FireBreather 2021 Tournament Report; The First Post-Pandemic MTG Event
On March 13th, 2021 I had the pleasure of attending the first Magic the Gathering tournament since COVID-19; The FireBreather. The Firebreather was an Old School event hosted by Mike Frantz at York Springs Fire Company in the state of Pennsylvania. At the time, I was still living in Fort Worth, Texas and had quite the journey of 1400 miles. Mike wrote up a great post shortly after the event concluded. You can find that post here as well as all deck lists in full from the event here.
I had very little time to prep for the event, but knew one thing forsure; I wanted to play 4 Juzam Dijin in whatever deck I built
While I am quite experienced in formats such as Modern and Limited, I found myself entering the event with literally no other experiences to look back upon. I don’t know the card pool of Old School particularly well, and I knew by choosing to not play blue that I would be at a pretty large disadvantage. Alas, I chose the route of style points by dismantling my opponents with an Alpha Shivan Dragon and a Bartel Runeaxe rather than fancy blue cards. I even managed to snag some altered power for the event just in time.
My deck had a few fun things it could do, in particular a turn 1 Juzam. I probably went a bit overboard on the style points, and could have had a better balance of style and playable cards. Sometimes you do what you gotta do.
There were a total of 24 participants including myself that attended; many of which represented Dice City Games. Upon arrival we were greeted by ice cold Yuengling and a Thanksgiving Style Lunch in between rounds. Since it was a small event; there were simply four rounds of swiss followed by a cut to top 8.
I can’t tell you how nice it was to have an actual delicious, non-rushed meal in between rounds of a Magic tournament. Nothing like your traditional, convention style hot dog; that’s for damn sure. Watching opponents enjoy their Yuengling over some of the oldest cards in the game and even using them as coasters for power was also a good laugh.
Ultimately, the event was taken down by Rubens Campana and some bad boy Sedge Trolls. Rubens had great an interesting array of card choices, including some of my own personal favorites. The deck list he used to take down the event can be found directly below.
Rubens stayed in the same beautiful Gettysburg Mansion I did that weekend, and I was sure to congratulate him for the big W. Ultimately; he won in the Dice City Games red as well.
I also had the pleasure of attending the event with long-time friend and sponsor Jimmy Cooney; Owner of Dice City Games. Jimmy ended up in third place with an incredibly interesting take on a green-based thalid deck. I did my best to defeat him the morning after the event but didn’t quite get there. Turns out; Turn 1 Black Lotus is pretty good.
I found Sylvan Library to be outstanding and if I were to play the deck I built again I would make similar adjustments to the changes below. There aren’t a lot of card advantage options in the format so cards like Sylvan Library run at a premium. During the Firebreather; I managed to defeat a Mono White Deck and a G/R Aggro deck but had issues with the two blue decks I faced.
However, since the event; I’ve already started to build up a new masterpiece. I found that Juzam wasn’t actually that good and that Swords to Plowshares is quite absurd since it trades up on mana so heavily. Ultimately, I love black-based midrange decks and know that I want to be playing Mind Twist is just about any Old School deck I build. You’ll see that I took some inspiration from the Fire Breather and continued to work on a black-based Sedge Troll deck. Disenchant plus Swords to Plowshares makes up a pretty reasonable splash color.
Here is a rough draft of my current project. Ultimately, it isn’t finished but I’ve made some really solid progress. I’m looking to take it one card at a time. I’m sure by the end of the summer it will take a new, evolved form as well.
Current Decklist:
Spells
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Sinkhole
3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Sylvan Library
1 Chaos Orb
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Sol Ring
1 Nevinyrral’s Disk
1 Mind Twist
1 Mana Vault
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Artifact Blast
1 Fireball
1 Earthquake
1 Disenchant
Creatures
4 Sedge Troll
4 Hypnotic Specter
1 Su Chi
Lands
4 City Of Brass
3 Badlands
2 Mishra’s Factory
2 Scrubland
2 Bayou
2 Plains
2 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Strip Mine
1 Taiga
A few final pictures for the road…
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