What a weekend! So much fun. Great games, good times with friends, laughs, bad beats amazing top decks, you know, a Grand Prix. This was my 6th (Philly, Lisbon, Atlantic City, Vegas, DC, and now Richmond) it was a paradise of gaming. Seriously I was never at a loss of things to do. And sometimes I had to sit down and rest. Magic can be a mentally exhaustive game. It’s nice to just chill out for a minute and relax.
I do that by looking through dealer foil binders. I have a weakness for foils. Especially if I can use them in my cube or my deck. So I like to find trinkets to take the edge off. Here’s my pick ups from the weekend.
Pretty sweet right. Some playables and some neat stuff for the cube.
Scouring the vendor table I happen over to Channel Fireball and see that they are taking in Cryptic Command for $50 in trade. $65 for the textless Foil! It’s time to find some high ticket item to port these into. $50 is really good and I don’t think they’ll stay there forever. I added a Verdant Catacombs and 3 Mistbind Cliques and picked up this bad boy!
That’s right, I’m working on a Vintage deck. I’m only 15 cards away… 9 of that is Power. The goal is to be able to Play in the Vintage Champs next year. My deck is Steel City Vault Ala Brian De Mars. It endeavors to play Time Vault and Voltaic Key in as short a time as possible then take all the turns. It’s super fast and plays plenty of disruption so it’s got a good chance against pretty much any deck in the field. The lines of play are CRAZY but it’s super fun.
So after that, I handed my trade binder over Paul, who was grinding tables and picking up random value in trades. Paul was able to get me a Mox Opal, a Volcanic Island, a Tropic Island, several Griselbrands and a ton of other little gems.
It was a pretty solid weekend. Hipsters put a couple of cats into the Second day, and one of the guys from our play test group (not ours per say but a group many of us tested with) made top 8!
How’d I do? 5-4 with a bye, so I broke even with Storm. I think I little more play testing would have helped. The games I won were either super close top decks or insane blowouts. The games I lost were close. I always got to try to go off at least once. I think Storm is really strong and thanks to it not making top 8 it’s safe to assume that it’ll stick around for another season. I have to say with 5 pod decks in the top 8, I’m glad I’m not invested in that deck.
I can’t wait til the next GP, not quite sure which one that is, but it’s likely to be a great time. For now, I’m mentally worn out. Maybe I’ll just play with this Vintage deck….