Magic at Gen Con 2019

This year's Gen Con came and went way too fast!  I played in two Old School tournaments, bought a bunch of singles and a bunch of Old School sealed packs and even got two new playmats and Signatures from Mark Poole!

There's a lot to talk about so let's get going.

My Gen Con started off on Wednesday evening where I played in the 3rd Annual Gen Con Old School tournament at the JW Marriott's Velocity Bar and Grill.

I believe there were 40 people in attendance and it was 5 rounds with a cut to the top 4 after that.

I only played in the first 4 rounds because there was a bye for me in the 5th.  That was fine because I was not doing very well in the tournament and by that time I was four 22oz Bell's Two Hearted Ale's in.

Here is the deck I took.  It is an experimental deck I am trying to make Mill work in Old School.  The only real win con is Milling my opponent.  The four Factorys are there as blockers.

UW Mill

I had 4 Winter Orbs to hopefully slow down my opponents and I opted for 4 Boomerangs over Counterspells to hopefully be able to deal with more threats and threats that I could have potentially missed by using a Counterspell.  The idea was that I would have a Winter Orb in play, they would play something tapping most of their mana and then I could Boomerang the permanent back and it would be awhile before they could cast it again.

Well none of my games went very well.  Everyone was faster than I was.  I wasn't able to get a lock on anyone with the Winter Orb and Icy Manipulator and I lost every match.

Even though I didn't do well I was able to meet a bunch of new people and I had a great time.  I am excited to go to the Old School Players Ball in a few weeks and see some of the guys I met at this tournament.


I made some purchases at Gen Con that I think may help my UW Mill deck.

One thing to note about Gen Con is that there are more booths buying and selling Magic Cards than there are at any Magic Fest you will ever attend.

If you plan to go to Gen Con you should be wary of the different prices and also be on the look out for dealers selling rebacked cards and fakes by accident.  I heard some stories about this from someone else who also attended Gen Con.

Here are my two favorite Magic booths to buy from; Graded Power and Mr. Nice Guy Games.

Graded Power only deals in sealed product and Old School singles, both Graded and not.  They have the best prices of anyone at the con and truly do base their prices on condition.  I spent a lot of money at their booth both this year and last.  They also have booster packs from almost every set.

The other booth is Mr Nice Guy Games.  If there is a card you need they will have it at a decent price.  They bring more cards than anyone else to Gen Con.  You simply tell them what card you want, what edition and what language and they will most likely have several to a dozen of them for you to pick from in various conditions as well.

I bought a bunch of singles and a bunch of sealed packs from Graded Power this year.

For sealed packs I bought 4 Fallen Empires, 2 Ice Age and 2 Chronicles and I also bought one sealed 4th edition Starter Deck.

I should have taken a picture of what all of the cards from these but I forgot too.

I didn't get anything good except one Adarkar Wastes.

The Old School cards I did acquire will help out with a number of decks including Monoblack, MonoGreen, Blue/WhiteMill, UrzaTron or BlackTron, and Apes and Elves.  I also bought a few Legends because I want to build some OS EDH / Brawl decks.

I am very excited about Boris!

I also bought a couple of playmats, one from Wednesday's Tournament and one from Mark Poole:

Mark Poole was at the convention again and I bought a bunch of Saproling and Goblin tokens from him and I also had him sign a couple of cards.

On Saturday I played in my second Old School Tournament in 3 days!  It is the most in person Old School I have ever played.

This tournament was put on by Pastimes Games which organizes all of the Magic events at Gen Con.  This was a fairly typical affair, I had to have a DCI number, which I didn't have so they gave me a new one, the winnings of the tournament would be in prize tickets which could be redeemed at a prize booth.  There would also be official Judges but I do believe that they abided by Eternal Central rules.  No one who played had any reprints that wouldn't be Eternal Central legal.

I played the following deck:

The first match was against a mostly Black and White deck.  He played a lot of Black Knights and Hypnotic Specters.

The first game he got off to a very good start and my back was up against the wall.  I was losing life quickly but eventually got out a Land Tax and nearly got back into the game.  He eventually won the game but it was close.
Game two I started really fast and got out an early Land Tax and was able to Tax almost every turn after that until most of my land was out of my deck.  It was very important because he had cast a Gloom and I needed to pay 4 mana to cast a Savannah Lions!  I eventually won because I had more creatures and could get damage in in most turns.
Game three I simply outraced him and had a quick start and never let up winning pretty handily.

I was now 1-0 and pretty excited especially since I had lost every match on Wednesday.

Match two was against a White weenie deck supplemented by Blue Power.
Game one he was able to play 3 Thunder Spirits and a Order of Leitbur but began stalling with creatures.  I played a White Knight, an Order, two Timber Wolves, a Mesa Pegasus and a Serra Angel.  I was then able to cast Armageddon and he couldn't recover fast enough.  I won because I had more creatures.
Game two I sideboarded in 3 Repentant Blacksmiths and sideboarded out 3 Disenchants.  I wanted even more creatures and he really didn't have any artifacts or enchantments I needed to kill.  This game I got even more creatures into play and we even each had a Crusade in play at one point.  I eventually won with the help of a Serra Angel banded to a Mesa Pegasus on the attack.

I was now 2-0 and headed into the final match.  The winner of this match would win the tournament.

I was playing against what I believe was a 5 color Shaharazad deck.
The first game was a fairly typical game for my deck, I had to mulligan but I had a lot of small creatures which I played out as fast as possible.  I won in less than ten turns.  He just didn't have the ability to kill or stop all of my creatures quick enough.
Game two is where things got interesting.  I sideboarded out all of my disenchants and added in my Repentant Blacksmiths and a COP:Red because he had a few red creatures.  I was doing fairly well and I had him down to 1 life when he cast Shaharazad.  We started the sub game and almost immediately he cast a second one.  The third subgame started and I started doing significant damage, I got him down to maybe 10 life but then time was called.
I had won the first game and we drew the second because of time.  I ended up winning the match.

I finished 3-0 and won the whole thing!

I have never won a tournament before and it was pretty awesome!  I was pretty surprised because I knew this deck was good but I didn't think it was this good.  I may try it again at the Old School Players Ball.

I won 30 prize tickets which I traded in for 7 Modern Horizons and 1 Dominaria pack.  I ended up getting nothing special in those packs but oh well.

It was a pretty great GenCon overall and it went by way too fast.

Next year I believe a decent contingent of the Northern Paladins will be coming so that should be pretty great!

I am not sure what my next post will be about but stay tuned.....

Summer Derby results

I have now played in the last Winter Derby and this past Summer Derby.

My record in both is quite bad but I always enjoy playing the games and meeting new people.  In my previous post I had talked about the evolution of my Erhnamageddon deck.  I took the newest incarnation of it to the Summer Derby.

My Summer Derby 2019 deck

I called this version Boreal'Geddon. I added in Jasmine Boreal a legend from Legends as an additional Erhnam Djinn.  She is a 4/5 for 3GW with no drawbacks, which for Old School is a pretty decent creature.

Another thing I did was build a sideboard that I thought would be useful against certain decks.  

Against Mono Black my sideboard included 2 Derelors so their Terrors and Protection from White creatures would be less useful.  I also had 3 Whirling Dervishes as anti-Black creatures.

The Clockwork Avians did double duty as they are also immune to Terror and The Abyss and are a few extra flyers if necessary.

Against Artifacts I had 2 Dust to Dust.

I had 4 Spirit Links to deal with lots of Creatures or to gain life if I needed to.

If my opponenet had City in a Bottle I could remove the Erhnams for the Derelors and Clockwork Avians.  

If he has Moats and was playing some sort of control build then the Clockwork Avians could help along with the Avoid Fates.

I had some decent ideas and reasons for why I played the above Deck and why my sideboard was constructed the way it was.  I had just missed one key fact.

The format was Atlantic.  

Atlantic's restricted list favors a certain type of build which I hadn't realized until I started playing opponents and talking to them about the format and their decks after our matches were over.

What Atlantic does is restrict Strip Mine but not Mishra's Workshop.  This favors heavy Artifact builds and almost pushes out many budget builds unless they are built with this format in mind.  

I hadn't adjusted my deck accordingly and without the extra 3 Strip Mines I would have liked to have played in this deck I had some serious issues.  I also should have added in more Dust to Dust and maybe even considered a 3rd color to add in Energy Flux.

As you can see after some inspiration from Edwin The Magic Engineer (which if you haven't already subscribed to his channel on YouTube you probably should at least watch his Old School content, it's very well done and well thought-out.) I modified my Erhnamageddon Deck again.

Here is the newest build:

I didn't win a single match but that doesn't mean I didn't have fun.

I really do appreciate the work that DFB does to put on these online Derby tournaments and I will continue to participate in the future.  Hopefully I will do better next time.

Next article will be on my Gen Con 2019 Experience.  I had a great time playing in 2 Old School tournaments.

Until Then...

The Evolution of a Deck: Erhnamageddon

So when I first started assembling decks for Old School I had several decks in mind.  I wanted to create 6 mono-colored decks (one of them being artifacts) and then a couple other decks that are pretty popular.  The other popular decks I wanted to assemble were Troll Disco, MonoBlack, and Erhnamageddon.  I feel like the three decks I just listed are very doable without Power or even Dual Lands.  As a side-note, unless otherwise stated, I always build Eternal Central-legal decks. 

Another goal of mine when getting into Old School was to create Power-less decks.  I wanted to prove that it was possible to win against Power without having to have Power yourself.  I made this decision for a variety of reasons.

One reason was that I didn't own any Power and figured it probably wouldn't be very feasible for me to acquire it.  I don't have tens of thousands or even thousands of dollars to spend on Magic cards.  I also haven't been playing Magic consistently since 94, even though that is when I started, so I don't have a big backlog of valuable cards to trade in for Power.

Another reason I wanted to build without Power is to prove to myself that I can win games based on my deck building and skill, not based on owning the most powerful cards in the format.

The third reason is that I never owned Power back in the 90s, nor did I ever play against it.  It isn't part of my Magic-playing history.  None of my friends had it and it was always seemed like an unobtainable goal.  They were mythical cards and I almost want to keep them that way.

The final reason I wanted to build without Power is to prove to others that Power is not necessary to play Old School.  In fact, its not even necessary to own dual lands.


So I want to dive into my Erhnamageddon deck. It has been evolving now for about a year.  I have a number of photos of it's evolution and I will talk about each of them.

This is the initial deck I built about a year ago.  I filled out the Cities of Brass and the Birds of Paradise with Championship Deck gold-bordered version.  I also had White Knights, Whirling Dervishes, Jayemdae Tomes, Llanowar Elves and Spore Clouds from Fallen Empires.

 This deck has a proper sideboard.  I tried to get a bit spicy and added a mainboard Blood Moon and Demonic Tutor.  I took out the White Knights and added Tundra Wolves and Juggernauts.  I was able to upgrade the Cities of Brass to Chronicles.  I swapped the Jayemdae Tomes to Jalum Tomes.

This is the deck I used in the Winter Derby.  I didn't do very well and I got some good suggestions from my opponents.  Some of the suggestions I took to heart and some I am still thinking about implementing.

This version of my Erhnamageddon deck I used in the April Northern Paladin Skype league.  I went 0-4.  I had thought that I had upgraded the deck but it seems that I was wrong.  I pulled out the Juggernauts, Llanowar Elves, and Tundra Wolves.  I added in a Mind Twist and three Lightning Bolts.  I also added an additional Jalum Tome.  After doing some playtesting I was able to get off to incredible starts with this deck.  I blew two opponents away in a three-player game within the first 5 turns.  I thought I had a great deck but the Skype league proved me otherwise.

Luckily I got some more great suggestions on how to improve it and I just recently acquired 3 Land Tax which will help out the deck tremendously.

Here is the newest version of the deck:

In the May Northern Paladin Skype League I played the above deck and I went 2-1, a much better result than before.

Some of the things I did were to add Rainbow Vales which play nicely with Land Tax, Fellwar Stone and Balance.  By limiting the number of cards that are not Green or White, having only 4 Birds and 4 Rainbow Vales is just enough mana producers to make the deck work.

Another big change was just how many 4-ofs I have.  4 Disenchant, 4 Swords to Plowshares, 4 Armageddon, 4 Birds, 4 Llanowar, 4 Serras, 4 Erhnams.  Most Erhnamageddon Decks I have seen have only 3 Armageddons.  I have 4 and play them very aggressively.  There were several games I won where I Armageddoned multiple times.  Combine 4 Strip Mines with 4 Armageddons and the Land Taxs  with Birds and Elves and I generally have the mana I need and my opponent generally doesn't.

I had concerns with City in a Bottle which seemed to pop up in almost every match I played in the April league.  The Rainbow Vales also addressed the City in a Bottle issue.  The only Arabian Night card in the deck is the Erhnams (and I am still searching for alternatives).

The Derelors and Clockwork Avians I can sideboard in when facing City in a Bottle in place of the Erhnams or if I need more flyers or if I am facing Black since terrors won't work against them.  The Clockwork Avians also help against Moat or The Abyss.

I still have some consistancy issues with this deck.  I am not always drawing what I need and I think the solution is probably Sylvan Library but I just don't have the budget right now to purchase several of those.  A cheaper solution could be Jalum Tome but I am not sure.

This deck is still a work in progress and I will come back to it and continue to work on it in the future.


In the meantime I have a new deck I am brewing up that I haven't seen anyone else play in Old School.

I will debut it in the June Northern Paladin Skype League which just started.

I will post here how it does.

Magic at Gen Con

So a week or so ago I went to Gen Con in search of games and of course Old School Magic cards.

I was able to get me hands on a few cards I wanted including an Unlimited Icy Manipulator and 2 Unlimited Sinkholes.

We completed my wife's Necropotence deck as well.

I had wanted to play in one of the Old School tournaments but it appeared that no one signed up for them when I checked the Gen Con event list.  On Friday and then again on Saturday we went to the main hall where Magic was played and, sure enough, there was a whole long table full of Old School players.

While I didn't introduce myself to anyone because I didn't want to interrupt anyone's game and also because I am not really sure where to begin, I just stood and watched for a few minutes.

Next year I am pretty sure I will sign up for one of the tournaments.

On Friday night we found a quiet bar under the Union Station and played some Old School magic with some of the decks I brought.  It was a 3-way game as you can see below:

My colorless artifact deck won piloted by my friend Ian.  It was really no big surprise it is a pretty good deck and is difficult to beat unless you side board-in artifact hate.

My black Thrull deck and my mono-green deck could use some work but fun was still had by all.

As you may notice in the picture above I was able to acquire a new playmat from Mark Poole!  It is an Urza's Tower mat, which he graciously signed for me.  I also got him to sign a Revised Counterspell.

Mark was a very nice guy and our Magic talk quickly morphed into a Babylon 5 discussion when my wife found some paintings he was selling were Babylon 5 themed.  He is a big B5 fan just like us and he actually made a painting for Londo's room in Babylon 5 but it was ultimately not used in the show.  He was such a nice guy that we ended up buying a Centauri painting from him for a discounted price (you can see it watching us play Magic in the photo above).

 The three card from the Con I am most excited about.

I bought the Icy and the Lord of Atlantis but I pulled the Blood Moon in a pack of Chronicles.

The Lord is going in my new Merfolk deck and the Blood Moon in my Goblin deck.

The Gen Con Magic 25th anniversary playmat and the 

new Uraz's Tower Mark Poole signed playmat.

Next I want to show my Fungal Enchantress Deck which is a concept I stole but I really like the idea.  I feel like a white / green deck using Enchantress and enchantments along with making Saprolings is just such a great idea!  It finally is a deck that can win using Thallids.  I have always tried making Thallid decks since Fallen Empires came out and I was never very successful until now.

Fungal Enchantress

The next Deck is my Apes and Elves deck.  It is a red / green burn deck that uses Llanowar Elves, Elvish Archers, Kird Apes and Barbary Apes as the main creatures.  It has a lot of burn and even the infamous Channel / Fireball / Fork combo!  It is probably my fastest deck and it has beaten pretty much every other deck I have.

Apes and Elves 

This last deck is my attempt at a Mono Black deck.  It is still a work in progress but it is getting there.  I feel like I need more The Rack and some Sinkholes.  I am not really impressed with the Disrupting Scepters because they are so slow.  Greed I am also not super impressed with but I feel like I need some card drawing power.

Mono Black

Anyways I think that is it for now.  I want to continue to share my decks that I come up with on here.  My current two decks I have been working on are Mono Green Swedish-legal and Thrulls.

I just hit on some interesting combo ideas for the Thrull deck and I will be sharing those in the future along with my Mono Green Swedish deck.

Anyways, until next time.