»4th February 2012

Dark Ascension

Despite having just shook off the hangover from the drinking session with Rory on the 29th, New Year's Eve had once again arrived and I felt the need to do something besides sit in and get drunk on my own. It got to about 7pm and I thought, 'yeah I really ought to sort something out.' So I went over to JK's... to play Magic Cards. Oh yes, I am cool.

Despite not being able to get drunk since I wanted to wake up on New Year's Day in my bed rather than on JK's sofa, the evening was highly entertaining. Besides the Magic ('what the fuck does this blue card actually do?' 'I can't believe how overpowered this is.') we watched Jool's Hootenanny, which is hands down the best thing on TV at New Years, despite the preponderance of R&B bands--Jessie 'don't move too quick or your wig'll fall off' J and Cyndi 'ooh she looks a bit rough' Lauper both felt that the only way to be taken seriously on Later... was to go in packing an R&B session band. The result of all this was that I was suddenly interested in Magic again.

I made various enquiries and couldn't work out what the modern alternative to the old 75-card tournament decks were. Eventually I settled on a 2011 Deck Builder pack, which despite a severe lack of rares, seemed a pretty good deal. I found out that Travelling Man run a Friday Night Magic event. As you should be well aware, I really have fuck all better to do on a Friday night, so I resolved to attend the midnight Dark Ascension pre-release event. That's right, my social calendar is so free, that playing Magic at midnight with a bunch of strangers in a comic book shop is about the coolest thing I can muster. Of course, I'd have a pretty hard time following up the Skeletonwitch gig with something as cool.

I turned up with a shambles of a black/blue deck, a bottle of Lidl cola and a pen and paper. Like I know what you're supposed to bring to these things? I sat nervously on the first chair that was free on both sides and started to look in on an ongoing multiplayer game. My complete lack of Magic small-talk was a slight hindrance.

Eventually the rubbish deck made a decent icebreaker ('Oh, use my deck. It's really good. It has cards.') It managed to win the match and probably wasn't as bad as I had thought (in my solitaire games, it had barely been able to win against a deck comprised of all the green cards I had got in the deckbuilder pack.) At some point before the event started proper I had to sign up for a DCI account. This was slightly unnverving as it felt like some contract of commitment to another rather expensive pastime.

There were only a few people when I arrived.

At midnight, a bunch of Dark Ascension (the new Magic set) booster packs were brought round. I eagerly opened one of mine, whoops, turns out you're supposed to wait until you've been given all your boosters or something [shrug]. The format would be a regular draft, event where you are given a bunch of booster packs and then have to form a deck with them to play. There'd be five rounds, best of three each time. In addition to this, some players were given monster stickers, and whenever they beat someone who wasn't a monster, they'd be monstered too. At the end of the night, it'd be seen whether the humans or monsters had won or something. This never happened.

What followed was a series of Magic games against various people who were all better--or at least more experienced--at Magic than me. I was soundly trounced in the first round by some guy who had managed to draw a mythic rare (i.e. very, very good/wildly overpowered) card in his booster packs. I think I maybe did 8 damage to him across both games. He would later go on to claim 3rd place across all the matches (there were 35 people there for the start, so that was no mean feat). Thankfully, he was kind enough to have a look at my deck afterwards and make suggestions. Turns out I'd managed to draw one of the best cards you can get in draft, a Vampire that can make other vampires and turn into a bigger vampire. I had not included it on the basis it was one of the gimmicky new 'flip' cards and looked like it would be a nuisance. Naturally, this went straight into my deck. So with my first result ending in a loss, and with the other guy being one of the five players who started the night monsterised: I was given a zombie sticker and finally had an excuse for my shambling performance.

I first got into Magic in Year 7 when I saw some Year 11s playing it. Going into Leeds to buy Magic Cards back when Travelling Man was in the Corn Exchange was really cool. At the time I liked them more for the artwork and the collecting aspect than for the game itself. This is what I mean when I say that land art peaked in fifth edition.

The next few games were a mixture of wins, draws and losses. I talked at length about how much I liked the old Magic cards (turns out the cards I got when I was thirteen are all collector's items now and belong in a museum, which is apparently where I also belong. 'When I was your age it was just trees around here!' [...] 'When I was your age it was just basic snow-covered lands around here!' [...] 'When I was your age artifacts were brown!'

I managed to get myself into the final round with an unimpressive score of two losses and two draws. In my defence, one of those draws was against the only girl who had bothered to turn up to the event (ensuring it wasn't a total sausage-fest.) She was either deliberately stalling for draws or really was taking all that time in her turns to plan her next great move.

The final round was against one of the guys I had spoken to first, he too had two losses and two draws, but was still a human, so was fighting for his humanity. Apparently the pairing was on account of a Swiss draw system(???) being used. By this point, I had made every effort to stay down in the basement, which was cooler in both temperature and company. I made various jokes about how it only seemed cold to warm-blooded humans and suited my undead tendencies fine. That's right, I had started making Magic jokes about being a zombie...

It's kind of hard to portray the drama of a card game. Also, we weren't all deep in thought like that. It's just that I can only draw solemn contemplation faces.

The first two matches had been a win and a loss. So everything was coming down to the wire. The final match saw us both take lots of damage. In the final round, I was down to 1 life and he was on 2, I was in the slightly stronger position, having more creatures in play, but he had totally ruined my shit with some ludicrous 8/8 flying trample or something, which I had only just managed to defeat. Whilst I looked in desperation at a bunch of cards in my hand which would not be able to win me the game in the next turn, since he still had a decent defence, he too was clutching at straws. 'Surely I can flashback something from my graveyard... Nope.' With nothing left to lose I looked through my own graveyard for a flashback card and managed to find a card that would make one of my creatures unblockable, enough to win the game, assuming he couldn't kill me first. He had nothing left, and by this point it was 5am and fatigue was taking its toll. My turn came and despite the tremendous cheapness of an unblockable attack, I had me my first win of the night, and my opponent lost his humanity on the final round. This was a ludicrously dramatic game and couldn't have been much closer. Naturally, I was well pleased.

It might be easier to imagine it ending like this.

After some frantic tidying up, and giving back of the basic land cards, the results were announced. First place got a prize of 8 booster packs, second place got 4 and I think third got an extra 2. Everyone else got one. I quick-marched down to the bus station to discover the 229 I thought would run at 6:00 didn't exist, though that didn't matter since there was a faster 254/255 at ten past anyway. The guy I beat in the last round and his friends were in the station as well, waiting for a taxi or something, so I talked with them until they left.

Walking back down from Gomersal was ridiculously cold. Oh look, here's another walking photo.

Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!