Warning, much Magic geekery to follow:
For the last few days, the Magic: the Gathering world championships have been going on, and they were in San Francisco. This is a pretty big deal, as it’s like the Olympics and wanders all around the world, and isn’t even in the U.S. that often. So on Saturday, I carpooled up with two of our regular play group. The main event wasn’t really the interesting part, however. The event we went up for was the Japanese Fourth Edition/Italian Legends sealed deck. I won’t type in my full cardpool, although there was an Armageddon in there, and it’s black border and in Japanese, so that’s kind of nice. I typed up the deck that I played. It was seven rounds of swiss and there were a hundred people entered. I ended coming in third, after intentionally drawing in the last round at table two, and I got 21 packs of Mirrodin, Darksteel and Fifth Dawn for my trouble.
The tournament itself was very fun. Because most of the cards were from Fourth Edition, it was very much like playing when I first started (which was in Revised). I had a game that started with my opponent playing Shanodin Dryads, I played Drudge Skeletons, then they played Hurloon Minotaur… it was very old-school. Also, for the first time ever, I was on the receiving end of a Mirror Universe. One guy in the tournament even had Channel + Fireball.
There were other things going on as well, people I know played in side drafts, team sealed decks. I also watched the gunslinging going on, and hovered over while Mark Rosewater won with Darksteel Reactor for the first time. I also saw the 3d cards done by that Japanese artist… those were amazing in person, the article on them doesn’t do them justice.
The weather was also amazing. The event was at Fort Mason, so there was a great clear view of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and pretty much the entire North Bay was visible.