A while back I wrote an intro to one of my favorite yearly events at my LGS, the end of year tribal break up event. I introduced the concept (60 card "EDH" + tribals wars) and my personal take on it - Ooze-DH (a modified version of my Mimeoplasm Ooze Tribal deck). The event itself was yesterday and was a big success, 1/5-1/4 of the players (including myself) went hard on the themed decks and even rocked up in costumes and everyone was there for a good time filled with magic, laughs, friends and pizza (thanks Kev ;) ).
Since i've already listed my decklist (in the previous article) i'll give a quick run down of the fun extras I did to lean into my ooze-y theme. Above is my commander Mimeoplasm resting on my costume headpiece (a fun art project involving mixing silicone resin like kids slime and then molding it into shape).
The game accessories Slime tower of petri dishes and deck box (yes it's a modified secret lair box, lol, gotta get my money's worth for it somehow ;) ) complete with mascot ooze Vile Bile foil.
A bunch of different ooze tokens and ooze copy tokens.
And as I couldn't find any basic lands I deemed "ooze-y" enough I even tried my hand at some inner sleeve alters.
I think I probably went a little crazy on all the props for the deck/event, I like to think my costume on was also respectable -
But it couldn't hold a handle to the efforts of some of the other participants, especially a Nissa costume and a Cyberpunk styled Skeletal Pirate which to my mind were both cosplay event prize worthy.
There were also a lot of other fun decks and tribes, special shout outs to the Pramikon Walls deck, the Dispicible Me themed Minions deck and the Xmas Tree themed Phylath "plants" deck (the last of which was themed around plants and plant token making cards instead of a set tribe, something that's not only ok, it's even encouraged at our events, as long as it's done well). And I know i've definitely missed out on a few others worth a shout out (sorry guys).
For the games themselves we played 2 rounds, my first round consisted of myself, Phylath RG "plants" (wearing a costume and with mini Xmas trees as plant tokens), Oona UB Faeries (wearing a costume) and Abomination of Llanowar GB Elves (also wearing a costume). I came out of the game very slow, with the lead going back and forth between the other 3, both the Faerie and Elf decks seemed really strong with power cards and actual removal/counters (something I mostly lacked having leaned super heavily into the theme) but the Plant deck scared everyone with a Scapeshift generating lots of triggers and big plant tokens so I was mostly left alone and Door of Destinies made my Oozes grow huge while Vannifar helped me chain into a lot of value meaning that after the dust settled I ended up on top.
My second round consisted of myself, Reaper King WUBRG Scarecrows, Horde of Notions WUBRG Elementals + Kaheera as companion (wearing a great costume of many soft toys joined into one) and Anowon UB Rogues (wearing a costume). In this game the Elementals player unfortunately got stuck on 3 lands for a significant length of time, but the rest of us curved out fairly normally with the Scarecrow deck even curving out perfectly with basic lands into a 5th turn Reaper King (super scary, although it turned out that the deck was actually a very kind version), I hit Door of Destinies again (which was destroyed by a Reaper King trigger) and the Rogues threatened to mill us all to death (especially me) by hitting all of their mill cards in quick succession. Luckily the mill also enable Mimeoplasm to copy my Acidic Slime to destroy Reaper King and have more gas to use to come back again. I was able to use Biowaste Blob for the first time and without any wrath effect the oozes started to snowball taking over the game and netting me another victory.
Needless to say I was super surprised, I leant very heavily into my meme-y deck concept and was running no real ramp, barely any interaction and had barely any card advantage but somehow in the unique "meta" we created for the night it was a big success. That said to me (and I think most of us) the results weren't nearly as important as the overall fun and the vibe of the event.
Starting next week our LGS (huge shoutout again to Kev and the Cardhouse crew) is on a holiday hiatus from tournaments but I can't wait to return next year for more good times. In a slightly more serious note I also want to thank everyone who i've been lucky enough to interact with there this year, the whole community has added a lot of joy to what could have otherwise been a very bleak 2020 for me. I wish you all a happy holidays and a 2021 that's infinitely better than this year. I also hope those of you in other less fortunate places where social distancing rules have impacted more heavily on LGS communities will be able to start participating again sooner rather than later.