A newcomer’s perspective on going 5-1 with mono-proxy Dib Bolt in A2A
It is Sunday morning. My stomach is full of coffee and homemade biscuits. I am at a punk rock flea market. A man in a robe and wizard hat is singing a Beastie Boys cover. I feel increasingly out of place. I am considering a lifestyle change.
It is Friday night. I am told to check out the basement. I am scared to go to the basement. I do not know anyone in the basement. I am on the play for the deciding game three. I mulligan, then mulligan again. Island. [[Mox Sapphire]]. [[Black Lotus]]. [[Quirion Dryad]]. [[Timetwister]]. I apologize for my actions. I am considering a lifestyle change.
It is Wednesday afternoon. My flight has been delayed. Delayed again. Delayed again. My pilot is "optimistic" that I will make my connection. I am not optimistic. I reschedule. I go home. I cook a frozen pizza. I eat a frozen pizza. I am considering a lifestyle change.
It is Friday morning. I am on my third breakfast taco. I am wondering why I do not live in a place that offers such a delicacy. I am considering a lifestyle change.
It is round four. My opponent has opened on unsleeved Beta Forest, unsleeved Beta [[Sol Ring|LEB]]. I am admiring the patches on his vest. I am wondering if I can wear such a vest. I come to the conclusion that I cannot. Later, my wife agrees with me. I am considering a lifestyle change.
I've been told that this is the sixth Bootlegger's Ball? Makes sense. Clearly, the folks in charge are doing something correctly. 49 Magic players showed up at Yazoo Brewing in the Greater Nashville area on a crisp winter Saturday to do such things as "battle for supremacy" and "drink beers" and "profoundly fuck up each other's Magic cards." I am someone who has not fucked up a lot of Magic cards in my day, besides the odd bulk common and a [[Steam Vents]] in the only game of Flip It or Rip It that I ever decidedly lost. This is a pretty new concept for me. I was always under the impression that you AREN'T supposed to let people scribble on your cardboard. This new view on life is surprisingly refreshing.
I sort through a stack of Magic cards that a powerful shaman has stamped, inked, and otherwise "destroyed" in the eyes of your typical Magic player. At this point, I am well aware that nobody here is your "typical" player, which is really excellent to see. My good friend Dan Potter, the reason I am at this event at all, lays first eyes on an incredible looking [[Red Elemental Blast]] that he snags. I must be content with lesser fare, if a [[Yawgmoth's Agenda]] converted into [[Yawgmoth's Will]], with a back that is more white than brown, could be considered "lesser."
Dan busies himself with hanging the Bounty Board, which is a concept that we should have all integrated into our tournaments years ago, and leaves me to wander. Other folks I know have not arrived yet. I am not the type of person to strike up a conversation, so I eyeball decks and cards that people encourage each other to sign, and a raffle table full of hats and shirts and altered cards and artbooks and... Beetlejuice sleeves? Bettie Page pin-up index cards? Mystery box?
You have to understand that I am not accustomed to ANY of this. I started Magic at my college gaming club in 2009, right between Zendikar and Worldwake. My first few months were full of 60 card multiplayer games. I remember a guy who loved casting [[Glimpse the Unthinkable]] on us, just so he could get in with [[Guiltfeeder]] for lethal damage. Another paired [[Prismatic Omen]] with [[Last Stand]], and with eight lands in play, that's what you might call "a fucking" to 18 year old me. I received a thousand card Mystery Box for Christmas, AKA a way for vendors to make roughly ten thousand percent profit off their bulk rares to impressionable young minds like mine. (I did build a pretty sweet Kithkin deck out of it.)
Later on I discovered that there was, in fact, an entire industry and culture around this game outside of my world of two to five other Magic players at my small liberal arts university in Alabama. I quickly bounced from local game store to local game store, and while college didn't last, the magic of Magic (barf) persisted. I learned about standard, and later, legacy, modern, and EDH before moving away from the area in 2019 and taking a break from the game.
I eventually landed in Vermont and found a group of Magic players who would become very good friends, and while playing casual and competitive EDH with them is still a fun thing to do on Friday nights, I still itch for the purity of playing against one other skilled opponent, testing my skill and luck in the way the game was really meant to be played - with goofy cards that we all have nostalgia for, without the creep of power and Nickelodeon franchises. It was around this time that Dan informed me that such formats really do exist - Premodern wasn't yet a sweat fest, and Old School variants abound. You’re telling me I can play FOUR [[Strip Mine]]s? Count me the fuck in.
Fast forward to summer 2025, where I am educated about Alpha to Alliances, a 93/94 variant where everything changes with the advent of new sets, adding powerful cards such as "best creature in the game" [[Balduvian Hordes]], [[Elvish Spirit Guide]], and [[Incinerate]]. Oh and I guess [[Force of Will]] and [[Necropotence]]. Fun cards! It's weird to have a sense of nostalgia for these cards, considering that most of them were printed while I was still learning how to read. I'm definitely the young guy in the room.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a tournament report, not an autobiography. And here I've gone and written six paragraphs.
I did a bare minimum of research into the A2A format and landed on a variant of the UR Dib deck. I have been casting [[Lightning Bolt]], [[Counterspell]], and efficient creatures semi-professionally for a decade at this point, and would rather go into my first experience in the format playing a deck that I have a reasonable idea of how to play.
I did a lot of waffling on what cards to play, as one often does. Came to the conclusion that [[Flying Men]] wasn't where I wanted to be, and then last minute audibled off Vise, which was probably a bad idea, but also was nice to essentially entirely blank opposing [[Disenchant]]s. [[Portent]] was vaguely terrible all day and will not be making a return. A billion bolts feels like home to me, and searching up [[Ancestral Recall]] never gets old. Mox Monkey was awesome all day and might want four. Threw some random cards in the board and mostly just boarded in Lapses that were generally pretty good. I mostly played against one or two color decks all day so never got to Moon anyone.
Round one I'm paired against JC, who seems like a nice enough dude. This pattern will persist throughout the day. A whole lot of riveting and thrilling Magic occurs over two games, in which I play islands and mountains and he plays swamps and plains. The games end in similar fashion - my hands are torn apart, my relevant permanents follow suit, and I die to random Factories, Specters, and Racks. At one point one of my good spells is Power Sunk? Maybe I Counterspelled the [[Power Sink]]? A halfway decent [[Balance]] happens? I kind of blacked out. I was mostly distracted by the game next to us - I decided to put up a bounty of my own on the board and saw it immediately get achieved here (draw the game with [[Psionic Blast]]). I tuck $25 in the side of my playmat as a reminder to pay out my own donation. Thankfully, I'm not really here to get fired up about losing a game, so I figure I'll just shoot for a 3-3 kind of record and move on with my life.
Round two I'm shoving the remainder of a surprisingly good burger and fries in my mouth and sit down across from Bryan R. My turn one Dib and turn three Dib are hot to death and quickly go the distance while Bryan has kept a hand that seemingly needed to draw one more source of mana to bury me. Game two is a lot more contested, as I mull but still have the Lotus Dib dream start. This time Bryan works multiple Workshops into an Icy and other rocks, while locking down a Dib and receiving Mox Monkey beats. Unfortunately, he's tall on non-artifact spells and short on non-artifact mana, and a small [[Mind Twist]] leaves me with burn in my hand to lock it up, again with Brian perhaps one non-Workshop land from putting the last nail in the coffin.
Round three, I'm up against someone by... wait, is his first name Shaman, or is that like, his legal title? I quickly learn that A) it might be both, and B) Shaman Ben is the guy who's been stamping and altering a lot of the cards that I see kicking around the room and the Discord. This was a really fun match and he was such a joy to play against - round one I am worked over by Hymns and Racks and a Twist, but I _think_ I pulled this one out? Maybe I won game two. Hmm. I board out [[Chain Lightning]]s only to get mauled by the pump knights that neither of us saw at all in the first round. Game three and the match is decided by my Monkey devouring his Jet and him ending the game with a Factory, a Swamp, and showing me a hand full of double black cards he could not cast. Shaman Ben falling to the Shaman, akin to something something ray-hee-ain something.
I swear I have met Mailman Bob somewhere before today but I can't place it. He's the only guy in the room that I can confidently pick out without outside assistance, seeing as nobody else is wearing a USPS patch and a nametag that says Mailman. Bob is playing unsleeved mono green and I'm not sure if I should feel guilty or not as I draw three cards, take extra turns, and Bolt his [[War Mammoth]]s. However, we take the match to the limit - a full FOUR games, as I am forced to retroactively complete my own bounty via Psi Blast in order to have a chance of winning the match. I squeak it out with equal parts mana denial, removal, and big boy Efreet beats, although it is a very near thing.
At this point I'm up 3-1 and mildly surprised in myself as I sit down against DFB, who apparently is the founder of Lobstercon? I try not to let this intimidate me - surely he is just a mortal like myself, and anyone can win at this children's card game of skill and chance and occasionally salt. DFB lands a super early [[Blood Moon]] in game one, but luckily for me, I seem to have drawn a hand of multiple basic Islands. Ankhs hurt us both, [[Atog]]s and Dibs get slowly chewed up, and two Bolt effects from me close it out. In game two I tank entirely too hard on a [[Portent]] targeting him, and end up fucking myself over on the math anyway by missing the fact that my game-winning line actually puts me at negative one life, not positive one. Game three is pretty excellent. I end up with three 1/1s off multiple copies of [[Varchild's War-Riders]] that get killed, and the little guys get in for a ton of damage. He ends up not using a burn spell on one (who wants to [[Guerilla Tactics]] a fucking 1/1 token anyway) while at 7 life and I breathe a sigh of relief as I show him two Bolt effects while at 3ish life myself. Nail biter. DFB tells me I am good at Magic and it makes me happy. (Also I learn that old school-type players actually exist in my neck of the woods? Whaaaaat?)
The final round arrives and I sit down across from Sonny, my second opponent with no sleeves. Myself, with a deck comprised of few real cards and mostly two types of proxy, am once again jealous of this aesthetic. His [[Ironclaw Orcs]] and [[Orcish Artillery]] are awkward against my burn spells, and he feels forced to board out his Chains while I feel no such need. I take the match in three games, having only been hit by one [[Ball Lightning]] and casting Lotus for probably the seventh or eighth time on the day, once again feeling slightly guilty about the affair. Sonny tells me that Dan needs to stop bringing in ringers to their events and I am once again happy.
Wasn't trying to end the day 5-1, but there I was, pleasantly surprised by my results. Sixth place brought me a beautiful Lotus patch and an incredible [[Demonic Tutor]] alter that I'll find reasons to play for the next five years at minimum. People also kept handing me items throughout the day, which is something I'm not used to in a world where some players would rather see me die of a heart attack at the table so that they can write 2-0 on the match slip. Still, it is nice to win games. The post tournament raffle happens and Josh wins everything. I assume this is why everyone has been saying "fuck Josh" all day. I take home a booster pack of Xena Warrior Princess Battle Cry cards that I later open with my wife. I do not open a Xena card and this saddens me. I do open a Callisto card, and this makes my wife happy.
Props to literally everyone who was there, especially all my opponents, who were awesome people; Cayce, for making everything run and being very nice and efficient (and not rigging the raffle in his favor); and Dan, my friend of many years who correctly convinced me to try this format and event out. Also props to good friend Becca, Dan's wife and maker of excellent biscuits.
Slops to [[Portent]], which sucks, and to myself, for playing it.
Here's to next year.
