Hot damn! This past weekend was a crazy torrent of Magic: The Gathering, travel, gambling, and food. A year ago today I was only interested in three of those four pursuits. I never would have imagined that Magic could bring me to a place where I could enjoy all my favorite things. I’ve never been to Vegas before. I’ve never been to the desert. I played a lot of Magic, I got stuck in a bunch of airports. I’m exhausted, so here… look at the pretty pictures I took!
I love traveling. I don’t get to do it nearly enough. If you’d like to sponsor my new life as a vagabond traveling author, go ahead and private-message me. Here I was waiting for my traveling companions (some of whom can be spotted in this picture as I spy on them). We fly Virgin America to Las Vegas and it was an extremely pleasant experience.
See that mass of people in the background? Those were the lines for the artists. It’s amazing to me that these fantastic men and women who draw the pictures (you ignore) on your cards get the recognition they deserve! The other amazing sight was to look around and see how empty the Cashman Center was, and to realize every chair here would have a butt in it in due time. What you see here is a quarter of the size of the auditorium.
We stayed at the Wynn in Las Vegas. On the 54th floor! Holy crap, look at this view! Also, can we talk about what a waste having a lush golf course in the middle of the desert is?
I forgot how, uh… ornate casinos could be. A little tacky and overwrought, but sometimes you need to feel good about yourself. And what better way than to walk through a miniature flower-puffed, Christmas-lit, weirdo canopy?
Here’s my sealed pool. Hello friend, I can’t wait to meet you (postscript: Eh, you weren’t that great)! I ended up building a deck that relied on Thallids to stall until I was able to ramp into casting huge creatures. But it didn’t go very well. I went 3-2-1 before I finally dropped to play Modern Masters Mini-Masters, which may be my all-time favorite format now.
Ooooh. Night Vegas. As seen from my hotel window (don’t go out into night Vegas).
And finally I ended up back at the Error-port. Everything that could have gone wrong with my flight home did, as flights home are wont to do.
Other highlights included all of the insanely dank meals we ate, my going 5-3 in a Standard tournament side event (go RG Aggro! Smash!), and getting to see/hang out with all the Twenty Siders and Hipsters who came out of the woodwork to come to Vegas. It was fun, I played about as well as you’d expect for a first-time GP experience, and now I’m going back to bed.