Legends, Legends, and more Legends…

That was the theme of the Northern Paladins Old School 93/94 Heroes of Legends tournament held on Saturday, October 26th!  Players brought decks with Legends, players won prizes from Legends, players received categorical and random cards from Legends, and everyone went home with a hero from Legends with a commemorative Northern Paladin stamp to remind them of this amazingly fun tournament!  Here’s a letter from Angus Mackenzie that introduced the tournament:

The venue was Fantasy Flight Games and another huge thanks to tournament organizers Michael Angelo Russo, Joseph Freshwater, Adam Luchsinger, and Our Prize and Theme coordinator Jon Tschida! This tournament gathered 29 players.  We had 6 rounds of Swiss, and rules were Eternal Central 93/94.  Entry fees went towards the rental hall, prizes, and ANOTHER $167 was raised towards our charity effort called Paladin Backpacks!  This doubled our cumulative charitable giving to this effort.  Michael Gross and Joseph Freshwater are leading efforts to build backpacks full of supplies and deliver them to local homeless people, providing these people with comforts and necessities that we all take for granted and showing them that people do care.

First, ALL participants received a hero from Legends with a commemorative Northern Paladin stamp!

Top prizes for place in the swiss standings consisted of a Legends Recall, Underworld Dreams, and Land Tax.  Top creative prize was a Legends Hell’s Caretaker and the top 4 received revised Demonic Tutors (the latter generously donated by Joseph Freshwater.)  Best Unpowered deck received four legends Chain Lightnings!

Everyone’s deck received categorical prizes for Legendary Peace, Knowledge, Growth, Fliers, Destruction, Control, and Aggression received NP Altered Spirit Links, Recalls, Whirling Dervishes, Fallen Angels, Land’s Edges, KIsmets, and Blood Lusts.

More Legends cards, which included the five Legendary Lands, Spinal Villian, Firestorm Phoenix, Typhoon, and the very own Sol’kanar were given away as RANDOM door prizes!  Two old Magic comic books with Fallen Empire boosters, a magic life counter, a magic figure, and an original magic deckbox were raffled towards the charity!  Angelo won the oversized Chaos Orb signed by all participants!

   

The Northern Paladin Spirit Awards were NP Altered Legendary Elder Dragons!

FINAL STANDINGS

AWARDS

The winner of the tournament was Jordan Berg, bringing his UR Aggro Workshop deck, riding it to an impressive undefeated 6-0 record.   His deck aggressively attacked with robots and burn, but an insult-to-injury inclusion is three maindeck Blood Moons.  I had the joy of seeing that come down game 1 for a practical auto-concede.   What is that Taiga and Badlands doing in your maindeck — such trickery!

Rounding out the top 3 were Kevin Berg at 5-1 and Arty Garcia at 4-2.  Kevin played an aggressive RUG Arabian-type Aggro deck with 4 Kird Apes, 4 Dibs, 2 Ernhams, a ton of burn, and 4 stone rains (ouch!)  Arty played a brutal UB no-Rack Discard deck.  I could barely read his decklist picture as it’s chock full of foreign black bordered goodness, but all you need is the art in Old School!  Look for his miser Juzam Djinn hiding behind a swamp.

Top Unpowered Deck – Nolan Becker.   Make this two in a row (unpowered wins) with a powerful and beautiful black bordered unpowered BRG deck.   His deck had a diversity of beaters, burn, and discard.  Following the theme of this tournament, I loved that he included Bartel Runeaxe and Xira Arien maindeck and Adun Oakenshield in the sideboard.  Very fitting that the deck placed well!

Most Creative – Dane Malone.  Dane is our resident creative master.   This time he brought a sleight of mind / deathlace creation called Icatian War that turns your cards black or his creatures protection or COP’s another color, and then he run you over with his protected creatures.  If that wasn’t enough, you have to read his decklist picture to see the fun game within the game to win cool altered prizes if you succeed in your quests to defeat his knights!

The next three creative prizes went to Tom Lee, Dana Drew, and Jeremy Jones.  Tom brought a Halloween themed reanimator deck called Pet Sematary that used Bartel Runeaxe, Lady Orca, Rubinia Soulsinger, and Sol’kanar as the mom, dad, Ellie, and Gage and his other creatures representing Church the cat.  Dana brought “Angels and Bunnies” that played the usual aggro/control BW cards, but he added the spicy Breeding Pit to feed Fallen Angel, Soul Exchange, and an awesome addition of Ebon Praetor (I’ve never understood the art with the bunny, but I love it!)  Jeremy Jones brought his Ring of the Beast deck.  When you REALLY want to get Guardian Beast and Chaos Orb online, why not use three Ring of Marufs to sort of make it six “maindeck” of Beasts and Copy Artifact!  The deck looks super mana hungry, but when the combo gets online, it’s GG.

These four Paladins, Jon Tschida (the creativity behind his Legends themed tournament), Adam Luchsinger (co-tournament organizer), Michael Gross (Charity coordinator), and Dan Hyland (blog and weekly card write-ups) all won the Paladin Spirit Award, each winning a NP Altered Elder Dragon!

And last and yes least, Jeremy Jones had to agree to this picture to claim his Last Place Blow Out prize card of Typhoon!

DECKLISTS

Below are the decklists in alphabetical order by last name.  We had a great variety of decks with seven unpowered decks.  There was a lot of combo this tournament including Lich, Twiddle-vault, All Hallow’s Eve, Underworld Dreams, and Beast/Orb.   Look for Agnus Mackenzie and Rasputin Dreamweaver in a millstone deck!

Kenny Becker-Pink-Weenie [Unpowered]

Nolan Becker-GRB-Aggro

Jordan Berg-UR-Workshops

Kevin Berg-RUG-Arabian-Aggro

Jonathan Brummer-4C-Control

Saul Clayman Mono-Black-Rack

Dana Drew-BW-Angels-and-Bunnies [Unpowered]

Jason Freshwater UR-Counter-Burn

 

Joseph Freshwater WR-casting-the-first-stone

Arty Garcia-UB-Discard

Michael Gross WUR-Storytime

Justin Halberg Mono-Red-Goblins-Aggro [Unpowered]

[Unpowered] David Holler RUG-Berserk-Aggro

Dan Hyland Troll-disco-eggs

Megan Hyland-UB-Aggro-Control [Unpowered]

Joshua Johnson – Skittles 5 Color


Jeremy Jones-UBW-Ring-of-the-Beast

Tom Lee-5C-Reanimator Pet Semetary

Jesse Laidlaw Mono-Blue-Fish-Aggro

Adam Luchsinger-mono-black-discarded-and-stoned [Unpowered]

Dan Malone – Icatian War

Marcus Pobloske  4C-Twiddlevault-Combo

Michael Angelo Russo Machines-of-Darkness

Jeremy Severson 5C-Reanimator with a transformation sideboard into dream-winds-combo!

Jon Tschida UWG-Control-Rasputin-and-Angus-get-stoned

Will Weatherhead-White-Weenie [Unpowered]

Tim Winter 4C-Lich-Combo

Pictures from the Event

Jon announcing the theme of the tournament holding up Sol’kanar the Swamp King!

Tom has his hands in his pockets watching Marcus combo out taking perhaps 10 time walks in a row.  Is Nolan going to see the same fate or will his Ernhams race in time?

  

Coincidentally, both Jon and Jonathan have Millstone, Moat, and Sylvan Library going – hopefully in control of the game!

 

Tim with Sylvan, Fastbond, double Dark Heart, Abyss, Lich, and Icy.  The combo is on with a bit of extra insult to injury.

That’s a mean Ancestral, Dane!  Michael’s thinking “for me?”  Meanwhile, Megan says take 4 to the face, while Jeremy doesn’t have red for his blast.

    

More pictures from the tables!

 

 

 

 

 

At the end the tournament, Arty put his raffle won Magic comic aside to rip open the Fallen Empire booster!

Looking Ahead

Be on the lookout for our next Northern Paladin event in 2020 — MORE DETAILS TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON! 

As a reminder, we host our Tuesday night Old School Gauntlet at Steamship Games in Minneapolis at 6:45 with FREE entry and weekly prizes!