Three months ago, you probably had no idea who I was. Today you read about me at almost every Grand Prix. My name is James Searles; I’m a game store owner and professional Planeswalker.
My Magic story starts during 1993 when the idea of a Trading Card Game was so novel that everyone in the games industry was tripping over themselves to tap into this new market. I was already an avid gamer so when I skipped class to go into town, I of course wandered into the game/comic store there. The place was filled with people playing Magic. I was of course intrigued, but all they had were Antiquities booster packs. I bought one and took it back to my dorm. Lying on my cot I looked through the cards trying to ascertain the way the game was played. I invented in my head my own little rules and tried to play with my roommate to little success. It would be almost a year before I actually even obtained any lands and learned the actual rules of the game.
I started playing regularly around Legends at summer camp with my friend from Seattle who actually knew the game. Once I returned home I went to the store where I’d purchased my Warhammer and D&D stuff and found that Magic had become the game of choice. I played almost every day. Other card games came out, and I started playing those too. Games like Netrunner, Jihad, and RAGE showed all the ways CCGs could be made. When Chronicles was announced, everyone seemed to think that Magic would die. After the Fallen Empires debacle, this seemed to make sense, and I decided to focus on the games I really liked, like RAGE. Without a centralized community to refer to I assumed Magic died, and I went on with high school.
In 1999 I found out that some people I knew were playing. Unbelievably the game had survived! I found TheDojo and started to read about tournaments and the Pro Tour. I built a deck, wrote an article about trying to get back into the game, and took my chances at the local store. Things did not go well. Urza Block Constructed turned out to be a degenerate format that I was not prepared for. I even lost to a girl in Round 3 when she played a Giant Growth to kill me! (That girl was Melissa DeTora, who you probably know as the winningest woman in Magic history, and my girlfriend.) Clearly this wasn’t the game I remembered, and honestly I had better things to do at the time so with my loss in hand I took my second hiatus from Magic.
In college I studied Computational Neuroscience (which is a fancy way of saying I was a double major of Computer Science and Psychology and that I was Pre-Med) and spent a lot time digitizing my life. This was the dot com boom, and we were promised a life free of physical media for music, movies, and even books. Around this time I signed up for the Magic Online Beta. This was an amazing turning point for me. Now I no longer had to physically maintain a Magic collection. I would never have to touch a paper card again. I started playing all the time, first for free in the beta and then paying for cards in the release. Then Wizards got me. You see, they offered an exclusive MTGO Avatar to anyone who played in the 8th Edition release event in real life. I of course attended. When I was there, I remembered what was great about playing Magic in real life, the people. I met so many great people that day that I was hooked right back in. One of the people I immediately clicked with was Matthew “DeMo” DeMatteo who is now my partner at our store, Mana Core in Providence, RI.
As I played more in real life, I began to realize that I was actually pretty good compared to most players. I would win most casual games I played and most matches in the small tournaments at the store. I decided that I should try some Pro Tour Qualifiers. The format was Onslaught Block Constructed, and I was playing Mono-White Control. I did pretty well that season, often making 9th or 10th, but the top 8 eluded me. The next season was Mirrodin Limited, and after a few failed attempts I finally Top 8’d my first PTQ. The only problem was, I’d never drafted before, and the Top 8 was Rochester! I went into the draft as the number one seed and opened the first pack, laid it out on the table. The only card I remember was Reiver Demon, and of course I picked it. That was the last black card I was able to draft. My Round 1 opponent was Jill Costigan, and she easily defeated me.
I started to travel as far away as Washington, DC and continued to Top 8 PTQs over the next two seasons. I never made it past that first round. I just got too nervous. I also around this time started judging to learn the rules better and understand how tournaments worked. Eventually I developed a relationship with Pro Tour Hall of Famer Rob Dougherty and ran all his Your Move Games Prereleases and a lot of his PTQs. It’s Rob who gave me the best advice a Pro Tour hopeful like me could receive. He said it was better to use a “shotgun than a sniper rifle.” Taken out of metaphor, it was better to try and win one of sixteen plus invites at a Grand Prix than a single invite from a PTQ.
With that advice in hand I gave up PTQs entirely and started travelling to Grand Prix. At first I didn’t post the best results. Out of four Grand Prix I made literally zero Day 2’s. At the same time I was becoming an important Judge in our local community and was the only Level 2 in RI. Then our last Level 3 was offered a job at WotC and left. New England had no Level 3’s. I applied for and received sponsorship to judge Pro Tour Los Angeles with the hopes of testing for Level 3 myself.
The week before the Pro Tour there was a Grand Prix in Mexico City. The format was Champions of Kamigawa Block Constructed, and I decided to play a new format-breaking deck that had won Japanese Nationals the week before called Deck-X. Of the 400 or so players in the tournament, only two were playing this deck. I was undefeated going into Round 6 of 7 on Day 1 when I faced my first Pro, Antonino De Rosa. He was playing Mono Blue, and I had him completely locked out of the game. In that moment, all the nervousness I’d experienced in Top 8’s came back, and I made a mistake and let him out of the lock. He managed to win the match, and I ended Day 1 6-1. On Day 2 I played Pro after Pro. Even though all matchups were in my favor, I just couldn’t manage to win enough. My final standing was 31st. This was the best I’d ever done at an event. In addition, there were so many qualified players in the tournament that the last invite passed all the way down to me. I even got the Amateur Prize!
Despite now holding an invite to the Pro Tour, I felt the best thing to do was to honor my obligation and judge. Wizards had sponsored me for the event, and the needs of my community seemed more important than my personal desire to play on the tour. I enjoyed interacting with the high-level judges and officiating the first day. On Day 2 the tournament is much smaller so I took my Level 3 test. I failed the written test by one point. Clearly my esoteric rules knowledge had slipped while I had focused on playing and tournament organizing. Despite this, they gave me the chance to do the interview. This was a role-play designed specifically for me to test my ability to handle a difficult situation. After the role-play, I was pretty emotionally charged. The next step was a one-on-one conversation with the test proctor. During our conversation we discussed how I was qualified but chose to judge. Then he said, “Right now you’re one of the highest level judges in your area; you hire all the judges for local events; and you play in a lot of competitive events. We think you should really pick two of these roles, and I think you know which two we’d like you to pick.”
I was of course upset. I’d chosen to judge a Pro Tour I was qualified for! What more commitment did they want from me? I asked another judge if they ever had any intention of making me a Level 3 that weekend, and he flatly said no. I was pissed. I returned back to RI and slowly withdrew from my role as a judge, a coordinator, and a player. I chalked the previous two years up to a simple waste of time and moved on with my life.
In 2008 I was living in New York and basically ignoring Magic. One of my other Rhode Island Magic friends also lived in the city so we’d get together once in a while for drinks. We would reminisce about the old times and travelling together to PTQs. One day we decided to look into the current state of the game. That’s when we found out about Planeswalkers. This simple innovation got us both interested in looking into playing again. We didn’t really want to commit the time playing competitively so we started a Limited Universe League with two friends that didn’t know how to play. We started with some Shards Sealed Decks, and each week we added 3 packs to our pools. Trading was handled on a 1-for-1 rarity basis, and we had tons of fun building and playing with our decks and even occasionally drafting.
About a year later the league started to wind down as we all got busier, and I ended up moving back to Rhode Island part time. Since I missed playing and I didn’t really know where to play anymore, I decided to start running FNM at a little store I opened in Providence. We were only open on Fridays for FNM and some Saturdays for Launch Parties. Eventually people asked me to be open more so I started a Tuesday box tournament since none of the other stores in the area were open on Tuesday. This was the beginning of our success, and so I eventually took on a full schedule. At this point my partner Matt joined in full time and started to take over operations. I kept running events and spent a lot of time at the store, but now we were able to hire employees to handle the actual retailing. I still had no interest really in competitive Magic, but I would go to nearby events to let people know about the store.
For fun I considered going to GP Pittsburgh and then Pro Tour Philly, but life intervened, and that didn’t happen. After the Pro Tour WotC announced the change to the Planeswalker Points system, and I realized that given the high multiplier, attending every GP this season would virtually guarantee a competent player a spot in Hawaii. This was exacerbated by the distance between the events. It was unlikely that anyone would be able to commit the time and resources to attend the majority, let alone all of the Grand Prix this season. With that in mind, I set out for Montreal to see what would happen if I returned to completive Magic. I was 6-2 going into the final round when I was paired against a very good friend. This was the worst. We played it out, and I lost. Still, 6-3 was not so bad for my first try without any byes.
I went home and started thinking about seriously trying to qualify on points. I invited my girlfriend Melissa DeTora to join me. We looked into the costs of flights and hotels. We’d have to fly first to Milan, Italy to play Sealed, and then make our way to Brisbane, Australia, to play a totally undefined Standard environment, followed by a trip to Santiago, Chile, for another Sealed, then Japan for Standard. We’d have one week off before we headed to San Diego for another Sealed event. Every day I would switch my mind about going and not going, which drove Melissa a little crazy I think. Finally she intimated that she really wanted to quit her job anyway so I just said we should do it. With less than a week notice, we booked a flight to Milan, and we were off for an 8-week trip around the world.
You can read about our journey and our results in my next article. Until then you can follow Melissa and me on Twitter @AllWeDoIsWinPWP
See you soon!