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

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!

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.

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

CANDIDS

After a slow-burning summer for old school MTG in the City of Chicago, 19 Lords gathered at the venerable DMen Tap for our annual autumnal OS95 shootout - the Fall Brawl. This being the sixth iteration of our fall classic, we’re all familiar enough by now with the ebbs and flows of this Old School + Ice Age format, so thusly submitted is a somewhat barebones reportage...

For the results-oriented reader, McCarthy bested a logjam of 4-1 players with BR Necropotence, and the Holy Trinity of Sweathoggery rounded out the 4-1s: White Weenie (Moss), UW Control (Petray) and Esper NecroMirror (Elleman). See the gallery below for a full detailing of the day's siq brews & stews. As part of the meetup, the Lords sponsored DMen’s community meal program, donating $400.

In club news, after Round 1 we took a short break to induct two new Lords, our old school stalwarts from the North Woods, Mike Butzen and Robert Vincent. Welcome to Lord Butzen and Lord Vincent!

To honor this sixth installment of the Fall Brawl, here’s a look at some format staples Ice Age has brought to the card table over the years:

Glacial Chasm - an all-star card that one time in Danny’s Lich-Fastbond-Mirror-Chasm deck.

Stormbind - the only Gold card on this list; it gives red decks the ability to close out close games.

Portent - lets the blue durdle decks durdle even more. (Note: Brainstorm isn’t on this list because of a dearth of shuffle effects to abuse it, aside from Land Tax.)

Dance of the Dead - this Reanimator staple's taken a hit now that Reanimator’s best days are behind it.

Mystic Remora - underrated but gaining appreciation. For one mana you can usually draw at least 3+ cards.

Incinerate - big brain players love this burn card.

Mana Crypt - it’s free mana and thus restricted.

Zuran Orb - probably overrated but nevertheless remains popular as it lets players trade lands to hang on at the end of games.

The Pain Lands - mana fixing is always in-style.

Black & White Pump Knights - a slight edge to black here for synergy with Necro, but both cards give extra game to Weenie players.

Demonic Consultation - the other restricted 95 card (thanks to early Reanimator results) and the most-fun 95 card to play. Even if DC were a unrestricted, Necro would probably still be number one.

Necropotence - the skull, the format-defining card. Winning decks either play it or play a strategy to fight it.

DECKS GALLERY

CANDIDS

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...

The first thing that struck me as unusual about The Land, a recent weekend-long invitational tournament brought to you by Ohio's Team Serious magic club, was that there were no beds to be had. Set on the picturesque family land of Vintage Champ Rajah James, The Land offered a freshly-cut lawn under the shade of enormous trees. There, you could set up a tent. Sufficiently hammered, you could fall into a dreamless slumber under the summer stars, fully unaware of the soft chorus of snoring all around you, most of which would certainly seem to qualify as undiagnosed sleep apnea. If you were a light sleeper, at dawn you'd be awakened by the blazing sun and a classic farmland cliché: the crowing of a neighbor's roosters.

What next struck me as unique to The Land was the family-style approach of the whole affair. Rajah and the rest of Team Serious had done so much preparation, but the execution required help from attendees. For meals, some skewered meat, some worked the grill, some prepped and chopped veggies, while others set up the spread. On Sunday morning, everyone helped clean up the event space, a cavernous, concrete-floored “barn” where we spent most of the weekend flinging spells at one another.

Rajah set the tone for this sense of community on Saturday morning, when he stood on a table and thanked the 38 magicians who had come for the Vintage main event. With the twinkle of a tear in his eye, he recounted why the space meant so much to him and his family. The net effect on me was that I felt more invested in the weekend than I often do at Magic tournaments. I felt like I owned a piece of it. If I squinted, I could see what an MtG commune might look like.

But what did the Magic look like? Well, dear reader, let me tell you. Friday night had a Middle School Tournament; Saturday afternoon Vintage; and Saturday evening Eternal Chaos, aka, “Dom presents Crackin' Boosties: A Brandon Sanders Production.”

I had chosen to play a Premodern netdeck for Friday's Middle School tournament. It used Hermit Druid to flip my deck into the graveyard. Then I'd cast Reanimate on a Sutured Ghoul, remove some Phyrexian Dreadnoughts from my yard, trigger Dragon Breath into play, and attack for the win. The deck also had a backup plan of Stifle-Nought.

Premodern enthusiasts tend to say that their format is more fair, while Middle School is more degenerate, due to our not-banned cards like Necropotence, Grim Monolith, Entomb, Earthcraft, and Mystical Tutor. In practice, however, the average game plays out pretty similarly because Force of Will and banned mana accelerants like Dark Ritual tend to keep the more powerful cards in check.

I bring up the idea of fair vs. degenerate because my Angry Nought deck (aka Angry Hermit, Noughty Hermit, Noughty Ghoul, Techno-Hermit, Techno-Druid, etc.) feels to me to be the most unfair deck of any I've played in Middle School. Granted, it's an easily-disruptable glass cannon, but it's pretty resilient for a deck that can win on turn two. Case in point, match one game one turn one, on the play I cast Hermit Druid with the help of Elvish Spirit Guide. My opponent, Romancing the Stones' Brian Hockey, who has told me several times that he never misses with Cabal Therapy, blind-Therapied the Reanimate out of my hand. It didn't end up mattering, though. Turn two I flipped my deck. On my turn three upkeep I shuffled two Reanimates into my empty library with Krosan Reclamation. Then I played a land and won the game.

My previous experience with the deck made me wonder whether it just wasn't that good in MS; I think I went 2-3 or something like that. But many things that could have gone wrong did, and it was my first time playing it. By comparison, I ran hotter at the Land, going 5-1, good enough for 3rd place after breakers. My loss was to UW Landstill, which was very close. In game 3, I had the choice of two plays: one would lose to a topdecked Tormod's Crypt, the other a counterspell. I figured he had more counters than Crypts, so I took the lose-to-Crypt line, and lost to a Crypt.

Due to my inexperience with Vintage, I expected a 2-4 run on Saturday, and I ended up bullseyeing that target. I was on UG Oath of Atraxa, splashing black for the tutors and white for Balance. I don't think I lost a game where I triggered Oath of Druids, but there were many games where I did exactly nothing. I guess I've got the itch for the format now, mostly due to how much happens in the first couple turns, and how tense those turns feel.

Of the three events, I was most excited for the Eternal Chaos/Crackin' Boosties tournament and most desirous of a win there. If you're not familiar with Eternal Chaos (K-OS for short, pronounced "chaos"), it uses the Eternal Central brand of Old School as its base, but it legalizes the three booster-tutoring cards from the “Un” sets. See this article for more details and a recent tournament report. Sure, it's a wacky format born from a Southside Chicagoan who, by my reckoning, probably just wanted an excuse to crack some packs. But it's also a genuinely fun format that puts some lipstick on the pig that is Old School.

At the above linked Boosties tournament in Chicago, I had vastly underestimated the power of then-newly-legal Summon the Pack. I thought it was too expensive, but opted to play one as a "fun-of," instead of Mind Twist. Throughout that day, I realized a couple things. One, with OS jewelry and four Fellwar Stones, it was actually pretty easy to cast. Two, resolving it was back-breaking for the opponent, whereas a cheaper threat like Serra Angel could be easily answered.

For The Land K-OS event, I built what was basically The Deck plus three Summon the Pack and four Booster Tutor. BT can sometimes grab a threat, but just as often grabs an answer. Much of the time, the best target is just a land to make sure you don't miss a drop.

By the time we got around to the "tournament," it was late. Vintage was over, as was the post-Vintage pub quiz. And there was also a Dominaria draft that was firing, pulling away a few would-be-chaoticians. We ended up with around 8-10 players, and Rajah suggested we do double-elimination. Rounds weren't timed, and some decks were apparently exceedingly slow to win.

A pain point of K-OS can be the reading of the new cards. If you take a leisurely, un-self-aware pace of carefully reading each card, opening a couple packs can add ten minutes to the game. I suggest players have a decision tree in mind as they open a pack. Need a land? Just grab a land. Need a specific answer? Look for that specific answer. Need a threat? Look first at the rare, then uncommons. If you find something good, stop there. The best time to carefully read each card is on your opponent's turn.

My first opponent, Brian Tweedy, another guy from Austin's Romancing the Stones, was new to the format but very excited about it. It seemed like we were playing a mirror match–Tweedy had counterspells, the Abyss, and no apparent threats. Both games were long slogs, but I eventually got a Summon the Pack to stick. Afterwards, Tweedy noticed he was missing about five cards from his deck. He didn't say which five.

Next round, I played Angelo Kortyka from Team Serious. He jammed Dark Rits to power out early Opening Ceremonies and Packs. He also had Fork for some dastardly tricks. Game one, I Mind Twisted him for his hand. For game two, we made a gentleman's agreement to both take out Mind Twist, since it creates non-games. I BTed for Urabrask the Hidden and played it. A couple turns later, I Summoned the Pack. Angelo was kind enough to concede without requiring me to crack a new pack.

Round three, I played Kyle Wells, another Team Serious dude, who was on mono red. There are draws he could have had to hose me, particularly a turn-one or turn-two Blood Moon, but he didn't have those draws, and I eventually ran him over with a Pack each game, 2-0.

By the time I sat down across from Rajah for my fourth match, it was nearly 2am. Most of the other players had two losses or had just gone to bed. Game one, I let a DT resolve, thinking I could counter whatever he got. Of course, Raj went for Library of Alexandria. That plus Candelabra buried me in card advantage. Mana Flare and Fireball finished me off. I think in game two I resolved an early-ish Pack, and that was that. Game three was a slugfest. Raj was able to Balance away my first two Packs. He nearly got me with chip damage from Mishra's Factories, but I finally topdecked my third Pack for the win.

The Boosties tournament dissolved more than it concluded. There were a few players who had already finished five rounds, but no one seemed interested in continuing. Raj crowned me the champion, since I was the only person with an undefeated record who was also still awake. For my troubles I got a beautiful full-art alter of Blacker Lotus, a frequent stand-in proxy for Black Lotus.

Thanks to everyone who played K-OS at the Land! It's really cool to see people outside Chicago interested in it. To help answer some basic questions about the format, I've posted "official tournament rules" here. At first, making tournament rules for a casual format seemed unnecessary. But after my weekend at The Land, I get it: people want just enough structure so they can get invested and feel like they own a piece of it. Until next time, may your Boostie cracks be bonkers.

Lords Agra & Etters rewatch the Eternal Weekend 2022 Vintage Finals with the champ: Rajah James.

Steel gray overcast skies greeted the nine hale mages who Gathered at DMen Tap to partake in the Lords’ second iteration of Christmas Chaos. Amidst the holiday redecoration of DMen’s backroom into a Krampus-inspired dungeon, the Lords & Co. deposited numerous toys in offering of Pt. II of our annual Toy Drive. Our format of choice, in keeping with last December’s Gathering, was Eternal Chaos – Chicago's favorite pack-cracking, dopamine-inducing degeneracy – albeit a modified version for 2022.

We added two new cards, legal as four-ofs, for Christmas Chaos 2. First was Unfinity’s Opening Ceremony, a Red six-mana Sorcery that color fixes and allows its caster to deploy any number of spells from a freshly-cracked pack. Second was Unstable’s Summon the Pack, a Black eight-mana bomb that puts all creatures from a cracked pack immediately into play as Zombies. Our cunning wizards deployed these new cards to devastating effect; for example, Chet used big mana to ramp into Opening Ceremony in his “Fast Pass” deck. Meanwhile, Lords Velasco and Elleman fully embraced the Spirit of Christmas Past, each bringing packs of 2003’s Legions (an all-creature set) to push the impact of Summon the Pack to its fully-realized potential. Witness:

The new hotness of Opening Ceremony completely outclassed the old & busted Booster Tutor, both in form and function – why cast one spell from a boostie when you can cast many? And Summon the Pack, while gimmicky, has life as a spicily flavourful win-con for a control or ramp lists. Perhaps OC could be too powerful, but isn’t that the whole point of this fringiest of fringe sub-format variants?

In gaming action, Jimmy McCarthy used Shops to take down the field at 5-0, even ripping a mighty Wurmcoil Engine in one match, and Lord David Velasco took the “top” prize – a masterfully altered Opening Ceremony depicting Lord of the Pit – for cracking the most boosties (16). Thanks, Shane and Zach, for coordinating the siq alter!

Other decks in the room included Power Monolith (Blank), Underworld Dreams Combo (Jones) and 5C Shops (Semmens & Moss). After the day’s battles, a handful of hungry mages made their way down the block to dine on Trespassada and Recall the day’s broken plays. Thus concludes 2022, another fine year of Old School Magic in Chicago. Happy Holidays from the Lords of the Pit!

GALLERY

CANDIDS

POSTLUDE

The Lords want to give an extra special shoutout and congratulations to Team Serious member and friend of the Pit, Rajah James, for his triumph at the Eternal Weekend Vintage MTG tournament in Pittsburgh, PA. Well done, Raj!

Lords Elleman, Piquard & Moss cover results from Thrash Bash and Fall Brawl, with an eye toward Christmas Chaos.