So some time ago myself, Jeff Anand, Mike Sanchez and Aaron Jarvis decided it was time to find a little direction in our lives, find some focus and then we all gave up on that idea and decided to go to Gencon. Fortunately Jeff had recently purchased what could only be described as a "sweet ride" a brand spanking new Acura TL with all the fixins including leather seats, a CD player and a GPS Navigational system. Needless to say this car was hot (meaning "awesome hot" not "stolen hot").
After making the arduous 4 hour trip to Long Island New York to meet up with Samite and his travelling buddies and getting lost multiple times along the way and having serious concerns about my car's suspension system (turns out I just had a very worn out tire and some worn out ball joints) I arrived at Samite's place to find that they've all been drinking heavily and we'll be leaving in a few hours. After an adequate sobering up period we packed up the car to begin our journey to the vast wasteland of Indiana with it's.....cornfields........and basketball courts. I manage to entertain myself by playing old school video games on my laptop emulator, putting licorice up Aaron's nose while he's sleeping (Night at the Roxbury style) and hearing all the hot tips about the wheeling and dealing of magical cards from Mike Sanchez and Samite (I don't think I'm cut out for the CCG dealing biz). We travel through the night, I nod off at points but still find it difficult to remain asleep with Jeff's constant stream of Dream Theater songs coming from the speakers and Mike Sanchez making sure to test out the handling on the brand new TL. We stop at various rest points and begin the longest running game of "Would you do her?" going by Mike Sanchez's 1-3 scale
1-Not under any circumstances
2-If I was drunk
3-Anytime, Anywhere
Unsurprisingly the vast majority of women fall under the 3 category for me.
This game continued at random points throughout the trip. SO finally at some random hour we reach our destination, A Knight's Inn in what we would later find out to be a notably sketchy part of town. Jeff and Mike decide to go pick up our roommate from the airport and then hit up a bar. I, lacking 1) A fake ID 2) A desire to drink 3) A desire to stay awake, decide this would be an ideal time to get some sleep and proceed to do so for a few hours.
DAY 1: Gettin' SettledI awoke the next morning to find that some braniac in the Gencon planning commission had decided that running the event first thing in the morning on the first day was a great idea that would make it convenient for everybody, so despite hours of preparation trying to compile the deck/become farimiliar with the format I got shafted. We strolled into the CCG room at approximately 12 PM and I go on the hunt for some fellow TMDers. I run into some farmiliar faces in Ray (Iamfishman) who is off to a less than promising start in the Legacy world championships (I guess I was a good luck charm). So I start bumming around looking for side events, I do some vintage stuff, decide that the midnight $500 Vintage tourney was a great idea, at some point around round 3 my ride decides to head out in search of greener pastures and I decide not to leave with a 3-0 record at the time. I would lose the next two rounds and be eliminated from contention. I decide to make my own sleeping accomodations and find an empty room, put some chairs side by side, wrap the straps of my backpack around my leg to protect theft and decide to call it a night.....errr.....early morning.
Day 2: Blurry DayThis was clearly not meant to last as I recieved an early morning phone call from a certain Atog looking for Rico Suave's number. I nearly hang up in lethargy, but that might cause him to call me back. I reach for my pocket to get my phone somewhat bleary eyed and recite to him the numbers. I settle back down to return to sleep only to be awoken moments later by Rich, who said the number didn't work and wanted to confirm that I had recited the correct number [Carl from ATHF impression]oh.......good[/Carl from ATHF impression]
I try to get back to sleep but some random guy looking for a quiet place has decided it would be ideal to crash into my quiet place and start randomly making noise. I drop subtle hints that he's making my sleeping on some chairs more uncomfortable than it already is, but he fails to get the hint......damn non magic players.....
I decide that any further sleep would be futile and deem to head back into the now somewhat bustling TCG hall. I find purple hat bumming around hitting up Rich Shay for all the awesome tech and some friends of his and I head out to the mall to get some food from the food court. I eat a +3 Pizza of Sbarro with a +1 starvation bonus and some caffeine and I'm once again good to go. I sign up for some events including a legacy event in the evening. What I didn't know was that to get the cards necessary from Mike Sanchez I would have to catch him before the exhibition hall closed, in desperation I borrow Jeff's SuperGro deck. I throw together a craptastic sideboard at the last minute and decide to give it a go. Playskill>Experience with the format right? I guess it would've helped if I'd had either. Long story short I play two rounds vs. landstill and get pwned by Wrath of God, swords to plowshares and Nevy's disk wiping out all my threats repeatedly and drop 0-2, put frowning on the stack. I get back to the hotel room relatively late and decide to call it a night ASAP. Jeff informs me that he won't be getting up in time for the Vintage World Champs in the morning, so I set my alarm in time to catch a ride with Ed Beard who is sleeping in the adjacent room in the morning.
Day 3: Vintage World ChampsNeedless to say my alarm did little more than annoy me after only 4 hours of sleep. Luckily, I was able to get my shit together in time to bother Chris Alexander to bother his friends to give me a ride to Gencon.......mize. I manage to make it to the Event Ticket Line and to the TCG hall and get my deck reg sheet done in record time and manage to take some time to shoot the shit with JDizzle prior to the start of the world championships.
Round 1: Bye......I mean Matthew J Hazard playing unpowered landstillGame 1: I drop an early trike GG's
Game 2: Landstill has a hard time winning when you get crucible/waste up apparently
Round 2: Bye......I mean David Long playing Mono-White featuring Dust to Dust, Eternal Dragon, Swords to Plowshares, Wrath of God and Exalted Angel.Game 1: Trike two for 1's hitting a face down exalted angel and a savannah lions, and welder makes sure he comes back for more
Game 2: Some well placed Dust to Dust's give him enough time to kill me with decree tokens.
Game 3: I Draw some triskelions and duplicant hits an exalted angel GG
Round 3: Hale Simon (Purple Hat) Playing DragonHale's report is already on SCG, it's about as detailed as I could hope to make this one. He played very well, he gave me the opportunity to make a misplay and I jumped all over it like a fat kid on a pack of ho ho's
Round 3: Mike Lydon with Workshop Aggro
Game 1: So my notes say "I give him an Orchard token, he forgets to attack. Then I give him another and take two twice before I combo him out." I don't really remember this game any more and apparently didn't see fit to give myself any clues, so I'm going to go with that story.
Sideboard:
-4 cards +2 Swords, +1 Rack and Ruin, +1 Sacred Ground
Game 2: Mike plays turn 1 Strip Mine, Mox, Chalice for zero, go. My opening hand was Swords, City, Orchard, Sacred Ground, Bazaar, Squee, card. I'm not sure it gets much better vs. turn 1 Strip. I drop City and pass, Mike thinks about it and decides not to Strip the City. On his turn Mike drops Workshop taps for Juggernaut and decides to strip my land. I send Juggy farming. On my turn I drop Bazaar and Bazaar away Dragon and Squee. Mike drops a land and passes, I drop a land and pass. Mike Fetches, gets Volcanic Island and plays Welder leaving a second Volcanic Island untapped. I let Welder resolve since I have Animate Dead and Force of Will backup. On my turn I drop a land and animate the dragon. Mike plays Blue Elemental Blast with the comes into play trigger on the stack and asks if I have Force of Will. I show him Force and a Blue card and he holds out his hand.
It was about this time that I found out that Ray's power AKA the Waterbury Prize had been stolen and begin to do everything in my limited power to aid the search and would continue to do so between rounds.
Round 4: Daniel L Schaffer playing GiftsGame 1: I win the roll and immediately drop a turn 1 mishra's workshop/mox and pass the turn. He decides that he is going to immediately crash the yogurt truck and pulls of a broken turn 1 with all the bells and whistles, when he passes he's got a small hand and a darksteel colossus on the table. He looks confident perhaps even a bit smug behind his indestructible 11/11, but the next turn I drop my second mishra's workshop and windmill slam the 6cc artifact creature of DOOM or "Dupes" as I like to call him. Two turns later he's pulling out his sideboard.
Game 2: I bring in my second duplicant and some pyrostatic pillars in case he's decided that tendrils of agony was the kill of choice or in case he doesn't get the turn 1 tinker this time. I forget the specifics, I think I got to dupe a big man again. Anyways, I won.
Round 5: Lorenzo Fedeli playing storm comboAll I really remember about this round was that I mulled into a crappy hand game 3, but not crappy enough that I could mull it, I drop turn 1 chalice of the void for zero, he thinks about forcing it for about as long as it takes Smmennen to resolve a brainstorm, after which he lets it resolve. He drops a land on his turn and passes. I strip his land on my turn, he brainstorms in response. then he misses approx 15 consecutive land drops and begins swearing at his cards in italian and my chalices for zero and 1. He counters my gas for a bit but eventually runs out and I manage to kick ass with some guys to win the match.
Round 6: Berthold Célien playing storm ComboAgain, games 1-2 are a blur of whoever won the die roll killing their opponent/dropping lock components before their opponent can go off. Game 3 I keep a so-so hand and he mulls to 5. He starts out with a draw7 spell but stalls out, next turn, another draw 7 another stall out, same with the following turn. In none of these hands did I see one of my pyrostatic pillars and he eventually resolves a rebuild to get rid of my chalices and then resolves yawgmoth's will for approx eleventy billion damage, killing my chances at top 8
Round 7: Bye......I mean Jason E. Smith playing crucible/fast bond/Zuran Orb combothe guy never gets off his combo and both games I manage to get him to sacrifice all his lands to zuran orb before he just loses the game. his attempts to go off were hindered by my chalices/pyrostatic pillars.
It was after this round that I would decide to go hang out with a somewhat forlorn Brassman and play some mental magic for lack of a better plan. Once they announced that the final results had been posted Brassman and I decided to cancel the mental magic game until further notice brassman saying "I'm going to go see what I won for a prize....if any" when he didn't return for some time I decided to go claim my own prize, a hefty rubber band full of packs, but the brassman is nowhere to be seen. I go to watch the Top 8 and suprisingly enough there he is with a crowd around him playing in the top 8. Go Brassman Go!
I take some timely snapshots and rejoice to find that Ray's power has been recovered and Waterbury was saved. All in all an eventful night with tons o fun.
Day 4: Pimpin out the Playmat DayI slept in extra late that day because I felt like it, I decided to allot this day to hanging out in the exhibitor hall and finally getting all the artists to draw stuff on my playmats and hopefully find a deal on sleeves. After some negotiation I manage to get 40 MaxPro 50 counts from Stokinger @ $1 each and begin making the rounds with the artists.
Rebecca Guay draws an awesome elf chick picture on my mat for a mere $5
Ben Thompson draws an excellent rendition of Thirst for Knowledge for $15
Mark Poole draws a bad ass new ancestral pic for $5 after I insist upon paying him
Franz Vohwinkel refuses to accept any money for a modest mountain
Ed Beard draws me a bad ass zombie dude for free cuz we're buddies like that
April Lee makes an excellent rendition of lotus petal despite claiming she's a horrendous sketch artist
Randy Gallegos does a great side profile of Soul Warden for $5
Jeff Easley draws an excellently detailed dragon head and refuses to accept any money
Tom Baxa draws a fairly disappointing duplicant for a whopping $30, he said he'd do a random zombie guy for free, but I wanted a BADASS duplicant picture after he'd been kicking the crap out of DSC all weekend, but it sucked for $30
All in all not bad for 60 bucks
Needless to say I left my playmat, cards and my laptop in New York. Perhaps I'll be able to get a scan of my playmat when I get it back from Jeff sometime in the near future to put up here as well as my Gencon Pics.
Props:
Non-Tom Baxa magic artists for doing quality work for a low cost
Jeff Anand for having a bad ass car and randomly being able to loan me multiple power cards/legacy decks
Brassman for finishing second overall and playing mental magic with me
Chris Alexander and the Wiz Kids for randomly hooking me up with the rides I so deperately need
Mike Sanchez for trying to teach me how dealing works despite my limited ability to comprehend it
Waffle House for providing shitty food at low cost
Ray for asking me to play hackey sack despite the fact that I suck at hackey sacking
Purple Hat for finishing in t4
Roland Chang for being presumptuous enough to wear a shirt that says "WORLD CHAMPION" on it and then having the skillz to back it up
Slops:
Rich Shay for waking me up for random things
Rico Suave for having a broken cell phone
JDizzle for hording all the grim tutors and being a dirty combo player
Steak and Shake for providing shitty food at high cost
Strikezone for running out of those little pads of paper to keep life totals on and not offering a deal on buying sleeves in bulk
Tom Baxa for reasons already stated
LARP kids for annoying/scaring the hell out of me
Gencon planning commission for putting all the good events first thing in the morning, don't they know gamers are night owls!
