The third annual Eternal Central Old School tournament at Eternal Weekend is in the books, with some familiar faces, and a lot of newcomers as well. Players traveled from New Zealand, Spain, Canada, and all over the USA to do battle in the ancient ways. With over 100+ players pre-registered, between last minute withdrawls and no-shows, we had 86 players come out to do battle, making this the largest (yet) Old School 93-94 event held anywhere to date.
The tournament was held at Gordon Biersch Brewery, in downtown Columbus (Ohio, USA), with free entry. Many thanks go to their friendly staff for continuously keeping cold craft beers coming, even though they grew flustered as we sprawled beyond our assigned areas. Prizes included a commemorative Dust to Dust for each player for their opponent’s to sign, with a ‘payout’ of other prizes to the Top 16, including Alpha and Beta cards ranging from a well-loved Jayemdae Tome for first (special thank you to Hunter Prendergast for his generous donation), a Beta Braingeyser for second, and other goodies, stretching to Alpha Islands for 9th-16th place. All of these prizes were signed by all 86 players participating, and while we didn’t get a good picture of the total prize pool this year, you can no doubt find some of them floating around on social media.
In a change from previous years for time and fun considerations, before the event was announced we decided on a Straight Swiss + 1 event, rather than Swiss + Top 8 playoff. Swiss + 1 was how many of the original Magic tournaments were run (or single elimination), and with 80-120 people that would normally be 7 rounds, plus 1, equals 8 total rounds. Tiebreakers matter, as does playing out your rounds to try to keep winning points. This was also to keep the tournament flowing and not be around until super late. As is our policy at all events, we want the maximum number of rounds and matches played, and because of this, do not allow draws. If a match would otherwise be a draw after time is called (plus 5 turns), the match immediately goes to Sudden Death Chaos Orb flipping to determine a winner. It seemed like most people finished on time in the normal 50 minute rounds, with a few matches per round going to Sudden Death to determine a winner. The pairings and standings for each round can be found on our live coverage page from the event here.
As can be expected in a larger field, there were many variants of The Deck and UR Control. RUG Tempo was also a popular choice, and one more notable trend was the wider proliferation and mutation of Black/White, Black/Green, and Black/Green/White decks finally. They have a number of tools and disruption pieces to grind out many games, along with tons of removal. Some of the more unique decks in the field were Matt DeMinico’s Fork Combo deck (utilizing multiple Forks and Fastbonds), Kevin Cron’s GW Living Plane deck (leveraging multiple synergies with Living Plane, Tabernacle, Winter Orb, and Drop of Honey), Phil Hillman’s UBR Control deck, Greg Kraigher’s Mono Brown UrzaTron (using 4 Workshops and 4 of each UrzaTron land), Mattew Deering’s RB ConTroll, and Shann Chaudhry’s 5C Birdman deck.
There were also a number of combo decks, like Power Artifact Combo (of a few different stripes), Underworld Dreams Combo, the aforementioned Fork Combo, RW TaxEdge, etc. A new feature of this year’s tournament are prizes for the two most creative decks. The winner of the most creative deck for 2016 goes to Mike Lupo’s Coinflip Red deck, featuring 15 coinflip cards main deck, and he wins a Diamond Valley signed by all players. The runner up for most creative deck of the 2016 tournament goes to Dan Rech’s RGW deck, highlighting the awesome power of Jacque le Vert, and Dan walks away with an Illusionary Mask signed by all players.
Final Standings
Rank, Name, Points
1 Humphreys, Daniel 21 61.9792 70.0000 58.4398
2 Menendian, Steve 21 60.4167 68.1818 55.5260
3 Cummings, Nick 21 58.8542 71.4286 56.0380
4 Slack, Matt 18 68.7500 73.6842 61.8014
5 Anand, Jeff 18 60.9375 60.0000 59.1868
6 Lentz, Jared 18 60.9375 60.0000 59.0860
7 Kraigher, Greg 18 60.7887 68.4211 56.8562
8 Cano, Jame 18 60.4167 68.4211 57.3307
9 Moreno, Dario 18 59.8958 68.4211 54.0343
10 Grudzina, John 18 57.0833 66.6667 54.2783
11 O’Brien, Sean 18 56.7708 60.8696 54.0625
12 Buehler, Randy 18 53.2738 59.0909 53.6945
13 Winzer, Craig 15 66.5179 52.3810 59.7593
14 Tork, James 15 63.0208 52.3810 59.1932
15 Cobb, Axel 15 60.9375 61.1111 55.5232
16 Young, Matt 15 60.0446 60.0000 54.9926
FOR FINAL COMPLETE STANDINGS CLICK HERE
ALL Decks, Alphabetically, by Last Name
Luke Ailanjian – BG Berserk
Jeff Anand – The Deck
David Ata – The Deck
Scott Bradley – BRWU Aggro
Gene Brumby – The Deck
Jonathan Brummer – UR Control
Randy Buehler – The Deck
Michael Butzen – UW Control
Paul Callis – Stasis (not pictured: P9, Tundras, Howling Mines)
Jaime Cano – UBR CounterTroll Disco
Roland Chang – UB Aggro
Shann Chaudhry – 5C Birdman
Blaine Christiansen – Deep Blue Worksop Control
Axel Cobb – Mono Black
Kevin Cron – GW Living Plane Combo
Nick Cummings – UR Control
Bryan Daniels – Mono Red Artifacts
Business (33)
3 Atog
4 Su-Chi
3 Juggernaut
2 Tetravus
1 Shivan Dragon
4 Black Vise
1 Chaos Orb
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Fireball
1 Earthquake
2 Fork
1 Shatter
3 Blood Moon
1 Wheel of Fortune
Mana Sources (29)
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
4 Mana Vault
2 Fellwar Stone
4 Strip Mine
4 Mishra’s Factory
13 Mountain
Sideboard (15)
4 Red Elemental Blast
3 Flash Fire
2 Shivan Dragon
2 Earthquake
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk
1 Fireball
1 Shatter
Eliot Davidoff – 4C Zoo
Matthew Deering – RB ConTroll
Ryan DeMarco – UR Control
Brian DeMars – The Deck
Matt DeMinico – Fork Combo
Dominic Dotterrer – 5C DorkAGeddon
Scott Ferguson – RGW Zoo
Brian Fisher – Patriot Aggro
David Fleischmann-Rose – Mono Blue Tempo
Andrew Frank – UR Control
Bryan Freres – UR Control
Danny Friedman – 5C Copy Millstone Control
Mike Griffin – Power Artifact Combo
John Grudzina – The Deck
William Herdman – Mono Blue Power Artifact Combo
Phil Hillman – UBR Control
Joseph Horen – RUG Tempo
Daniel Humphreys – White Weenie
Mark Jenkins – 5C Copy Millstone Control
Matthew Junker – Deck Photo Missing/Pending
Michael Kiesel – BW
Kirsin Koch – BWG (aka “The Real Aga Galneer”)
Mike Kochis – Mono Black
Greg Kraigher – Mono Brown UrzaTron
Christopher Langston – Mono Blue Power Artifact Combo
Jared Lentz – Mono Black
Mike Lupo – Coinflip Red
Robert Matthews – White Weenie
Andrew McLennan – RG Aggro
Steve Menendian – UR Control
Dan Miller – Greedy Tower UWB Control
Greg Mitchell – The Deck
Marland Moore – UW Control
Dario Moreno – UB Workshop Control
Chris Moyer – Underworld Dreams Combo
Matthew Mullins – UWB Workshop Aggro
Ben Murfin – RGW Zoo
Evan Nyquist – ShieldsUp aka Guardian Beast
Sean O’Brien – BG Nether Void
Will Parshall – RUG Tempo
Chris Pepin – BW Abyss Control
Ben Perry – UR Control
Brian Plattenburg – The Deck
Nate Ponce – UB Discard Control
Hunter Prendergast – GW ErhnamGeddon
Mith Rao – The Deck
Nicholas Rausch – UR Workshop
Dan Rech – RGW Jacques le Vert
Charles Rolko – RUG Power Artifact Combo
Stephen Rosenthal – RUG Tempo
Ryan Sauve – RUG Tempo
Shane Semmens – Dreamweaver Control
Matt Slack – The Deck
Joaquin Solis – RUG Tempo
Andy Swaffar – The Deck
David Szatkowski – Underworld Dreams Combo
Chad Teuscher – The Deck
Jeremy Toma-Cooper – Mono Black
Mike Tompkins – RG Berserk Aggro
James Tork – BW
Mike VanDyke – The Deck
John White – RG Aggro
Tim Winter – RW TaxEdge Combo
Craig Winzer – RG Berserk Aggro
Randal Witherell – Mono Red
Elton Wong – UR Eel Control
Andrew Wright – RG Berserk Aggro
Matt Young – UR Control
Social Media Roundup and Closing Words
The hashtag for social media for the event was #ECOldSchool2016, which you can use to find more on Twitter, Instagram, etc. Thank you to everybody who came out to play. If you are interested in buying any of the physical books we had on site, please head over to our online store here. We plan on being back again next year, probably with more changes and experimentation to make these events better and better. Thank you again to Hunter Prendergast and Sean O’Brien for their contributions to the prize pool this year. For any corrections, comments, follow up, or to donate any cards as prizes for next year, please email eternal.central@gmail.com.
Tournament Action
The winner for Hardest Drinker (who received a custom playmat) also went to the tournament winner, Daniel Humphreys
Prize for Hardest Drinker, in honor of 2015’s Hardest Drinker, Richard Lessman (courtesy of Sean O’Brien)
Round 2 Action, Fleischmann-Rose vs. DeMars (middle match) and Wong vs. Lentz (far match)
Round 2 Action, Parshall vs. Ferguson (near match), Humphreys vs. Moreno (middle)
Old School cross table playing
Rolko’s RUG Power Artifact vs. Shaman Perry’s UR Control
RUG on RUG, sleeves touching and deciding a Chaos Orb flip
One of many The Deck mirror matches on the day
Round 5, Swaffar’s The Deck vs. Rech’s RGW Jacque le Vert
Raush’s UR Workshop vs. Dotterrer’s 5C DorkAGeddon
RUG Tempo mirror
TO Jaco playing a pickup game, gets sick hand Amnesia’d away by Ponce’s UB Control
DeMinico executes Time Walk + Fork + Fork, at 1 life
When Electric Eels and Walls of Heat Attack
The O’Brien School of Opening With Black Lotus and Nether Void
The O’Brien School of Combating Unrestricted Ivory Tower
Chaos Orb Sudden Death Flipping, Chaudry vs. Shaman Ben
