I was meant to be running D&D today, but a couple of late withdrawals from the session caused it to be cancelled. (As I haven’t had much internet access over the weekend, I hope Adam and Greg got the message Josh sent them). I had thoughts of going to see Cowboys and Aliens, but as it turned out I spent the afternoon playing in the Grand Prix Brisbane Trial at Good Games Ballarat. Grand Prix? Am I racing… no, I was playing Magic: the Gathering.
I was mainly playing as a favour to Mark, the owned of GG:Ballarat. It helps to have a big crowd for these events, and we managed 34 players – an incredible number, especially given there were several potential players absent due to Father’s Day.
I played a Valakut ramp deck of which I downloaded the decklist from the ‘net at 7am this morning. Yes, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I was going to play. The advantage to this deck was I’ve played similar decks before, and as a result I had all of the cards to build it. This was rather important, since I’ve been mostly taking a break from Magic over the last few months, and the more recent decks I don’t have the cards for.
Eventually, I ended up in 15th place, with a 3-3 win-loss result. Not too bad, although a 4-2 result wasn’t out of the question with slightly better luck. I don’t think I made too many mistakes. Mind you, I am absolutely sick of the two-card instant-win combo of Deceiver Exarch and Splinter Twin. If there are any Magic developers reading this, hang your heads in shame: two-card instant-win combos are *not* good for the game.