So I’ll actually start off a little before Zendikar, the place that got everybody pumped about it, which was PAX 2009 (Penny Arcade Expo). This was my 4th straight year going down to seattle with my buddy Peter to stay with his Buddy Dan in Seattle for a weekend of gaming and lanning goodness. This year we had got Nelson to be our third which was cool, since we were roommates at the time. This did mean we were going for more of a magic filled pax, but that was something I hadn’t tried before. The big magic draw was MTGO Live, which had 4 heats top 2 advancing to the finals. Prizes were $250, $500, $1000 and $2000 for t8, t4, 2nd and 1st respectively for the finals. Me and nelson both got in the first heat (so did peter, but lacking a modo account he passed). Being M10 draft, I opened up platinum angel and then got passed tendrils of corruption as the best card in the next pack. For those of you that know me, I was repping green very hard at the time, usually drafting it through 2-3 people, but still ending up with a good deck, with UG being the bet in my eyes. I took the tendrils and committed my self to the only other plan I’d liked personally, which was mono black. I ended up with a fairly sick mono black deck featuring at least 3 tendrils (I think it was 4) and the obligatory nightmare. I won my first 3 games with ease and then ended up getting dominated in game 4 until I windmilled the platinum angel into play while hes at 30 and I’m dead the next turn. Interesting thing about this draft for me was the amount of doom blades I passed for tendrils. My opp saw me mono black in g1 and likely sided the ones he had out, which meant he had no answer for the angel in g2, which took him down from 30 while I was at a healthy neg 10. Nelson made rd2 also, but lost to Wil the judge from van, who then scooped us into the finals. Nelson tried twice more but ended up getting baneslayer’d out in his last attempt. This plus a disastrous mini mater event that took forever to get going, had Nelson pretty down on mtg. Luckily, Wizards had setup their presence in the convention with tasks to get you into a secret magic party. 2 free drinks and we ended up sitting in a booth with planechase just chilling. While we were playing tom lapille and another guy from r&d whos name I now forget came and talked to us about planechase and other current sets. This party also had us seeing some spoilers for zen spoiling fetchlands possibly a planeswalker and a bunch of landfall junk. Nelson’s faith in magic restored, I promptly scrubbed out of the finals, despite draftin a pretty solid u/g deck. I won one game in a great comeback with a series of sweet topdecks. Just don’t pass overrun and then go green (even though the cards were sweet after). Still $250 is the most money most of us have ever won playing magic so I was still happy.

A couple weeks before this we saw Victoria do well in another ptq over in van, with Jono and The Bert making their first ptq top 8’s, with Robin and Markus getting in there as well (I think) and Bert took it down. So Victoria was doing great in the magic scene again with sage having q’d last year, now bert, and some money finishes at gp tacoma. I however had stopped playing competitive decks at ptqs for a couple years, always taking some rogue deck took U/G time warps to that standard ptq bert won, yet somehow lost to a fog. I was more into ptqs and gps for the road trip and good times with friends more than the actual drive to win anymore.

I preordered a box of Zendikar mostly because of the fetches, I ended up with 1 which was pretty disappointing. There was a sealed ptq around now that all I did in it was be ty rob’s first loss so jono could finish him off in the last round. Jono and Josh made t8 which was pretty sweet again. I was still playing fnm’s and drafts a decent amount at this point not sure what I was originally playing, but Bert had been running a polymorph list on mtgo and doing fairly well with it. I ended up first trying it on mtgo, and running pretty hot with it. Ended up getting me quite a few free drafts and a few ptqs as well. Did well at fnm as well. Once worldwake had come out though, Jace had hurt the deck a lot and U/W was not a good matchup, but by playing 4 jace and khlani garden, the deck may have gotten a little stronger. Was a cool deck and I’d love to play something like it again (maybe mass poly this year who knows). Also got a little payback for my Zendikar Box being crappy, opened 2 Jace’s out of about 10 packs of Worldwake, which helped me have some for poly.

Was also getting pretty into the highlander scene for a while here, splitting with robin at gottacon and taking one yj tournament down, until josh realized he’d found his dream format and crushed everyone forever (only marginal exaggeration). The cost and time needed to put a successful deck together was too much for me and I lost interest.

The next big event I played in was the extended PTQ and with very little testing I decided to play living end, based on seeing it played on modo and I liked the idea of Phase 3, which is when you just play your big stupid cycling donks and beat down. This tournament saw Nelson fall just short of the promise land for the 4th time. I ended up going 5-2 in this tournament and thought there might still be some competitive life left in me after this.

It was around the time this ptq happened that I left my job because Money Mart is a terrible place to work. I stayed unemployed until mid June, so this caused me to scale back big time in magic. I traded to make poly into u/g poly (RIP dragon fodder) with emrakul once rise of the drunk-drazi came out. I played this set in two prereleases in limited and that was all. Played quite a few fnm’s during this time, but U/G poly just wasn’t quite as good against fnm level decks. I ended up missing playing in the standard ptq regionals and SCG 10k Seattle, which I wanted to play some competitive legacy in for the first time. On the plus side Nelson qualified for nationals, so that was cool. With my new job I really haven’t had a chance to play much magic, as I was usually working sunday and friday night and I am still really broke.

I wasn’t planning on going to gp portland, but when plans to go to PAX 2010 fell through because of work, I decided this would be my fall roadtrip this year. This tournament ended up getting me excited about magic again, as have the scars of mirrodin previews. Making day 2 definitely stopped my original plan of just drinking and having a good plan until Sunday night, but I also got to play the reigning player of the year and US national champ, which was a cool experience. I do plan on posting the videos I made between arounds and after day1 and also make some more for my day 2 matches, but I decided to do this first (because I wrote it at work). I’m still super poor since I’m finishing my degree and the one course is hurting my work schedule, but I do want to somehow go to the next ptq, right before a planned trip to Mexico. So this cycle in magic interest was quicker than normal, going from playing the most on mtgo I ever have to barely playing at all, to wanting to get back into the game all in a year. Hopefully the next year keeps me in more, but we’ll have to wait and see. Good friends are my number one draw for Magic and I don’t think that will ever change.