Middle School Marauders 07-2019 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 usually 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 Japanese Morphling given out to 1st place in Swiss, as well as a Strategic Planning, and an Entomb (donated by Mr. Baran), given out to the top two Most Creative decks. Check out the cards people chose to get signed here:

Final Standings After Swiss+1

1. Andy MacDougall (The Rock BG)
2. Evan Smith (Landstill UW w/ StifleNaught Sideboard)
3. Bob Agra (Sligh)
4. David Gleicher (Mono Blue Faerie Tempo)
5. Lee Cote (SqueePulsion Control)
6. Tyler Etters (Sligh)
7. Jaco (Replenish Combo UW)
8. David Velasco (RUG Grow)
9. Matt Moss (Survival Slivers)
10. Tim Baran (Palichron Survival)
11. Robert Beedle (RG Creatureland Aggro) *Most Creative 2nd*
12. Adam Rinsky (Mono Blue Control)
13. Nick Rohr (Mono Black Stax) *Most Creative 1st*
14. Anthony Zinni (SqueePulsion Control)
15. Zach Zurawski (Landstill UW w/StifleNaught main)
16. Ian Blank (BG Pox)

There were 16 mages on this scorching game day in Chicago. Psychatog and Oath were entirely absent, and there was a pretty wild mix of decks in the smaller field. 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.

Rohr (Mono Black Stax) vs. Velasco (RUG Grow)