Editor: James Kong. Friday 2nd September 2005.
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Editor: James Kong. Friday 2nd September 2005.
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 PC Indianapolis Report Part 1 "To Hell And Back Again"
I had declared an attack on Kyle Rayner with my own copy of the Last Green Lantern. G’Nort lay in wait with the trusty guillotine. I had been unlucky in the first round, but I could hear the ink drying on my 1-1 result already as I prepared to adjust my opponents endurance to 47. Then to my disbelieving eyes, his Kyle powers up not once, but twice. I look at my own hand, the board, and with an inflection inspired by a carbon-freeze doomed Han Solo, I whimpered, “but he didn’t even Ring has Chosen”. I was 0-2. I had flown countless hours and endured endless Will Smith artistic endeavours to get to this point. Subsisting on a diet of salted sausage and “100% Real Cheese” the possibility that this was all a hallucination had occurred to me. Unfortunately it wasn’t. I was 0-2. 36 hours later. I KO some meaningless resource to make Goldface 11/11. I have a Shock Troops for backup but my opponent simply extends the hand. I am now 15 and 6. 0-2 feels like a world away. I have easily paid for my trip and made much more. I relent and let Paul Ross congratulate me ghetto-style. PC Indy 2005 was one crazy ride. My name is Alex Brown. Some people call me Uly. Some people call me Uly on the Forums. Some people call me the Gangsta of Love. This is my story. After flirting with the idea for a while, I decided I owed it to myself to go to Indy for the PC. Nobody else who would test was going to go. It was a long way away, even for a nomadic Australian. The format favoured strong teams who could afford to play thousands of GLEE mirrors amongst one another. For all of the advantages I usually have playing Vs, for this tournament I would have none. In hindsight I have no idea why I did it. Part of me tells me I am nearing what seems like infinite semesters at the helm of an interminable university degree and I need to find a job. Part of me gets sick of having moved back home and needs to feel a little gritty and poor sometimes. Part of me knows I belong on the Pro Circuit and for all of its faults a little patriotism boils my blood. I didn’t say there were good reasons for going. Luke and Kongy helped me test for the tournament, but the deck we came up with was bad. Still, they are great friends for helping me wade through a format more deadening to the soul than a printout of Dave Spear’s LiveJournal. When TBS told me my deck was shit halfway through my tournament I was able to live on in the illusion that it was still playable. This was because we had done enough testing that I couldn’t think otherwise. I didn’t know that testing was bad. I didn’t know I had no idea what was going on in the format. I didn’t need to. I just needed to have the confidence to think I was OK. My biggest regret in Vs is throwing a tantrum in LA when I threw away my tournament. Screw stunning Alfred. Almost a year ago I was playing the right deck at the right tournament and stuffed it all up. The mental block that had been implanted in my brain after that result was dominating. I knew I had to go back to the PC. I knew I had to banish those demons. See, the problem is that I am good at Vs. I can know that, but I couldn’t really say that until I had proven myself at the highest level I could find. Hence the confidence issue thing. The skill level of Vs PC’s is still rather crude, and even with a bad deck I knew I should at least make Day 2. For all of my alleged skill however, I have a terrible mental game. I tend to struggle against people who don’t let the cogs in my head turn at their own pace. I tend to lose a lot of games to someone like Ryan Dare who whinges a lot about the game state, or to someone like TBS who pretends that their board is much better than it really is. I unfortunately listen to all of the talking and it really puts me off. If left to my own devices I think I am a match for most people on this planet at this game. Anyway, I notified my various employers of my impending week-long sojourn and conscripted a hesitant Rebecca as chaperone for my 11:30 flight from Australia. The only problem was that flight went to New Zealand. The next one only went to LA. The one after that only went to Denver. The one after that would finally get me to Indianapolis. There is a point when you have been awake and relatively stationary for over thirty hours that you become unsure whether you are alive or dead. Will Smith gets the girl and you feel like crying for both of them because you know they were meant to be together. Simultaneously you want to cut your arms just to know what it feels like. You wonder whether everyone else on the plane only got two and a half mushrooms in their mushroom risotto. You wonder why the damned plane can’t just go faster. I mean there aren’t any speed limits in the sky, right? When I tell TBS that I would kill to be able to just pass out sitting up, anywhere, like he can, I for once, am not lying. Kill. Dead. Sleep. Speaking of TBS how good is this? I get to Denver, looking and feeling like I just wandered out of Abu Ghraib, and I ring about thirty numbers before I realize I merely have to add a 1 to the number he gave me to get through to him. So I reach him, and he says, casually, that his flight was actually the next day. Keep in mind that I am meant to be crashing on his floor and that I will arrive in Indy that night at 11PM. What if I had just gone straight to the hotel? What if I had rang him when I got to Indy? What if I hadn’t deduced the crucial Da-Vinci-Code-esque precursor 1 to his phone number? Who knows. I am too drained to freak out so I am polite and I just hang up. You are shit and your phone number is shit. I end up getting to Indy, waiting for forty minutes for a shuttle to the cheapest hotel I can find at that point, pay my $79.95 and pass out on the bed. The wake-up call bleats 11:30 all over me. I get out of bed without waking up. Indianapolis may be the shittiest looking city in the world. I have been enough places to have an opinion here. You know in Bladerunner, how all of the colours are various shades of black, streaked in electric orange? Well I half expected Deckard to walk out from some open air Asian eatery, and that wasn’t just because there was a Con in town and Deckard clones were fashionable. A local shaman tells me that the name Indianapolis is derived from an old native word that means overflow of turds. Indianapolis is where dirt goes to die Fortunately, an oasis of gaming stood out like the Ivory Tower at the end of The Never-Ending Story. GenCon, the funnest, bestest four days in gaming. Everywhere I looked there were kids hunched over dice, bountifully breasted women riding dragons, and old men with crucifix earrings trading Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. Is there a better place on earth, or even Middle-Earth? Odin knows not! After hooking up with various Australians and depositing luggage I did an Avengers draft just to make sure I wasn’t completely lost in the format. I drafted a great deck and Foggo won a round so I was supremely confident with my take on the format. Adding to that I rare drafted 2 Null Time Zones, a Cap and a Spiderman. Considering I lost the draft because of a screw-up, all in all I was very happy. During the draft I made acquaintances with some quasi-DeckTechers, Eric, Colin and Keith, and having people to talk to during the PC should never be underrated. Anyway, some people like to get a ‘good night’s sleep’, whatever that means, before a big tournament. Not me. Jetlagged and slightly anxious I knew sleeping was unlikely. Fortunately, Foggo and Ryan want to go somewhere to eat, and the obligatory alcohol arrives not much later. Beer after beer, then vodka after vodka, goes down the hatch as I parade my usual “Ill just have one more” routine while smoking half of Foggo’s cigarettes. After a couple of hours of merriment, we return to our various places of rest and I promptly pass out from various competing forms of fatigue. I wake up again when Paul Ross and TBS come back to the room, and between Ben’s snoring and the stifling heat of the room I don’t get any more sleep, generally just lying there with a headache until seven in the morning. Bad times, but when you can fly thirty hours without sleeping more than once you develop a tough skin for such situations. After getting a shower I go to the site, and do some irrelevant stuff like gold-fishing. I also pretend that searching for healthy food will be fruitful, and idle some time away fantasizing about broccoli and bananas. Time goes slowly but eventually we are moshing at the pairings pages and I have drawn Matt Oldaker in a feature match. My pseudo-fame as Metagame.com columnist extraordinaire affords me some privileges I guess. I never win feature matches. Technically this is wrong, as in top Eights at 10Ks I seem to be fine generally, but during my overrated Magic career and my short Vs career the feature match area must have been paved with my own personal kryptonite. The chairs they give you are so awesome though that I would almost be willing to drop a match every couple of rounds to have their contoured vinyl exterior caress my posterior for a few brief but blissful moments. Anyway, I get my preferred evens initiative in this match and given my strategy is to hit a one-drop and try and use Chopping Block and Sweeping Up to create a match-winning board advantage you can imagine that I am pretty happy with my opening hand of G’Nort, Sweeping Up, Sweeping Up, Sinestro. I didn’t draw another character until turn three. I had fourteen two drops in my deck. Needless to say I got crushed. Oh well, I thought, shit happens. Even though this rarely happened in testing it wasn’t beyond the realms of probability. It was close, but not beyond. I signed the slip, peeled my arse cheeks from the gentle kiss of those wondrous chairs and forlornly sat down on a much harder, more plastic, chair miles from the feature match area. Fortunately I was too tired to get that much upset. I had gotten a bad draw, it happens. Foggo (Chris Foggin, the only other Aussie - Ed) had lost as well and although he seemed much more optimistic than me it was a comfort to know I wasn’t the only one who had traveled the equivalent of a moon landing to be 0-1. There was a long way to go still and I finally understood why all of those robotic sportspeople are told to say they are taking each game one at a time. Round 2 was my nadir. I direct you to return to the opening paragraph of this venture for the details. 0-1 Seems unlucky. 0-2 seems shit. I was disappointed sure, but surprisingly I wasn’t livid, or indignant, or any of those other life states that just scream, ‘Hey how about we break some stuff!?”. I had been unlucky sure, but I knew there was still a long way to go. I now needed 7-3 sure, which seems daunting, but I had been fortunate to string large numbers of wins together in the past and I knew I had it in me. In the back of my mind I had to show myself that LA had been aberration, not an inherent flaw in my character. At the same time 0-3 probably would have killed me. Fortunately I got some back next round. I got evens, and by the end of turn 2 I had a one drop carrying the Block and an exhausted Kyle Rayner. My opponent had no characters. GG. I let him whinge a bit because I know it sucks and all but I was elated just to get on the board and I left the table ASAP. The fourth round was much of the same, with me Sweeping a guy early and riding the advantage over the long game. I wont deny that I felt a little horrible to my opponents at this stage, but it really wasn’t my fault that the format sucked. I was making the plays I had to make, and given my weakness for compassion leading to bad play on my part I knew I had to stay pig-headed if I was to ride the lightning to day two. The fifth round was tough. I missed my one drop, which my deck really has to make, due to its lack of pumps. My opponent gets into a position where I know he has three Helping Hands and there is very little I can do to play against them. He is misplaying but his advantage is too much, and I am eventually swarmed on the last possible turn. Slipping back to 2-3 was almost as bad as being 0-2. It is really tough to keep picking yourself up off the floor, knowing that you cant afford to play sloppy and when playing with a bad deck in a bad environment you really have to eek out the smallest advantages you can get. Fortunately I was playing pretty well, as I tend to excel in formats with a lot of known information, which in turn tends to reward small incremental positional plays that I revel in. I always play d4 before e4. So now the target is 5-2 from my remaining matches. Fortunately I play a rather experimental deck in the sixth round. Although he recurs Dead Eye with Dr Light the entire game my deck just curves out well and overwhelms him when he under-drops on turn six. I get to sign the slip at 3-3 knowing that I am doing ok but I am going to have to do better to get through to the next day. Man, the PC takes way too long. I know, I know slow play is incredibly difficult to monitor but damn there is a lot of abuse going on. Between rounds one time I realized I had no friends so I decided to go and loiter in the feature match area. Maybe I was just trying to be closer to the chairs, I dunno. Anyway, I had obviously finished my round so there could have been max seven minutes left on the clock. Anyway, I watch Reinhard Blech take, no lies, at least seven minutes to decide whether to play Chip and a 1-cost guy or Tomar Tu and a 3-cost guy. He was getting pummeled on the board. I realize there are decisions to be made in Vs, but this was turn 5 people. It is totally unfair that people can take this long to play. I am not singling out Reinhard here, he was the norm rather than the exception . Seriously, when the rounds are supposed to take half an hour, and routinely took double that time, something is wrong. I was 3-3, and it was 4 o’clock or something like that. Ridiculous. Getting to the seventh round I really wanted to finally move into positives. I felt like I had to, as I needed to 4-2 at least, and I had to string a few wins together at some point to get to the next day. I get tangled in another GLEE matchup but fortunately my opponent gets mauled by Remoni and a choice Salaak power-up. Sweet. I edge it out and finally am above .500. Unfortunately next round I realize this is going to be harder still. I get owned by Speedy in this game but my opponent had missed two so it wasn’t all bad. The problem was because of Speedy I couldn’t really put the game away. I end up looking to clean him out on turn 6 with a chop on Sinestro and a Sweep on his Malvolio (Fun Fact: I went 0-x against guys who resolved Malvolio against me at the PC, as predicted). Anyway so I line up an attack on his Sinestro and he plays Dimming of the Starheart on my Sinestro. ZOMG. So I’m like whatever homie, and announce my Katma Tui and Tomar Tu with Light Armour on his Sinestro. Another Dim. OMFG. PS I get to Sinestro the hard way, lose most of my board, and even though I sweep and chop him out he peels Sinestro 7 (sighs) and wins a tight one after a tied extra turn 4-4. Goddamn it wasn’t easy that’s for sure. Next game I just beat someone who was far worse than me. I get a good curve and just ride my slightly better skills to victory. It really wasn’t any more than this. Round Ten. I really got to win this. Unfortunately for me, I know my opponent, Niles Rowland, is quite savvy, and that I am not going to get a free win by any means. Fortunately for me I actually draw the nut high in this game. I don’t mean like a straight off the flop nut-high, I am talking like Royal Flush. The freakin’ nuts. I go G’Nort, Tomar Tu or something, Sweep. Then I drop Roy, and sweep again, rinse repeat with me dropping Roy three times on one turn. It was unfair. It was GLEE. I was finally breathing easy and 6-4. One more win. C’mon. After I won the last match I didn’t think I could hold my luck, but this game blew my mind for how crazy good my opener was. I bust G’Nort, Kyle Rayner, Olapet and The Ring Has Chosen off the top. Then I draw Kyle Rayner and G’Nort. This is ridiculous as my opponent has evens and drops a one and two. He sends a dude into G’Nort for 1-ATK and I power-up LOLS. Then he goes in on Kyle and I power-up there too OMFG so lucky!. Obv he is shattered and I proceed to just consolidate for the rest of the game, playing overcautiously as he is with Prison Planet, but never looking like losing. 7-4 OMG. I was absolutely mentally finished at
this point. The force of will not only needed to merely stay awake, but
play 11 mirrors in a row, was retarded. I just wanted to collapse right there. I
had exorcised the demons of LA. In all seriousness, al I wanted to do was make
Day 2. I knew I would make money drafting. I just wanted to hurl a few
monkeys off of my back. [ Email the Author | Discuss this Article ]
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