Bootleggers Ball 2023

Show poster for our Friday jams, courtesy of Sonny

On December 1st, Music City Old School opened our doors once again to our friends to celebrate another year. Our tradition has grown to include a pre-event event the night before Bootleggers. This year, the first event of our Bootleggers Ball Weekend was Classic Magic.

Classic is a Type 1/Vintage format that spans from Alpha in 1993 to Scourge in 2003. The first ten years of Magic are what I am most nostalgic for and I've been brewing Classic for a year or two. Enough to have built a battle box of decks. So I was excited to share this with our Bootleggers crowd.

I've been a fan of Vintage since my high school days. I played Type 1 B&R back then, so Classic is a more polished recreation of that. Come to think of it, Alpha to Alliances forms sort of a "year zero" for Vintage with the power level and deck variety. But more on that in the BLB writeup. Classic proved to be fairly popular and everyone was keen to try it out.

We all trickled in to Bearded Iris and quickly realized that the cool, damp night had brought everyone else in town to the bar also. So we commandeered some towels and dried off the patio tables to claim our space. Our favorite evil mailman Bob got lost on the way to the venue because recent redevelopment has removed all the street signs, and the entire neighborhood just looks like this:

But eventually we all arrived and said our hellos. Pretty soon, we were deep into the games.

As always, we had a pile of prizes for everyone to group sign, including white border foils courtesy of Bob. The damp night and fan exhaust from a nearby HVAC unit formed weird microclimates that increased the humidity in some areas of the patio. Bob's cards were sweating harder than a GP grinder on Day 2, and the prize foils were curling (as expected). But we all took it in stride because the games were high variance, which was typical of Type 1.

The above photo is a perfect illustration of what Classic can be (and what Type 1 was). Stephen casts Dreadnought. No response from me. He Stifles it. Now, I don't believe this worked in 2003, but it works now. Therefore, I Force of Will the Stifle, pitching the Mana Drain (as I was tapped out). Dryad gets its first counter. Stephen Forces back. I Misdirect, pitching Tutor, redirecting his Force to my Misdirect. My Dryad gets a second counter. If this resolves, it's the end for the Shrimp. But Stephen has one Black open, so he Consults... naming Daze--a card he has two of in the deck. I can't respond, so he rips the top 6 and they're all Daze free. He brings a Daze to hand and casts it on my Misdirect for free. That's when my 3/3 Dryad develops a Shrimp allergy and we go to game 3.

The above pic was from my first round of four. I didn't get any photos of the rest of the night, and I don't believe I saw any from anyone else either. We were all so happy to meet up in person and play games we ignored content creation. But I do recall a few of the more interesting events of the night.

People were storming off like crazy, with 3 Storm lists floating around. Charles was able to Dragon people for the win--in one case on the turn before he would have been guaranteed to lose had he not Bazaared into a reanimation spell, which is great to see. Tip: a resolved Xantid Swarm generally beats blue decks.

Dryads were grown, Noughts were Stifled, and tons of fun was had. We even had two different people come up to us on the brewery's deck and make conversation about what we were doing.

Playing Magic in public can always lead to some fun interaction, but when the rubberneckers recognize cards and get excited about seeing something nostalgic being brought back, I can't help but get satisfaction from that.

Anyway, enough of my yammering. Here's the results and deck lists, in order of placement.

Josh Burgoa's RUG tempo build of Grow has proven to be a nasty challenge for the rest of us, taking down our summer event, and winning out here, going 4-0 for the win. Jordan Z had a sick Stiflenought list that contained a transformational sideboard into a Reanimator package for Akroma that came in 2nd. The rest of the Top 8 was 3 Storm piles, a Dragon deck, Gro-a-Tog, and another tempo list from Tom that he's keeping secret.