The other night a total of five Old School slingers met up in a small pizza joint called Granfanally’s Pizza Pub in Salem, New Hampshire. The pizza is good, the garlic knots are insanely good, and the beer selection is somewhat small but surprisingly good for a pizza joint. It was the night after the election but there was no talk of politics. Instead, there was comradeship and good times that were had.

We all got our pizza and beers and sat down and socialized for a little while. Scott told us some pretty awesome tales of battling other wizards in the faraway land of Columbus, Ohio. He played in the Old School Eternal Weekend event. He even played a round against Randy Bueler. After we finished eating we wiped the grease off our hands it was dueling time. There were five people so one person had to sit out through each round but it worked out fine.

The Old School community in New England seems to be forming with a good foundation. We’ve decided on Granfanally’s as the regular meet up spot. It’s a pretty solid joint. It’s an equal drive for everyone but me. Everyone else drove about an hour to get there, I only had to drive thirty minutes. We’re no Chicago Old School community-and I’ve also heard things about a significant New York Old School community-but we’re growing. And I don’t necessarily desire to be some well known group either. The other night was everything that I really desire and more so as long as that’s maintained, I’ll be perfectly happy.

This past week, however, we did get some publicity. Over at the Channel Fireball website in a weekly article series titled This Week in Magic, they posted a link to the post I did a couple weeks back on the GP Providence Old School event at the Union Station Brewery. Dave Firth Bard also wrote up an awesome tournament report on the event which was published over at the Old School MTG blog! Quite a lot of publicity for our first and only New England Old School tournament so far!

A couple of us actually met at Granfanally’s last week as well. Nick and Jared, who have been at every meet up so far were there in addition to our friend Amanda. Amanda doesn’t normally play Old School but she came and used one of my decks. This time around Jared, Dave, Ash, Scott, and I showed up – all guys that participated in the GP Providence event. I feel I can’t ignore the other half of this New England group. There’s a group of guys from Connecticut that are part of the New England group as well. A southern chapter of the group, if you will. Many of them were at the GP Providence event as well and seem like awesome guys too. I’m pretty sure they do weekly meet ups and have been for a while now actually. If any of you guys read this, you can correct me if I’m wrong. As for the “northern chapter,” we’re sort of just getting organized.

Anyways, the night also displayed some pretty awesome and rarely seen cards. At one point I looked over and saw Dave had summoned an Argothian Treefolk! I love that creature. Scott also had a pretty unique deck that featured Sage of Lat-Nam, Matyrs of Korlis, and Bazaar of Baghdad that involved a lot of discarding cards then taking them back out of the graveyard.

Another highlight was I finally got to play against Dave. I was actually planning on leaving around 9 but stayed a while longer for a round against him. He beat me in 2 games I think but it was cool to see his deck work. In one of the games he got two Ankhs of Mishra out which got some significant damage on me. I realized I should try out some Ankhs in my Land Destruction deck that I’ve been occasionally experimenting with.

In another round I played against Scott where he played a Bottle of Suleiman on turn one or two. It was the first time I’ve encountered The Bottle. He ended up playing two bottles that game and won the coin toss both times! I’m pretty sure I lost that one.

In conclusion, we now have a pretty cool spot for regular meet ups and it just so happens that they provide incredible garlic knots. I’m really looking forward to getting to know these guys better and sling more cards with them. In other news, next week we’ve got a pretty awesome guest post by Dave! Make sure to check back for that!