Hello again everyone and welcome to another episode of Hard Objects: Things that Generally Cost Money! Well, actually no.
I know I said we were gonna be doing an article on a sweet Antiquities War deck, but the fact of the matter is that I simply haven’t had a lot of time to fire up XMage and get the recording done (awkward, I know). Recording videos takes time, especially when you are going back and adding audio and doing a deck tech and then… yeah, you see the issue. So, the AQ War article will get done at some point, just not this week. Last week we took off for Memorial Day Weekend in the States, taking a short break to get ready for the upcoming haul.
This week we’ve been prepping and planning for a trip to Roanoke, VA in literally just a week (coupled with prepping for SCG Regionals this past weekend – yes, I actually play Modern, hilarious surprise indeed) where I will be partaking in an event that has a lot of history.
The StarCityGames.com Power Nine Series
That’s right, for the first time ever I’m going to be playing Paper Vintage. While I will be talking about this in greater length in a future article on my Puca side of things (especially about the experience of the SCG-Con weekend overall), I wanted to talk a bit about how this all came about first.
Around the time of SCG-Cincy Team Open, I had been waffling on whether or not I was going to make the trip to SCG-Con or US Eternal Weekend this year. I had minorly settled on not going to Eternal Weekend primarily because prize payout there is purely in store credit and it was in Pittsburgh again this year. I was feeling very meh about this, but started looking at the event schedule for SCG-Con and was very impressed.
I got to talking with Dennis / Harrison about it that weekend. The idea came up of maybe trying to talk to people about finding a borrow hookup for being able to play Paper Vintage.
That week I spoke to a few folks, primarily Jon Medina and our patron in site Strictly, and hit upon one of our patron members Blackred who owned nearly most of the pieces that I would need to borrow. Over the next few weeks I spoke with Blackred at great length about all of this, under the assumption that another friend of mine would be able to allow me to borrow some of the lands I needed. I very specifically play a variant of Dredge on Magic Online, otherwise known as Sunny Dredge (or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”).
Right at the get go of May however, that nearly all fell apart, as my other friend’s travel plans flipped sideways on him and he was unable to get down there in enough time to lend out the cards. At this point, a short month away, I could have ducked back and decided to play Legacy. I didn’t. I steeled my resolve, and reached out in all the social media outlets I could. But it was the unlikely place of Reddit (specifically the /r/MTGVintage subreddit) that led me to a guy who was not only able to lend the lands onsite at the event, but was willing to work out with a complete Internet stranger to help him out to be able to play Paper Vintage. It is for things like this that I dearly love the Vintage/Legacy/Eternal Magic community, because of people who are willing and able to help others see and play the formats we so dearly love.
The race back on track, I assembled a time together with Blackred, who lives a scant 3-4 hours away from me to get together to exchange the pieces of Power I would be borrowing from him, and drove up to meet with him. Even though it was a short meeting, I can already tell and hope that we will be able to get together further in the future and be able to jam some sweet games of Magic.
There is excitement in the air. I am greatly looking forward to my experience at this event. Not only will I be there playing Vintage, but I’ll also get to see Dennis again and get to meet Sir Strictly himself! I can’t wait to report on that alone.
Wrapping Up
So I promise that I will be able to get the AQ War article done at some point, cuz I think you guys will get a real kick out of that deck. After that I’ve been kicking around what I want to play. I’m considering a Stax build of some sort, or maybe switching gears and playing a ridiculous Vintage pile on XMage for funsies, or even recording some Sunny Dredge matches.
If you have something specific you’d like to see, please feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or on Discord!
Until then, join me next time for another episode of Dayman Strikes Back: The Return of the Nightman!
Joseph is an avid player of eternal Magic formats, including Vintage and Legacy. As a Nic Fit player who will tell anyone who will listen about his deck, Joe spends his time analyzing and playing on Magic Online and various online platforms, while prepping for competitive events. To follow more Joe, check out his Twitter!