One of the things my LGS and it's owner (huge shoutout to Kev and the Card House Crew) does really well is community building and as part of that a few times a year they run special theme/tribal days where the game play is kitchen table style (no real rules beyond the deck size and 4 copies ones) and very much secondary to costumes, deck alters, memes etc. Halloween is one such time and so today with a very Halloween mood appropriate weather (thunderstorm threatening the whole time) I participated in a very Halloween Party-esque MTG event.
A photo of me and one of my mates in our Halloween Costumes.
My deck and theme, in case you couldn't guess from the above photo was very Pirates of the Caribbean inspired - undead pirates. But because that would be too simple (and those who know me and my deck building antics should know how obsessive I can get) I decided to take it a step further and make the deck mono Blue (partly to prove you could do a properly spooky deck with no Black cards and partly as a meta joke). The deck I used is this -
I'll be the 1st to admit that as a competitive deck or even a Kitchen table deck aiming to win this one is a bit of a failure (decent card advantage but average creatures and no removal), but as a deck leaning heavily into a meme i'm actually super proud of it. Every card is thematic and I even snuck a card from the future into the mix. BTW the planks on Reef Pirates and Ghost Ship are sticker alters to show their current oracle creature types. It also had a lot of Islands, all of which I custom sharpie altered to fit the deck theme -
They're a mixed bag in terms of quality but i'm pretty happy with how some of them turned out. And yes, the meta joke I was referring to earlier is again referenced with my choice of card sleeves - the concept that nothing is more frightening in MTG than mono Blue with 2 untapped Islands which is a little ironic from a deck with a grand total of 0 Counterspells. I also went the extra mile with custom tokens despite only have a single copy of a single card which makes any -
My end result was 2-2 (not bad considering my deck's flaws) but the real result was a lot of fun and a voice that is almost completely gone thanks to an afternoon of maintaining my "best" bad pirate accent.
Bonus:
Since it's Halloween I thought I'd share with you a few of my favorite Halloween themed MTG cards, not All Hallow's Eve (although it is a great card and the biggest Halloween reference of all) but Halloween monsters that some newer players might not even realize exist as MTG cards.
The Italian Legends card is Headless Horseman (a vanilla 2/2 for 2B, aka a "Gray Ogre" but this one has great spooky art and naming). Greater Werewolf was a card that I opened many of as a kid (yes, I did open -shudder- Homelands, with my own pocket money no less) and to this day I still strongly believe it is the creepiest piece of MTG art.
I hope you all enjoyed the article, did you do anything special MTG related for Halloween? Or will you? (overseas friends) regardless I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween.