The last couple of weeks have seemed like some sort of caffeine-fuelled haze of activity. There is a pretty good reason for this—that is exactly what they were.
Now, I am not normally the sort of person to keep a diary. I’ve seen too many teen movies where things go sour upon the discovery of that sort of thing. My LiveJournal pretty much consists of my ranting when things go bad, then celebrating when everything randomly turns out for the best. I say randomly, but it pretty much always happens, so I cannot complain.
The only thing that is fiction about the diary below is the diary itself. Some names have been changed to protect the innocent. All the guilty names have stayed exactly the same.
Wednesday – The Day that Just Wouldn’t End
Today I traveled to the Pro Circuit. Four thousand miles—a full day’s journey. Before arriving in Atlanta, literally all I knew about the place were the following “facts,” and some number of them might in fact not be facts at all:
- Brian Kibler used to live in Atlanta.
- It hosted the Olympics.
- Judge Dylan Northrupp lives in Atlanta.
- It is north of Florida. While on the plane, I discovered that in fact this does not necessarily mean it’s hot.
- According to the girl I sit next to in the office, everyone in Georgia talks like Forrest Gump.
As you can imagine, I was pretty excited. I cut it pretty fine on time, picking up some last minute essentials like a big shiny trophy and some chocolate with which to prove to Johnny Foreigner that English chocolate is better than American chocolate by a factor of about twenty-two.
The tough thing about traveling to the States (beyond the hours and hours of sitting around) is that when I get there, time has somehow played a bizarre trick on me. My body tells me that it is midnight, while the sun and clocks (and people, and presumably, were I to ask them, really intelligent animals) tell me that it’s seven.
Cue the caffeinated beverages.
In fact, after rolling in and dropping off my bags, I engaged in my other Pro Circuit hobby—finding fun places to go out. Unfortunately, I was pretty tired, so I only got as far as a place called Joe’s. But I did manage meet up with Paul “Egnits” Ross, and us two foreigners enjoyed the finest beer that Joe (or perhaps it was Sam or George behind the bar) had to offer. If you saw Paul smiling over the course of the weekend, it was probably because on this first night, we both got carded. After all that, he went with a Coca Cola, Atlanta’s special drink. I guess he didn’t want to have a hazy memory of so great a moment.
Thursday – Engineering a Fiasco
Jet lag meant that I got up at about 5 AM after having gone to bed sometime after midnight. Luckily for me, though, I had plenty to do. For some reason, I’d been assigned a room with a gym. I’m not quite sure what you have to say to a concierge to get a room with a gym, but I had one—free weights, a bike, a medicine ball, resistance bands, and a whole mess of other things that, quite frankly, I had not a clue how to use to get fit or otherwise.
Not having anything better to do, I worked out. I turned on the TV, and Chuck Norris was selling gym equipment. Chuck and I worked out. It was good. I was going to need to be fighting fit, as Thursday was the day of The Willoughby Team Classic (or “Timvitational 2,” as it had been casually dubbed).
Now, before I ever showed up to the venue on Thursday, I had the word “fiasco” in my head. While flying over the Atlantic, I had the pleasure of seeing 2 ¾ films. Pride and Prejudice wasn’t really to my tastes. Walk the Line was pretty good. My favorite was the last, though. Elizabethtown is one of those “not a lot happening” films that I can really relate to. I didn’t get to see the end because we had to land, but it struck a chord. That chord included the word fiasco, which features heavily in the film. I won’t spoil it for you, as that rather leaves the door open for someone to spoil it for me, which would just be rubbish.
The first Timmyvitational was a pretty small event with only eight players. But it was still pretty stressful and complicated for me as the tournament was named after myself. Fun, but stressful. For the second Timvitational, I had no idea how many players I would have or whether the format would even work.
What I did have, though, was a big, shiny trophy.
I have come to learn that in America, having something big and shiny can make up for a lot. I’m not sure it fully made up for the fiasco that was Timvitational 2, but I hope it helped.
The format was complicated, but it seemed to be a really interesting one. By the time the event kicked off, I had gotten the art of explaining the format down to less than two minutes. Perhaps it was too tricky. Perhaps not. The way that players approached it was pretty gratifying for me, though.
I had gotten an email from Doug “Magpie” Tice the week before Atlanta asking for details of when the whole show would kick off, as Donkey Club had at least three teams looking to play and had prepared carefully for the event. This looked like a good sign. I figured I’d need at least four teams to stop the whole thing from being a bust.
I got thirteen.
Unlucky for me? It gave me a whole lot of decklists to look into. I consider that a winning proposition. There was some real talent at those tables. The Germans had a team that had clearly had a good old think about the format. At the other end of the spectrum, Dean Sohnle wasn’t going to miss out on a Willoughby Invitational if he could help it; he built three decks on the morning of the event and scoured the room for players. He found Alex “Jebailey” Jebailey and managed to get his third just prior to the event’s start.
I have come to the conclusion that as organized as Dean wasn’t for the event, I was probably worse. For this, I apologize. As time was a bit of an issue (with players looking to be well-rested for the Pro Circuit), the tournament basically ended up being single elimination—not a great payoff for the amount of effort that the players had to put into decklists. Luckily for me, I was in a room full of gamers. A room full of gamers where I was running the biggest game of the day.
There were some early upsets when two Donkey Club teams met each other in the first round. Josh Wiitanen, Dave Spears, and Adam Prosak had chosen to run the bunt. Adam and Josh were playing what were more or less their chosen builds of Faces of Evil and Titans, respectively. Josh even had Home Surgery. I’m not sure if he was trying to take the Mickey or something, but he didn’t lose all day, so it can’t have been that bad. In the meantime, Dave was there to “make weight” for his team. As the total combined threshold and recruit cost of the three decks had to be exactly 450, there had to be a little monkeying around with builds somewhere. For this event, Dave was the monkey. He did have some good toys, though. By hook or by crook, Dave had put together a deck with nothing but Extended Art cards. That is a lot of Extended Art. He wasn’t expected to win a whole lot in the heavyweight bracket with his deck, but the plan was that it wouldn’t matter. The other two decks were very strong and in the hands of some of the best players in the game. If those two won their games, the matches would go 2-1 to Josh’s boys.
Against Neil Reeves, Gabe Walls, and Nick Little, though, they had some real competition. These guys had some very saucy builds between them. Neil’s Kang City deck was fat in cost and powerful on the attack. Unfortunately, while Neil was smashing face against Dave, Gabe was having a tough Titans mirror and Nick’s Anti-Green Lantern was having a rough time against swarm strategies like Faces of Evil. When the dust settled, the Extended Arts would get to play another round.
Another big casualty in round 1 was Dean’s team, which didn’t have a lot of luck with its experimental Justice League of Arkham deck in the hands of the Pro Circuit runner-up in the middle seat.
As every team had to have someone who had won a $10K or Top 8’d a Pro Circuit, every match was a feature match of sorts. But for me, one of the most interesting things was the way that different teams had approached building; it was a format where there was a lot to think about.
One novel idea that buzzed around but was never realized was putting a very aggressive swarm deck that ran more than sixty cards in the “heavyweight” seat. With a ninety-card deck, it wouldn’t be hard to make up the numbers without feeling that extra-high cost threshold.
There were a few nifty new Golden Age deck ideas being tested, too. Atlanta local Nathaniel Curtis had a devastatingly powerful deck that he referred to as “Chicken Feed.” Using Longshot, Rebel Freedom Fighter with Wild Sentinels was nothing new, but using it with Sentinel Mark III was a little different. Throwing in Gone But Not Forgotten and El Guapo (yes, click the link, he’s pretty good) to turn it into a stall deck that won with Onslaught actually made for a pretty beastly control deck. Nathaniel was heard proudly stating that he would take on and beat every deck in the room with his build, and given the caliber of players around, that was no small claim. Apparently, the deck made a few waves around Atlanta; it will be interesting to see whether it makes a splash in Golden Age, where it is a little trickier to predict matchups. There isn’t a big Golden Age event for a while, but this is definitely a deck to bear in mind, and El Guapo might be a card to consider for the future.
As the teams began to drop out, the tension got tighter. All of a sudden, people began to recall that there was a prize in this event and that it was a big, shiny trophy. Somebody once said that you could get away with a lot if you had something big and shiny to hold. Clearly, a lot of players on that day were looking to get away with something.
Steven Silverman’s “Team Skeet” was going well. They made it to the semifinals, where they faced off with the “other” Donkey Club team. The quiet one. Doug Tice, Adam Fears, and Tillman Bragg are all quality players, and they had taken an interesting approach with their builds. They had (rightly, as it happens) determined that Teen Titans would be a popular deck type and that it would likely sit in the middle seat. They had also spotted the fact that a New School/Rigged Elections build has a very low cost. To that end, they built so that they could fight the aggro lightweight decks with combo and the ponderous heavyweight decks by “bulking up” a Titans deck and handing it to Fears to smash people with. In the middle, Doug was doing naughty things with a Doom/Injustice Gang deck. He was not under too much pressure to win a whole lot, as the decks on either side of him were very powerful for their “weight class.”
This sound strategy took them all the way to an all–Donkey Club final. Dave “The Vocalist” Spears was full of big words with his big fat deck. It even looked like he might have a chance against Fears’s Titans when he had an early Total Anarchy to keep the board pretty clear and to stop Adam from gaining any momentum, along with a superior draw to his opponent’s rather patchy one. Josh won his match pretty quickly and easily thanks to three copies of Finishing Move.
“Ah . . . so you’re the deck with Finishing Move!” exclaimed Tillman. All of a sudden at the table next door, he had one less card to worry about.
To his right, Dave’s luck rather ran out. He’d been getting greedy against Adam from turn 2 onward, and eventually, Adam actually had the Tamaran. On turn 6. When Dave went for the high risk/high reward set of attacks (possibly not a bad plan when you don’t have a good matchup) on turn 6, Adam made him pay with a rout for the Titans. It would all come down to Prosak against Bragg.
“If I don’t get a trophy here, somebody’s gonna pay,” remarked a snarky Wiitanen, looking over to his teammate Prosak.
Unfortunately, though, Adam was learning that Melissa Gold ◊ Songbird, Sonic Carapace was not the greatest turn 2 recruit against a deck sporting four copies of A Child Named Valeria. Black Knight couldn’t get around Utility Belt to force through some breakthrough, and ultimately, it was with a whoop and a holler that “The Donkey Club B Team” walked away with the grand prize.
I have a theory about Doug Tice. Hot off winning back-to-back $10K events and the Timvitational trophy, it seems that he goes all out for the “big and shiny” approach. For the good of the rest of the players on the Pro Circuit, it might be best if the PC trophies never get silver-plated. That boy is all about the bling, yo.
The Thursday night dinner was all about Jebailey. Nate Price, Dean Sohnle, and I went to dinner with Alex and some friends at the end of the day. Somewhere over the course of the evening, a legend was born. I’m not sure if it was when Alex started complaining about the salt around his margarita while drinking through a straw, or when he managed to spill cheese (and not a small amount of cheese) in the beer. If I had to pick a moment, it was probably when he asked me whether or not we have the Internet in England. Just for your reference, Alex . . . what you’re reading right now was actually transmitted in Morse code by a team of highly trained spiders. We call it the Worldwide Web.
Friday – The Big Show Begins
Being a reporter on the Pro Circuit is awesome. All day, people asked me how I was doing, and I would point out that I was undefeated. I got to pick my matchups all day. Sure, I had a whole extra round’s worth of work typing things up after the event had finished, but I also had a round of dinner with the Metagame crew to show for it. Apparently, what I had was not Mexican. I’m not sure what it was, but it was pretty good.
Most of the events prior to my Not Mexican meal have been pretty well documented, but there were a few moments that I thought were worth sharing. At the player registration meeting, Anand Khare pulled me aside to show me his deck. He looked pretty pleased with himself. When I saw what he was playing, I could see why. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was no hope of Anand writing for Metagame for the rest of the weekend. Technically, I was wrong, as he did do coverage at the end of the $10K, but really, the weekend was far more about the TOGIT pro’s Top 8 than anything else. There was also a bizarre conversation that I joined in on between Andre Müller and Alex Brown. Apparently, there are people so good at Rock Paper Scissors that they can get you in a lock where you can never win. I have no clue whether or not this is true. I would just suggest that you always roll a die, just in case. And before you roll, check whether the “0” on that 10-sided die counts as high or low.
Saturday – The Day of the $10K, Tim Feeling Okay, Time for a Rhyme if I Find Any Slow Play
So somehow, after going undefeated on Day 1 at the Pro Circuit, I got to cover the $10K. As I’ve done quite a lot of X-Men Sealed Pack, I was rather looking forward to being shown the error of my ways by some of the best in the game. One of the fun things about X-Men Sealed Pack is that it’s nice and aggressive. This does tend to mean that it’s harder to do well with a poor card pool (as you tend to be under fair amounts of pressure a lot of the time), but I enjoy the dynamic play.
I got to see a lot of it during the course of the day. In between rounds, I also got to go through the Draft decks of various players who wanted to show off their wares. In my experience, the people who come up to show me decks normally have very, very good decks. On occasion, though, they do it because they are good players with truly wretched decks.
The best example of this I think I’ve ever seen was Nick Little’s 3-0 deck with which he somehow mauled our good friend Jebailey. Good times.
Somewhere in the middle, I was possessed by the spirit of Vanilla Ice. I’m not quite sure how it happened, and I can’t be sure that it won’t happen again at some point. This is just something I’ll have to deal with.
I plan to deal with it by finding slow matches to cover in rhyming stanzas. It is insanely tough to write at the same speed as the pace of play, even without throwing out some rhymes. If I’m to go for the insanely insane, I might have to slow it down a touch.
For Saturday night, it was hotel steak. I like to have steak every time I come to the States because eating out in England isn’t always the greatest. It turns out that you can get away with a lot as a country when you have big, shiny steaks. My companions included Olav “Likes to Order the Girliest Drink on the Menu” Rokne and Toby “Work Harder” Wachter. Writers’ dinners are always kind of fun—lots of people with a lot to say plus good food and drink equals good times. Some of the topics of conversation included: “Glam rock may have been the music that spawned punk, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it,” and the classic “How unfunny does a joke have to be to become funny again?” Highbrow it really wasn’t.
Sunday – The Final Countdown
There is a tradition that I must have the most random and destructive night out on the last night of the Pro Circuit. New York was carnage. Indianapolis featured a big staff dinner followed by various parties around Gen Con. While everyone else was concerned with who was going to win the Pro Circuit and how (which I’m sure you can find elsewhere on the site), I was more concerned about keeping the good times rolling.
That isn’t to say that I don’t take my job seriously. For me, getting to do coverage of the finals of the Pro Circuit is just amazing. I get to see how the best get to be known as the best, and even on occasion get to sit on the comfy chair in the feature match area. The play is the thing. The great bit, though, is that the people in the feature match area aren’t just there because they’re good at the game; they are also some of the most entertaining people on the Pro Circuit. It’s a lot of fun to be entertained at work. Trust me on this.
Of course, the finals went the way that finals do, and finally, the Pro Circuit was over . . . at least in terms of the playing. I was still pretty busy, trading a little (I traded a bar of English chocolate for an Extended Art Metropolis from Josh Wiitanen that got promptly signed by Adam Prosak and now sits proudly in my binder) and generally hanging out with the people I only get to see four times a year.
For the final night out, it was time to go to Atlanta. Olav and Dean Sohnle, along with Mitch Fu, ventured with me downtown to see what we could see. It was a bizarre evening. Sunday is possibly not the greatest night out in Atlanta. We were definitely not the best people at navigating to the best places to be. After a meal and a drink at Hooters (one of the more underwhelming places I’ve been in my life), we ended up paying some guy three dollars to “lead us to the good times.” He took us to a place that we thought was doing karaoke when we walked in.
Tim loves his karaoke.
Tim does not love bands whose singer sounds like he’s doing karaoke.
Gots to love the last night of the Pro Circuit, though. The key ingredients of very random elements, fun people, and good food were mixed generously, and I flopped into bed feeling pretty good about my Pro Circuit. I didn’t win any money, but I definitely didn’t lose any, and I got some good stories.
Monday – I Don’t Like Mondays
Especially when they involve flying for seven hours next to screaming children while trying not to think about the Enormous Omelet Burger that I (for reasons I still cannot fathom) elected to consume at the Atlanta airport.
I’m sure there was a lesson to be learned about my jetlagged, fatty, long journey home to a cold England:
Don’t let the Pro Circuit end.
I’ve rather taken this thought to heart in the last couple of weeks. A new card shop has opened up right on my doorstep in Reading, England. I fully intend to draft there every chance I get. I have already emailed eight suggestions for the Fan Card Crossover that TBS is running on this fair site. I think that when I’m done writing, I will send a pile more.
The Pro Circuit is a great opportunity for great times with friends while playing games. Really, though, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be doing that all year round. Party with the players in your area all you can, and then when you party with everyone at the PC, it will just be even better.
Have fun and be lucky,
Tim “Party Hard” Willoughby
timwilloughby@hotmail.com