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terryclothI decided to go to the pre-release for Betrayers of Kamigawa, charmed by both the promise of a free Ink-Eyes promo (such a ky00te little ratty!) and the possibility of winning a few boosters before they were out on the street...
It was in Seattle Center, so I had to pay for parking. I got there at about 9:30, just missing flight five, but I signed up for flight six, little dreaming that it would be THREE HOURS before flight six filled up and we actually got to start.
While waiting, I mostly... well, waited around. I tried playing a few games with other people who were waiting, but they were all testing their tournament decks for the type I tournament happening next week (or so Havoqx informed me later on) and their hideously broken combos destroyed everything I could bring to bear. One guy did play a standard deck... but it was full of crap like duplicants and solemn simacrulums, yay. Still, that deck was at least fun to play against, even if I didn't have much of a chance.
Oh, there was one guy who had a 'bad deck for playing against stupid people' that he pulled out after his heavily proxied monstrosities proved too tough for me... but it was *really* bad, and completely not fun in the other direction, as several of my decks in succession shut it down without trying. Gah.
Anyway, on to the tournament itself. The process for passing out the cards and building decks was amazingly tedious -- at each step, you had to wait for the judge's prompting. "Okay, flight six, now I want you to open your product..." pause "...only after I tell you to, or you'll be disqualified." And so on.
We had to open the packs, count the cards inside, swap boxes, verify the count, and then build a deck in 30 minutes after spending longer than that on tedious accounting. I quickly eliminated red and white, which were lacking in creatureage, and eventually settled on Green/Black. It was a really simple deck, with lots of good creatures, and a little removal. No theme, just beef.
I went 3-0-1, although it would have been 3-1 if we hadn't arranged a draw for the last round. Like everyone else in the flight. I'd rather have played for real, but during the course of the day it was obvious that this was sort of a big deal to many of the people there, since they were selling the packs they were getting for cash to play in more tournaments...
Round 1: pathetic deck that I beat easily, a black/green deck without the good creatures.
Round 2: Much harder. He had a kabuto moth and a split-tail miko that he got out all three games. Game 3, he had to mulligan down to four, and it was still pretty close.
Round 3: Easier than round 2. I played a really young kid who used lots of Soratami, 1-toughness flying creatures. I had a couple of the orochi 'ping a flying creature' things. Game 2 was the one that I shouldn't have won -- he got out Kikyo, Night's Flower, and assassinated all my big creatures... but she was useless against my 2/4. q:3
Round 4: We agreed to draw, then went 1-1... and in the third game, I was completely color-screwed and mildly mana-screwed. He had the same kabuto moth/split-tail miko combo, with a genju of the plains as a huge life-linked blocker to complement it. I think I might have won the first game if it hadn't been for a judge's ruling that the Neko-Te didn't keep the plains tapped after it was no longer a creature, though -- that one extra mana let him ninja out the black rats that make you discard two. I'm pretty sure that ruling is wrong. Not that it mattered, since we'd agreed on a draw anyway.
After that, and after picking up my prize, I headed home to eat and get some damn aspirin, because my head was killing me. x.x
BUT! I won 13 packs, and bought 8 more off someone for about what I'd pay in the store. Plus the three that I got as part of the sealed-deck event, that's... more than I'd normally buy for a set. So I think I'm set for Betrayers, although I might buy the Fat Pack to get the die. A d-20 with a shuriken on the 20 should be neat. q:3
I think I'll go to Crossroads tomorrow -- I could go back to the pre-release, which is two-days long. Everyone else that ever goes to the crossroads gathering to play magic was at the pre-release, though. We were all in different flights, unfortunately, so we never got to actually play each other. I did see Havoqx's huge stack of boosters and cash... just from trading. I didn't bring stuff to trade, and in a way I think that's probably a good thing, because I'd have gotten raped. Er, not by Havoqx, probably, but by the other people trading, who all knew a hell of a lot more about the value of the cards than I do.
It was in Seattle Center, so I had to pay for parking. I got there at about 9:30, just missing flight five, but I signed up for flight six, little dreaming that it would be THREE HOURS before flight six filled up and we actually got to start.
While waiting, I mostly... well, waited around. I tried playing a few games with other people who were waiting, but they were all testing their tournament decks for the type I tournament happening next week (or so Havoqx informed me later on) and their hideously broken combos destroyed everything I could bring to bear. One guy did play a standard deck... but it was full of crap like duplicants and solemn simacrulums, yay. Still, that deck was at least fun to play against, even if I didn't have much of a chance.
Oh, there was one guy who had a 'bad deck for playing against stupid people' that he pulled out after his heavily proxied monstrosities proved too tough for me... but it was *really* bad, and completely not fun in the other direction, as several of my decks in succession shut it down without trying. Gah.
Anyway, on to the tournament itself. The process for passing out the cards and building decks was amazingly tedious -- at each step, you had to wait for the judge's prompting. "Okay, flight six, now I want you to open your product..." pause "...only after I tell you to, or you'll be disqualified." And so on.
We had to open the packs, count the cards inside, swap boxes, verify the count, and then build a deck in 30 minutes after spending longer than that on tedious accounting. I quickly eliminated red and white, which were lacking in creatureage, and eventually settled on Green/Black. It was a really simple deck, with lots of good creatures, and a little removal. No theme, just beef.
I went 3-0-1, although it would have been 3-1 if we hadn't arranged a draw for the last round. Like everyone else in the flight. I'd rather have played for real, but during the course of the day it was obvious that this was sort of a big deal to many of the people there, since they were selling the packs they were getting for cash to play in more tournaments...
Round 1: pathetic deck that I beat easily, a black/green deck without the good creatures.
Round 2: Much harder. He had a kabuto moth and a split-tail miko that he got out all three games. Game 3, he had to mulligan down to four, and it was still pretty close.
Round 3: Easier than round 2. I played a really young kid who used lots of Soratami, 1-toughness flying creatures. I had a couple of the orochi 'ping a flying creature' things. Game 2 was the one that I shouldn't have won -- he got out Kikyo, Night's Flower, and assassinated all my big creatures... but she was useless against my 2/4. q:3
Round 4: We agreed to draw, then went 1-1... and in the third game, I was completely color-screwed and mildly mana-screwed. He had the same kabuto moth/split-tail miko combo, with a genju of the plains as a huge life-linked blocker to complement it. I think I might have won the first game if it hadn't been for a judge's ruling that the Neko-Te didn't keep the plains tapped after it was no longer a creature, though -- that one extra mana let him ninja out the black rats that make you discard two. I'm pretty sure that ruling is wrong. Not that it mattered, since we'd agreed on a draw anyway.
After that, and after picking up my prize, I headed home to eat and get some damn aspirin, because my head was killing me. x.x
BUT! I won 13 packs, and bought 8 more off someone for about what I'd pay in the store. Plus the three that I got as part of the sealed-deck event, that's... more than I'd normally buy for a set. So I think I'm set for Betrayers, although I might buy the Fat Pack to get the die. A d-20 with a shuriken on the 20 should be neat. q:3
I think I'll go to Crossroads tomorrow -- I could go back to the pre-release, which is two-days long. Everyone else that ever goes to the crossroads gathering to play magic was at the pre-release, though. We were all in different flights, unfortunately, so we never got to actually play each other. I did see Havoqx's huge stack of boosters and cash... just from trading. I didn't bring stuff to trade, and in a way I think that's probably a good thing, because I'd have gotten raped. Er, not by Havoqx, probably, but by the other people trading, who all knew a hell of a lot more about the value of the cards than I do.
