Serious Vintage Episode 46: Vintage in the Time of Coronavirus

For episode 46, Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser on Twitter), Nat Moes (@GrandpaBelcher), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) talk with Rajah James (@rykerwilliams). Rajah is a Team Serious member and friend who organized the online Team Serious League and played in the recent Team Serious Invitational: Virtual Realm, so we’re talking to him about getting your Magic fix while dealing with physical distancing.


Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:
01:17 – Team Serious Leagues
24:10 – Enter the Virtual Realm
37:47 – The Cat’s in the Vintage
55:28 – Food & Drink: MTG Pub Quiz
1:16:49 – Outro
Total runtime – 1:17:51

Missing: The Gathering

These are weird times we’re living in. The coronavirus, as well as thoughtful public health officials and good sense, has relegated most of humanity to stay physically apart from one another to prevent the spread of a particularly virulent disease. I was thinking about it and realized I haven’t been in a building other than my own house in seven weeks. Distancing is the norm now, and that’s a problem for a tabletop card game where players square off in intimate distance, talking, and often interacting with one another’s cards.

Wizards of the Coast provided the first solutions to playing Magic under quarantine with, of course, Magic Online (MTGO) and Arena. But these services might leave something to be desired for some players. Arena’s available collection won’t allow players to play Vintage (or Legacy, Old School, Modern, and so on), and while MTGO offers most of the cards, there’s still a barrier to human interaction. You can’t fully engage with your opponent: introduce yourselves when you sit down, congratulate them on a good play, or see their reaction when you have the answer or drop your big threat. It can feel sterile, like you’re one person against a machine.

To overcome that, Rajah organized the Team Serious Leagues (TSL) within our group. As he describes, it’s similar to the Vintage Super League: round-robin games are played in batches over multiple weeks, and players are allowed to change decks or strategies between batches. Eventually records are compared and winners are declared. The TSL allows games to be played over any reasonable medium: webcam, MTGO, Cockatrice, even in person since it was organized before social distancing protocols were in effect. It was meant as a way to get Team Serious members to play games against one another despite there being sometimes long distances between players.

Since quarantine, it’s been a relief not only for the players, who get to continue playing games and talking to people, but for other Team Serious members, who often get to watch the streamed matches and even interact with the players over the team’s chat and Discord.

You can follow along too if you like. The results and decklists from the first Vintage batch are on Rajah’s website, and here are the decklists from the second batch. When the three batches are complete, someone will win these keen lands altered by Daniel Anschutz, or this “Wild Thing” Force of Will altered by Bobby Lupo.

Welcome to the Machine

Inspired by the TSL and compelled by the coronavirus quarantine, Andy “The Brass Man” Probasco and I started talking about hosting a virtual Team Serious Invitational (TSI). We wanted an opportunity to get people together where they could hang out online, play some Vintage, and perhaps consu