging

Smell that beef

Shout out to the chill staff

Next stop, Red Lobster

They put us in the back room, a good call

Rajah’s Lobster: Before

Rajah’s Lobster: After

Good eatin’

Conspicuous Consumption


by Mosstodon · Link

Summon the Pack

A miserable drizzle greeted the Lords of the Pit as we made our way to DMen’s Krampus-themed back room for our third annual “Chaos” event to close out 2023. While the year was a tad quiet for the club in terms of the absolute number of meetups held, the fact that we had 14 ballers engaged for this, our most degenerate subvariant “format,” shows that good (bad?) ideas never die.

For Holly Jolly K-OS, the Lords collected donations in care of The Ark Initiative, a street-level meal program operating one Saturday per month at the Wilson Red Line. The Lords generously raised $469 for Ark, which will translate into nearly 220 meals served.

The 2021 Chaos event featured Booster Tutor alone. For 2022 we added both Opening Ceremony and Summon the Pack (only later coming to grips with the latter’s unbridled brokenness, discussed below). For our latest, 2023 edition of Chaos we 1UP’d the “crackin’ boosties” cards with the addition of the venerable Contract From Below, a club favorite for many years now. Contract would be played via “pack ante” rules.

In keeping with the tradition established at Chaos’22, the “winner” of our meetup was determined by qty. of packs cracked. Last year it was Lord David Velasco, who cracked 16 packs over the afternoon. Fueled by an increased understanding of Opening Ceremony and Summon the Pack, Lord Brandon Adams cruised past the previous record enroute to a staggering 26 packs opened in four rounds of play! Adams’ 4C pile centered around big mana ramp (Dark Rit & Mana Vault) plus Fastbond to speed into OC and StP and tear through packs at a frightening pace. Not only was Adams’ strategy effective for conspicuous consumption, it was the field’s sole 4-0 list. Resplendent in his Chaos Orb-themed sweater, Brandon took home the top prize, a glorious LOTP-themed Opening Ceremony alter (arranged by Lord Scat-Man). Excelsior!

Adams & Krampus

Chaos’23 was the swan song for Summon the Pack as unrestricted. At future meetups, the Lords will play this utterly broken card as a one-of. Why? It’s essentially an eight mana “win the game” card: once a player can resolve it, he almost always puts lethal power on the board. Consider also the combination of StP with certain specialty themed or commander-specific boosters where the power level of the creatures hitting the tabletop is uncanny for us old school mages. Not only that, but the relative value of numerous ETB triggers pays off even if an opponent manages a Balance or Wrath. With StP unrestricted, most games are a race to cast it, and most games have the same ending. A restricted StP will still allow for some occasional fun hi-variance brokenness without being quite as format-warping.

Meanwhile, Opening Ceremony feels safe as a four-of in Chaos. While certainly powerful, it’s far from being the game-ending elbow drop that StP is. OC is also a fun “mini puzzle” within the game as its caster considers how best to make use of the mana and the cards within the cracked pack. It’s not exactly the swiftest card to play, but then we also went with more or less untimed rounds and just played one less round to allow more time for the drawn-out games. Lastly, Contract From Below was a fine addition for those looking for even more gambling degeneracy. Not every attendee had it this day, but a proposal for 2024 would offer an award to whomever nets the most anted packs won.

Loots

In other nuttiness news, Lord Brandon Sanders’ epic pull of a #236/500 Mox Amber Schematic from a pack of The Brothers War smashed a club record for most valuable card cracked. Lord Sanders intends to harvest the Mox for EV on eBay.

Following the cellophane-wrapped afternoon, a handful of Lords decamped to the nearby Bucket of Blood to browse LPs and sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks. From there we wandered our separate ways into the rainy Saturday…

Happy Holidays from the Lords of the Pit!

DECKS GALLERY

Adams

Chet

Elleman

Jones

Moss

Piquard

Sanders

Semmens

Velasco

CANDIDS

Shane Summons The Pack

Velasco Antes Up

Detritus

Dudesweats

BTFOOC

Dudesweats2

Moss' Snap Keep

Donutology

Pitcast - Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?


by Pitcast Thrull · Link

Lords Elleman, Etters, and Moss palaver about tournaments of the recent past and near future whilst meandering into the depths of D&D, Star Wars cube, Richard Bachman, and the fabled - darkly prophesied and already infamous - “Triple Crown” event…


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