Magical Weekend
May. 10th, 2004 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothSunday, I went to the Crossroads gathering, like I normally do when I'm not playing D+D on Sunday. After chatting with Darter and Loial and such about religion and politics, Lex came over and asked to play magic. Then wandered off for about twenty minutes, after I got out my deck.
I didn't get to play him there, although I did get in a few games with Slox before it was time for the movie. We did see a movie this week -- Van Helsing. Opinions were mixed, but I liked it, overall. The story was decent (although I was really feeling sorry for the poor baby vampires near the end), and the effects were neat in parts...
It relied VERY HEAVILY on coincidence for certain plot points, but the only one that was *really* bad was when Frankenstein swung down, on a rope, off a bridge and just happened to crash into the room where one of the hunters was fighting a vampire -- then the hunter swung out the same window, on a different rope, down to the bridge. Some Escher effects going on there.
After the movie, I was planning to head over to Legend's, but the other people who'd gone to the movie had seven people and one car, not counting me (or Jurann, who had himself and one motorcycle). They all lived down in the Federal Way/Tacoma/Auburn area, except for one who lived in the U-District, so I agreed to go with them to Gasworks park for a bit, then drop the guy off in the U-District (which was right near Gasworks) while the six others piled into a car uncomfortably for the long drive down. The reason to go to Gasworks first, other than that it's a nice little park, is that Lex still wanted to play me in magic. }:P
So, me and Briar and... geez, I don't remember his name, but he'd Briar's boyfriend and the guy who lived in the U-District headed out in one car, following Lex and the others in their car -- for about one light, after which they ran a yellow and ditched us. But we knew where we were heading, so we got out a map and managed to eventually find our way to the park, although we ended up taking a bunch of twisty hilly side streets and making Briar carsick.
But there was no sign of the others at the park. After waiting around for a while by the entrance, we combed the park for them, walking past the rusty machinery, the picnic area, and the giant menacing hill overlooking Lake Union with the sinister magical seal set into its crown. It reminded me of the thing in the basement in Buffy season 7: "Oh! So Seattle does have a hellmouth!"
They weren't anywhere to be found in the park, so we headed to the parking lot to try to figure out what to do -- evidently, they'd ditched us, and Briar was still feeling kind of sick, and lived all the way down in *Tacoma*, and it was getting dark and cold. After another half hour of sitting around waiting and failing to come up with any good ideas, they finally showed up.
I have NO IDEA how they managed to take an hour to drive from Bellevue to Gasworks (we got lost and it took us fifteen minutes), but apparently it involved going through Capitol Hill.
But they were there, so we started wandering through the park again, as the sun slowly set. We stopped for a bit at a skate park kind of thing (at least, it was being used as a skate park) with a nice view of the Seattle skyline, and I started playing a few games of magic with Slox. Just after we started, the others decided to wander around the park more, so we told them we'd catch up. The wind howled a bit, and tried to scatter our decks, but we pinned them down with counters and played on!
Until Lex ran up and told us to pack up, because we had to leave, NOW. Briar was under attack by some spiritual entity inhabiting the ominously rumbling rusty industrial building at the center of the park, and we needed to get him away from it before it devoured his soul, or something.
So, since he was feeling even more sick than before, they decided he needed to lie down, which meant that he couldn't be shoved in the car with six people, which meant I had to go down to Lex's place after all. *sigh* Besides, he still wanted to play magic. I wasn't entirely against it anyway, though, since I wanted to go somewhere, and Legend's was looking less and less plausible, as it was getting late.
It turned out that we could have stayed there in the park, because the 'demon' or whatever it was chased us all the way home, trying to possess Briar and get him to jump out of the car. I kept the doors locked, and his boyfriend kept talking to him to snap him out of the trance.
When we got to Lex's place, Cal had gotten the call and showed up with more people, and they got some candles and incense and started casting magical spells at Briar to save him from the demon. I just went into the apartment to sit on the couch and be bored and listen to the ipod with one ear, but the couch turned into an angst-fest over something I didn't really catch (because of the ipod).
I ended up fleeing to a corner with Slox and playing *more* magic, only with his own deck this time since I'd left my cards in the car. We swapped off his red and black decks, and eventually decided that his red deck would almost always win, although only after a VERY long game, because it would lose if it tried to use its damage against the player and race the black creatures instead of killing them.
Eventually, Lex finished up with the purification, and came over and joined us, and we had a couple three-way games. I went and got my cards, because Lex didn't want to play against both Slox's decks at the same time. The games were interesting, in that no one managed to really dominate them, and so they just went on and on and on...
Around 3:30 am, I finally left to head home, taking whatsisname back to the U-District, of course. Most everyone else had already left by that point. I crawled into bed about 4:15 am, and set my alarm for 10...
But I woke up at 9, and somehow managed to get to work almost at my normal time. Go figure.
'There Cannot Be Two Skies' Prognosis: This is the new T2 deck I made Saturday after finally finishing sorting out my cards by set. Black/White/Blue clerics, backed up by Shifting Sky/COP to get a lock on the game (at least, against decks that can't kill enchantments), and Crafty Pathmage/Vile Deacon/Starlit Sanctum as the killing blow. It's the deck I played most yesterday, and it's a fun deck to play, although I wouldn't take it up against anything tournament-worthy. It uses your own life as a resource, to draw cards and filter mana, but has plenty of ways to get that life back. First deck I've ever played where I'd sit comfortably at one life because I knew I could get a dozen more at instant speed if I *really* needed to.
IPOD report of the day: Having some music to listen to when everyone was panicking over all that demon stuff was nice, and when I only kept one ear of the headphones in I could also hear the outside world. But with people in the car, I have to keep the volume down too low to play it over the radio effectively (I can't hear it well enough to tune it when it starts slipping off), and after a couple hours the ear-plug style headphones REALLY FRICKING HURT. I'm not going to use them ever again, even if they *are* more convenient to put in my pocket. Maybe I'll follow up on the suggestions Legend and Snowwy made, to get some new pocket headphones that don't cause bleeding.
I didn't get to play him there, although I did get in a few games with Slox before it was time for the movie. We did see a movie this week -- Van Helsing. Opinions were mixed, but I liked it, overall. The story was decent (although I was really feeling sorry for the poor baby vampires near the end), and the effects were neat in parts...
It relied VERY HEAVILY on coincidence for certain plot points, but the only one that was *really* bad was when Frankenstein swung down, on a rope, off a bridge and just happened to crash into the room where one of the hunters was fighting a vampire -- then the hunter swung out the same window, on a different rope, down to the bridge. Some Escher effects going on there.
After the movie, I was planning to head over to Legend's, but the other people who'd gone to the movie had seven people and one car, not counting me (or Jurann, who had himself and one motorcycle). They all lived down in the Federal Way/Tacoma/Auburn area, except for one who lived in the U-District, so I agreed to go with them to Gasworks park for a bit, then drop the guy off in the U-District (which was right near Gasworks) while the six others piled into a car uncomfortably for the long drive down. The reason to go to Gasworks first, other than that it's a nice little park, is that Lex still wanted to play me in magic. }:P
So, me and Briar and... geez, I don't remember his name, but he'd Briar's boyfriend and the guy who lived in the U-District headed out in one car, following Lex and the others in their car -- for about one light, after which they ran a yellow and ditched us. But we knew where we were heading, so we got out a map and managed to eventually find our way to the park, although we ended up taking a bunch of twisty hilly side streets and making Briar carsick.
But there was no sign of the others at the park. After waiting around for a while by the entrance, we combed the park for them, walking past the rusty machinery, the picnic area, and the giant menacing hill overlooking Lake Union with the sinister magical seal set into its crown. It reminded me of the thing in the basement in Buffy season 7: "Oh! So Seattle does have a hellmouth!"
They weren't anywhere to be found in the park, so we headed to the parking lot to try to figure out what to do -- evidently, they'd ditched us, and Briar was still feeling kind of sick, and lived all the way down in *Tacoma*, and it was getting dark and cold. After another half hour of sitting around waiting and failing to come up with any good ideas, they finally showed up.
I have NO IDEA how they managed to take an hour to drive from Bellevue to Gasworks (we got lost and it took us fifteen minutes), but apparently it involved going through Capitol Hill.
But they were there, so we started wandering through the park again, as the sun slowly set. We stopped for a bit at a skate park kind of thing (at least, it was being used as a skate park) with a nice view of the Seattle skyline, and I started playing a few games of magic with Slox. Just after we started, the others decided to wander around the park more, so we told them we'd catch up. The wind howled a bit, and tried to scatter our decks, but we pinned them down with counters and played on!
Until Lex ran up and told us to pack up, because we had to leave, NOW. Briar was under attack by some spiritual entity inhabiting the ominously rumbling rusty industrial building at the center of the park, and we needed to get him away from it before it devoured his soul, or something.
So, since he was feeling even more sick than before, they decided he needed to lie down, which meant that he couldn't be shoved in the car with six people, which meant I had to go down to Lex's place after all. *sigh* Besides, he still wanted to play magic. I wasn't entirely against it anyway, though, since I wanted to go somewhere, and Legend's was looking less and less plausible, as it was getting late.
It turned out that we could have stayed there in the park, because the 'demon' or whatever it was chased us all the way home, trying to possess Briar and get him to jump out of the car. I kept the doors locked, and his boyfriend kept talking to him to snap him out of the trance.
When we got to Lex's place, Cal had gotten the call and showed up with more people, and they got some candles and incense and started casting magical spells at Briar to save him from the demon. I just went into the apartment to sit on the couch and be bored and listen to the ipod with one ear, but the couch turned into an angst-fest over something I didn't really catch (because of the ipod).
I ended up fleeing to a corner with Slox and playing *more* magic, only with his own deck this time since I'd left my cards in the car. We swapped off his red and black decks, and eventually decided that his red deck would almost always win, although only after a VERY long game, because it would lose if it tried to use its damage against the player and race the black creatures instead of killing them.
Eventually, Lex finished up with the purification, and came over and joined us, and we had a couple three-way games. I went and got my cards, because Lex didn't want to play against both Slox's decks at the same time. The games were interesting, in that no one managed to really dominate them, and so they just went on and on and on...
Around 3:30 am, I finally left to head home, taking whatsisname back to the U-District, of course. Most everyone else had already left by that point. I crawled into bed about 4:15 am, and set my alarm for 10...
But I woke up at 9, and somehow managed to get to work almost at my normal time. Go figure.
'There Cannot Be Two Skies' Prognosis: This is the new T2 deck I made Saturday after finally finishing sorting out my cards by set. Black/White/Blue clerics, backed up by Shifting Sky/COP to get a lock on the game (at least, against decks that can't kill enchantments), and Crafty Pathmage/Vile Deacon/Starlit Sanctum as the killing blow. It's the deck I played most yesterday, and it's a fun deck to play, although I wouldn't take it up against anything tournament-worthy. It uses your own life as a resource, to draw cards and filter mana, but has plenty of ways to get that life back. First deck I've ever played where I'd sit comfortably at one life because I knew I could get a dozen more at instant speed if I *really* needed to.
IPOD report of the day: Having some music to listen to when everyone was panicking over all that demon stuff was nice, and when I only kept one ear of the headphones in I could also hear the outside world. But with people in the car, I have to keep the volume down too low to play it over the radio effectively (I can't hear it well enough to tune it when it starts slipping off), and after a couple hours the ear-plug style headphones REALLY FRICKING HURT. I'm not going to use them ever again, even if they *are* more convenient to put in my pocket. Maybe I'll follow up on the suggestions Legend and Snowwy made, to get some new pocket headphones that don't cause bleeding.
