What's better than a 3-day weekend? A 4-day week. Friday has arrived. Some quick catchup... Since I blogged last, I cranked through finals, played in Pre-release/release events, a PTQ and a handful of other local drafts. I finished 5-1 at my first pre-release, with a mostly Mono-B pool, running Obliterator and Sheoldred, along with a suite of black removal, splashing red for a couple artifact removal spells and a burn spell. Somehow the breakers put me into 5th place, which was a significant drop-off in prize support, from 4th. The following day, I went 4-1, to finish 3rd, but getting the opportunity to play against Brian Kibler. I played fairly poorly against him, but managed to pull it together game 3. The following Thurs we had midnight drafts at the LGS, I broke even on the first draft, and my buddy and I crushed a 2HG. He had a U/B control, and I had a rage extractor deck. Rage extractor is sleeper nutty in a 8 pack NPH sealed. If you happen to have 16 packs of NPH and you want to school some people, do it. The release events I couldn't play in, but I played in a Legacy tournament and embarassed myself with ANT to a 1-2 drop finish. Played the deck with out ever seeing it before, and i was in way over my head. The PTQ was a nightmare also a 1-2 drop. Both of my losses were of the nastiest beats ever, but I'll spare the 2-week old bad-beat story(ies) for now. I did manage to crush 2 side drafts after dropping, and with those prize packs, battled some winston drafting to convert those packs into $$. All said and done, the day was a wash.
So that's the fast forward catchup. This past weekend I went to a buddy's place up in LA, and my backpack of cards was stolen from my car. Most of you have heard my moaning about it, I'll spare it again here. But, yeah, it sucks. I caught up on last weeks Limited Resources podcast (they are at MTGcast.com) and I chuckled. Ryan (@modogodot) has just gotten hired at WotC in what he considers to be his dream job. On the cast, he talks about how difficult it is to explain to non-gamers how big of a deal this job is to him. In this same vein, I've had trouble communicating to my non-gamer friends how difficult it is to have your collection stolen. Obviously, it was a decently expensive collection, but on top of that, it's my continuous 'trophy' of my last two years drafting. Not to mention my custom playmat a guy at our LGS made for me, along with my PTQ top 8 pin, and my beloved Pyromancer Ascension deck are all gone... forever. It's so hard to describe the gravity of this loss to a non-gamer. My gamer friends think I'm taking it extremely well, I'm still anxious to be drafting, and I'm still excited about Magic. My non-gamer friends think i'm over-reacting. Perhaps both groups are right. I wrote a bit about how I'm going to approach rebuilding my collection over at @quietspec today, and this weeks article is outside the paywall, so feel free to read a little more about what losing my collection means to me over there. That being said, the outpouring of sympathy, well-wishes, and generous offers is really heart-warming. Thanks.
On to the Follow Friday already! Jeez, okay guys, don't all yell at me at once!
Had a brief back-and-forth with @mrfridays this week about comapring Volt Charge to Fallen Ferromancer. We both felt it was not close at all, but we disagreed (big surprise). I like volt charge here, because it will always do what you want it to do, while ferromancer is really swingy and fragile. #ff to @mrfridays because he's not only extremely entertaining, but very opinionated as well.
Huge #ff to @modogodot and @marshallLRcast who prepped me well for my pre-release and release events. I love their new set material, because they dig so deep on each card, that even when I don't agree with a particular valuation, the facts they bring up are very complete, and give me the tools I need to make my own judgements. Congratulations to both Ryan and Marshall, Ryan on the WotC gig, and Marshall who was selected to the Community Cup team. Nice work, fellas.
#ff to @semisober who is still pushing great draft material on his blog, www.tommartell.com, he also got a 17th place finish at the GP due to some awful tie-breaker shenanigans.
#ff to @smi77y just for being smitty, also to @williegmyprez who both really have their ear to the Standard Meta, and have fresh ideas constantly. Same goes for @cavemankellen who also writes on quietspec, as well as the other spike guys @dtlerch @bgardnerdurbin and @joshjmtg
I try to avoid directly promoting quietspeculation.com 's subscription service here on my blog. But @chosler88 and @fatecreatr have put together the Prediction Tracker for Insider subscribers, and it's really impressive. It collects information from all of the finance writers (including YT) into a very well organized and detailed spreadsheet. It's any serious traders guide to being "next level" on trading.
#ff to @samstod, one of my favorite writers, and @wrongwaygoback who has (somewhat) recently joined quietspeculation.com writing about commander, is my other favorite writer.
Before this blog existed, I applied to the SCG talent search, and while continuing on there wasn't in the stars for me, @wrongwaygoback gave me, a simple fan of his blog, his time and effort to review my submission for me. He also really gave me a wake-up call about writing style. This guy has good digs. Check out his blog, you can find it through his twitter tag.
Also, #ff to @rtassicker, @necr0mancer, @ahalavais @hobbesq @dzimet @metaknightmare and @thewachman because they are all awesome! (yeah yeah, i'm getting lazy, sorry to sell you guys short... another day another blog...)
have a great weekend everyone!
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