I Wheel into 5 lands and promptly die to Hippies and Juzams. In game 2, I have double Strip Mine to keep him off blue mana, and fortunately for me, he drew mostly blue cards. I get Axel down to 6 in game 3 before he stabilizes and starts his come back. Having a board of 7 Mountains, I gamble and Detonate his Chaos Orb, hoping he just takes 2. Unwilling to “waste” the Orb on a mountain, he takes the 2 damage. A goblin carrying a grenade finishes the job. Joey (from Round 2) comes over to console Axel with a shot and a beer.

3-2

Round 6 - Nam from Cleveland (Black Blue Aggro)

At this point, I’m feeling pretty good about being above 50% with an unpowered deck. I have also played against entirely gracious opponents, a trend that continues with Nam. He floods a little bit in game 1, and 2 1/1 goblins go the distance. In game 2, his 4 Mishra’s Factory draw lines up perfectly against my sorcery-only draw (Chain Lightning your face… I guess???).

Game 3 ends with him beating me down with a Hypnotic Specter, an Order of the Ebon Hand, and a Mishra’s Factory. On the penultimate turn, he’s at 7, and I’m holding Ball Lightning, Detonate, and a Goblin Grenade. He has an Aeopile protecting him from Ball Lightning. I Detonate the Aeopile, which he flings at my face. He has Terror for the Ball Lightning anyway, so I was behind no matter what. On his turn, my three Howling Mines provide him with enough Dark Rituals to pump his Ebon Hand for the win.

3-3

Round 7 - Ted (Mono Black)

This round is for all, or rather some, of the marbles. Can I clear my first Old School event with a winning record? Sadly, no. I think Ted and I are racing in game 1 until he Dark Rituals out a Drain Life to put him safely out of burn range. Game 2 begins with a classic “we both drew 3 Strip Mines” crawl, but ends in nail-biting fashion. He’s at 2 for three turns while cracking in with a Mishra’s Factory. My last four draws turn out to be Mountain, Mountain, Ankh, Ankh, and I end the day at 3-4.

3-4

Wrap Up

So now we come to the important question. Would I run it back? Absolutely, yes. The event was well run (thanks, Jaco!), the people were nice, and the venue was fantastic. The day had a similar feel to a good cubing session - everyone took it seriously, but only in service of having a good time.

As for the decks themselves, yes, most people have some amount of power in their decks, but power is by no means necessary to compete. Neither is having the oldest versions of your cards. I played against plenty of Revised, Chronicles, and Foreign White Bordered cards. No cares what your deck looks like, except maybe you. That was reassuring.

In light of that, I am going to change my card acquisition strategy and start picking up some Revised/Chronicles staples. I ran Detonates instead of Shatters, largely because I could afford 3 Antiquities Detonates but not 3 Beta Shatters. That cost me a few games. The Eternal Flames also should have been Fireballs or Earthquakes to deal with all the 2/1’s running around. Again, that was somewhat of an aesthetic choice, but I also overvalued the damage from Eternal Flame (who has 4 Mountains in play when everyone is blowing up everyone else’s lands?).

Speaking of Revised cards, the next big hurdle on the horizon is Duals. In the 4 Strip Mine meta, it seems irresponsible to run a 2+ color deck without as much fixing as possible. As I work my way towards a playset of really any Revised Dual, I’ll just keep jamming the mono-colored beats and hoping for the best.

Until next time...