The first Festival of Friendship was all the way back in 2019! Austin (Romancing the Stones) has been going hard on Vintage and Middle School in the interim but they have been a bit slow getting back into Old School post-pandemic. With the success of Hurricane in 2023 I think they were ready to start adding an Old School event back on to the calendar. Selfishly, I’m very happy to see this event back on the Texas calendar as it means there is another event that I can go to by driving instead of having to fly to all my Old School events!
Romancing the Stones always knocking posters out of the park!
I may have had to strongarm the local crew a little bit—everyone wanted to drive up Saturday and drive back Sunday. I really wanted to drive up Friday, get some good food, and have some hangouts, make a slow start on Saturday, play the tournament and relish the company, then drive back Sunday after going for breakfast and a hike. This would give the added bonus of being able to eat some better food and not have to drive up the day of the event. I won the battle but lost the war (maybe) since I ended up having to book the Airbnb and drive to Austin—not the worst but also not the best. Jeff was a bit tardy getting to my house on Friday due to prepping for the incoming freeze, so we are stuck in traffic getting out of Houston. Stupid 610. One advantage of being cast as driver is that I get to control magic the music. After making everyone listen to Portishead, we proceeded to chat about Magic, life, etc., and the remainder of the drive-up was pretty uneventful.
BBQ (Blurry BBQ)
The first stop on the way into Austin was an Egyptian BBQ place that I had been wanting to try (KG BBQ). The food and bar where the BBQ was posted were both great. After the drive and the dark skies out it felt late, but it was really only early evening. Cue themes of old men. They did miss one of the meats from our order unfortunately (lamb shoulder), but the rest of the food was good: classic brisket, pomegranate-glazed pork ribs, Mediterranean pork sausage, Baladi salad, Mediterranean rice, and of course some comically large beers from the bar.
Who even knows what I am doing?
The Airbnb was a stones throw away from the Saturday venue. Street parking was a bit tight, but thankfully we had a garage in the town house after we got into the unit. After deliberating on what to do, we decided we would just go to tomorrow’s venue (Tweedy’s) and grab some drinks. The bar night ended with shots of Mezcal, so I would say it was a roaring success. After we got back to the Airbnb we got some Old School Cards Against Humanity in, and we got some late-night / early-morning pizza. We also realised that the prior Airbnb guest had left their YouTube account logged into the TV, so we tried to mess up their algorithm as much as possible: Scottish Peppa Pig, I think you should leave, Portishead live at Roseland concert, other random comedy acts, competitive eating videos, etc.
Tweedy’s
We are officially old. Everyone was up and showered by 8:00 am, despite us not going to sleep until ~3 am. I had decided in the early morning that I wanted to add the Blood Moon back into my sideboard that I had cut on Friday morning. Of course I cut it after taking my deck picture, which is really annoying because I hate taking another deck pic and I am a constant sideboard waffler. Winston thought he had an extra Blood Moon so we appeared to be all set. We decided to order some food to save us going out, and we got some decent breakfast biscuits delivered. Winston finds out he only has 3 Blood Moon with him and they are all in his sideboard, looks like I am stuck with what I brought with me (which serves me right I guess). Much coffee and tea were consumed before walking to the venue, which took a whole 2 minutes and with which we were intimately familiar with from the night before. I had to wait a little bit for the bar to get set up so I could get my early morning bloody Mary, as is my old-school magic pre-tournament tradition. I unloaded some of the Old School bandanas I had with me, divided out some stickers, cards to be signed and stamped, and I said hello to new and old faces.
Bloody Mary – Breakfast (drink) of champions
Round 1: Stasis – Theo (our youngest mage) – 2-0
Lose the die roll.
Strip Mine + Icy Manipulator is pretty good against the card Stasis when you get to accelerate out your Icy Manipulator .
Red Elemental Blast is a good card after the sideboard, and I brought 3 of them in.
I had one humorous moment where Theo played Library of Alexandria and immediately activated it. How many cards in hand? I asked. “Three” came the reply. Ok, well, you are going to have to wait until you get to 7. Library would have been even more bonkers.
Round 2: UWB Control Serra – Tanner – 2-1
Lose the die roll.
This was my most interesting match all day.
G1: I constrain his mana and beat him down with robots. I see that he is on UW, but I don’t know how heavy into control or creatures he is, is he classic the deck, etc.
G2: He plays a turn 2 Serra Angel off Black Lotus, I have to mulligan to 6, the card I put on the bottom is Fireball, and I never draw an Icy Manipulator . Meanwhile, he has 2 Counterspells for a Su-Chi and a Triskelion, so I cannot even try to race or copy a Triskelion to kill his Angel. I think my mulligan putting Fireball on the bottom was correct but sometimes you do lose to T2 Serra Angel.
G3: Library of Alexandria game…for both of us. I should have lost this game or at least drawn this one, but my opponent made a few critical mistakes, allowing me to have a bit of breathing room. We both play Draw Go for a while. My hand is really good, and I have the Blood Moon, but he is also playing Draw Go, and I really need Blood Moon to resolve to make the game easier. I alternate drawing on his turn and my turn, changing the pace of the game a little, either because of my weird pacing or because of his lack of experience with Library of Alexandria; he missed drawing a couple of times (I think twice) and I think it was putting him in the tank a little with wondering what exactly I was doing. He had multiple counters and removal spells for my first couple of threats – Triskelion/Su-Chi, which meant I didn’t ever have a chance to play a Copy Artifact on them or get to attacking him. I got to a point where I needed to empty my hand because we were approaching a game state where I needed to cast Blood Moon and then cast Wheel of Fortune, so I was copying mana sources with Copy Artifact, which was a bit awkward and not really what I wanted to be doing but it would also let me cast a reasonably big fireball to also get it out of hand. I was also keeping his mana constrained with Icy Manipulator while it was around, which was stopping him from being able to cast Serra. He taps down low one turn and I slam a Blood Moon since he only has one blue open, but he has the BEB, which is kind of a blow out, and I slump in my seat. The next turn, he taps out and slams Braingeyser… I untap, use the remaining cards in hand before I discard them, and then cast the Wheel of Fortune that I have been sandbagging—his hand is exactly what you want when you play the deck, and is one of the better Wheel of Fortunes that I have ever cast—he discards Mana Drain, Ancestral, Serra, etc. After this, I slowly pull ahead, but after I resolve a couple of Triskelion’s he casts a Moat which stops me in my tracks. Then a turn or two later there is a turn where he casts Divine Offering and in response casts another Divine Offering on my two Triskelion’s, and I showed him the take 2 and kill itself trick. Unfortunately, with the Moat in play and being down a few more Triskelion’s this means my win cons are a single Triskelion, a Copy, a Chaos Orb, and a Timetwister, while he is at about 8 life and I already used my Fireball to get it out of hand before the Wheel of Fortune. We keep playing, and he casts Demonic Tutor; the door is closing even faster, but he isn’t able to really leverage the Demonic into anything too bad for me since his best cards were discarded by Wheel of Fortune and he already cast Braingeyser, and in the meantime I keep messing with his mana with Icy Manipulator (two of them at this point). He makes the most costly misplay one turn though when he drops a City of Brass…eventually this lets me kill him on the second to last turn of turns…a very lucky escape from me! He was a new Old School player and probably couldn’t have won the game in turns either, so we would likely have gone to Chaos Orb flips, which would have likely benefited me if we had ended up there.
I should have lost or drawn this one. It was even more awkward that I had cut the 2nd Blood Moon the Friday before the event; having access to another Blood Moon would have made this match a little easier (as well as the next two…).
Round 3: The Deck – Patrick – 2-0
Lose the die roll.
Strip Mine is real. Strip Mine + Icy Manipulator is real.
I also have a turn where my opponent taps out for Braingeyser for 3, and I get to play City in a Bottle, blowing up his 2 City of Brass, and he gets really mana constrained as a result.
At least one of these games is also a Library of Alexandria game (again)!
Spoils
Round 4: The Deck – Tweedy – 2-0
Lose the die roll.
Strip Mine is real. Strip Mine + Icy Manipulator is real.
These were real non-games. Tweedy maybe should have gone for a mulligan but he kept very fair and slow hands and I constrained his mana hard in both games.
Round 5: Mono Black Aggro – Bye, I mean Brian – 2-0
Lose the die roll again.
Opponent: t1, Swamp, Dark Ritual, Order of the Ebond Hand, The Rack
Me: t1, Mishra’s Workshop, Black Lotus, Triskelion
SB in: Falling Star, Earthquake, and Animate Dead
I kill his Royal Assassin twice and then win. I did draw both Falling Star and Animate Dead which was pretty good but in the match if I am not under threat from The Rack I have a lot of time to draw into Triskelion.
I do make a mistake one turn by blocking and removing a counter off Triskelion and don’t leverage my board position as well as I could, but I am so far ahead that it doesn’t matter.
It turns out that losing the die roll every turn doesn’t matter that much when one of your lands produces 3 colourless mana.
Sign the cards damnit! (Some people didn’t and this make me sad)
The only meal of the weekend that I don’t have a hand in. Stoner “Jimmy Johns” would not have been my choice, but the food is fine, and the sandwich I got did have the perfect name after my 5-0 run. Oh, it was also a happy hour, even though it was Saturday evening, so we could have $2 well drinks, which is, uh, dangerous / solid.
5-0
We grabbed some snacks and ciders from the CO-OP on the way back towards Tweedy’s, but everyone had left, so we grabbed some extra dessert at the place out the back, Zucchini Kill. After that, we continued to mess up the prior AirBnB guests YouTube algorithm.
Sunday morning, we all woke up early again and went to grab tacos at Veracruz. Delicious, delicious tacos. Oh yeah, it was also below freezing. Remember my original plan? Go for a hike Sunday morning before heading back. With our bellies full, we drove about an hour outside of Austin and went for a quick 3.2-mile hike up and down the only elevation around. It was a nice counterpoint to being inside doing nerd stuff and drinking all day Saturday.
“Brave hikers”
A couple more hours more in the car, and we got back to Houston.
All in all, a great magic trip unfolded, leaving behind a disrupted YouTube algorithm, one too few Blood Moons, some quasi-strategic battles and an oversized Juzam Djinn to add to my haul.
My list (with 1 sb changes – 1 Blood Moon +1 Animate Dead)
Big thanks to Ty Thomason for doing well with a very similar list at Eternal weekend 2023 and I believe that the nexus of that list came from from Shop aficionado Will “Wheel” Magrann.
Cheers,
–mtgmisprint–
Falling Stars 