GPSeaTac!

So, i went to GPSeaTac this past weekend. And let's just say, the experience was quite different than my last GP. The last one was my first and was local, and I had no byes, and i was alive to make day 2 until round 9 which had an anti-climactic end. This time, I travelled to Tacoma, had 2 byes, and then immediately lost 3 rounds in a row in surgical fashion. My pool and deck were atrocious, i likely misbuilt it, i may or may not post the pool, it just really sucked. I initially built a R/U deck, that didn't quite have enough aggression, and ended up in a durdly G/R werewolf deck. Removal just wasn't deep enough in any of my colors, and my deck didn't have answers to simple commons like Chapel Geist.

However, this GP experience was awesome, instead of running around the site checking on all my local crowd and their results, i was meeting new people at every turn, and constantly playing magic! I got to meet lots of twitter folk for the first (or even second) time, and that was awesome!

I met @fatecreatr Chris McNutt, which was really cool. We've connected through QuietSpeculation.com stuff early on, and stayed in close touch even though he's no longer actively working with the site. He put up a good run Saturday, but missed Round 9 to go 6-3, sounds like my local GP in San Diego. maybe its the local's curse?

I also got to chit chat with @marshall_lr briefly a couple times, he was obviously swamped with coverage stuff, and what i did see of it from the hotel room during breaks was spectacular, I hope thye sign him on for more of this.

I also got to meet @jonloucks, and get some LR stickers, which was pretty cool too!

I got to spell sling against Ryan Spain @modogodot former host of Limited Resources and now WotC employee. This was actually my only prize earned of the weekend! *sigh* It was cool to just shake his hand and say hi.

I got to meet one of @thebg_d's friends Drew, @generalfish, as he smashed me in Round 2 of a Legacy win-a-box, but i got some good tips from him for beating Delver in the future.

I ran into @tom_martell a couple times at the Hotel, bought him a drink with his $napcaster mage money, and he said something to me that i've still been pondering since then. "...I x-2 (edit: fixed) or better ever Day 1 sealed at a GP anyway, so sealed is just sealed." That really stuck for me. I hate sealed, I have very Feast/Famine success with it, and made me wonder how bad at building pools i really must be. :/ not really sure how to work on this. I practice building pools a lot, but there's not really a great way to get feedback on if you built it correctly or not, aside from tournament results, so re-building pools over and over again only really gets you so far.

I also met @inkwell_looter! we just so happened to sign up for the same 8-man draft! he recognized me, and we chatted a bit before our event started. A really really friendly guy, and good competitor. i didn't get a chance to play with him, but we were both defeated by the same opponent. It was also kinda late on sunday at this point, and i didn't get a chance to try out his "Potluck" format afterward. His Draft deck looked pretty sweet when I peeked at it. He also gave me some of his awesome wolf tokens! Gonna put them in a Mayor of Avabruck deck, I think. Always refreshing when someone who you suspected is pretty damn cool actually turns out to be pretty damn cool.

It's really hard to actually hang out with people at these events, people all have different schedules and priorities, and everyone is also trying to play their event(s). It sure feels good to meet these people in person, but i had envisioned this giant dinner where everyone would drop everything and want to do some big get together. Not really sure how/why i thought that would happen, but was definitely a bit dissapointed Saturday/Sunday night when i was still just hanging out with people I already knew from prior to the weekend.

Aside from Magic, I got to do some pretty cool sight-seeing in both Tacoma and Seattle, and I had a blast both at and away from the GP site. Fun trip, hopefully I'll Q for PT Seattle later this year so I can return.

After feeling pretty confident in this format, and putting together a somewhat respectable run at my last GP, i figured the 2 bye's i had earned would help me make the bump to Day 2, and when I couldn't even win a single round, i was a bit dejected, but after that passed, and i started just playing magic for fun and exploring the city, the trip turned out great. I'd love to be able to do more travelling to these sorts of things, but it's a bit insane the more I think about it. Even if i had done well, it would have been impossible to recoup my costs unless I won the event or qualified for a flight to barcelona, and of course, everything always turns out more expensive than what you'd expect. in retrospect, if I had made it to 9th place (for arguments sake), I likely would have had a much worse trip. Sure, i'd recover a decent fraction of what i'd spent, but have not much else to show for it, and not nearly as much time to adventure around the city or meet new poeple like i did after i dropped from the event.

Thanks to all of you who helped make it an awesome trip for me!