Whenever I say that it’s easier for me to get to Neutral Ground in New York City for a PTQ than many locations that are geographically closer to Washington (Roanoke, say), it raises the usual set of eyebrows. It’s a non-trivial amount of money, and a mighty long trip, just to suffer through the crush of gamers and the mental pressure of seven or eight rounds of Magic. Even though I am lucky to have a job such that I can afford the trip, people still wonder why I would bother going all that way for competition that is some of the toughest in the country.
It’s not easy to explain. There was a PTQ at Neutral Ground last weekend; all I can do is tell you what happened when I headed up there. Most of these times are estimated; it’s not like I pulled out the laptop every time something interesting happened.
Friday 9 March 2007, 10:00 p.m.: There are two trains tomorrow morning, one which leaves at 5:25 a.m. and gets to Penn Station at 8:45, and one which leaves at 6:20 and gets to New York about 9:40. It would be nice to take the second train and get an extra hour of sleep, but if it’s delayed at all – and knowing Amtrak, it probably would be – then I would miss the start of the PTQ. So I take the 5:25 train, hence I hit the sack now.
There’s an additional problem: I bought the train ticket on Monday, both because I was passing through Union Station and because I was thinking that there was nothing that would keep me from going. On Wednesday my throat felt a little sore. On Thursday it was clear that I had the flu, and all I can say about my condition right now is, “it could be worse,” knowing there’s a fifty-fifty chance…
Saturday March 10, 2007, 4:30 a.m.: It’s worse. I feel like an animated corpse that just got re-killed.
5:30 a.m.: Well, I made the train successfully. I could have skipped the PTQ – it’s not like I didn’t have an excuse – but there were three things that pushed me on. One was that I had a CD with part of a podcast that I had done for Top8Magic, the file being too big to send via email, and I wanted the Top 8 crew to receive it that weekend. Another was that I couldn’t let the money spent on the train ticket to go to waste, that’s just the kind of guy I am. The final reason… well, I’ll get to that later.
So, I’m armed with the following:
*Laptop in my backpack for writing this article, derf.
*Later on it will be David Mamet time on the computer’s DVD player, I’m packing both Ronin (which he wrote under a pseudonym) and Spartan.
*CD with the podcast saved on it.
*A one-liter bottle of Gatorade (I’ll need the electrolytes) and a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi (I’ll need the caffeine).
* Some Theraflu Daytime and a prescribed decongestant, to keep me awake and hopefully feeling moderately well.
*A travel-pack of Kleenex in each of my coat pockets, and another in my backback. I’m like the Chow Yun-Fat of fussiness.
* A yin-yang charm around my neck, which I have worn for every good tournament result I have ever had (of course, I’ve worn it for some 0-2 drops as well). I call it my “bad luck charm,” because it’s there to remind me that you can’t have good luck without the bad.
*Three TTP draft sets, because obv.
*My cell phone, spare cash, and house keys, which I have historically been more likely to forget than the draft sets.
* Note cards for keeping track of life total and in-match details, and some pens.
*Pro Player cards to use as counters or tokens.
*Spare sleeves.
* An uncompleted version of Raphael Levy Singapore deck. Embarrassingly, the missing cards are Invasion commons: Armadillo Cloak, Gaea’s Might, and Tribal Flames.
*A completed version of the deck Maryland native Hans Mahler used to win a PTQ in Pittsburgh, PA a couple weeks back.
Yes, I’m considering playing The Rock, despite writing two weeks ago that “You couldn’t get me to play The Rock if my life depended upon it”;
*And my mitts.
I can’t believe I made a list that long just to get in a Sin City reference. I need a nap.
6:00 a.m.: So much for my nap. The woman in the seat behind me is choosing a new ring for her cell phone – at the HIGHEST POSSIBLE VOLUME AKJDHFLSHJAHA.
7:00 a.m.: You can’t go wrong with Robert De Niro. “Tell me about an ambush?! I ambushed you with a cuppa coffee!”
8:15 a.m.: Theraflu starting to kick in. I might be up to 80% by the time the tournament starts. Problem is, 80% of me is worse than about half of the players in your typical Neutral Ground PTQ.
9:10 a.m.: Arrival at Neutral Ground. The place already looks quite busy. No surprise there – the last PTQ of the season is always heavily populated. This is also the first PTQ of the season held at the Ground, which usually draws people from as far north as the Canadian border and as far south as Maryland.
9:30 a.m.: Steve Sadin creeps up behind me and claps me on the back so hard that I jump. Sadin is what sports analysts call a “good locker-room guy.” He’s good for team chemistry and he’ll always keep everyone’s outlook positive, regardless of the individual performances of any one team member. Best of all, the “team” he’s good for is the collection of just about every person he knows.
9:45 a.m.: Hey, EDT is here! Seriously, how has he not got into the Invitational as a Road Warrior yet? The people who travel to all those GPs have to do it to maintain their pro level; EDT travels to all of these PTQs because he wants to be on the train. Now that’s a Road Warrior.
10:00 a.m.: They would be closing registration now, except some people have begged for delays as they try to arrange their decks. Mike Flores also called in to beg for an extension, and he’s not even here yet. Sadly, I’m playing The Rock, because Neutral Ground is sold out of Gaea’s Might. I had tried to buy them at home on Friday afternoon… but that didn’t work either.
Oh well, I figure that the only time where The Rock would be good enough to play in a PTQ is the weekend after the same guy won back-to-back Grand Prix with a Zoo deck. However, Julian Levin informs me that he tested the matchup with Flores this week, using a Rock deck with maindeck Flametongue Kavu, and the Rock did not win a single game out of eight. Luis Nieman is also playing Levy.dec, and he affirms that while Loxodon Hierarch is not great for him, he’s not afraid of The Rock. Uh-oh.
10:30 a.m.: Starting up with 180-plus players. Later, I will read in Brian Kowal’s LiveJournal that the PTQ he attended last weekend was “the biggest one in the world for this Extended season at 218 people.” Really? None of the Grand Prix PTQs were bigger than that? Hard to believe. Regardless, Neutral Ground is currently bulging to the seams with human beings. They’re even using the private gaming space in the front of the store.
11:00 a.m.: Just lost round 1… to Levy.dec. Ouch. In game 1 I emptied his hand with a single Cabal Therapy, but he simply topdecked a Watchwolf and a Boros Swiftblade while I drew nothing. In game 2 I destroyed him with Deeds and Destructive Flow. In game 3 he played a turn 2 Meddling Mage on Pernicious Deed; I had a Deed in hand and immediately drew another one.
Here the Sports Guy would write, “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little,” but I’ll be avoiding that phrase, for obvious reasons. It’s looking like it’s going to be a long, crushing day, but Sadin says to me, “You’re definitely qualifying for at least one Pro Tour this year.” A specious claim, but it was exactly what I needed to hear to keep going. See? Good locker-room guy.
12:30 p.m.: When my round 2 opponent led with fetchland-Stomping Ground–Kird Ape, I had a nightmare that both of my PTQs this season were going to end exactly the same way: with 0-2 drops in which I lost to the same deck in both rounds. Thankfully, my opponent was playing Boros instead, which is a better matchup for me. I crushed him with Deeds in game 1, and he owned me with Molten Rain in game 2. I won game 3 when I Death Clouded away his board except for Sulfuric Vortex, and then topdecked Deed on the last possible turn before I would have lost to the Vortex. Whew! Still in.
2:30 p.m.: You might notice that some time has expired since the last entry. That’s because I got caught in a never-ending Rock mirror. My opponent was actually Gifts Rock with Living Wish, and you might think the differences would be in his favor, but I simply played better Magic. I won a marathon game 1 by wearing him down and making sure his Genesis didn’t find its way into the graveyard until I could Cranially Extract it. Game 2 started with about 10 minutes left, and he couldn’t manage anything in that time. He said after the round, “that counts as a draw, right?” so he might not have known that he needed to try and manage something.
3:15 p.m.: Still in! Just defeated an Aggro Flow deck. In game 1 he Duressed and Therapied me early on, taking a Deed and some other useful cards, but he was doing those things instead of summoning guys. Thus, when he finally did get his beat on with Wild Mongrel + Umezawa’s Jitte, I had developed my board to the point that I could cycle into a Deed and blow away his offense. Shortly afterward I got Genesis-Hierarch going and he had no shot. In game two he stalled on land and Mox; I dropped Ancient Grudge on the Mox and won easily.
Flores was knocked out of Top 8 contention this round; his new and improved G/W Haterator lost to Sadin’s Boros in round 2, and was defeated by Elf-Opposition in this one. Mike can give you all the details if he likes, but it’s notable that he stayed in the tournament. Yes, Neutral Ground does pay very well for its PTQs, with prizes going well down the pairing chart, but he would have to win out in four more rounds to get there. Now there’s a man who loves Constructed Magic.
4:30 p.m.: God, I need to die. My fever is back, and I just lost in methodical, excruciating fashion to a Green/White Astral Slide deck. In game 1 he played Sakura-Tribe Elders on turns 2 and 3, which neutered the Death Cloud I had in hand. I could never get enough mana to blow away his board such that it would matter, and after he got Life From the Loam going it stopped mattering anyway. In game 2 I Extracted Eternal Witnesses on turn 3, but when I Witnessed back the Cranial Extraction later on he had Gilded Light (the last card in his hand) to stop it. I was going to name Eternal Dragon, because I saw that the only way he could win the game was to get Dragon + Slide, which is exactly what he did while I drew crap.
5:30 p.m. When Scott McCord found out that I had dropped, he said, “Good, you’re drafting with us,” in a tone of voice that left no room for debate. Like I was going to debate anyway! The draft also features former U.S. National Team member Chris Manning, Mason Adams (one-half of the New York 2HG state champs), Sean McKeown, and Asher “Manning-Bot” Hekt.
I first-pick Errant Ephemeron over Stonebrow – a tough choice, but Blue is so good in all three packs and I wanted to cut the color from Blue-loving McCord on my left – and a late Gorgon Recluse suggests Black to me. Then a first-pick Sengir Nosferatu in pack two seals the deal; I stay Blue-Black and receive all the good Blue cards from Planar Chaos, plus a ridiculously late Kor Dirge.
I hated to pass Pyrohemia to McCord first-pick in pack three, but we were doing the draft New York style – you pick random seats before the draft, but you don’t pick random teams until after the draft. Thus, it was more important for me to pick a good card for my deck (Shaper Parasite) than hate up the Pyrohemia. McCord and I ended up on the same team with Mason.
7:00 p.m.: Just won the draft, thanks to Mason’s clutch win over McKeown. I went 2-1, the loss coming to McKeown’s crazy Wild Pair deck (in related news, Wild Pair is a lot better than I gave it credit for). It was nice to win against Manning, gaining some small measure of revenge for a close loss that torpedoed my chances in day 2 of GP: New Jersey. There wasn’t much to be had from the packs; I took Psionic Blast and walked.
Billy Moreno, Gerard Fabiano, and Eugene Harvey were here around this time. Why? Billy and Eugene appeared to be testing Block Constructed or Standard, and Gerard didn’t appear to be doing much at all. I’ve noticed this before: on PTQ days lots of NYC and New Jersey pros will come up to the Ground, to watch their friends who are trying to qualify, or just to hang out and test or draft or whatever. The Ground is simply the place for Magic-related good times.
Julian Levin invited me to join the gang at Katz’s Deli after Flores was done in the tournament – yes, he was still playing, having won out and needing a Round 8 win for prizes – but I had to decline. I felt terrible and basically passed out for the duration of the train ride home.
So I had an uneventful tournament, a good but low-paying draft result, and I was just as sick going home as I was at the beginning of the day. However, as I walked to Penn Station through the glitz and glitter of Seventh Avenue, I didn’t regret getting out of bed almost fifteen hours earlier. I know that I would have made the same decision all over again, because it was good times (would have been great times if I had been well enough to go to Katz’s).
The third reason I came here today? I love New York City, and I love playing Magic. How could I turn down a chance for both?
This article written while watching Kansas beat Texas in the Big 12 championship game. Rock Chalk Jayhawk.
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