BOOM: http://www.eternalcentral.com/schools-of-magic-the-history-of-vintage-a-starcitygames-power-nine-series-retrospective/

Do any of you remember the Starcitygames Power Nine Series? Play in it? Travel with friends in a car full of players to one of them?

Then be sure to read this. It's a complete history of that series.

And, for the historians or those interested in historical decklists, I've compiled, for the first time ever, a single appendix of coverage and decklists from every single SCG Power Nine event. Perfect for datamining. For almost half the events, we have complete decklists and final standings.

Someone could conduct a pretty extensive data analysis if they wished. SCG event calculated match win %ages for some of the events. Pretty insane.

Bookmark this.

@smmenen

A fantastic read. So much of our current understanding of Vintage (the pillars, proxy vs. non-proxy, the movement of power to Europe) is encapsulated in that tournament series.

It's true. SCG's brilliance at melding the strategy, retail, and TO is also underestimated.

SCG is different from Wizards organized or community organized events, but the series was instrumental to the growth and sustenance of the vintage community. I feel sorry for people who didn't get to experience it.

But, I've done my best to compile information in a way that is usable by future researchers as well as the merely curious.

Wow what a fantastic and nostalgic read. I attended 2 of these events (Richmond when Oath Debuted, and Rochester when TK won with Sullivan Solution). While these events were well run and a great time, I was able to talk my dad into driving me to Virginia and Rochester, but sadly Chicago and other midwest spots were out of the question. I honestly recall conversations about the recurring instances of disappointing attendance and what that meant for the format. I believe it had a substantial impact on my decision to sell out at the end of 2006. One thing you did not mention (I dont think) was the number of Proxy's allowed in these events. I want to say the early events were 5, but they may have been the pioneer of the large scale 10 proxy event, which makes some of the attendance issues even more interesting. 2003-2006/7 was really an amazing time for type 1 in terms of event availability. The SCG series, plus (at least) a semi-annual Waterbury event created such a tremendous amount of coverage and innovation for the format. There were just more people willing to write extensive tournament reports and provide coverage back then, I know we get MTGO Data, but it is really not the same as it used to be.

I LOVED these events. Only made it to 5 of them, but they were awesome. Syracuse was a bust, and I would never travel to an event after that. Luckily, I lived in Richmond, so got to hit 4 of those when they came to town. Had such fun times during those years. Great friends, fun night-befores, and awesome tourneys. Just ask Stephen about hamburger ninja stars

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone.

I'm so happy that everyone is enjoying this. I've gotten a ton of positive feedback on social media.

The best part of the article is probably the Appendix at the end, which makes it SUPER easy to click through the coverage and decklists. No one has ever done this before.

I'm still waiting on @Brass-Man 's feedback though, since he was the "road warrior"

Well, this article is certainly relevant again. It may even be useful data mine to see what metagame preferences prevailed in the Roanoke tournaments.