Since Denver’s YetiCon 2024, I’ve been playing it low and quiet. Something shifted after that trip—I went through the looking glass and became consumed by ultralight hiking. My brain, which once spun with decklists, now churns out decklists packlists on Lighterpack as I shave ounces off my setup. Magic has taken a backseat to base weight, frameless packs, and scrutinizing the grams on every item I carry. No seriously, my kitchen scales are hardly in the kitchen anymore. I have plans to do a 100 mile thru hike later this year, so we will see how that pans out.
So, when the Winter Derby rolled around, I was far from my sharpest. I dragged myself into the event with a deck I didn’t even like—just another checkmark on my list of decks to top 16 or top 8 with. Naturally, I got promptly booted with a lackluster 1-3 record. I shrugged it off, my attention already fixated on my plans for a mini hiking trip after the Festival of Friendship 2025.
I barely gave the tournament a thought until a couple of days before the event. That was when I talked to some folks, including Ty, who told me he’d had a blast piloting the Zoo list in a prior event. A lightbulb flickered—Zoo was still sitting on my own “to-play” list. The original list, of course, was a Jaco special (https://www.eternalcentral.com/old-school-magic-93-94-naya-bazaar-zoo/). But I wanted to make some tweaks: a 4th Chain Lightning, cleaner mana (with City of Brass and not Mishra’s Factory), and a hedge against all the black decks by running Order of Leitbur. I also wanted Armageddon in the sideboard and tried to make sure I didn’t have too many double pips so removed cards like Dust to Dust. The Sideboard Mishra’s Factory was to help cast that Armageddon. At the end of the day I ended up using all of my sideboard except for the Preacher. My 7 year old helped me pull my cards together the Friday night before the event and then insisted on us playing a couple of games, I won both of those games and then we switched decks and I won that one as well. Gotta get them used to hardship when they are young!
Turns out, my instincts weren’t wrong. The 2024 Festival of Friendship felt like lightning in a bottle—and now, in 2025, I managed to capture it again. Another victory, but this one without the help of blue cards!
Magic might not be my center of gravity these days, but when the stars align, it still pulls me back in.
Round 1: Mirror Universe + Power Monolith Deck (Win 2-0)
The first match of the day started with a deck I didn’t expect but was more than ready to face. Well my disenchants were. My opponent was on a spicy build leveraging Mirror Universe and the Power Monolith combo for massive mana bursts and cheeky life-swaps.
Round 2: Robots (Win 2-0)
Facing off against Robots is always a tense matchup. Their artifact creatures are big, resilient, and can overwhelm the board if left unchecked. But Zoo’s speed and burn package can dismantle even the sturdiest of machines if played right, it doesn’t hurt to have 4 Swords to Plowshares and 4 Disenchants kicking around either.
Round 3: Tweedy Bullshit but basically Tax Tower. (Win 2-0)
Ivory Tower + Blood Moon – seen it a million times. Tweedy was a little perturbed by my ability to draw Disenchants and Divine Offerings during this match. One of the few interesting interactions of the day came up in this matchup. Tweedy plays Blood Moon tapping out. I am at 10 life and Tweedy has a Serra Angel in play, he is at 8 life. I have a Sylvan Library and a Savannah Lions in play. I take 4 off Sylvan to go down to 6 and attack with Lion, he blocks the lion and I cast Chain lighting on him, cast Copper Tablet and then cast Balance. I let Copper Tablet take me down to 1 and him down to 3. Then I cast Divine Offering on my own Copper Tablet to go back to 3. There is a lot of draw go during this time but I eventually draw the last piece of burn. So this sounds pretty easy right? The issue was that I didn’t have the Divine Offering when I played that Copper Tablet but I hadn’t played any Divine Offerings in this game and with Sylvan Library I thought I would get Divine Offering or enough burn spells to get him dead, or not.
Round 4: BR Aggro (with Sedge Troll and friends who didn’t show up until G3) (Win 2-1)
My only loss of the day included my opponent casting 4 Hypnotic Specters and 4 Lightning Bolts as well as a couple of strip mines, those are good cards!
Round 5: Goblins (Win 2-0)
Kird Ape > 1/1 Goblins
Round 6: UW Control (Win 2-0)
Play 1 and 2 drops = profit.
So yeah, all in all a good day at the office for the little zoo. Afterward a small group went out for Izakaya which was great.
Leaving Austin early Sunday morning on the way to Enchanted Rock we grabbed some tasty baked goods.
Oh yeah and the camping and hiking went well even though it was very cold (low was 17F on Sunday night).
Cheers,
@mtgmisprint
Falling Stars 