The New York to Philadelphia corridor still sees a fair amount of regular Vintage.
There's a monthly Vintage FNM at The Comic Book Depot on Long Island, in addition to a bigger monthly event there (the last one was a Tundra/Taiga tournament that fired at 16 players last Saturday).
The Bearded Dragon runs a monthly power tournament, I believe.
Top Deck Games runs monthly Vintage as well.
There are other stores in Pennsylvania that run events as well.
@yayjinaz I was very lucky to be able to pick that one up. A friend made it possible.
There's a ridiculous backstory to that too, where it was supposed to trade hands on a bullet train in Japan, but the potential buyer didn't show, and the (then) owner decided to hold on to it for a while longer.
Nice Vette! I had a 76' back in the day.
You can find Mike on Facebook, though I think that may be the end of your hunt. Mike has a phenomenal collection, and hasn't moved art, to my knowledge. Good luck.
So it's a cool card, and I owned a foil set of them at one point because I felt like it had some merits, but the biggest problem with it is the time that it takes to gain a real advantage.
If your opponent opens on an aggressive hand, you want to counter their aggression. If your opponent had an aggressive opener, would you rather have a four mana artifact that drew you cards, or a three and two life artifact like Phyrexian Metamorph? Would you prefer a Pithing Needle to shut off opposing Ballistas, Wastelands, Overseers, perhaps? Immediate effects that instantly impact your opponent's ability to shut you down, or wriggle out of your dominant board state, are better now. You will likely draw between 1-3 cards with this before you're dead. It's just not enough to reverse a dominant board state. If an opponent opens with more mana than you, and quickly establishes better threats (bigger Ballistas, more active Ravagers because they drew more artifacts, etc.), your draws will be better, and given enough time, you'll swing the game your way, but you're still only able to play one land per turn, and Coercive Portal really reads something like "draw a card, take X damage, where X is the amount of power that your opponent put on the board instead of playing Coercive Portal".
Coercive Portal is a card that has utility in a Shop deck that is dedicated to control. If this card had been printed back when we first broke out Espresso Stax in January 2010, I'm pretty sure we would have found a way to work them in. If it had been printed in the early days of Terra Nova, there may have been a case for them there, then, too. As long as Shop Control is dead (and it's pretty dead), I just don't think this card is good enough. If we get any of our toys back (which I can't imagine happening any time soon, as the community at large seems to be happy those cards are restricted), maybe a Shop Control deck can be built, and maybe this card has a home there.
Leaving this here as a placeholder.
There just might be a sweet Vintage event that day.
Welcome to TMD, and the format!
Where do you live? Perhaps we can help you meet some other Vintage players in your area.
@stuart Glad to hear your venue is sorted. Speaking from experience, it can be a source of incredible frustration and expense.
Magic judges have a site:
https://apps.magicjudges.org/accounts/login/?next=/
I'd create an advertisement of the event on the site, give the particulars, including compensation, and take applications, if I were you. This is what I did in years past, when I was a few judges short.
It's usually tough to gauge how many players you're going to get before the event, but you really do need to get a ballpark estimate. If you're north of 100 players, you're going to need a head judge (preferably level three, level two with great experience if that's impossible), some number of floor judges, and a scorekeeper. My venue is broken up, which results in needing an extra 1-2 judges. Still, I've always erred on the side of having 1-2 judges more than necessary, mostly because it's such a disaster when judge calls don't get answered efficiently (and result in delays for everyone with longer round extensions).
Also, for whatever it's worth, leave some financial breathing room for yourself if you don't get the turnout that you'd hoped for. There is nothing worse than spending an inordinate amount of time working on an event, and getting blown out by attendance the day of. When you're working with higher entry fees, the loss of a few players can be difficult. Lose 10-20 and it feels really bad, really quickly. If the turnout is what you expected, you can always add more support back in. If the turnout is less, taking a bath on a few thousand dollars will be a bad way to start the day.
Austin is great.
More high end Vintage is great.
I'd try to aim for January/February if I were you; your Northerner friends would be able to escape the cold for a few days, and June-October is packed between the N.Y.S.E., Waterbury, potential future SCG Cons, and Champs. You don't want to split attendance with another T/O.
Also, I don't know if you have some sweet deals set up, but you can't forget to include venue, judges, etc. The judges for the N.Y.S.E. Open in 2017 were north of $2,000.