When the stars align and the Wizards tour bus rolls through the swamps of the Meadowlands, the Sisters of the Flame, specifically Sister Paul DeSilva, put together an offsite OS 93/94 tournament as a refuge from the steaming hellscape that is the Meadowlands Exposition Center. Most players know this place at the host site of what Wizards once feebly attempted to pass off on the public as “Grand Prix: New York” (though that was clearly so humiliating that they have called it Grand Prix: or Magic Fest: New Jersey since then), but I have another more traumatizing, personal history with this building. On the first Saturday of every June from 2007 through 2011 I would spent 8 or 9 hours in there taking the grueling CFA exams. If you’re not familiar, the CFA program is essentially a masters-level finance/accounting/portfolio management course that is self-taught and evaluated via 3 pass/fail tests that are given once a year with passing rate of around 30-45% (at least when I took them). It is at least as much psychological torture as it is academic rigor, with the pressure of having your whole year of studying riding on that one test. When I was finished with those, I swore I would never set foot in that building again. Funny how things turn out…
Anyway, in the past, Paul has run some fun events off to the side of official Wizards shindig at the Cheeseburger in Paradise bar next door. In October 2018 we played an EC rules tournament in which I piloted trusty UR Atog to a top-4 finish after never having played the deck a single time, and really only losing my final match due to manascrew (as in mulligan to 5 and draw one land the whole game in game 2). I won a sweet scribbled-on Sol’kanar the Swamp King that I simply HAVE to find a use for one of these days, but haven’t managed to yet. A few months later in January 2019, Paul ran another tournament that involved the old Vanguard cards. I missed that one, but it looked incredible.
The timing of the next Magic Fest: New Jersey worked out such that it dovetailed nicely with the introduction of Scryings (see my post here for that if you’re unfamiliar) and so, it was a match made in heaven. Paul hosted the first open Scyrings event in the U.S. (that I am aware of anyway) with the following rules:
1) Swedish card pool, EC reprint rules
2) Mana burn applies (atypical for Swedish rules)
3) “The Gentlemen’s Agreement”… Mind Twist and Library of Alexandria are banned
The event also dovetailed with Mike Frantz’s GloryCon out in Gettysburg, PA, held the day before. Mike wrote a tremendous TR about his event here that I would highly recommend checking out. Sadly, I was not able to make it out to the event, but reading the report gave my serious, serious FOMO and a strong desire to run my own tournament someday! Stay tuned for that one… maybe…
Brewing
I sand-bagged it a little bit in my post from the beginning of January about Scryings, but I have been absolutely DYING to play that Reanimator list, so when I saw that signups were open, I pretty much immediately knew what I was playing. As a result, my “brewing” wasn’t really much of a brewing process as it was hunting down the last couple of cards that I needed for the deck and putting together the sideboard. In the end, I arrived at this masterwork of the dark arts:
Some notes on deck construction:
1) I started out with 4 Nether Shadows but ended up cutting down to 2 in favor of a second Krovikan Horror and the Ihsan’s Shade. I was afraid of running into Swords to Plowshares and felt like the Shade would be a good maindeck inclusion while the Shadows are just so weak in this deck.
2) Plan A with the deck is to get Bazaar online ASAP, dump fat dudes into the yard, Animate or Dance, smash face, then go get a beer and a burger. Plan B, should your opponent mess with your graveyard, is to hard cast Juzam Djinn (who is also a hyper-medium reanimation target depending on the context). Plan C, which is bad in a restricted Workshop Swedish meta, is to rely on Workshop to cast the Triskelions and Tetravuses early for the win.
3) Perhaps I should let the netdeckers suffer and keep quiet on this, but the only good cards in the sideboard are the Funeral Charms. They were so good that I would consider playing 2 maindeck and 2 in the board. Emerald Charm seemed good, but I never found a good application for it. Jester’s Cap sucked, but I included two for nostalgia’s sake since the IA copy is literally the rare from the first pack of magic cards I ever opened and the white border copy is the last Fifth Edition AP that Dan Frazier had available for sale when I chatted with him about it last October. For the next iteration of the deck, I have approximately 13 sideboard slots to work with.
4) Although Buried Alive is in the set, I don’t think it’s a good inclusion here as any more than a 1-of. I have Bazaars and this is a 1-Strip format. That’s the engine I want to work with, not a 3-mana sorcery that is going to make me also want to play Dark Rituals.
5) The crown jewel of this deck is an absolutely dope Mark Tedin altered Deep Spawn that I managed to get done on the Friday afternoon of the MF. My plan is to eventually get 3 others done in different color schemes, but for now feast your eyes on this bad boy:
So, with that I was ready to rock and roll. On to the matches!
Round 1 – Brett on Mono Green
I didn’t know it at the time, but Brett would go on to narrowly edge me out for most Scryings cards in a winning deck (29 vs 25) . It was fitting to start out the event against an opponent who was so deeply invested into the spirit of the event as I was! I lose the die roll, draw my opening 7, and find 4 big creatures and 3 dual lands. Immediately I’m reminded of the hundreds of goldfish practice rounds that I had done before and I knew that this hand wasn’t remotely keepable against any opponent. I threw it back and found a pretty bad hand with a Deep Spawn, an Animate Dead, Nether Shadow, Mox Sapphire, Ancestral Recall, and 2 other non-land cards. I put something on the bottom and decided to give it a roll, figuring that a mulligan to 8 was a hell of a lot better than a mull to 5, London rules notwithstanding. Brett leads on a Forest and passes. I play the Mox, Ancestral, find a Swamp, pass. Over the course of the next couple of turns, I find another Mox and no other action while Brett builds up his board with Quirion Rangers, River Boas, and Spectral Bears, using Giant Growths to slam the door shut. By the time I find a fourth mana source to play a Juzam, the game had long since been lost.
In sideboard, I take out the 2 Nether Shadows, put in the 2 Funeral Charms and shuffle up. Spoiler alert: I did this often enough that I think it might be correct to just run this as a maindeck configuration. I draw my 7 to find Swamp, Mox Jet, Mox Sapphire, Lotus, Juzam, Juzam, Underground Sea. So, I go Turn 1 Juzam, Turn 2 Juzam, turn 3 Ashen Ghoul off the top to get Brett down to 2. Unfortunately, Brett starts to stabilize, getting 2 River Boas down along with some spectral bears. He starts playing some Uktabi Orangutans to blow up my Moxen. He can’t get through my Juzams to start attacking, and he can’t afford to start attacking with the Boas since he needs to leave them back on defense. I find a Bazaar and start ripping through my deck, filling my yard with tons of creatures but my own Djinns are clocking me. Finally, saved by the bell, I find a Dance of the Dead, reanimate a Trike and pew pew shoot Brett twice for the win.
Game 3 has more of a traditional Reanimator texture to it as I start off with a Turn 1 Bazaar and start filling the yard with big guys. I play an Animate Dead on a Deep Spawn on Turn 3 and start attacking, chunking his life total down in 5s. Brett starts to get a board presence together and starts racing me. I can’d find any other reanimation spells despite a full graveyard full of good targets, so it become clear that I am going to have to ride or die with the Deep Spawn. Brett attacks me down to seven life, holding on to one card in his hand. He thinks hard about what to do with it and eventually plays a Ghazaban Ogre as a blocker. I go to my turn with Brett at 9. I attack with my Deep Spawn, Brett blocks with the Ogre, I pump the Deep Spawn +2/-1 with Funeral Charm, Brett takes 5 and then I reanimate a Trike to shoot him for the final points of damage for the win. Were it not for the Funeral Charm, I lose the race. This was an insanely tight match.
Record 1-0 (2-1)
Round 2: Jeff on Bant Empyrial Armor
Round 2 gets off to a much better start as I get down a Bazaar and Animate a Trike early. Jeff plays a Quirion Ranger and a River Boa and plays a Swords on my Trike. Fortunately, the Bazaar continues to supply the yard with good options for animation, so the game goes longer. There’s quite a bit of back and forth after Jeff gets down an Empyrial Armor on his Boa and he eventually gets down a Serra Angel, but not before I get down enough pressure that he has to double-block one of my fatties. I eek out a close one and go to the sideboard thinking that I have absolutely nothing to bring in.
For game 2, my hand is gas. I have a Bazaar, Swamp, Mox, Deep Spawn, Animate Dead, Juzam, Trike. Jeff plays a Forest and a Birds of Paradise and passes. I play Bazaar and bin my 3 creatures, holding back the Mox and thinking I possibly should have held back a creature in case he plays a Tormod’s Crypt. Jeff plays Mox Emerald and taps his birds to play a River Boa, then strips my Bazaar and passes the turn. As I go to my turn and start to play the Mox, Jeff realizes that he made a huge misplay by forgetting to play the Tormod’s Crypt in his hand! Hard to say how this would have played out if he had played it out proactively, but I intentionally held the Mox back on turn 1 to bluff an inability to reanimate anything on turn 2. It seemed to have worked. I reanimated a Trike, went to shoot both the birds and the Boa and Jeff scooped.
Record 2-0 (4-1)
Round 3: Jeff on U/R Atog
If you’ve seen any pictures of this event, this match was played on one of those high top 4-seater tables where we had to play across the table from our opponents. The player to my right, playing in the other match not only decided that his playmat needed to be on top of mine, but also that his deck box needed to be placed at the top left corner of his play area, right in the middle of mine. He also had enourmous 20-sided dice to keep track of life totals that he thought nothing of leaving right in front of me either, so in the end, I played a graveyard deck in about a 4-inch wide playing area.
This hardly mattered in the end. Both games of this match were over pretty quickly. I did manage to get an Animate Dead down on a Deep Spawn down in both games, but bolts, Psi Blasts, a Waterspout Djinn, a Serendib and several Mishra’s Factories were too much to handle. At first, I was happy enough to be done with this match fast so that I could eat lunch. Then I realized that I lost a pair-down match and obliterated my tiebreakers.
Record 2-1 (4-3)
Round 4: Sister Andy on B/G Pox
After a round that was super annoying (not Jeff’s fault… he was a pleasure to play against despite ripping my face off), I sat down against fellow Sister Andy Baquero for a match. I hadn’t talked to Andy about what he was playing ahead of time, but I knew I had to be prepared for anything as he is the group’s resident spice master.
Andy won the dice roll and led on Mishra’s Factory into The Rack. I thought that The Deck might be my worst matchup of the day, but I hadn’t considered running into The Rack in a format with no Hymn to Tourach, but c’est la vie. My hand isn’t great. It has Ashen Ghouls, a Deep Spawn, a Dance of the Dead and some black mana sources. I figure that I can eventually find a Bazaar or a Demonic Tutor to get the Deep Spawn into the yard and reanimate it with the Dance. Andy surprises me by playing a Stupor. I have a 6-card hand and I’m thinking this is great… I really just need to avoid Andy hitting the Dance, but any other card would be perfect to go into the yard. Unfortunately, the random discard is indeed the Dance of the Dead. I pitch the Deep Spawn. Next turn, another Stupor. So now I’m starting to take a lot of damage from The Rack. Next turn, I draw a Dance of the Dead, but before I can play it, Andy Funeral Charm’s it away. My next draw step suffers the same fate and the game is over.
I side in my Funeral Charms and go to game 2. Again, my opening hand is not exactly what I was looking for, but I had 2 Ashen Ghouls, a swamp, a Mox, and a sol ring. So, I went turn 2 Ashen Ghoul, turn 3 Ashen Ghoul, and turn 4 Ashen Ghoul off the top. We went back and fourth a little bit, then Andy played an Anvil of Bogardan and seemed to turn my deck on more than his. I ended up playing a Dance of the Dead on a Deep Spawn and taking the game pretty easily, finishing the game with 6 cards in my hand… no other game ended that way all day. I’m thinking that Anvil might be an essential add to the maindeck here for reanimator as well. I should mention that at one point Andy had a Chaos Orb out and flipped and missed on one of my Ashen Ghouls. Discussing it afterwards, I told Andy that I thought he should have hit my Sol Ring since I was constrained on mana and wouldn’t have been able to untap my Deep Spawn anymore, but Andy responded that “if I did that, then you would have drawn more land”. Maybe he’s right (?) but in hindsight, he could have cut me off.
Game 3, I think I managed to reanimate the same Deep Spawn 4 or 5 times, but Andy was able to disenchant/chaos orb/bounce each time and eventually our match went to time. Believe it or not, this is the first time I have ever gone to flips! Andy sort of casually started flipping from a seated position and he nailed several in a row dead-on. I stood over the target and hit each one, but I had a couple that were very, very close. Eventually Andy misses and I have to make mine to close it out. Fittingly, I make the shot, but only by a fraction of an inch.
This was the most fun match of the day by a country mile. The trash talk going back and forth between Andy and myself didn’t stop the whole time and I don’t think I stopped smiling all match. I think it’s moments like this that most of us feel a nostalgia for… playing a friend of yours in a tournament, joking around and having a great time, win or lose. But I have to say that this particular experience doesn’t strike any specific nostalgia for me at all. Despite the fact that OS 93/94 Magic in general is hugely nostalgic for me and the cards themselves have a romantic quality about them that allows me to live an experience that I fantasized about as a child, the play experiences are actually somewhat new. And playing with good friends who are as enthusiastic about the hobby as I am is a new thing for me as well. I had 4 or 5 friends in the mid-90s who were interested in Magic and had collections, but we were 10 year-old kids. We had no resources, little time to play, and lacked the perspective to enjoy the game the same way that two guys in their mid-30s can. Honestly, this might have been the most fun game of Magic I have ever played in my entire life.
Record 3-1 (6-4)
Round 5: Jason on All Hallow’s Eve Reanimator
I had bumped into Jason earlier in the day and chatted with him on a number of things, one of them being that he mentioned picking up a playset of Beta Animate Deads in trade at the GP next door. When we sat down for our match, he unfurled a Bazaar of Baghdad playmat and when I complimented him on it, he mentioned something to the effect that it wasn’t going to be the last I was going to see the Bazaar, so at this point I knew I was involved in a mirror match. Jason won the die roll, played a Bazaar, activated and put a Deep Spawn, Trike and Spirit of the Night into the yard. Spirit of the Night caught my attention since it has protection from black and thus can’t effectively be reanimated by Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead (target works in the graveyard, but the enchantments fall off once the creature hits the battlefield). I look over to the table next to me and see Andy Baquero who says “Oh my God, you’re playing the mirror?”, to which I gave him the silent finger over my lips “shhh” face. I slow-rolled my hand, which also had some fatties, a Bazaar and a Dance of the Dead, and just played out my lands until I was able to play the Dance on Jason’s Deep Spawn. This set in motion a very bizarre game. I was able to get some hits in with the 7/7 Spawn, but I was taking damage from my mana base with a City of Brass and the constant tax of needing to untap the Spawn. Jason cast a Buried Alive at one point, getting his other 3 Deep Spawns in the yard. Eventually we got to a board state where we each had 3 Deep Spawns on the table, two of which were reanimated with Dance of the Dead and one with Animate Dead (so we each had 2 7/7s that don’t untap and a 5/6 with trample). Jason cast an All Hallow’s Eve and I realized that time was running out for me. Fortunately, he was also tapped out. I swung with my team, we traded 7/7s and the 5/6s bounced off of each other. I cast an Animate Dead on a Triskelion in my yard and was able to shoot the Deep Spawn and kill it in the second main phase in the one window where Jason wasn’t able to spend the blue mana to shroud (in retrospect, I was in the clear here either way since his Spawn wouldn’t have untapped next turn even if he could have shrouded, but either way, the Triskelion came at exactly the right time). With the board clear, I was able to swing with my 5/6 on the next turn to take the win before the second scream counter could come off of AHE and those Spirits could come kill me.
In the sideboarded game, I screwed up big time. I brought in 2 Copy Artifacts and a Jester’s Cap in lieu of the Wheel, Ihsan’s Shade and a Nether Shadow. The Copies made sense, but Jester’s Cap was once again completely useless. Jason got off to a fast start, playing a Bazaar and filling his yard, then Stripping my Bazaar. He got the tempo advantage on me by reanimating his Triskelions first and getting ahead of me on life before dropping down an All Hallow’s Eve. At this point, it would be an understatement to say that my graveyard was far less creature-rich than Jason’s. There’s no worse feeling in this mirror than on turn 6 when your opponent says “What’s in your graveyard?… Oh, really? JUST Ashen Ghoul? Okay, um I’ll play Animate Dead on my Triskelion instead”. Our boards were locked up with Triskelions staring each other down and I sat and thought for a long time about some way it might be possible to win with an alpha strike before the last scream counter came off of All Hallow’s Eve, but the line just wasn’t there. I scooped with my 5th Edition artist proof Jester’s Cap in hand.
For game 3, I felt good knowing I was on the play. It is a huge advantage in this matchup. This game was somewhat anticlimactic in comparison to the first two. Jason had to mulligan while I opened on a strong hand with Bazaar, Deep Spawn, Black Lotus, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Mox Sapphire, Swamp. With a Bazaar activation another fattie, I could turn-1 double-reanimate with the Lotus. Unfortunately, I played the Bazaar, activated and bricked. Still, with the crazy nature of this mirror, I couldn’t risk Jason having a Land-Mox-Animate hand that could take my Deep Spawn so I played the Lotus and the Animate Dead to get Deep Spawn up on turn 1. Jason played out some lands, but no Bazaar. He tried to Red Elemental Blast my Deep Spawn in combat on one turn, but I had the open blue mana to give it shroud and since it was already in combat, he had to take the 5 damage anyway. Deep Spawn kept filling up my yard while Jason’s deck essentially failed to function and I took the match with an easy game 3 after harrowing games 1 and 2.
Record 4-1 (8-5)
At this point, there was some talk that we might try and squeeze in a 6th round. Under normal circumstances, I would have been down for that, but that last match against Jason was so stressful and difficult that I was completely cooked. I was also massively dehydrated by this point and really needed to go home and rest. The big crowd that turned up for the event made for an amazing atmosphere of camaraderie and community, but it also made it extraordinarily difficult to get things like a glass of water. The Cheeseburger in Paradise staff did a great job working through the physical challenges of getting around the room, so I don’t blame them, but I was still thirsty as hell.
It came down to awards time and I was pretty excited, thinking I was a lock for top-8. Unfortunately, that pair-down loss in round 3 annihilated my tiebreakers and I ended up in 10th out of 55 players. Frankly, despite my disappointment in not officially top-8’ing the event, I’m not sure I’ve ever done this well in any event with this many players, so I’m still very, very proud of how well I did. Also, I was beaming when I saw that Sister Phil took 4th and Sister Sammy took 6th. Seeing your friends do well in events is sometimes even more satisfying than doing well yourself, especially a player who shall remain nameless who forget about the Gentlemen’s Rules until the last second and had to scramble to find replacements for both Mind Twist AND Library of Alexandria in their list and had to submit a deck photo from a bar table just before the noon deadline.
Once again, we had an amazing dichotomy on display in Northern New Jersey. A convention center hosting a complete clusterfuck of an event that left almost everyone in attendance with some sort of reasoning as to why WOTC needs to find a new company to host Magic Fests/Grands Prix (Both? I don’t know the proper nomenclature these days) and about 150 yards away, a bar hosting a gather of 55 like-minded folks playing a brand new, 25 year-old format of Magic without a single complaint. Paul DeSilva deserves, once again, a huge shout out and many thanks for putting on a very fun, extremely well-run event. Can’t wait for the next one!