Saturday Locals Recap 2-18-2012

For not actually playing in a tourney, I had a lot of fun today. Basically Danny and my plan for the day was to simply drive to the various locals and try to plus off the ban list as much as we could. Zach had wanted to play in an actual tourney but it simply wasn't going to work out today since I had to drive all the way to the northside to pick up cards I ordered for Ryan and meet him at downtown Uncle's by 1. So I get delayed due to having to drop off keys for my wife (Ace hardware messed up the copies I had made) and I get to Danny's around 11:15. He's organizing cards and we talk about the ban list a little, the potentials of 2 E-Tele in the format, and how Konami has clearly used the ban list for marketing this time around. We also kill time as Zach gets ready to be picked up. I think we leave around 11:30, get Zach, then drive to the post office. I grab some packages from my PO box and we go to Jack in the Box to pick up some brunch.

We get to Uncle's right at 1 and the parking situation is ridiculous but we finally find a place to park. I don't have any change on me and Danny had like a quarter so the plan was to go in, exchange a dollar for some change and feed the meter. Ryan meets us outside, we go in and I give Ryan the Laggia and Dolkka. I completely forget about the meter thing until Danny reminds me, he has a little more change and then Ryan gives me 50 cents and this random kid gives me like 20 cents, lol awesome. I don't make much effort to do trades and I want to eat my food, and Shiggs remembered to bring his Magic uncommons and I pick out a few things I wanted and I end up trading a Gold Sarc for them.

As I'm sitting there beside Danny, he looks at "Blood Mefist guy"'s binder and notice he has 3 Maxx C chilling in his binder. [I call him Blood Mefist guy because I don't remember his name and he ordered a Blood Mefist for $500 just for the hell of it.] At first he values them at $60 each, I whisper to Danny that it's a good deal and I'd do it if I had the money, but Danny is able to get him to sell all 3 for $150 since he's a "family man" lol. Danny only had like $130 on him so I lend him $20 to help seal the deal. Awesome plusses in that one since I really feel it'll be at minimum a $90 card by the time next format gets going. After like 10 minutes or so it kinda dies down and I get antsy to leave because I really feel like I'm "on the short bus" with the people all around me if you know what I mean lol. I'm also almost out of parking meter time so we gotta go. Zach's finishing up some purchase or something so I tell them I'll wait in the car. The person parked behind me is literally like 3 inches behind me and the person right in front of me is very close too. I'm like well how the hell am I gonna get out. I notice the people behind me are in their car so I have Danny and Zach ask them if they could reverse a little. Turns out they're pretty much stuck as well due to the people behind them, so Danny goes to them, gets them to reverse, person behind me to reverse, so I have enough space to get out. I hate when that shit happens.

Our next stop was Gamer's Haven since Bob needed to talk to me about something. Guess he's not an e-mail guy lol. They've been incredibly busy though since their opening, I drove by one night to go to Subway and they were jam-packed with people. I'm hoping they don't get burnt out with just the 2 of them working there! I can tell the gaming community really wants to keep this place around for a long time so they are in there buying product, playing games, and whatnot. We get there and Bob is out to lunch with his family, so we chill for a little bit since he's supposed to be back any minute, use the bathroom, look at Magic singles, but we couldn't afford the time to wait there any longer so we decide to make our final stop to Lightning.

On the ride over, Danny calls Epler and asks him if he's at the tourney and he says yes. They talk a little and then Danny asks him if he had my sunglasses since Zach had left the ones I lent him for regionals in his car. For some reason they were at Danny's so I got them when I went there at first. Danny was like "Mike's a really good guy but you really don't want to upset him. I've never told anyone this, but he hit me one time because I upset him but I never told anyone because he's such a good guy." We're all busting up laughing as Danny continues the story and apparently Epler's all freaked out lol.

So we get to Lightning and I walk in with the sunglasses on my head and I spill the beans that I had them the whole time. I go over to Kim and chat a little, we play a few games with my proxied Inzektors vs his proxied Sams and I think I win them all. Zach somehow picks up an Ulti E-Tele from the store's display of singles for like $3.99 I was like wow, awesome pick-up. Surprised that Big Mike had let that one slip. I might've done one trade or so, but wasn't too motivated as I really don't have much in trades anymore.

This random kid sees that I have a page of Magic cards in my binder (1 page worth on the last page) and asks me if I'm playing in the Magic tourney tonight, I'm just like no I didn't come out here for Magic. I tell him that I'm just starting Magic back up again and he all talks to me as if I had never played it in my life. I ask him if he had a deck and he's like yea so I ask him if he wanted to play. I figured this would at least give me some much needed practice as it'd be the first game in like a year and a half. I needed 9 basic land to finish my deck so I grab some that were lying around randomly on the table. The kid switches out his black/red deck to red/green and asks me if I could help him unsleeve. I'm just like lol alright? First time I've been asked that by someone I had never met before. After he spends an eternity to figure out his mana base and sleeve up we get started.

He "lets me" decide if I want to go first, so I take the liberty of doing so lol. Basically the games went exactly how I figured they'd go, he'd aggro out and get me down to like 12 life or so until I wiped his board and stabilized with Batterskull and/or Sun Titan. After I beat him game 1 he's like "OK we need to do 2 out of 3 cuz I drew a bad hand." Sure why not lol. Pretty much the same thing happens in game 2 as game 1. He wants to play a third game, which I agree to since it's giving me pretty decent practice with the deck. I think by this point he's realized that I'm not some random scrub lol. Well maybe I am at the moment but just not as scrubby as him, haha. We both draw crappy so we agree to a friendly mulligan. I think he takes me down to 8 this game before I stabilize, gain like 20 life from a Batterskull'd Sun Titan attacking twice, and he scoops as he's down to topdecking mode. Sometime in between our game Kim comes up to me and is like "oh you're gonna play Magic?" I explain to him that the turnout for almost every tourney for Magic is ridiculous, to the point where the prize for 1st is like always a whole box, and T&M's gives out free pizza and drinks every FNM. Nothin' like that in Yugz at the moment. Get a measly 3 or 4 packs worth for winning a Yugz tourney :/ That's just too good of an opportunity to plus, and get free food on top of it? Too good. Even though I beat this kid, the deck felt very clunky and I probably wouldn't have stabilized quick enough against a faster aggro deck. I dunno, I think I need to play a few more matches to see if the main is how I want it. Theoretically I'll stick with this Flare deck until I pick up the cards to play Wolf-Run Ramp or Finkel.dek. Sun Titan is a very underwhelming card in my opinion, at least with the build I'm running.

Anyways I pack up and watch Donut and Colin in their semi-final game since we all want to go to Top of China together. Donut pushes Colin's poop in game 3 and Tyler and Donut split for top 2. We leave real quick and do our usual Top of China shenanigans. Of course we get the guy who I can never understand wtf he's trying to say. At the end of our meal I ask him if he knew who Steve Schroash was and he just mumbles something I can't understand at all lol. We pay and say our goodbyes, drop Zach and Danny off , and that's a wrap.

I can't really speak for myself on this since I didn't bother too much trading/buying/selling today, but I know for Danny that he plus'd a lot more just going to the different locals and trading. Why bother being stuck at one place and playing for $10-15 in credit, when you can travel and make more off trade/buy/sell? We won't do this like every weekend as it's quite a bit of gas and downtown Uncle's really isn't worth going to, but maybe on like Sneak peek days and whatnot, who knows. I think everyone was aware of the ban list even though some people were still skeptical. Wow, lol, if you don't think it's real can you buy my Trish that I pulled the other night from the Duality tins I picked up?

Oh yea, Donut is back on the team for like the 3rd time now lol. Welcome back buddy, please just stay on this time around!