FNM

[tigertoy]

So after a couple of weeks of hiatus I returned to Friday Night Magic at the Armored Gopher.  (Two weeks ago, when Standard didn't run due to too few players, I decided to go to a board game party instead.  Last week I was in Atlanta.)  My curse seems to still be with me.  The scheduled formats were Scars of Mirrodin sealed and Innistrad draft.  I signed up for sealed, but it didn't go off (as I was nearly certain would happen).  I drafted what I thought was a great deck.  Red and white, plenty of removal, bunch of creatures, two Rally the Peasants.  I even showed it to Bill, who was not playing, and he concurred.  So of course I did poorly.  My memory is poor and of course I'm too bone-headed to write down notes about the matches, so I don't remember very much of what happened in which game, but my first match against Matt, first game, I lost because I didn't miss a land drop all the way to turn 10, but I only saw one creature.  Second game, I didn't take a point of damage.  But the third game went to time; I don't recall what the board looked like -- I had less life but I think I was still in it.  I think my deck was better, but it ended 1-1-1.  Second game, against Ray, was a walkover by the final result, but the first game was a fairly long grind, and he played v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.  I'm a slow player myself and I try hard to avoid hypocrisy, and I mention it -- that's how slow.  I didn't look at the clock but I think game 1 took 40 minutes.  Game 2 went a lot quicker but still very close to time.  I didn't lose a life in either game.  Match 3, game 1 against Adam, I smacked him good -- kept his board clear and didn't lose a life.  Game 2 I think was the game where I mulliganed a marginal hand (3 mountains, mostly white spells) that I should have kept, got a 1-lander, and then got 2 plains and a couple of red spells; I was a couple of turns behind from lack of mana and he walked over me, so it was 1-2 for the match and 1-1-1 for the tourney.  Tiebreak didn't save me, and my door prize was the uncommon batch, nothing exciting.

I stayed for the after draft event, where I drafted what I thought was a terrible deck -- red and white again, but this time with almost no removal, no bombs, really not much of anything, and I went 2-1 overall (beating Harrison in the last round even though he had a deck that should have been a lot better, because he didn't draw his best stuff), so I won a pack of Scars for my trouble.

It's kind of frustrating that any time the thought that I might actually do well in an event forms in my mind, the universe seems determined to smack me down with bad luck; I only do decently when I think I have a terrible deck.

I didn't do any trading.  Dave discovered a couple of boxes of tokens cleaning out the storage room, so I bought a few cool ones.  (I have plenty of cat tokens now.)  And now I'm heading back to the Gopher for some casual play to celebrate Mark's birthday.