Lords Dotterer, Friedman, Moss & Petray catch-up on spring '21 OS action.

Long time reader, first time poster. You may know of me from my collected works on the merits of including Ancestral Recall in your 93/94 deck list, as well as my pioneering works on the positive effects of moving immediately to the second main phase. At any rate, I’d like to thank you for reading.

This spring, the Lords organized March Radness to keep our degenerates satiated in spite of the global pandemic. Eighteen participants raised $417 to benefit the Chicago Restaurant Workers Relief Fund via Southern Smoke. The formats were Classic and Middle School MTG, two formats I know very little about.

My first exposure to Magic was in 1994, but I was not actively playing between 1995 and 2004. When I got back in during college, I wanted to play a format where I could play both Sol Ring and dual lands. Thus, I started with Type 1 (Vintage). Aside from a limited amount of Legacy, I knew very few cards from the card pool outside of Type 1. So, as you can imagine, without having played during the Classic and Middle School eras of MTG and never having played Extended, these two formats are pretty far outside of my comfort zone.

Middle School (which seems to be extremely similar to Premodern, but with some key card differences, like Force of Will) has an extremely wide card pool and many viable decks. I’ve avoided the format, largely because I was happy enough with other throwback formats, and I didn’t want to dive into a new card pool. But sometimes in life, if one is extremely fortunate, he or she will encounter selfless individuals who just want to bring everyone together:

So with most of a Middle School Stasis deck in my hands as a result of Shane’s kindness, I ended up playing in March Radness. I threw together a Goblin Welder control deck with a bunch of blue draw spells for Classic, hoping to live the dream and weld Tetravites for Triskelion (spoiler alert, it DID NOT happen).

On March 4th, a small gathering of Lords and select associates kicked off March Radness with a virtual happy hour. I’ve been living in Dallas, TX over the last three years, and having the opportunity to play virtually has been a great way to stay in touch with the club. I’ve been grateful to my fellow Lords for hosting all of these virtual events over the past few years.

The event started with Classic, and contained a healthy mix of different decks—Stifle Nought, High Tide, Price of Progress Cam Special™️, Goblin Welder control from yours truly, Food Chain Goblins, Deadguy Ale, Storm Combo, Gro-A-Tog, UR Morphling Control, Devourer Combo, Pox, Goblins, Burn, Zoo Sligh, and Dragon Combo.

I understand very little about this format, but it is very broken. My Goblin Welder deck was fun to play but had absolutely no chance against both of the Strom decks that easily 2-0’d me. Welder was coincidentally amazing against Lorien’s Dreadnoughts (it helped that they never made an appearance G1). Shane’s Devourer Combo deck was new tech to me – I got lucky and won this match, but the deck was clearly better than mine.

Long time friend of the club, Cam from PDX, and I had a fun set of side games. I had always heard Cam was awesome from Moss and just about anyone who had met him. Unfortunately, neither of us had ever hung out at an event. A few years back, I was visiting Portland on vacation. I texted Moss for Cam’s phone number to see if we could find an opportunity for beers. We got a chance to hang, and I cannot wait to visit again – he’s one of the best dudes.

These games were the only time I got Goblin Welder + Tetravus going and it was glorious. Mana Drain proved to be pretty good against Price of Progress + Fork, and I’m looking forward to the next battle.

Classic is relatively unexplored. There are some obvious historical decks—Storm, Gro, Goblins, etc, but I am guessing there is some unknown coolness out there that we’re all missing. This format is also really exciting because the internet is not loaded with deck lists. This makes for a great opportunity to play some interesting games if you can convince your friends to build something other than Type 1 net decks from 2003.

As anyone would have guessed, Storm dominated. This deck benefits from playing most of the restricted list and paving the way with Duress. Playing against this gave me Type 1 PTSD (well done Dom & Punts).

On to Middle School – this format is incredibly wide and really requires expert knowledge of the card pool. As a first-time player who has seen many of these cards in the past, I still had almost no idea what was going on as my opponents ran me over. Mossman dropped after a disgraceful performance with Stiflenought in Classic... Just kidding — he was busy moving (congrats on the new place!!!)—and Standstill expert Greg tagged right in.

The Stasis deck I played was really cool, and Forsaken City is some incredible technology. That said, it’s pretty hard to win with Black Vise when your opponent has Manabond in play. This was a new one for me. Stasis was also terrible against Rajah’s Enchantress, but it was cool to see his deck play out. Very very broken. Same can be said about my match against Baran’s Madness deck. Tim played it very well, and there wasn’t a single turn where I was ahead in our two short games. Bob did some charity work and went easy enough on me to give me a win against his Coco Pebbles deck. I did almost lose this one as well, given that he necro-locked himself with 3 cards in hand. And with this, I’d deck out before he did, and could never kill him with Vise. Double Chain of Vapor gave me the win in one of the weirdest games of Magic I’ve played in a long time.

Middle School was a ton of fun, and I’d like to give it another shot, though I think I need to read up on the card pool more before next time. Again, would never have ended up playing without Shane’s generosity.

To no one’s surprise, the combo stars of Classic also dominated Middle School with Braun beating Dotterer on breakers (though a mis-entered match result initially gave Dom the win, Moss crushed him with the final, corrected results). Congrats to both of them for slaying us all. Big thanks to Moss for running yet another excellent event despite being in the middle of a move. I’m looking forward to next time.

Classic Gallery

Middle School Gallery

Four dudes in the mood to discuss Winterlude.

As our calendars mercifully flipped from 2020 to 2021, we found ourselves in need of a way to keep virtual hearths stoked and the Gathering strong. Enter Winterlude ‘21, a two-batch challenge featuring Old School Alpha-Alliances in Batch 1 and Middle School in Batch 2. Fourteen Lords & Co. met in icy, windswept, digital battlefields to test their mettle against winter’s might.

Batch 1: Alpha to Alliances

For those curious, the Music City Old School crew have a fine primer explaining this OS variant and for Winterlude we tweaked it by restricting Strip Mine. Our own Politburo decided to push the envelope with broken lands and, sure enough, Bazaar of Baghdad, Glacial Chasm and Kjeldoran Outpost all featured prominently among winning lists. Our field saw several classic and interesting archetypes such as Necro (burn & combo variants), Stormbind Aggro, Reanimator (strengthened by Krovikan Horror), Storm Cauldron Combo and Diminishing Returns Combo. Both Force of Will and Gorilla Shaman were in bountiful supply.

Batch 2: Middle School

It’d been a while since we rocked a Lords Middle School event, so Batch 2 served to scratch that itch. Green was unleashed over the four rounds with The Rock, Oath, Survival/Opposition and Secret Force taking the top four slots in dominating fashion. The field also included Trix, Firestorm/Mogg Maniac combo, Zombies, Pox and 5C Survival, among others. In the end it was our own Carter “W” Petray that beat back the interlopers, defending tha club with a sterling 8-0 record and continuing his reign of terror within the Digital Realm.

Until next time, stay warm & safe and take care of each other out there.

Alpha-Alliances Gallery

Middle School Gallery

Last December, I remember looking back fondly on my year of Old School: all of the meetups across the Lords’ local haunts, connecting with friends from across the country over Players Ball weekend, and our year-end blowout at the Party of the Pit Lords. Though none of us expected Lords Haüs to be the end of our in-person tournament season in 2020, it would provide a lasting reminder of the club’s values as so perfectly described by our humble T.O., Lord Agra: it’s not about the Magic, it’s about the Gathering.

This year, Lords Punts & Moss worked tirelessly to keep the spirit of the club alive through Quarantine Cups, one-day “family-only” meetups, and special format variations that encouraged the Lords & Friends to return to the drawing board and brew up their gnarliest stews. The Beef Bash first took place in June 2017 at Lord Jaco’s Westside headquarters, back when Lord Petray still had some of his luscious locks and, for the most part, the crew was all in attendance. This was just a short couple of months ahead of the first Player’s Ball, an event that would become one of the most anticipated annual events for OS players across the country.

It would be another year before I first met the Lords (outside of some chance encounters playing Legacy in Columbus, OH uncovered through a deep dive of tournament results leading up to the dissolution of the DCI), but you could say I’ve been preparing for this tournament since I first found OS. In my short two and a half years of playing OS, Berserk has quickly become my calling card. Where my decks may have been missing a handful of the format’s blue restricted staples, I instead chose to overrun my opponents with good old-fashioned combat tricks and the sheer girth of big green creatures.

This year’s culminating tournament, aptly titled Christmas Beef, came with its own set of rules: every deck must contain at least 40 total power at the start of each game In addition to EC’s standard bans and restrictions, The Abyss, City in a Bottle and Moat were banned, and Maze of Ith and Mishra’s Workshop were additionally restricted. To encourage players to stuff their decks with even more Djinns, Elementals, Lords, and in select cases, Leviathans, prizes were awarded to the Beefiest Deck (highest total base power in the 75) and Beefiest Boardstate (highest total power in a single screenshot during a tournament match). In this sense, victory was not just about having a winning record, it was about being the meatiest mage among us.

The Christmas Beef event brought together 22 Lords and friends from across the country for eight rounds of batch play carried out over webcams. The group raised $531 for the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit organization whose work includes the support and legal aid of marginalized communities, research for criminal justice reform, and re-entry assistance to the formerly incarcerated. Throughout the month of December, our Beefy brethren carried out their matches over Whereby and Discord, often taking to the virtual homes of various Lords’ haunts, where at any moment another player could drop in to spectate and, in the spirit of the Beef, add to the trash talk. On the first Thursday of the tournament, after Lord Moss delivered me a quick and brutal beating at the hands of giant robots, Atogs, and Shivan Dragons, we bar-hopped across the Discord to heckle Lord Agra and Cam Wall as they slammed Dragons into each other until Bob’s reanimated (and hardcast) Yawgmoth Demons bested our West Coast friend. In this sense, we were able to preserve one of the most important aspects of our in-person tournaments: wandering the tables after your match, talking shit whenever possible.

Naturally, the former math tutor in me also wanted to examine the correlation between Beef count and record, and really I was just itching to make a spreadsheet anyway! With that in-mind, I took each player’s total Beef and multiplied it by their overall match win percentage to generate their Beef Score.

In standard form for me, I opted to bring a plethora of green creatures and the classic Giant Growth/Berserk combo, featuring such quadruple-green behemoths as Craw Giant and Force of Nature, while swapping out my old friend Ernie for Juggernauts and including some select Beef enhancers and accelerators like Lure and Channel. In the end, Beefy Berserk ended up in the middle of the pack in both a Beef count of 78 and in record at 3-5, awarding me a Beef Score of 29.25.

Even batting just shy of .500, I still managed to walk away from the tournament with some new friends and exciting battle stories. Within the first half of the tournament, I had already Channeled my way into double Juggernaut on T2, been brought to near-lethal with a double Berserking Juzam Djinn (after a lucky spin of the Wheel of Fortune), and had my own Juggernauts granted multiple Spirit Links by my opponent. My own Beefiest moment (and the Beefiest Boardstate of the second batch) came through during a match with one of the Midwest’s spiciest red mages, Robert Vincent, where a 44-power, Rampaging and Berserking Craw Giant came crashing across the battlefield and over an Uthden Troll and a Wall of Earth (46 total power).

With the club’s favorite heel, Lord Petray, absent from this tournament, there was a vacancy for the champion's throne in our virtual realm. Wasting no time, Lord Friedman pulled together his Walls Combo deck that topped our Beef count (168 power) and finished at 7-1, giving him the highest Beef Score among players of 147. Danny explained to me that his goal was to not “play any creatures that appear in competitive/tiered 93/94 decks,” and even extended this to the dominant OS removal spells: no Bolts, Swords, or Disenchants, only Chaos Orb and Balance. As a result, Danny chose a plethora of powerful walls that he could Beef up with Glyph of Destruction before sacrificing to a mighty Sword of the Ages. In addition, the combo of Pestilence and Ivory Tower allowed Danny to wipe out his opponent’s creatures, bring down their life totals, and keep himself afloat between Towers and Diamond Valley.

The bulk of Danny’s Beef total came from his sideboard; 15 of the Beefiest creatures of the format, each purposed to fight off anything from common removal and Blood Moons to the wall’s worst enemy, Juggernaut. In this sense, Danny’s reactive plans would help him maintain the Beefy spirit of the event throughout, and most importantly, play spicy cards and have fun playing Magic.

While the gap between Danny and the second highest Beef Score was large, I want to highlight some of the other flavorful and Beefy decks across the tournament, starting with friend of the club Nick Viau and his 113-beef count Monoblue list with a Beef Score of 84.75. Nick truly dropped the elbow with his nWo-altered Motis at the top end alongside Water Elementals, Juggernauts and Trikes (two of the most popular robots of the tournament). Nick posted a strong 6-2 record while doing exactly what the tournament called for: turning big creatures sideways and occasionally blowing out opposing Beef with a timely Unsummon.

It would be hard to miss Lord Agra’s powerful 86-lb Beefy Reanimator, bringing powerhouses like Shivan Dragon, Yawgmoth Demon, Nicol Bolas, and Deep Spawn back to the field to absolutely pummel his opponents. Bob ended his run with a 5-3 record and a very respectable Beef Score of 53.75. As Bob displayed across the tournament, a creature that can profitably block a Shivan Dragon is a force to be reckoned with.

The only undefeated player in the tournament was our newly-minted Lord Tim Baran, playing a 51-power Charred Beef (With a Side of Cheese), featuring full playsets of Ball Lightning and Erhnam Djinn alongside tournament favorites Shivan Dragon and Berserk. His aggressive threats paired well with some handy Bolts and Chain Lightnings and propelled him through eight rounds relatively unscathed.

Playing Eureka in a format centered around playing the biggest creatures takes an absolutely fearless pilot, and we were graced with the presence of two players doing just that! Lord Semmens approached this archetype with his 84-power Lords & Associates deck. While Shane’s mostly singleton cast of characters alongside a set of Lords of the Pit did not win too many matches, he embodied the spirit of the tournament wholeheartedly by encouraging Beefy boardstates on both sides. Matching Semmens in record and gameplan, friend of the club and OS stalwart Rajah James brewed his own 94-power take on Eurkea, including the powerful Juxtapose to give himself an upgrade courtesy of his opponents and possibly hand off Force of Nature along with a free eight damage straight to the dome.

On the other end of the spectrum of Beef, Lord Blank in his truest form, brought Lean Beef, a 43-power BU deck featuring sixteen of his favorite two-power creatures and only four creatures at four power. Combining combat hosers like Imprison and Darkness with Meekstone, Ian was able to take his army of low-power creatures to a strong 6-2 finish. When asked about his feelings on creatures, Blank said he thinks “creatures are fine, but (he) prefers playing spells like Enchantments.”

In the end, Christmas Beef provided a brief vacation from OS’s famed archetypes, even with restricted staples still in major attendance. While I don’t imagine I’ll see too many copies of Force of Nature hit the battlefield for a while, there is something special about fearlessly slamming big, Beefy creatures into play game after game. Even with Workshop restricted, artifact creatures still found their way out quickly via a plethora of Mana Vaults and occasionally Dark Ritual across the entire tournament, demonstrating as always the power of robots. In speaking with Danny, one thing he had wished for was to see more “firsts” throughout the tournament; casting oddball creatures like Yawgmoth Demon, using Lure to wipe out a Tetravus and its Tetravites with a Juggernaut, just cool card interactions that might not happen all the time in other tournaments.

This raises the ultimate question, how do we truly show Beef? To put it in the words of the great Notorious B.I.G., Beef should be “when you roll no less than 30 (in this case, 40) deep, when I see you, guaranteed to be in I-C-U.” Beef is about confidently staring your opponents down with the biggest, dumbest creature you pulled out of the back of your binder, and absolutely wreaking havoc.

Sometimes it is hard to find the positives in a year like 2020, where so much of our normal has been disrupted, or to put it more bluntly, added to the constantly growing flames of the dumpster fire that has been this past year. Where my year started with some of my favorite people in the world, slinging cards at Der Rathskeller and trekking to Essen Haüs on a cold Madison evening, I’m happy to say it ended in a very similar fashion, even with a computer screen between us all. With 2020 almost in our rearview mirrors, we can hope that 2021 will bring us back to the places that the Lords have called our homes away from home across Chicago.

Cattle Call

A USDA certified prime panel (Petray, Agra, Blank, Velasco & Moss) weigh in on the LOTP Christmas Beef.

Nuked turkey, soggy stuffing and lumpy taters are the staples of any good Thanksgiving leftover feast. Because it’s 2020, the Lords of the Pit added roast unicorn to the mix with our Lords & Leftovers challenge on Black Friday eve. Fifteen LOTP met in the virtual squared circle to find out who their most festive fighter was. For one night only, Feast of the Unicorn, that oft-overlooked black Homelands Aura blessing a creature with +4/+0, was legalized. The Lords once again supported the Greater Chicago Food Depository as their charity of choice for the event.

We turn now to the stews. Many Lords tacked toward black, inspired either by Black Friday or perhaps just overindulgence on unmentionable equine delicacies. Hippies and Knights patrolled the skies and grounds, respectively. Derelors and Juzam Djinns brought the Black beef while a Guardian Beast sought out his Orb. One maniacal wizard dug deep into the desert sands, however, to summon forth a mighty Pit Scorpion.

Playing with open Discord video chatrooms allowed us to crash matches and shit talk in real time and the rooms were once again named for our old (and now dwindling) Chicago haunts such as Crown, Hopewell or DMen. We even had a couple hangers-on that dialed in to observe, such as Marty Silenus who enjoyed us on his 19” bigscreen.

There were some tasty lists to observe, too. Lords Rohr and Friedman brewed differing versions of Big Red (Rohr cracking our Top Four to boot) and the aforementioned Semmens brought the deep state tech with Poison Counters Agro. Lord Blank continued his dedication to Underworld Dreams and there were two takes on Gobbos as well (Agra and Punts).

At the top, Pink Atog (L.G.), Esper (Lorien), and RUG weenie (Meatball) rounded out the T4 with the Meatball continuing his reign of terror with a 5-0 finish. He noticeably refused to use public Discord rooms, preferring to grind in private and prevent his Euroboard tech from being revealed.

The whole shebang ended on high note with a dozen Lords crashing Etters’ and Rohrs’ match in time to observe Nick’s ignominious defeat at the hands of Tyler’s 6/2 Black Knight w/Feast of the Unicorn.

Special thanks to Dr. Punts for organizing this family Gathering. Happy Holidays, everyone and stay safe out there!

Leftovers

The Brawlening: The Fall Brawl 2.5 Report

October is one of Chicago’s most pleasant months. The jean jackets come out of the closet. People take long walks through parks. Red leaves and discarded N95 masks flutter together in the autumn wind. For the Lords of the Pit, the colder weather and spiking COVID-19 rates also meant that it was time for our annual Fall Brawl tournament. In years past, Fall Brawl had been a one-day affair of Swiss+1 rounds of Old School '95 (OS95). But because playing in a virtual hellscape had become the new normal for our club, we 18 Lords and Thrulls stretched the event over the month of October with two four-round batches and then a cut to top four. The first batch was traditional OS95. The second batch brought a new spice to the format: OS95 Singleton (using the Beasts of the Bay banlist + Mana Crypt). Singleton ended up being a contentious second format. Some, like myself, loved the opportunity to pull from Old School's deep pool of second-stringers. Others found the format to be, as Lord Punts put it, “Misery.”

The Lords & Co. used Fall Brawl 2.5 entry fees to raise $380 for My Block My Hood My City, a non-profit organization that provides underprivileged Chicago youth with an awareness of the world and opportunities beyond their neighborhood, taking students on explorations focused on STEM, Arts & Culture, Citizenry & Volunteerism, Health, Community Development, Culinary Arts, and Entrepreneurism.

As for the split format, “I felt robbed of both experiences,” said Lord Danny Friedman, the literal winner of the tournament, referring to the fact that the event split our attention across two formats.

Danny had a dominating start in the OS95 portion. His brew? A highly innovative five-color Necropotence combo deck that first resolved a Lich (dropping his life to zero) and then swapped life totals with his opponent via Mirror Universe. Typically in Old School, the words “Lich” and “undefeated” don’t find themselves in the same sentence, unless it’s, “Well of course that dude went undefeated---he played against three Lich decks.” But Danny managed to put together a truly repugnant list that no one could beat.

In addition to his draw engine and combo, Danny played Fastbond for mana acceleration, Zuran Orb to keep him from dying to Fastbond and Necro (and to draw cards with Lich), Glacial Chasm to negate Fastbond and creature attacks, and Avoid Fate to counter the inevitable Disenchant. He also jammed 20 restricted cards. Danny, ever the fan of the transformational sideboard, dedicated ten of fifteen slots to a mixture of Arabian Nights creatures and Hypnotic Specters. He had figured that his deck would be so explosive and unexpected, it was sure to win game one. Then his opponent would board out all their creature removal and Danny would pull the old switcheroo. His games played out according to plan, and he ended with a perfect 4-0 record, not dropping a single game.

Danny was the only Lord to go undefeated in the first batch. After that, a whopping 44% of the field (8 decks) went 3-1, while 33% (6 decks) went 1-3. This tail-heavy outcome was due to a combination of two factors: (a) the batch-style pairing system and (b) the apparent fact that half of the Lords were playing to win, while the other half were playing to brew. That’s not to say that all the 3-1 decks were uninspired. Here are a few of the most creative 3-1 lists:

-An OS94 UR Atog deck that added Incinerate (Moss).

-An OS94 UR counterburn deck that added Incinerate (Schriver).

-An OS94 UWR aggro deck that added Incinerate (MacDougall).

-An OS94 Tax Edge deck that added checks notes Zuran Orb (Petray).

There were actually a few interesting decks with winning records, including another Lich deck (Butzen), UWb Millstone (Semmens), and WU banding aggro (Agra). There was a lot more spice in the losing bracket, such as :

-A GU “Lore & Order” prison deck using Forgotten Lore, Primal Order, and four Mazes of Ith (Rohr).

-Two Time Vault decks, one that could go infinite with Elder Druid (Baran), and another featuring Merieke Ri Berit and Preacher (Velasco).

-A GRub ramp deck that powered out Shivan Dragons with Orcish Lumberjacks and Tinder Walls (Punts).

I played a BWU simpleton's Necro Mirror deck, which finished the opponent with Drain Life after switching life totals. As one of the eight players who were 3-1, I knew I’d need at least another 3-1 record to make the cut to top four. The Singleton rounds were going to be a sweat among sweathogs.

Lord Andy MacDougall was the first to report a perfect 4-0 finish in OS95 Singleton. His list was an upgraded version of his 93/94 Singleton deck (which got him second place at last year’s Solocon). Andy had added an extra copy of Llanowar Elves, Lightning Bolt and Disintegrate with Ice Age’s Fyndhorn Elves, Incinerate, and Lava Burst. The real backbreaker of the deck was Stormbind, which could win a game on its own. I was the other person to report a 4-0 record in Singleton. Coincidentally, my deck also was an upgraded version of my 93/94 Singleton list (pink aggro; third place at Solocon). After adding obvious cards like Order of the White Shield and Incinerate, I noticed that Ice Age’s two sets of ally dual lands (pain and depletion) would allow me to make a green splash without giving up much consistency in white or red. I probably could have gone a little deeper into green, but I added only the bombs: Sylvan Library, Erhnam Djinn, and Stormbind.

Our 7-1 records put Andy and me in the top two seeds. Danny squeaked out a 2-2 record to go 6-2 overall. The only other player who went 6-2 was Lord Carter Petray, who managed a 3-1 record in both formats.

I played Carter in the semis, while Danny played Andy. The semis and finals were supposed to be decided by OS95, but I tried to convince Carter to play Singleton. He had, after all, claimed that his and Andy’s RG archetype was the strongest deck in the format. Carter declined my challenge, explaining, "My winrate is 0% against Icatian Javelineers." As we shuffled up, I joked to Carter that he and I were in the bad guys’ bracket. I had won two of the three Lords’ Quarantine Cups, and Carter was still strutting around like the cock of the walk from his Lords' Haus victory. He had also won a Labor Day Lords’ OS tourney and second-placed the most recent Music City “Summer Slam” event.

"But isn't Danny always the bad guy?" Carter asked. It was an interesting question coming from him, a Hulk Hogan type who could switch from hero to heel over the course of a sentence. Carter was probably right, though. Danny was a bit of a villain for his durdley decks with few win conditions, and his envy-inducing Alpha collection. Danny was also an Elder Lord, as OG as they come. Back when you were grinding out EV in Modern RPTQs, Danny was playing kitchen table Old School games with JACO, the physical manifestation of the Eternal Central website. The only good guy in the Top 4 was Andy, a doctor with kids who somehow found the time to jam games.

I expected to have an advantage in the match versus Carter’s five-color Tax Edge deck (which had won last year's Fall Brawl), but he took the first game after I dropped to one life and had a Mirror Universe in play. At my end of turn he tried to Disenchant my Mirror. I Mana Drained it. He untapped, grabbed three lands with a Land Tax trigger, and slammed his one copy of Land’s Edge. Game Two was his to lose, and he managed to do so. I was at 6 life. He played Land’s Edge and discarded three lands. Okay, I said, and sacrificed a land to the Zuran Orb I had played the previous turn. A turn or two later I was Necro-locked at 1, all my lands had been sacrificed, and my Zuran Orb had been Disenchanted. He was at 7 life and I had three lands in hand, 1 damage short of being able to kill him with his own Land’s Edge. My only out was to play a land, Drain Life for 1 and then use my last life to topdeck a land with Necro. I got there. Game three was anticlimactic: he played Blood Moon and locked me out.

Andy, the good guy on UWR, had been defeated by Danny's unstoppable Lich deck, so the finals was a battle of the bad guys, Danny’s Necro Lich vs. Carter’s Tax Edge. Game one was a testament to the degeneracy of Danny's deck. Danny was on the play, and after a slew of restricted cards and at least one Time Walk, he passed the turn to Carter. Carter dropped a Plains, played Land Tax, and passed. He did not get another turn.

Game two was a long slog, probably an hour and a half. Since the element of surprise was ruined with open decklists, Danny did not board into his beatdown plan. The game was prolonged due to both players having Zuran Orb in play, as they could convert life into cards (although Carter’s Sylvan Library engine was not as efficient as Danny’s Necropotence). Danny was very careful about playing around Land Tax; I am not sure if Carter ever got a single trigger from it. At one point, Carter Disenchanted a Necro instead of a Mirror Universe that had just been sitting in play for a while. The peanut gallery strongly disagreed with the play, and Carter himself later said he regretted it. It was hard to fault him, though, since Danny had been out-drawing him the entire game, and they were both at very low life. Carter could never really turn the corner, and Danny’s slow, meticulous play seemed to get to him after a while. At one point, Carter left to go grab a beer, and told Danny to just do whatever. After thinking for a while, Danny finally told the audience that he’d wait for Carter to get back before making his move. However, when Carter returned, Danny just hemmed and hawed, slowly tapping and untapping mana, prompting an exasperated Carter to ask, “Have you STILL not decided what you want to do with your turn?” It was over soon after that. At the end of Carter’s turn, Danny cast Hurkyl’s Recall. Carter carefully decided which five to discard, but it didn’t matter - that was Danny’s setup for the win. When asked what led to his loss, Carter blamed not drawing enough restricted cards in the second game. Danny said of the second game, "That was one of the best games I've ever played."

For all his effort, Danny was playing only for glory, as there was no prize for first place. Based on his winning deck, though, I think a CE Lich would be appropriate, with the phrase “Still a lich in my book” scrawled across it. I’ll be sending it to him once I get the order in and the card properly altered.

A Golden Zuran Orb was awarded for “gnarliest brew” to Winconsinite Robert Vincent, who had the greatest number of Ice Age and Homelands cards (42) across his two decks. His OS95 BU control deck used Old School staples like Mind Whip, Seizures, and Lim-Dul’s Hex to grind out his opponent.

As we closed out this year's Fall Brawl with a fitting webcam happy hour to swap stories of bad beats, we took a moment to welcome our newest Lord of the Pit, Tim Baran, to the crew. Tim made his debut at our December 2018 "Ice Storm Social" event and has been a Chicago mainstay ever since, battling in the realms of Old School, Middle School and Vintage. Lord Baran won the A.M. Vintage tournament at this years Lords Haüs.

Batch I Standings & OS95 Gallery

Batch II Standings & Gallery

Lords Friedman, Moss & Punts break down OS95 action from the Lords' Fall Brawl 2.5.