This is a collection of deck photos and relevant media from my journey down the wondrous rabbit-hole of Old School Magic the Gathering. I initially started playing Magic in 1995 (I was 8) and the very first card in my very first Revised booster was a Howl From Beyond. I came back into, and fell back out of, Magic many times since but after almost a decade off, I finally discovered Old School in early 2016. My favorite card as a kid was always Birds of Paradise and I started playing with it when I came back to the game. I’ve made dozens of incremental changes over the past 4 years, but most of the cards I’m still playing with were in the very first iteration.

July 2016

This is the first real deck I ever built. Prior to this, before I had found out about Old School but after I had found my old revised collection, I build a white deck and a black deck based around their respective Knights. This deck was likely based on a variation of something I’d found on Mg’s blog. These were the only 3 dual lands I owned. I also started picking up cards I knew I’d always wanted for play and started buying them in Alpha (hence the Elves, Giant Growths, and the Sol Ring). At the time, I didn’t know anything about EC so it was built with 1 Strip Mine to be Swedish legal.

At this time, I was the only Old School player in Portland, OR as far as I knew. I got into playing over Skype and played in the derbies where I met DFB, Florian Von Bredow, Matt Moss, et al.

Around this time, I started my Instagram account, 8bit_mtg, where I started making little pixel versions of Old School cards, some of them animated.

September 2016

You may have noticed that my first deck didn’t feature any Power, but I had been bitten by the bug. Two months later, this was my set of Power. I remember buying the Pearl and Ruby from a TCGPlayer listing that had no picture. I quickly got into eBay and snagged the Jet, Emerald, and CE Sapphire. Finally, at GP Portland, I found a vendor that had an MP CE Black Lotus for $240 and I had completed all the artifact Power! I also made a big move from Portland to New York City.

October 2016

Wanting my deck to be a little faster on its feet, I decided to go more toward the all-in Berserk deck and played this at my first couple Old School tournaments in New York at Comic Book Depot. The events pulled around 8-10 people and that was incredible to me since I’d never actually met another Old School player in person before! The deck was Ok and it definitely won games just on the back of an unanswered berserk’d Ball Lightning, but it would often lose steam in the midgame and I only played it for a couple months.

January 2017

Once I had acquired the last 3 pieces of CE blue Power I needed, I had begun to realize that Birds of Paradise could not only help cast them, but that if I wanted to get the best bang for my buck with them, I should run as many restricted spells as possible. I went back to adding in the white that I liked but not too much of it. Looking back, it’s obvious that the Berserks didn’t really fit in and that Kird Ape was maybe a little underpowered compared to the bigger dudes. Juggernaut died to everything and everything died to City in a Bottle. But my collection was growing and I finally had all the duals I needed, and was getting Alpha versions of things that I could find for a reasonable price, such as the Wheel of Fortune and Demonic Tutor.

July 2017

My deck stayed roughly the same during 2017 but I started to futz around with Counterspell which looking back never made any sense. I thought I was being innovative with “Aggro Control” but it turns out I was just being inefficient. My manabase was always difficult to manage so I refused to run Mishra’s Factory.

I kept black bordering what I could and by this point had a playset of Alpha Birds of Paradise, Bolts, Counterspells, Swords, Disenchants, and had even grabbed an Alpha Pearl, Sapphire and Emerald. My goal was to Alpha everything though I knew I’d probably never be able to get a Lotus. Nevertheless, I started down the dark path of Alpha Dual Lands.

October 2017

Eternal Weekend 2017 was my first big Old School tournament and at the time, I believe it was the biggest Old School tournament ever run at 118 players! This is where I met so many people that I had only met through Skype or chatted with on FB or Instagram in person for the first time.

Here’s what I ran for the event. I was still running some “cute” single creatures and had added a Vesuvan to the mix, mostly because I owned an Alpha one and loved the card. Kird Ape was present, but I also still refused to run Mishra’s Factory. Jaco dubbed the deck 5Color Gasoline and I generally came to call my Restricted Card / Birds melange 5Color Goodstuff from here on out. I ended up going 4 - 4 at this event, which kicked off a spree of mediocre tournament results.

Around this time, I had saved up a bit of cash and was really eagerly watching eBay sales for an Alpha Black Lotus. At any given time, there were around 10 or so available but the cheaper ones hung around the $11k range. I checked every day for weeks on end until finally, a Lotus popped up for only $8k and after some moments of deep philosophical despair, I clicked buy and spent the most cash I’d ever spent on anything. A few days later, I had complete this beautiful set of Alpha Power 9.

January 2018

The Winter Derby finally came back around and we broke another record in the Old School community with the newest “Largest Tournament Ever” of 142 players! If memory serves, I believe I went 4 - 4.

April 2018

My love of Alpha was full steam ahead, and after witnessing the craziness that was the Wizard’s Tournament (a side tournament at n00bcon played with Alpha only 40 card decks), I became determined to create an Alpha-only deck that could still be competitive in regular Old School. I landed on this, and played it unsleeved at a couple tournaments: GP Hartford 2018 and a local OS tournament at The Bearded Dragon.

It was also around this time that our group in NYC had reached a critical mass of players that we decided to establish ourselves with a name and we landed on the Sisters of the Flame, mixing one of my personal favorite pieces of art by Jesper Myrfors, with NYC’s own Lady Liberty.

June 2018

My foray into Alpha-only did one great thing: it got me off of Kird Ape for good. I had filled that slot with Scryb Sprites and found that having the one less creature be susceptible to City in a Bottle along with it being a flyer, provided enough incentive to run it over Kird Ape going forward. I ran this at the SCG Con Old School tournament and ended up again around the middle of the lot: 17th out of 46 players. But look how beautiful it is! This was one of many times that I would say “my deck is done” only to change around some cards a few weeks later. But this was when I realized all my Alpha purchasing had already put me at 1/3 of a complete Alpha set and that most of what I had already was the hard stuff. I shifted my collecting focus toward finishing the set.

September 2018

DFB had long been organizing online events, as well as smaller gatherings of 20-40 at GP Hartford, but September finally brought his inaugural standalone event: LobsterCon. I ran much the same deck save for a few tweaks that streamlined it slightly and ended up exactly where I had found my sweet spot, 55th place out of 94 players.

October 2018

In October 2019, the Sisters of the Flame held our first official event at GP New Jersey. Read more about the event here. I piloted this deck to a 4th place finish. Essentially the same deck I had been running but I’d swapped the CoP: Blacks in the side for Dervishes. But I spent the effort to take a new deck picture so here it is, on my triangular coffee table.

January 2019

The annual Winter Derby came up and here’s what I entered. By this point, I now owned 1 of each Alpha dual land and out of novelty, decided to run at least one of each. Surprisingly, it didn’t really effect how well my manabase performed. I’d still usually be able to cast everything and I’d still definitely always lose to Blood Moon. But somehow, with mostly the same deck as usual, I clawed my way up the ranks to end up in 12th place out of 142 players.

We also held our second official Old School tournament with some wacky Vanguard cards added into the mix!

April 2019

I was very fortunate that DFB was able to finagle me a n00bcon invite!! I got to play in the Wizard’s Tournament II, taking 4th place with a silly 8 bolt, 3 wheel, and another dozen pieces of power deck. For the main event, I ran this beast, looking mostly similar to what I had been running prior with a couple small tweaks. This was the first time I really saw how powerful Armageddon could be when paired with an unanswered fatty.

While at n00bcon, I also shot off a roll of 3D analogue film and got a great collection of gifs.

Just after n00bcon, I was able to track down the last couple cards I had been looking for. Years of hunting finally came to an end when I finished this: a full set of Limited Edition Alpha!

This accomplishment also prompted me to finally get my first bit of Magic ink, one of my favorite pieces of OS art: Stasis.

August 2019

This marks an inflection point when I finally started taking the deck a little more seriously. The Scryb Sprites became Lions and I relented and started playing with Mishra’s Factories. I played this iteration at some local tournaments with favorable results.

September 2019

LobsterCon 2 is where the room really started to come together. I often found myself with excess mana, all dressed up with nowhere to go. So I experimented with adding in a couple Serra Angels and going up to 2 Armageddons. The results spoke for themselves. I made it all the way to the finals of the 122 person tournament, finally losing to Ben Wagnon and taking 3rd place, one of the best results I’d ever put up!

November 2019

Yet again, I had “finished my deck” grabbing the last Alpha Duals I needed to make the entire thing original printings. I took this iteration to Eternal Weekend where I again made it all the way to the finals to face off against a good friend, Will Magrann. The fight was fierce but in the end, while I was siding in white cards to answer his threats, he was siding in Glooms and I got quickly shut out of the game. I took 3rd place for the second time at a huge event within a couple months!

January 2020

Urza’s Chalice is, for the most part, a casual time to hang with friends. But coming off of my back-to-back near gold medals, I was determined to take it down. Unfortunately, there was someone else in the community known for several losses in the finals, Svante Landgraf, who I would also consider a good friend. The stars would align and the two of us sailed through to the finals meaning one of us was about to break his streak. In the end, Svante took me down in a match that must have lasted 2 hours.

Having had the full Alpha set for 6 months by this point, I had started to grow bored of it and finally made the decision to piece it out. The possession was nothing compared to the hunt and I was happy to move a few big pieces at Urza’s Chalice to people I knew would keep them in the community. I played mostly the same deck as I had at EW, but it was looking a bit different by this point.

March 2020

Dropping $100 on Posca pens, I finally started to make my foray into altering. This is one of my favorites so far, an Unlimited Wheel that I black bordered and then extended the art spilling out over the frame.

July 2020

The Summer derby came up and I piloted this stack to go 2-2 batch I, and 2-2 batch II for a 134th place out of 256. Back to my comfy mid zone. I’ll continue making tweaks and seeing where I go!

September 2020

LobstercoM, the first online version of Lobstercon which I’d attended for both of its previous years was once again run by Dave Firth Bard. I decided to run a pretty similar iteration with the primary difference being that the Armageddons were out and a couple Psiblasts came in. Out of 118 players, I fought my way up all the way to the semifinals, losing to Ben Katz (who ultimately took it down). Another great placement for the deck!

January 2021

The 5th Annual Winter Derby saw a record breaking 375 participants!! WOW! I ran the same deck back from my great LobstercoM semi-finals placement to an Ok 103rd place finish. The competition was stiff but what a blast. And watching the top 28 go down was some of the best Magic I’ve ever watched.

July 2021

My next event was the summer derby and I thought I’d mix it up and try something a little new. I’d been playing against a lot of Troll Disco recently so I decided to give it a whirl but instead of just the more streamlined BR deck that usually runs Hypnotic or Juzam (which I didn’t own), I opted for the blue splash for Dibs which also give you Psionic Blast. I ended up doing surprisingly well given I hadn’t really piloted the deck before. But Hymn is a good card. I ended up taking 36th place out of 190 players. I quite like the curve on this deck as the primary spells/creatures have an elegant CMC of 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4.

July also brought momentous occasion! I purchased my first piece of Old School art done by one of my favorite artist, Anson Maddocks. This is Thrull Wizard from Fallen Empires. This piece had been sitting in the collection of someone who received it from a friend and wasn’t even a Magic player/enthusiast. I was very fortunate to snag this for what felt like a reasonable price for artwork from 1994. I reached out to Anson and Brenda and was able to provide them a high res scan which they previously never had. Brenda had a signed AP sent over for free as a thank you.

October 2021

And no sooner had I bought my first piece of Fallen Empires art than another piece showed up on the market, being sold by Heather Hudson herself. I won this piece for Initiates of the Ebon Hand in auction for roughly the same price as Thrull Wizard. The board has some additional information on it you can see below. Along the side is written what I assume was the prompt that Jesper sent over accompanying the card name which says “one who has received special in-sight.” I assume the dash is a small play at the pun for that beautiful chest eyeball. Then, along the bottom next to the card information is Heather’s (old) phone number. Heather very generously hand painted a smaller copy of the art on a COA which I mounted to the back of the piece.

October also saw Chalice 2021 where I got to do a painting class with Jeff Menges who walked us through repainting the art for Moat. These painting classes are my favorite part of Chalice. My second favorite part is Urza’s Ante, a closed proxy environment where you can trade and win cards in ante to craft the most busted deck possible. I put together this absolute banger of a combo deck.

November 2021

We held our first club invite event called The Lady of the Mountain. It was a somewhat complicated team-based, multi-event extravaganza but it went swimmingly. It involved 5 events: Atlantic, Singleton, OS Draft, OS Trivia, and an Orb Sniper mini-game. Individual points gained over the weekend were aggregated into a team score with tons of prizes to go around. All in all, a success! I also finally received my orb patch here, an important moment for any old schooler.

May 2022

As post-covid life started to return to some amount of normalcy, LobsterCon 2022 was finally back in full swing. Getting a little bored of what I’d been playing, I put together this funky little brew that exploited Blood Moon to get my Goblins of Flarg through for chip damage. This deck did SURPRISINGLY well and I ended up taking 15th place out of 144 players! After the tournament, I also got to play some Ante40k, the new hot shit on the playground, winning a Badlands and Savannah Lions (among others) and almost taking an UNL Mox Sapphire from Jason Schwartz! We also got to snag a new family photo of all our local Sisters of the Flame that were able to make the trip.

Borrowing a friend’s VHS camera, I also shot this recap of the weekend.

September 2022

My next major event was in beautiful Italy and my girlfriend and I decided to turn it into a few week long trip, hitting not only Genoa for the tourney but Florence, Venice, and Milan. I brewed yet another new deck for this one. Essentially, I started with the constraint of “what would happen if I had to play 4 Serendib Efreets, and 4 Serendib Djinns?” and this is the deck that emerged. I was vindicated in the brew by making the Top8 (though I promptly lost in the bracket). Nonetheless, it was an amazing event and it was great to get to watch Brother Stebbo take the whole thing down in a nailbiter of a match!

I’d like to reprise this deck sometime soon and see if I can get similar results with it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little jaunt. I hope to keep it updated in the years to come as the Old School community and tourney scene continue to grow.

If you have any questions, feel free to find me on Facebook (Paul DeSilva) or on Discord/Instagram (8bit_mtg).