What a weekend. If you follow my twitter (@kellyreid), you'll already know what I'm about to say. Grand Prix: DC was an absolutely great event. Believe it or not, it was the first GP in which I had the opportunity to compete. Previous events have seen me rail-birding or just trading around the room and playing side-events, but this weekend, I wanted to show up and see if I could sling 'em with the best. Turns out I'm not so bad, but I've still got a long way to go.

At first glance, the venue looked to be an unimpressive vacant building in a suburban shopping center. When I heard Dulles Expo & Convention Center, my first thought was not "Former Home Depot", complete with "Garden & Patio Center turned gigantic empty smoker's porch" (which it was.) The last GP I attended was GP Chicago, which was held in a stunningly beautiful and modern hotel in the wealthy suburbs of the WIndy City. Cascading water features, plush carpeting, and gorgeous modernly-appointed rooms were in stark contrast to the bare, scarred concrete floors of the Dulles Expo.

The reason I say "at first glance" was because it didn't matter. My guess is that the folks at Dream Wizards got a really good price on the space due to its lack of frills, and at our core, we Magic players really don't go for the frills. It turned out to be one of the best tournament sites I've been to. Parking was ample, directly adjacent and free. Food options were infinite. Chick-Fil-A was the breakout joint of the tournament for me! The hall was expansive, easily accommodating the largest single Magic: The Gathering tournament in North America's history, and the hotels were all very close to the site. I balked a bit at the $35 entry fee to the main event, but the promo Umezawa's Jitte helped take the sting out of the cost to a degree (selling for up to $15 to the vendors.) Overall, it was definitely on the "plus" side as far as venues and events go, and my snap judgment of the space was quickly found to be in error. Well done, Dream Wizards.

The free market at these big events always takes on a life of its own. While the prices and demand are always grounded in outside prices, there are always certain cards that dealers don't bring enough of, or cards that are just too hot to keep in stock. Vengevine might have been the hardest card to get ahold of on the weekend, even when Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Gideon Jura were selling steadily. Some dealers didn't adjust their prices on Vengevine for a long time, and they were selling at $35 with great ease. Hotel lobbies often become the "other" dealer area (which is fine, as long as you're not on-site), and Vengevines were untouchable at The Wingate hotel. They sold easily for $50, and I had to borrow the playset I was using from my esteemed colleague Lauren Lee.

An aside about the on/off site selling; I got a lot of propositions on the floor of the main event to buy cards from me. As many of you know, I regularly carry a large stock of in-demand cards on my person. This usually leads to people asking to buy from me. While I know this goes on with regularity, and I don't ever hear of anyone getting caught and tossed out of the event, I choose to do the right thing and respect the rules of the tournament organizer. The dealers who sell on-site pay good money for their space, and with that comes what should ideally be a quasi-monopoly on the transacting of cash for cards. If you must transact business in cash, do so away from the venue out of respect for the hard-working guys in the booths. Hotel lobbies are perfect for this type of thing, since you are not interfering, breaking the rules, and you can often benefit dramatically from the time value of cardboard the night before the main event. Just don't ask me to sell you anything on-site, and I implore you to refrain from doing so with others while within the four walls of the event.

Lotus Cobra was somewhat challenging to find, but I managed to find my playset thanks to some heads-up play by Sam Black. They're only going for $10, which utterly baffles me. I feel like too many players invest with their hearts, not brains. Lotus Cobra premiered at $30 and began a sharp nose dive to its current price when it wasn't an auto-include in every single deck using Green cards. Maybe people are afraid to get burnt again, but he is seeing play now. I've been saying this all weekend, but I think the card has some room to grow. I videocasted after the third round of Day 1, saying that it would go to $20, but I redacted when I saw how many were in stock around the site soon thereafter. That said, I still believe it's at a slightly low price at the moment. Almost every green deck is running them, and with good reason. I have high hopes for our slithery buddy and I'm buying them aggressively. I'd suggest you do, too.

Sarkhan the Mad is about to see a lot more play. He was not seeing any until this weekend. Jund players realized how powerful he was in combination with the majority of their deck. He oddly provides the Jund decks with a wonderful suite of answers to the myriad problems it encounters. It lets you squeeze extra value from Vengevine, turn a late-game Cobra into an evasive win condition, and strips Baneslayer Angel of all its gamebreaking abilities. It also knocks off Eldrazi Conscription if you can manage to survive the first attack. By far the sickest play with Sarkhan is one that I attribute to Michael Jacob, who flashed me the tech between games while sitting beside him. He elaborated on it in an interview with Evan Erwin on which I eavesdropped - he seems to be a big fan of playing a Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund or two in his sideboard. Why? Well for one, it's basically a Searing Flesh that costs 4RGB, and two, it makes a really great story when you turn someone's Baneslayer into a Dragon, steal it, and kill them with it. Nice life, Mike. I'm gonna buy a couple copies of Karrthus just in case. Mike was splashing Black in Naya, actually, and the splash seemed to work out nicely for him.

Linvala, Angel of Stop-Pinging-My-Guys was a rising star this weekend. I personally believe the price jump on-site to be an aberration, and actually sold quite a few of mine to dealers at their newly elevated buy prices. We'll see if my guess was correct, but it was a popular sideboard option at the GP. Frankly, I wasn't impressed with Linvala one bit, but my deck also didn't require Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise to operate correctly. I did, however, run the Sparkmage/Collar package in my Jund sideboard, which made Linvala awkward at times. Most times however, she was just a Duress for 2WW that drew out a Terminate or Doom Blade. I am willing to be wrong here, but I think any residual price jump from this weekend's event is not permanent, so I'd use this as a chance to sell a few for +value.

Outside of slinging the trades, I had a chance to catch up with some of the great personalities of the game. I got to meet our lovely editor Trick Jarrett and film a video segment with him. I also got to do some podcasting with the Yo! MtG Taps crew, met the hard-working guys behind "0-2 Drop" and a myriad of other bloggers, Twitter friends, fans, and got a couple chats in with the enviable Pro community. I've got to say that I really adore how the Internet is draws the Magic community so close together. While there are still plenty of cliques, disparate groups, fan clubs and the like, it seems that more and more, people are focusing on coming together, sharing war stories, and having a great time playing the game we all love so much.

As I said, it was not my first GP by attendance but the just first one in which I played. For those curious as to whether this writer can actually play Magic, I started the day off with a single raiting-based bye and won my first 5 rounds thereafter, before dropping a match to the Jund mirror. I made multiple mistakes in Game 3 of that match, but I don't believe that I was ever really "in it". Game 1 was a write-down because I mulliganed, by necessity, to 4. Game 2 was a blowout in my favor; he didn't find green mana and I had threats for miles. Game 3 seemed to be decided on the die roll. He had Sarkhan the Mad on 5, as did I, and we both hit all land drops. His first play allowed him to run out the Planeswalker and make a Dragon, turning my Sarkhan from my best out to an almost-dead card. I most likely misplayed this game to a loss, but I felt like he was already too far ahead for it to have mattered much. By the time his Sarkhan died by drawing him a Sprouting Thrinax, I hadn't found removal for his Dragon. I thought my copy of the Mad Man would get me back in it, but when I tried to turn a Saproling into a Dragon, he showed me a Bolt, untapped, and killed me. My attempt to kill his Planeswalker with Hell's Thunder the previous turn was thwarted by a 5/5 Dragon in my way, which I somehow forgot had Flying. I threw away the Planeswalker-killing unearther for no reason and lost the match.

Despite my braindead suicide attack, I locked myself for Day 2 by beating Evan Erwin's Mythic deck in the following Round 8. Our pairing was unfortunate because we had played a handful of matches between rounds in which he absolutely demolished me. I also would have preferred not to have to deliver such a savage beating to one of my favorite members of the Magic community, but my deck, as it was wont to do, handed me some serious firepower in both games. Evan had me playing around Sovereigns, which he was bluffing, but when he topdecked it anyway, I felt like I had done the right thing. Regardless, Evan thankfully took his next match and locked up Day 2, while I got the raw deal in my draws against John Rolf playing some form of deck with Spreading Seas. My plays and my mulligans were tight; keeping a 3-lander with early action is rarely wrong. I did so both games and didn't see land 4 within any reasonable time frame. His island-making skills got the best of me! At least my deck chose to dump on me after I'd locked up Day 2. We had a laugh about it, which is important. Losing to a combination of variance and Islands will put even the most stoic player on some kind of a tilt, but I was still glowing from locking up my first Grand Prix Day 2.

Sunday was a debacle. My lack of sleep caught up with me, and while I routinely play and work on the 6 hours of sleep I got Saturday night, I was already Sleep Flow Negative since I'd been traveling all week and weekend. I was not able to play good Magic after Round 12, making very severe, basic errors despite my burning drive to put up a respectable finish. My only match win on the day was one in which my opponent received a game loss for tardiness - which is enforced to the second at the Professional REL. I made a series of horrible play mistakes that are far, far too embarrassing to admit on the Internet. Let's just say that Bloodbraid Elf costs four mana and Putrid Leech's mana cost is G/B not R/B. Yeah. That's why we sleep before events, children. I lost 2 of my Day 2 matches to Spreading Seas alone, which means that cutting Sedraxis Specter from my 75 was assuredly an error. I won my third match because of the aforementioned Game Loss penalty; there's no way I win the match if he's on time. My fourth match saw me lose all ability to play Magic. I screwed up some very basic plays and generally forgot the how to play the game. My opponent was skilled and cordial, but I was just totally gassed. It was my first two-day event and I really had no idea what a toll it would take. I'll know for next time, and won't make that mistake again.

This weekend really drove home the point that I have been pondering for a few weeks now.

Rares have basically become super Uncommons. The days of the $20 Rare are gone, replaced with $5-$10 Rares and $30+ Mythics. Jace, the Mind Sculptor is at an unprecedented high. Not even Tarmogoyf was $80 in Standard. Heck, 'Goyf was barely $80 for Extended season! We're about to see what happens when Mythic Rares rotate out of a format this autumn, and I'm going to keep looking at data to try to find some sort of precedent. As to be expected, it's all speculation at this point. My theory is that the Mythics that rotate but see play in Extended will take about a 25% dip, while those that do not will fall by 50% or more. 50% is the approximate decline that Lorwyn staples experienced upon rotation, and some of those cards approached Mythic Rare pricing. I've been saying it, but it bears repeating. It's almost getting too late to get max value for Shards block cards. A reader recognized me in DC and really made my day by telling me he really liked how my advice was always a step ahead.

I always try to be.

It's not always possible, and I can't call every play, but I try my best to get you guys the info you need as quickly as I can get it myself. This is one of those situations where you don't want to say "Well, no one else is selling Shards block stuff, why should I?" Be ahead of the game and get out soon. Once the decline starts, there's no stopping it. Join me next week, when I'll re-evaluate Rise of the Eldrazi's value-per-pack after GP DC has its effect on the market. See ya!