Changing leaves, shortened days, and the nip of winter’s grasp on the wind can signal but one thing – the return of the Lords of the Pit to DMen Tap for the club's annual Fall Brawl. For the eighth installment of this venerable tournament, 19 Lords & guests assembled to sling ancient spells from an era long gone but never forgotten. This particular Gathering was more than any mere OS95 meetup, however, as the Lords also bid farewell to one member and welcomed a pair of newcomers.

While not in attendance as a combatant, Lord Shane Semmens was at the Fall Brawl to sell pimp cardboard in advance of his pending relocation across the Atlantic. Shane, an OG Lord and among the club’s most-stalwart of members, will be dearly missed. Best of luck, Shane!

But the Wheel never stops spinning, and at the Fall Brawl the Lords inducted two deserving individuals: Rob Beadle and JP Lamp. Both men have been regular attendees for a number of years and make fine additions to the Pit. Additionally, the Lords recently extended their geographic reach by welcoming Thrashin’ Dave to the Pit. Dave has been a steady organizer of the annual Thrash Bash in South Bend, IN and another oft-seen face at Lords events.

Back to the spell-slinging. In keeping with recent OS95 meta trends, both Necropotence and Reanimator were in short supply in the Fall Brawl field. Lords Elleman (Esper Necro) and Jaco (Reanimator) fearlessly piloted these once-fearsome archetypes, though it seems the format (via direct damage & graveyard hate) has seemingly declawed these former Tier 1 decks – for now, at least.

Meanwhile, the day's sweatiest mages dabbled with '95 cards to bolster otherwise well-established OS stratagems. Lord Rohr inserted Tindr Wall & Jester’s Cap into a Shops/Titania’s Song prison stew. Lord MacDougall added Ice Age cantrips and Merchant Scroll to a UW Skies list. Lord Moss bolstered Jeskai Atog with Incinerate, Mana Crypt and Zorb, and it was Josh Burgoa, our champion by way of Chattanooga TN, who took down the Fall Brawl with a UW Midrange pile that leaned into Adarkar Wastes for mana fixing. Burgoa’s play was as tight as his shit-talking while he ran the gauntlet to a sterling 5-0 finish.

During the Fall Brawl, the Lords & Co. raised $760 in support of The Ark Initiative, a Chicago street-level organization that delivers healthy meals to needy people one Saturday per month at the Wilson Red Line.

DECK LISTS

CANDIDS

Another year, another Cream City Con. This was the 4th iteration of CCC that I have put together since moving up to Milwaukee. Every year I’ve been able to fit five rounds into five hours, quick and clean.

I did my best to have as many prizes to give away as possible this year. I always make sure there is at least something for each player that comes to play. This year, I got a playmat made for last place and two nice wooden long boxes. Big shout out to the community for donating a bunch of stamped cards, proxies, and playmats.

Jimmy ended up going 5-0 with an Esper Shops deck (so innovative) and took down the tournament. But otherwise there was a good variety of spicy decks. A handful played Juzam, which I haven’t seen in awhile. But my favorite of the weekend was Flint’s Personal Incantation / Greed deck.

Last but not least, the charity we donate to each year is the Special Olympics of Wisconsin. This year we raised a whopping $925! I’d say that is a success and I am proud that so many people came out and donated. Raising money for a good cause is the reason I continue to run this event every summer. Thanks everyone, and see you next time!

CANDIDS

FINAL STANDINGS AND DECK LISTS

While I was visiting my family over the 4th of July weekend, I saw a box for a board game I hadn’t thought about in a long time: “Talisman: The Magical Quest Board Game.” My brother had purchased it a few years ago to recapture the magic of our childhood, and apparently my niblings enjoyed playing it enough that it was left sitting out.

Talisman is a relatively straightforward game in which you roll a six-sided die to move around a board and land on spaces, similar to Monopoly. However, on many of these spaces you have random encounters, as determined by the top card of the Adventure deck. Sometimes you find a bag of gold, sometimes an enchanted object. Other times you have an encounter, like a monster you have to fight, a princess who becomes your follower and can be returned to the Castle for gold, or a pestilence which sweeps across the land.

The board is separated into three zones: an Outer, a Middle, and an Inner Region. If you can make it to the Inner Region, you must possess a magical Talisman to enter the Valley of Fire, and then claim the Crown of Command, which lets you smite all other players from afar. Speaking of smiting, there's also PvP in the game, and if you win a battle over an opponent, you can choose to take one of their four life points, a gold piece, or an object they are carrying.

What makes Talisman less random than something like Monopoly is that the character you play isn’t just a superficial signifier; it determines your stats (Strength and Craft), as well as unique special abilities. So your character drastically impacts how you might approach the game. For example, a Thief would probably choose to steal other players’ best items while avoiding combat, but a Troll, who has the highest starting Strength in the game, would just bludgeon everyone and everything in its path.

As a child, I found these characters and the other cards that came with the game incredibly evocative. I spent much more time staring at the art than actually playing the game, since no one in my family could stomach the never-ending gaming sessions like I could. In fact, I don’t think I ever finished a game as a kid.

When I asked my brother about his family’s playing habits, he bemoaned the same thing he had 30 years ago: that the game took too long and they had tried but never played to the end. I convinced him to play a quick game with his family by having a custom win condition that drastically shortened the length of it: First to the Middle Region wins.

Something I noticed while playing was that even though this 4th edition we were playing was basically the same ruleset as the 2nd edition I grew up with (and was, admittedly, improved in a few ways), the modernized art had stripped away much of the aesthetic that had attracted me to the game in the first place. After a little research, I realized the art problem was even worse with the recently-released 5th edition.

Returning home and still feeling the itch from the short session with my family (I didn’t win), I found and purchased an old copy of the 2nd edition, first published in 1985. The game was marked “untested/as-is,” but was astoundingly complete, including every card and counter from the base game, plus two expansions.

After having pored over every card art, I asked a few Lords if they wanted to play this “Old School Renaissance”-adjacent board game. I found a quorum and set a date.

As the date drew near, I began digging through old forums on Talisman Island and similar websites, in order to get a sense of how the 2nd edition stacked up to the newer versions. The common complaints were that the game lasted forever; there were no rerolls; and getting turned into a toad, a core mechanic of the game, was incredibly punishing.

On game day, I explained the original rules and offered some updated ones based on the 5th edition, but the Lords were having none of it. They wanted to play with most of the original rules. The only rules we modified would end the game faster: characters leveled up more easily from trophies of defeated monsters; and if your character were slain, you could only make a new character in the first two hours. Thus, the game could end through traditional means of reaching the Crown of Command, one-on-one PvP, or simple attrition.

Including the two expansions, there were 36 characters to choose from. I figured a good way to give players some choice without overwhelming them was to give each player five character cards and let them choose one. Lords Moss and Houtman quickly settled on their choices: the Wizard and the Warrior, both of which are strong characters. Lord Zinni asked me who I would pick between the Soldier and Hobgoblin, and I suggested the Soldier, who has excellent beginning stats: 4 strength (5 including the sword) and 3 craft.

I was not thrilled about my options, but I narrowed it down to two: the Monk and the Philosopher. In retrospect, I think the Monk would have been a very good choice, especially for PvP, but I decided I liked the Philosopher’s playstyle: peek at the top card of the Adventure deck and decide whether to land on a space with a card draw, using the move reroll ability where necessary.

My strategy worked well for PvE encounters. In the early turns of the game, I avoided a number of nasty encounters, like a dragon, a ghast, and a leper. Moss, whose turn it was after mine, complained about his bad luck for much of the game; he didn't seem to notice when I would peek at the top of the deck and then scramble not to draw a card.

At just 2 Strength, I was weak to PvP, and Zinni took advantage of that fact by bullying me out of my starting gold piece and a Talisman I drew.

Zinni had a strong start, drawing the Wand, one of the best items in the game. Both he and Moss now had the ability to always draw a new spell card when they ran out, and they both immediately grasped the utility of churning through spells as frequently as possible.

A turning point in the game came when Moss, having drawn the Warhorse, attacked Zinni, with fairly good odds of winning, especially after he Counterspelled Zinni’s Psionic Blast. But the dice were against him, and Zinni won, taking the Warhorse. That put Zinni far ahead, and once he picked up the Familiar, adding 2 to his Craft, it seemed no one could really touch him.

Meanwhile, Houtman, who should have been crushing monsters and leveling up with the Warrior, was on the wrong side of luck, and lost easy encounters left and right.

Moss, on tilt at that point and with only one life point left, bravely charged into battle against an enemy with higher strength than him, and the Wizard was slain. With fifteen minutes still on the clock for reincarnation, Moss chose to play the Priest, but seemed to have not read the character card, as he complained about his choice for most of the rest of the game.

Soon after the clock ran out, Moss, still on tilt, had his Priest fight Houtman’s Warrior, not once but twice. Houtman’s luck was so bad, the first time their fight ended in a draw, and the second time the lowly Priest managed to slay the mighty Warrior. Houtman was out.

With Houtman dead and Zinni greedily eyeing my Horse and Cart, I decided to buy an Axe and head for the Woods to make a Raft and set sail to the Middle Region. My Philosopher had gained quite the following–the Guide, the Maiden, and the Unicorn. With an effective 4 Strength and 8 Craft, I thought I might be able to make a run for the Crown of Command, especially since I had picked up another Talisman. I was a little hasty and probably overestimated the likelihood of being slain by a player, but I also wanted to wrap the game up.

I used my Craft to pick the lock on the Portal of Power that had barred me from the Inner Region, and then with some luck I breezed through the Mines. When I hit the Vampire’s Tower, I read, “Roll 1 die to determine how many lives the Vampire takes from you.” The space was on the other side of the board, so I didn’t notice the additional text: “(The Vampire will accept Followers instead of Lives),” and then a table that showed the result of the die was halved, rounded up. So when I rolled a 3, I thought I lost 3 lives (whoops). I was still alive with one life, but was immediately mauled by the first of five Pitfiends I had to face in the Pits. If I would have realized I had only lost two lives, and could have traded my Guide for one of them, I could have conceivably taken on the Pitfiends, but it still would have been a series of battles that in aggregate were statistically not in my favor.

Zinni decided to make a run for the Crown of Command soon after, but he had discarded the Talisman he had robbed from me, so he couldn’t get to the Valley of Fire. Not thinking it through fully, I suggested he could take the Strength route of the Inner Region (I had taken the Craft route), and then circle around to the Pits, where all of my loot was. But I hadn’t considered that he would have to go through the Valley of Fire to get there, so he had to turn around right before the Valley (whoops). As he retreated back to the Middle Region, I didn’t realize he didn’t have to interact with the Inner Region spaces, so he almost got KO’d by Dice with Death on his way out (whoops). Zinni then made it back to the Castle and regained all of his life.

Meanwhile, Moss had hit his stride with the Priest, destroying all the face-up Spirits littering the Outer Region. A generous interpretation of the Priest’s ability, agreed-to by Zinni, meant he could keep all of those spirits as trophies, so he quickly leveled up his Craft.

Zinni then cast Teleport to the Warlock’s Cave, and was given a quest to destroy an Enemy to gain a Talisman. A Poltergeist attached to him meant he had to travel one space at a time. Traveling through the Deserts left him with 2 lives.

And then suddenly, the game was over. Moss, after grumbling the entire game about his bad RNG, met a Demigod who let him choose any one Spell from the deck. After reading through his options, he chose Finger of Death, which would destroy an Enemy or make a Player lose 2 lives. He cast it at Zinni and showed that he had a Counterspell in hand, as well. Zinni grabbed the card, read it, shrugged, and admitted defeat. What both of those knuckleheads failed to notice (and I only noticed during this writeup) was the first line of the card: “This spell may only be cast during an encounter.” Meaning that Moss had to be on the same space as Zinni to cast Finger of Death, which he definitely was not (whoops).

Moss, still beaming from his win, said the game was a ton of fun. Zinni and Houtman agreed that they had enjoyed it, as well.

Despite not being as prepared for the rules of the Inner Region as I could have been, the game went smoothly enough. My Philosopher hadn’t won the day, but I still claimed victory on having successfully finished my first game of Talisman in my life. To many more!

A fine July afternoon greeted the Lords of the Pit as they assembled at DMen Tap for a midsummer showdown. After letting the Beef marinate for five years, going all the way back to the Christmas Beef 2020, the Lords thawed out the hyper-niche “format,” this time with a Middle School flavor. The resulting Middle School Beef Bash attracted 15 spell-slinging Lords plus a handful of observing luminaries.

MS Beef carried a requirement of 60 maindeck power at all times, up from the 40 power required during the 2020 outing. Additionally, Phyrexian Dreadnought was banned to prevent copycats from overloading on Middle School’s foremost “big” creature. Also new for 2025: the event “winner” (aka “Biggest Beef”) would only count maindeck creature power. Call this the Danny Friedman Rule after the cunning Lord broke the scale last time with 132 power stuffed into the sideboard.

MS Beef offered all the comfy familiarity of a regularly-played format plus an extra taste of yesteryear, throwing back to those bygone, youthful days when your biggest, baddest creech always went in your deck.

A gaggle of Lords assembled at the nearby Caravanserai coffee shop while awaiting DMen to unlock their doors, then at noon the weigh-in began as players registered their decks’ total power. Most hung in the 60s. A couple pushed well into the 70s. Three improbable piles packed on the poundage — Lords Baran (192), McCarthy (180) & Rohr (133) loomed large over the competition like Kaiju in terrified Tokyo. Baran took home the prize for Biggest Beef, a group-signed “Beef” (aka Thorn) Elemental.

On the leaner side of the aisle, Lords Blank, Braun & Beedle (Killer Bs all 65 power or below) were the day’s top try-hards, all at 3-1 with Ian taking the breakers via a Monoblack discard deck. Braun brought a Goblins pile while Beedle was on Red Aggro. Fourth place was shared by the two-headed monster of Lords Semmens (1-1) and Adams (2-0 on Elves). Rounding out the T8 were Lords MacDougall (Monowhite), Elleman (Bots), Moss (4C Survival) and Sanders (Mostly Legal Cards).

As a secondary prize, a pair of group-signed “Beefmongers” (aka Spiritmongers) went to the players that achieved the Beefiest Boardstate combined. That honor was shared by Lords Elleman & Adams who racked up an aggregate power of 42; perhaps a little lighter than expected but a product of the day’s fast-paced games.

Four rounds of Beefin’ was chewy enough as the games proved to be as silly as the format – play largely hinged on landing a fast fattie, or else just going wide and low to the ground. A lot of decks seemed to shoot past each other (common in casual Middle School). Is there a future for Beef? Certainly, although the format could stand to cure for a bit before serving again. Perhaps next time we’d consider expanding waistlines with a 75 power requirement.

For the Middle School Beef Bash, the Lords raised over $300 in support of the Ark Initiative, a street-level non-profit organization that provides healthy meals to hungry people one Saturday per month at the Wilson Red Line.

(Your humble reporter takes no responsibility for the quality of puns used in this write-up.)

CATTLE CALL

CANDIDS

BONUS CONTENT: GRANTLY V. MOSSTODON DMEN BLOOD BOWL GRUDGEMATCH

Beneath the steel grey of a late March Chicago sky, 22 Lords & Co. met to duel in the arcane arts of cardboard carnage at our longtime stomping ground, DMen Tap, for the first meetup of 2025 - the aptly titled “March Radness.” It had been quite some time (years, perhaps?) since the Lords had hosted a regular, “old school” old school EC 93/94 meetup, and interest seemed keen as we were able to attract a number of newcomers. There may have been some new faces, but the format remains, as ever: Blue is busted, White gets wins, and the rest is a matter of personal taste (plus four Strip Mines). Still, the ritual, dark though it may be, felt vibrant as folk met to give hugs, shake hands, pound knucks, deface cards, then battle to the death amidst the prismatic planes of Dominaria.

After five rounds of Swiss action, Lord Lorien Ellemen, still gleaming from an AD&D team championship win at the previous week’s Garycon XVII, piloted a particularly sweaty iteration of Atog-Shops to a sterling 5-0 record. Lorien defeated Lady of the Pit, Brie Agra (4-1, 5C Bantgeddon) to secure the top spot, as well as a group-signed Fear. Rounding out the top four were Lords Jimmy McCarthy (4-1, Shops) and Tim Baran (3-2, 5C Rack).

Other notable piles included Thrashin’ Dave’s highly-tuned Monogreen (3-2) as well as those from newcomers Graham, on UR Mind Bomb/Primoridal Ooze (2-3), and Sam, on "Storm" aka Candleflare (3-2). As is de rigueur for any LOTP meetup, some quantity of Atog and Monoblack lists also prowled the battlefield.

(It should be noted here that your faithful reporter, on Arabian Aggro, entered the day fearing no City in a Bottle, but that lack of streetwise resulted in a grim 1-4 showing, much to the attendees' cheers.)

We fired round one at 12:30 p.m. and wrapped final announcements at 4:45 p.m., making for a fast-paced, fun afternoon, after which Lords and Thrulls dispersed onto Belmont Ave to depart along our various paths to Parts Unknown.

DECK LIST GALLERY

CANDIDS

Eight months ago, Lord Zinni pitched the idea of gathering a party and adventuring forth to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The dungeon to delve: Gary Con XVII, an "Old School Renaissance” tabletop roleplaying convention dedicated to Gary Gygax and run by his family. Lord Zinni and I, along with a few other Lords, had been meeting biweekly to play Dungeons & Dragons and other roleplaying games. He had been spending a lot of his free time building modules for a handful of different game systems, so to him, it seemed like a natural fit. Even though I had been GMing once a month, I wasn’t sure if I could keep up my enthusiasm for tabletop roleplaying for four days straight. But in the end I decided, like Bilbo Baggins, to step out my front door and see where the journey might lead. Well, actually, all I did was buy a ticket. Then I waited eight months.

Thursday

Lords Zinni, Semmens, Mith and I arrived at the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa in the afternoon to get our badges and attend a few evening events. The resort was a welcome change from the sterile convention centers where Magic events are so often held. With over 3,000 attendees, Gary Con had completely taken over, with every conference room in use on the first, second, and basement floors of the hotel, and events spilled over into hallways that were wide enough. Three other buildings on the resort grounds were also overrun with nerds, and regular trolleys would shuttle you to any one of them, as well as the distant guest parking lot.

For grub, the hotel had three sit-down restaurants, ranging from casual to fine dining. There were a few temporary bars and hot food stations at strategic points, so attendees weren’t forced to backtrack all the way to the lobby. With traveling food carts pushed around by hotel staff, you didn’t even have to step away from a game session, many of which were four hours or longer.

After we checked in and received our badges, three of the four of us attended a seminar, “Worldbuilding with Intent,” hosted by Alphinius Goo, of GooeyCube, and Ed Greenwood, the father of the Forgotten Realms. For being such a pillar of D&D lore, it seemed fitting that Ed himself looked like a wizard, with flowing white hair and a long white beard. The conversation between the two meandered and was peppered with anecdotes and asides, and at just an hour, it was a very basic outline of how one might begin to create a world that could effectively suspend a player's disbelief.

My first gaming session was from 6-10 pm, and I had signed up with Lord Zinni. The game used the “Weird Heroes of Public Access” system, which is a rules-light and creativity-heavy game. You and other players take on roles of public access TV personalities who solve mysteries and Keep Weird the small town of Fairhaven, which is part Twin Peaks and part Silent Hill. Unlike most of the games I played at Gary Con, where you played a pre-generated character, the first part of the session was spent building our weirdos. Mine was Jimothy Williams, the host of a “local talk” show, Conspiracy Corner. At one point, to persuade a mid-level villain to stand aside, I tried to convince her of a conspiracy theory that the meatballs everyone was eating were filled with addictive, psychotropic drugs, which turned out to be true! The villain collapsed in a puddle of tears, allowing us to avoid a combat encounter with her.

Friday

Compared to the other Lords, my schedule was relatively light. I slept in as they headed out to catch their 8:00 am sessions. Friday was still my heaviest day, with eight hours of gaming, starting at noon and ending at 10:00 pm. I had a slow morning, first stopping at Egg Harbor downtown, then an antique mall, where I failed my perception check to find anything worth buying.

My four-hour noon session used “The One Ring” system, a Lord of the Rings setting that takes place between the events of the Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring. Its mechanics offered just enough differences from 5e D&D to feel both familiar and novel. I played a merry halfling treasure hunter by the name of Ledger Rumblebelly. Together with my three human, elf, and dwarf companions, we set out on an elven ship to find a secret island, rescue a lost daughter, and ultimately remove the curse that kept all the island’s inhabitants trapped there. At the climax of the adventure, we fought a Sauron-like boss at the peak of a mountain. Our elf companion, who was wielding the magic sword that both summoned the boss and could defeat him, was knocked out. Since I was the only other party member proficient with a sword, I picked up the unwieldy weapon, took a heroic swing… and completely biffed it. Luckily, our human warrior finished off the spirit and we won the day.

We had dinner at the hotel’s Italian restaurant, which had renamed all of the dishes on the menu to be fantasy-themed. Tatiana, our waiter, couldn’t seem to get into the spirit of it all, and gestured with restrained exasperation toward the menu, saying, "Welcome to… whatever this is." We split the swamp flora and I enjoyed the crispy skin on my pan-seared mermaid tail. After I chivalrously corrected a mistake on our bill that would have had us pay half of what we owed, we were rewarded with a dragon egg dessert for free.

Our next session was a 6-10 pm Advanced Dungeons & Dragons tournament called “Legends of Roleplaying.” I hadn’t known what to expect, besides that the teams would be nine players, but Lord Mith had convinced Lord Zinni and me that it would be fun to sign up together so we’d be on the same team.

Several times prior to Gary Con, Lord Zinni had expressed concern about needing to study up on the ancient AD&D system in order to participate in the tournament. I hadn’t worried about it. I knew the very basics, like THAC0, from having played the first two Baldur's Gates, and I figured in a pick-up-group format, the tournament probably wasn't taken that seriously.

Once we sat down at the table, though, I began to feel the gravity of the situation. We were nine players out of 140, one of sixteen teams competing for the glory of victory in the largest Old School D&D tournament in the world. A team won the tournament by scoring the most points. You could score points by defeating enemies, avoiding traps, looting magical items, and reaching certain milestones. Points could be taken away for failures and deaths.

Our Game Master was a seasoned veteran who had played with Gary, and he explained exactly how he was going to adjudicate. I looked around the table. There were four generations of gamers in our group of nine, from Boomer to Gen Z, and all eyes were locked on the GM as he spoke.

When the GM finished his spiel, a scruffy-bearded, long-haired Millennial in a patched-out vest, who could have passed for a Lord, pulled out a two-minute sandglass to make sure decisions wouldn’t take too long.

The GM passed around the pre-generated character sheets. The vested dude snapped up the first fighter that was offered. Zinni and I lunged at the next two fighter sheets because mechanically they were the simplest: Step into danger and hit things. I tried to quickly but methodically scan my sheet for the important details: Level 7, human fighter, 3/2 attacks per round, +2 Longsword, Short Bow with eight +1 Arrows, Armor Class of 1, a Ring of Water Walking, a Potion of Extra-Healing.

We were briefed on the quest: the Duke had been betrayed by a group of five adventurers turned assassins. They had possession of the Soul Gem, which had trapped the soul of the Duke within it. Our mission was to travel to the dungeons beneath the fortress of Inverness, exact justice on the assassins, recover the Soul Gem, and find the other two Eldritch Jewels.

And then it began. The GM laid out the first map, an 8.5x11 photocopied black-and-white sheet that showed a birds-eye view of the ruined fortress: four half-crumbled towers with the central tower in complete ruins. Deteriorating walls connected the four. We stood outside the gate. What would we do?

Our first decision was whether to go under the portcullis, which was raised only three feet. We looked around at each other skeptically. This seemed like a trap. We found a section of a crumbling wall that was only four feet tall, and the fighters helped lift everyone over it.

Although there was only a very basic image to set the scene, my adrenaline made the environment come alive in my mind’s eye. The nine of us were clambering over a dilapidated stone wall at dusk, jumping down into the fortress grounds, ready for combat and searching for traps. We descended down the stairs of the nearest tower into its dungeon.

We found the first assassin down there, dead, turned an unearthly white after the Soul Gem had absorbed his soul. The evil adventurers had turned on themselves, apparently. We unceremoniously cut off his head and stuffed it in the thief’s bag of holding for evidence he had been slain. We stepped through the secret door and started through the maze.

My heart was racing. Lord Zinni whispered to me that he hated feeling out of his element. I was high on the thrill of it. I knew how to dungeon-delve, but like a newborn I had to learn how to connect my intention with the mechanics of the new body I was inhabiting. It didn't take long, and the GM was very helpful at explaining what you had to roll, and what to add, for any game action you wanted to take. He also had great deadpan humor, which helped ease the tension a little.

There was plenty of tension, though. Hallways led to rooms, and every room had a puzzle or challenge to overcome, and any one of them could be deadly. Do you risk removing the Decanter of Endless Wine from the pedestal? It might bring the faerie statues to life. Which astrological glyphs do you step on to get through a room? There’s a small pyramid with magical items piled high. Which to grab first, and how?

Sometimes we’d quickly unite on a common decision, sometimes we’d hem and haw, sometimes we’d argue. Often, it fell to one of the fighters who felt strongly enough about their solution to simply try it, because we were the most likely to survive if something went wrong.

At one point, we opened a door and a magical torrent of water in the next room dropped into a bottomless pit. I remembered my Ring of Water Walking. I tied a rope around my waist and tried to leap onto the river. Something went wrong. I fell into the pit and drowned. They pulled me back to safety. Lord Zinni held a sword under my nose and saw my breath condense on it; I had been magically charmed and was merely asleep. They shook me awake. The whole thing was an illusion. We closed our eyes and walked through the room.

Everyone did their part. The thief disabled traps and unlocked doors. The cleric and druid healed us and kept anyone from dying to poison. The wizards shot fireballs and magic missiles. The ranger tussled with an ambushing jungle cat.

On and on it went. We’d find a slain assassin, get a piece of a key from underneath each tower, then quickly race to the surface and enter the next tower. We collected all four pieces and opened the door to the maze of the Ghost Tower, where each new “door” was a hidden magical portal. From desert to jungle to tundra, up and down and upside down, we relentlessly pushed forward.

We were in what appeared to be the final room, circular with eight floating gems evenly spaced. Each round, a random gem would shoot a petrifying cone. With just a minute left, it seemed like this was where we would find our end. All the gems were protected by force fields. We couldn’t find a pattern or solution to it. Then, in desperation, we simply started attacking the force fields. They went down, but the first, second, and third only held illusions of the gem, not the real one. Then, finally, we snatched the real one. We hit the button on the magic bangle given to us and we were all teleported to safety.

There was a real sense of accomplishment at the table. No one had been slain, and we thought we had managed to complete the dungeon. We congratulated each other on a successful run and wondered how well we did. The GM was impressed, but couldn’t promise anything about our ranking.

Saturday

Lord Zinni and I didn’t have a session before noon, so we slept in and got breakfast at Joni’s, a diner downtown.

My first game was an introduction to the “Call of Cthulhu” system, whose setting is most commonly associated with the 1920s. This particular game was more light-hearted and set in the disco era. We four players found ourselves in a nightclub, stepping over corpses and trying to keep our sanity in our search for a philandering husband. It was short and sweet, a fun appetizer.

With more time on my hands than I had planned, I beelined it to the Tower of Gygax, a two-hour AD&D adventure that varied depending on the GM. I had noticed the table would take walk-ups if a scheduled player didn’t show up. I got lucky–there was an open spot and the adventure had just started. Other players at the table had already selected their characters and told me they needed a cleric. I said I was happy to oblige, if someone could help me with my spells. In short order I realized I was one of the only players at the table who had any experience playing D&D, so I sat down and started reading through my spell cards.

The scenario was a two-hour battle on a grid map. We had to cross a river (with an ambushing monstrous octopus in it, of course), fight through a wave of defenders, and stop a ritual before a bone dragon was summoned; the dragon would mean certain death for us all. When a player died, the ritual turned their corpse into a ghoul, and they had the unstoppable urge to kill all other players. Things were grim at the end, with more monsters on board than we could handle. About half of us had been zombified. But we finally managed to destroy or dispel all four energy crystals that powered the ritual. For my efforts, I got a couple freebies and a stamp on my character sheet certifying that I had survived. We all thanked each other for the game. I left the table with a feeling that was very common that weekend: a sense of camaraderie with complete strangers for having overcome imaginary challenges that seemed real enough in the moment.

I stopped by the charity auction in the lobby bar and paid a fee for a card. It was packed, with standing room only. After an hour, I wanted to sit down, so I wandered off and eventually met up with Lord Zinni. First we did another lap around the vendor hall, which I ended up doing every day of the event. Then we took the trolley to the chalet, where a few Magic events were going on. We briefly looked around, but decided to just go back to the hotel and get dinner with Lords Semmens and Mith at the ChopHouse, the finest dining at the resort.

While we were in line to get a table, we received an email from Gary Con organizers: Our team had won the Legends of Roleplaying tournament! Our GM had very graciously called our team’s play a “masterclass in efficiency.” It felt incredibly gratifying to be a part of Gary Con history. We each won a free silver badge for next year's Gary Con, and our badges would state that we were the reigning tournament champions. There were many drinks and much celebration at dinner.

My next session was 7-11 pm with Lord Zinni. We were at a five-player table using the “Electric Bastionland” system. It was a custom setting: dystopian Chicago, circa 2195. We were recently laid-off employees of a megacorporation. I was an Investment Centurion, a slimy people-leader with a tendency for backstabbing. Our mission was to plan and execute a heist of our previous employer’s mystic artifacts during a gala.

At the crescendo of the game, all of our plans were coming together: we had each infiltrated different aspects of the gala, the drinking water had been spiked with LSD, and the air conditioning had been turned off. Unfortunately, the gala wasn’t just for the unveiling of the artifacts, but a bringing together of them to cause some sort of cosmic, catastrophic event. Chaos ensued, and my character took his opportunity to seize power. He was thwarted by the other characters, and escaped into the night, defeated. The rest of the party won the day and had a happy ending.

Our GM was, by far, the best narrator and voice actor I had encountered that weekend, and it was not a surprise when they revealed they were a GM-for-hire in Chicago.

We took a photo with the other members of our winning AD&D team, congratulated each other, said our goodbyes, and the four of us headed back to our cabin. We spent the next couple hours drinking the remaining beers in our fridge, debriefing the weekend, and regaling each other with stories of our impulsive teenage years.

Sunday

Despite a draining weekend and having stayed up too late the night before, we woke up early to pack and get to our morning sessions. Lord Mith took a rideshare to get to his 8 am game, while the rest of us hit up Grandma Vickie's, a downtown greasy spoon filled with townies. The head waitress (owner?) remarked how we all looked exhausted.

“Just one more game,” I joked.

I made a last-minute audible to join a 9-11 am “Age of Vikings” game, which was modified from the “Call of Cthulhu” system to be more combat-heavy. It was the only game of the weekend where the system hadn’t actually been released and the hosts were using the sessions to playtest.

The session was supposed to be a five-person group, but a couple people must have partied too hard, as they didn’t show up. I arrived a few minutes late, and since the other two players had chosen straightforward melee classes, I went with the spellcaster. The game was easy to play and the setting was cool enough.

The magic system was probably the most interesting part. You had a set of runes that could combine to create different spells. Some spells you had by default, but you could also mix-and-match runes to create a custom spell (the GM had the final say on what exactly it did). When I wasn’t needed to drive the game forward, I was fiddling with combining the runes and finally figured one out (kinship + fire + defense), but never found the right opportunity to use it.

I made my way to the vendor hall to see if I had any winning raffle tickets, but all my luck had been spent on winning the tournament. The other Lords finished up their games and we headed out to drop Lord Mith at O’Hare.

As we drove out of town, it occurred to me that Lake Geneva reminded me of growing up in Sand Springs, Oklahoma. Lord Semmens said it reminded him of his childhood home in rural Michigan. Much of the US is covered in these quiet, small towns with gently sloping hills and long, empty, winding roads, where you can confidently expect nothing to ever happen.

What better place, then, for those with wandering minds to imagine magical lands, artifacts, creatures, and characters? If you’re a daydreamer, small town boredom almost forces you to pretend you exist in a more exciting place and time. To escape the ennui, you fly on the wings of a dragon to a land where your every decision matters, and where there's evil to overcome, treasure to be discovered, power to be gained, and romance to be had, all with the roll of the dice.

A make-believe universe is, by its nature, a fragile one, because at any moment it might be shattered by the warhammer of reality. To strengthen the conjuring ritual, you can join together with a coven of like-minded wizards, and now your pocket dimension is sustained by the collective imagination of your playgroup. At Gary Con, the mass incantation was woven so tightly, it often felt as if we had truly found a way, even for just a weekend, to transcend time and space in order to live in that fantastical realm.

Which made returning to reality all the harder.

It may be hard to believe but Fall Brawl is the longest running annual OS meetup we have in Chicago. Now in its seventh year, the lion’s share of Fall Brawls have taken place in DMen Tap’s backroom, where on this cool Saturday in November, twenty aged but able mages found themselves shuffling up and throwing down. A few newcomers joined in the spellslinging, too, bringing some fresh faces to the otherwise ever-haggard assemblage of dudesweats.

The Gathering began with a queue of black-clad fellas outside DMen, awaiting doors to unlock at noon. With telltale backpacks in-tow, any well-versed observer along Belmont Ave. would surely recognize and appreciate the fearsome sweathoggery about to uncoil. After a half hour of beverages and small talk, we fired Round 1.

The Fall Brawl field was Necro-light this year, with just one such list (JP) among the T8. Shops (Baran), Stasis (Petray) and Willowgeddon (Semmens) were among the other top decks. A surplus of Zuran Orbs lengthened plenty of games and seemed to be the overall most-played ‘95 card in the room. Following five rounds, Lord Tim Baran emerged undefeated with a Shops list featuring Jester’s Cap. Lord Robert Vincent, meanwhile, took the award for most ‘95 cards used (12) and a copy of The Duelist issue no. 5 (June 1995).

Following a hiatus, the Lords are pleased to bring back the LOTP Toy Drive for 2024, spearheaded by our very own Lord Petray. The drive will benefit Children’s Charity of Orland Park, and the Lords are collecting toys & donations up until December’s Holly Jolly Chaos IV event.

DECK LIST GALLERY

CANDIDS

Thrash, it’s just an aggressive style of skating.

Nostalgia is mostly based on our childhood environment—whatever era we happened to be born into. Nostalgia for particular media tends to be more specific to whatever micro-environment we grew up in; similar to a sexual fetish, it all depends on what we were exposed to as impressionable preteens. For example, I just happened to encounter Conan the Barbarian (1982) and the art of Boris Vallejo (see: Siren Song) at the age of 12, and for that reason, fantasy settings and babes hold a special place in my heart.

Dave, from Indiana, must have been exposed to Thrashin' (1986) at just the right age. Thrashin' is a film that imagines an L.A. where skateboarding has been infused into every element of pop culture; for example, breakdancing is dead as disco, and instead teens hop around on skateboards on the dancefloor while the Red Hot Chili Peppers jam out on stage.

A quick synopsis of the Thrashin' story is that Corey, the protagonist played by a young Josh Brolin, is a skater from the Valley who has come to the city with his buddies to compete in a couple skating competitions, the biggest being a downhill race where the winner gets a cash prize and signed to a skateboard label. The antagonists of the film are the Daggers, a group of mischievous punks who, with their bepatched denim vests and hometown territoriality, bear more than a passing resemblance to the Lords of the Pit. Inevitably, Corey falls in love with Chrissy, an Indiana girl who just happens to be the little sister of Hook, the lord of the Daggers.

I've gone into such detail on the Thrashin' plot because it is the basis for Dave's Thrash Bash, an annual Old School MTG event in South Bend, Indiana. There's no thematic reason to tie together Old School Magic and Thrashin'. It's just that Dave, in particular, wanted to see it, and his will to power forced the two to collide, much like a little girl might make a G.I. Joe and a Barbie kiss.

Although the pairing is truly arbitrary, the result is delightful, especially in the Thrashin'-themed alters that many players submit to the insane prize pool every year. Two of my favorites from this year were an Earthquake where the falling man has been made to look like he's grinding a stair rail, and a Serra Angel who has completely wiped out and broken her board.

I could write a whole article on the alters of Old School MTG, but for now I'll just say this: they seem to tap into the same nostalgia of WotC's Secret Lairs product, but in a much purer way. The purity comes from the lack of monetization. For players, it's a chance to express themselves, try out an idea they had in their head, or simply have some fun with a theme, even if they've never picked up a paint pen before. To me, the amateurish quality of most of this kind of art is what makes it so endearing and untainted. It's my honest belief that one day, maybe five years from now, maybe fifty, alters from the MTG underground will be showcased in a folk art exhibit at a museum the caliber of the Smithsonian.

You like games, right, Valley boy?

For Thrash Bash 2024, I decided to put down my usual “Esper Good Stuff” and retool a list from Kumite 4, which I call “22-Card Salute.” It's an homage to the power and absurdity of the 22 restricted cards in Old School. The basic premise is this: If restricted cards are good, more restricted cards in a deck are better, and all the restricted cards in a deck are best. This premise is objectively not true, but for me, playing all 22 restricted cards in the main is a fun deck-building restriction.

At Kumite 4, I went 3-3 with a midrange build that played Erhnam Djinns, no Forests, and about 10 spot-removals. This time, I decided to play 22-Card Salute in a Mishra's Workshop shell; although I'd have to play five colors for all the restricted cards, I wouldn't need to worry about having the right colors of mana to cast my artifacts. The only truly-dead restricted card in my list was Time Vault; my deck had no way of taking advantage of giving my opponent an extra turn, and the most I could hope for was that it would be bait for Disenchant.

Here's a quick recap of my matches:

Round 1 (Dave on Mono-White Karma Tomb): Dave's brew was cool, but turning my lands into swamps didn't slow my robots down enough, and he couldn't get a Karma to stick. 2-0.

Round 2 (Chad, last year's champ, on URb Disco): An early Shivan Dragon plus some burn got him there in Game 1. Game 2, double Su Chis bashed in and Trike pinged for the last three damage. Game 3, two Trolls went to town on my life total, and an Energy Flux kept me from developing a board. 1-2.

Round 3 (Ben R on UWbr Rasputin's Mirror Ball): Game 1, he turn-one Mind Twisted me for 4. Later, I Mana Drained his Chaos Orb, topdecked a Braingeyser, and drew nothing but heaters. I kept his reanimated Mahamoti at bay with an Icy while my bots got the job done. Game 2 we traded 1-for-1 removal for a while and he whiffed a few times with his Bazaar. His reanimated Trike couldn't block my Su Chi, which eventually got there. 2-0.

Round 4 (Stoomie on Mono-Black; feature match): Game 1 was so drawn out that it looked like my locking down his Juzam with my Icy might win me the game. That seemed less likely after a Drain Life for eight. His second Drain Life finished me. Game 2, I got a couple Icys on board and he went wide, eventually dropping Bad Moon. A top-decked Balance saved the day; I was able to tap down his two 3/3 Hippies as my two Su Chis quickly won the race. Game 3, I mulled to six and he had a turn-one Mind Twist for three. I was able to recover well enough, dropping double Su Chis, but I had no answer for his Nev's Disk, and I didn't have a mana sink, so I took 8 damage from mana burn. A Drain Life ended the game. 1-2.

Round 5 (Lord Semmens on 5C Reanimator): Game 1, he went all-in with Bazaar plus Black Lotus into Sylvan Library. He took all three cards on his next draw step and reanimated a Deep Spawn. I had a Chaos Orb for the Animate Dead and got there with a Su Chi. Game 2, I had a turn-one Su Chi. He played a Workshop and passed, with no play and five mana. I Stripped the Workshop on my turn. He put it back into play with Regrowth. I locked down his Workshop with Icy long enough for Su Chi to get there. 2-0

I ended the day with a winning record, 3-2, which technically had a win-loss ratio better than my 3-3 Kumite run. Overall, the deck performed as expected: the Shops part was very powerful, as were the restricted cards when I had the right mana to cast them. Time Vault never ate a Disenchant, but after our Game 1 in which I played it, Ben R verbally expressed his confusion as to what the hell was going on with my list, so I count that as a moral victory.

If there's a better shell for 22-Card Salute, it's probably a burn-heavy list, as those decks tend to want both draw-7 effects, and could play a couple Fireballs to get lucky with Channel. Regardless, I had a lot of fun playing Shops for the first time, and will probably pick up that deck again, either as 22-Card Salute or a more standard, sweathog version.

That wild Indian picture happens to be stylin'.

If you were to pick a venue for Thrash Bash with the Thrashin' aesthetic in mind, you'd want to book a dive bar or run-down pool hall, somewhere with dim lights and graffiti-covered walls, where every surface is a little sticky.

Thrash Bash's actual venue, Tippecanoe Place, is more-or-less the complete opposite: an 1880's historic mansion that offers, according to its website, “casual upscale dining.” It's the sort of place where a 1980's bad-boy protagonist might show up, get into an argument with the stuffy maitre d, and instigate a foodfight, much to the horror of seated pearl-clutchers. It is, simply, a grown-up space for adults who are on their best (or at least good) behavior. Even with a dedicated bar for the event, which takes over the second floor of the mansion, Thrash Bashers have behaved well enough that Dave is able to rebook each year.

The only carry-over from Old School's more raucous days is the Chaos Orb flipping challenge of the Lords of the Pit, where a participant can bet a number of liquor shots against hitting fifty Orb flips in a row. Every shot nullifies one miss; so if you bet two shots, you can miss up to two flips while you try to get to fifty. At first, a passerby would hardly notice the crowd of nerds quietly counting the early hits, almost whispering, “One… two… three… four…” But as the count gets closer and closer to the climax, it crescendos into giddy yelling, “Forty- seven! Forty-eight!! Forty-nine!!! FIFTY!!!!” The Lords awarded two Orb patches at Thrash Bash ’24, one to Dave, who bet one shot but hit all fifty in a row. The other was to Thrull Caleb Dragonborn, who bet three but only needed two. Congrats to both!

In the end, Dave helped raise $1,830.76 for Cultivate Food Rescue, an all-time donation record for the Bash! Until next year, a word to the wise: If you hang around here, you hang out with Daggers.

Twenty-one Lords & Co. gathered at the stalwart confines of DMen Tap on 4/20/2024 for our fifth installment of the Relic War, Chicago's (pseudo) annual tip of the cap to Swedish OS MTG.

In an afternoon filled with stews and brews – made safe for mid-rangey lists and greedy mana bases by virtue of restricted Strip Mine – it was Lord Tim Baran who stood undefeated atop a pile of vanquished foes. Tim played 5C Sedge Troll Goodstuff.

See our deck list gallery below for the club’s other takes on the Swedish OS format.

Also, special shoutout to that one wack dude who played loud-ass Venom pinball the whole day. An anonymous Lord – as well as the machine, probably – were tilted.

DECK LIST GALLERY

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

DECKS GALLERY

CANDIDS