I was one of the judges at the event. Aside from the little snafu with the computer and printer not talking to each other, the event ran extremely smooth. Probably the smoothest I can remember in years. I brought my friend Eli down to help judge, and he was happily surprised at the community. Zero deck list errors, zero game losses, zero DQs, and zero player arguments. All of those would be unheard of at a 78+ player Standard tournament. Vintage events are the only tournaments aside from FNMs and prereleases that I still enjoy judging, just because the community around here is amazing. I do hope to get to play with you all again some day though!

Thanks Nick!

Hi everyone!  This is Brian Paskoff, and I was judging the tournament over at Grim.  It was great seeing everyone again; I was afraid after the unpleasantness at the other location last time that many of you wouldn't make the trek out again, but as I told Nick when talking about the gloomy weather report for Saturday, I think Vintage players would drive two hundred miles in a blizzard to get to play for some Power.  Aside from a mere twenty minute delay due to about seven of our players getting stuck in traffic because of the weather (much less than the hour and a half delay last time due to... well, I should be nice to store owners), the tournament went on without a hitch.

Judging Vintage is a little bit scary - sure the rules are the same in every format, but it's difficult when cards don't do what they say.  Hell, there's cards legal in the format that can choose to do what they want themselves, as last month's ninth place prize showed.  I had to consult Gatherer a few times, and had to answer a question on Chains of Mephistopheles (which was in Italian, so that didn't help things), but most judge calls involved Looking at Extra Cards and various shortcut guideline things, as well as a few questions involving Trinisphere, the converted mana cost of Chalice of the Void, etc.  Seeing as most of you guys seem to play the same deck forever, it's kind of boring for me when you guys know all the interactions by heart.    (Just kidding, it was actually waaaaay more fun than judging yet another Standard PTQ.  Stax vs. Stax > Faeries vs. Faeries any day.)

Anyway, we had 39 players, which was astonishing considering we were up against bad weather, a Standard PTQ, and a Standard event for a set of M10 the same day.  I know most Vintage players don't care about Standard at all, but I think we could have had more bi-format-curious (ugh, sorry) Standard players showing up to try to win a piece of Power.  We also had a few Brothers Grim locals excitedly building decks for the event, only to not show up for whatever reasons.  I also think we'll get a lot more of those casual Vintage players wanting to play next time if it's for a Lotus.  To answer Nick's question, something like an Emerald is valuable, but the response I got from a few casual players was along the lines of "Why would I want an Emerald?"  Everyone wants a Sapphire or a Lotus, but the other ones aren't as exciting to people who don't fully understand the power of these cards in the format.

Congradulations to Ron Konak for winning the entire thing.  I know Dredge is the bad-boy of Vintage, but every time a "cheap" deck wins it attracts more players.  One of the reasons attendance was down at Nick's first event was because many local, casual-type players were scared of "the big TMD players", but someone winning who they're all at least somewhat familiar with and who isn't a "big name Vintage player" will make them think twice the next time they go to say "I'm not going, there's no way I can win."

I know I've talked a lot about bringing new players to tournaments here and I get the feeling that some of you are rolling your eyes thinking about playing against a bad mono-red burn deck or Dragonstorm or mono-white cats or something, but more players = bigger prizes and more fun.  I'm even starting to get into Vintage, and would probably join you guys at Blue Bell if I had more of a clue what I was doing yet.

Thanks to everyone who came out from both close to home and from so far away, thanks to Brothers Grim for hosting the event and mercifully cancelling their Yu Gi Oh tournament that day, and most of all thanks to Nick for running a successful tournament and bringing Vintage to Long Island.  I hope to see you all again in October!