Old School MTG: Old School 40 Tournament Report

The annual "travel far and gather" trip happened over this weekend. I'm fortunate to see these guys on a regular basis, but it's always nice to spend some time away with them playing games and talking. This year on our trip, I thought it would be fun to hold an Old School tournament!

Since most of the guys are gamers, but aren't into Old School specifically, I modified the rules to make the format more accessible.

1) Eternal Central Rules, except
2) Strip Mine is Banned
3) Restricted cards are Banned
4) No Sideboards
5) 40 Card Minimum Deck Size

And "Old School 40" was born!

There were six of us facing off for the prizes pictured below. Prizes were reverse drafted, where the player with the lowest rank after round-robin would choose first.

Here are the results.

This was a fantastic way to spend more than a few hours with friends. The deck construction rules helped to reduce the cost of building decks and focused the strategies around one or two key concepts. Players were mostly able to stick to using old school art and it felt like playing Magic with friends in days gone by.

Here are the decks everyone played.

Mark's "Making Friends" Deck

Eric's "Also Making Friends" Deck

Ben's "Welcome to the Thunderdome" Arena Deck

Darren's "What Does Banding Do?" Deck

Will's "Giant Ape Escape" Deck

Chris' "Needs More Islands" Deck

Here are some pictures of the action.

Banding is fantastic!

Orb, Tower, and Vise? Hmm.