The other day I was once again forced to try new things. I know! And in the middle of my summer holidays, no less! Scandalous, but as long as it is primarily new things, but kept within the realm of Magic, I guess it is okay.
Some of it was within the realm of Magic, as Peter W had invited the Metageyser crew, my Wednesday Wizards, to celebrate his latest circumvention of the Sun.
Ah yes – drinking, playing Magic, in the middle of Summer, with good friends even? What is not to like?
New things
Nothing, as it would turn out. Or one thing actually, but I will get back to that.
Seven wizards including one that had left a year ago, and an exile wizard living in Copenhagen, had announced their participation in the festivities. We would start out with some fine dining in the form of “Triskeloni” pasta and loads of parmesan.
And then the evening was to go down with a modern triathlon containing all the most classic and traditional Danish disciplines: Ice cream kicking, lumberjack darts and Mono Splash Old School Magic.
Three disciplines of which I only had very quaint knowledge on one: Darts. I have a dart board in my basement. I don’t use it very often, but that was pretty much how much preparation I had for the event.
Okay, even though there was fierce competition, epic moments, legendary comebacks and great sportsmanship (as well as the very opposite of great sportsmanship), I will not go into too much detail on the first two disciplines. For this blog, it seems a lot more meaningful to focus on the third and last discipline: the Mono Splash Old School Magic.
But first just a couple of pictures from the first – and possibly most insanely Peter W-ish thing I have ever done:
I must admit that I had never kicked an unpacked box of vanilla-flavored ice cream before – and for an ice cream lover like myself, it felt very wrong! As a side-note one of my only grievances with Peter is that he is not a dessert and sweets kind-of-guy. That is not my jam. Seems sketchy.
But after the dust settled and the garden had been sprayed thoroughly with ice cream, I emerged as a clear winner. 21 meters! The runner-up had only achieved a measly 18 meters. I guess I should apply for the National Team for this!
For Darts I did extremely poorly. I have no idea about how to play it, and everytime I missed the specific goal of the round I halved my points. I think I ended on around 10 points. At most.
And that is where the Magic happened
Having finished the two first disciplines, it was time to play some Magic. I had scored myself a host of points in the first discipline, the next one not so much, and no-one knew how the score or the tournament structure was about to be anyway. In short: I ended up having an amount of points after having played against four out of six opponents, and then I went home as it was around 2.30 at this point.
But, I am getting ahead of myself. What I actually wanted to write a little about here today, was the format we were playing. Or rather the changes Peter had made to the normal Old School format when building our decks.
We had to obey the following rules:
- No power
- Mind Twist and Library of Alexandria banned
- Maze of Ith and Mishra’s Factory restricted
- A maximum of five non-colored cards
- A maximum of ten cards of one color other than the main color of your deck
- Up to eight copies of each of the following bangers of cards: Fasting, Tangle Kelp, Burrowing, Fear, Carnivorous Plant (Peter W favorites!)
Then it was on to the drawing board!
There was some chatter in our Messenger thread about not being cool if playing combo at such an event. So of course I started out designing a combo deck. This:
The two card backsides should obviously be two more Prodigal Sorcerers. For some reason I only own two rather strange copies of that card… Someone must have four Beta copies for me out there…
Of course all decks in this format are very, very low-powered, but most of what you build can make for an excellent time of playing some true Kitchen Table Magic. This one – even though it is a combo deck with an infinite combo – is very much also Kitchen Table. You have to jump through so many hoops that if you finally manage to actually assemble the combo. You are boss. Also a combo deck with walls… And that Instill Energy just doing a whole lot of great things. And Time Elemental to get back stuff you have played early on, to use it for the combo instead? Yeah!
Instill Energy is one of Peter Ws favorite cards.
My second design was a take on one of the decks I have previously played having great fun:
Here, it was really difficult that I had only ten black cards available. I would have loved to also play some amount of Evil Eye of Orms-By-Gore in here, but I opted for the Pestilence instead. There is not really that much to say about this deck, I think. I actually think it may be the strongest of the three decks I am showing you here tonight, but I only got to play one of them.
Because I decided to play this:
Yes. A non-powered Flower Power CandleFlare Deck. Complete with an altered Mana Flare (of Peter’s design, don’t judge too harshly) and a card specifically of Peter. Of course The Pete of the Universe was legal.
I won this card at the latest installment of At the Mountains of Madness for being best placed Enchantress deck.
I think I should have won this tournament for most Peter-Themed deck at the very least.
Anyway, I tried to take advantage of the fact that the format is very light on Mishra’s Factories which makes the Drain Powers a lot more useful.
I won a couple of games with the deck – one with The Pete and one with a resolved Drain Power netting me 16 mana to then be able to play a Forked Fireball x=24. Great times!
But – and this is where that one thing was not to like: four out of seven players had opted to play Land Destruction decks. With armageddon. Booh. So I did poorly.
But who cares? The evening was not about winning. At least not about winning in Magic. It was an awesome night and it is always great fun to figure out new ways to play the cosiest format of the game.