Old Order Cabin 2022

Written by Mike Frantz… Aug 28th 2022

For the second year in a row, the Old Order crew gathered together in August to do what they do best: Travel to “Bumfuck Nowhere PA”, drink lots of beer, eat lots of meat, and play Old School Magic. Nothing but Old Order and trees.

The Gathering:

The weekend goal was to have a summer picnic vibe with yard games, cooking outdoors, and beer… oh and more beer. Step 1: Yard games. The whole group offered to bring all kinds of games. We had ladder golf, disk golf, corn hole, dildo ring toss, “warshers”, and an original set of real lawn darts. These were not only fun to play when chilling, but we used these games to determine who went first in Magic all weekend. At the start of each round, you and your opponent chose a yard game. Throw 1 round and best score won the choice.

Step 2: Cooking outdoors. The menu was collaborated by Levi Baumgardner, Mike McLaughlin, and myself. Most everything was cooked on a flat top griddle and a smoker. Friday evening Dave Portal did the cooking of burgers, brats, and deer dogs supplied by Nate Shue. I love cooking breakfast so hashbrowns, sausage, eggs, and French toast was the menu for Saturday morning. Make your own sandwiches for lunch. Levi started the smoker just after breakfast for some delicious pulled pork, beef, smoked corn, baked beans, and brussels sprouts for dinner. Sunday breakfast was just donuts, breakfast bars and GTFO.

A special shout out to Levi for doing the heavy lifting feeding the crew while under a special circumstance. He spent 2 days that week at urgent care with hives and swelling due to an unknown allergy. (You can see he is still swollen in some of the pictures) This included Friday morning before he went shopping for all the food for the weekend. The guy is tough as nails and will not let his friends down. Thank you!

Step 3: Beer… oh and more beer. Is there really old school magic without beer? Pffft, of coarse not! We originally stated that we would bring 10 cases of beer. 5 Lager and 5 Miller Lite. But Don Perrien had to back out because of a wedding he forgot about and sent us $100 for beer so Lager was upgraded to a variety of better choices and we bought 2 cases of cider. Old Order chugs cider… and sometimes spills it on summer cards. On top of the 12 case of beer there were plenty of bottles brought too including vintage Fire-In-De-Hole which has been known to create an appetite for actually eating Atog cards.

The Magic:

To begin the magic portion of this, lets talk about the swag. Everyone received a packet with everything in the picture below. The stamped ones are real magic cards. The rest are proxy cards. We needed proxy Jeweled Birds and blank cards for our FakeAnte40k (read below for more) event so I threw in some random cards we all know will get used at the bar like duals, orb, and Tetravite tokens. Everyone also received a shirt. I knew the design wouldn’t look right on a patterned gray shirt so I went to a site that had a solid gray shirt listed. Guess what showed up, hrmm. It doesn’t look the greatest and we will do a different run at some point. At least you can do yardwork in style. Also as per tradition we hid a dick. This time on the inside bottom of the t-shirt. You can flip the shirt up while wearing it and show it off, but most importantly it hits you in the face when putting the shirt on. You’re welcome for that.

Friday was 4 rounds of Premodern directly following dinner. John, Levi, and myself don’t play Premodern due to a lack of nostalgia but we borrowed a 10 land stompy deck from Dave Portal so there wasn’t a bye. We rotated playing it by round John, Levi, Mike, John. I was the only lose for the team. Goblin Sharpshooter is a hell of a card. Mark Evaldi won Premodern and then we drafted stamped and signed prize cards top down. Thank Andy Blaufarb for the card selection.

Saturday afternoon was the Old School main event. We chose to use the Eternal Central B&R as it has been a while since most of us played 4 strip. The sentiment from around the room was that it was nice to play 4 strip but we are happier playing 1 strip for about 10 months out of the year, roughly. Ben Katz won the event with the obvious Vampire Bat/Nightmare/Howling Mine deck. We then drafted stamped and signed prize cards top down. Ben also won the limited edition Elves of Deep Shadow pin that I had won from the last Philly OS auction

FakeAnte40k

What is this “FakeAnte40k” you speak of? Well some of you know I love playing Ante40k. Ante40k really checks all the boxes for me. It has a powered down level that feels more like playing in the 90’s. You are playing with friends that have a like mindset with you, are fully vested in Old School, and are looking for a deeper connection with people in this community. There is nothing quite like getting drunk with friends late night at the bar, playing magic for keeps, getting some real nerd adrenaline, and telling the story of defacing an expensive card that will never be traded away. But it is hard to get people in a level of risk they are not comfortable with or don’t have a collection to support it. I wanted to try to give my closest magic friends a like experience and here is the rule set I came up with:

I want to hold an open invite fake ante tournament based on a ruleset like this in 2023 so this was the test run. I was very eager to know how this would go down. These games were played all weekend, casually between rounds, at meal time, and drunk late at night. Not everyone brought a deck as they didn’t see the attraction of playing fake ante for no gain. Friday after Premodern finished those who brought FakeAnte40k decks jumped right into it. Jamming a game, doodling a card, and jumping across the table for the next opponent. It very much felt like the Ante40k rodeos that have been done at Chalice 2021 and Lobstercon this year.

Then something I had secretly hoped for happened. Those that poopooed the idea of fake ante quickly felt left out after seeing and hearing the good times being had. Those fellas went to work Saturday morning, put decks together, and jammed so much magic Saturday. It was awesome to see and hear the war stories, the cards getting won, and the artists that came out in everyone.

At the end of the weekend FakeAnte40k was a success. There are some things I’d tweak but you’ll find that out when the event is announced. Prizes for FakeAnte40k was most wins (Mark Evaldi and Matt Messa tied) and most cards won (Matt Messa).

Some of the other BS awards given out for laughs include: Best photo: Nate Shue, Best proxy artist: Jason Koresko, Most non-infinite damage dealt: John Gehling, Best hangover: Dan White, Red mage: Jason Koresko, Burning the biggest log: Matt Messa, Most swollen: Levi Baumgardner, Battle for the rights to the name “Nate”: Nate Gates, Spice Lord: Jason Beaupre, 2nd Spicy: Andy Callaghan.

Jason Koresko also donated a perfect IE Tutor for most wins on the weekend. We promptly stamped, signed and clipped the value out of that card. Jason also donated a box of official Gencon sleeves for the person who won the most expensive card in ante: Jason Beaupre with Volcanic Island and a Diamond Valley tiebreaker.

Some of the other bad idea/late at night activities was cash low roll, C-Lo on the mat, a balcony Chaos flipping elimination, and a warshers tournament where Levi Baumgardner and Mike McLaughlin came out on top.

At the end of the weekend it is clear that the Magic is second to the friendships I have here in Old Order. I enjoy the banter, inside jokes, and the fact that we don’t offend easily (if at all). It is amazing how different we are as people but all get along like we are all old high school buddies. This might be one of the more degenerative Old School groups and we are just fine with that. Love you guys. Thanks to everyone that helped out.

Magic Action Gallery: