Hi there, kids! For the three of you left who were unaware of this, there was a Pro Tour just a couple of weekends ago in San Diego. As a fairly regular contributor to the Magic event coverage team, I was set and ready to head out of cold, cold Indianapolis and enjoy the considerably more temperate climes of the old Sahn Diahago. This story starts where all good stories do: my house in Indy at four AM on a Wednesday. My roommate is in “lawl” school, and his classes start at an early enough hour that he was willing to take me to the airport to catch a 6:15 am flight. I am a professional packing procrastinator, and, true to form, I spent the entire night before loading my suitcases and going over my lists to make sure I had everything. While I acknowledge that all-nighters are usually reserved for Adderall-addled students and Mountain Dew-infused LAN parties (you know who you are), they are also perfect for preparing oneself for a long cross-country flight, especially when said one finds it impossible to comfortably sit, let alone sleep, on most commercial airplanes. Being a 6’6″ giant of a human, I definitely consider myself “one.”
Successfully deprived of sleep, I managed to groggily meander my way from the curbside drop off point, wander through the security checkpoint, and boarded the plane. Sometime later, I arrived in San Diego, after a quick jaunt through Washington DC, proving that apparently the fastest way to travel west is by heading east first. To be honest, the only proof I have that any of what I just described happened was that I eventually made it to San Diego. I was so tired that I effectively blacked out from the time my roommate and I hit the road. For all I know, I could have been violated at the airport, had the security peeps all up in my secret places. It’s a bit unnerving as an afterthought. I imagine that I was probably saved that, for lack of a better word, “discomfort” by the Indiana Pacers warm-up pants that I wear on the long trips due to the fact that they are THE MOST COMFORTABLE PANTS EVER. Upon seeing a giant person wearing authentic Pacers gear, I’m hoping they assumed I was a professional basketball player, thus rendering me untouchable for fear that the many high-priced lawyers obviously on my bankroll might come after their jobs. LUCKY THEM!
Upon arriving in San Diego, I bribed a cabbie with some cash I had on me to give me a lift to my hotel. I was staying at the Gaslamp Hilton, in the scenic and historic Gaslamp District of San Diego. It was the kind of hotel I really enjoy on these trips: designed for Americans (read: not tiny, unlike most foreign hotels), full of amenities like an exercise room and pool, and, best of all, walking distance from the event site. About the only thing keeping it from being perfect was the fact that it was not Doubletree and did not provide me with freshly-baked, delicious cookies upon checking in. Sigh.
Sitting on a sofa in the hotel lobby, obviously awaiting my illustrious arrival, was Dr. Richard “The Hagron” Hagon. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him, Rich is the Pro Tour’s delightfully charming and wonderfully British Statistician. I’m pretty sure that Rich knows more about the history of the Pro Tour than anyone save Brian David-Marshall and Indiana Jones, whose infamous “Snake Basket Meltdown” prevented him from winning the real first Pro Tour. It was a jarring enough scene that Wizards chose to strike the tournament from the record and start over again the next year.
After a few hours of good old-fashioned sleep, I got dressed in my Wednesday finest and went down to the lobby to hook up with the rest of the coverage crew. Our editor and resident man-in-charge, Greg Collins, wanted to take all of us out for a coverage staff dinner and discuss our plan for the upcoming event. Luckily for us, he chose the venue most likely to make sure we all got our work done: an Irish pub. He also made a point to mention to The Hagron, who has a notoriously difficult time finding food he can eat at most of our restaurant ventures, that if he couldn’t find food at an Irish pub, he was going to be banned from the British Isles. Once at the pub, we immediately broke down into serious discussion about the upcoming weekend and the movie Avatar. After much deliberation, we decided that there would in fact be work accomplished this weekend, and that the effects from Avatar were great, though the characters were found somewhat lacking.
During dinner, behind plates of fish and chips and an Irish beer I affectionately referred to as “that one,” I had a chance to talk with two of my favorite people to hang out with at events: my perpetual roommate and coverage partner Bill “Thestarkingtonpost.com” Stark and Rashad “Actually One of the Best People on the Earth” Miller. You can call him Rashad for short. Most of our discussions were spent sharing some of our best travel stories (though I promise I save the best for you guys. Hugs!). If you ever see Rashad at an event, ask him about his favorite European hotel.
After a parting glass of Jameson Super-Duper-Extra-Awesome-Older-than-America Special Reserve, we graciously thanked Greg for a fantastic meal, promised excellent work over the weekend, and promptly Usain-Bolted for the hotel and the first draft of the weekend.
Ok, here’s my thing about draft stories. First, they are invariably infinitely cooler to see in person. Second, I have the worlds absolute worst memory, and find myself remembering details as I am telling the story, which ultimately ends with my audience completely lost and unable to understand what was so cool in the first place. I will give you the abbreviated version for sanity’s sake.
I drafted a Black/Green deck with a Marsh Casualties and thirty-nine other cards. I managed to 3-1 our eight man draft, losing only to Brian David-Marshall and the best Black/Blue draft deck ever assembled. It was like in the movie Chocolate where all the bad guys think, “She’s autistic! How can I lose!” Then she kung-fu’s the ever-living crap out of them. That was what I felt like. I drew some lands and spells. He drew galvanized cardboard and beat me blacker and bluer than his deck. After my team somehow managed to finagle its way into a tiebreaker game, it was decided that I had the deck that most resembled Marsh Casualties and thirty-nine other cards, thus I would play the tiebreaker.
After getting stomped the first game and doing some stomping of my own in the second, it all came down to a tight third and a judgment call. I drew both my Marsh Casualties and a Disfigure early in the game. I passed up on an opportunity to immediately Disfigure the Hedron Crab BDM just created, much to the chagrin of my on-looking teammates. Instead, I opted to wait a turn or two and go for a big Marsh Casualties, which I knew would be good against his deck, taking the Crab along with it. Instead, I just got him to block one of my two-power creatures with the Excavator and Disfigured it. It turned out that I made the wrong play since it took him about six turns to cast another creature that could be eaten by the Casualties. The Crab ate most of my deck before I finally cleared it away, but I had been chipping away at his life total the whole time.
I finally found a way around his blockers in the form of a Quag Vampires kicked to a 4/4. He was at eight. His draw off an empty hand? Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Back to my hand went the Vamps. His next draw? A Creeping Tar Pits that could kill me in three turns. With Jace down to one counter, Brian chose to set up his next draws instead of bouncing my Vampires again. The ensuing swing killed the Planeswalker. His retorting attack dropped me to three. I now had two cards left in my deck, with my opponent two swings from death and myself one away. I carefully thumbed through my graveyard to see if I had an out.
I discovered I had one.
“Primal Bellow,” I yelled as I flipped the top card into play! As the realization set in with me and my team that the card I flipped over actually was the out I called for, we went berserk! With that, I was able to pump my Vampires enough to kill BDM in one swing. All of that sick work to get to that point, and I finally got my revenge and a shot at a Jace and a foil Admonition Angel in the Italian Game.
Ah, the Italian game, Italy’s finest export since Asia Argento. For the uninitiated, the Italian game is a method of splitting rares after a draft that adds a heightened tension to what was previously completely uninteresting and stale. The winning team takes all the rares, shuffles them up, and tosses them face-down in a loose heap in the middle of the table. Then, each member snags a card and reveals it. The highest casting cost wins all revealed cards. In case of a tie, all players draw again until there is a clear winner. The game ends when all of the cards have been won, usually such that the person who won the most games during the draft gets the least impressive haul, while the 0-fer shoulder jockey gets the foil Jace. At this point, it is customary to complain about how unfair the game of random chance is because you ended up with nothing despite the fact that you wouldn’t be saying anything if you had managed to win all the cards.
After an impressive showing in the draft, I showed why I am an Italian game competitor to be feared by managing to snag four whole cards, including two foil commons and two rares that I’m pretty sure came out of Fallen Empires. Josh Bennett, on the other hand, managed to snag both the Jace and the Angel, as well as one of the fetch lands that was in the draft, while my other teammates split up the other fetch land and the three manlands. Feeling sorry for me, Josh was kind enough to let me have the Admonition Angel, while the teammate with the triple manland pull shipped me a Creeping Tar Pit to commemorate my victory over them. All in all, it was a very successful draft for all involved. With the draft over, it was time to crawl up to the room for ten hours of precious sleep, which was effectively the total amount I would be getting on all other nights combined (we work hard at the Pro Tour).
Thursday was my only day of real rest for the entire weekend, though I did have a bunch of work to do on other, non-Magic-related projects. I sat in my room virtually the entire day with a computer in front of me, typing away. It was like working at the Pro Tour, but with less doing things I enjoy. Towards the end of the day, I went across the street to the Event Hall, ran into the coverage crew, and promptly left with them to head to the Tin Fish across the street for a second night of fish, chips, and beer. Along the way, we ran across our second homeless rapper of the weekend (this would be a theme over the weekend). Apparently, these guys are gearing up for some sort of East Coast/West Coast homeless rapper battle coming up sometime after New York thaws. Strangely, this one seemed to be tossing his allegiance aside, as he shambled past us spouting “Mo Money Mo Problems,” which was ironic to an unheard of level considering the situation.
After a delicious dinner, we headed back to the event site for a little, you guessed it, drafting. With work starting bright and early at 8:30 am the next morning, I was only really looking to get one draft in. We were short a few players, so we set about finding people to fill the seats. Luckily for us, we were at a Magic event, so it wasn’t too hard. Eventually, BDM came back to the table with Conley Woods and a couple friends of his to fill the draft out. I drafted another Green/Black deck (no one seems to like Green in this format for some reason), featuring an Omnath, Locus of Mana. BDM was on the wrong side of a five forest/Omnath draw with his Blue/White deck in the first round, and a 10/10 Elemental went to the house for me. The next couple of rounds were very similar.
With the drafting out of the way, it was time for me to go back to the room and sleep. Tomorrow was going to be the beginning of a long, work-filled Magic weekend. Next week, I’ll be back to pick up with what happened to me at the Pro Tour, and you won’t want to miss that!
Until then, stay tuned!
Nate Price
Yeah, Indy is cold. You had to rub it in that you got to go someplace warm, while I PTQd in this cold state. Jerk.