Summer Derby 2020 – Wet Dreams

Spoiler alert, my overall record was 5-3 and I had a ton of fun. Out of 8 opponents I had, to my recollection, only played 1 before which was both gassy and improbable. I sleeved up a fun little tier 2.66666 (repeating of course) brew, which I think is my sweet spot when it comes to Old School Magic tournaments. This Derby’s starting point was Underworld Dreams, a pet card I had previously built around maybe 2 or 3 Derbies ago. Team Sped member Mano (you might have heard of him) helped me polish this turd up from a Sinkhole Stone Rain Dreams deck to something that should in theory actually have a chance. It kind of gets on my nerves though, it’s like just let me play my fucking land D, bro! when all was said and done the only bad cards in the deck were the 4 Underworld Dreams, which I guess is fine because I came here to do 2 things: cast some Dreams and have some fun. After batch one I was almost out of fun.

In case you’re wondering, the answer is yes! I ran a 14 card sideboard. Might as well have been a 12 card sideboard because Gloom is shit. Are there any other more overrated cards in Old School? Chain Lightning maybe? Gloom is for sure shit though, you heard it here first. If I was scared of white or wanted to slow down Plow I would have rather had 2 more Order in the board or even Black Knight. That’s how bad Gloom is. Sell your Glooms if you can find a sucker to buy.

I’m notoriously bad at remembering matches and any details, which is awesome because that shit is boring AF anyway so here are the high points. After batch 1 I was 4-0 and I vaguely remember playing mostly reasonable decks. The deck felt good and I was drawing well enough to lose just 1 game (although I forced 2 draws by decking both of us with Wheel!). Turn 1 Juzam might be the most underrated play in Old School. It doesn’t even feel that bad to get it plowed and gain 5 life, but way more often than not that’s just game boys.

Batch 2 I started 0-3 and won my last match against 5C Twiddle Vault in 3 games. Obviously in the 4-0 bracket there were some real decks out there. I lost badly to The Deck, not so badly to UW Shops and I punted a match against a Nether Void deck in match 5 to start the batch. That was actually a super feel bad because I made a savage misplay and played a second land after I Wheeled. It was correctly called out on the Twitch stream as we were shuffling up for game 2 so I conceded G1 even though I had the win in my hand. There was just no way to walk it back. Oh well. One of these days I’ll learn how to play Magic correctly.

If you’re hell-bent on playing Underworld Dreams I’d sleeve this up. I usually hate playing anything that straight up folds to Blood Moon but in a stoke of luck I won the only game in which a Blood Moon hit the table. I did side in all 3 U Blasts if I even sniffed a Blood Moon. Drain Life is also severely underrated. People play all sorts of non-Braingeyser X spells as finishers, and sure every now and then you might split a Fireball, but an X-1 spell with Lifelink came in really, really, really handy just about every time I drew it. Finally, I realize it’s generally considered cool to diversify your factories or play 4 Winters, but goddamnit if you’re not playing 4 Summers in the Summer Derby and 4 Winters in the Winter Derby you’re doing it wrong. Just be sure to diversify your bonds.

Keep having fun and staying safe! – Jeff