GP Richmond Report
Because there was more to GP Richmond than not saying hi to theferrett. Though this is almost all Magic, so the non-players may be bored. Except for the bit where we got lost. And I realize it's slightly confusing, but the guys I went with are really named Zach and Zack. At least they're spelled differently.
Me and my friend Zach drove down Friday, for the Last Chance Qualifier thingie, which was Ravnica/Guildpact Sealed. The drive was much more relaxing than when we drove down for the Prerelease, other than the non-enforced speed limit, we didn't break any traffic regulations or almost die once. Knowing how to get to the Richmond Convention Center helped. It's a nice place, but frustratingly lacking in things like, oh, signs. Or people who knew where the event was. It wasn't in the same room as the Prerelease had been. We wandered and started following some fellow nerds who looked like they knew where they were going. You can always tell the nerds around Magic events, groups of 20ish guys, all wearing backpacks. Like college students, but even paler and a lot less women. A big group of other guys came down one escalator and followed us, probably figuring we knew where we were going. After all, there were people where we were heading.
Which just turned out to be a bunch of people for some kind of soccer convention or show. Lots of women there, definitely not the Magic event. So the whole mass of us turned around, and headed down toward where the Prerelease had been, but as I said, dead end. Turned out it was in the other building across the street, and was quite obvious once we got there. Nice big vinyl signs saying "Magic Grand Prix Richmond". Woulda been nice if they'd been somewhere other than just right outside the room we needed to get to, though.
I opened and registered nothing much. My deck I got passed was much better, I ended up playing 4 colors, with most of my rares. I had a Sacred Foundry, Char, signets, bouncelands, and the Sand-Dweller Nephilhim, who gives you ridiculous numbers of dudes when he hits somebody. He never did, but he sure drew attention, and was in the 4 colors I was playing, so why the hell not? I have the cards to the deck around somewhere, but I took it apart so I don't remember the exact contents. I won the first two rounds with it, the first round was at the first seat, against some guy wearing a Pro Tour Competitor shirt from PT Nagoya. Of course, after an opening like 2-0, I had to start talking about it, which doomed me to go 0-2 in the next two rounds, so I dropped, since it was 12:30 am and a 40ish minute drive to our other friend's apartment to crash. Zach went 0-2, and has since sworn off Sealed. I can't blame him, he's never had any good luck with it. He ended up getting in a side draft, with theferrett. My excuse then was you don't interrupt a man when he's drafting. Which is true.
A bunch of the Japanese pros had flown in, 'cause the prize money at a Grand Prix is pretty good. If you win, anyway. They came in while I was playing in round 1, at table 1, so I got to watch them get greeted by some of the guys who knew them. Including one guy who yelled across the room. And I got to watch a little of them playing with some other American pros on another table, for fun or money or something. It was weird though, because they played crazy fast, from all the practice and knowing the other player was a good player, they didn't have to ask about most things, just assume the other player was a good player and would make the good player moves. Throwing cards down, tapping all the land at once, etc. Wouldn't play that way in the actual tourney I'd figure, just because there'd be too much chance of getting a technical call for tapping mana late or something from a judge. And the thousands of dollars potentially on the line. Still, markedly different than watching scrubs like me play, who make bad plays all the time
So anyway, the three of us decided not to bother going to the GP itself the next day. That way we could sleep in and get breakfast. Food is important. We learned that after the Guildpact Prerelease, when we went all day without eating. Being hungry makes you suck at playing. And if you get dehydrated too, you can get sick when you eat. Well, I can anyway. The three of us went to Denny's, where we had to wait like twenty minutes, even though they had plenty of empty tables. Maybe they didn't have enough servers, or maybe they just hated us. I said we shoulda gone to Waffle House. We were in the South after all, you can tell because you start to see Waffle Houses. Well, among other things.
We got there around noon, and me and Zach started drafting. Zack didn't draft at all, he just traded, including most of his duals for an Ancestral Recall and some Mana Drains. Dude. I have no interest in old formats like Vintage and Type 1, so that seems crazy to me, but I guess it makes him happy. And the "Dude, I have Power 9, look," factor I guess. Zack's more a collector than me. I just like to play.
Zach won one of the drafts, and got 3rd in another and scrubbed out of a third. Me, I scrubbed out of one and got 3rd/4th in two, so netted four packs, plus the cards from the drafts. I always feel weird drafting Ravnica, 'cause there's so much good stuff, I hate passing all the other cards. Still, I bet my rating went up a little bit, just because most of the people there were probably better players than me, with higher rating than my hair over 1600.
The other thing I found out over the weekend? I can open crazy stuff for other people. But not for me. Like Friday, Zach bought four packs, I opened two of them, both had Rumbling Slums. And he got the W/B dual from the other. Then later on, Zack bought a fat pack, I picked up one of them and said "here, I'll open you a dual." Yeah. The R/G one. Opened another, Burning Tree Shaman. Dude. Best things I actually opened all weekend were a Quicken from one pack and a Firemane Angel in my last draft. Which I had to take, she's just too sexy. And I got passed crazy red stuff the whole stuff. But not crazy enough to deal with my opponent who had an Ursapine and Golgari Rotwurm and other nice fatties. Never even got to cast her. The draft I scrubbed out in, I lost mainly because my inner Timmy demanded I pick the Blazing Archon, then the Authochron Wurm. That worked about as well as you'd expect. Heh.
We had to leave early on Saturday, because Zack had a date. Psh. Coulda gotten at least one more draft in. But it let me get back in time to play a little bit of D&D last night. Then come home and post this and dink around the house.
So what'd you folks do with your weekends?
Me and my friend Zach drove down Friday, for the Last Chance Qualifier thingie, which was Ravnica/Guildpact Sealed. The drive was much more relaxing than when we drove down for the Prerelease, other than the non-enforced speed limit, we didn't break any traffic regulations or almost die once. Knowing how to get to the Richmond Convention Center helped. It's a nice place, but frustratingly lacking in things like, oh, signs. Or people who knew where the event was. It wasn't in the same room as the Prerelease had been. We wandered and started following some fellow nerds who looked like they knew where they were going. You can always tell the nerds around Magic events, groups of 20ish guys, all wearing backpacks. Like college students, but even paler and a lot less women. A big group of other guys came down one escalator and followed us, probably figuring we knew where we were going. After all, there were people where we were heading.
Which just turned out to be a bunch of people for some kind of soccer convention or show. Lots of women there, definitely not the Magic event. So the whole mass of us turned around, and headed down toward where the Prerelease had been, but as I said, dead end. Turned out it was in the other building across the street, and was quite obvious once we got there. Nice big vinyl signs saying "Magic Grand Prix Richmond". Woulda been nice if they'd been somewhere other than just right outside the room we needed to get to, though.
I opened and registered nothing much. My deck I got passed was much better, I ended up playing 4 colors, with most of my rares. I had a Sacred Foundry, Char, signets, bouncelands, and the Sand-Dweller Nephilhim, who gives you ridiculous numbers of dudes when he hits somebody. He never did, but he sure drew attention, and was in the 4 colors I was playing, so why the hell not? I have the cards to the deck around somewhere, but I took it apart so I don't remember the exact contents. I won the first two rounds with it, the first round was at the first seat, against some guy wearing a Pro Tour Competitor shirt from PT Nagoya. Of course, after an opening like 2-0, I had to start talking about it, which doomed me to go 0-2 in the next two rounds, so I dropped, since it was 12:30 am and a 40ish minute drive to our other friend's apartment to crash. Zach went 0-2, and has since sworn off Sealed. I can't blame him, he's never had any good luck with it. He ended up getting in a side draft, with theferrett. My excuse then was you don't interrupt a man when he's drafting. Which is true.
A bunch of the Japanese pros had flown in, 'cause the prize money at a Grand Prix is pretty good. If you win, anyway. They came in while I was playing in round 1, at table 1, so I got to watch them get greeted by some of the guys who knew them. Including one guy who yelled across the room. And I got to watch a little of them playing with some other American pros on another table, for fun or money or something. It was weird though, because they played crazy fast, from all the practice and knowing the other player was a good player, they didn't have to ask about most things, just assume the other player was a good player and would make the good player moves. Throwing cards down, tapping all the land at once, etc. Wouldn't play that way in the actual tourney I'd figure, just because there'd be too much chance of getting a technical call for tapping mana late or something from a judge. And the thousands of dollars potentially on the line. Still, markedly different than watching scrubs like me play, who make bad plays all the time
So anyway, the three of us decided not to bother going to the GP itself the next day. That way we could sleep in and get breakfast. Food is important. We learned that after the Guildpact Prerelease, when we went all day without eating. Being hungry makes you suck at playing. And if you get dehydrated too, you can get sick when you eat. Well, I can anyway. The three of us went to Denny's, where we had to wait like twenty minutes, even though they had plenty of empty tables. Maybe they didn't have enough servers, or maybe they just hated us. I said we shoulda gone to Waffle House. We were in the South after all, you can tell because you start to see Waffle Houses. Well, among other things.
We got there around noon, and me and Zach started drafting. Zack didn't draft at all, he just traded, including most of his duals for an Ancestral Recall and some Mana Drains. Dude. I have no interest in old formats like Vintage and Type 1, so that seems crazy to me, but I guess it makes him happy. And the "Dude, I have Power 9, look," factor I guess. Zack's more a collector than me. I just like to play.
Zach won one of the drafts, and got 3rd in another and scrubbed out of a third. Me, I scrubbed out of one and got 3rd/4th in two, so netted four packs, plus the cards from the drafts. I always feel weird drafting Ravnica, 'cause there's so much good stuff, I hate passing all the other cards. Still, I bet my rating went up a little bit, just because most of the people there were probably better players than me, with higher rating than my hair over 1600.
The other thing I found out over the weekend? I can open crazy stuff for other people. But not for me. Like Friday, Zach bought four packs, I opened two of them, both had Rumbling Slums. And he got the W/B dual from the other. Then later on, Zack bought a fat pack, I picked up one of them and said "here, I'll open you a dual." Yeah. The R/G one. Opened another, Burning Tree Shaman. Dude. Best things I actually opened all weekend were a Quicken from one pack and a Firemane Angel in my last draft. Which I had to take, she's just too sexy. And I got passed crazy red stuff the whole stuff. But not crazy enough to deal with my opponent who had an Ursapine and Golgari Rotwurm and other nice fatties. Never even got to cast her. The draft I scrubbed out in, I lost mainly because my inner Timmy demanded I pick the Blazing Archon, then the Authochron Wurm. That worked about as well as you'd expect. Heh.
We had to leave early on Saturday, because Zack had a date. Psh. Coulda gotten at least one more draft in. But it let me get back in time to play a little bit of D&D last night. Then come home and post this and dink around the house.
So what'd you folks do with your weekends?