Wounds and what not

So we all collective went pretty bad. "You don't say?" We do say. I think the trip overseas was great, as was seeing NZ and all the new/old players that we're used to, but in terms of achieveing results the team was lacking.

Myself the worst, I reckon. I fretted and didn't know what to play until the night before, and ended up with a very uncompetitive azorious izzet "good stuff" deck. Fine for FNM, but this is not FNM. I drew a round, that I instead conceded because I didn't want to be in the draw bracket all day, then continued to every other match of the weekend, just about. After the initial slaughtering, I could only look back at the Slaughter Games deck that I didn't play, and ponder on what it could've been.

So games aside, it was still a great time. I hadn't really packed my bag all that great. Cards first, then "essential clothing only". So shirt, pants, and 500+ pairs of socks n such. Every rare/uncommon Ravnica card that I owned, no commons and nothing from Avacyn block besides anything already in a deck.

We had a good nights practice when I showed up, greeted in the hotel lobby by the clerk, asking for me by name. That's a pretty good feeling, when you arrive, very late and very tired, in a foreign place but your mates have been asking for you by name and you know you've arrived when you get there. That was awesome.

We didn't grind very much, and I found out I didn't have that 1 bye I thought I did. Oh wells! Ammy had her three byes but didn't do crash hot, getting one more draw than she needed to make day 2. James spotted another version of his deck doing well, but in general the day was owned by the "simply most obvious best cards" in each colour. It was mostly reanimator, and again with Witton in the top 2! I remember him winning with Primeval Titan/Valakut, and cheering him on. Good decks indeed. Also another local you'll know is Justin Cheung, who made top 8 with his build. Also Robert Liu. I remember playing him once at Rony's old place, and asking him "So are you good?"

He said no. I believed him until 10 minutes later when I lost the match :P

Rangor went well with his aggro humans build, and I'm always happy to see Matt Anderson do well, this time with his blue black noncreature build. It always seems like a good call, because it immediately blanks several cards against opponents. In rare cases it can leave a deck incapable of removing "dead cards", when they haven't actually got 60 cards in their main n side that don't care about creatures.

Apart from the Magic and how various players went, there was NZ itself. Very cool place, from what I saw. One big windy street that leads to our hotel, all with a lot of places that sell alcohol, but not a singular can of Guiness. We eventually found a place that didn't care about the "new laws" that forbid singular selling of cans, so our saturday night commiserating our achievements was "fun" to say the least.

All the food on offer was pretty awful, if you went to an asian style take away. I'm sure there's good ones out there, but we were only ripped off, as tourists rather want to be. We had a very good korean bbq one night, which I was rather kicking and screaming about until my brain managed to "unlearn" the previous Mass Group Self Food Poisoning that happened when I was in the real korea, and nobody knew how to cook.

The coins were fun, but I did have the impression the entire time that we were playing with toy money. Not just the conversion rate (that was great!) but the colours, and different sizes. I didn't manage to find any of the LOTR style $1 coins, but it was still fun. Get out some money, only costs a fraction of that much. I would consider returning for a trip at some point in the future, simply because it's a nice place and the gf killed me for not taking her. You know.

SO, what do we take from this? One, I like my team. LOVE them. Two, lock in your deck a lot earlier (or in my case, DO lock in A deck) and base it on the decks that are getting coverage. There's no real use being rogue unless you're Conley Woods, in which case please come live with me and we'll brew the awesomest thing ever for GP Sydney.

Seriously. It was a great weekend, and even though we all had rough experiences (I'm thinking of the toilets on sunday night. 3 cubicles, but only 1 useable after the first was used abundantly and left broken, the other filled with my vomit from that Nandos that I just couldn't stomach) but we're all the better for it.

Next time, I would take a jacket.

Fox, for the You Don't Say team.