Emerald City Trolls: Seattle Old School MtG

The X-Files: The Truth is Out There Tournament Organizer's Report

By Shawn

June 23, 2025

Location: Seattle, WA

Date: June 6-7 2025

Investigation Log: On an otherwise ordinary Friday morning, Agent Scully and I got a call about a possible X-File, taking us back up to the Pacific Northwest. It hadn't been that long since our last investigation up here, when some sort of Satanic Cult had been trying to raise a demon through a ritual involving the Seven Deadly Sins. We never found out what happened with that case, so I was hopeful that we wouldn't be running into another dead end.

This time, there were reports of possible extraterrestrial sightings in the vicinity of Ballard, a neighborhood in Seattle known for its fishman roots, not to mention its historic commitment to the culture that comes with a life spent on the sea. Of course, with a rich fishing culture comes all kinds of tall tales, but this case smelled like there might be something to it.

When we arrived on Friday, we followed a lead that took us to the back warehouse of a brewery. Barrels were stacked high up to the ceiling. When we peeked in, we saw what appeared to be a large group of middle-aged nerds playing some sort of card game. They all had on FBI badges, but to look at them, there was no way these people were FBI agents. They were also playing with stacks of round discs -- saucers, maybe? -- that they would strike with another disk. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite place my finger on it.

These people seemed to be a little strange, but not alien. We watched them until they all slunk off into the night, and Scully and I went to the motel to get a little bit of sleep before continuing our investigation.

The next day, we managed to get onto the trail of these folks again, following them out to the shore where they were gathering in a secret society lodge. Now it seemed we might be getting somewhere.

We couldn't enter the lodge because we didn't have a pass, so we waited until someone who appeared to that be their leader wandered off to go get some sandwiches. Scully caused a bit of a distraction and I snuck in.

Now there was an even larger group of nerds playing even more cards. They brought a few of their friends too, who were drawing pictures. They seemed to be artists and they were drawing on the cards.

I waited, hidden in a closet for some sort of extraterrestrial presence to make itself known. As the day progressed people, got rowdier and rowdier. Finally, at the very end, one of them received an ovation from the crowd. It appeared that one person was managed to defeat all of the other people (I say "people" in quotation marks) in the room, going undefeated and winning whatever their card game was. For just a split second, in a flash of light it appeared that this champion was wearing a mask, and underneath some sort of being it reminded me of the ones I'd seen back in New Mexico.

I found myself paralyzed. When I tried to jump out to apprehend the suspect, my mind went blank. When I came to, they were all gone, except for some sort of greasy residue covering the tables and chairs and floor. Scully and I tried to pick up the trail, but I couldn't find them again.

Despite Scully and my best efforts, it appears this is another X-File that will have to remain open. But I know the truth is out there, and one day I'll find it.

Friday: The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Friday's event was The X-Files: I Want to Believe, another special one-time only rule set with an X-Files theme and held at Reuben's Barrel House in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. Another big twist in this event besides the theme this time was the introduction of pogs to the game of Magic. Special rules added pogs to the game, with players receiving a stack of pogs to play with. The pogs had various game effects on them, and the rules gave players game actions they could take to stack up pogs and use their slammer to flip them over. Or try to at least. Any pogs that they flipped over would have a game effect, such as drawing some cards, doing 3 damage, making an opponent discard some cards, or even more powerful effects like making both players mill most of their library, making them switch life totals, or taking an extra turn. So these were very powerful effects and good strategies often involved trying to leverage the pogs in the game.

Additionally, players earned victory points ("Secrets") for the overall tournament based on the number of pogs they flipped over in games they won. The victory points were what decided the ultimate standing of the players in the tournament, not just their win loss record. So, players were incentivized to flip over the pogs not just for their game effects, but also because it's how you win the tournament.

Other than the pogs, there were also 5 X-Files characters that were printed on special cards for the event, one in each color. There was Agent Mulder in red, Agent Scully in white, Deep Throat in blue, Assistant Director Skinner in green, and The Smoking Man in black. These creatures were all legendary 4/4's for four mana with no drawback, so they were already a good rate for Old School. They each also had one keyword ability, and one ability that affected the pogs that were played. Players were required to include at least four copies of these characters in their deck, but it could be advantageous to play more because of their powerful effects.

This tournament was a short, fun warm-up event to kick off the weekend. We had hoped to play 4 rounds, but only managed to fit in 3. From what I heard though, I still think players had a really good time with the format. More fun than people thought it would be :) Admittedly, the rules are a bit long and take a while to read. But they kind of make sense once you get used to playing it a little bit and get a game or two under your belt. Then it seemed like it was a pretty interesting twist on our well-loved game of Old School Magic.

If anyone wants to try it, I do have some extra pogs and X-Files cards I'd be happy to to give out. You can also print your own or come up with your own way to represent the pogs if you want to. Unlike most other special rule sets that I've made in the past, I don't think I would really change anything about this one. The rules were pretty solid as-is and don't need any major tweaks for balance. Maybe one small possible exception is Deep Throat's Shroud ability. Shroud does make him hard to deal with. I think there are ways to handle him once his once you recognize how powerful that Shroud ability is, but maybe it could be tweaked into like just Flying or something (and then give him Plot Armor). Oh, and also, playing in a room full of barrels makes chasing down stray pogs challenging. But overall, I was pretty satisfied with this one.

Here are the pogs and X-Files Cards:

Saturday: The X-Files: The Truth is Out There Main Event

Saturday's main event was held at the Ballard Elks Lodge, a venue located right on the shores of the Puget Sound. The weather was incredible, and the views across the Sound over to the Olympics were breathtaking. The location of the famous Un Bien Cuban sandwich shop across the street made for extremely convenient, tasty lunch. I try not to reuse venues, but this one was so great that I might have to run it back again someday.

There were 76 players who registered for the main event. making this my largest tournament so far. With that many players we would need either 6 or 7 rounds to end up with one undefeated player, so i scheduled the tournament for 7 rounds and figured we would just see how it shook out.

After 6 rounds, Stephen Hines of the Beasts of the Bay was the only remaining undefeated player. However, I had already announced we would play all 7 rounds, so if he lost in round 7, any of the X-1 finishers could end up winning the tournament.

In round 7, Stephen played Will Parshall on the top table (which was recorded -- I'll post links to those later). Stephen ended up beating Will as well to finish the tournament at 7-0, the clear victor in a long day of hard-fought Pacific rules Old School Magic.

We had many artists at the event as well, although not as many as I had originally expected. A few of the artists were unable to make it at the last minute. I've heard from all of them and they're all doing well. They all hope to be able to make it to next year's event so fingers crossed it will work out better next time.

We of course had spice prizes for the event, so in order to prevent those from being buried below, here is a list of all the spice winners from the event:

Eric Martin
Neil Troy
Jeremy Chien
Park Cofield
Erik Pederson
Jacob Brotherton
Andy Swaffer
Andrew Lockhart

Andy Sifford also received an honorable mention. His deck was definitely spice-prize-worthy, but he won one a month ago in Portland with the ~same deck, so I decided to spread the love.

Keeping tradition with some of my recent events, I also awarded a prize for Best Deck. Best Deck is a purely subjective award given by me, at my discretion, based upon whatever I feel like basing it upon, though I will note that I have tended to give it to people with lots of great alters in their deck. This year was no exception. Will Magrann won Best Deck with his incredible, lovingly crafted altered Atog deck. Every alter in Will's deck has a story behind it, and he's continually working on it upgrading pieces over time to make the deck even more personal and meaningful. It's really a beautiful thing to see in person, and I applaud Will for the time and dedication he's put into building such an amazing, beautiful piece of Old School Magic artwork.

Of course, this whole event was ultimately in service of raising money for charity. This year, we were raising money once again from Mary's Place, an incredible charity based here in King County whose mission is to make sure that no child sleeps outside. They do this through focusing on women and families who are dealing with the effects of trauma in their life. They do amazing work and I'm proud to be able to support them once again. Through a combination of the raffle ticket sales merch sales and other kinds of donations I'm thrilled to say we were able to raise $6,532.81 on behalf of Mary's Place! It's really incredible that we get to play this children's card game we love, hang out with friends, and raise money for a good cause all at the same time.

Thanks for reading! Hope you will “get over here” to Seattle for next year's event!

Shawn

Event Photos

Thanks to everyone who shared photos with me to share of the event! Unfortunately, I didn't get credits for most of them, but please note I am nonetheless thankful because I am usually too busy to take many :)

Friday Night's Venue, Reuben's Barrel House

Swag for Friday: Pog Tubes, X-Files Card Boxes, and Official FBI Badges

TO, Outer Character

TO, Inner Character

Noah Handed Out These Custom Sealed Packs Containing Alters and Stamped Cards from the Community!

James with his Custom Event Sleeves

Rob and Noah Sporting Out Of This World Theme Gear...

...As Long As They Can Avoid Special Agent Blake

Action Shot Trying To Flip Pogs. Only Got One, But If You Only Get One, Ancestral Pog is A Good One

Quinn Flipped Over Many Pogs...

...And Had to Decide What to Do With Them All

All Pogs Successfully Flipped with Agent Mulder On The Case

This Hand Featuring 3 Different X-Files Characters Won an Instant Spice Prize

Deece Hand

Bjorn and Brian Snoddy Letting The Good Times Roll

First Prize: I Want To Believe Poster Signed By All Players. With a Snoddy Doodle!

Winner of Friday Night, Noah Shanning, with Prize Poster

Entrance to the Event Hall at Ballard Elks

Packed House for Saturday's Main Event

Top Tables and Feature Table. Feature Matches Were Recorded and Will Be Shared When Ready

Artist Alley

Matchup Live Shots 1

Matchup Live Shots 2

Matchup Live Shots 3

Matchup Live Shots 4

Matchup Live Shots 5

Matchup Live Shots 6

Matchup Live Shots 7

Matchup Live Shots 8

A Few More Buds

Bros Being Bros

Mark Root and Nicola Beeson Recreating One Of Her Iconic Pieces

Nicola Also Tatted Up Noah

Food For 100? No Problem For the Toyota Sienna

Lunch From Un Bien: Smokin' Thighs, Roast Pork, and Spicy Tofu

No Un Bien Meal is Complete Without Onions, Rice, Beans, and Salad (Yes, the Salad!)

Yum Yum!

Some of the Raffle Prizes. Sealed Product! The Smells!

More Raffle Prizes. So You Can Read Something Besides Your Phone When You Poop

View From The Venue

More View From The Venue

Friday Final Standings

Place	Player	Matches	Secrets	MP	OMW%	GW%	OGW%
1	Noah Shanning	3	76	6	0.4444	0.625	0.4815
2	Quinn Maurmann	3	64	9	0.5556	0.8571	0.5556
3	Luis Dominguez	3	63	6	0.6667	0.5556	0.625
4	Mox Emerald Scott	3	60	6	0.3878	0.7143	0.3762
5	The Library (Steve Hines)	3	54	9	0.4989	0.8571	0.3905
6	Blake	3	53	9	0.4989	0.75	0.375
7	tim	3	49	3	0.6667	0.4444	0.6158
8	Jacob Statnekov	3	44	4	0.3693	0.4286	0.3929
9	Bjorn	3	43	6	0.5544	0.625	0.418
10	Nicholas Aiello	3	42	6	0.4444	0.5	0.5231
11	Tim Moran	3	40	6	0.4444	0.5556	0.4993
12	Pazan	3	34	3	0.5544	0.4286	0.4412
13	Ben Katz	3	31	6	0.3333	0.6667	0.3545
14	Mitch	3	29	3	0.5926	0.4286	0.5893
15	James Onions	3	28	7	0.3311	0.8333	0.3174
16	Will Parshall	3	25	9	0.4444	0.75	0.4444
17	Andrew Lockhart	3	23	7	0.3311	0.8333	0.3333
18	James Portello	3	19	6	0.6667	0.625	0.5595
19	Jeff Scofield	3	19	3	0.5544	0.5	0.4352
20	Rubber Chicken	3	19	0	0.4259	0.25	0.4762
21	Jason	3	17	6	0.6667	0.5714	0.6051
22	David Neitzelt	3	16	6	0.5915	0.6667	0.5
23	Ben Hart	3	13	2	0.6285	0.3333	0.6666
24	Ben DiMiero	3	10	3	0.5926	0.3333	0.5635
25	Dom Dominguez	3	8	2	0.6285	0.3333	0.6666
26	Dr Big cox	3	7	4	0.4815	0.5	0.4603
27	Cliff	3	7	3	0.6656	0.4444	0.5278
28	Mark Root	3	7	3	0.6656	0.3333	0.5199
29	Andy Swaffar	3	7	0	0.5	0.1429	0.5
30	Billy O'	2	0	3	0.8333	0.5	0.7857
31	Noah	2	0	3	0.665	0.5	0.5
32	Rob Hackney	2	0	3	0.665	0.5	0.5
33	Jared Miller (Sarevok)	2	0	3	0.665	0.4	0.7286
34	Aharon	2	0	3	0.5	0.6	0.4
35	Kevin Elliott	3	0	3	0.4804	0.2857	0.5
36	Park Cofield	3	0	3	0.4804	0.2857	0.4365
37	Nick Fox	1	0	3	0.33	1	0
38	Justin W Coffey	1	0	0	1	0	1
39	Chris Vitas	1	0	0	1	0	0.75
40	Graham	2	0	0	0.8333	0.2	0.7857
41	Justin Fultz	3	0	0	0.4444	0.1429	0.4464
42	Aaron West	2	0	0	0.3333	0.3333	0.365

Friday Final Standings

Place	Player	Matches	MP	OMW%	GW%	OGW%
1	The Library (Steve Hines)	7	21	0.7002	0.8235	0.5873
2	Noah	7	18	0.6594	0.75	0.6007
3	Justin	7	18	0.6186	0.7222	0.5705
4	David	7	18	0.5676	0.8571	0.5385
5	Justin W Coffey	7	15	0.699	0.6111	0.6396
6	Quinn Maurmann	7	15	0.6735	0.5789	0.612
7	Tim Moran	7	15	0.6633	0.6875	0.629
8	Ben Katz	7	15	0.6429	0.6471	0.586
9	Aaron West	7	15	0.6224	0.6111	0.5851
10	Will Parshall	7	15	0.6186	0.625	0.5642
11	Wheel Magrann	7	15	0.5676	0.6667	0.5137
12	Chris Tolar	7	15	0.5676	0.6316	0.4823
13	Mark Root	7	15	0.5676	0.625	0.5667
14	Christopher Skidmore	7	15	0.5229	0.6471	0.4943
15	Bjorn	7	15	0.5165	0.7059	0.4997
16	Brian Vegso	7	15	0.5076	0.6316	0.4783
17	Carson Brown	7	15	0.4718	0.6875	0.4623
18	James Onions	7	12	0.6531	0.5625	0.6167
19	Marshall Lake	7	12	0.6429	0.5333	0.6062
20	Joe Fairbanks	7	12	0.639	0.5882	0.5825
21	d00g	7	12	0.6288	0.5263	0.5875
22	Nicholas Aiello	7	12	0.6082	0.5789	0.5842
23	Teebs	7	12	0.5573	0.5789	0.5371
24	Ben Hart	7	12	0.5433	0.5625	0.5084
25	Scott Ferguson	7	12	0.5267	0.5556	0.5132
26	Aharon	7	12	0.5265	0.5294	0.5129
27	Graham	7	12	0.5165	0.5	0.4991
28	Joe Lennox	7	12	0.4952	0.5333	0.5261
29	Ross	7	12	0.4922	0.5263	0.4796
30	Shane mccandlish	7	12	0.4859	0.5556	0.4623
31	Eugene	7	12	0.482	0.5556	0.4807
32	Ben DiMiero	7	12	0.482	0.5263	0.4712
33	John Stocker	7	12	0.468	0.5294	0.4546
34	Jason	7	12	0.4616	0.5294	0.4267
35	Rob Hackney	7	12	0.4553	0.5789	0.4557
36	Luis Dominguez	7	12	0.4456	0.6	0.4572
37	Eric Martin	7	9	0.5714	0.375	0.5514
38	Jeff Scofield	7	9	0.5612	0.4444	0.5506
39	Flint	6	9	0.5476	0.5333	0.538
40	Andy Swaffar	7	9	0.5471	0.4118	0.5238
41	Mac	4	9	0.5468	0.6	0.5256
42	Pazan	7	9	0.5229	0.4444	0.4964
43	Nick Fox	7	9	0.5165	0.5	0.503
44	Mox Emerald Scott	7	9	0.5165	0.5	0.489
45	Andy Sifford	7	9	0.5165	0.4667	0.5159
46	Cliff	7	9	0.5088	0.4375	0.5042
47	Andrew Knapp	7	9	0.5063	0.4286	0.5127
48	Jared Miller (Sarevok)	7	9	0.5012	0.5263	0.4986
49	Justin Fultz	7	9	0.4961	0.4375	0.4807
50	Jacob Brotherton	7	9	0.482	0.4118	0.4695
51	Anthony (Delibre)	7	9	0.4476	0.4375	0.4372
52	Artemis	7	9	0.4371	0.5	0.4127
53	Andrew Lockhart	7	9	0.4335	0.4375	0.4202
54	Lars Garvey	7	9	0.4067	0.4118	0.3795
55	Mitch	7	9	0.3995	0.4706	0.4006
56	George	4	6	0.5825	0.5	0.5052
57	Kaden	7	6	0.5369	0.3529	0.5268
58	Park Cofield	7	6	0.5076	0.3333	0.4687
59	Aaron Rehfield	7	6	0.4961	0.3529	0.4968
60	Noah Shanning	5	6	0.4803	0.4167	0.4989
61	James Portello	7	6	0.4757	0.3333	0.4469
62	Dom Dominguez	7	6	0.4743	0.3125	0.4395
63	Jacob Statnekov	7	6	0.4476	0.3125	0.4338
64	Chris Vitas	7	6	0.4343	0.3125	0.4118
65	Erik Pedersen	7	6	0.4271	0.3889	0.4273
66	David Neitzelt	7	6	0.4195	0.3889	0.4265
67	tim	7	6	0.3886	0.3529	0.3768
68	Neil Troy	3	3	0.5714	0.3333	0.5425
69	Quinn	7	3	0.5165	0.2778	0.499
70	Jack	4	3	0.4515	0.4	0.3931
71	Blake	4	3	0.4507	0.3636	0.4182
72	Tanny Curley	7	3	0.4476	0.2353	0.4578
73	Kevin	3	3	0.4433	0.3333	0.4902
74	Jeremy Chien	2	0	0.5714	0	0.5658
75	Dr Big cox	7	0	0.5088	0.1765	0.4806
76	Gwen Levine	4	0	0.4932	0.1111	0.4796