Sometime last summer, shortly after the first Bootleggers Ball, I was surprised to see a message pop up from Jesper Myrfors. What in the shit is Jesper Myrfors messaging me for? He told me that I should show our groups patch featuring the artwork from Titanias Song to Tom Wanerstrand, as is his mother Kerstin Kaman had done the original painting. I knew who Tom was. Off the top of my head I knew his work in Royal Assassin and Blood Moon, among others. I was also very surprised to hear that his mother had painted Titanias Song. She also did a small handful of other cards from Antiquities and nothing else. Kerstin’s work is some of my favorite in MTG art. She unfortunately passed some years back. I ended up showing Tom the patch and chatting briefly about the history of the Titania artwork. A few months pass and our group is kicking around ideas for the tournament. We always wanted an altered Titanias Song to go to the winner, along with a patch and big bottle of booze. Last year the great Cap n’ Lupo altered her into an appropriate Music City caricature of Dolly Parton. My idea was to get someone different, specifically someone from the Old School community and not a professional artist, to alter Titania each year. It occurred to me though, that the perfect candidate for the job would be Tom Wanerstrand. I hesitantly contacted him and to my surprise, he accepted to do the alter. There’s obviously a lot of sentiment and emotion attached to this alter. It’s extremely unique and I’ll never be able to thank Tom enough for helping us out and doing this for us. The card is still being worked on, but I plan to share it soon.
With that anecdote out of the way, registrations for Bootleggers Ball 2019 are up! There will of course be a ton of other cool shit to walk away with for everyone. Although the 1st place prize is pretty special, we’re keeping tradition and incentivizing creativity and fun. Unique brews are highly encouraged. Teaser pics and general hype of random alters and goodies will come soon and there is more info on the Eventbrite page (link below) regarding logistics, etc. The venue this year will be Tennessee Brew Works in downtown Nashville on Saturday, May 25th. The tourney will start around 10 am and end around 6 pm. Plenty of post tournament shenanigans will commence as well as some Middle School jams the day before. Email [email protected] for any questions.
DO IT! EC rules. Falling Star is a thing. No drama. Hot chicken. Cold beer. Maximum hangs. Be there.
-D
