Part 1 of this report can be found here.
So where were we? Oh right, Nationals. I woke up something like three minutes before my alarm was due to go off. My body instinctively does this most mornings, but there was no way I was going to trust in my meat, bones and squishy bits to get me up on time on this particular morning. I rolled out of bed and into the shower for a quick rinse about the ears and a little soap around the gills. I slid out of the shower smelling if I do say so myself, like a million dollars that has just had a quick shower, and logged on to Magic Online. There was more yelling at me from the clanmates to get to bed and get some rest, but I allayed their fears with news that I had slept well and was about to Break the Fast with the Break-Fast of Champions. I may have even busted out a Champion-like pose at that point, too, which was probably something that sounds good until I tell you that I was most likely still wearing boxers and a crusty gray old-man singlet when I did it.
Then to the kitchen where a hearty bowl of cornflakes awaited me! The cornflakes yes, but not the milk. I was somehow clever enough to forget to buy milk on the way home the night before. No matter, the Back-up Break-Fast of Champions is equally as formidable to that Foe called Hunger. I retrieved the jar of Vegemite from the shelf it is accustomed to sitting upon, and went to scrounge up some bread to spread it across. Any bread would do. Any bread at all. There was no bread. I was going to feast on neither cornflakes nor toast.
How. Depressing.
All was not lost however, as I knew I had to pick up Dave on the way, and there is this positively charming Bagel café that is literally two blocks from his house. I would be dining on bread products before round one, and that was all there was to it! But what to do with the remaining time before I had to rendezvous with Dave? I had resleeved my Standard deck already, made sure I had additional sleeves for breakages and made sure I had sleeves for my draft decks. I looked out the window. The sun had not yet crested the horizon, and seeing as I live literally 50-60 seconds walk from the beach, I knew what I had to do. Mother Nature was providing this morning’s bountiful plate, and there was space at the table awaiting me. And because I’m such a big, big nerd. I scooped up my camera on the way out the door.
I stopped looking at the sun at that point, because it began to hurt my eyes (derf!), but I knew deep inside that to start the day like that could only mean good things. Either that, or my stomach was getting really pissy at remaining in an unsated state this long. Seriously, I get cranky if I don’t gets me breakfast.
I grabbed my stuff and headed out to the car. Well, not before I had uploaded those pictures to the internet for a good ol’ brag at how cool it is to live where I do, obviously. In the end, it took more yelling from the clanmates to get me out of the house and on my way. I guess they figured if I wasn’t at least half way to the venue at the tee minus eighty minutes to the player meeting, then I wasn’t going to make it. Pish, what did they know?
Anyway, I pulled up at Dave’s and he was still in what can only be described as a mild state of undress. This is not a problem I told him, for I have a date with yonder Bagel shop and can I get him anything? Dave informed me that I could, and five minutes later I was back at Dave’s door letting him know that I in fact could not because the Bagel shop was shut, and what the hell were we gonna do for food now? Oh and I haven’t written out my deck list yet, this is beginning to look bad Dave, and for goodness sake, put some freaking pants on!
We scramble out to the blistermobile (seriously, I should call it that more often) and make for The Venue. We got there with about ten minutes to spare, which is good, and I set to filling out my decklist, which is bad. I mean, I had no problem doing this in front of my IRL teammates, but there were malicious North Islanders not named Andrew beginning to mill around hoping to get a look at what I was playing. And by “look at what I was playing” I mean saying things like “Aggro Red, I see. What’s in your sideboard then?” This clearly wasn’t going as well as I had hoped, and I still hadn’t had anything to eat. Yuck, I thought to myself, bring on the player meeting.
(Cue: player meeting.)
Our decklists were collected by those trusty floor judges, and before we knew it the pairings for round one had been posted. I checked the list and breathed a sigh of relief when I failed to recognize the name next to mine. Seriously, no disrespect to the guy, but I’d much rather see an unknown name than the name of last year’s champ or something.
First up, may I introduce to you Samuel Allan. This was Sam’s first Nationals, and being the nice guy that I am I decided not to drag his confidence through the mud and stomp on it a bit by telling him that this was something like my seventh. Sam made the correct choice and brought with him to the table some Mountains. Mountains are clearly the best choice in any tournament because they are made of rock. There are no land types that comprise of paper, so you should be in for an easy ride down Victory Street if you correctly assemble your deck to include rock. I mean Mountain. But what happens if both players have Mountain? Well it turns out that the player who doesn’t mulligan to five in games one and three will win in the end. That said, the games were pretty close as Aggro Red can quite happily recover from a mulligan to five. What it can’t recover from is a third turn Song, Sword, equip smash, tinkle, tinkle and splat. Remember what I was saying in Part One of this lengthy saga about broken draws? Because I sure as hell don’t, I had better go back for a refresher.
(*goes back for a refresher*)
Gosh, whoever wrote that is obviously some kind of genius slash strapping specimen of a bloke!
(*cough*)
Game three was probably the most important one (see? Genius!) Because we’d taken so long to get to this point, we had managed to attract a wee crowd. Now I’m sure you’re well aware that I’m probably more than at home amongst a gaggle of onlookers, but alas poor Sam was not quite so comfortable. I was soon pulling daring stunts like attacking into his active Blinkmoth Nexuseses with fresh off-the-top Sliths, based on the fact that he didn’t appear to want to risk them in previous turns. Sure enough, he was even less willing to risk them in front of the spectators for fear of ending up looking silly, or something, and I was soon ripping Shrapnel Blasts off the top to finish him off. Seriously, looking silly is what I does best!
I also couldn’t help but notice that every time Sam mulliganed to six, and I then wished him “good luck”, he then promptly dipped to five. I’m not a superstitious man, but that was certainly good to know.
All in all, that’s not a bad way to start out, 1-0. It’s certainly a hell of a lot better than last year, where I started 0-1. Yes, I had a good feeling about this. I had the Mountains, and I had the win. What more could a man want?
Oh yeah, some food would have hit the spot right then, too. But instead, I had to settle for the pairings for round two. I narrowly escaped getting a warning for attempting to eat the pairings sheet right off the wall, and not just because I was hungry, but because they had dared to try telling me that I was now paired against Dave, which is hardly fair play IMO. Ooh, look! Another acronym that works IRL! Anyway, what was Dave playing? He was playing the Mox and Nail deck that I wasn’t playing. Yay. Sadly for me, I lost the flip and Dave had natural Tron on turn 3. Sadly for Dave, while he was all up in the colorless mana department, he was all out in the way of Green, and I quickly threw my Mountains in his general direction for the win. Man, I miss those days when we actually did throw our Mountains at people for the win. With Fireblasts, I mean. So unfair. Anyway, game two was just as quick when my deck sensed that my stomach was about to demand I eat the next three cards off the top, and therefore it delivered multiple Molten Rains and Sowing Salts for me to send up the side of poor Dave’s head. We then quickly filled in our results slip and dashed out in search of food.
Funny story from this round. Digby was paired against Some Guy from the North Island everyone calls “Horse”. Before you go getting all concerned about where this is going, I don’t know why they call him “Horse” and I’m not especially keen to find out, so don’t you go panicking about what this could possibly be about. Anyway, before they got underway, Horse reached into his pants and whipped out this humongous coin which they then flipped to see who got to go first. Horse won the flip, and then proceeded to have a good wee think about the situation. Now, in the past, Digby has been known to play the with the control decks, and a shrewd player like Horse here might be forgiven for assuming that Digby is with the Islands again this year. Now, if Digby is with the Islands, I’d still be thinking you’d want to play first with your Mox and Nail deck, right? Not Horse. He looked Digby in the eye, squared his jaw and announced that he would in fact be drawing first. Digby looked at his hand, let it be known that he was keeping, and promptly got off to a good start with a Slith Firewalker and a Zo-Zu the Punisher. Horse was later unable to be reached for comment, and was last seen heading for a bar surrounded by a large group of giggling ladies.
Anyhoo, Dave and I popped out into the foyer where a small cafeteria was situated, with filled rolls and hot chips and soft-drinks hurrah! I selected from the array on display a Caesar-Salad Wrap, which looked awfully delicious. Sure enough, it turned out to be exactly the delectable treat I had been looking for, and I soon had it flying down my throat in some kind of ritualistic feeding frenzy reminiscent of piranhas or sharks at the smell of blood, sweet fresh blood.
(*I see you were expecting a cough here, but there is no cough! no cough for you*)
By the time round three rolled around, I was beginning to feel quite queasy. Perhaps swallowing that Caesar-Salad-Wrap in one cartoon-esque gulp was in fact not the way to go after all. My round three opponent was Jon Manuuli who had decided to bring Forests to the table in the form of Mono Green Aggro, or MGA as you hip kids seem to be calling it these days. Despite Paper being made out of pulped Forests, in it’s native form Forest is no match for Rock, I mean Mountain, and I soon took game one in a flurry of Sliths, Sorcerers and a Zo-Zu. I seem to remember having the ultimate turn 1 Slith, turn 2 Song, Sword, equip, smash, tinkle, tinkle draw, but because Jon had won the flip, he managed to spoil these hasty, tasty plans by playing out a turn 2 Sakura-Tribe Elder. Sure enough, I ripped the Sorcerer needed to knock the old man out of the way and come in for another +1/+1 counter, but that’s not nearly as satisfying as turn 2 Sword plus equip. That Traitorous Caesar-Salad Wrap was also turning out to be less than satisfying.
(*hiccup*)
Game two, Jon mulliganed to six, and I couldn’t stop myself from wishing him “good luck” as he dealt out six cards face down. Sure enough, he was soon going back for five. That dangerous part of my brain that likes to talk to me while I’m almost asleep or trying to think rationally about something awfully important pipes up and reminds me that “I’m not a superstitious man” in what I can only describe as a sarcastic tone of inner-voice. Jon then surprises all concerned by throwing back those five and then settling on four cards. That’s four cards people, four cards while on the play. To make matters worse for Jon, my draw resembles what I would chose to have in my opening hand if I were allowed to pick through my deck and build my hand from scratch. Strangely enough, Jon came very close to stabilizing and could have quite possibly won this game if my draw hadn’t been quite so nut busty. He basically played a turn 2 Jitte, turn 3 Troll and gritted his teeth while he let a Slith and Zo-Zu run on by. On his fourth turn he equipped and attacked to gain enough counters on the Jitte to kill off the Zo-Zu. If I hadn’t had two Magma Jets and a Shrapnel Blast in my hand at that time, well it could have been an uphill battle for me there! It wasn’t though, so I got to enter the draft portion sitting happily on a 3-0 record.
Nice.
Sure enough, my draft table was literally littered with great players, and I was being fed by a good friend of mine, Martin Brown-Santirso. Martin’s combined Limited results for the last three Nationals was something like 16-2, so it was a bit of a mixed blessing to have him there. Here are the players I can remember from this table:
Martin Brown-Santirso (forever finishing 9th, Top 8 in 2003)
Roger Miller (National Ream last year, National Champ in 2001, and so on and so on)
Darryn Ying (Top 8 in 2000, I think)
Paul Carson-Wenmoth (Top 8 last year)
Shaun Hayward
Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of England at some point, I think)
Albert Einstein (a real smarty-pants)
Me (heh)
I opened my first pack and was a little surprised to see the who’s who of awful draft picks from Champions of Kamigawa staring back at me. The only playable card in the pack was a Befoul, and for some reason I hate drafting that card. My eyes darted up and scanned the room for hidden cameras. Maybe Ashton Kutcher was about to rush out and tell me that I’d just been punk’d. Please, anything but this pack! Sadly, my Ashton does not come and when the head judge called time, I started my pile with that awful, awful Befoul and a non-smile on my dial. I was at least happy that I didn’t pass any bombs to my left, and that I’m generally more than happy to float about the colors a bit until I get a good feel for what I’m being passed. Sure, I’d prefer to cut a color hard, and then if possible choose my second color with the best card in the Betrayers pack, but booster draft is about being flexible, and I was looking for any excuse to just plain forget about that Befoul.
For my next pick, Martin passed me a Frostwielder and two good Black cards in Rend Flesh and Villainous Ogre. I like Frosty, he hurts many of the good cards in Saviors, and I’m not especially fond of Rend Flesh in Limited because it seems like the best enemies are Spirits. If it had been a Rend Spirit, I probably would have stayed in Black, but instead I went for good ol’ Frosty and shipped those two Black cards down the line. Let those guys flight over the Black cards, I thought to myself.
So what did Martin pass me in the third pack? Another Villainous Ogre, a Rend Spirit and a healthy dose of irony, that’s what. I plunge back in to Black while obviously setting up Shaun Hayward on my right to do the same. Every pack I got passed seemed to have two or more playable Black commons, it was almost my worst nightmare, but it lacked the CareBears and chainsaws to really make it a full-scale bed-wetter.
When I finally got to open my Betrayers pack, I was rewarded by a Scourge of Numai followed nicely by a tasty little Frostling. I got a Torrent of Stone fifth pick, and perked up a bit. By the time Saviors rolled around, I was obviously throwing together some kind of Red/Black aggro deck, but I had this sneaking suspicion that it lacked the punch it needed to do much more that go 1-2 or 0-3.
Somewhere around pick three of Saviors I scooped up an Oni of Wild Places figuring he could at least follow up my army of thugs quite adequately. Despite having never drafted him before, I had to assume he would deliver the goods I needed. Pick five or six revealed to me a Choice of Damnations, which happened to be yet another card I had never had a chance to try out. I looked at it longingly while flicking it about the pack in front of me. I thought to myself that if this were a casual or practice draft, I would slam that puppy down onto my pile and give it a run round around the block to see how it performs. However, I couldn’t help but remind myself that this was Nationals, and I was currently in possession of a winning record, and there was to be no shenanigans like rare-drafting bad rares just to see what happens when I play them. I then remembered just how lack-luster my deck was shaping up to be, and I slammed down the Choice anyway and grinned to myself. At least I was gonna have fun slash go out with a bang.
Yeah, as it turns out, Choice of Damnations is pretty good in a deck that specializes in getting in some early damage before rolling over to any deck that dares to play a creature bigger than a Pious Kitsune. Who’duh thunk it? Anyone who’s had a chance to try it out probably, but whatever. Anyhoo, here is my first draft deck, which online clan member Reuben has been hounding me to show him for about a week now.
7 Swamp
9 Rock, I mean Mountain
1 Frostling
1 Goblin Cohort
1 Skullsnatcher
2 Blademane Baku
1 Hearth Kami
1 Akki Underling
1 Battle-Mad Ronin
1 Ronin Houndaster
1 Nezumi Ronin
1 Scourge of Numai
1 Burning-Eye Zubera
1 Frostwielder
1 Yuki-Onna
1 Sokenzan Spellblade
1 Oni of Wild Places
1 First Volley
1 Rend Spirit
1 Unearthly Blizzard
1 Befoul
1 Torrent if Stone
1 Spiraling Embers
1 Uncontrollable Anger
1 Choice of Damnations
Cards of note in my sideboard were:
1 Shuriken
1 Blessing of Leeches
1 Blood Clock
1 Struggle for Sanity
1 Path of Anger’s Flame
1 Captive Flame
1 Sink into Takenuma
1 Devouring Rage
1 Vital Surge
2 Dosan’s Oldest Chant
I love the Shuriken, but it certainly wasn’t going to do very much in my deck. The only creatures I had with a toughness greater than two were the kind of guys you want swinging over to see what’s-his-name, not messing about with pointy little holiday decorations. The Blessing of Leeches I got last pick, after I considered picking it seventh out of a pretty poor pack. The blood Clock looked like it could have been fun against a slower deck, and the three life-gain cards were just pure, late-pick hate-drafts.
So whom did I get in round four? Mister 16-2 himself, Martin Brown-Santirso, who happened to know exactly what he passed me in packs one and three. To make matters worse, I had no idea what I passed him in pack two. The only advantage I had here, is that he probably assumed I took the Rend Flrsh over the Frostwielder. Moral victory for the win not very likely!
So what happened? Martin’s Green/Red fatty deck got stalled and smashed out by my six mana ring-leaders, Oni of Wild Places and Choice of Damnations. After the match, Martin let me in on just how lucky I was by fanning out his array of fat, including two Genju of the Cedars. Yep, lucky is exactly the word needed to describe just how that went down for me.
After that round, I took five minutes to go sit outside for some fresh air to cure my Nasty Cesar-Salad-Wrap blues, which worked surprisingly well. Yuus!
Round five saw me paired with Darryn Ying and his Black/White deck. I took game one after a little top-deck war that ended with Darryn having to choose a number less than one with Choice of Damnations. Darryn got his revenge in game two by getting of a perfect curve draw, and game three was a wash out. I drew 12 lands and he got a Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker plus Moonlit Strider combo going. Still, there’s nothing to be ashamed of in dropping to 4-1. No, that’s still a very fine record to have at Nationals in my opinion.
For the last round of the first draft I was paired with Paul Carson-Wenmoth, who was playing Blue/Black. Those packs full of Black that kept flying around the table in the draft? Apparently they managed to get five different people to draft Black. I was like, note to self, stay away from Black in the next draft.
I know I won this round, and I’m pretty sure it was 2-0, but the only thing I remember was at one point forgetting one of my Spirit/Arcane triggers, and when I tried to retroactively add a counter, Paul pointed out rather officiously that it was a “may” ability. Fair play Paul, fair play. I would have let him do it, but this was like, rules enforcement level four, so there’s no way I could hold that against him. It did make beating him feel that little bit better though.
(*grin* …err, I mean *cough*)
5-1 with hot resistance was more than good enough to get me drafting on the top table again, which is great. However, anyone drafting on this table who wasn’t in the last draft on this table was either Julian Brown-Santirso, who was the only 3-0 in the last draft to be on table two, or someone who 3-0’d their draft pod. Here are the people I remember in this draft.
Roger Millar (again)
Jon Manuuli (South Island State champ 2004, and my round three opponent)
Mark Simpson (numerous Nationals Top 8s back when cards were carved from stone)
Michael Tan
Julian Brown-Santirso (Martin’s brother, obviously, and National Team 2002)
Glenn Patel (just some guy, and national champ 2005 omgspoilers!!1!)
Darryn Ying (again)
Me (saucy chap, I’ll trust you’ll agree)
I was being fed by Jon Manuuli, and was feeding Julian Brown-Santirso. My first pack looked much better than the one I was presented with almost four hours earlier. It had several cards of reasonable quality, but most importantly, the only even vaguely playable White common was the always-awesome Kami of Ancient Law. I snapped up the Bear and was rewarded by the exact same thing in the following pack, another Kami of Ancient Law and no chance that Julian was going to mistakenly think I was passing him White. Pack three was a disaster. Another Kami of Ancient Law, a Hundred-Talon Kami and an Innocence Kami. Now not only was Julian going to get two quality fourth pick White cards, but Darryn Ying was going to see a very nice fifth pick in White, too. Apparently, this was quite a relief for Darryn, who had first picked a Mothrider Samurai, and was probably beginning to despair a little when he missed a third or fourth pick option. Either way, it meant I wasn’t going to be the beneficiary of any later-than-they-should-be Waxticore Bakus, which I was obviously quietly hoping for. I say quietly because outright yelling that you’d like to be passed White bombs is apparently cheating or signaling or some crap like that, I mean, whatevaaar!
Now, which of those three White cards I actually drafted is actually quite the interesting topic for discussion, I think. If it were the first pack, I probably still would have gone with the Kami of Ancient Law, although I’d preferably be looking for a color with less playables in it, so I wasn’t signaling erratically like a blind heart attack victim. In this case, a third 2/2 for two-mana isn’t nearly as impressive as an Innocence Kami to top off my curve. I dunno, I kinda like the fact that in this game, the card you would pick out of any given three can vary wildly depending on if it’s the first pick or third.
Anyway, I drafted mostly efficient little White creatures from the Kamigawa pack, and picked up a late Hisoka’s Defiance as an option for my second color. The Betrayers pack would tell me if I was going to ditch that Defiance or go with it. I cracked the little plastic case (packs are pre-opened and stamped at this level of play, kids) and thumbed through the pack. Ooh goody! A White Genju of the Really Silly in Limited! I continued thumbing through the pack to see if there wasn’t anything else that might take my fancy, as if that were possible, and froze when I came across a Shining Shoal in the rare slot. Oh this was too cruel. My eyes darted between one and the other as panic set in. I heard a spectator behind me snigger to himself. This wasn’t funny! I thought to myself, and used pretty much all of my allotted time before I finally decided and slammed down the Shoal, figuring that I could possibly squeeze out the last few points of damage I might need with it at least. Other than seeing four Floodbringers, three of which I drafted, which made me happier about passing the Genju, the rest of the draft was quite uneventful. My first pick from Saviors was a Hand of Honor, and I managed to scoop up a much-needed Secretkeeper and an Eiganjo Free-Riders to bulk out my top end. Here is the deck as I registered it:
1 Lantern Kami
1 Bushi Tenderfoot
2 Kitsune Diviner
2 Kami of Ancient Law
1 Hand of Honor
1 Split-Tail Miko
2 Floodbringer
1 Erayo, Soratami Ascendant
1 Ninja of the Deep Hours
1 Eiganjo Free-Riders
1 Secret Keeper
1 Genju of the Falls
1 Innocence Kami
1 Kami of the Tattered Shoji
1 Mending Hands
1 Indomitable Will
2 Plow Through Reito
1 Hisoka’s Defiance
1 Phantom Wings
1 Shining Shoal
Cards of note in my sideboard:
1 Floodbringer
1 Mending Hands
1 Blood Clock
2 Freed from the Real
1 Cowed by Wisdom
1 Oboro Breezecaller
1 Dreamcatcher
1 Teardrop Kami
2 Thoughtbind
Don’t laugh, but the reason I ran only two Floodbringer in the maindeck with the Erayo over the third, was that I (once again) failed to notice that Floodbringer has a toughness of two. This is obviously huge in the face of Frostling, Frostwielder and First Volley. For the second draft in a row, I got a late Blood Clock that could conceivably come in handy at some point. This time I opened it I think, and chuckled to myself because I knew I’d probably get to scoop it up on the second pass. The other card in the maindeck that probably has your eyebrows a wigglin’ is the Kami of the Tattered Shoji. If you look at the list above, you won’t see any obvious flaws, but when you lay out the actual cards in front of you, you can see it has a huge gap at the three mana mark. This deck would basically sell it’s grandmother (my 3-0 Blue/White draft deck from nationals 2002, that featured Iridescent Angel and Upheaval) for a Kitsune Blademaster or two.
Unlike last year, where we played three rounds of Standard, then drafted and played the three draft rounds before doing to final draft and then calling it an evening, this year we played the seventh round before we were allowed to make a run for our all-you-can-eat at Pizza Hut. I had to Play Mark Simpson and his deck of little White and Red men before I would be allowed to leave.
Game one, I draw a hand that has only Islands and a few Blue spells. For some completely custard-for-brains reason I decided to keep it, and was quickly swept aside. Game two wasn’t much better, although at least I had both colors of mana for most of that game. I still died, though, which I suspect was the incorrect play.
Okay, I had no right to be disappointed with finishing Day 1 on 5-2, but for some reason I was a bit down. Probably because after the pasting Mark gave me, I wasn’t feeling at all confident about my second draft deck. From here I needed to go 3-1-1, possibly even 3-2 with good resistance to make the Top 8. Usually at this point, I need to pull some undefeated miracle out of my butt to have a shot, so this was at least an improvement over my previous years. The only drawback was I held in my hands a deck that could quite likely dish up two losses for me first thing in the morning. At this point, I was hoping to get 1-1 to finish the pod at 1-2, so I could 2-0-1 or at least 2-1 the last three rounds of standard to make the playoffs. All that remained now was to collect the rest of the guys and head off to Pizza Hut for some good eats.
Unfortunately, we all ended up crowded around both Digby and Francis, who both managed to make their matches last longer than a full-term elephant pregnancy. Francis’s deck was an atrocity. He had Ghostly Prison, two Kami of False Hope and a General’s Kabuto to make games resolve by one person running out of cards, or something like that anyway. Despite this set back, Francis still managed to win his match 2-1 before Digby, who went to time and then some.
Interesting fact: Digby’s favorite Pokemon is “Snorlax”. Coincidence? You decide.
Finally, some three weeks later, we all piled into the cars and made our way to the eatery, where a good time was had by all while we ate our fill of pizza, Garlic bread, fries, ice cream, jello, chocolate mousse and ice cream with mousse on it. Unless you were Francis, then it was pizza and fries followed by ice cream with mousse, jello, nuts, chocolate chips, salt, jello from the floor, chocolate chips from Andrew from the North Island’s mouth and a single piece of pepperoni that somehow escaped someone’s slice of pizza.
Yeah, you should have been there, that’s what a big tournament is all about. Good times indeed.
So anyway, join me for the finale of this epic tale of no discernable end, where the following questions are answered:
Do I qualify for Worlds?
Does the fact that Dave and I now count as Andrew from the North Island’s legal guardians come back to haunt him at some point?
Will the next part really be the last?
The answers for those too eager to wait are obviously, not quite and yes.
Until then, remember to mulligan those all Island hands!
(hax)