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.
