Holiday Festivities and Some Links

This is a busy (and very snowy) weekend of holiday festivities and other obligations for me so I planned on this post to be out a little early. The holiday season is great fun but it can be stressful. As Ralphie says in A Christmas Story, “I [can] feel the Christmas noose beginning to tighten…” Still, I didn’t want to skip a week on the blog because I genuinely enjoy doing this. So this week I have a bunch of stuff from around the internet that I think is cool. You probably will too.

What New England is like right now

Browsing through some old posts on /r/oldschoolmtg on Reddit, I came across an article from last year called Magic The Gathering Old School: Poor/Heavily Played Cards. It’s not really an article but a bunch of scans of super worn and well loved Old School cards. It’s totally awesome. The more time I spend playing Old School, I appreciate cards like this more and more. Part of me wants to start playing without sleeves to wear down some of my cards!

Here’s a taste from the above article.

I heard recently that there are videos of Old School tournaments on YouTube. As an adult it’s not so easy to just sit down and browse YouTube for a large chunk of time so it took me a while to finally sit down and watch some. And I’ve only watched a small handful but I want to post a few here for those who haven’t seen any yet.

Before I show recent tournaments, I want to start with this incredibly cheesy video of the final round of Tournament of Professionals from 1995. It’s like watching a VHS. I’ll post all three parts. I’ve only watch the first one and some clips of the others so far.

Part 1/3

Part 2/3

Part 3/3

I don’t know if 2016 has rebirthed the 90s style but some of the commentators look like they would totally fit in 2016. On the third video that guy with the beard, beanie, and black frame glasses could totally walk around any American city today and look “cool.” I’m wondering if the commentator parts were edited in later? Probably not but I just don’t remember bushy beards or those black frame glasses being a cool hip thing in the 90s. I was young in 1995 so my memory is foggy. Maybe some of you older folks can comment on that.

(EDIT: Apparently these videos are actually recent but are made to look old. Makes sense! I didn’t know!)

Now to some current times videos, here’s a couple of really cool decks that I haven’t seen before. One guy has a mono green artifact deck which isn’t something you see often. I tried making a mono green deck over the summer and it was a struggle. A couple Sylvan Libraries, a playset of Berserk, and maybe a couple Pendelhavens could have helped but I didn’t have any of those at the time. I just couldn’t put together anything that worked well. I wish there was a decklist for the deck in the video.

The other deck is a UW Field of Dreams/Millstone combo deck which the video calls Mill of Dreams. I’m totally infatuated with this deck now. The deck also has Sindbad! Perfect to go with Field of Dreams. So cool. Anyways, here’s the video:

I did a little more research on the Field of Dreams deck hoping to find a decklist somewhere. I did find one. Over at Eternal Central there’s an article written by Nicholas Rausch called Playing Millstone Dreams Control. The first half is deck tech and then the second half is a tournament report where he used the deck.

The article sort of argues the strength of the deck but it doesn’t fare too well in the tournament. And the sideboard makes it essentially an entirely different deck since he uses it to replace the Mill of Dreams combo. Also, if you watch the video, you’ll see that it doesn’t fare too well against the mono green artifact deck either. Regardless, I think the deck is cool. If I had more time and money I’d build a Mill of Dreams deck but I have a couple of other decks that are priorities right now.

A few weeks ago there was a tournament here in New England. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it down but the final was posted on YouTube soon after. Check it out, it’s Scott versus Jared and they both have pretty sweet decks. I actually haven’t gotten a chance to watch the whole thing through yet but here it is:

That’s about all I have time for this week. I have something planned for the next post that I’m excited about I just hope I have the time to write it. I typically post on Sunday nights but next weekend is Christmas. I’ll be partaking in eggnog drinking, gift swapping, feasting, and other festive things. Hopefully you will too. If I get time to write it during the week I’ll probably post it early on Thursday or Friday. If not, I’ll get to it the week after. We’ll see how things work out.

I’ll leave with this commercial which I tried posting in an older post but wouldn’t embed at the time. Happy Holidays, everyone. Don’t let the Christmas noose squeeze too tight.