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Guildpact Release Tournament
Feb. 5th, 2006 06:50 amI didn't make it to the prerelease 2 weeks ago in Boston, but I did attend the release tournament at TE this Saturday. My record at the end was 3/2, so I didn't place for a prize, but I got one of the between rounds random door prize things for a copy of City of Heroes...which I somehow doubt that I'll use, with my lack of time for such things and lack of highspeed internet connection. eBay, maybe?
Aside from the games that I lost, which is the sort of thing you need to be able to accept in a tournament, the only dim patch on the day was one obnoxious player who stood next to one of my later games giving advice to my opponent. The only reason I didn't complain immediately is that I was pretty certain that victory in that game was assured, but it still annoyed me. That sort of thing is forbidden in tournaments, and I was just about to say something anyway when he finally shut up with the advice. What he switched to instead was a constant refrain of "If the pairing had been switched I could totally have beaten this guy," which I thought was rather insulting to me. After I finished the round we had some spare time, and the guy asked if he could play me to see what would have happened if we'd been matched against each other. I almost said no because he was such a jerk, but I felt a vague need to defend my honor or something, and wanted to see if I could destroy him. It took a little while, but I did beat the guy, which made me feel somewhat better.
In the Irony department, it's worth noting that we got a starter of Ravnica (45 cards + basic land) and 2 boosters of Guildpact (30 cards) to build our decks, and my final deck for the Guildpact release tournament included a mighty 5 cards from Guildpact and 20 from Ravnica (plus basic lands), so I wasn't playing with much new stuff at all. Oh, well.
Finally, I actually did manage to win a few games by depleting the decks of my opponents. My collection of cards came with a Gimpse the Unthinkable, Induce Paranoia, Psychic Drain, Vedalken Entrancer, and Thoughtpicker Witch, not to mention a large number of cards that let me draw more cards so that I had a better chance of drawing some of those 5. It seemed kind of insane to try to use them in my deck instead of more critters designed to kill things, but I knew I would wonder afterwards if they would have worked if I didn't try them, and it seemed a shame to waste such an obvious setup for a deck design to run my opponent out of cards.
Aside from the games that I lost, which is the sort of thing you need to be able to accept in a tournament, the only dim patch on the day was one obnoxious player who stood next to one of my later games giving advice to my opponent. The only reason I didn't complain immediately is that I was pretty certain that victory in that game was assured, but it still annoyed me. That sort of thing is forbidden in tournaments, and I was just about to say something anyway when he finally shut up with the advice. What he switched to instead was a constant refrain of "If the pairing had been switched I could totally have beaten this guy," which I thought was rather insulting to me. After I finished the round we had some spare time, and the guy asked if he could play me to see what would have happened if we'd been matched against each other. I almost said no because he was such a jerk, but I felt a vague need to defend my honor or something, and wanted to see if I could destroy him. It took a little while, but I did beat the guy, which made me feel somewhat better.
In the Irony department, it's worth noting that we got a starter of Ravnica (45 cards + basic land) and 2 boosters of Guildpact (30 cards) to build our decks, and my final deck for the Guildpact release tournament included a mighty 5 cards from Guildpact and 20 from Ravnica (plus basic lands), so I wasn't playing with much new stuff at all. Oh, well.
Finally, I actually did manage to win a few games by depleting the decks of my opponents. My collection of cards came with a Gimpse the Unthinkable, Induce Paranoia, Psychic Drain, Vedalken Entrancer, and Thoughtpicker Witch, not to mention a large number of cards that let me draw more cards so that I had a better chance of drawing some of those 5. It seemed kind of insane to try to use them in my deck instead of more critters designed to kill things, but I knew I would wonder afterwards if they would have worked if I didn't try them, and it seemed a shame to waste such an obvious setup for a deck design to run my opponent out of cards.
