Subject: [Report] European Championships - er, bit late I know, sorry... Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:41:38 +0100 From: "A.A.Coggins" To: "'fkusumot@ix.netcom.com'" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ European Championships, Brussels - various side events 10-12 July 1998 4-1 in Korean 4th SD, various 0-1's in 8 player drafts Scott qualified for the Europeans at the same time as he qualified for the Worlds. I wasn't qualified but decided to tag along as well as it was my first chance to go to an International event, plus we wanted to go together. Robin McCandless (also on the UK Worlds team) was driving over to Brussels as he has a company car, along with Mike Cooper (not qualified). We were going with them on the ferry, instead of catching the Eurostar. Thursday morning we get up hideously early and drive down to Luton in my Mini. We meet up with Robin and Mike and set off for Dover. The trip was fairly uneventful - we stop for coffee at a service station, then arrive at the ferry without incident. The crossing is pretty calm and we play Magic for the duration of the journey. We wander down to the car decks only to discover a huge queue of people in their cars waiting for us to return and move Robin's car - oops... We all leap in the car and drive off. Robin used to live in Brussels and knows the way, so we find the hotel pretty easily after a couple of hours driving. Robin and Scott need to register their decks and attend the player meeting at the Holiday Inn, so after unpacking and settling in, we wander off to find it. It's just round the corner, and the bar is already full of people. I have a glass or three of the lovely raspberry beer, while Scott has his usual Coke. We meet up with the other Brits, plus Tim Hall and Carl Crook, UK Wizards people. Scott and Robin register, and we wander round chatting with people until the player meeting starts. I sneak in just to see what it's all about, but it's just the usual explanation of the format, rounds, mulligan rule etc. A lot of people start asking very stupid questions after a while, so Scott and I wander off. Back in the bar, Scott plays against Tim Hall whilst I wander off to chat to Kim Eikefet, whom I'm on a all-female-mailing-team with, and meet some of the Scandinavian players. I go back into the bar and see Scott playing with his Korean black bordered Armageddon with an Animate Wall picture on it. I tell him he shouldn't play it in the main event because it'll confuse people, and we squabble a bit before going to check with the Head Judge. When we go to find the Head Judge, it turns out the Player Meeting is *still* going on! Some mad foreign bloke is going "When I play Cataclysm, who chooses the permanents to destroy first? Can I respond in between the first person destroying their permanents and the second?" Scott and I roll our eyes at each other, and when they eventually finish, tramp off to see the Judges. Scott is told he can't use his Armageddon, much to his chagrin, and has to borrow one off Robin. We sit around and chat for a bit longer but Scott is tired and we both have a busy day tomorrow so we retire for an early night... Friday morning and we arrive at the tournament venue for the first time. It's *huge*! I'm totally impressed and wander around wide-eyed, looking at the booths and where the artists sit and the pictures on the wall, and peering over the upstairs balcony at the tournament area. I buy a load of foreign boosters which are 130 BFr each, and just as I settle down to rip them open, Arne Bister of Team Aachen Fantastics comes along! Scott and I have been emailing Arne for a while, and he presents us with little gifts to wish us luck. Mine has some cards for my Suicide Black deck, a Spiny Starfish (long story!) and a pack of German Exodus. I rip it open to reveal: Equilibrium! Cool, what a great start to the weekend! We chat animatedly with Arne who's really bouncy and friendly, and then wander off to talk to the British players. There are about 15 altogether: (from memory...) Chris Manners, Tony Dobson, Gordon Benson, Phil Mattingly, Robert Bown, Dan Paskins, Nicolas Moss-Allison, Clint Oldridge, Robin McCandless, Graham Thompson, Paul Hawkins, Warren Marsh and Scott (sorry to anyone I've forgotten). Unqualified there was me, Mike Cooper, Paul Barclay, Carl and Tim from WotC plus Julia Ball who turned up on Saturday. The main event starts after a bit of a delay, and I wander off to find out what's going on with the side events. It's a bit disorganised, and they haven't got a cash box or any sheets filled out yet! I ask if I can do a Chinese/Japanese Rath Cycle draft, and they agree, and within a few minutes we have 8 players. We sit down to draft, and I get a pretty good deck, although I had to ask loads of questions about what the cards were - I didn't realise how tricky it is to remember all those Stronghold uncommons when they're in Japanese! Here's the deck: 1 Mogg Maniac 1 Raging Goblin 1 Mogg Raider 2 Furnace Brood 1 Wall of Diffusion 1 Mage il-Vec 1 Sandstone Warrior 1 Anarchist 1 Rathi Dragon 1 Carnophage 1 Dauthi Cutthroat 1 Morgue Thrull 1 Thrull Surgeon 3 Flowstone Blade 1 Shock 1 Flame Wave 1 Sonic Burst 1 Spontaneous Combustion 1 Spinal Graft 1 Evincar's Justice 1 Diabolic Edict 10 Mountain 7 Swamp I am drawn against Paul Barclay in the first round, which is a little frustrating as he only lives in Cambridge and I could play against him anytime! Still, we begin. In the first game I get Rathi out fairly early on, then Combustion away all his creatures and Sonic Burst his new blocker. I win. In the second game, I have a lot of land but decide not to mulligan. He gets out a Scalding Salamander, puts loads of Spike Counters on it until it's 5/4, and I draw even more land before he kills me rather swiftly! We move onto the final game. I have Rathi in hand and cast him as soon as I can to avoid being crushed. This seems like a great plan until Paul casts Capsize with buyback, at which point Rathi starts to be much less useful. He stomps on me with beasties and I die. As it's knockout, that's it for me, which is a little disappointing as I rather liked the deck. I try not to worry about it and wander off to do something else. I register to do the Korean 4th Edition sealed deck at 1.30pm, but I have a little while yet. I wander downstairs to look for Scott, and find him after his second round. He's on 0-2 and just been beaten by Janosh Kuhn. He is not very happy about it. I try to console him a bit before going back upstairs to begin the sealed event, which is 5 rounds of Swiss. I sit down, get my packs, and open them. I'm pleased to find a Winter Orb in there, although I won't be playing it as my deck is better suited to beatdown than control. For some reason I've been blessed with a rather large amount of direct damage and removal, and I construct the following deck: 1 Nether Shadow 1 Erg Raiders 2 Ironclaw Orcs 1 Brothers of Fire 1 Grey Ogre 1 Bird Maiden 1 Scathe Zombies 1 Frozen Shade 1 Vampire Bats 1 Hill Giant 1 Hurloon Minotaur 1 Battering Ram 1 Grapeshot Catapult 1 Grizzly Bears 1 Giant Spider 1 Meekstone 1 Dark Ritual 1 Drain Life 1 Ashes to Ashes 1 Terror 1 Pestilence 1 Pyrotechnics 2 Lightening Bolt 6 Mountain 7 Swamp 3 Forest Pretty good, huh? Well, that's what I thought too. Until I met my first round opponent, Thomas Diedic. In the first game I crush him by Bolting and Terroring his creatures, casting an early Meekstone so his Unholy Strength'ed creature cannot attack, and Drain him for the kill. I am quite confident, although I haven't seen much of his deck yet. We go onto game 2. I have to Paris mulligan, but since he is going first it's not too terrible. I make an early Meekstone, he casts a Serra. SERRA? He points at Serra and then my Meekstone and says "Combo!" I groan inwardly. Then he casts a Hypnotic Spectre. Yikes! He's also got Savannah Lions and a Disrupting Sceptre. Of course, he stomps all over me. I'm very impressed with his deck. Why don't I get Serras, Hyppies and Lions, huh? Game three it turns out that he also has Brass Man, White Knight, Ashnod's and Swords. [sigh] I tell him afterwards that he should win the whole tournament with that deck! I think he came second in the end so not far off... In Round 2 I am playing Christian Brummer. Gordon comes upstairs not long after the match has begun, all bouncy and happy because he's crushed someone with his Song of Blood/Goblin deck. I didn't take many notes in this match, and I'm glad because I made some very embarrassing errors which I seem to have "forgotten". Something about 'Drain your Wall for 3?' No, no, it's slipped my mind... Christian was sitting opposite me when I was constructing and had helped me identify lots of the cards in my deck, and seemed really chatty and friendly plus a pretty good player. He killed me quite quickly in the first game, and in the second I had to Paris, made a series of terrible errors including misusing Pestilence and Pyrotechnics (for some reason I didn't realise you could target more than one thing, but then it was in Korean...) and happily topdecked a swamp so I could Drain Life... I won game 3 as well despite playing terribly, and the poor guy looked quite disappointed, I could almost hear him thinking "Oh my god, what has this woman just done to my ranking?" [grin] Scott appeared halfway through the match, much happier because he'd pulled back from 0-2 by winning his last 2 matches. He watches the end of the match and marvels at my terrible mistakes with Gordon. They both mutter about Draining Walls for the rest of the weekend... I wander off downstairs with them, and chat to some of the other Brits. Warren Marsh and Tony are on 4-0 and seem pretty cheerful. I go and get some cards signed by the artists: Kev Walker, Daniel Gelon and John Matson are all there signing everything from White Knights to Tradewind Riders to Volrath's Stronghold. I've brought a few of each and chat briefly to them. Scott still hasn't been called back in, and I say "Hmm, it must be about time for my next round..." and he says "Oh? I thought it started ages ago?" I run upstairs only to discover that I'm already late and have a first game loss for it - silly me! This happened at the Nationals too... I guess I just get distracted when Scott and I aren't playing in the same tournament! I'm playing Johan Sohck. I don't think his English is all that great, or else he's just very shy. He has big brown eyes and looks at me shuffling frantically with an air of great patience. We begin, but he has to Paris mulligan. He is totally mana flooded, and casts only one non-land spell in the whole game, whilst I run at him with an assortment of Orcs and Ogres. In the deciding game he is playing first and goes: Land, Black Vise. Eeek! I lose 7 life to the Vise in my first few turns. I have a lovely Sligh-ish draw and can cast out my hand quickly, accumulating a nice array of small creatures. I start to attack, and when he finally puts down some blockers, I get Pestilence out. I Pestilence away almost all of our creatures, sometimes killing my own and casting something else so that I don't lose the Pestilence. I do us both a lot of damage, but he's on less life than me and I win. I feel a bit bad about it, because whenever I win the first game because my opponent is late I'm always optimistic about winning the match, and yet whenever it's been me that's been late, I've come back and won 2-1! Oh well. Round 4 and I'm playing Sebastien Gosse. I think he is French, and he looks at my stuffed frog when I dump it on the table with an air of suspicion. He's got blond hair and is quite bubbly and effusive, and exclaims loudly to his mates from time to time. He's funny, I liked him. In the first game he kills me somehow (can you tell I didn't take very precise notes here!), and in the second I kill him by casting monster after monster, and he only has so much creature removal. He didn't like my Meekstone much either. I have only 3 land all game, but I draw just about every little creature in my deck and he cannot block them all. In the final game, a number of the British players have wandered upstairs and are watching. Chris Manners is sitting behind me, and Gordon is to my right. Chris is loudly taking the piss out of Gordon for being beaten by a Shrieking Drake/Equilibrium combo, and I'm trying not to laugh and be distracted. Scott is there too, and when they all head downstairs for their next round, I am on 11 life and Sebastien has a Shivan Dragon in hand. You'll never guess what... I win that game! Scott couldn't believe it when I told him later! I topdecked a Pestilence, attacked with everything and he could only block one thing, I Pestilence'd as far as I could, and eventually I scraped a win. Sebastien was a really good sport, and laughed a lot, and said "I cannot believe eet!" a few times... In the last round I am playing Hynek Skoda. I'm late (again) and rush up to the table, dump my frog on the table, then remember the last round. I stare at Hynek, then ask "You're not French, are you?" He says "No" and I say "Good!" People turn around and stare at me, and I realise I said that a bit loudly. I stutter out an explanation, pointing frantically at the frog and eventually realise that I'm making things worse. It turns out Hynek is from the Czech Republic, and can't understand me babbling along in English. I try to slow down a bit and we begin. In the first game we trade a bit of damage at first. I have too much mana and am desperately trying to topdeck a burn spell. Unfortunately for me, Hynek gets there first and Disintegrates me to death. In game 2 I get the Pestilence out, kill all his creatures and then him. Pestilence has been a marvellous card today, it's won me so many games! At this point, Hynek's friends cheer, and one of them explains to me in broken English that they don't see many pretty girls in Magic and that they'd rather I won than him as they see him all the time! I think this is quite sweet and flattering and smile back politely before beginning the final game. He chooses to play, and then has to Paris meaning he starts with 6 cards and I start with 8 - this is why I always choose to draw first in Sealed. I get out creature after creature, and eventually he's forced to waste a Fireball getting rid of my Hill Giant. I play Pestilence, followed by a bit of direct damage to ensure my victory. Woo-hoo! 4-1!!! I win a Japanese Weatherlight and a Japanese Visions booster, and get a load of crap apart from a rather nice Japanese Impulse. I wander off to find Scott and the others. They've finished, because Scott ID'ed the last round. He's on 3-1-2 and safely into the second day. When I find him, he's playing Korean Fifth Edition straight out the box for ante with Gordon. The rules are: You can take one card out before you start (Scott implemented this rule on opening a Nev's Disk!) but you have to play with everything else you get. I watch them with amusement for a while, and then we decide off for some food and some more Korean Fifth. Gordon, Scott, Clint, Dan, Phil and I all buy packs of Korean Fifth just as the booth is closing. We meet up with a load of the others and wander off to a nice restaurant near the Atomium. The food is really nice although the waiter looks a bit bemused by a dozen Magic players laughing gaily in the corner. Everyone's in chirpy moods and we manage to scrape together the money for the bill at the end, so all is well. We head off to the Holiday Inn afterwards and soon settle down with our packs of Korean Fifth. It's really funny watching and playing, many of these cards I've never played before (Krovikan Fetish, Blessed Wine, Arenson's Aura...) and both players are frequently colour screwed as we're all playing with 5 colour decks. The chance of me casting my Leviathan is pretty slim - I only have 5 islands in the whole deck! It's incredibly good fun and I'd recommend it to anyone as a great way to pass the time. I trade with Stuart Gosden for a bit, getting some Exodus cards for the Nether Shadow I opened earlier, and at around 1am Scott and I head off to bed. I didn't really want to leave because I was having loads of fun, but Scott needed to get some sleep before tomorrow and eventually convinced me that I should go with him, which I did. We get up reasonably early on Saturday morning and go downstairs for some breakfast. Robin comes stumbling in, asking what time the first round starts, hair all over the place looking very sleepy indeed. He explains he'd been out with Graham Thompson getting pissed last night, and is still drunk. We tell him to hurry and then nip into the supermarket for some sweets before going to the tournament ourselves. When we arrive I say hi to a few people - Arne is around, plus Kim (who's made second day) and Julia has arrived. Scott goes off to start the first draft, and I go and hang around with the Brits who haven't made second day. This includes Gordon, Dan and Phil. Gordon and I play a bit of Korean Fifth for fun, although we're a bit bored of our decks from last night after a couple of games, so run off and buy new ones. Gordon gets a Sylvan Library and a Geddon, I get... Lord of the Pit. Hmm. Oh well! We start, and as usual it's absolutely ridiculous but very amusing. There were a few classic moments, like when I asked Gordon what Juxtapose does, he told me, I look at what's on the table and choose not to cast it, and the next turn he casts his Orgg!! I of course swap one of my crappy monsters for his Orgg and beat him down with it. In another game he taps all his mana, untaps one with a Ley Druid and taps it again for a 4 point Mind Warp, and I go "Force Spike?" and collapse in giggles. I steal all Gordon's fat monsters in ante (I think I got a Fallen Angel, Durkwood Boars and something else) leaving him with just 1/1s to win with... [grin] Dan Paskins kindly acts as scorekeeper, at one point keeping score for two different matches at once! Dan decides to play a game against my frog, which is sitting on the table. He casts Mind Ravel on the frog and pulls a card at random (the frog wasn't very good at choosing) and pulls the Fireball, and the Frog still crushes him. I'm crying with laughter and insist on taking a photo of the match, which I do (see my webpage). To my amusement, Dan signs the ante for me, which is a Fog. Eventually we get bored of this. The main event draft is still going on, although they don't seem to be stopping it every five seconds like at the UK Nationals. Gordon tries shouting "Stop the draft!" from time to time, but nobody pays much attention. We decide to go and play for some more foreign cards, so we go upstairs and register for an 8 player draft. It consists of pretty much all the British players plus a few foreign people I rope in. We decide to do Rochester, and Julia agrees to judge, so we head out to a round table on the balcony. I draft a weird green/blue deck, I'm not sure if it's particularly good and I just hope I don't see Gordon, who's sitting next to me and manages to get all the good cards... [grin] Here's a listing: 1 Wayward Soul 1 Rootwater Mystic 1 Thalakos Deceiver 1 Skyshroud Condor 1 Wall of Tears 1 Wind Drake 1 Spindrift Drake 1 Watchdog 1 Horned Sliver 1 Bayou Dragonfly 1 Wood Elves 1 Jackalope Herd 1 Pygmy Troll 1 Rootbreaker Wurm 1 Spike Feeder 2 Skyshroud Troll 1 Dream Cache 1 Time Ebb 1 Power Sink 1 Broken Fall 1 Provoke 1 Rampant Growth 8 Islands 8 Forests 1 Ancient Tomb I'm paired against someone called Bernard. He gets out a Frozen Shade and a Canyon Wildcat, I have nothing but small crappy flyers and no FAT! I can only hit him for 5 (he's on 10 life) before huge beatdown next turn, so I concede. In game two he gets out a turn 2 Foul Imp, turn 3 Spinal Graft which I just can't find an answer to. He also gets out a couple of black shadow creatures (hmm, this is starting to look like Suicide Black!) and absolutely crushes me. [sigh] So, another draft, another first round knockout. Nevermind, eh? Scott has built a bizarre Type II-style draft deck with Awakening, Capsize/Mind Games and some Spikes in it. He seems fairly confident, and goes on to achieve 2-1 in the first section of the draft. I launch myself straight back into the side events, and go and enter a TE/ST/EX booster draft, again Japanese/Chinese. I open my first pack and spy a Rolling Thunder, so I take that, and in my second pack I'm passed a Rathi Dragon! Again!! I snatch it out, and in my next few packs I'm kindly given a Kindle, a Canyon Wildcat, a Furnace of Rath (??) and a selection of beatdown monsters. This is before we even start on Stronghold!! At the end of Tempest I'm playing a mono-red deck, and continue to build on this throughout Stronghold and Exodus. Paul Barclay is standing behind me looking more and more shocked at the choices I'm being given, and I'm feeling very confident. At the end I pick up my cards and laugh, and on laying them out, this is the deck I build: 2 Duct Crawler 1 Furnace Spirit 1 Raging Goblin 1 Mogg Flunkies 1 Flowstone Giant 1 Wall of Diffusion 1 Flowstone Hellion 1 Sandstone Warrior 1 Canyon Wildcat 1 Wall of Razors 1 Mogg Conscripts 1 Reckless Ogre 1 Anarchist 1 Flowstone Shambler 1 Rathi Dragon 1 Rolling Thunder 1 Sonic Burst 1 Kindle 1 Seething Anger 1 Giant Strength 1 Maniacal Rage 1 Furnace of Rath 17 mountains I'm convinced I'm going to win this time. I mean, LOOK AT IT! I run downstairs clutching my Furnace of Rath, jump the queue to get John Matson to sign it and write "Guaranteed Win" on it, then run back upstairs and put it back in my deck before I play my first round opponent Christophe. Christophe has long thin fingers and lots of black hair and looks a bit like those lovely pale, thin people on Deep Space Nine called the Vorta. (That's intended as a compliment, honest!) He's playing a red/white deck with first turn Soul Warden (grr). He also has Venerable Monks and Staunch Defenders (how much life would you like?) but cannot deal with an influx of monsters followed up by a Rathi and a Furnace for the kill. I hit him for 24 points of damage on the turn I kill him. [grin] In the second game he again gains some life, but this time his Magmasaur shows up. Magmasaur is very scary in sealed, and we find an English one so we can make sure we know exactly what it does. I lose this one as I'm on 9 life and he's on 8 when he attacks and then blows his Magmasaur up. I made a slight error by not casting the creature I had in hand, worried that the Magmasaur would destroy it, but I later realise that had he blown up the Magmasaur, we would've both lost all our creatures and it would've been a race, and had he NOT blown it up, I could've killed him. Both rather better than him killing me, which is what happened. So we're onto the third game. I have a bad feeling about this as my luck in knock-out drafts doesn't seem to have been very good this weekend. We begin. Again he gets a first turn Soul Warden, backed up by a Monk. I get my Rathi out and beat him down to six life, before he pulls his Capsize. Capsize - WTF? It turns out he sideboarded heavily including changing some land around to get that in there. This destroys me. I play the Rathi again as a blocker, blowing up all my Mountains, but Rathi's not enough as he comes steaming in with everything. I die, and I'm really annoyed about it because I have about the best deck I've ever drafted and I get knocked out in the first round AGAIN!!! I go outside with Tim Hall and stamp around while he has a cigarette until I feel better. Meanwhile, Scott has been doing his second draft of the day. This time he's built a black/red beatdown deck. I flick through it and it all looks very promising. I'm confident he can go 2-1 with it, which means he'll get some money for being in the top 64. I moan about how I've been doing in the drafts a bit, before going off to sort out tonight's Team event. Scott goes off for his first round of draft, and I go to watch Gordon playing the Vorta bloke. Gordon's deck is pretty hideous and I think he should win - I hope he does. The Vorta bloke doesn't really understand Smite, and makes a few errors, but still beats Gordon up and wins 2-1 to my annoyance. Gordon is not best pleased about this... We go and register Team Grollub (Scott, Gordon and I) for the team event, before deciding to go and get some food. We head off to the Pizza Hut near the restaurant we went to last night with Phil and Paul. At the table next to ours is a woman who has not only brought her dog in with her, but is letting it put its feet up on the table. I watch this with amusement, and try to imagine this scene ever happening at home. Somehow, I can't manage it... The food is okay, and we head back via the bank, which thankfully doesn't eat my card. When we return, it transpires that Tony has definitely made top 8. He has only got to win his last match to be top seed! We are all really excited and decide to watch the match from the balcony. Scott has won one and lost one, and needs to win his last match to come approximately 43rd. I give him a hug, and wish him luck, and then race upstairs to watch Tony vs Svend Geertson. Gordon, Dan, Phil and I drag chairs up to the balcony and peer over the edge, only to see Wizards staff dragging the Feature Match sign up alongside Tony and Svend. We look at each other and then all race downstairs again! The Feature Match board has a listing of the player's past successes, which is a bit nervewracking as Svend's are very impressive...We stand up so we get a decent view, and the match begins. It's really exciting, because I can see Tony's hand (but not Svend's) so I can guess at what he's going to play before he plays it. I don't remember the details, other than in one game Tony had like 8 monsters out plus Slaughter in hand! Tony wins 2-0 and we're all really pleased for him, it's so cool that one of the UK players is top seed going into Day 2! Just as Tony's match is finishing, Scott comes over. He's really frustrated and annoyed as he's been defeated by his last round opponent, who played 2 main deck Light of Days against his almost mono-black deck. Gordon and I both think this sounds a bit suspicious, but after a deck check it turns out the guy really did put two in his main deck. [sigh] So Scott comes 75th or so, just outside of the money... We sit around for a while chatting and congratulating Tony before the team event begins. Most of the UK players are involved, other than Tony who's sent back to the hotel for an early night... Team Grollub are seated at Table 1, opposite a Portugeuse team called Enrraba Porcos. Every time we read this out, they burst out laughing, and they won't tell us what it means, hmm... (I've since tried to find out, but all I've discovered is that Porco means "pig"). Hmm... [grin] If anyone reading this knows, I'd be interested! Anyway we have a bit of a laugh with them, and they let me have one of their biscuits, and someone about 100 miles away whispers the rules, and then we begin. We rip open our cards and discover the usual pile-of-pants rares plus some good stuff. We have next to no direct damage (I believe we had one Lightening Blast between us) but lots of good blue and white stuff. We scrape together three decks, despite the extremely short deck construction period, plus the fact we weren't told we could have extra land until 3 minutes before the end of deck construction... Gordon has a blue/white deck, mine is green/black, and Scott's is black/blue, I think. We are playing against a German team called Dead In Your Upkeep. We snigger at their name but they don't seem to notice. My opponent is called Jonas. In the first game I beat him down to 1 with my Forestwalker, before he gets going with Mind Games. He gets out a Spike Feeder with Predatory Hunger on it, and transfers the counters one at a time to his Spike Soldier. He also gets out a Tempting Licid. Unfortunately I don't see this combo until it's too late, and he attacks for 14 to kill me. (He counts it up wrong to start with, but I let him get away with it anyway...) We have ten minutes to go and he starts shuffling. He pile shuffles a few times, then riffles, then takes my deck and does the same. Scott is rolling his eyes and pointing at his watch, and so I pointedly ask if he would hurry up. I draw, and discover I have to mulligan. So I shuffle, then offer him my deck to cut, and he proceeds to start pile shuffling it! I screech for a judge (it just pisses me off that he's blatantly stalling). Also Scott has lost and Gordon won, so if I don't at least draw this game we'll be knocked out. Paul Barclay comes over to watch the match, but we don't get very far before time is called. I am on 19 life and he is on 20. So Team Grollub are knocked out... Paul gives the bloke a warning for slow play as I walk away, which cheers me up a bit - he deserved it. Gordon thinks it's really funny that the other team are taking it so seriously but I'm a bit wound up by the bloke's attitude. We split the rares, and then wander around for a while. Scott and I are both pretty tired by this point so we go back to the hotel. We plan to get up early on Sunday morning, pack all our stuff, meet Robin at 9.30am to put the stuff in the car and then go and watch Tony in the Finals. When I first open my eyes and look at the clock, it says 9.29am -oops!! I rush downstairs to find Robin but he's not there - obviously not out of bed yet either! I go back up to our room, have a quick shower and help Scott throw everything in the suitcase. Robin knocks on the door and we go downstairs and dump the suitcase in the car before hurrying off to the venue. When we get there, the first thing I see is Tony's face on the big projector screen! Excellent - his quarter final is the one being shown! We run into the tournament area and see some of the other Brits already there. We've only missed the first few minutes and settle down to watch the rest. It's nail biting stuff, and I've never watched Magic like this before and am absolutely entranced. Tony unfortunately goes down 0-2 to Jakub Slemr and ending up in 5th place. After Tony's match he comes out to join us and we watch some of the other quarter finals. We decide to go and do a Japanese/Chinese Rath Cycle draft so that some of the Euros players can get their hands on some foreign cards. We go upstairs but it's really hot and crowded so I sit down at a table with Gordon and Dan and wait for the others to sort it out. They come back saying that there's no more side events being run, and look pretty pissed off about it. This strikes me as being very unfair, and I get that look of grim determination, and say "Wait here" and go off to see the woman that runs the side events. She's been around all weekend, and I've seen a lot of her because I've been in loads of events. She's pretty scary - she does Magic for the military! - but I go up to her and say "Can I do an 8 player side event please?" and she says "No, we're not running anymore." I ask why and she says they've been told to get everyone downstairs to watch the finals. I protest, and offer to judge, and explain that I want to run it for the British players who haven't had a chance to get any foreign cards yet because they've been playing in the main event. She softens a bit, and says "Okay then, but you have to do everything." I grin, run around getting the money off everyone, and get a handful of boosters and the tournament sheet. We decide to do the draft downstairs so that we can watch the finals at the same time. It's pretty cool and scary for me, because I'm judging an event with 8 of the top British players in, and I've only just got my Level 1! It includes Chris "Number One in the UK" Manners and Tony "Fifth in Europe" Dobson, amongst others! Hopefully there won't be any tricky judging calls! The draft goes pretty well, and I organise the pairings and then sit and watch. The draft runs fairly smoothly and ends up with a final between Gordon Benson and Tony Dobson. Gordon pretty much has the game sealed up when he makes a bit of a cock up and attacks with everything. He needs to Elvish Fury the monster than gets through - shame it ends up being a Mirozel! We all laugh a lot, especially as Tommi Hovi has wandered over and is watching. So Gordon comes second and Tony gets first. They open their MiViWe boosters they get as prizes and Gordon gets an Abeyance and a Snake Basket whereas Tony gets the usual terrible rares, so I guess justice was done, if inadvertantly! Scott and I are leaving shortly, so we decide to spend all our remaining Belgian francs on some boosters. We go and buy a load of French/Spanish/Portueguese Exodus and rip all the packs open, getting some good stuff and loads of cool foreign commons like Sonic Burst and Soul Warden. This is a nice end to the tournament, and we say bye to everyone and then go off with Robin and Mike in the car, back to the UK. The trip home is fairly uneventful, other than a stormy-ish ferry crossing. I decide that I'm going out on deck anyway, and convince Scott and Robin to join me (Mike declines the opportunity). The spray throws water up everywhere, and within seconds we're absolutely drenched. It's really exilarating though and we're laughing our heads off as we fight our way back indoors. We wander around the duty free for a while and then get back into the car. The trip back to Luton doesn't take too long and there's a beautiful sunset as we drive around the M25. Altogether a really fantastic weekend, it was my first international event and I had a brilliant time, special thanks to Robin for driving and Gordon for keeping me entertained, and of course Scott for being his usual wonderfully patient self. If you want to see the photos I took at this event, here's the URL: http://freespace.virgin.net/black.star/magic/100798.htm Cheers, Alice