Storm Crow Descending
An Old School Scryings tournament
I still, almost a week after it happened, can’t believe it took me just short of 3 years to host another OS tournament. I can promise that won’t happen again.
Storm Crow Cup 2025 was the event. Swedish Old School with the Scryings expansion was the format. Why Scryings? Because there’s value in your father’s OS, but there’s value *and* novelty in things like Scryings. Plus, there aren’t nearly enough Scryings events and I decided to be the TO I wanted to see in the world.
When I knew I was going to be doing another event I also knew that I was going to need more help than I asked for during Balance 2022, so I reached out to my friend and official Magic Judge, Karl. Karl had been the judge during Philly Old Style’s last tournament, Jawncon and had come away with the kind of appreciation for the format that we love to see. Also, Karl works in harm reduction. That was important because I decided to throw this tournament in part in response to Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s ongoing war against the unhoused and people suffering from substance abuse disorder. I asked Karl for a line on some mutual aid orgs that could benefit from our patronage, which lead me to the recipients of our support:
And thanks to the 40 registrants and their generous consumption of alcohol and raffle tickets we were able to raise $2378! I rounded it up to $2400 and as of this writing have made one of the $1200 donations, to Food Not Bombs. The donation to Punks with Lunch will be made when I get this stack of dollar bills to the bank on Saturday morning. Thank you all so much for your contributions and help! I can put on the best tournament in the world, but without people playing and supporting it amounts to nothing.
We were in a new venue for me this time, the Philadelphia Ethical Society, an Ethical Humanist congregation who were very friendly and gave us a killer deal on their auditorium. Being able to host the tournament right on Rittenhouse Square was huge, because I find it remarkably annoying to have to go to tournaments in the suburbs when all of the culture and tourism is located in Center City.
Additional credit to Philly Old Style member Brad for stepping up to bartend on the day, and for getting this great pic of the beginning of Round 1.
Credit as well to Will and Lucy, who weren’t playing but showed up to support and especially to Lucy for watching my running car for like half an hour during setup when I forgot it was parked in a no parking spot. And to Levi and Andy who came down without playing as well but drank plenty and bought raffle tickets as their way to support.
And now to the tournament itself. I’ve never played Scryings before, but I recently acquired a playset of Living Plane and couldn’t help myself but combine them with Simoon. I had really no idea what I was going to do from there, but a GR burn deck took shape around that interaction and the existence of Nature’s Lore. I started off with a loss to Time Vault, which is one of the boogey men of the format so I wasn’t too upset. I then rattled off three wins in a row and was feeling great going into the dinner break.
Oh right, I didn’t mention the dinner break! As a personal thank you to everyone for coming and supporting the event I had grilled just shy of 30 pounds of chicken and provided the fixings for Caesar salad as well as a wild rice dish and some Mac and Cheese. Given what almost all of us were doing to our livers, I figured our stomachs deserved something a little nicer. Because the venue was so rad I felt comfortable giving a 90-minute dinner break. Too long, in retrospect. At least a few people, myself included, fell off of our Ballmer Peak and tanked otherwise good performances in the last two rounds.
Going into Round 5 I was feeling pretty good about myself, but was really just looking forward to the raffle drawing coming after the round. I didn’t solicit super hard for raffle items this time, and the community came through anyway. Special thanks for Merhans for shipping an envelope full of goodies without me even having to ask him to! And to every single person who donated anything. Additional thanks to Philly’s newest Ante degen, Mostoman, who donated an UNL Balance and a small pile of AAA playables and similar. He played his first game of 40k in the waning hours of the tournament, losing a Bird in the process.
Back to the Rounds proper, I lost in 3 to the first Philly Phellow I faced - Andy “Domino” “Farb”, and then closed my night out in Round 6 losing to a sweet-ass Reanimator deck piloted by Ammi in his (I am 99% sure, sorry if I’m wrong, Ammi) first ever OS event. 3-3 while running the event felt pretty good. Channel Fireballing a very drunk DFB in Round 4 will forever be a highlight of the day. (He even complimented my playmat!)
Here were our final standings
Enormous congratulations to Greggg for winning with Mono Ggreen. Maybe that sentence needs more “G’s”. GGGGGG. There. You may distribute them as you see fit.
Congrats as well to Philly’s own (and The Beasts’, and the Sisters’) Eureka Shivan for winning our spice prize with a spicy deck that also had his customarily beautiful photo.
Diamond Valley - Lich - Mask - Naught. Totally normal deck.
This event will go down in my memory as an all-timer. I had a blast, the venue was sweet, and the crowd was exactly what I expected. And given the email I sent yesterday I can safely say that Storm Crow Cup will be back next March. Same place, similar time. Mark your March 2026 to come back (or come for the first time) to Philly for some Scryings.
Props: As always, my wife. For helping me design the stamp for the participation Storm Crows and for being solo parent to two sick children all day while I threw cardboard rectangles at a bunch of friends from all over the country. To the Ethical Humanists for being rad and not getting weird about a bunch of Gen X and Millennials throwing cardboard rectangles at one another while being drunk. To Humanism in general, for being a philosophy I identify with. And to everyone who helped make the day run smoothly in any way. You all know who you are and I love you all.
Slops: Losing my Ballmer Peak and taking a 3-1 to a 3-3. The $40 I had to pay to park in Center City. Children’s ear infections. Genocide, Colonialism, substance abuse disorder, people who have no compassion for people experiencing homelessness, the current Presidential Administration, and the spineless politicians who make it so that we have to raise money to ensure that people have access to food and shelter instead of getting to raise money to fight things like disease and famine.
If you made it this far looking for deck pictures, please follow this link to an Imgur gallery to view the ones I have so far, and this link featuring the ones I was sent since I wrote this or that failed to upload in that first gallery. If your list is missing, and you could send it to me I would appreciate it.