Twenty-six Old School mages traveled to the great city of St. Louis, Missouri for a day of Pool, Foosball, drinking, and most importantly, the dankest format of Magic to ever exist. Pieces Board Game Bar & Café were extremely gracious in lending a room for the event, and the amazing pair of dudes that make up Diamond Valley Deals on Twitter (@DiamondValley_) put an amazing event together with an Orb flipping contest and 5 rounds of wizard battle. A plethora of prize cards, Underworld Dreamers swag, and Shaman Ben alters were handed out at this event as door prizes, as well as Most Creative Deck and 1st place.





Jeff Blyden and his Tetra-Bus emerged victorious over all, even against a turn 2 hard cast Deep Spawn early in the tournament and going 0% on Orb flips for the day. Maybe he'll take a break from fighting games a bit before the next event to help his odds.









The Diamond Valley folks commissioned Magic artist Brian Snoddy for a re-imagining of the card Diamond Valley, and had the art printed onto playmats as part of our entry. They also brought the original for us to ogle between rounds.





























Starting our day off right by drinking at 8am on the drive up, we arrived on a crisp (cold as fuck) morning with the sun shining and lots of smiling faces; only the best vibes in this community.





Blyden brought business card cutter set to the same margins as Magic cards for me so I could properly massacre my square power. There’s a video out there, share it with your friends to bring tears to their eyes, for better or worse. Thank you to Michael for getting this on video. (https://twitter.com/GuntherFett/status/1094297105215225859)













Pieces made us a special mixed drink for the event called the Blackest Lotus, which resulted in a reasonable amount of belligerence during the event. I was DD for my car, so I just had some Bud Light to really fulfill my role of Team Dad for the day.









I Dream of Decklists





Below are the decklists that we Dreamers played for the event. Jason Jaco, Mayor of Eternal Central, will be posting decklists from all players on his website in a coming article on eternalcentral.com.





I played a deck that I have a lot of love for, and will continue to tune and improve over time (without leading to The Deck, I’m looking at you Bard), it checks all the boxes for me in Old School. When I first saw Dean Costakis’s Bayou Lightning deck for the first time, I knew what it is I wanted to be doing. Since I couldn’t afford Juzam and their big muscles, I knew budget decisions would have to be made, and since we play in the wonderful world of Eternal Central, it was cheaper to buy blue power and some decent Dibs than a set of the powerful Djinn. Since BUG decks are what lured me into Magic in any capacity to start with, it feels right to live this life. An insatiable need for puns, and the desire to pay homage to the progenitor of this idea, it will be forever referred to as Lightning BUG.









The other Dreamers that could make it all played their pet projects as well.





Bryce Wickline, a recipient of the Most Creative Deck award, played a Weenie Ponza variant.









Ryan Sala, co-Ryan of the team, played…this. Mirror Ball Beast Control.









Ryan Bishop, another co-Ryan and new baller in the world of Old School, played UR Counterburn.









Michael Thorington played an unpowered Mono Black Rack deck, missing the title for best unpowered finish by razor thin margins!









Coming up next, some deck techs and tournament reports from this event!