Jawncon 2022 Organizers' Report

I did extremely well in this event—I even won a game! Far more importantly though, the vibe was exactly what I wanted: people hanging out, chatting, inviting each other back to their houses for cube draft, and overall being pals. It was exactly the amuse-bouche I wanted before the main event.

As is becoming an unfortunate habit for me, I was taken down by the eventual winner of the event who was on Noughty/Disco Druid. Pictured below is the winner of the event, Dave Portal, and runner-up Shane Cota, who was on Reckless Sligh. Shane was my partner for the main event the following day, so I was particularly happy to see that he was fired up and playing tight, even if he was not happy about the end result the PreModern event...

We will post the top 4 decklists on TCdecks for anyone who is curious. In the meantime, there are a couple pretty PreModern deck pics in the gallery below.

The Main Event

The Food

Many months ago, when we first sat down to discuss JawnCon, Nate asked me what was on my wishlist for the event. This was before we knew it would be Two-Headed Giant, before we had a venue or even a date. But one detail was crystallized in my mind from the very beginning, and I answered Nate with just one word: pretzels. To me, Philly hospitality means a big box of soft pretzels that lets everybody know that, regardless of the reason for the gathering, all are welcome and all are friends. Later, I would refine this idea by bookending the pretzels with tomato pie, the other staple of Southeastern PA parties. For the main course, we wanted to do something a bit different.

One of the venues we were looking into, Balboa Catering at American Silk with chef Alex Garfinkel, gave us the option to up the food game over that of a normal Magic event. We knew the space was cool and had some nice sized tables. And while neither of us had previously eaten at Balboa Catering, I’d gotten rave reviews from people whose food tastes I trust.

We loved the venue, but the downside of the location was that there aren’t really any restaurants in walking distance, so we knew that we were reliant on Balboa for food onsite, and Alex didn’t disappoint. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect going in, but as soon as I took my first bite of falafel I knew we’d made the right choice.

Agreed. The falafel/hummus bar was amazing. And it was very refreshing to have access to well-prepared vegetables at a Magic event. After the falafel bar, Alex and Balboa put out another course of dumplings, french fries, and cheesesteak egg rolls. Not surprisingly, those were all pretty tasty as well. Thank you Balboa and Alex for spoiling us with your amazing hospitality!

Two-Headed Giant

We swung for the fences a little bit by throwing a Two-Headed Giant event. Back at the beginning of Covid, we’d previously tossed around the idea of doing a Two-headed event, but we couldn’t come up with a feasible way to make it work on webcam. Even with an IRL event, there are certain complications to overcome. There is a certain set of North American Old School players out there that really just wants to play EC (and nothing else). And another set that really just wants to play ATL (and nothing else). And to further complicate things, Two-Headed Giant introduces the whole partner element as well as some interesting/tricky rules interactions. One additional complication that we didn’t think through was the effects of Covid. Several teams were broken up by one member testing positive for Covid. Luckily, we were able to get new teammates lined up for 2 out of the 3 teams. Even with all of those complications, in my opinion, it was DEFINITELY worth it. Two-Headed Giant games allow for more powerful lines and can be even more interactive than regular Old School games.

Part of the appeal of the format to us was the way many cards play differently with more than two players at the table. We decided to lean into this aspect and let people try to break stuff, because after all this is relatively unexplored territory and it’s more fun to let people explore it without taking out all those unique interactions. However, we did try to prune the most degenerate stuff. The first casualty was Underworld Dreams, which showed itself to be incredibly busted after just one game. It’s very strong on its own, but between Howling Mines, Draw Sevens, and Winds of Change it becomes really easy to combo out with dozens of points of damage in a single turn. The other three restrictions (Ankh of Mishra, Time Vault, and The Abyss) are less egregious, but we felt that each of those cards had the potential to homogenize the format.

We also decided to ban Shahrazad. Not only does 2 mana for ~15 damage feel too good, but with one game matches that we already feared might go to time, subgames felt very problematic.

How did we do with the restrictions/banning? I think decently, as a starting point. There are definitely some other cards we will look at for future events... but I don’t want to spill those beans just yet 😉.

As the cards and games play out a bit differently in Two-Headed Giant, we brought in a judge, Karl Wendt, to assist in any particularly tricky situations. Karl was invaluable throughout the day. Not only did he answer rules questions, but he helped to input results and keep the tournament on a good pace. Thanks Karl! Hope you can join us for our next event.

Proxies

Initially, we didn’t plan on allowing proxies in this event. We always allow them at meetups and in our webcam leagues, but we had internalized the idea that, for various reasons, allowing proxies in a proper tournament would discourage long-time players from attending. But because we felt that the format would benefit if people were free to brew decks that they might not play in normal Old School, we reopened the topic for discussion, talked through several approaches, and settled on the following:

1. You would need to donate some extra money for each proxy you wanted to play (because raising money feels good)

2. You would only be allowed to proxy cards from a short list. This felt like a good way to give people room to build decks without opening the floodgates completely.

3. We would make nice proxies available for people who wanted them. This served two purposes: first, it solves the potential problem of people using proxies that are ugly or unreadable, and second, it made for a very cool memento of the event. And here they are:

These turned out to be a big hit! Almost everyone who played in the event donated to get some proxies even if they weren’t playing them that day, and we were later able to raise even more money for HIAS by offering the leftover proxies online.

I was initially very reticent to allow proxies. As Geoff mentions above, I thought it would really turn off a certain type of Old School player. But I kept an open mind and came to a landing point with Geoff that I thought might work. After that, I bought all the way in and started reaching out to artist connections to assist with the art for these proxies. My cousin, Joe Nicholson, is an artist who specializes in illustration, and so I reached out to him to see if he would be interested in submitting a piece. He landed on wanting to make a version of Black Lotus and did an amazing job. I will certainly tap him for similar projects in the future. We also reached out to Syrproxy, an avant-garde proxy master that plays in the Philly Old Style PreModern group. You certainly will not be able to ignore his unique rendition of Chaos Orb on a crowded battlefield.

I had the initial idea to use photographs for the dual lands, but it was Geoff who executed the composition of the duals and all of the rest of the Power 10, including the elegant quilted Moxen. Thank you, Joe, Syrpoxy, and Geoff!

Degenerates

When it comes to holding a tournament, there is an additional benefit to Two-Headed Giant. It leaves a lot of room for shenanigans. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, if you are unlucky enough to have an odd number of teams (which we were), then one team will be on a bye every round. Unlike in a normal tournament, if you get a bye, you aren't on your own. You have a built in companion (who you theoretically don't hate) to jam side games or what not. Second, you don't need to run as many rounds, so tournament pacing can be a bit more relaxed. People can have time to eat, drink, and get some fresh air before the next round kicks off. So lots of people took the opportunity to smoke, drink, and chat. Some people got some good games in. But for certain members of the crowd that we had, shenanigans means one thing and one thing only: Ante40K.

Now, I'm not an Ante40K player (yet), but I do know enough about it to do my record-keeping service to the community. Here you go:

Winners

Bald, Bearded, and Beautiful (Jason Beaupre and Andy Blaufarb) won the event on their Power Candle Monolith build, going a perfect 5-0.

In second place, we had Fee Fi Fo Fuck Outta Here (Baron Nick and Will Parshall) with Counterburn and Mono-Black Burn.

And in third place, Team Falling Stars (Simon Christie and Ty Thomason) on a Power Monolith build.

The Spice Winners for the event were Counter-Melody (Paul DeSilva and Emily Sprague).

Congratulations everyone! And way to put Power Monolith on the watch list. 😉

Slops

• Me for forgetting that we’d tweaked our lists and that I needed 5 more islands for my deck when I showed up on the day of the event.

• My partner for forgetting to take a deck pic.

• Tropical front for not letting us naturally chill the beer in the trunks of our cars overnight.

• Covid for breaking up partnerships.

Props

• Ty and Jesus for lending me 5 Islands.

• My partner for coordinating with me at the last moment when his original partner suddenly couldn't attend.

• Balboa Supper Cub for having a freezer that would let us rapidly chill the beer and wine and for everything else they did.

• Dom Dotterer for filling in for a partner that couldn’t make it.

• Vince DeVito for taking so many great pictures and letting us use so many for this report.

• Dan Serwan for putting us in touch with our judge, Karl.

• Simon Christie for coming all the way from Texas to play! I owe you a Flying Man.

The people that came to Jawncon 2022 were some high quality Old School people. We’re definitely going to have to run Jawncon back in one form or another. Stay tuned for Jawncon 2023.

Cheers,
Geoff and Nate

Final Standings and Deck Lists

Team The Karate Kids (Nate Gates and Shane Cota)

The Birb Maibens (Geoff Matteson and Tom Matteson)

Woo Berg with Two Gees (Chris Gray and Dan White)

Wardens of Alcatraz (RagingRiverMTG/Micah and Jared Susney)

Two Dinguses (Dominic Dotterrer and Andy Baquero)

Car Ramrod (Jesus Mansilla and Vince DeVito)

Mr. and Mrs. Derelor (Christopher Zach and Stephanie Zach)

Gallery

Many thanks to Vince DeVito, Andy Baquero, Jared Susney, Andy Blaufarb, Ty Thomason, and Will Magrann (I hope I didn't miss anyone) for the use of their photos.