A picturesque, mid-April afternoon greeted the Lords & Co. at Avondale’s DMen Tap as temperatures in the upper 70s ushered out the mid-spring gloom, summoning jorts instead. Amidst this near-perfect backdrop, twenty-five mages Gathered for another installment of Middle School Marauders, filling DMen’s back to capacity and spilling out into the bar’s main holding for five rounds of Swiss action.
The Middle School scene is alive & well in Chicago, with this latest meetup being our third such in 2022 and among our largest such featuring the format. This edition of Marauders supported DMen’s own meal donations program to the tune of over $300 raised. Thanks again, Lords and friends, for your continued generosity!
The field saw a vast array of MS archetypes and stews. Among them were: Lord Carter Petray’s defending Marauders champ list, Full English Breakfast (4-1), at fifth place; Lord Ian Blank’s signature Pox (4-1) pile at a stout fourth place; Brandon Adam’s UR Trix (4-1) taking the bronze; Zack Zurawski on The Rock (4-1), the “fairest deck in the format,” he said, at second; and Lord Greg Kotscharjan on UW Control (5-0), sans Standstill, assuming the top spot. Greg took home an art-extended Smother for his first place efforts. See the decklist gallery below for comprehensive coverage of the day’s arsenals.
After the battles and beverages, the Lords basked in the promise of summer on DMen’s back deck. The club is in full-swing.
Postlude I
I’d made plans with Taylor Quail, my fellow Iowan in-town for the weekend, and Lords Blank and Velasco to dine on Pequod’s following Marauders. With an hour to kill before the pizza party, Quail and I engaged in a Best-of-7 challenge of Eternal Chaos, cracking some Forgotten Realms packs I had left over from Lords Haus 2. My 5C Living Plane pile took Games 1-3, notably Control Magic’ing Q’s Guardian Beast to turn on my own Beast-Orb lock, then Q’s Esper Bots took Games 4-6, at one point Copy’ing his own Orb before redeploying Beast and rocking the Double Chorb Lock. Q used Booster Tutor to draft basic lands and fix mana, while I returned to Hive of the Eye Tyrant numerous times for man-land beats. The deciding Game 7 went to the Bulu Master, despite a comically poor (wind-aided?) Orb bounce, and we departed to dine on Chicago’s finest pan style.
GALLERY
CANDIDS
Postlude II
An extra special shout-out is due to our very own Shane Semmens, whose recent heroics in Gothenburg, Sweden yielded him the Old School Ante 40K World Championship. Congratulations, Shane, for bringing Glory to the Lords!
