May 19, 2002
Magic Diary
Found out that there was a pre-release tournament showcasing the latest Magic card set in San Diego on Saturday. I haven't played in a long time, and I don't have any tournament-legal decks anyway, but pre-release tournaments are sealed deck, where you build decks from fresh starter and booster packs, and the competition isn't as hard-core as typical tournaments, so I wouldn't be totally outclassed. So what the hell, it wasn't as if I do anything more interesting on Saturdays. Since I don't know anyone and don't have a constructed deck to play, I had nothing to do during the long downtimes at the typical tournament. So I brought my iPod and the Palm Pilot, and kept notes through the day to keep myself busy.
9:00
Finish cleaning out the deadwood in my card binder and rush out the door, sans breakfast.
9:25
Get to the San Diego Convention Center. Get bent over by the parking garage. Six bucks? Prepaid, of course.
As I opened my wallet, I recognized my one forgetten task that always comes when I go out. Forgot to go by the ATM, and after paying the extortionary parking fee, I have exactly $22 left in my wallet.
Of course, the Pre-Release Tournament costs $25.
Moment of panic and self-recrimination doing irreparable harm to my psyche. Then remembers the change drawer in the car. Scrape up enough quarters to make up the difference. Even have enough change left for a soda later.
9:30
Follow the stream of geeks up to Ballroom B6C. Surprisingly large number of chaperoning mothers and entire families in the crowd, but all in all still mostly gamers. The line extended well down the hall. I knew I should've gone to Costa Mesa.
9:47
Get to the front of the line and pay my money. I now have 50 cents left on my person, not counting the P9 + friends sitting in the binder. 64 people per flight, six rounds of swiss. I'm in flight 2. Hopefully they'll run the flights simultaneously.
10:00
I'll have to stick it out in the main tournament unless I find an ATM so I can play the side drafts. At least there are no dealers to suck up more of my money. Although I wanted to find out what the latest DCI announcement had done to the value of dual lands, not to mention the set of artist-signed Force of Wills. Most likely it just slashed the value of the binder by half.
10:07
I thought that they'd renovated the convention center, but the restrooms don'teven have IR autoflushers. I actually had to tap a handle to flush the urinal. What is this, the Dark Ages?
11:15
They waited until Flight One was seated and registered before seating Flight Two. So there was a lot of downtime. But we finally have our "product" now. Ah, the smell of freshly opened Magic cards.
1:20
Wasn't terribly impressed with my assortment of cards, and my fears were confirmed when I was summarily crushed in my first match. Couldn't stop the enchantment-boosted forestwalker in the first game and couldn't stop much of anything in the second. Spend some time fiddling with the deck and do some test draws.
2:30
Played a girl from SDSU, who frankly wasn't very good. She didn't put much pressure on me and didn't have any tricks, so I could play my cards at leisure. 6/6 trampling wurms do the job nicely
3:40
Got paired down to someone who was 0-1-1. Another woman, too, which is a bit of a statistical anomaly. Unfortunately, this lady was no cute co-ed, and let's leave it at that. She was playing W/G, and my green grunts hold the ground while the blue evasive creatures carry the day. So I'm 2-1, but they're pretty weak wins. I consider dropping out while I'm ahead. Then I find out that the top-24 get prizes, which makes it worthwhile to stay in for at least one more round.
5:00
Three girls in a row, at a Magic tournament. What are the odds? She was seated next to her friend, since they were both 2-1. If life were like a Hollywood romantic comedy, she'd be the Rosie to the Meg Ryan. The guy next to me, playing her friend, was flirting like mad. Althoughlines like "Do you play a lot of Type 2?" didn't sound like they were working.
I drew good in game one. She drew good in game two. She got mana-screwed in game three. Magic in a nutshell.
6:00
Okay, there's conspiracy afoot, as I sit downacross another girl. She talks to her deck. Apparently Magic decks are feminine. Her unblockable crab chews me up, then my fliers + her mana screws win me the next two. There are only 25 people left in the tournament anyway, so at least I'm guaranteed a few pack's worth of prizes.
6:50
Phew, glad that's over. Finally play against a guy. A regular Joe, in fact. Was slightly worried since I was 0-1 against men and 4-0 against women for the day. We actually have pretty similar decks. He has better card quality in core green, but my splashed red tricks come through and I maintained steady pressure with the unblockable blue creatures to win a tough 2-0 match. Actually was pretty lucky to get matched against the guy I did, because there were some other seriously sick decks amongst the 4-1 group. Hey, 5-1 is about as well as I've ever done at a tournament, even if it was against medicore opponents. I didn't have to make very many tough tactical decisions, since most of the games was a mindless beatdown with an unblockable creature while the green grunts stood off in a stalemate. The toiurnament was understaffed and there was a huge amount of unnecessary standing around. Turns out there is a dealer table, but his prices are so outrageous that he might as well not be there. So it's a good thing I won a few matches, otherwise it wouldn't have been very much fun.
7:30
Did I say there was too much standing around? They finally get around to handing out the prizes. 6th place out of 64 ain't bad. My opponent match win percentage tiebreaker was pretty poor, since I lost the in the first round and crawled up the backside of the swiss draw, otherwise I would've been higher. But it doesn't affect the prizes one way or another. So after 10 hours of work, I got eight packs of the new set for my efforts. Zippity doo. At least I got my money's worth out of that $6 parking space. There's a prom going on in the main ballroom down the hall. Teenagers in formal clothes coming in, geeks in T-shirts heading out. I think I'll stop by In-n-Out on the way home.