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Sunday, April 6, 2014

Can all this happen in one day? Full of failure...

At midnight I watched Once Upon a Time episode and during it I decided to prime a play set of Ponders. After I painted one I realized that it was from a wrong set (*facepalm* at least it was the correct card^_^). So I checked the rest (if they are from m12) and painted them. After that episode I finished my ongoing draft showing my opponent that few mythics on the board are simply insane. At 1 am I went to sleep. I felt horrible and not really wanting to sleep, but I knew that sleep is what I need. At 6 am I woke up for no particular reason. This happened for the the sixth time this week. I tried to fall asleep once again but in vain. I got up two hours later so I could get on my way to local game store where I would have my shift that day. I arrived in one piece (which cannot be probably said in the case of some other people on the way. Car accident no.1) and by some miracle on time (due to city wide marathon the 'surface' transportation was limited).

That day morning Modern tournament was supposed to be held. Few minutes before the start there wasn't anybody. Few minutes later though people started to show up and 4 called that they would be late (several times). After 20 minutes of waiting for some people and even more for others everyone was sitting and playing. During that time many people decided to buy this and that card or borrow this or that card (fetchlands were easy to find...but some cards...that was a different story) and I had quite hard time finding all those cards. Internet went down so I was writing everything on a piece of paper. Eventually the event started. Wizards Event Reporter decided to crash (does not usually work without internet connection)and also decided to 'unpair' the players (never happened to me before...). I paired everyone manually following the pairings I printed out (fortunately) and started to think what else would happen during the day (during that some players already were reporting me their results). At that moment I remembered were Modern Masters singles were stored and found the last card I was supposed to sell before the tournament started. So I collected my own Lightning Helix and let the player have his Lightning Helix with Ajani.

During the first round I decided to set new prices for some of my cards so I started doing that but after several that did not update due to internet connection going down and after several minutes of waiting for internet connection I gave up. So I checked what decks the players were piloting and watched Sasa how he loses already won game with my Birthing Pod deck (after hearing the story that he lost the first game by not being able to play Path to Exile twice because he only had Misty Rainforest, 1 tapped and 1 untapped Temple Garden in play and was unable to fetch a white source.)

Some time later I decided to come up with design for Dryad Arbor - a card I want to alter. I don't like the original illustration so I was trying to come up with some Dryad looking 'something' for quite a while (the photo follows). (I used the Liliana as a ruler...it seems I happen to that more often - and I have that even on video. But that's a different story)

So I might actually try to paint more or less something similar looking on Dryad Arbor in the near future. Anyway when I wanted to take a picture of this doodle my cell phone decided to go dark. I don't know what happened. The battery was at 100% supposedly. Someone came to the store so I processed his order. After that I tried starting up my phone again but it didn't do a thing. Actually it did. It flashed red three times. That's how my last phone died. But on the other hand via computer I can get to the phone and make it work for some reason (same with my former phone).

At this time I felt pretty dizzy due to the local players smoking 'something'. Even though they smoked outside the smell of it was everywhere. I also lost track of how many beers they drank and most probably messed up the numbers when entering them from time to time to the cash register.

I decided to open some packs. I opened two GTC booster packs but there was nothing in them. The tournament was nearing its end and my flatmate was supposed to show up with dinner. In those 30 minutes I was waiting for him the players received their prize packs and bought other packs as well. Probably none of them was good. My flatmate came with my dinner so I asked him to pick a good pack for me. He did choose the best one he probably could. I didn't notice him opening the pack as I was selling something in the meantime so when I turned my head again all I saw was a foil Stomping Ground. He then showed me the Mythic that was above it to see if the card is worth anything or not. Seeing my reaction he understood that it's not a good card and handed me the pack. I would have taken a picture of it if I could but couldn't I asked Sasa to take it for me few hours later (so here it is).

Sasa and Matej gave me back my decks. Sasa came stating that there are some cards missing from the sideboard and that probably one of the cards is in the main but he didn't know which one it is (Scavenging Ooze). The cards that were missing were Thoughtseizes. I was quite a bit shaken by this information that got to me after the tournament and not before or during it (so I could actually search for the cards). I let it go because I knew that the deck was complete that morning and that it left it's box during my way to the LGS.

At 5pm Top 8 (from the Najada League) Draft was being organized. I tried to force some players playing MODO to get up from the table and move to another so we could draft there but it was of no use. I tried insisting few more times and they finally moved. After some misunderstanding were everyone should be seated we started the draft. My first pick was epic. I opened Eidolon of Countless Battles, I picked it and went through the cards in the pack. I was passing Stoneshock Giant sending the player into red. I picked some white cards (mostly to enable Heroic ability) in the first booster pack and few red creatures. From the second booster pack my first pick was Sentry of the Underworld. Soon after I picked Scholar of Athreos which sealed my fate of not playing Boros Heroic. But for some reason I wasn't really conviced that I can switch to black and passed Sip of the Hemlock and Hythonia (*double facepalm*). In the end I ended up with a deck that wasn't bad actually but the fact that I wasn't familiar with the cards from both sets made me lose 3 matches. On the other hand all the games were fun and interesting. I was quite surprised what cards were actually printed in the set and was pretty perplexed playing against Perplexing Chimera. I had 2 outs but they did not arrive in time and I lost that game. It was the only match I won though.

In the first round I managed to put a swamp on the bottom of the library and I needed 4 black sources in order to win. I had 3 but I didn't draw a 4th one in the following six turns. I also managed to let my Sentry with Eidolon of Countless Battles die because I read the mana cost wrong. After messing even something like this I did not feel like winning and forgot to attack even though that this attack would lead to victory later. My creature died but I still could win. I needed to draw a swamp once again. This time in 2 turns. I drew 2 plains cards and lost.

In the second round I played against WU deck with quite many fliers, Phalanx Leader, Wingsteed Rider and some other white creature. I was killed by blue flyers and wasn't sure if I should side in Glare of Heresy. I died to Wingsteed Rider in the second game. Lash of the Whip nor Rage of Purphoros couldn't deal with it. I was close to winning both games and me messing up an attack with my flyers cost me a game. I didn't realize that Sentry of the Underworld has Vigilance (*facepalm*).

In round three feeling REALLY bad after messing 4 games in a row I finally knew that I wouldn't at least mess up my attacks with Sentry of the Underworld. My opponent played Esper with similar cards as me except the fliers. I knew the cards I passed for this archetype so I knew what to expect. We both mulliganed more than we should and in g3 Adam mulled to 5 and lost. Even though his Abhorrent Overlord seemed pretty daunting. I knew that I have like 7 outs in the deck and I managed to draw one of them the next turn and win. I did not really want to win against Adam but it happened (especially after losing to two players that I should have won against).

In round 4 I played against a player with even worse score than me but he beat me singlehandedly (and then in round 5 was awarded a bye, how unfair!).

Round 5 was yet once again a nice game. But I didn't not win. Always it was one card or one turn away. In the first game I actually did not draw lands as I needed them. I won game two and in g3 I lost the turn before I would swing for lethal. But it was nice anyway. My deck proved to be actually capable of winning against 4 players. But I was the one to cause it to lose.

I opened my prize packs during the tournament already because and got one Temple. Otherwise nothing expensive. After the draft again quite some booster packs were bought and open. Even Modern Masters was bought. It contained a Mythic Rare but it was Yosei. Not a card I would want to open. I decided to give it a try to. It was an artifact. A creature with P/T. Arcbound Ravager. That was worth the pack^^ and I got some extras, foil Terramorphic Expanse from yet one more edition (my landfall all common deck has 8 foil 'fetches').

The players eventually left and left behind a terrible mess. After smoking some more etc. one player came back to get M14 booster pack in Korean and opened Mutavault. So I bought it and will want to exchange it for a German one somehow. Unfortunately someone stole or lost my 2 Mutavaults from my type 2 deck. So I bought the only Mutavault available at that moment (played German one...). I tried to tidy up the mess here and went to catch the tram. It arrived 5 minutes late. We did not even arrive to the next stop in the upcoming minute. There was another car accident in front of us. I did not want to leave the tram because it would take me directly home. I was too tired to be running around and waiting for something else somewhere else. Some time later the path was cleared and hopefully the people in the accident survived it. At Libensky most (12 later) there was another accident. Not wanting to walk 6 km home I tried to calm down. I put my hand into my bag to search for piece of paper and actually hit a piece of paper but it had a name as well - Thoughtseize. After that I actually pulled out a scrap of paper and wrote this entry on it.

When I came back home I was greeted by Zdenek. He cooked some eggs and we had them with what we found in the fridge. I told him about this hell of a day and then we watched some NCIS. Being completely exhausted I went to sleep and this time I did not have problem to fall asleep but still woke up earlier than I would have liked.

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