The Lords of the Pit and Eternal Central are proud to present coverage of the second annual NoviceCon, a charity Old School Magic event held in Chicago. The charity for this year’s event was Cornerstone Community Outreach (CCO), a local group in Chicago that works with communities in need in Chicago.
Because of limitations on space, this event was capped at 24 people, and immediately sold out to local Lords in Chicago and Wisconsin within a couple of hours before being opened to public registration. Rather than a regular 93-94 tournament, this event was designed as a special “Unified” Old School format, utilizing both 93-94 Old School and 95 Old School. Players were to construct 2 decks ahead of time, and play a total of 6 rounds of Swiss:
3 Rounds of 93-94 Old School
3 Rounds of 95 Old School
Unified Old School rules mean that if you shuffle your two decks and sideboards together, it could be presented as a legal 150[+] card deck. The totality of a player’s two decks must follow the appropriate Banned and Restricted List, and must not include more than 4 of any other than basic lands. For example, if you include 1 Mox Pearl in one of the decks, it may not be included in the other deck, as that would be more than the 1 total allowed by the Restricted List. If you included 3 Tundras in one deck, the other deck may contain no more than 1 other Tundra (3+1 = 4, the total allowed between the two decks combined).
In the aftermath of 24 players battling for 6 total rounds of Swiss we were left with 4 players who were tied at 5-1, in this order after tiebreakers:
1 Greg Kotscharjan
2 Chris Bergeson
3 Jaco
4 Lorien Elleman
And so Greg was crowned the champion of this sweet unified Old School event, playing a spicy Preacher + Diamond Valley control deck in 93-94, and a midrange NayaGeddon deck for 95.
ALL Decklists, Alphabetically, by Last Name
We’ll present each player’s decklist below, with the 93-94 deck, followed by the 95 deck. Keep in mind that the unified deckbuilding restrictions made for some interesting choices and sacrifices.
Bob Agra
Chris Bergeson
Mike Butzen
Grant Castleton
Danny Dunaway
Lorien Elleman
Tyler Etters
Charlie H
Matt Hahn
Jaco
Greg Kotscharjan
Andrea Longhi
Ron Longhi
Stephen Maldonado
Matt Moss
Nathan Mullen
Carter Petray
Dan Piquard
Rohr
Bill S
Brandon Sanders
Shane Semmens
Matt Sharp
Joe Stacko
Tournament Action and Wrapup
Dressed Hamm’s Build
Etters (Naya ErhnamGeddon) vs. Sharp (GW ErhnamGeddon)
Matt Hahn (UR) vs. Kotscharjan (UWB Preacher)
Charlie H (UR Gasoline) vs. Castleton (GW ErhnamGeddon)
Semmens (GW Alpha Build) vs. Mullen (Naya Tax Edge)
Dunaway (Mono Black) vs. Sanders (Black White Greedy Beast)
Moss (White Weenie) vs. Charlie H (UR Gasoline)
Castleton (GW ErhnamGeddon) vs. Petray (Stasis)
Jaco (Pink Weenie) vs. Rohr (RWB)
Dunaway (Workshop Atog Aggro) vs. Hahn (BR Demonic Troll)
Sanders (UW Transmute Skies) vs. Rohr (Mono Green LD)
Jaco (BUG Reanimator) vs. Agra (Mono Brown UrzaTron)
Your winner, Greg Kotscharjan!
Thank you to everybody who came out to play, and we hope to see you again soon. As we move forward experimenting with more changes we hope to make each event more unique and fun. And to those wondering, yes this will include larger events with more participation, and other years/formats/deckbuilding limitations. The #MTGUNDERGROUND does not remain motionless, and is not to be confined to a homogenized set of rules. Experiment on your own and enjoy yourself. For any corrections, comments, follow up, or to send us any action shots to add to this report, please email eternalcentral@gmail.com.