Old School MTG: First Webcam Game

I've been watching the webcam Old School community for a while now, but never took the plunge. I finally connected with my friend Ben to play a few games through a webcam and it worked well enough. Camera placement, lighting, video compression, and communication are all important factors to get right and I didn't want to subject a stranger to me trying to figure it all out!

The main thing is to be able to recognize almost all relevant Old School cards by sight and remember the current oracle working and rulings. Easy. In my limited experience, the card art is all you can see on the camera clearly. So, not only do we get nostalgia from collecting the cards with the original artwork, but it makes games over a webcam easier. Bonus!

While there are a lot of Old School players in the world, the world is a big place. Unless you are lucky enough to live close to one of the hubs where OS games are played regularly, playing over a webcam might be the only way to jam games between trips to events. It also gives you the opportunity to play against a range of opponents and decks and format variations, which is something you don't get even if you have a dedicated group or community to play with in person.

Of course, playing by webcam is not quite the same as playing in person. In some ways, it's more comfortable and efficient. Heck, you're in your own house. But, if you can get out to gatherings to play (once this pandemic is over), that still feels like an important part of the experience. It's not quite the same over a webcam, but certainly better than nothing.

Ben played his Ernhamgeddon deck. I played my colorless Shops deck. Icy Manipulator is the MVP. We played 3 or 4 games with no sideboards in about an hour. I've been playing MTG with Ben for more than 20 years, so we communicate well and we both know that the other person isn't up to any shenanigans. I'm sure that 99% of OS players are cool, but I'm not sure how it would have played out against a perfect stranger halfway across the world. That's the next thing to find out!