With great excitement the Syracuse-based Team Sped members read a message from Mano on the Sped Discord informing us he’d around for some hangs the week of Thanksgiving! As the big day approached we got another message from Mano on November 15th:
“Reminder: We will be in Cuse next weekend, looking to hang out Fri night (11/19). It is our only night to hang out.”
Well fuck me, I thought. I’d better hop to it planning this shit since it’s well documented that the only planners on the team are Mano and me. With Friday the 19th right around the corner I jumped into action and booked a dinner reservation, babysitter coverage and tossed out some post-dinner ideas (Magic related obv). Now you might be asking yourself Jeff, this sounds fishy… Friday November 19th is not a real date or Jeff, why the fuck would Mano come to Cuse a full week before Thanksgiving? These are all good questions. Once I posted the plan to hang, these questions and more came to light.
After sitting around with our dicks in our hands for the next few hours and speculating as to how this could have gone so horribly wrong, we finally got confirmation.
Sadly, this is what happens when you get old. I can’t even imagine what planning a Sped Weekend is going to look like when we’re all in our 80s. With any luck another Sped will pick up the ball and get the plan ironed out for Friday, November 25th. In the meantime, I’ll just go ahead and add this to my Elves deck to commemorate the Great Thanksgiving Fiasco if 11/19/2022.
OK, on to some Magic. In the November Premodern Monthly webcam tournament I sleeved up Mono U Stiflenought for the first time. I’ve played the UB version on and off, and when I looked up my deck history on TCDecks I apparently made top 4 (of 29 players) with this monstrosity 2 years ago which is kind of funny in retrospect.
Here was my build for the Premodern monthly. There’s are not too many flex spots in the deck. The decisions basically come down to 16 or 17 islands, 3 or 4 counterspells, and the some combination of a Reality Ripple, Boomerangs and Misdirection. Not owning any Misdirection or Reality Ripple, I opted for a spicy little Disrupt. I doesn’t really matter, you’re just going to pitch it to Foil anyway. Mike Harris and company did a really nice deck tech on the Premodcast .
Man, what a deck this is! It almost feels like you’re cheating sometimes. As documented, the power of this deck revolves around being able to protect your Dreadnought A LOT of times. I also almost never had to mull a hand because every other card in the deck just smooths out your draw. Finally, you get to abuse Gush which is everyone’s dream. I had a good run into the top 4 and eventually lost to Stasis after going up 2-0 in a best of 5 match. After playing 9 total matches with this deck it has quickly made it’s way of my short list of decks I will keep playing. It’s gained tremendous popularity for good reason: it’s a ton of fun to play and extremely competitive.
Oh yeah, and we did end up getting together for a Sped hang out on Mano’s actual date of visit. Of course I ended up planning dinner still or it just flat out would not have happened. After that we went back to my place. Members present included Mano and Janine, Jamie Parke and Lyle Cohen. Apparently Lemke had an irritated molar.
Magic players are an awkward bunch, so when we get together we always need to start the night with an ice breaker. Our game of choice is Left Center Right, a game of chance involving 3 dice and 3 chips. Based on your roll, you either keep your chips or pass some/all of them to the Left/Center/Right. Once they are in the Center they are gone for good. Last man with one of more chips wins the pot (usually about $20/man). We also have a house rule that anyone who rolls CCC automatically wins the pot. Well, this spicy house rule came into play three times and REALLY helped break the ice with some good laughs.
Once the ice was broken, we moved onto Game of Things. Turns out Game of Things is not super fun when you and your friends only have 5 jokes and you all use them interchangeably each round of the game regardless of the question card. But I did manage to snap a pretty good picture of Mano, which as most of you know it about as close to a Christmas Miracle as one can get these days.
Finally, we rounded out the evening with a Sped Family viewing of Bumper in Berlin. If you don’t know, Team Sped are notoriously crazy about Pitch Perfect. That said, our expectations for Bumper were exceptionally low for obvious reasons. Turns out no one could have set the bar low enough for this pile of dogshit. I will of course watch it cover to cover, but my god this has to be the TV equivalent of The Room.
So remember, be courteous and specific with your holiday plans this year! And if you need a good ice breaker, look no further. Bye for now!
Quest for the Shark 