So I arrive about 30 minutes early to the Union House Brewery in Providence seeing as how I’m in charge of signing people up and doing all the round pairings. Turns out the bar doesn’t open until 11:30 but I wasn’t the only early bird. I got to meet Jared a member of New England Old School and Paul a member of Sisters of the Flame out of New York. So now I’m here chatting with some old school veterans about the format and the community that has formed around old school and I think to myself this is gonna be a pretty awesome event.

Finally the bar opens the door and we head in to get set up. I start to get my laptop setup so I can get everyone signed in and paired for round 1.To be honest I was a little nervous at doing this seeing as how it was my first time doing any event like this. But after just a few minutes of signing everyone in and talking to each of them I realized that the whole reason why I started playing this format was the fact that it is so laid back.  I mean it really doesn’t get any better than this; a bunch of friends hanging out in a bar playing their favorite card game, drinking beer, and ordering bar food!

Now its time for Round 1. I’m playing a deck based around one of my favorite creatures of all time Atog. I choose to build a mono red version because I couldn’t justify the price tag on blue dual lands, especially on top of the money I had spent on the 5 collectors’ edition Moxes, Black Lotus, and Chaos Orb. I call the deck Atog Prison because, well, between the Blood Moons and Winter Orbs you’re usually going to have a hard time casting what you need. I won’t bore you with a whole tournament write up of how each of my matches went but I ended up with a respectable 4-2 record on the day which put me in 9th place out of 28 players. The prize pool pictured below is an Old School tradition. Everyone brings a card that’s playable and legal for Eternal. Central rules there is no limit or minimum. Then everyone that attends the tournament has to sign every card. At the end of the tournament we all pick a card out of the pile starting with first place. I ended up with that beautiful strip mine that I will now have forever as a memento from my first Old School event.

For me the whole tournament was a bit of a whirlwind. I was playing in my first large Old School event while trying to keep track of everyone’s win/loss record. But it was everything I had expected it to be. The whole reason why I wanted to play Old School in the first place was because it seemed like more of a group where friends gather to enjoy the whole reason most of us started to play this game in the first place: to have fun. I got tired of trying to go to FNM magic events because of the groups of people who only wanted to play with the best cards and the top decks to get really good for some big event some where.  I find that Old School isn’t about that. It’s more about brewing janky decks to play with for fun to remind us of simpler times in life. It’s about making friends and building a community of people who all enjoy this type of Magic: The Gathering.

So to finish this article off I want to say if you haven’t heard about Old School I recommend you look into it, and try and find the local group that may be near you. Build that budget deck that won’t break the bank but has some obscure cards that no one else uses. Build that deck because it just seems like fun to play and it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. Build that deck and find some friends, a comfortable bar, and play some Old School! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed my article, and if you have any questions feel free to get in touch me and I will try and answer your questions.

Until Next Time!

Jason Williams

Born and Raised in Western Massachusetts

Chef for Life

Old School 93/94 Connoisseur

New England Old School Member

 

For those of you that caught my title pun, I didn’t actually play V:TES back in the day. Decipher Star Wars CCG ate up my disposable income once I moved on from Magic, and now that I think of it, I have a couple of pretty cool deck boxes that I am going to have to dig out to house 93/94 decks.

                                         (current deck boxes in use that I had kept from ‘back in the day’- 1996)

(classic Decipher Star Wars CCG deckboxes that I dug out of the dark recesses of a plastic storage bin, not coincidentally also full of boxes and binders of the old Star Wars cards! I think that Han frozen in carbonite will make a good home for my mono Blue artifact deck).

Last time I wrote, my 93/94 decks consisted of: mono Blue artifact ramp with Urza lands, R/G Kird Ape Berserk, Flying Men aggro blue (splashing green for Pendelhaven and pump) and mono Black. Since then, I have done some tuning and put some thought into how I might accomplish those upgrades (thanks to the Old School Discord server for being a great community!). In mono blue, I added a second Transmute Artifact to find what I need in a given situation and an Unlimited Nevinyrral’s Disk as a great answer to search up. Kird Ape Berserk now has a playset of the powerful green pump spell and 3/4 Taiga are Unlimited. Flying Men aggro has smoothed out its mana base with another Tropical Island, and mono black has found an Arabian Nights Sorceress Queen.

My most recent creation is a W/R fliers deck, with Rukh Eggs. All of my one- and two-drops are removal or are helping me get more mana to leverage the Land Tax, and then flying creatures can take over from there. If I get lucky, the Rukh Egg can block or be hatched from a timely Earthquake. Two Fellwar Stone are there in place of Mox Ruby and Mox Pearl, and with this many flying creatures it would be a luxury to have a Moat, but those are three cards that are currently out of my reach.

I don’t think that I’m taking enough advantage of cracking the eggs; perhaps adding the Preacher/City of Shadows combo would help accomplish that goal more consistently.

My nemesis:

This is the pride and joy of the friend who encouraged me to make my first 93/94 deck, and it’s pretty good at what it does- drawing cards, resetting hands and dealing damage one at a time from Black Vise and Underworld Dreams (often stacked together for double the fun!). I have been able to beat this beast of a deck on occasion (it’s weak to an early Blood Moon), but I really need to manage my removal and have early pressure in order to end the game before he can get his engine going.

The newest format that I was introduced to last month by my playgroup was one that I think would be a great way to introduce old/lapsed players to the world of 93/94- 60 card singleton, with restricted cards banned (sorry, Sol Ring and Chaos Orb), and further constricted to ABU cards (or same art/frame). I initially misunderstood the explanation, and built a G/W deck using EC rules. This left me with a nice curve and disruption, but I had used 17 cards from expansions that weren’t legal! Playing definitely hit the nostalgia notes for me, as when I first played the game having four of one card (especially a rare or a card from an older set) was not very common.  When you draw your powerful threat (or Lure a Thicket Basilisk) it feels like you’ve accomplished something!

My goal for next time is to have played more over the summer, and to have another deck to discuss. I’m hoping that it will be mono red, with Atog and artifacts.

Craig Simpson

Craig is a husband, and father of 4, living in the frozen north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Outside of collecting cards to build old school decks with, he has a love for merfolk in modern and occasionally drafting online.

I began playing when I was in grade ten, and Revised and The Dark were still in print. I would sometimes take my bus to the last stop in order to get off at the comics store to buy packs, and then walk home from there. I got sharked on occasion by the local scumbag trader at the store counter, but once Scrye was readily available I was able to avoid that fate. A good friend and I would even travel to the University Game Day on Saturdays once we had access to a car, and between the two of us were able to trade into a set of Arabian Nights and Antiquities.

Friends and I would play at lunch in the science room, and my brother and I built decks and played at home as well (he always played mono black). It was truly an innocent and casual way to play, and the exotic cards from Legends, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities and the elusive powerful and out of print cards from Unlimited and before were rarely seen at our tables. In fact, part of the reason I stopped playing Magic to start with Decipher’s Star Wars CCG was because those powerful, old cards were so hard to obtain.

Fast forward to winter of 2017, when time is precious and disposable income has a very different meaning supporting a family with four kids! I had stayed in touch with a couple of my Magic-playing friends from high school over the years, and got back into the game around Zendikar. It was this friend who introduced me to ‘Old School (93/94) Magic’ as a format, and it has changed my collection in a significant way. Outside of actual power 9, the power level of cards in this format is very different from new Magic sets (Serra Angel and Shivan Dragon are playable along with Swords to Plowshares and Lightning Bolt, and Thunder Spirit is a staple of many white decks). Since I don’t get to play very often, building a deck would be a labour of love and the chase for a single card is very real. I used Pucatrade, (promoted trades, reciprocal trades and use of their Discord server) to assemble a fat pack full of cards I could use to build my first deck.

I haven’t travelled to a far-off land to play in a tournament, but recently I had the chance to run my decks against a friend. I braved the -30 weather to get to his place, and he was kind enough to set up his dining room to record the gameplay! I ended up having 4 decks ready to play versus his 5, so each deck got its chance to play at least once. We played best of 3 and didn’t use a sideboard, and if you would like to see how the matches played out, you can view them here:

Match 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebXiKTHr1FE&t=28s

(Blue/Artifacts vs. Red) I felt like I drew a good mix of counters and threats, and having access to direct damage in blue sure feels good (thank you, Psionic Blast!). Jade Statue can be a good attacker if left unopposed, but once tron gets assembled and you have something to do with all that mana, look out! Even Rocket Launcher got to pull its weight, taking out a Ball Lightning in game 2.

Match 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deybVRXOadQ

(G/R Kird Ape pump vs. Mono Black control) Good thing I didn’t like having cards in hand or need more than 1 or 2 mana at a time against this deck- between the hand and land destruction and all of the other ways to get pinged, I was lucky that the first Kird Ape took me the distance in the first game. He had to be thinking it was a GG after his opener in game 2 (Mox, Sol ring, Tutor and Sinkhole my land), but my threats had to be answered since he doesn’t have many creatures. We agreed (rightly or wrongly?) that he could spend more mana on Drain Life to avoid mana burn, but that it just didn’t do anything beyond the toughness of the creature. After getting a Kird Ape in play I thought I would be able to finish the game, but was taught a lesson on the power of Mishra’s Factory being able to animate and turn itself into a 3/3 (I would use that in a later match to my advantage). The march of the Argothian Pixies made for an uneventful end to this match. I currently only have 1 Berserk and am looking forward to adding at least one more to this deck.

Match 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdof0zegpvw&t=6s

(Blue Aggro vs. Blue/White fliers) Unstable Mutation on a Serendib Efreet demands an immediate answer (which I did not have) in game 1, but Dandan was the one needing an answer in game 2. Recall takes a lot of work to get you back cards from the graveyard, and facing down 2 Old Man of the Sea is not going to end well for a deck that needs to attack (although I was a topdecked Psi Blast away from the win).

Match 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljxMy1nsrs0

(Mono black vs. Mono white) This match was nostalgia at its finest, with the two colour pie opposites facing off. Black Knight vs. White Knight, and whoever could come up with the better colourless way of dealing with the other would come out on top (game 1 showed off the speed that the white deck could hit with). I was not using EC rules and didn’t have access to Hymn to Tourach or Order of the Ebon Hand, but I think that Pestilence showed me that it deserves its place in the deck. My reason for having Icy Manipulator in the deck was to work with Royal Assassin, but it kept his Order of Leitbur locked down in game 2. I will chalk up beginner’s luck to my Orb flip at the end of game 3 (we were discussing technique before I 3-1’d him).

Match 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nopI3gy0oE&t=1775s

(Blue/Artifacts vs. G/R midrange): It took multiple tries to get rid of the Efreets, but a lucky Orb flip helped to seal the deal along with trusty Sindbad to dig for more lands. Luck really is required to get those Urza lands together, but they came at the right time to help assemble a pesky Triskelion. The lands were used again right away to take down the mighty Ernham Djinn with a Rocket Launcher, and Juggernaut brought home a win to end the evening.

This evenings achievements unlocked: Flipping an Orb (got lucky two out of three times)

Achievements still locked: Drawing an extra card from Library of Alexandria, looping Triskelion with Tawnos’ Coffin, lethal damage from a Berserk, using Icy Manipulator/Royal Assassin combo

Some cards I’m chasing to upgrade my decks are: Transmute Artifact, Nevinyrral’s Disk, Earthquakes and more unlimited Taiga and Plateau. My next deck is going to be R/W and try to use Rukh Egg, Preacher/City of Shadows, maybe Su-Chi/Ashnod’s Altar and some burn.

The most common rules in North America can be found at Eternal Central that includes Fallen Empires and allows for reprints as long as they have the correct are and frame: http://www.eternalcentral.com/9394rules/.  

An even more restrictive card pool is the goal of many Old School 93/94 players, including only ABU and the three original expansion sets: http://oldschool-mtg.blogspot.ca/p/historik.html.

Join us in the Discord ‘OldSchoolMTG’ server: https://discord.gg/GqQjGx

So what happened to those sets that my friend and I worked so hard to trade for, you might ask? He traded his Arabian Nights for 64mB of RAM for his computer (approx. $900 value at the time), which made it lightning fast, and I traded my Antiquities for a full set of Star Wars Premier (black border), which I still have to this day.

Craig Simpson

Craig is a husband, and father of 4, living in the frozen north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Outside of collecting cards to build old school decks with, he has a love for merfolk in modern and occasionally drafting online.