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Sunday, December 18, 2016

Eternal Weekend 2016 Restrospective

Well, I always say that I am going to start posting more often, and shorter posts, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it. Since my last post in October:

This post will focus on my experiences at Eternal Weekend 2016.

The following post will be a complete metagame posting, and guest tournament report from the Party of the Pit Lords winner, Brian Fisher. If you ever played Vintage in the Midwest US in the early-mid 2000s, you probably lost to Fisher on either Control Slaver or 7/10 Split. I know I did—over and over again.


Eternal Weekend
As far as 93/94 goes, this is a lot of State-side action for just a couple months. I'm not going to dive into everything, but I do want to highlight my experiences at Eternal Weekend playing Old School. For any of you interested in my Vintage performance—I was extremely hung over, tired, played a sub-optimal deck, and played poorly. That's an accurate high-level summary of my Vintage exploits. Done.

The Old School was unreal, as could be expected. Some highlights from EC's 93/94 event:

I was matched up round one against fellow Chicago Lord, Matt Slack who wrecked me in two quick games and went on to get fourth place in the event. I can't beat Matt in any format, so this is to be expected.

I played against Evan Nyquist, of Atlanta and the Team Tusk crew, in an earlier round of the event. I got pretty lucky, but he still held on for a long time. He was super fun to play against, and was a beast in Chaos Orb-flipping.



We chatted Old School and had a great time. He mentions our match and the Lords of the Pit superior attire (over the current Team Tusk garb, not including Evan's track suit) during Tusk Talk: Episode 13 around the 3:00 mark.

I played against Mark Jenkins, who was a super nice guy who live-streamed our match on FB (and I have now uploaded it here). He happened to be playing a copy of the "The Milling Factory" list that I also happened to be on.

My Milling Factory list from EC's Eternal Weekend 2016 93/94

Nothing like a control mirror match when both your mental and motor skills are degraded from a full day of beers and Jaëger bombs (in true Jaco fashion).


The second of the three rounds that I lost was to the eventual winner, Daniel Humphreys (described to be my Sean O'Brien as "a pirate" while trying to locate him before our match), of another Atlanta-based crew, the Tax Men, on White Weenie. He was so drunk that he had a hard time coming in to play our match (by the time he won, he had no idea that he had actually won, was nowhere to be found, and when finally found, thought that he had to play another match). Despite his state of mind, he absolutely wrecked my in two games, top-decking an Armageddon for the win the turn before I could play my Wrath of God.

Drunk-ness portrayed accurately (photo courtesy of EC)
My final loss was to John Grudzina on a pretty stock build of the deck (with Factories and The Hive). It was standard bad beats—his draws were better than mine, and in a control matchup, that will do it.

In the end my losses were to the first, fourth, and tenth-place finishers for a lackluster seventeenth place finish. I had an awesome time and can't wait for next year. Hopefully I'll have a spicy brew prepared. I may need to pick up some Nether Voids.

In addition to EC's main event. We ran two smaller spur-of-the-moment tournaments. One in our hotel, and one at a local bar, Barley's. Each had eight players and the prizes were whatever junk cards the players could spare.

Hotel Mini-Tournament (I didn't take enough pictures):


Not a bad showing for almost no notice!

Control deck mirrors...

Here is Dominic Dotterrer versus Brian Fisher settling a draw with Chaos Orb flips in our hotel tournament. 360º is serious shit.



Dominic is clearly a seasoned Chaos Orb veteran.

"Barley's Open"

Jaco vs Fisher

Prizes

Christensen vs Friedman


Fisher's start against Friedman (I definitely lost)

Not a hit in my book, but this was contested and reflipped.
Alpha FTW.



Fisher stylin' Dotterrer's vest



Here's Blaine Christensen wrecking Shane Semmens's Library with Chaos Orb.


West. Coast. Style.

I'd like to thank everyone that made Eternal Weekend amazing for me this year. I started typing out a list of people, and when it hit 20 I just figured a short statement would be more palatable. I met some amazing people for the first time, reconnected with old friends from all over the country (and the world), and of course got to hang out with people I see all the time. Community is what keeps Magic exceptional, and it's why I'm still playing. This format seems to bring out the best people and it's been a true joy to be a part of it.

Now, onto some Chicago style...

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