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Main » Articles » Grand Prix Anaheim

Grand Prix Anaheim

Adam Styborski
Posted on May 26, 2012
 Reddit

The “coverage” here isn’t what you’ll find on DailyMTG.com’s official Grand Prix coverage. It certainly isn’t a live feed of matches and commentary from the site. This is something a little different.

Just like many of the articles you find on Gathering Magic.

What I mean is this: I’m sharing things that you won’t find in the traditional coverage. It’s stories of what an everyman can do at an event, the discussions and personalities that you can’t find at a local game store, and the awesome little things that make a Grand Prix much more than a pile of players playing for victory.

The sections will be brief, to the point, and entertaining—at least when I can be. I hope you’ll agree on all three.

Please don’t hesitate to tweet @GatheringMagic or @the_stybs with feedback, questions, and suggestions, and longer replies can be added in the comments below. Thanks!

Day 2 – Sunday

Day 1 – Saturday

Day 0 – Friday

Day 2 — Sunday

Commander, Block, and Crushed by a Kid

If you don't remember Jake from yesterday's cube session, go check Drafting with Stybs from the link above.

So you're ready? Alright. That ""little kid" absolutely housed me in a Winchester Draft. Maybe it was a fluke, or perhaps he didn't draft the previous day's deck as well, but his Jund-color Sprout Swarm mostrosity simply demolished me.

It was sweet. I wish I had picked up and played Magic as sharp as he did. and I think most of you wish you would have too.

But not all my games ended in losses. Matt came up with the "Raisin Brand"/"Angel Reanimator" Innistrad Block Constructed deck. Since I didn't have anything comparable, I pulled together this 40 card red deck from a portion of my pauper cube.

"Stybs's Pauper Red Deck Wins"

So we sit down and play a game. My deck versus his. What do you think the first result was?

Yep. Getting him down to nine life then, running Incinerate, into morbid Brimstone Volley, into a "free" Fireblast can win games. The rubber match was very close, with my ability to burn him out falling short by just two life.

Did I mention he defeated Owen Turtenwald 2-0 in a match just the day before? Red Deck Wins indeed.

One of the last games I played was against Whit with a sweet Kresh the Bloodbraided Commander deck.

 

 

With my Ghave, Guru of Spores deck at hand we began to battle. I played Phyrexian Reclamation, he played Phyrexian Reclamation. He brings a Woodfall Primus back from the dead, I end up discarding my own. He begins to nip at my life total, I cast Hornet Queen to nip right back.

His Kresh had a very similar to philosophy to my own, partially because my first Commander deck was a Kresh deck as well. After wailing on each other for nearly 40 minutes, his Oblivion Stone reset us back to the start. I called it a draw to keep the line moving, but getting to see a similar deck philosophy in action was an awesome experience.

Thanks Whit!

And, finally, this happened.

 

No comment.

Artist Love

I love Magic artists. I collect an artist proof from every artist I can meet, have as many of the foils in my cube and Commander Box signed by artists as I can, and I assiduously tip every artist for every signing. It's "free" for you, but have you ever tried to signed thousand of small card every day for two or three days?

 

 

Artists deserve your respect and compensation, at the very least.

But what made today special was that they were asked if they would kindly come in early so that judges, staff, and others critical to the in-the-moment operations of the event had a chance to greet and experience the artists. They all obliged. In fact, I wouldn't have had any cards signed at all had I not risen early too.

As a Pro Tip, getting to the site early with a specific effort to queue for the artists is the most efficient way to maximize your signatures. Terese Neilsen, rightfully so, had a long queue every day. It's impossible to get everything signed, but choosing the best, choosing to be early, and choosing to be polite all goes a long way in ensuring your favorite artist will consider attending a future event.

Day 1 – Saturday

Eating with Giants

While I usually find awesome people to grab dinner with, the Godards were kind enough to do this for me Saturday night. The Magic Show himself Evan Erwin and Magic Rules Manager Matt Tabak, as well as all four artists, were the guests.

And me. I guess I'm important somehow too.

Among all these giants of their craft, Godards included, I was privileged to be merry and and converse. From Evan and Matt came an endless series of jokes and wordplay, each pass outdoing the last. The creative quartet of Martina Pilcerova, rk post, Daarken, and Terese Neilsen added a layer of off-the-wall excitement.

I mean, I ordered this:

 

 

My choices of fried tofu with steamed broccoli and garlic-sauteed spinach were "dangerous healthy," as described by Mr. Tabak. Everything we shared at, from coconut melon shrimp to extra spice beef and broccoli, was fantastic. But the converations made were better.

I don't mean to #SickBrag my dinner, but the point is this: when you're tavelling for events, making new friends, and connecting with folks you've only tweeted or friended on Facebook, make the time at night to celebrate. You're playing Magic among a huge community, in a city you need to go see. At the very least, find a decent meal and set your cards down for an hour.

My only regrets are when I didn't join a dinner. I hope you never feel the same, so don't let it happen

Drafting Pauper Cube with Stybs

As you may have heard, I have a pauper cube that I really, really enjoy. Naturally, given the open option to spellsling anything want, I chose to set up Winchester Draft sets of my cube.

It’s was as awesome as hoped.

I got three drafts in late Saturday afternoon – after spending most of the morning catching up on Friday’s update. Playing, writing, and sleeping are mutually exclusive activities. To help spread the love and ensure I could give out many booster packs, I ran a deal where people waiting around could take a picture of the spellslinging, tweet it mentioning so, then visit the CoolStuffInc booth to claim a pack of Avacyn Restored.

A free pack for a quick tweet was similarly awesome as hoped.

 

 

 

 

Some of those candid shots of me aren't very nice. However, here are the four players I got to battle through three drafts, each with a very nice picture.

 

 

Charlie is a competitive player who ran into a little bad luck in the main event. Despite that, his attitude and draft skills were spot on. The pile came up red and green over and over, resulting in his sharp picks ups for removal an my late switch into the same colors.

It turns out when you both draft the same colors, the deck with better removal and creatures will win. Nice job, Charlie!

 

 

This is a face you’ll find familiar. Fellow cube aficionado Evan Erwin was on site for the Grand Prix and wanted to battle. How could I decline?

I fell into another red-green deck with several ramp spells, leading to the real ultimate end boss of pauper Ulamog's Crusher. However, Evan had drafted a blue-black control deck and, despite getting to Crusher him to death in one game, easily beat me in the other two.

 

 

It probably doesn’t help that I threw away all my burn spells trying to kill his Halimar Wavewatch. In our grudge match that night the circumstances would reverse when his Fireball for four on my Coalition Flagbearer was countered by a revealed Momentary Blink.

He’s still the better player by far. Thanks again, Evan!

 

 

Jake was really excited to jump in and Winchester Draft. In fact, he regularly did so with some of his friends! We moved through the draft quickly, and he finished building his deck in record time. No sooner we start he had to leave: it was Round 6 and he was still playing in the main event.

Freaking awesome.

 

Cesar stepped up to the plate, but Jake’s white-green deck just wasn’t enough to my ramp-to-go-over-the-top green-blue deck. End of turn Elephant Ambush into flashing it back is pretty awesome.

Thanks for jumping in Cesar!

Day 0 – Friday

What does a DCI Scorekeeper do?

Late-night dinners are a usual part of my process for attending Grands Prix. I catch people after events end, which is when everyone has time. It’s hard to have a nice dinner between late rounds. It’s also when plenty of Draft action happens.

 

 

Along with Glenn and his wife Jody, I had the pleasure of some IHOP with DCI scorekeeper Nick Fong. Nick, if you’re unfamiliar with him, is one of the best scorekeepers in Magic. He’s been scorekeeper for numerous Pro Tours, and he is routinely given accolades for his efforts.

Scorekeeping is one of the most critical functions of a large event. It consists of entering and handling all results from matches within DCI software. If that doesn’t sound important, understand this: When there is an error at a small event, such as Friday Night Magic, repairing or resolving the issue delays one or two dozen people. Magnify the volume by up to two orders of magnitude to get to the size of the Grand Prix. And when potentially a thousand or more players have to wait through error resolution, the time lost is enormous.

At even higher levels, errors tarnish or create unfortunate confusion for high-level players who shouldn’t need to worry at all about accurate results handling. The head judge of Grand Prix: Anaheim, Toby Elliot, vouched that the most destructive thing that can happen at an event is for scorekeeping to go awry. The longer errors go unnoticed, and the more often they occur, the more an event deteriorates.

Nick Fang doesn’t let the happen. And even though you may never see him at an event, you should thank him for giving many of the biggest shows the unnoticed polish required to move hundreds or thousands of players through the system, one game at a time.

You notice every time something goes wrong, so make sure to appreciate when everything goes right.

Avacyn Restored 2HG with team GatheringMagic.com

There are always fun side events at Grands Prix, and Anaheim delivered in spades. One of the features of the weekend was the presence of Chase the Foils events that gave a promotional foil card to every participant and an additional foil for every match win through Swiss play.

Since I’m a fan of all things shiny, I grabbed West Coast UCLA attendee and site writer Jules Robins for some Two-Headed Giant Sealed action. He’s a fun guy, studies physics and game design, and is a much sharper player than you’d think. I was thrilled to see what team GatheringMagic.com could to!

 

 

Unfortunately, we were handicapped from the start. While our pool features Avacyn, Angel of Hope, Bruna, Light of Alabaster, Spirit Away, and Devastation Wave, our early 1- and 2-drops were left lacking. In fact, there were only five creatures at converted mana cost 2 in our entire eight-pack pool.

The guys across from us had the Entreat the Angels special. It’s always how it is at Sealed events.

My top-heavy W/U deck promised a powerful endgame, but Jules’s 5-drop-packed R/G special had a tough time getting us to that point. We weren’t optimistic, but we did find the fun in every game. And I apologize for this, but I forgot to write down and photograph our opponents. However, they were all awesome.

Avacyn, Angel of Hope
The first round featured me keeping a three-land hand and then never seeing another one for the dozen turns it took our opponents to kill us. It was our fastest match of the night, and even thought it was a fast loss, there isn’t much to do when you hit mana screw. We had early plays and we fought hard, but revamping our decks due to some randomness wasn’t the right call—so we didn’t make it. There’s always that temptation in Sealed events; don’t fall to it.

The second round was a really fun back-and-forth match. With about twenty minutes left in the round, Jules and I were riding high against our opponents, one of whom was stuck on all Forests in a decidedly G/U deck. Even without drawing any Forests for the rest of the game, they battled us back to take us to time. With a board full of fatties on both sides, and my deck failing to cough up any of the late bombs, it appeared we would draw.

What we didn’t know was that there are only three additional turns after time is called in Two-Headed Giant, rather than the usual five. At the end of the third extra turn, Jules and I couldn’t finish our opponents off, though they were left in dire straits. With an act of generosity, they conceded to us so we’d have a match win for prizes. I apologize, again, that I didn’t take down your names, but Jules and I really appreciated that. It ended up being our only match win.

The judge did share with us that you guys earned your win in the last round. Nice job!

Killing Wave
Round 3 was an epic game but for entirely different reasons. We hit the end game, and I got to play both Bruna, Light of Alabaster and Avacyn, Angel of Hope. Jules landed a Vigilante Justice after I cast Devastation Tide to slow the game down. It sounds like we rocked it out, right?

Our opponents had plenty of firepower that perfectly fought what we did. Wolfir Silverheat, Triumph of Ferocity, three Death Wind, Divine Reflection, and Ulvenwald Tracker all together tore our position apart repeatedly. Avacyn even fell to Killing Wave. It was still a fun game, but losing to a better-constructed-via-card-quality W/U deck and an overloaded-with-removal B/G deck is how those types of Sealed matches should go.

We split the cards after the event—I kept Avacyn and our unplayed Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded, and Jules received everything else. We each collected our hard-earned pack of Avacyn Restored and bonus foil, a Glistener Elf to go alongside our Dismember participation card, and we parted for the night. He was going for glory in another event later that morning, and I was headed out for a quick bite. But playing with Jules was the kind of fun I was hoping to have, and even through our poor pool and unfavorable variance, Jules and I kept the joking and smiling along the way.

That’s the kind of Magic-playing partner one should always seek out. Thanks, Jules!

Why CoolStuffInc is important to Gathering Magic

CoolStuffInc is the exclusive online retailer that supports Gathering Magic. But there’s a little more to the answer than that.

Before leaving to join the DailyMTG.com team at Wizards, Trick ran Gathering Magic and worked for CoolStuffInc. He built Gathering Magic from the ground up, from its ManaNation beginnings through passing the baton to me, and he left an indelible mark on everyone on the CoolStuffInc and Gathering Magic teams.

Without forging that fantastic relationship while building the foundation of limitless potential, Gathering Magic wouldn’t be here today. CoolStuffInc’s support is unwavering, and it gives Gathering Magic great freedom to share Magic content of all types. We’re not just here to “sell cards,” but to provide a dynamic experience that honestly shares a little bit of everything that’s a part of Magic.

And in the interest of full disclosure, it is helpful for you to support Gathering Magic by visiting and purchasing things from CoolStuffInc. We link to cards and other Magic products, but if you enjoy other types of games, such as Ascension, Dominion, and hundreds of other board and strategy games, we encourage you to use CoolStuffInc to pick them up.

From personal experience, I began using CoolStuffInc in 2006 when I ordered booster boxes for casual Drafts at my college. They’re been excellent to me for most of a decade, and I wouldn’t proudly share that they make Gathering Magic happen unless I could stand by their service. I even hit the top level of their customer rewards tiers before becoming Gathering Magic Content Manager.

Just as for Gathering Magic, they’ll help individual customers like you, too. Whether it’s online or at their dealer booth at Grand Prix events, be sure to mention that we sent you. They’ll be glad to make the Magic happen for you, too.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Grand Prix

If you follow my words of subjective wisdom on DailyMTG.com, you know I really enjoy attending a Grand Prix. They are the largest public Magic events, filled with players of all types and skill levels, stocked with dealers and traders, and loaded with opportunities usually unavailable anywhere else.

Glenn Godard, one of the fearless faces behind Sunmesa Events, asked me to come to Grand Prix: Anaheim as a personality—a spellslinger, writer, and general attendee all-in-one. Putting all three into it was going to be a challenge since it’s hard to do it all. Most players have their hands full just playing.

Letting people down isn’t something I like to do.

So I prepared to run the Grand Prix gauntlet with a few things that, as just a player, would give me the extra time I needed for everything else.

  • I packed light—just one Commander deck, my Cube, and cards I wanted to sell to dealers.

  • I brought only a carry-on bag. No checked luggage meant no waiting for bags and no bags to be lost.

  • I chose the events I wanted. A Grand Prix is a buffet of events, so I chose only the most exciting for me.

Anyone can prepare in the same way by paring down to the basics, streamlining the bag one uses to tote cards around, and by taking the time to check the public events schedule. Of course, if you’re in the main events, there’s even less you need to worry about.

Speaking of worry, one change Sunmesa put into place was the use of wrist bands attached to players and their belonging. It’s was used at Grand Prix: Salt Lake City by its tournament organizer, StarCityGames, and it suppressed some theft. Things went missing, but wholesale bag lifting was very small.

That’s perhaps the best reason of all to pack smart for a Grand Prix: protecting yourself so you can have a great time is the best thing any Magic player can do. Prepare accordingly. It’s worked for me!

TAGS articles, grand prix, coverage, event, current events, adam styborski, jules robins, recap, grand prix anaheim

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