Last night we had our usual Monday Meetup, and it did not fail to be a wonderful evening.  When I first arrived, there were already 4 people playing, a fifth watching, myself, and before we knew it there were around 14 of us chatting, slinging spells, checking out binders, and having fun.  I was a touch worried as one of our usual tables, a four top, was occupied by people playing Cards Against Humanity, which although fun, isn’t Magic.  Lucky for us, they had to leave about 30 minutes after we arrived, so we got settled in to play. I’ve been pondering what I’d like to play at The Winter Blast in March, so I decided to brew up something that’s full of cards I like.  Generally speaking, cards I like tend to be lands, and in particular, I’ve always loved Urza’s lands and , so I decided to go [ … ]

While I’ve been working on The Winter Blast, I’ve spoken to some other organizers and been paying more attention to the Old School world on the whole a lot more closely.  I know that we are relative newcomers to the community, and as such we have a lot of privilege since so much ground work was already laid, however, there are still a lot of awesome things going on, and I’m hoping to help spread that groundwork some more.  Today, I want to highlight some that I absolutely love. First up is the Lords of the Pit’s map of Old School groups around North America. It’s been so much fun to see it evolve and notice new groups showing up, and being able to visualize where there are scenes happening. I know that it’s by no means definitive, but it is very handy. Next up is this rad chart that [ … ]

Note, I’m terrible at remembering peoples’ names, and even though I went into this night with the intent of taking loads of pictures and writing down names for each match, well, neither of those really happened.  The entire night happened so quickly that taking out my notebook didn’t even cross my mind.  I’m also certain that I’m missing at least one match in here, but again, I can’t recall what it was. I’m fortunate enough in life that I was able to take the summer to spend time with my kiddos and to free up my wife’s time a bit more to focus on her business.  It was fantastic, but it had to end eventually.  Job hunting began in early September, resulting in a company wanting to fly me out to their office in San Francisco towards the end of that month.  I was excited for the job opportunity as [ … ]

Last night, Monday 5 October, a group of strangers (well, some friends as well) met up at Bar With No Name here in Toronto to play with 25 year old cardboard.  Leading up to it, I was worried that people wouldn’t show up or that too many people would show up for the space.  We were lucky in that the bar was pretty quiet when we arrived, so we were able to carve out five tables for the ten of us to play. I arrived to see my friend Chris already hanging out with a fellow old schooler, Joel, so I joined them and chatted for a few.  The few became more, and it soon became evident that it was time to claim our tables, order some food and drinks, and get things going.  In total, we had 9 players and a spectator, with 3 of them being total strangers [ … ]

I’m tapping my to band with some other locals to play the best kind of Magic! In continuing to try and grow the Toronto Old School scene, I’m publicly announcing that 5 November, 2018, around 8:30pm, some of us will be meeting up at Bar With No Name, located at 1651 Bloor Street West in Toronto. If you have questions, the easiest way to get at me is on twitter as @jasonious. I’m hoping there’s enough space available for us to take over a few tables and play some games. I’d love to discuss other locations with people who are interested, as BWNN isn’t huge, and with it being cold and wet out, their patio is closed. Generally speaking, we’ve been playing Eternal Central rules (reprints allowed, 4 Strips, etc) but are open to other formats. In the interest of growing the community, if you are interested at all but [ … ]

Well, it’s been a busy summer of not playing nearly as much Old School as I’d have liked, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Sometimes it’s nice to be away from our hobbies so that we can truly appreciate them. It also helps that I spent most of my summer at our Tiny Cabin out of the city with my wife and kiddos enjoying my time off from working. Anyhow, that’s not what I’m here to write about! The other night, I did get a chance to play some cards with my regular playgroup, which is where I learned about an amazing combo. We have one regular in particular who has gone all in on getting Power and _good_ cards for the format which makes it exciting to play against him. He’s been known to run Powered Winds of Dreams combo, so that’s what I was expecting. Instead, I was greeted [ … ]

   A while back, I found this post from Music City Old School about mono-green budget weenie deck and was enamored with it.  It runs a bunch of cheap, efficient creatures and a full set of to lock out the opponent while constantly having threats to drop.  I played it a handful of times with my usual group as it was and then started tweaking it to my personal liking.  I was pleasantly surprised when I returned to the article to see the update about removing a bunch of stuff and adding in a load of wolves.  Be still, my beating heart!  I’d made very similar changes once I realized that the old green wolves worked very well in the deck.  I tried to get to fit as well, but it just doesn’t work very well. Since I played it a bunch of times, I realized that I wanted more [ … ]

It’s been a while since our last post, but that doesn’t mean that nothings been going on.  Quite the contrary!  We organized and played our first tournament amongst our usual play group a few weekends ago.  It was a lovely afternoon here in Toronto, which means that we got to sling some spells outside.  All in all, it was a fantastic day, and I think that all of the players very much enjoyed old cards, grilled/smoked foods, and plenty of beverages.  Oh, and playing for the chance to win this, rather appropriate, old school prize, which we of course signed and altered as we saw fit, so as to follow the old school culture we’ve seen around.  It happened to be a player’s birthday, so we figured a Candle of Brass made sense. We wanted to keep our first tournament fairly low-key, so we didn’t bother with using technology to [ … ]