And I'm back!

Alright, I think it's obvious to everyone involved that I have been a slacker lately. I have been playing, and I haven't been writing about it. Shame on me. No, seriously, I've been doing some really exciting things lately and I've been keeping my mouth shut. Well, no longer! So far in 2015, I have:

• Played in the Fate Reforged pre-release. For Fate Reforged I went to a midnight event following a day of work, and was so tired after 2 match wins that I misplayed horribly in round 3, lost that round 1-2 and conceded to my opponent 2-0 for the round to give him a better record, then dropped and went home at 3 am to try and salvage some sleep. I then promised myself "no more midnight releases". Let's see how that went, shall we?
• Played at Fate Reforged Game day. Now remember, Game Day for Fate fell on Valentine's Day this year. It was mid-afternoon, the store wasn't sure if they would have enough people to hold the event, and my plans with my with didn't start until later that evening. With her permission (trust me, Valentine's is her day, I needed her permission), I went to my local game store. Total competitors in the event? Four! And two of the players were running red aggressive decks, or Red Deck Wins. I beat my first opponent 2-0, then lost in the "finals" 0-2. I think I won a pack of cards. Nice.
• Played in the Dragons of Tarkir pre-release. Twice. First I did the midnight release at my local store. (Yeah, we all knew I wasn't keeping that promise anyway.) However, this time I was well rested, and had no work commitments the day of or the day after. I did much better. So much better, actually. I won first place! My Ojutai pack gave me an Ojutai Exemplars and a Monastery Mentor, so I ran everybody over with my amazing Jeskai colors deck. I'll post the list below. Lesson learned: Get some sleep before your tournaments. (Also, rebound is amazing!)
• My second Dragons Pre-release was the following evening. It was a Two-Headed Giant event, and I learned a great many things. I entered the event with my friend Paul, and our record for the night was 2-2. We played against some very skilled opponents, including a father-daughter pair that cleaned our clocks in the last round. New goal: teach my daughters to play Magic and hope that one day I can do the same thing. I also found out that 2HG is a very fun format and I need to play it more often. It's also great practice for Sealed deck construction, which is the format of most events I attend. In fact, building two decks from a single pool of cards is really difficult. We both ended up with white in our decks, which was probably a mistake.

I need to figure out how to build a Standard deck around these guys. They do everything!

I also attended a PPTQ in December of 2014, and ended up competing in the Top 8! It was Standard format, and I played a Jeskai Tempo deck, and went 3-1-1 to lock up the top 8 spot. I ended up losing in the quarter finals and ending up with a 7th place finish, but it was a lot of fun. Competitive rules enforcement is very different from pre-release level Casual enforcement, and I made a few mistakes, but I was happy with my overall performance for my first tournament of that level. Happy enough that I will soon be doing another PPTQ this Saturday, schedule permitting. This one will be Sealed Deck, and with the new summer set, Modern Masters 2015. I really enjoyed drafting the first Modern Masters set two years ago, and this set looks really interesting as well. 

Speaking of Modern Masters 2015, next week is a huge week for Magic. Wizards of the Coast is celebrating the release of Modern Masters 2015 with three massive Grand Prix Tournaments all the same weekend, and the closest one to home will be in Las Vegas on May 30th and 31st. And I am going! I'll be in Vegas Thursday night, and will be catching as many side events as I can Thursday and Friday, and competing in the Main Event on Saturday and hopefully Sunday! I went to the Grand Prix that Salt Lake City held last year, but I didn't get to play. Now not only is Las Vegas close enough to home to justify the trip for me and a few friends, but it is also exciting because it is looking to be the largest Magic tournament to ever be held, with over 6500 players currently preregistered to compete! The previous record in size was Grand Prix Vegas 2013, with approximately 4300 players. It's going to be an insane mad house of people, and I am going to be there to enjoy every minute of it!

Hopefully I won't take another 5 months to update again, especially with things at my house taking a much needed break for summer, and I will let you know how the PPTQ and Grand Prix go. For now though, go play some cards!