Middle School Marauders 03-2019 Coverage and Results

This past week the Lords of the Pit hosted another Middle School event in Chicago, in a recurring series of events called Middle School Marauders (#MiddleSchoolMarauders on social media). Future events in this series will likely be open to the public every month or two, and found on our Events page here, as well as posted online at https://twitter.com/middleschoolmtg.

Tournament Structure and Prizing

As usual, with most local events we try to keep things moving quickly so people can have fun and get in and out, and then go hang out with friends at night afterwards. We often do Swiss+1 with no draws allowed, to encourage people to actually play Magic rather than draw matches, and this event ended up being 6 total rounds. This was a charity event where we collected physical school supplies to donate to the Charles S. Brownell Elementary School.

There was a large stack of Middle School staples that people could choose from before the tournament, and each player chose one card, and then everyone else would end up signing that card by the end of the event. There was also a special Illusions of Grandeur given out to 1st place, as well as a special Bribery given out for Most Creative Deck. Check out the cards people chose to get signed here:

Final Standings After Swiss+1

1. David Gleicher (Survival Squeebind) 6-0
2. Jaco (Psychatog UBW) 5-1
3. Matt Braun (Tax Edge RW) 5-1
4. Steve Walsh (Worldgorger Dragon Combo) 4-2
5. Brandon Adams (Trix UBR) 4-2
6. Lorien Elleman (Goblins RB) 4-2
7. Anthony Zinni (Landstill UW) 4-2
8. Michael Tabler (Trinity Green) 4-2
9. Bob Agra (Worldgorger Dragon Combo) 4-2
10. Tyler Etters (Cartographer Slide) 3-3
11. Andy MacDougall (Mono Black Shadow) 3-3
12. Nathan Mullen (Psychatog UB) 3-3
13. Ian Blank (Mono Black Pox) 3-3
14. Dan Piquard (Fires RG) 3-3
15. Chris Bergeson (Pandemonium Dreadnought Dragon) 3-3 *MOST CREATIVE DECK WINNER*
16. Dan Guajardo (Wheaties) 3-3
17. David Velasco (5C Tribal Flames) 2-4
18. Tim Baran (Fruity Pebbles) 2-4
19. Alex McCarten-Gibbs (Madness UG) 2-4
20. Stephen Maldonado (Trix) 2-4
21. Zack Zurawski (TurboLand Oath) 2-4
22. Max Neumann (Rock BG) 2-4
23. Stefan Croissant (RG Ponza) 2-4
24. Shane Semmens (Worldgorger Dragon Combo) 2-4
25. Jack Holt (BW Slide) 1-5
26. Michael Goss (Madness UG) 0-6

There were a robust 26 players on this day, with another 4 watching. Worldgorger Dragon Combo was somehow the most represented archetype, and there were around 20 distinct decks present. We will not be posting many decklists from these events here on EC in the near future, but will instead continue to post full metagame breakdowns for each event, in order to give people a more general idea of what people are experimenting with and playing in events. It’s a relatively new format to most people, so it is very much in the discovery and exploratory phases of Middle School deck development, which is very exciting.

For deck ideas see our Introducing Middle School article, which has links to the rules and a number of historical events and decks of their respective eras, to get the creative juices flowing. From there you can begin to engineer some decklists, and then test and tune as you iterate!

Tournament Action

While we will not be publishing decklists from this event, below you can find plenty of pics from the games during the tournament, and see many of the cards in action.

Etters (Cartographer Slide) vs. Holt (BW Slide)