Monday, October 20, 2014

The Viscount Plays Magic

Sunday was gearing up to be a much-need Gaming Day with Daddy and the girls, however, real life interfered.   My wife's relatives took the girls to Knoebels for some trick-or-treating and some rides, my wife was forced to work, and I had to babysit out dog guest Guest Clarkie until his owner arrived around 1:30.

Afterwards, my wife gave me a dangerous text:

"You can go do whatever you would like!  Relax and enjoy your afternoon!"

No more dangerous words could be texted.

As all exciting stories go, I gathered up all the spare change accumulating on my dresser and went to the local grocery store to use their Coinstar machine.

I then proceeded to break it. 

The machine says not to put in real silver dollars, bent, or damaged coins, but no where did it mention 1/8" thick mdf board I used for miniatures bases.   One must have been at the bottom of the MBA building I use to store change and the sorter did not like it one bit!

Just in case you wondered, it takes three girls from customer service to open up a Coinstar machine.  I felt bad for breaking it, but after seeing the plethora of barrettes, paper clips, damaged coins, and souvenier pennies that people dump into it and get caught in the works, I feel better that I didn't grab my kid's candy-covered money that's stuck together.  I did get all my change back that had gotten caught, including three Eisenhower dollars that I'm quite certain I didn't put in there to start with!

So what did I do with my whopping fifteen bucks I cashed in?  I drove down to Emerald Vales Games and participated in a Magic booster draft. 

Now, details are sketchy, but the last time I played Magic was a booster draft back in the Spring of 2006 at the White Knight Game Room in Williamsport.  Eight and a half years later, Magic is still Magic (with some minor tweaks), and the idiot participating in the booster draft that can't keep count of his cards was not me!

Back in 2006, we were playing Kamigawa block drafts, which I loved due to the Asisan fantasy theme of the sets.  The new set is Khans of Tarkir, and it feels like not much has changed.  While some of the newer concepts, like Planeswalkers,  are foreign to me, and I had only purchased one pack of the set,  I could still draft a passable red/white deck.

One of the lower-intellect concepts of drafting is to just grab all the cool cards, rares, and foils that you can grab.  While I do have about six rares I drafted, no current player can fault me for my first pull out of my first pack.
 
 
For my old-school readers with ancient knowledge of Magic, this is one of the new "Fetch-lands"  Think somewhere between a Revised Dual land and one of the pain lands from Ice Age.   That alone makes it fetch probably $10+.  That glare in the picture is the refelection of the foil, which apprently jacks it up to $41.   I had people pulling me aside to offer to buy it throughout the day.  As crazy as it sounds, I think I'm going to trade it in to the store to go towards a few Alpha and Arabians there hunting for me.
 
Game wise, I went 2-2 in two matches before time and guilt of not getting the kids ready for bed caught up to me before the third round.  It was a nice combination of old school players, both long-term and just coming back, a few socially awkward types, and one or two the the required db's that have haunted Magic (and life in general) since the early days. 
 
Hopefully, I'll get another late Sunday afternoon and go down there again to draft again.  I'd spend a lot more money going to a sportsbar to watch footbal and enjoy myself  a lot less
 
And now that I know what this "Planeswalker" mumbo jumbo is, I can draft against it.  It's extremely silly.

No comments:

Post a Comment