Mobstercon 2024 is in the books. In total we raised ~$4100 for Homefront. Homefront is a middleman between homelessness/poverty and a better life. They provide (mostly short term) housing, food, clothing, education, job placement, etc., in an effort help struggling/unlucky families get back on their feet. Hyperlocal (Trenton, NJ), super efficient, almost zero waste. Their admins don’t make shit. It is basically the perfect charity.
Mobstercon is an Old School Magic: The Gathering Tournament that takes place about every 5 years in New Jersey. This year the format was 3-person Scryings Team Unified. Scryings is an Old School “expansion” designed by the godfather himself, Magnus de Laval, featuring cards from Fallen Empires through Mirage (in addition to the traditional Swedish card pool of Alpha through the Dark.) Scryings came out about 4 years ago. Despite how awesome it is, there have been surprisingly few tournaments played with it. And exactly zero Scryings team unified events. Because of this, I truly could not have told you anything about the winning decklists before the tournament. I would have lost a LOT of money betting that they featured any copies of Mishra’s Factory and Lat Nam’s Legacy in their 225 (they did not.) In addition, as is customary at Mobstercom/ns, teams could play any number of Savannahs they wanted.
This years event was held at Village Brewery in Somerville. By my calculations, roughly 85% of a TO’s work is finding the right venue, and Village was close to perfect. Given how well it worked out, I can see myself running stuff there in the future despite my proclaimed distaste for organizing.
In total 16 teams registered.
After 6 rounds, the top 4 teams were:
1. Impossible Berger (5-1)
2. Zur’s Weidos (5-1)
3. Scrybabies (4-2)
4. Boomer and the B Dots (4-2)
Also at 4-2 and just missing the top4 on breakers were Illuminati and The team name is etc…
In the semifinals, Boomer and the B Dots took down Impossible Berger (featuring Jon Finkel), ruining his chances to repeat as Mobstercon champ. In the other semi, Zur’s Werdos took down the Scrybabies. It should be noted that if I were slightly more sober, I would have just had a top 2, as with 2 teams at 5-1 there would have been a clean cut. To make it even more awkward, the semifinals were actually a complete repeat of the the last round in the swiss…
In the finals, Zur’s Weirdos beat Boomer and the B Dots 2-1. Ty Thomason (Twidlevault) beat Chris Manning (Goblins), Jeff White (4C Jeff White) beat Will Parshall (WGu SavannahGeddonAggroControl), and Dan Miller (Reanimator with Thawing Glaciers) beat Ben Farkas (Mono U.)
There are quite a few people I should thank:
– Jared and Micah for their raffle donations.
– Jeff White for setting up Full Send Collectibles, BDGS Grading, as well as donating a pack of 1990 Upper Deck for each participant.
– DFB for refusing to leave his team in the lurch when his Saturday morning flight was cancelled and driving 4.5 hours at the last minute.
– The Hamburgers of Bogarden for really bringing the spice. The “Howling Diner” playmats below were theirs. Their life pads were also diner checks. A+, I will be sending you guys something.
– My family, especially Janine, for putting up with all of this shenanigans (this weekend and for the last 9-20 years.)
I would also especially like to thank Shaman Ben, who generously donated 50+ alters for the event, enough that I could give one to every single participant. In addition, he donated an original painting of a Priest of Leng, which was the highlight of the raffle (won by Chris Mason.) The day would not have been the same without your energy, thank you so much.
The decklists are listed below, in no particular order (also not in A,B,C order) and with garbage formatting because WordPress was giving me a ton of shit so had to screenshot a bunch of them. In addition I tried to download a plug-in that allows you to click a pic to zoom in, but ofc that did not work either. Sometimes it is tough being a boomer.