Old School Mtg

Yesterday I got the chance to play some IRL Magic again, this time drafting "The Beta Cube" over at Jhovalking's place in Oslo. It was a sweet gathering, and I plan to do a short write-up about the cube and tournament in the not too distant future. Before that however, I figured I could do a couple of short posts on some recent mail-days and other collection updates. As the pandemic rages on and ordinary charity tournaments have been harder to set up, a bunch of heroes in the community have organized and contributed to charity auctions the last couple of months. Even original artists like Drew Tucker, Jesper Myrfors, Ken Meyer Jr and Liz Danford have joined in the efforts and donated artwork or exclusive collectibles for the causes. Earlier this month the Pacific Old School community gathered almost $10,000 to Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Color of Change, and National Federation of Filipino American Association (NaFFAA) with their summer charity auction. Today'

Prologue Frog says to fish, "How's the water?" Fish replies, "What's water?" That story has repeated itself in my head a lot this year. A realization that I get blind to what I'm familiar with. Ask me 15 years ago about international Magic tournaments with casual competition, jovial players, flowing beer and glorious old decks - tournaments that are a party as much as a competition - and I'd thought of it a pipe dream. Then, imperceptibly over years, it becomes a natural and expected part of life. Weekly meet-ups at pubs, traveling around the continent slinging cards, limited only by the time I can spend on it in good conscious rather than any lack of opportunity to play. It turns to familiar ground, so I don't really reflect over how great and important it is. Not until it is removed, and I'm a fish out of water. Six months is a pretty long time on dry land. I got some fix to survive the Easter with n00bcoM, but I also found that o