Kergy’s Korner #72: Kergy’s Post-Indy Diary


Back from the PC and into the routine – whatever sort of routine my existence ever seems to have…! I spent the whole weekend doing traffic reports…erm…PC coverage for Metagame, and once again spent some time with some of the coolest people in the Vs. community, watching from the front row as our own Dave Spears blew away the competition on his way to his first PC Top 8, thereby justifying everything that was ever said about his natural born talent.

Indy was a blast, man! And this is where you get to hear about the weekend from the ringside. If you want coverage info, or talk about tech, you’ll find it at Metagame.com/vs in the PC and $10K Indy sections. This is an article about my trip, and all the fun stuff that makes the PC such a cool place to be - Buckle Up!

PT.1: THE TRIP

“I’m going back to Indiana…Indiana’s where I’m from!” –The Jackcon 5

Of course, in order to do coverage for the PC, I had to get there first! So I got to the airport bright and early (well…around quarter to ten, which is bright and early for me at least. Settled in, boarded a half hour late - a regular occurrence in the airline life of Kergillian – and waited for takeoff. And waited for takeoff. And waited. And waited. And waiiiiit a minute, there’s the captain telling us that bad weather in Chicago means a another hour and a half more of idling so if we could all just get off of the plane and go eat or something and come back in an hour or so, that’d be really grand. So off we go, and oh look, a Burger King – lunchy-munchies!

Back on the plane, and we’re good to go. Off to the runway we taxi, and….nothing. At the last second they decided to freeze departures again, so another hour of waiting on the plane and on the frikkin’ runway no less. Stupid me for forgetting to bring a couple of DVDs to watch on the flight…

So, the 11:30 flight left Montreal at around 3:30, and would be arriving at about 4:30 Chicago time – more than an hour after I was originally supposed to be arriving in Indianapolis. We were assured that all Chicago flights had been frozen, including our connections – but frankly, when dealing with O’Hare, I tend to ignore anything anyone ever says. Chicago’s finest airport is kind of like the Improbability Drive on the Heart Of Gold – take whatever scenario is [i]least likely[i] to occur, especially that which is diametrically opposed to the airline’s suppositions, and that’s what will actually occur. I would curse a pox upon whomever arranged my flight through Chicago, except that I have a plane curse – every plane I’ve ever been on has left late or suffered delays. And Indianapolis is the worst for me - last year on the way to GenCon I got stranded for four hours on the tarmac in Pittsburgh in the middle of a massive lightning storm, as they wouldn’t even let us off the plane. At least this time I wasn’t across the aisle from three absolute monkeys drinking the ENTIRE mini-bar dry and trying to pick up the flight attendant…

So, we finally arrive in Chicago, and the nightmare continues. The pilot was right, it seems, in that all of the flights had been grounded, meaning hundreds upon hundreds of stranded passengers scrambling for flights, half of which were subsequently canceled. Yup, that’s right – my flight hadn’t left without me, and wouldn’t, because it was canceled. Void. No longer in existence. So I was re-booked to a 9:15 PM flight. Yay! Four hours to kill, so I hit a bagel stand for some egg and cheese goodness and headed to my gate. We were eventually transferred to another gate, where we had to wait for another delayed flight (to Kansas City, I believe) to leave, and, an over hour later than advertised, we took off into the air.

I finally got in to Indy at around 1130, got to the hotel before midnight, where my roommate for the weekend, Metagame savant extraordinaire, Ted Knutson, was pretty much asleep already, and I hit the sack myself. I missed Day One of GenCon, my chance to unwind, draft a bit, sell some stuff, and trade trade trade. But hey, the PC was looming ahead, and my excitement for the weekend kept me buzzing!


PT 2: THE PC:

Well, any self-pity I felt was soon dissipated when I discovered that I was trumped by Tim Willoughby and his 35-hour miasma of airport misery. For that full story go here:

http://www.metagame.com/vs.aspx?tabid=46&ArticleId=3210

But he made it in one piece, even after being stepped on in the middle of the night by Jason Grabher-Meyer. Don't ask.

So for me it was a quick bite, and on to Day One. The Realms guys were in their awesomely awesome new tees showing the evolution of a Vs. player, and the whole room was buzzing with hints of insane deck ideas and new tech that would pop up, Well, it didn’t really happen, as 241 decks of the 350 people at the PC (which was the highest ever PC attendance!) were GLEE derivatives - right within my 70-80% prediction. And one time when I thought, nay hoped I’d be wrong.

Day 1 was somewhat boring. Don’t get me wrong. I think that Modern rocks but the set choices here were so imbalanced that the field was the exact opposite of the diverse and yummy breakdown at Amsteram – this was an unexciting field with an ugly mirror. Trust me – watch GLEE vs. GLEE twenty times in a row and, if you haven’t gnawed your arms off, try to focus enough to argue. The only mirror more painful is X-Stall, and not by that much. There’s only so many Olapets, G’Norts and Dr. Lights a man can take before he Uppercuts himself and sends for the Shock Troops…

One saving grace was my introduction to, thanks to Jason Grabher-Meyer, 7-layer Nachos. Eight bucks a pop, but SO worth it, picture a shovelful of nacho layered with fresh lettuce, black olives and grilled onions, topped with cheese and an amazing salsa, a bucketload of ground beef, and a heaping scoop of sour cream and guacamole. Oh man, I’m hungry again…

Night 1 made up for any tedium from the field, however, with a mini-festival at the Hard-Rock Café, as a who’s who of the US Pros joined together in celebration of Alex ‘I DDR better than you’ Jebailey’s birthday. After much Heineken, I somehow managed to find six hours of sleep, and woke up to the worst breakfast buffet I’d ever inhaled at a hotel. Forced myself to eat a bit anyhow, as it would be a long day of draft coverage, and I’d have little time to sneak off for more nachos…

And Day 2 was much more exciting! AVENGERS! WOOHOO! I love me some Avengers – and I learnt more about the set from the first round of the draft than I had from spoiler-study sessions…so when it came to Night 2, I was ready for the draft night that lay ahead of me. Because Night 2 was draft all night! I had a great time ganing with Tim Batow, Big Spooky, and the Dream Team, with Mike Rosenberg and Josh Wiitanen, and with my boys Ryan and Stephen and their crew from Ottawa. The first draft of the night was a learning experience for me – And oh how I LOVE Squadron Supreme!! But although I built a decent Squadron/MoE deck, I’d never played a single game with Avengers before, so I had to learn the tricks and how to play team properly. Mistakes ensued and the results were dismal. They’d get better, however. Then came a win-a-box tourney where my Burn deck went3-3 against Sentinels, with only one game of more than a 6-8 endurance difference at the end. Pleasant Distraction is soooo good in burn! Children of Forever, however, is a bad card – in theory it’s brilliant, but in practice it just doesn’t get used. I’m now trying Press the Attack, which may add a little late-game spice when I can attack down the curve with Scarlet Witch or Mimic, then press them for more carnage. I then played another draft, taking a pure Squadron deck (LOVE them, I tell you! LOVE them!) to an undefeated tourney win. It’s ALL about Eldritch Power. Lord oh lord that card is sick! And man oh man am I excited for the $10K Toronto next week!!! Sealed Avengers! I am beyond drooling!

Day 3, which was a sleepless continuation of Day 2; I had basically just returned to the hotel to shower, change, and carefully stow my new, shiny World’s Finest EA and the Peter Parker alternate art EA I’d acquired during Day 2. Day 3 was hope and glory, devastaton and depresion. Top 8 excitement died in the first round when Dave fell to Rob Dougherty and Michael Jacob fell to Jason Dawson. Two decks that gave us hope that we would have a non-GLEE winner, but it just didn’t pull through. FTN rules the universe, apparently, scoring a PC *and* a $10K. It was disappointing that Leader and Dawson didn’t put on more of a show n the finals, though – I know they’re teammates and figured it futile to bother playing, but it would have been nice to give the audience a bit more than a half-hearted attempt at a match without losers. The $10K finals were much more exciting, and Noland and Bell put on a true show.

One complaint heard a lot over the weekend – especially on Day 3 – s about the judging. Most of the complaints are whingeing, but I thought Michael Dalton got the low end of the pressure cooker when he was being hurried by a judge who had specifically said he wouldn’t push them or speed them up, It was particularly unfortunate because Markus Kolb, who’s an awesome player but gets so frustrated with himself! - was actually the one who was playing rather slowly the entire match, but Dalton got pressured during what was robably the most important moment in the game for him,

I also have to give props to Tim Willoughy for allowing me to take part in the inaugural Willoughby Invitational!! I’ll let Tim fill in all the details – I wouldn’t want to spoil his fun;) But it was a HELLUVA lot of fun losing to Olav Rockne and Dean Sohnle in the Canada-dominated 8-man tourney. German cards!! Wow! And even though Tim is so completely dead for costing me the match against Sohnle with his horribly unfortunate new effect for Bizarro World, I commend him for running the event of the weekend! And props to Jason Hager for drafting the only non-foil EA (it was a Batman) to pop up in the draft, and then playing it in his deck and, every time it was recruited, popping down his cellphone with a Batman theme song ringtone!

Night 3 was the UDE dinner, and I found myself at a table with Patrick Sullivan, Zvi Mowshowitz, Andrew Yip, ‘The’ Ben Seck, Ten Knutson, Chad Daniel, Brian Kibler, Tim Willoughby, and a judge whose name I should probably find out at some point. It was drinking and fun for all, and I encountered the best crème brulé I’veever tasted! Topics of discussion for the evening included ‘If you could pushing a button that gave you $10 but someone would die (with everyone, including yourself, having an equal chance at being that someone) how many times would you push it?’ and ‘Assuming it was monitored and morally safe, how many six year-olds could you be locked in a room with, all attacking you simultaneously?’ IN other words, how many could you take down before the swarm did you in? And that led to ‘how much would you pay to watch Mike Tyson in this scenario?’

After dinner it was off to drink and draft. Beer and Goldshlager with the group, and we all noisily left after last call, away from the Mariott and to the Hyatt where some of us were going to draft and others were off to a party of some sort. As an aside, what’s with last call at midnight??? It’s quarter to three here, and that’s often just a suggestion. And I like…England was it?…with they’re new 24-hour regulations… Seriously, what’s WRONG with you people!! 3AM last call!?! Sheesh!

So we woke up Toby Wachter to get some product (Thanks Toby!) and headed downstairs – only to be led astray by Justin who kidnapped all of my drafting partners for the party. Having not slept in 44 hours at this point, and having had lots to drink, I couldn’t handle the idea of party of this kind – and carrying around two boxes of Avengers in a party thrown by Wizards-related people would be rather the awkwardness.

So back to my room, 1:30 AM or so, and to sleep. They found me and woke me up at about 3:30. Ted, Tim, Patrick and Zvi, and later Star Wars Kid and Kibler joind us, wanted the boxes for drafting. It took me only about a minute to get dressed, and we drafted - and I came away with a solid MoE build with a lil Avengers splash. It did me well – we only played a couple of games, and it was against competitors who were exhausted and not the least bit sober, but the wins did my ego well and it was a learning experience.

And so, after getting my six hours, I boarded two planes on time and got to my destinations early today – through Chicago no less! I predict that the world will end tomorrow as a result. Of course, my predictions are usually wrong, but that’s some bad juju right there…

For me, it’s prep for $10K Toronto next week – AVENGERS SEALED!!!! – where I try to improve on the 43rd place I got at Origins.

Next Week: A $10K Toronto recap and winner’s diary! (Well one can always hope, eh?)

The next time you get stuck in the Chicago airport give me a call. If I'm working downtown (instead of at home), I'll grab a VS deck and come rescue you (or at least buy you lunch or something).

Spot's Knight

heheh mike tyson vs a room full of six year olds! god that would be funny. I would like to see George Foreman vs his weight in starving ferrets though. Just a thought i guess.
anyway, sorry about chicago kergy. Next time book a flight into midway and snag a connecting flight to indy. Screw O"my god this airport is the inner ring of hell" Hare.
lbx!

Spot's - gonna take you up on that;)

LBX! - well I wuldn't go through Chicago by choice - I didn't book the flight...and if I don't pay for the fight I can't *really* complain much about it. Still, Pittsburgh was just as bad last year. I need to find a direct Montreal to Indy flight -lol-