#gp calgary

[postrk]

Sakashima mat sketch.   #gpcalgary

[byronosaurusrex]

Grand Prix Calgary Diary: Day 1.

(My apologies for the delay in posting: As it turns out, once you get into the Grand Prix days themselves, things get a little busier. And then you go home, and you get distracted catching up with everything that's happened since.)

Day 1 is in the books, and I learned some valuable lessons. Above all is, of course, take care of yourself. I made some mistakes in the 24 hours that entailed Saturday in that regard. I stayed awake until 2:30 AM writing my previous entry and sending a message to a friend who couldn't make the GP. Having already been behind on sleep going in, this was a very bad idea (but I don't regret it *that* much). Additionally, I failed to eat anything during the rounds where I finished early, focusing too much on running around to find out how my friends were doing -- by the time I did finally try and get something, the nearest A&W had closed at an unconscionably early 5 PM!

Anyhow, this combination of poor nutrition and sleep deprivation didn't really hit me during the GP itself, as day 1 was only 8 rounds and the excitement of playing Magic got me through it pretty easily. But in the ensuing celebrations of our success stories (which I'll get to soon), I became progressively less comfortable. Part of this was poor table management on my part. All my closer friends were on the opposite end of a long table, and while I don't mind the company of the other Saskatoon Magic players in general it was a little frustrating to be at a distance from the part of the conversation I was most interested in.

The other part, of course, was that I was just in plain old rough shape by the end of it, suffering from poor digestion after a diet that had gone as follows: Meatball sandwich at Boston Pizza for dinner, nothing for breakfast, nothing for lunch, big (and too delicious not to finish) plate of fish and chips for dinner. Most of the Saskatoon contingent had gone to an Irish pub (the James Joyce, I believe), where I also tried a sampler of Irish beers.

For the record, my opinion as someone who very infrequently drinks beer: I liked the Harp lager fine enough to complete, the Kilkenny was drinkable but so uncompelling in flavour that I didn't bother finishing it, the Smithwick's was far too bitter for my liking, and Guinness just tastes weird and causes me to make particularly unusual faces. I could only manage 11 ounces of the 24 served to me, but at least I learned something: I don't like dark beers. (Also, remember not to drink on an empty stomach. It didn't come to anything awful like throwing up or a hangover, but I knew I might not be handling my beer so well when I started genuinely enjoying the 2000s-era U2 the pub played.)

Anyway, so between the poor digestion and the uncomfortable position at dinner,  my initial state of 'behind on sleep but still content' had given way to 'exhausted and feeling kind of miserable' by the end of the day. I was eager to put an end to this, although the general difficulty of organizing people between the multiple directions they want to go after a GP Day 1 (parties, playing more Magic with friends, and just back to the hotel) led to further delays. By the time I did get back, there was little to do but hit the sack.

But let's backtrack for a moment, because the Grand Prix isn't just about going out to celebrate success, finding out what alcohols you don't like and being generally punished for poor decisions (although the latter does frequently come up!). It's about sleeving up some cards, making a decklist, checking it twice, checking it a third time, maybe a fourth just in case, and then playing the best Magic you can against all the talent the Grand Prix can offer.

On my part, I was not playing the best Magic I possibly could. After all, I was out of practice and had wasted much of my testing opportunity trying to learn how to play Bant Hexproof, a deck I had ruled out as effective but maddeningly inconsistent. I had built the UWR Flash deck the day before my bus trip, with just a few games of testing against typical Jund lists under my belt. By all indications, I would be happy just to not embarrass myself too severely at this event.

Round 1. I was paired against Earl Oleden, a quite friendly Alberta player coming off a Provincial Championship Top 8 the previous year. This day, he was playing Naya Midrange, a matchup I ultimately found comfortable if still challenging at times. In game 1, he rendered my instant-speed effects rather less than viable with multiple copies of Voice of Resurgence, but I was able to cast things on my own main phases and landed just enough threats on my side of the table to race him to victory. 

Game 2 saw my sideboarding decisions prove crucial -- he got a Domri Rade to 7 loyalty counters, but Renounce the Guilds forced him to sacrifice it the turn before it would have created an emblem that tilts the match decidedly in his favour. I dispatched most of his threats while maintaining a strong life total, and soon a large Sphinx's Revelation reloaded my hand and put myself so far out of danger that I could easily afford to take 6 damage in order to remove a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed that threatened to get in the way of finishing him off.

In Round 2, I faced against a player whose name was familiar to me though his face was not; Troy Hollister had been a mainstay of Saskatchewan provincial standings, but he played mostly in Regina and our paths only crossed when there was something worth driving for. He played a Gruul (red/green) aggressive deck with Burning Earth in his sideboard. This four-mana enchantment makes players take 1 damage every timothy tap a nonbasic land for mana, punishing me for my deck's almost total lack of basics. 

Burning Earth, as it turned out, would be a problem for me over the course of the tournament, and this round was no exception. In game 1, I dealt with all his creatures and stabilized on 3 life, then drew enough aggressive cards to beat him before he could find something to finish me off, but in games 2 and 3 I simply could not handle his aggression backed up by the nastiness that was Burning Earth. In game 3, I had stabilized through his early aggression and made it to the topdeck phase of the game with a pretty large life total, but as soon as Burning Earth came down it became clear that I would need to dig for a sideboard answer or draw really threat-heavy from then onward to make up for the edge the card gave him. I even cast a Sphinx's Revelation for six, taking 9 damage from my land in the process, but I couldn't find the Oblivion Ring I needed to limit the pain, and he was able to cast a second Burning Earth to lock me out completely.

(NOT-PARTICULARLY-PRO TIP: With a Burning Earth in play, normally you have to take damage from the triggers before your spell resolves, since most of the time you tap the lands for mana during the process of casting the spell. However, when casting an instant or a spell with flash, you can actually tap your lands for mana, have your opponent place their Burning Earth triggers on the stack, and respond to these triggers with the instant-speed spell, which will resolve first. This is particularly relevant when you're at a low life total and either gaining life or killing your opponent is a result of the spell.)

Round 3! Elijah Harper, playing what appeared to be Aristocrats Act Two, a deck that I like a lot for its ability to present a broad swath of threats and provide a lot of opportunities for synergistic interactions in the course of the game. This deck tends to feature Doomed Traveler and Lingering Souls as means to generate a lot of creatures efficiently, Cartel Aristocrat and Falkenrath Aristocrat as creatures that feast upon this overabundance for positive effects, and Blood Artist to drain your opponent's life total efficiently. I won game 1 with a little good fortune, and game 2 with a lot of good fortune as I knew what to bring in against the deck. I drew Izzet Staticaster and Thundermaw Hellkite in multiples, giving myself a number of nasty ways to deal with 1/1 flying tokens en masse as well as unprotected Falkenrath Aristocrats. I believe I also brought in Renounce the Guilds to deal with Aristocrats in general, but did not see the card.

Round 4, I headed back to the VIP area to play against Jordan MacIntosh's Wolf Run Naya deck. The experience was much like round 1, but closer due to the presence of maindeck Thundermaw Hellkites throughout the match. Another great matchup for Renounce the Guilds to come in, as it even hit a flipped Garruk, the Veil-Cursed whose color indicator is unintuitively both black and green. It went to game 3, where Jordan recovered from his mulligan and subsequent mana screw just enough to blunt my initial assaults and subsequently threatened a quick end to my life total with the likes of Loxodon Smiter and Thundermaw Hellkite. However, I found the line to win the game and the match, casting Azorius Charm to put his Hellkite back on top of his deck before using Encroaching Wastes to destroy his fifth land on my turn and thus preventing the Hellkite from making a repeat appearance.

Some people don't like the Encroaching Wastes in the manabase and want to play Mutavault or Ghost Quarter instead. I appreciate this line of thought, but right now between Kessig Wolf Run, Gavony Township, Cavern of Souls, Mutavault and even Moorland Haunt in the mirror match, there are a lot of nonbasic lands that you want to have a convenient answer for in the long game. Ghost Quarter can deal with these but tends to put you behind on mana in the process in a way that I dislike, as few opponents are genuinely neglecting basic lands enough to make it into a pure land-destruction card.

I was 3-1 at this point. This was on pace for an unlikely degree of success, as with attendance less than most Grand Prix tournaments, 6-2 had been announced as sufficient to make day 2! And I wasn't alone on the 'halfway there' side of things, with many of the other 16 Saskatoon players who knew each other having gotten off to good starts in the early rounds, to say nothing of the two who had begun the day with 3 byes from winning our local Grand Prix Trial tournaments. I'd just like to take a moment between rounds to mention that the VIP perks for a Grand Prix are surprisingly more worthwhile than I'd thought. Being assured a playmat is nice, and fixed seating itself is convenient, but the real benefit is not that the seating is fixed so much as that the seating they assign you in the VIP section is like night and day in terms of having room to play. Outside of VIP, it felt like it would be a challenge to fit all the cards, deckboxes and life total pad in play at times -- inside VIP, there was never a question of space other than 'how do I even fill this much?'

I stayed in the VIP area for a match with Richard Greenland playing Junk Midrange. Junk may sound like it's bad, but it's really just a common name in Magic circles for the color combination of black, green and white. This deck didn't tend to do a lot in the early turns but accelerating its mana, but it made up for it by dropping a Cavern of Souls and then starting to run out large-scale uncounterable threats like Restoration Angel, Thragtusk, Blood Baron of Vizkopa and the most problematic of the options available: Sigarda, Host of Herons, a 5/5 flying Angel that I couldn't target and couldn't even force my opponent to sacrifice! 

Despite all these problem creatures, I was still able to win game 1. However, mulligans to 4 and 5 in the next couple of games would be my undoing, though a clever Restoration Angel blink of Thundermaw Hellkite during the beginning of combat step managed to tap down Sigarda and briefly allowed me to entertain the possibility of winning the second game. Of course, an opposing Restoration Angel blinking Thragtusk put an end to such foolish hopes swiftly. I was now in 'back against the wall' territory, needing to win 3 straight to make it to Day 2 of the main event.

Round 6 against Travis Coles, I stared at my first hand. Two Pillars of Flame, one of my best tools against aggro. A number of two-mana cards that could help me buy time. A single land, but one that could come down early and provide the red mana I most immediately needed. I had two turns to draw a land without affecting my mana development -- in the dark, it seemed worth keeping, particularly given the impact that mulligans had just wrought upon my previous match (not a valid reason, but still possibly a psychological consideration). I kept it, and though I didn't draw the second land for several turns, I'm not confident that it was a bad decision. If I were to keep another one-lander in future with this deck, it would probably look very similar to this one, because it was about as good as I could hope for from such a hand.

Of course, as noted, I didn't draw that second land. Even though the Pillars turned out to be cards I really wanted in this mono-black control matchup to deal with Geralf's Messenger and help to burn out Lilianas, they were certainly no match for the massive Desecration Demon with which my opponent brought me to a swift and merciful end. I was at least glad that I'd lost game 1 quickly, as those which followed were the sort of grindy wars of attrition and gradual advantages that only a particularly competition-focused segment of Magic players can truly enjoy. I consider myself to be part of this segment, but after finishing the round with barely minutes to go I found myself contemplating how much more time I would have after my matches were I to have just chosen a 'win fast or lose fast' deck like Hexproof or Burning Earth-backed aggro. 

Adding to the disappointment of not having time to get food, although I had fought valiantly, I had lost game 3. The dream was dead: I didn't know how I was going to spend Day 2, but it wasn't going to be competing for a Grand Prix title. I congratulated Travis on getting close with a deck that seemed under-appreciated, as he had been a very likeable opponent. In fact, just about everyone I played against this weekend was at least pleasant. 

Before round 7, as had become habit, I checked in with my friends who were also between matches. Quite a few were still in contention, led by Stephane Gerard at 6-0. Stephane, a close friend of mine as described in the Day -5 entry, is a recent PTQ winner with three byes in this event as a result. Known in equal turns locally for his play skill and his gregarious personality, Stephane is a firm believer in brewing up new and innovative decks, and as it frequently turns out, even when he chooses the traditional strategy in a format he'll often take an unconventional road to get there.

For instance, he once made it to top 8 of National Qualifiers playing a blue-white control deck at the height of CawBlade season -- but his was built around Venser, the Sojourner. When black-red Zombies was in fashion during the early weeks of Standard after Return to Ravnica's release, Stephane won the Provincial Championship with black-red Zombies -- and maindeck copies of Fling! 

Stephane had seemed to be struggling to find a path to success in this GP throughout our testing, as for all the effort he'd made to figure out how to win the difficult Hexproof matchup with a burn deck, he determined that beating Jund with the same was just unpleasantly dependent on guessing to what degree the opponent's gameplan depended on their Arbor Elf's survival. When I had left Saskatoon, my last interactions with Stephane had been testing Jund against an Esper control deck that I viewed as his 'default strategy' -- but by the time he had arrived in Calgary, he was now on Jund himself. 

I had assumed he was just defaulting to the solid build that Andrew Boa and Jessie Aschenbrenner had built, but the conversations the morning of Day 1 in our group's hotel room had been clear that whatever Jund I had thought this was, this was not that. Farseek, a card that most players (myself included) viewed and that most still view as essential to the deck's gameplan (albeit a poor late-game card), had been cast aside in favour of 4 maindeck copies of Lifebane Zombie, a cheaper threat than Jund was previously accustomed to playing. Stephane also played Vraska the Unseen and even Bloodgift Demon as potent threats which could accrue additional advantage in the course of gameplay.

So anyway, Stephane was doing well. I, on the other hand, was finally getting to play against Jund Midrange in round 7, played by John Duquette. I had felt that in my little amount of testing, I had at least figured out the dynamic of the Jund-UWR matchup: Jund tries to cast a series of increasingly serious threats, while UWR attempts to fend these threats off with counterspells and removal without tapping out on its own turn. Often this pattern culminates in a big-mana Rakdos's Return by the Jund player which if resolved would deal the UWR player damage while emptying their hand, rendering them unable to handle further threats effectively.

Game 1, I dealt with the threats sufficiently well that by the time the Jund player was able to cast a Rakdos's Return, I had already pushed through a significant amount of damage with my flash creatures such that while the Return was going to resolve and take away any substantial amount of cards my Sphinx's Revelation could have drawn in response, I was able to cast a Warleader's Helix in response to drop my opponent to a low enough life total that these creatures could finish him off in short order. Game 2, he resolved an early Liliana of the Veil, but I chose what to discard carefully and recognized that I would likely only need four land for most of the early game, eventually managing to deal with it through Warleader's Helix and a well-timed Restoration Angel before taking over from there.

I was 4-3 now, meeting my hopes of finally at least locking up a 50% win rate at the Grand Prix itself. Stephane had won a Jund matchup to go to 7-0; six other local players were now 5-2 with a chance to make day 2 if they won their next rounds. Before round 8, I got to hear an amusing story about one of Jessie's recent games, wherein a Game Rule Violation had been committed (an opposing Stromkirk Noble had been blocked by his Huntmaster of the Fells, which as a Human should not have done so) and it wasn't caught until Jessie's turn. 

The judges were involved, as they should be, and it was decided that they would rewind the game state to the time of the error -- but Jessie had drawn his card for the turn, so as often happens in these situations, he had to return a card from his hand at random to the top of his library. 

Unfortunately for his opponent, Jessie had two copies of Bonfire of the Damned in hand, and one of them was chosen at random to be put back. This resulted in a scenario that I think can best be described as an unnatural miracle, and was jarring enough that I heard players in side events the next day discussing how ridiculously lucky Jessie had been.

Round 8, I was paired against what had to logically be one of my worse matchups: The UWR Flash mirror match. Marcel Dizon was an apt pilot, and I simply did not have any practice in determining which spells were truly important, when it was safe to cast them, and how to keep my opponent from making use of them. Thus, even though Marcel mulliganed in game 1, I still ultimately succumbed in both games to his superior handling of the deck.

I ended the day on 4-4, earning the 50% win percentage I had hoped for but not expected, and anxiously walked around the room seeking further results. TJ, John and Jessie didn't make it, but Kyle Gellert (another local game store worker), Kerry Hjertaas (one of the most experienced local players, with a past Pro Tour appearance to his credit) and Dave Wong (who had gotten to 5-0 before successfully pulling out of a tailspin in the last round) were all 6-2 coming into the second day of competition. Stephane was 8-0, giving him a great chance at making the top 8 the next day.

And hence, there was a celebratory dinner, whose extent of discomfort was already thus described above. Ultimately, it was a pretty successful day at the GP; even though I had not slept enough and had not kept myself well-fed, I still played pretty reasonably for my lack of practice and managed to get through the day without a slow play warning or a round going to time. I had been most concerned going in that my decision to play UWR Flash would lead to such problems, and successfully avoiding them vindicates my choice to go with the deck I most enjoy playing rather than one which promises a quicker but less interesting experience.

[metricaprovince]

You guys, if any of you went to GP Calgary, please check this out. Graham Stark is the co-founder of a comedy group called LoadingReadyRun, which produces a youtube series for Wizards. They'd filmed an episode at GP calgary, but they've lost the SD card much of that footage is on, and according to graham it's irreplacable.

Please signal boost this just in case someone knows where the card is!

[elihuaran]

I'm at GP Calgary!

To recap,I've played 5 rounds of play, dropping out at 2 wins, 3 losses, and 0 draws. Not bad for a dude who started out a year and a half ago.

After I dropped,  my roommate and I entered a 2 Headed Giant sealed event, where 2 players play together as a team with 2 separate decks, but both play at once and share a life total. We wound up winning the event, coming away with about 420 dollars worth of cards. I say we did rather well.

[byronosaurusrex]

Grand Prix Calgary Diary: Day 0.

It was an action-packed day in Calgary, as the Grand Prix circus kicked into gear. Although the tournament proper starts on Saturday (hence that being Day 1), the festivities truly begin on Friday, with 32-person 'grinder' Grand Prix Trials offering players as many chances to 5-0 their way to three byes for the main event as they can fit into a single day of competition, and there being a free minimaster event for everyone at the venue (wherein you put 3 of each basic land into a freshly opened pack without looking at it and play with the resulting deck.)

The day proper started with my awaking in the fantastic Carriage House Inn I'd booked for Thursday night, settling my accounts and checking out so that Morgan could pick me up to drive me to the Judge Conference. Unfortunately, he's still been having trouble navigating the city's trouble, so eventually I had to bail on him to hail a taxi so as not to miss entirely the first seminar of the conference (and the promo card that went with it, as well as the other judge conference seminars; these special editions of powerful cards are quite sought-after, and make spending time at these conferences even more worthwhile than it already is). 

Morgan would go on to blow a tire later in the day, making for an awful start to his weekend -- hopefully he can turn it around in the event itself (he won 18 packs in a Standard GPT for losing the semifinal, but that's still nowhere near three free wins in a Grand Prix in relative importance to the players who enter the GPTs.)

I should note that Judge Conferences are an amazing thing, because you get to spend four hours watching people in Magic's Judge Program talk about relevant topics like growing your local community, working toward the next level in your judge status, and various card interactions that come up in the game. There are a dizzying array of things to discuss, and plenty of great opportunities for networking. I'm looking to start working my way towards Level 2 in the coming months, which is exciting because when I get my Level 2 I'll be able to start certifying more Level 1 judges in town, whereas we would otherwise have to have them go out of their way. It also theoretically helps us eventually hold PTQs in the city, which would be fantastic for the game's growth locally.

I should also take a note to point out how fantastic James Searles and Melissa DeTora are. When the break to get food came up in the Judge Conference and I opted to stay back so as to keep watch over my luggage, they asked if I wanted anything. A small act of kindness towards someone they really didn't know goes a long way in my esteem.

But anyway, the Judge Conference eventually ended, and my friend Sean from Saskatoon picked me up (and kindly took custody of my luggage) to take me more-or-less-directly to the tournament venue. Once at the venue, I got to see the numerous carloads of other Saskatonians (and rogue locals operating outside the carload system, and even a couple of expatriates) make their way in over time, many of them finding their way into a Standard GPT, some trying their luck in the Sealed Deck GPTs instead; I, however, did not do so, as I was entering (and soon afterward losing) the free minimaster event while the last Sealed GPT fired, and I opted to instead play a Magic 2014 Booster Draft over the remaining Standard GPTs.

The decision paid off, in a sense -- though I didn't get the chance to win a ton of packs or byes toward the main event, I did win out in the draft with my Shadowborn Demon mono-black deck to score 5 packs of M14 and a package of Canadian-flag sleeves. I really like mono-black when it's open (early Corrupt and Quag Sickness picks gave me the incentive to force it), but it's a tough deck to draft to its maximum potential (because opening a Shadowborn Demon in your pack is highly unlikely, and being passed one is nearly impossible.)

As the time neared 10 PM, we headed out of the venue to congregate at Boston Pizza and soon afterward our hotel room for the next few nights; we'll be back again before 10 AM tomorrow, and hopefully we'll be fully ready to tackle 9 long rounds of Standard. I know I'll probably be a bit of a wreck; I woke up with a stuffy nose that was also running this morning, and it's already way later than I wanted to go to bed. So I'll let this entry go for now.

[byronosaurusrex]

Grand Prix Calgary Diary: Day -1.

Today was a long, somewhat exhausting trip. I went to bed at around midnight having packed in the last of my luggages, only to get up at 5 AM to make it to the bus station in time for….my delayed bus, which eventually left at around 7:30 or so. Yep, that was totally worth saving $20 for. I did eventually manage to get to Edmonton, where my connection was missed so I had to wait an extra hour and a half or so to get on the 4 PM bus I'd been transferred to. Thus, I arrived in Calgary (on a particularly nice bus, I might add) at around 7:30 PM.

I have yet to hear from Morgan, who was planning to get into town at around the same time -- as such, I did eventually settle for taking a taxi to the lovely hotel where I'm staying the night. I ended up spending probably more than I should, but the view is fantastic, the bathroom is brilliant, and when I walked in there was a towel swan on the bed! Suffice to say it was just the sight I needed to see after a long day of travel. I'll probably head to the A&W for dinner soon, but wanted to make sure I was up to date on my messages for the time being. 

I'm still on the UWR plan, but not 100% that I'll be playing the whole length of Day 1; if it goes poorly enough, I may consider dropping directly into a marathon of side event drafting. That being said, I could end up with 3 byes if I run the table at a 5-round Grand Prix Trial tomorrow night (Sealed deck, of course, because I don't trust my constructed deck to earn the wins it needs to earn, um, more wins) so that would keep me in contention longer.

I did go to A&W for a relatively light meal, which was held in the ambience of relative lightning outside at the time (a particularly mean-spirited thunderstorm seemed to swoop in on the restaurant). I'm looking to get to bed fairly soon, since I could use the rest after yesterday's rather short night -- but I have to be up fairly early yet, as there is the Judge Conference tomorrow morning to find my way to. I had hoped that I would be able to reach Morgan to make trekking to the Conference easier for myself, but he simply hasn't been in contact. I hope nothing has happened to him and he has simply fallen asleep upon arrival or something else benign. I may have to arrange alternate transportation.

Good news! It IS benign: He merely got particularly lost. Alright, so now he's in contact, but it's not clear yet whether that 100% correlates with having a ride to the Judge Conference (though it looks reasonable right now). In any case, I'll need to figure out a means of getting to the Conference and the GP Trials afterward -- at present another friend of mine from town is planning to take me to the event venue, as he wasn't around for the M14 release and so needs to reach me to pick up some cards anyway, so I should have at least a partial solution to my concerns.

Anyway, I should probably try and pop down to cash in on my complimentary drink at the lounge, then get in a quick shower before bed, and then get as much rest as I can before tomorrow's events. It's going to be a big day, and hopefully a rewarding one between the informative judge seminars and the first taste of GP-Calgary tournament excitement! Hopefully I'll have more (and better) stories for you tomorrow night!

[byronosaurusrex]

Grand Prix Calgary Diary: Day -2.

The big decision finally came: I opted to go with my heart and play UWR Flash, to take one more opportunity to Snapcaster a Rewind rather than jump on board the Jundwagon and hope to draw more threats than the other guy. It was a tough decision, and I'm not 100% that it was the right one, but if the goal is to have fun, then playing the cards I know and love is probably a good way to go about it. I just hope I play against friendly people -- sometimes you can get paired up against players who just don't care about having fun, and that can become a real pain. I don't mind if their deck crushes me as long as we're having a good time. The specific UWR build I've chosen isn't tuned on my part with experience, being as I only just picked it up for the first time last night. It is literally just the exact list played by William Jensen at the SCG Open last weekend. I am hoping that he has already done enough to make the deck playable, so that I can focus on figuring out how to actually play the deck. I'm not concerned with whether letting you know this in advance is giving away information you can use to beat me at the tournament, because frankly if I found out that happened I'd be too excited that someone is actually reading this Tumblr to care! I've preregistered for the event online, so I'm beating the lines on Friday. Not that I tend to have that much trouble with registration lines -- I usually end up near the desk right as they're forming. I'm kind of lucky that way. I've got a lot of things figured out, but I still need to figure out how in the world Friday's actually going to work for me. I'll probably have to change hotels, and I may need to rely on the few friends who are going to be there reasonably early to help me get around. Hotel booking is a confusing mess for me. Trying to strike the balance between frugality and comfort is harder than I expected. Eventually, I settle on a reasonable-looking hotel room for $160+tax for my solo Thursday stay, before spending the rest of the weekend with my friends. I still have to pack my suitcase tonight with 4 nights' worth of clothes and appropriate Magic gear, then try to find time for a shower in the morning before I head out to my 6:15 AM bus. Saskatoon-Edmonton-Calgary. What a fantastic journey this could be. I hope it's reasonably quiet, so I can concentrate on my fantastic binder of rules documents (which is, to be fair, no longer quite up to date with the changes to sideboarding.) I can't wait to get to Calgary. This is going to be a very unique experience, because the first two times that I played in Grand Prix events, they were far enough out of the way that only a couple other local players attended, and I used the fact that my brothers lived in those cities as an excuse to turn the trip into a longer, more vacation-like stay. This time, the Magic tournament is the main attraction and a substantial contingent of locals will be there. I hope someone makes the weekend special with a big breakthrough performance. I wouldn't mind if it's me, although I have no reason to expect such a result. I'd be pretty thrilled to put up a winning record, let alone play for the 7-2 necessary to make it to day 2. Anyhow, it's getting late and I need to finish packing my bags so I can get at least a little sleep tonight. I don't want to get sick! Planning to take my camera with me, so maybe I'll get some decent pictures of the journey for the blog! (I have a LOT of pictures from my past trips that are probably worth writing about at some point.)

[byronosaurusrex]

Grand Prix Calgary Diary Day -3.

Okay, I'm within 48 hours of leaving for Calgary, and panic is setting in a little. Not the 'oh no, I'm going to do awful at the tournament' sort of panic; no, that one's already blossomed and been neatly clipped at the stem, and I am now fashioning it into a cute little panic bouquet. I know I'm probably not going to do that well at the tournament, and that's okay. My friends will still respect my effort, and I'll still have plenty of opportunities to have fun and maximize my weekend. No, the panic is that of simply having too many things to take care of to all comfortably fit within the small window I've made for myself. I need to build decks. I need to buy the remaining cards with which to build decks. I need to try and jam some testing while I still can. I need to continue to take time to keep things in perspective, to not let this experience overwhelm me. But I need to buy a bus ticket. I also need to book a hotel room for Thursday night (I have accommodations for Friday-Sunday, but almost none of my friends are coming up the extra night before.) I should also keep writing these posts. Hopefully they'll be a little looser from here on out than the first couple stilted attempts at scene-setting, though. It's generally true that the more confident I am, the more fun everyone has, and I'm pretty sure that applies to writing here too. I'm almost second-guessing the decision to take a bus in and of itself, on grounds that it feels ludicrous to have somewhere between 8 and 11 hours with no responsibilities at all after spending the 48 previous trying to cram in as much as possible. Of course, I plan to spend those on-bus hours reading my binder full of rules documents anyway, so there's that. I just took care of the 'opening the rest of my 2 boxes of M14' part of the experience, which netted me 2 Archangels of Thune, a Garruk, 2 Oozes and a Mutavault -- and the impression that this set is laden with bulk rares, or at least rares that feel bulk. Opening an Indestructibility feels no better now than it did in M10 when I first started seriously playing, and quite a number of other M14 rares are reprints that I had approximately the same lack of appreciation for in their previous core set printings. Right now, I'm leaning towards playing Jund in the tournament, in keeping with my historical mantra of "Jund in every format". I am not certain whether it will be a stock list with some minor tweaks, or instead another player's build of the deck -- no fewer than two other locals have offered the option to play their own versions. I do know that I am unlikely to play Bant Hexproof, even though the benefits of doing so are tempting, and I'm also concerned that as with Esper, I just cannot master the constant stream of decisions involved in skilled UWR Flash play sufficiently to beat the more challenging matchups in what little remaining time I have. I continue briefly toying with the idea of playing a gimmicky deck around Heartless Summoning, an enchantment that allows you to cast creatures at a strong discount in exchange for making them weaker upon entering play. Or perhaps I could play Black-Green Midrange, which plays much like Jund, but with greater mana consistency in exchange for less powerful four-mana creatures, and the inability to use Bonfire and Wolf Run. I fear that taking the time to construct such a brew may prove not worth the effort of doing so. However great the advantages are in having an unexpected gameplan that my opponents will not plan for, they are likely nullified by the disadvantage of bringing a largely untuned list to an event. I've even toyed with playing an entirely unexpected rogue deck that Stephane built and considered but rejected as being too variance-dependent. I do like enjoy more than my fair share of variance, after all. I make plans to shave for tomorrow. I shower. I load and unload the dishwasher. I panic a little more. Testing session at 5:30. I should really be ready for that. There's no way I'm ready for that. I still think that given the choice, I'd rather play UWR Flash; the cards are more interesting to me, and I should probably at least try and maximize the fun I have. But over a potentially 9-round day, it's probably wiser not to wrench myself so severely with so many important decisions in each round because I'm likely to have less fun than I might otherwise enjoy. Not that Jund lacks for decisions by any stretch, but that the decisions a Jund player makes tend to be larger in scale -- which creature do I cast, do I activate Kessig Wolf Run and try to flip a Huntmaster of the Fells or run out a Thragtusk, et cetera. With UWR, it's more a constant question of "Do I counter that? What about that? How much mana can I hold up? When can I let my guard down and do something on my turn without giving my opponent a window to significantly punish me? Am I just dead if I do that?" Every round a battle of parry and thrust, of survival in the short term in hopes for victory in the long haul. A lot of small choices whose impacts compound over time. Normally, I like my decks to be like that, to give me 'more play' as it were. A greater opportunity to win and lose games on the back of my decision-making, a better chance to direct the course of action. But with my lack of recent experience, I find myself in doubt of my ability to confidently and comfortably make these decisions, at greater risk of faltering in the course of play. I fear that I will lose more games as a result of my decisions than I will win, or perhaps worse that I will fail to make decisions effectively at all, leading to slow play penalties and unintentional draws over the course of the event. I shouldn't fear so much. It's not good for my attitude coming into the event, and it distracts me from the things which need to be done. Speaking of, I've got my bus ticket booked, Saskatoon to Calgary -- via Edmonton. Somehow, this is $20 cheaper than taking a direct trip, although it does mean I'll have to leave at 6:15 AM on Thursday to get to Calgary at 5:50 PM, likely to be among the earliest of the Saskatoon players to arrive in the city. As I see it, the extra night will be good for me -- it'll give me a chance to get settled in and comfortable with my surroundings. I just need to book a hotel room for it, though it'll likely be a little wasteful on my part to be doing so alone. But it will feel at least a little more like a vacation. As I write these last three paragraphs, it is 2:37 AM on Wednesday morning. Our testing session ended around an hour ago, and I am soon to go to bed. Today will be a shorter day awake than usual, between having to sleep in and having to go to bed early to make the next day's bus departure. I am still undecided on which deck to play. It is almost certainly either Jund or UWR as noted above, as I got in some games with each to reasonable success. I am not entirely sure which deck is favoured in the matchup between the two either, for that matter. It is a very close decision: Jund feels like the more explicitly powerful deck and is somewhat less likely to lead to time issues, but UWR feels more natural for me to pilot, as I am no stranger to casting Snapcaster Mage, Restoration Angel and Sphinx's Revelation. I would likely be well-served to play either deck, and perhaps I should just make a choice now and commit to it….but it can wait until the morning. What matters most, however, is that I've played well enough in the testing to have a certain amount of my confidence back. For this moment, I feel as though it's still not unreasonable to hope that I can become a truly formidable competitive Magic player in my region with appropriate practice. I may never make it to the Pro Tour, but I hope to someday feel that I have truly earned the admiration of my community through my efforts.