Brooding in the tower Watching o'er his land Holding ev'ry creature Helplessly they stand Gaze into his prisms Knowing they are near Lead them to the dungeons Spectres numb with fear They bow defeated _ ~ Rush, The Necromancer_

The days grow short as autumn descends. After our summer’s-long hiatus, a quartet of hearty mages Gathered to again test their mettle with OS-EDH. The setting moved from Moss’ stronghold in Logan Square to EDH neophyte Bob Agra’s West Town abode. Would our time away and new blood yield technological innovation? A light rain drizzled Sunday morning as the generals assembled with their chosen Elder Dragons:

• Piquard: Arcades Sabboth (Bant)
• Agra: Odahviing, the Soaring (Jeskai)
• Moss: Palladia-Mors (Naya)
• Semmens: Vaevictis Asmadi (Jund)

G1: Copper Tablet Supremacy

We began innocently enough, with Tool’s Fear Inoculum on the stereo and a typical land-go, land-go start. Moss deployed Copper Tablet, promising to do his part to speed up the game. Then Semmens placed his own Tablet on the battlefield and thus each combatant took a Shock on his upkeep. Piquard did his utmost to staunch the bleeding, playing both Wooden Sphere and Ivory Cup. Bob burned an early Power Sink on Shane’s Powerleech, drawing a nonplussed reaction from his opponents. We then saw our first piece of new tech: Soul Net! After consultation with numerous artificers, Piquard decided to see if the Soul Net’s lifegain from creature removal could put him over the top. Ultimately, the artifact would serve as card draw fodder for the Sage of Lat Nam.

With our white-heavy roster (feat. Bant, Jeskai & Naya), we settled into a removal-heavy game that saw many Tranquility, Dust to Dust, Desert Twister (Forked, no less), Disenchants, Divine Offerings, and so on. Bob’s Hive Detonated in his own hands. Tablets continued to whittle away. Piquard cast Karma to put Semmens near critical, then Shane responded with a mighty Earthquake that served as his own death blow but left all remaining players in dire condition. Bob followed by KO’ing Piquard, and stood at 5 lives to Moss’ 6. After some rules lawyering by Moss, Odahviing remained grounded on his side of the battlefield, rendered helpless by a combination of Gravity Sphere and Moat.* Bob went for the pyrrhic victory, attempting to use Inferno to draw the game, but a timely use of the humble Crumble onto his own Copper Tablet let Moss survive the conflagration and eek out the victory in game one.

*Odahviing’s ability states that if he attacks, he gives all other attacking creatures flying. However, Gravity Sphere removes flying from Odahviing, so with Moat the dragon is precluded from attacking.

G2: Living Planes, Dead Game

Thanks to a pair of Tablets, game one moved along briskly and the generals decided to squeeze in another round before Bob had to skedaddle to Soldier Field. Game two was anything but brisk, as it quickly devolved into a degenerate control match favoring the Naya wizard and an early Power Surge. Shane soon thereafter played Living Lands, which upped the anxiety level immensely. Not only did all lands enter the battlefield with summoning sickness (a ruling that Moss nearly angle shot to play a Powerleech before being called out during the Actually Phase), but all lands became susceptible to the many forms of removal. Bob played a Rod of Ruin, which was quickly dispatched. We knew Earthquake loomed in Shane’s deck, plus he had Pyramids to protect his own stash. Moss first unleashed Tsunami, then Pyrotechnics, then Falling Star onto Agra and Piquard, the effect of which was to keep their blue and white mana bases from developing. Wrath of God was a boogeyman that threatened to end the game entirely. Meanwhile, Bob played a Manabarbs which served to speed up, and later end the game via submission after Moss used Regrowth to replay Power Surge and capture a second victory. The power level of enchantments in this game proved too much. Even with multiple Tranquilities, Disenchants, Chaos Orbs and Nev’s Disks in the field, they didn’t appear in a timely enough fashion to clear out enchantments' destabilizing effects. Living Plane + myriad direct damage spells were particularly devastating.

Takeaways

Creatures were essentially useless on the day, which focused heavily on defensive positioning, resource denial, global damage dealing, board-warping effects and X-spells. Not even in a utility role were creatures functional as Shane’s Willow Satyr, Bob’s Aladdin and Piquard’s Rubinia Soulsinger netted zero stolen permanents. Moss callously forewent using any creatures to push Naya’s enchantment package to its very limit. At our next OS-EDH meetup, we’ll try a “creatures first” iteration that will make use of a Victory Points mini-game akin to the Djinn-Efreet War variant originated by InQuest Magazine and later detailed here and here by Eternal Central. This project has been in development by our OS-EDH crew for a few months and the timing now seems right to give it a whirl.

The Ball

The following is a report replete with unimportant ramblings, minutia over the last three cards in the 76, stories of punts, and of course moments of immense skill (read: luck). More than anything, it is the reminiscing of Gathering with good friends over a shared niche hobby. Indeed, it is the Gathering that the Lords of the Pit provide over all else that makes this thing special. Replace the cards with clubs and carts and the Old School Players Ball could resemble a sweaty charity golf tournament somewhere in central Alabama between ever older (and often ever rounder) college buddies escaping the demands of life. The cards are the shared passion that brought everyone together, but it is the people that keep us coming back.

Prepare to Get Balled

The Ball is the event of the year for U.S. Old School.  A "championship" title or prize payout would only lessen its stature. Naturally, it has been on my calendar the entire year, joining only one other Lords’ event, Madison Offensive III, I could attend. Life comes at you fast and the opportunity to jam Old School has diminished as the distance between the Chicagoan Mecca and my domicile has increased. All the more reason I was stoked to pull some cards together, obsessively rearrange them, and make a run for a third straight Old School Player’s Ball Top 8.

What to play? As my previous post can attest, The Deck of decks is my true Old School love. It is one of the first decks I built and I’ve tinkered with different variations off and on for years in events both big and small. I enjoy playing it, especially in tight matches. I also have a bunch of reps that could potentially offset the heaping tons of rust gathered on my already limited skills. I have also been slowly trading off a bunch of underused cards to upgrade staples over the past year and it would be awfully fine to throw down with those beat-to-hell Beta Counterspells. On the other hand, the Ball would be an opportunity to reconnect with folks and a faster deck would mean more time between rounds to catch up and slam some beers. I ran a RUG aggro list at the inaugural Ball and enjoyed casting Apes and Stripping lands well enough and there was plenty of extra time. At this year’s Madison Offensive, I ran Power Monolith but the combo is always less fun than I imagine and I was left wanting up in the frozen north for something… more.  Given the recent scarcity of chances to play, I decided to sleeve up my partner of choice for another spin on the ball room floor.

Having settled on The Deck, I put a whopping five games of prep in via a camjam session with the preeminent Mossman who promptly burned a hole in my dome with his Big Red deck. After collecting myself from the long distance balling, I was not sure the exact 76 to pull together. One COP Red or two was a question the entire Old School internet and I considered. Beyond the COP shenanigans, there were a few considerations running through my mind. First, EC Old School and especially the Midwest player base were likely to skew heavily towards aggro and aggro control. This is normal for the event and is why I usually build The Deck the way I do - lots of cheap one-for-one removal to survive while the mana base is under threat. Then slowly stabilize, get that beautiful card advantage machine online, and flip-flop go the life totals. Second, blue-based Workshops were putting up a ton of finishes and the East Coasters were jamming away with it. The previous year I was handily run over by Shops and wanted to be ready this year despite not having any reps against it since. Finally, the Atog menace. Very fast damage, plenty of burn, and hits mana hard. After spending too much of time daydreaming I snapped a picture of 76 based on last year’s list, shoved it in a deck box, and threw a bunch of maybes into a box of middle school decks and a carefully packaged Revised 40 list.

The Nerds Descend

Per custom, a bunch of nerds rallied the night before to jam with Contract From Below, Middle School, or just get some Old School reps in.  DMen Tap bulged past capacity as the sweathogs rolled in.  Uncharacteristically, I played very little MTG that evening. I was too focused on seeing old friends, telling stories, and squeezing to the bar. All the better. I can always camjam to play some Old School, but there are only a few times a year I can feel the warm embrace of the mtgmeatball himself, Mr. Carter Petray. That evening I was glad to see the venerable Danny Friedman escaping from the hellscape that is Texas. Danny is a good friend and we regularly vie for the title of “luckiest player alive.” After discussion of the downsides of living in the furnaces below the Mason-Dixon Line, Danny’s voice lowered and asked “are you on The Deck tomorrow?”  Danny is known for being an exceptionally tight player and running control decks with very few (or plain bad) win conditions and here was an opportunity for the two of us to nerd out on the minutiae of card selection. What luck! We got to catch-up and I could make some last minute changes to my list.

Danny, being the unconventional genius he is, was all in on a great heresy: no Factories and a reduced land count to maximize gas.  Moat would jam opposing Factories, facilitating 49 minutes of durdle before a big ol’ Fireball or Mirror tricks.  The reduced count enabled some slots in the main to explore. I was excited about trying it, but lacked the gumption to cut all the Factories. That night I settled on two Factories in the main, a Divine Offering to boost the Workshop and Atog matchups an unperceivable smidge, and a Red Blast for shits and giggles. And let’s be honest, if the opponent is not on blue, a dead 61st card probably doesn’t matter. I put Moat in the board and kept Abyss in the main. Shane, the best dude in Old School Magic, loaned a last-minute, Beta Copy Artifact (to replace a Fellwar Stone), an English Moat and a third Divine Offering.

The real goodness lurked deeper in my sideboard. I still wanted an option to finish fast so two fatties made the cut. First, the MVP of any list, Shivan Dragon, which is pretty much an auto-include for its level of 3rd grade badassery. Second, an Alpha Serra Angel because she is the actual right choice being able to block after attacking and can’t get BEB’d. But most importantly, the aforementioned great dude Shane once loaned that Alpha Angel to me for an event years ago. Afterward, I paid Mr. Shuler a pittance to Sharpie his signature on the card mistaking it for my own less-impressive Beta Angel. Lessons were learned. I became the sheepish owner of a Sharpied Alpha Angel, and Shane received a new Angel in two business days. And no, I don’t know why Shane is still loaning me cards.  Finally, Aladdin made the cut again – because IF you have two red available, and IF he lives, and IF your opponent has artifacts, he just might find some utility.  But no matter the usefulness, he is always awesome.  Skip to the end if you want final impressions of this half-Frankenstein configuration.

Strap on Those Dancing Shoes

I woke up the next morning, shook off the IPA-induced fog, and suited up. The lovely jts_mtg_alters accompanied me to meet with several other denim-clad Lords for some breakfast chimichangas. There was good revelry, bloody hammers, and plenty of coffee. This would be everyone’s third Ball, and there were no illusions as to the need to fuel up before eight rounds at a venue such as Revolution with their variety of beers on tap. After breakfast was a short walk on a 70-degree morning to the Blue Line and we hopped over to Revolution Tap Room where we said goodbye to the sun and hello to the masses.

The Ball was insane as always as Big Brain Bob and Jason the Jaco put on great events. We were greeted at the door and got registered as we entered, handed an information sheet including food delivery options and some sweet OSPB swag. This year’s fundraising efforts were amplified with a raffle with a CE Chaos Orb as a prize. For me, this year was a little different now that I no longer reside in Chicago. The emphasis shifted from meeting new folks to reconnecting with old friends. In eight rounds of Swiss+1, I was happy to face off against three Lords in a hazy bid to ball or be balled. The following is what I estimate a mostly accurate account of the rounds.

Round 1 – Nick “I “Like Pink” Rohr (1-0)

Round one, I faced Chicago stalwart Nick Rohr on Big Pink Burn.  There was solid catching up between us as The Deck did Decklike things. Multiple Blood Moons resolved, but the basic Plains in his list turned on my Fellwar Stone, plus my basics and Moxen gave me lots of outs. Especially post board with three BEBs. If there isn’t associated pressure, four ‘Mountains’ draw a card with Tome as well as four Islands to find the answer. The last game highlighted this well: two Blood Moons were on board with Nick at nine lives and me somewhere around 10. Once he got pressure, I made a move on his end step to double Disenchant the Moons to unlock Bolt-Bolt-Regrowth-Bolt for the win.

Round 2 – Brandon on White Weenie (2-0)

Round two, I faced off against Brandon on an EC classic, White Weenie.  WW has not been as prominent lately and I have fond memories of it running me over in the finals of Eternal Weekend 2016. The Deck delivered and overcame crazy starts by Brandon with lots of one-for-ones, into Balance, into other grossness to finish with the Angel.  Brandon was a great opponent and I was happy to see him break the Top 16 at the end of the day.

Round 3 – My man, that motherfucker Ray (3-0)

Ray is the tits. We sat down. We chatted. We laughed. We compared our jts_mtg_alters Cities of Brass. We punted. But I won in two.

Round 4 – Michael on 4C Zoo (4-0)

Round four I faced Michael Scheffenacker on 4C good stuff. This match is where the rust really started to show, but Michael is a solid player and I love the opportunity to play against experts. Games 1 and 2 culminated in big spells, Mind Twist game one as The Deck took control, and a Time Walk-Twister-Mind Twist move from Michael that KO’d me game 2.  Unfortunately, the round ended in time, only the second time I have suffered such a fate. Even when I was lucky enough to play regularly, my Orb flips have always been mediocre (some would say embarrassing). Given my lack of practice, I was not excited to Orb flip a round. But Revolution was playing one of my jams and I sang along and flipped five or six enroute to victory.

Note: I lost count but up to here I mulliganed a ton and would continue to do so throughout the day. I am curious if the missing two Factories affected the mana that much or if in my rustiness I was making too many decisions to shuffle back seven acceptable cards.

Round 5 – Danny. (5-0)

I just knew it would happen. I knew I would have to face Danny. I basically learned to play The Deck by getting punished by Danny in bars around Chicago with his various control stews. Danny is a master of patience. He will account for all the lines and will not be rushed into making a move. In the mirror, often the one that moves first is punished terribly. Danny and I laugh on the way to our table, and we consider randomly determining the winner to just drink some beers and hang out. But we couldn’t do that. This was a great matchup waiting to happen. I am for the first time excited about the main deck REB. Danny less so.

Game one is always interesting given that we are both pre-boarded against aggro decks. There will be plenty of blanks, especially on my end without even Factories to hit with the three main deck Swords. Danny puts the clinic on during game one. The game was long, and every now and then, I almost got close but it was just always out of my grasp. I slipped into a position where I had to start running bombs into likely answers because they were the only way back in. Danny suffocated me out and it was a truly awesome time. We went to board and I think 10 cards came in including all three creatures and Dust to Dust. Danny does not believe in Dust to Dust given its mana cost and sorcery speed, but I think it is amazing in the mirror. I resolved it killing two mana sources early and it was a huge 2:1 swing.  Game 2 was another grinder but the luck was stronger on my side of the table. Serra and Shivan ended it together in glorious Old School flavoring.

Game three starts with a time remaining warning from Jaco. I think six minutes. Shit. Danny is resigned to flips, I remark that “we’ll see” and ask him to play quick. I really don’t want to press the luck on flips with a master. The Force is strong with me and turn one Ancestral steals the title of “Luckiest Player.” I have some early interaction then run out my MAIN MAN, Aladdin. I cannot stop laughing. We are locked in an epic struggle and one of my favorite childhood cards arrives to kick ass and take names. Danny has some mana rocks, but the one point of damage seems like a better line and I turn the little dude sideways.  The game is up in the air at this point and Danny has a grip but the clock is ticking. The Deck delivers the Dragon right off the top. The inner lizard brain says do it and I immediately run it out. No answer. Those early beats mattered and Aladdin and the Dragon swing in for lethal in two turns. Aladdin had stranded powerful artifacts in Danny’s hands and the insane clock of Shivan got the deed done quick. I get a beer with seconds to spare.

Round 6 – Aaron “The Champ” West (5-1)

I sit down across from Aaron, the reigning champion of the Ball. I knew he was good, but I learned he is also an all-around awesome dude. This was my favorite non-Danny round. I got to play against a great player, across three tight games, and every moment was enjoyable. This is because Aaron was a pleasure to hang with. The match ends staring down a Mishra’s Factory on two life with no answer. Aaron would continue to roll and become the back-to-back champ.

Round 6.5 – Bobby the Brain on R40 Mind Twists

I find Bob, true master of tournament organizing and self-proclaimed master of Revised 40, a putrid format for only the grimiest of ballers. We throw some cards down across a barrel of booze and get to it. I ball Bob back to the Stone Age with my raw, unsleeved Revised powerhouse and get to tattoo his ante cards in both games. This dumbest-of-all-formats ended up being a blast between rounds as I later battled David and Ray. Getting to memorialize the games with a Sharpie and the carefree, sleeveless riffles is true joy.

Round 7 – Matt on 4C Aggro (5-2)

I slide over from the barrel back to a table and face Matt on another 4C deck featuring Lions, Dibs… you know the crew.  I don’t remember all the details here besides a pretty spectacular punt. With an Underground Sea in-hand, land drop to give, and six lands on-board, I ran a moat into four open mana. Guess who forgot about Power Sink despite playing it at a previous Ball?  That’s right, this guy.

Round 8 – Sonny on Red (6-2)

I saddle up with Sonny for the final round. We immediately start bullshitting and enjoy the last round. Memory is definitely no longer complete. But I know game one The Deck delivered me a timely main deck Mirror Universe instead of that REB lurking in there to flip totals and steal a quick W. Game two I overload on Blue Blasts and bring in the Dragon. It is a quick one and the last round expires against a fun opponent. The sun had long since retired.

Three for Three

My 6-2 record squeaked over the line for a third Top 8 finish to defend the dignity of the Lords. Newly-minted Lord Ian Blank cracked the creative Top 8, maintaining a minimum of honor in Chicago. A Gathering of long-toothed Lords quickly boogied out of Rev to grab some beef mountains at Kuma’s and another round or two recalling inflated stories of balling.

To Deck or Not to Deck?

If you are interested in playing a Deck variant, I highly recommend it.  The decision trees are large, all the busted cards are there, and the sweathogs will boo the shit out of you. It’s great. In terms of this year’s list, I would not run it back exactly. The matches I lost or those that were close were almost always because of Factory. Having Factories of my own to block or a main deck Moat (or two) over Abyss would probably be better. Also, under mana pressure from Strips, I am not sold cutting land drops is the right move. The main deck REB never mattered, although it scared Danny. If it had, it would have been an awesome blowout and therefore maybe worth it just for the photos. The one card I really liked was Copy Artifact over Fellwar Stone. Low downside, high upside. Dust to Dust was great. Seeing both Danny and Will Magrann’s list, I am surprised by their use of Twister. I do not like draw 7s in The Deck (despite their fun).

As Shane astutely noted at the Contracts meetup prior to the Ball, none of these card decisions really matter. Playing tight with any of these configurations will work. He is undoubtedly correct but it’s fun to labor over a few cards, change a bunch at the last minute, and then get balled.

Many thanks to the Lords and all who are in on the joke of Old School. This year’s Ball was a hell of an event and Bob, Jaco, Nathan, Carter, Mossman, Shane, etc. all deserve big ups. Best of all, none of Shane’s cards were inadvertently defaced this go around.

• @mtg_beers_punts

The Lords recount their thrills & spills from OSPB3 weekend before turning the page to OS95 and B&R news.

Five Preachers, four Forks, three dudes, two days to go, and one CoP Red story!

It’s Old School Players Ball week! As our anticipation crescendos, we are pleased to provide this retrospective of the ‘18 Ball by Cam Wall, known brewer, lover of strong coffee and dear friend of the Lords. Thanks for sharing, Cam!

Once more into the breach, my brothers and sisters. The third Old School Players Ball is less than a week away and the Lords have graciously allowed me to Hack the Gibson with my time machine and tell you about my experience at last year’s Ball.

My first foray into the national OS Magic scene was at the 2018 Ball. I spent some formative mid-90s years in NW Illinois (go Freeport Pretzels!) and talked my dad into travelling to Chicago with me to see family and friends before the Ball. I dropped him off in Savanna on Friday morning and started off on my drive through the rolling cornfields of Central Illinois, listening to old episodes of All Tings Considered.

I got into the City Friday afternoon and checked into an Airbnb in Logan Square. I first met up with Bill Schriver, a Lord of the Pit I’d chatted with via Discord. We got some coffees and sat down to battle. I had mono-red goblins and a GW control build, but Bill busted out 4C Enchantress on my ass. As he played, as I mostly watched, we talked about the City and our respective entries into OS. It was a great start to the weekend and as we bro-hugged at the end of our session, I could feel the excitement of the weekend kicking in.

I met up with my two Airbnb mates, alterist Dustin Brossard and ‘19 Summer Derby Champ Jared Doucette, and we swapped deck techs and travel complaints. Jared split off to partake in Elliot Davidoff’s fully black-bordered cube while Dustin and I went to an impromptu Friday night Lords meet-up.

The events of that night are a little hazy, but highlights include:

Brendon Bowersox giving swimming lessons to his Alpha Chaos Orb;

Cayce Grissom repeatedly Bolting me, giving a cheer in that Southern drawl with each one;

Mano’s kidney stone debacle;

Carter’s new LOTP sigil tattoo; and

Making about 50 new friends.

I Goblin Grenaded everything in sight but the games didn’t really matter. No one cared who won or lost, they just wanted to hang out and play with friends. This would be a recurring theme from the weekend. Dustin and I somehow made it back to our Airbnb and we re-tooled his deck based on Duals he had traded alters for that evening.

We awoke Saturday morning, picked up Winston Wood and Mark Brothers, two OS staples from the Free State of Texas, and grabbed breakfast at a local diner. As we slammed chicken fried steaks, we talked about our decks and snuck a few quick games in. Citanul Druid made an appearance and, to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was walking into.

We arrived at Revolution a few minutes before noon and spied a horde of 30-something guys sporting backpacks, cargo shorts, and black denim vests. The event organizer, “Azorius” Bob Agra, handed us our registration slips and Ball patches, and in we went.

I’d recently acquired a set of CE P9 and thought to try it out at the Ball... but I also love Force of Nature. I know it’s a bad card but I keep coming back to it. I built a GW control shell around it, using Sylvan Library, Land Tax, Circle of Protection: Green, and Spirit Link. I hoped to show my new friends that OS isn’t about the cards you play but how you play them.

Again, I only remember a few highlights from this event, but what sticks out in my mind is the number of hugs, handshakes and great conversations.  As anyone could probably guess, I got shelled by Serendibs, Lightning Bolts and Nether Voids and basically every other deck I came across. I lost to Kobolds when my Chaos Orb was Artifact Blasted (I didn’t even know that card existed prior). I lost to Bob’s prison build. (I cast a Black Lotus for three mana though!) I lost to Stasis. I lost to a Shivan Dragon.  At the end of the day I was in last place and I could not have cared less. I got a group-signed Preacher for my deck originality and more beers than I could count from my awesome opponents.

The Ball was one of the top five days of my life. Even now I have a hard time articulating the feelings that day left me with. I cannot wait to see all the pictures and hear all the stories from this years’ Ball!

To all my friends, I hope you have as good of a time as I did.

Cam

Check back with lordsofthepit.com throughout this week as we provide additional pre-Ball hype. We’ll see you soon!

In my preteen to middle teenage years I lived for Gaming Saturdays. The inconvenience of weekdays with their homework deadlines, nagging teachers and social minefields melted away Friday nights before the anticipation of a Saturday. This was the mid-1990s and there were many games: Magic: The Gathering, of course, but also TSR's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Games Workshop's Warhammer or Blood Bowl, Decipher's Star Wars Customizable Card Game, White Wolf's Rage plus whatever over-hyped and under-cooked non-MTG game WOTC burned shelf space with that month. On Saturdays I'd wake excited and after breakfast either catch a ride from my stepmom in our ‘94 Dodge Caravan, forest green, or I'd strap my card box, source books and/or miniatures case to my bike and hit the pavement. The destination would be one of several comic or card shops around my hometown.

Like so many of us, my original hometown “LGS” was actually a comic book store, The Comic Shoppe Plus, to be exact. My foray into comics began as a wee man circa 1991 and places like the Shoppe were to me equal parts Shangri-La and El Dorado. The rows upon stacks upon rows of comics dwarfed the single rack at the local drug store. Highly detailed, gothic statues of sci-fi/horror (think Freddy & Jason) stars with their impossibly exorbitant price tags sat behind the counter… who could possibly afford such treasures? Miniatures and modules beckoned from shelves and pegboard walls. Older kids hung out here. They wore all black. They smelled of cigarette smoke. This was a dangerous place. It was all too much to take in and all too much for my meager paper route money to handle. I bought my first starter deck of Revised and, to quote Vonnegut from Slaughterhouse Five, "so it goes." Little did I know then that I would be hooked on such underground “geek” properties for the rest of my life.

Herein lies the forgotten role of a place like The Comic Shoppe Plus or those myriad other baseball card, coin, toy and junk shops, the brick-and-mortar gathering places we relied on in our youth to meet with other geekily-inclined kids. Unlike today, when Marvel Studios is an economic powerhouse, when Star Wars has its own Housewares section at Target and when D&D and MTG are mere balance sheet entries for a publicly-traded company, in those late ‘80s or early-to-mid ‘90s days, you really had to search in your town’s underground to find the other “geek kids” that would spend an afternoon quoting MST3K and Spaceballs or dissecting The X-Files and Dragonlance novels around the gaming table with you. A Saturday afternoon spent gaming could get me through a week spent in the regular world where I knew some people with passing familiarity or interest in the same stuff as me, but where I always felt I was the most “into” the stuff I liked and nobody else truly understood my obsessions.

Returning the focus to Magic, what would later become "Old School" but what then simply existed as all there was, let’s quickly remember that in the early days we didn’t travel with a single deckbox of 75 heaters, we brought all our cards to the shop! Our entire collection, the whole enchilada. One way to measure the seriousness of the dude was by the size of his card box. I began as most did, with a shoebox + rubber bands before embracing the technological and origami-cal elegance of the single row, folded cardboard box before graduating to the double row, lidded box, packed with bulk from Ice Age, Fallen Empires and Alliances boosters, all that bumping elbows with shittier CCGs. Booster boxes were massive capital outlays for me at the time but I didn’t grasp (or care about) the upside down conversion rate of Penny Savers delivered into alternate art copies of Goblin Grenade. Quantity over quality, in those days, was the route to a successful dick-measuring. In my local scene, we had a That Guy who would bring an unfathomable Four Row Box to the store. Young minds were flabbergasted; weren’t those intended solely for merchants? How could anyone compete against such an arsenal?

The quality of the actual gameplay in those days was crude and was really just a proxy for hanging out, telling jokes, quoting movies or doing impressions. My crowning technological innovation was to attack with Brass Man, then later have Stone Giant heave the tapped automaton at my opponent for extra damage. Brilliant! Sprawling, multi-player affairs could chew up an afternoon until a couple of us lingered, helping clean up the shop for a pack of Chronicles or some other pittance. Later, when people began to get cars, we could push the danger to another level by climbing into some late-‘80s sedan and heading off to anywhere we pleased. It's not like our parents had a way to contact us. Gradually, the older kids matriculated on, getting jobs or girlfriends, and fell by the wayside. Eventually, so did I.

The local shops closed down throughout the middle to late ‘90s. Comic Shoppe Plus, Phoenix Cards & Comics, M&M Comics, they all withered and died together with that initial mania centered on MTG and its spawn of wannabes. Then the most-successful of my area stores, Iguana’s Comic Book Cafe, an early pioneer in the sale of MTG singles via mail, closed in 2003. I’d purchased my booster box of Alliances at Iguana's, then hopeful for copies of the “new Juzam” that was Balduvian Horde yet ending up with a grip of Storm Crows. As an undergrad journalism student in 2003, I covered Iguana’s last day for The Daily Iowan. It was the end of an era.

The demise of brick and mortar retail is now widely understood. How many empty big boxes dot your city? The role of the gaming store as critical hub for geek culture gathering was replaced with numerous online platforms where individuals can emerge at will from any spider hole to engage in on-demand gameplay or shit-talk past each other from the comfort of an arm’s length. Immediacy has in some ways led us to become over-communicated yet under-connected. Perhaps this trendline doesn't stretch into the indefinite future, however. The explosive growth of retrospective Old School MTG formats over the past several years shows that, at some point, we have to come back around from this ephemeral, digital, disposable culture and return to a place where sharing something tactile with someone has value, where the physical act of sharing is the end goal.

Now that we've grown up, we have lives and responsibilities in the real world. Bills to pay, mouths to feed and so on. Yet those early impressions and experiences from the old stores remain and the desire, the anticipation to still Gather with like-minded geeks, gamers, collectors & weirdos endures, as evidenced by the upcoming third installment of our Old School Players Ball. Thus, our community thrives, built around people and around places and around the sharing of things. They are a part of what binds us, as much as any shared creedo or worldview. We forge friendships, not find opponents. The old stores are long gone but not those early memories. You may feel it, too, when you wake up on Saturday.

You can't go home again but that doesn't mean you can't take a piece of home with you.

The Lords are back to dissect the latest Middle School Marauders event, marvel over the artwork of Drew Tucker, fawn over the London Mulligan and speculate about new restrictions in Old School '95.

The generals surveyed their chosen battleground and the uncountable, disposable dead littering the blasted landscape like so many hailstones after a violent summer’s storm, and wondered aloud, “What devastation hath these powerful magicks wrought?”

The air smelled of garlic as four mages Gathered again at Moss' Logan Square stronghold for the June installment of our Neverending War. The evolving conflict stipulated no infinite combos for the night’s gaming and thus Time Vault and Basalt Monolith were banished. These battles would be fought and won in the trenches and in the skies via illicit incantations uncovered from forgotten spelltomes. The combatants and their generals assembled hence:

• Petray & Sahrotaar the Traitor
• Silenus & Palladia Mors
• Semmens & Vaevictis Asmadi
• Moss & Chromium

Game 1: Destroy All Monsters!

We filled our bellies with a pre-battle Italian feast (lasagna, garlic bread, antipasta + chopped salads) procured by Moss from the deli and freezer sections at Tony’s Finer Foods. After clearing the plates and crumbs, we shuffled our stacks and dove headfirst into OS-EDH to the soundtrack of stoner rock band, Greenleaf. Carter went supernova out of the gates, using Moxen, Timetwister, Sylvan Library, Time Walk, Mana Flare and Recall-Timetwister to race ahead with Stangg, Stangg Twin and Gerrard of the Closed Fist as potent threats. The Twisters had binned two Nev’s Disks and left Marty with a grip of seven lands. We had ourselves a target! The rest of the crew ganged up to subdue our Meatball: Moss landed Infernal Medusa, Nova Pentacle, Preacher, Time Elemental and Greater Realm of Preservation to mount a formidable defensive front. Marty took a beating early, but summoned General Palladia Mors to bolster his lines before unleashing Cyclone. Shane made use of Tawnos’ Coffin and Royal Assassin to battle the assault yet eventually succumbed to Carter’s blitz as the evening’s first casualty. Undaunted, Shane still graced us with the Ultimate Old School MTG card, Pyramids, forever cementing his status as the Grand Pharaoh of Pimp.

Interestingly, as we settled into the mid-game, all three remaining players were packing Urza’s Chalice! All four of combatants attended the Quest for Urza’s Chalice in California this past winter and so were sporting inked copies of this Antiquities chestnut. Another card that saw wide use was Candelabra of Tawnos. Both Marty and Carter cast them (Moss had one among his 100) and made potent use of Candelflare. The plot thickened, however, when Marty resolved Power Surge. In this supposed combo-less affair, we’d stumbled upon a forgotten supertechnology, using Candelabra to untap an opponent’s lands before the start of their turn to maximize Power Surge damage! Carter and Marty had exchanged haymakers all game, mostly because Moss ensconced himself behind high fortress walls, and now Marty exacted his revenge, making Carter pay for an earlier punt where he could’ve polished Marty off.

Marty slew the Meatball but was left depleted. Moss punched in with the Deathtouch-enabled Infernal Medusa, stoning Palladia Mors, before Marty resolved an Armageddon, one of several extra-legal plays made on the evening as the wizards haggled over ban list. Lands were laid waste and Chromium returned to the Command Zone but Moss still had the initiative with a swarm of Hive tokens. Marty accepted his fate, taken straight from the pages of The Wicker Man. Moss captured Game 1.

Game 2: Trench Warfare

We’d spun Pink Floyd “Animals,” being subjected to Meatball’s keening, singalong wail, and moved into “Ass Cobra” by Turbonegro before landing on Nirvana’s “Incesticide” during the follow-up game. By then we were deep into the mid-game, reset to one land, zero creatures. Moss and Meatball had previously run bone-dry on lands while Marty ran roughshod with a Turn 1, Lotus-powered Johan. Then he built on that advantage assembling an Agrivian Archaeologist-Chaos Orb lock. Moss consulted with Demonic Tutor whose lesson was a devastating Balance. Carter followed with Titania’s Song, resulting in the evening's most-entertaining (mis)play where he cast Remove Soul onto Marty’s would-be 5/5 Gauntlets of Chaos.*

(*Upon further review, this shouldn’t have been a legal play because Gauntlets isn’t an Artifact Creature on the stack and therefore isn’t counterable by Remove Soul, but it makes for good storytelling nonetheless.)

Nobody had advantage, though Moss paced the field at 56 life thanks to early work by Ivory Tower and Chalice. Carter then raised a call-to-arms for the field to gang up on their talented chef and gracious host. Shane cast Eureka, dropping Aladdin’s Ring. Moss dropped Serpent Generator. Marty played a land. Suddenly, Meatball went ham, dropping Shivan Dragon, Sahrotaar (in-hand because of an earlier Time Elemental bounce by Moss), Book of Rass and Gerrard! Marty again cast Power Surge, plus Karma, and the field made swift work of Moss, dealing 40+ points of damage in two rounds. Sensing his doom, Moss Flooded Marty’s 9/9 Angry Mob, then launched a 10/10 Dakkon Blackblade-led offensive, crippling both mages.

The turn then passed to Shane, who launched a near-lethal assault on Marty, but twin Mazes of Ith (Marty’s + Carter’s) kept the ailing wizard afloat, albeit it at one life. Then, with his final act, Moss used a remaining Trike counter to deliver the ol’ slap-n-pop, the coup de grace, to Marty. Carter bulldozed Moss on the next turn and we were left with Meatball vs. Shane. The cagey veterans settled into a back-and-forth, Carter working a creature advantage. Shane then pulled his namesake Semmens Maneuver with Mirror Universe, followed by Hurricane for the win. The dust settled and the Jund wizard prevailed, capturing Game 2, his third such OS-EDH triumph.

Takeaways

Banning primary combo pieces (Basalt Monolith & Time Vault) for one evening resulted in our games playing much more like Risk, where temporary allegiances, resource advantage and incremental territorial accrual are the keys to success. And just like in Risk, tensions ran high and nerves got raw; this is part of the allure of OS-EDH. In both of the evening’s games, early actors were stamped down and patience prevailed. These games didn’t stall out for too long, however, as there were enough threats to punch through most defensive positions. Both battles clocked in at a palatable 90 minutes. We were pleased to see all four Elder Dragon Legends summoned and relevant and at one point the whole quartet simultaneously soared the skies over the battlefield! Complicated board states, targeting optionality and diverse interactions made for satisfying and entertaining play. It allowed our crew to pursue creative paths to victory. It was an enjoyable respite from the sudden, jarring “everybody’s dead” conclusion of infinite combos.

Plus, who doesn’t love Tokens?

Roll Call

Progress continues in our crusade to Make Creatures Great Again. Here’s a Legends-heavy shoutout to the gnarliest creatures to prowl the battlefield at this Gathering:

• Angry Mob (biggest, 9/9)
• Breeding Pit Tokens
• Dakkon Blackblade (biggest, 11/11)
• Gaea’s Avenger (biggest, 13/13)
• Gerrard of the Closed Fist
• Halfdane
• Infernal Medusa
• Johan
• Lady Evangela
• Lady of the Mountain
• Master of the Hunt & Wolf Tokens
• Sengir Vampire
• Serpent Generator Tokens
• Sunastian Falconer
• Stangg & Stangg Twin
• Veteran Bodyguard
• Xira Arien

Interested in more OS-EDH coverage? Peep our dedicated OS-EDH section for rules details, downloadable custom Elder Dragon Legends, and more links to OS-EDH battle reports!

Lords Moss, Agra and Rohr run down Solocon/Old School Singleton, Revised 40, the London Mulligan, Fifi Nono, and Luther Manhole.

Tonight, on Pitcast: OS heartthrob Cam joins Moss and Meatball on a haunted road-trip through the heartland of America to the fabled Bootleggers Ball.