NPH FTW! (That's New Phyrexia, NOT Neil Patrick Harris...)

It was a pretty gloomy weekend - the forecast called for rain, rain, and more rain. So, at the very, very last-minute (mostly to avoid mind-numbing boredom and cabin fever) I decided to tag along with Myles to the New Phyrexia, Magic: The Gathering (a competitive deck-building card game, for all you non-nerds) release event at Heavy Support Games. We already had plans in the west end in the evening, so it made pretty good sense. If I dropped after the first few rounds, I could always meet up with my friend early and wait for Myles to finish.

Let me get one thing straight: I don't really play a lot of Magic. Myles tries his best to teach me, and in the last 3.5 years, I've played in a total of 3 events - the first one when I had only been playing for about 3 weeks. I only like to play limited, and even then, only sealed (as opposed to draft). But, over the years, I have watched a lot of Magic being played, especially the last two sets: Scars of Mirrodin and Mirrodin Beseiged.

Oh boy...this won't be very interesting to most people, so I will keep it simple.

I opened a lot of really good cards, so the deck pretty much built itself. For the sake of the two or three people who read this and know MTG, these were my bombs:

Like I said, the deck built itself: these were no-brainers, and I just filled the rest up with creatures and removal, plus I splashed white for an Arrest and a Divine Offering. I'm not the most confident player but the people who play at Heavy Support are generally really nice. They are pretty patient and let me take back mistakes (of which I make many) and they are usually gracious in defeat. This was most certainly the case on Saturday when, against all odds, I ended up going 4-0 in the first 4 rounds. There was only one person who seemed to get frustrated playing against my deck and who complained a little about me playing too slowly. Our match never went to time, or even the five-minute warning, so I was pretty sure I wasn't THAT slow. He was just frustrated, which is understandable.

In the final round, I was paired down against someone with a 2-2 record. That was a bit odd, since I probably should have been playing at least a 3-1 or another 4-0 (like Myles!!). I spoke with the guy running the event and found out that I was listed as 3-1 (he told me that the guy who complained about me said that HE won, which was not true...although, at one point I thought he conceded, so I started to scoop up my cards. Whoops! We played it out and I won so I'm pretty sure it was just an honest mistake). Myles and one other person had 4-0 records and agreed to split, giving them a final record of 4-0-1, which meant that I actually had a chance to win the whole damn thing! Alas, my luck ran out in the final match where I either never drew my bombs, or the guy had an answer to them. I'm also sure I made a lot of mistakes because he was pushing the pace a little which kinda made me nervous.

In the end, since I lost to someone with a much lower record than mine, my 4-1 record put me at around 5th or 6th place - enough to win 3 packs (a far cry from the 15 or so I could have won). But, it was still a pretty good feeling to do so well, and it was certainly unexpected. Of the 7 people in our group, 5 of us finished in the top 6! I think that I must learn through osmosis and just hanging out with this particular group of nerds has made me a better Magic player, whether I like it, or not!

And, slowly, I am starting to like it...