Looking back on Bootleggers Ball 6, I can confidently say it was the absolute best incarnation yet. Here's a non-comprehensive look from the organizer's perspective. Yes, I know the tournament was a month and a half ago. Let no one say Music City Old School ever really keeps a schedule.
When Magic's Sixth Edition was teased, there were endless posts on The Dojo saying 6E would kill Magic or that it would dumb down the game. Other posts perpetuated outright falsehoods and used those as justification for why the sky was falling. Others saw optimism but the debate raged on. One poster said that he imagined everyone thought this same thing:
"Everything should be just like it is now. I don't want changes."
Of course, 6E was released, the rules changes made the game better, and everyone got used to it. 6th Edition paved the way for a clearer and more understandable game. And key additions like combat damage on the stack form the basis for Nashville mainstays Middle School and Classic.
The poster who wanted everything to stay just like it was now resonated me as I looked back on the 6th edition of Bootleggers Ball. I'm a huge Rush fan and their 1987 song "Time Stand Still" echoes in my head too. "Freeze this moment a little bit longer..." If you can't tell, I'm pretty sentimental about some things.
In all, Bootleggers Ball 6 might be the best one yet. We say that every year, but this year felt extra special. Everything should be just like it was during that weekend.
Results and Decklists
This year, the deck photos are all available here on our website. Our webmaster Chris has developed the Events section further to include links to each player and each deck. Here's the final standings of the 2025 Bootleggers Ball:
https://musiccityos.com/events/bootleggers-2025/
You can click on each player to see other MCOS events they've taken part in and the decks they've played.
You can also click on the deck in the event to see a photo of the deck and a text list of the cards. You can even click on the cards in the text list themselves if you want to buy a copy from TCG Player. How neat!
This year we had 49 players total , our largest showing yet. Here are a few stray thoughts:
- Newcomer Will Parshall took down the tournament, going 6-0 with a blistering version of RUG aggro. He took home a Titania patch and my unending admiration for playing and sweeping with my absolute favorite deck. He had 14 burn spells backed up with 2 Stormbinds and an Earthquake main deck to clear the way for his 3-3-3 split of Mox Monkeys, Dibs, and Erhnams.
- After the tournament, a not-actually-serious judge call was brought to my attention. Astute viewers will note that Will has 16 cards in his sideboard--a spare Tormod's Crypt found its way into the deck list. Will obviously didn't mean to do this and merely miscounted. But the revelation also brought a couple more admissions into the open of other players with unintended numbers of sideboard cards! Pioneer of playing fewer than 60 cards Tom actually had a full 75 this year! We're a pretty loose group so everyone got a great big laugh out of this. Especially since Will never sideboarded in any of the Crypts.
- There were a ton of big spicy decks this year including: Living Plane, Snow Zombie Tribal, War Riders, and other riffs on typical themes. Props to everyone out here exploring the wide open space of A2A.
- The room felt very Red this time. Bolts and burn spells are obviously powerful, but they felt especially so here.
- Several of us got bit by the unsleeved bug. Me, Quail, and Cam played lower powered versions of Necro, Goblins, and War Riders (respectively). We were not successful. We took cues from Bob's unsleeved green Alpha deck, which saw more success than the rest of us. Special props to Brian Booth who also ran an unsleeved black deck with a sub-optimal number of Necros, but an absolutely balling number of unsleeved Juzam Djinns, and a Mox Jet and Library of Alexandria. He deserves endless praise for being that cool. Everyone should unsleeve some cards and riffle shuffle them once in a while. They aren't sacred icons--they're game pieces.
- I came in dead last on Necro. (Should have given myself the first round bye!) I was completely smothered by Bolts, Incinerates, and Chain Lightnings the entire day. At one point I had 3 Lake of the Deads in my hand and no Swamps anywhere. It was a tough day. Did I build my deck wrong? Let's not cosider that. The power of The Skull is no match for fire magic. You heard it here first: Necro is Definitely Not Oppressive.
King of the Hill
A new "event" was introduced the night before BLB6 called King of the Hill. A circus tent of a t-shirt and a playmat showed up in Alan's basement, both emblazoned with Bobby Hill, Demonic Tutor.
The rules are simple: If you are the King, you can be challenged to a game (or match) of Magic. The winner emerges the King.
I was the first King and racked up 3 wins, which I documented on the playmat, before passing the crown. Through the weekend there were I think 6 different Kings. I could be miscounting. The playmat has steadily filled with tally marks denoting the reign and overthrow of various Kings. Now the playmat and shirt are somewhere in North America.
Here's a few shots of the damn-hell-ass kings from the weekend. As of January 2026, the position of King of the Hill has changed hands and crossed the Canadian border. Who knows where the crown will wind up next. Keep circulating this. I want this to span the globe.
Bounty of the Hunt
Dan and a few others conspired to make people walk away with even more prizes than normal through the institution of a bounty board. Donated prizes were available for anyone who achieved certain feats of strength. I thought this was a killer idea and at the end of the weekend, a lot of the bounties had been claimed.
Charity and Raffle and In Memorariam
Once again we had entirely too many prizes. This year our charity was the Tennessee Children's Home:
https://www.tennesseechildrenshome.org/
This group provides support to displaced youth in and around Middle Tennessee and was close to the heart of MCOS founder Brendon Bowersox. This year we wanted to honor his memory by having the BLB donations go to the Tennessee Children's Home.
Between the tourney entries, raffled items, donated records and honey, Bootleggers Ball 6 raised a grand total of $5,861.00. This is by far the largest amount MCOS has ever raised. We couldn't have done it without the 49 people that attended, and we wouldn't be here 9 years since our inception without the vision of one of the OG members, Brendon Bowersox.
If you hadn't heard the news float around by now, Brendon passed away in 2023. He had exited Old School Magic before then and wound up volunteering to go fight for Ukraine and defend against the Russian invasion. Brendon was killed in action. Since then, Mano re-released his interview with Brendon which I urge you to listen to.
https://alltingsconsidered.com/2024/06/29/episode-246-lion/
I've tried to write a post about this and my feelings surrounding it for almost two years now. I never could put together the right words to express how I feel. A lot of us have memories of Brendon that we'll never forget and I don't think I could ever summarize the totality of Brendon in a blog post. But BLB6 was a perfect distillation of the things Brendon loved: The Gathering at its best.
BLB6 was for him.
In memory of Brendon Jayms Bowersox
November 13, 1988 - December 3, 2023
Cleanup Step / Props and Slops
There's not much more I can say about how BLB went down. It was an absolute perfect weekend. Sonny took a ton of B&W shots of the action. Enjoy the photos!
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17RMoBgbZK0r_r8ZS5En7sOBQ9uQPRdGa
Here's the props and slops:
PROPS:
- Alan for preparing his entire house and hosting BLBBBQ2 and the sickest basement games I've jammed in a long while.
- Charles, Pratt, and other people I'm forgetting who cooked for the BBQ.
- Dr. Finance for inventing King of the Hill way back in 2024.
- Yazoo Brewery for containing our insanity for 8 hours.
- Everyone who donated prizes and other items for the raffle.
- Everyone who donated to win prizes in the raffle.
SLOPS:
- The Burgoa crew for winning entirely too many prizes from the raffle.
- Everyone who can't count to 15.
- Me for registering Charles with a match loss instead of a win because I suck at entering data. Sorry Charles!
- The two guys at Southern Grist who had their double date completely torpedoed by Joe Singer's charisma as he explained to their girlfriends what Magic was and why he was wearing a velour track suit.
Until next time...
