Magic is a phenomenal game. It might be the greatest of all time, and it’s not just because of the complexity, diversity and near-infinite possibilities of the game itself. Ask anybody who travels to play the game, whether it’s at the PTQ, GP or PT level, and most of them will tell you that the best part of playing Magic is the people that you get to meet, the stories that you get to tell, the bad beats and the ‘one-time’s. This tournament report isn’t about any hidden tech in Dragon’s Maze limited, or any next-level plays that were done. No, it’s about how even though our favorite hobby is “just a game”, it’s so much more.

Wait a minute, who are you?

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Barry Hum, and I learned to play Magic in Ice Age. I stopped at Tempest and came back at Judgment, and haven’t stopped since. I only started traveling to north-eastern GP’s starting with GP Montreal 2011, but since then I’ve been attending all sorts of tournaments with the same group of guys that play out of the south shore of Montreal.

When we heard that there would be a team sealed GP within a 5-6 hour driving distance of Montreal, I circled it on the calendar and couldn’t wait for June 7th-9th. I got my two teammates Kenny Fung and Jeff Casselman to keep that weekend free and we were all set to test our limited prowess and see how we measured against the rest of the field.

Friday June 7th 10:30am

I took the day off of work to make sure that I had all my stuff in order. We were to meet up at our local card store along with KYT and drive down at 1:00. I knew in advance that Kenny and his girlfriend, Olivia had some stuff to take care of that morning, and that he might be a bit tardy, but nothing to derail the plan of driving down to Providence in reasonable time, find some New England Clam Chowder and get a good night’s sleep before going to battle.

Then I got a message that no one wants to see:

“Olivia got rushed to the hospital, complaining about pains in her stomach. I’m heading there now”

Jeff and KYT are friends with Olivia, and I’m very close friends with her, so this news hit us like a ton of bricks. I wanted to know what was wrong, seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours. I wanted to know something, anything about how she was doing. As I waited, I knew that Kenny was going to stay, I wanted him to stay and make sure that Olivia was okay. I wanted to stay, I didn’t feel like driving down anymore, it’s just a game. Jeff understood the situation, KYT said he’d fly down if he had to. Then all of my preparation bit me in the ass:

I had pre-registered our team.

I had booked the hotel room through hotwire. The room wasn’t cancellable.

12:30pm

Olivia was telling Kenny to go to the GP. She knew how much it meant to all of us, but none of us could bear leaving her alone in the emergency room. It’s just a game. He wasn’t coming with us. Jeff and I started frantically calling and messaging other local players. KYT took to his social media outlets. I must have tried 10 people, but the pings all came back negative. I never realized how exhausting it could be to call and message so many people in such short time. Our closest call was a local player, Nick Burdet who had managed to convince his boss to find a replacement for him on the weekend, only to remember that he had other responsibilities to attend to late Saturday. It was beginning to look like Jeff and I were going to have to find a random player on site.

Of course, this presented its own set of challenges. Would we get along with them? Were they going to be able to hold their own? What if we somehow make day 2? I could barely team draft with my own teammates, let alone someone who I would have just met.

It’s just a game. We’ll just go, have fun, and worst comes to worst, we can just attempt to draft side events all weekend.

The drive down was uneventful. Some construction and a heavy storm prevented me from breaking several highway safety laws and getting to the venue before registration closed . We got to Providence at 9:30pm, half an hour too late. We figured we would have better chances in the morning to pick up a straggler, and since we hadn’t stopped once during the 6.5 hour drive, we really needed to eat. After a bit of meandering around downtown Providence, we settled on a diner, and got some hot clam chowder. At least the weekend wouldn’t be a total loss. We checked into the hotel, and immediately jumped onto the wi-fi to see how Olivia was doing. She was doing better, but had to stay the night at the hospital. She wished us good luck, I took a shower, set the alarm and got ready for what could be the most interesting day of Magic in my life.

Saturday, June 8th, 7:30am

Jeff and I got to the venue an hour before registration closed, hoping that would give us enough time to find someone. My first inclination was to find a judge and see if they had noticed some people looking for groups. I quickly spotted judge Michael McCliment, explained to him our predicament and asked if there was a designated area for people who were looking for a team. He pointed us to the tables in a corner where the announcers were directing the people looking for a team.

The main problem was that everyone who was looking was in the same boat as us: groups of 2 looking for a 3rd. I saw Amanda Stevens, who I knew was a judge, walking the floor in civilian clothing. I asked her if she was judging, she said no, but she was trying to get on staff as a last second addition. I told her about our situation, but she said that she’d rather be judging. However, if 8:30 rolled around, and she wasn’t on staff yet, and we were willing to pay for her entry fee, she’d help us out.

As conditional as it was, at least we had a fall-back plan. We continued to wait around the team-building area to see if we could find someone else in case Amanda couldn’t come through. Did she ever…

8:15 am

I heard Amanda yelling at us from a distance. She was walking towards us while pushing forward an Asian girl, wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt, a bright yellow Pikachu sweater and a Pikachu hat, holding a sign that read “Looking for a Team”.

“You guys are playing the GP with her!”

I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but could we really go wrong with a Pikachu?

Meet Linda Wang.

I’m not sure I had ever met an individual who was so genuinely excited to be playing in a team event with two strangers. Her teammates were supposed to meet with her, but neither of them had a ride or a place to crash, so they left her high and dry. She showed up regardless, hoping to jump on to a team, and that’s exactly what she did.

She was a relatively new player, starting with Scars of Mirrodin. Her best finish was a 22nd place finish at SCG Somerset during the team sealed event, where she personally went 8-1, despite her team’s 18-point finish. She was apparently a Gruul girl, turning dudes sideways to win games. She had played the limited format a bunch of times, so she was familiar with the cards. Honestly, these were fine credentials considering we had to find a teammate on the spot.

Her enthusiasm and cheeriness were genuine and infectious. It was refreshing to be playing Magic with someone who was different from the typical PTQ grinder. She was very easy to get along with and very open to any thoughts we had pertaining to the format. Things finally started looking up.

Amanda was insisting that I wear the Pikachu hat since she found us a teammate. I proposed that if we made day 2, I would wear the Pikachu hat for the first team draft. You should always be careful what you agree to…

9:30 am: Grand Prix Providence, Day 1

586 teams came to battle, and per GP standard, 21 pts or better after 9 rounds gets you into day 2. Those who made the cut had to stay and play round 10 with the same sealed decks that they were battling with all day. Our sealed pool was a decent one. Jeff had a nutty grixis bombs-removal deck with [card]Mirko Vosk, Mind Drinker[/card], [card]Sire of Insanity[/card] and [card]Diluvian Primordial[/card], along with 6 pieces of removal. I had U/W/g deck with [card]Supreme Verdict[/card], [card]Collective Blessing[/card] and flyers. Linda had a straight Gruul deck with 10 two-drop creatures, [card]Madcap Skills[/card] and [card]Gruul War Chant[/card].

I won’t give many details of the games. To sum it up, our tournament went as follows:

Round 1: W
Round 2: L
Round 3: W
Round 4: W
Round 5: W
Round 6: W
Round 7: L
Round 8: W
Round 9: W
Round 10: L

Throughout the day, Linda kept apologizing for “dragging down the team” every time she lost her own match. I’m not sure what inspired this mindset. During our loss in round 2, Jeff and I flooded, while she won her match. Our loss in round 7 Jeff got run over and I punted my game, while she won hers again. Not quite what I’d call “dragging down the team”

Day 1 finished at midnight. It was an exhausting day, and the three of us battled hard to put ourselves into day 2. Of course, it meant that I had to hold up my end of the bargain…

Sunday June 9th , 9:00am

Day 2 was team drafts. We won our first team draft 2-0, but the second pod was much more difficult and we lost 0-2, despite Jeff winning his own matches. At a respectable record of 9-5, and no chance of making top 20 to cash the event, we dropped before the 3rd team draft to collect our 2 draft sets. We still had to wait for KYT, whose team was 11-3 at this point and had a real chance to finish high in the tournament. His team finished a heartbreaking 5th place, with the top 4 making the cut. With that, we had to make the drive back home, since we all had to work Monday morning. Getting back home at 2:30am was no picnic after such an intense weekend, but it was worth it.

Props

Jeffrey “Skrat” Casselman: For basically carrying the team, crushing games left right and center.

KYT: Congrats again on the sick run. 5th place!

Our round 1 opponents Eric, Brian and Andrew, who started the event 1-2, and casually went on to plow their way to a 10th place finish.

Amanda Stevens: For finding us the best emergency teammate possible. If anything gets Amanda’s seal of approval, you know it’s legit.

Michael McCliment: For showing genuine concern for Olivia, whom he doesn’t even know. (For the record, Olivia’s doing fine.)

And finally, Linda Wang: Thank you again for teaming up with us and going to battle with us in the GP. Those who thought they could get free wins off of you were in for a surprise. Keep on smiling, and don’t ever stop being you.

Slops

When we first met Linda, her confidence wasn’t the greatest. Why? Because she had been told repeatedly that she’s a bad player by local players in her community. She said that where she plays, if she makes a mistake there are people that yell at her when she makes a play error. I’m sure this is not a unique case, but is this really how our community is trying to foster growth?

Here we have a relatively new player, of course they’re going to make mistakes. It’s called gaining experience, deal with it. To those who berate others for their misplays, I’m sure you didn’t start out as good as you think you are right now. Everyone is going to miss triggers, keep sketchy hands, make bad blocks, mis-register a deck, you name it. The pros are pros because they tend to commit these errors the least.

If you see someone make a play error, there’s two ways of going about it. You can belittle them and call them a bad player and ask why they did that in a condescending manner, something Linda was on the receiving end quite a bit, to the point where I felt she might be conditioned into actually thinking she was a bad player. OR you can appeal to their intelligence and present your point of view and how you think the optimal play should have gone down. Then, if they choose to listen and learn from you or not, that’s their choice, but the decision on becoming a better player belongs to the player, not you.

The Magic community isn’t some old-boy’s-club where you snub or kick down any newcomer who’s trying to get into the game. We need to get rid of this stigma where “bad players” should just get yelled at. They want to be better players too. And if they don’t, just leave them be, but don’t foster negativity in the community, it’s not good for anybody. [/rant]

Providence was truly an amazing weekend, and it wasn’t just because of the tournament. After all, those were just games. The true gem in the weekend was the friendships that we forged so quickly with people who share a common interest. I can say that this story will trump any other Magic-related story that I have experienced to date.

Thanks for reading,

Barry Hum