For those who don’t recognize one, this is a tournament report. If you aren’t familiar with the tournament report, it is a document through which one shares one’s experiences and newfound knowledge achieved during the course of a tournament [1]. I am such a one: I’ve recently returned home from one such tournament, and I am now typing furiously in the hopes that some one like you might learn from what I learned at PCLA.

Confused yet?

My name is Gary Wise, and I am a newbie. I used to play other TCGs professionally, though never flawlessly, and now I’m just starting out on the Vs. System road, not towards playing the Pro Circuit, but towards helping to develop the Vs. System community by keeping everyone informed of goings-on within the game. LA was my second event, and the first in which I operated after having the basics of the game explained to me. You’re not going to learn how to build a better deck or gain a better understanding of how to metagame for the present environment by reading here, but I might have something to teach you about the fundamentals of tournament play, and I guarantee you’ll read things here that at least I find amusing.

See, the whole point is this: everyone has something to teach to everyone else. You could probably whip me but good in a discussion about the merits of a certain deck choice or which L-formation would be best in a given situation, but I know that I can tell you about little things like how many hours before a tournament starts one should wake up in order to play optimally [2]. Truth be told, if I wrote a strategy article, you’d probably learn something in that your objections to its contents would solidify random thoughts floating around your brain that you instinctively knew but couldn’t put into words.

Here’s the Wise-eye view of what went down in Anaheim:

THURSDAY

When I write a tournament report, I like to break it down into days so that the reader gets some sense of the order of events. Once you’re organized chronologically, you can tangent all you like, as long as that timeline’s there to return to when said tangent is done. This paragraph is a pretty good example of that, but I digress.

Due to some unfortunate travel bookings and a sleep schedule that usually has me going to bed around 4:30 AM EST (1:30 AM PST), I arrived in LA around 10:30 AM having not slept for a little over 30 hours. Most of you are likely younger than I am, so let me warn you in advance: When you hit 25, the innate mutation in all people under the age of 25 that allows them to go beyond sixteen hours of sleeplessness and still function as a human being ceases to function. To the minute, once you got beyond that sixteen hour mark, you’re dead to the world. I’d been walking stiff-armed for fourteen hours and still couldn’t see the light.

My travel companion was Jason Grabher-Meyer, a man whose knowledge of the game is exceeded only by the number of ways in which one can misspell his name. Jason, despite his complaints to the contrary, is a goth. No he doesn’t wear make-up, but he’s got the all black thing going and wears religious symbols which, were they bordered by diamonds or dipped in gold, would be proudly worn by any member of the hip hop community and repeatedly referred to as “bling.” The man was wearing a floor-length black leather coat on his way to California.

My life experiences with similar friends have taught me this: People like this are often intellectual, kind, quiet, artistic people who’ve embraced darkness for personal reasons I haven’t yet delved into with Jason, and he didn’t disappoint. He loves this game and shows it through every action: he solitaired on the plane as I slept, traveled over an hour to give me my first lesson in Toronto, and showed maturity beyond his twenty years in every conversation we had. He also served functionally as a crutch on which I could lean heavily in my fatigue-drunk state. He steered me towards the cab and then into the hotel, meaning I arrived in one piece instead of blindly wandering into Compton. This, of course, means that for the rest of my life, every day is a blessing: There’s no way my mouth wouldn’t have gotten me killed down there.

Wandering into the site, I was confronted for the second time with the massive sculpture of Batman extending a hand of cards. This visage always brings a warmth to my heart, because my past experience tells me that “extending the hand” is a symbol of resignation to defeat. Each time I see big Bats, I’m doing the one thing that the Joker, the Riddler, Ra’s al Ghul [3], and their villainous cronies could not: defeating him. Feel my power.

The next half hour is a renewing of company acquaintances: Jake Bales, the youngest of the young. Ian Estrin, whose quiet demeanor shatters when he shocks you by removing what feels like his entire jaw from his face. Dave Weiss, a gamer so old school that old school gamers know they’re new school while in his presence. Chris Zantides, an old friend from a different world with whom I’m renewing a friendship lost for years. This, by the way, is what attending tournaments is really all about, whether you’re on staff or a player: friendship. Without the fun, it just wouldn’t be worth it. That camaraderie is what’s kept me coming back year after year. The tournament is the gathering ground for friends spread across a planet which, while getting smaller every day, still seems far too large when friends are far away.

I wait around to no avail for a press badge so I might avoid harassment at the hands of the least intimidating security staff I’ve ever born witness to, but I eventually give up, heading back to my hotel room, where I struggle to maintain consciousness while waiting for a 12:30 phone call from Toby Wachter that is to confirm its time to lunch. At 1:45, I finally phone him back, and he explains that he’d called my cell phone and left a message. I hate cell phones. I work from home, so when I’m out, it’s with purpose, and I tend to not want to be bothered. People tell me that the solution to that is simple: turn it off. But that would mean owning a cell phone that would remain off at all times, thus defeating the point of owning a cell phone. I don’t own a cell phone. Guess what I found on my answering machine when I got home yesterday night.

Toby and I go to lunch with two of the following Bens:

1)      Ben Kalman – Casual community correspondent.

2)      Ben Grimm, a.k.a. Thing – A man whose whole body is made of rock, excepting his very fleshy heart. The vanquisher of evildoers everywhere.

3)      Ben Bleiweiss – Legendary TCGer and new addition to the Metagame.com coverage crew.

If you can’t figure out which two, you need to stop reading right now and enlist the help of an analyst with a medical degree, because your ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy is deteriorating rapidly.

Regardless of where the conversations between Metagame staff members start, they all seem to end up on one topic: baseball. See, to be the kind of person who wants to wax philosophical about these games instead of play them, one generally has to have a deep appreciation for their more romantic elements. Knutson, BDM, Toby, Bleiweiss, Kalman, and I follow baseball closely enough that we can each hold our own in intellectual conversations on the subject, and as baseball’s at a high point in its history at the moment, we, as men, typically have our minds on one thing.

At some point, Toby and Bleiweiss leave the table, giving me a chance to talk with Kalman in order to get to know him a little better. You have a good man here, people. He’s obsessive in his love of all things collectible, and doubly so in the case of Vs. System. Part of me worries that his focus is so rabidly entrenched in the casual aspects of the game that he’ll never fully understand the competitive side, but the casual aspects of Vs. System are what make the game more than just competition and mathematics. They’re what makes it fun. Trust me, you can be the uber-competitor, but if you’re having any fun at all, that’s the little piece of casual player in you trying to get out. Kalman is representative of all the good things that make this community: we are accepting of all comers and lovers of the game. Those are the elements that will define us collectively as we travel this road together.

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur in that my brain shut down around four o’clock and I went to bed at midnight. I do remember doing a dinner with Jon Fiorillo, Steve Sadin and Osyp Lebedowicz, who we determined is definitely not the Clown Prince of Magic. I also remember inadvertently insulting our waiter while making a complete fool of myself, hardly a shocking development to those of you who know me. Osyp’s one of my closest friends in the gaming community, and good times seem to follow him like lemmings. I don’t think I’ve ever not laughed over a five minute stretch while in his presence. I headed back to my room to find that “Survivor” was half over, made it through “The Apprentice,” and then finally started preparing myself for sleep, but my roommate Ted Knutson had not yet shown up, and I knew he’d likely wake me up with his entrance. Finally, as I was in the process of giving up the fight, he walked in with Toby and Bleiweiss in tow, and suddenly I was in a hotel bar snacking on nachos, chicken wings, and shrimp. After sharing a few stories about departed friends and a little more baseball talk, it was finally time to call it a night, at least for me. Apparently, my snores mirror the rumblings of Vesuvius, causing Ted to give up the fight at around 3:30 AM. You can read about it in the “Ask the Editor” section of the website he edits, starcitygames.com. I dreamed of Superman staring down Babe Ruth from the mound.

FRIDAY

I love writing. I’m smarter than your average bear, and as a result, I could probably have found some way to make more money than I will over this life, but I made the decision long ago to do things that make me happy, and when it comes to making a living, that means writing. In doing coverage, I find that my writing is definitely directed, but the direction is vague and generally allows me enough creative freedom to feel like I’m not just typing randomly so much as creating something new. In other words, I have a great job where my needs are concerned.

That said, no job is without its hurdles, and while I got a solid seven hours of sleep, it hardly made up for the deficit I’d built up, so when the wake-up call came at 7:30, tearing myself out of bed was far from easy. Knutson, however, made me look at the situation from a glass-is-half-full point of view. While I snoozed, Ted wrote a four page article, updated his website, saved a child from a burning building, cleared the national deficit, and negotiated peace in the Middle East. He was actually scheduled for a moon landing when the wake-up call came, forcing him to accept the fact he was fifteen minutes short of the time needed to do so, as we had a coverage team meeting at 8:15. He was obviously over his frustration but still reserved the right to complain about his sleeplessness, and rightfully so. I’m a brutally bad sleeper and have known the frustration of listening to a roommate’s breathing for four hours. He moved his things to Brian David-Marshall’s room as soon as BDM awoke. I now had my own hotel room. Some people have a word for a development like this one:

Victory.

In years of traveling around the globe, I’ve come to understand that the solo hotel room is the ultimate prize. Knowing that Ted is human, I took steps to ensure this result. Before leaving for the trip, I recorded fifteen minutes of “snoring” on tape. I purchased some anti-snoring nasal strips, designed to make it seem like I was sympathetic to my roommate’s plight, inserted the tape into the stereo next to my pillow, and set it up to play and loop. In doing so, I’ve virtually insured that I’ll have my own room whenever I’m on the road for Upper Deck. I laugh at Darkseid and Luthor. If only someone had intervened in my youth so that I’d use my powers for good instead of evil. Call me Machiavelli.

The meeting clears up some questions about how to address the past TCG lives of some of our players whose names have been affiliated with competitor products, and pretty soon, the players meeting that proceeds every major tournament is on. As I watched, I have to admit, there was a pang of jealousy.

See, you guys, and by “you guys,” I mean those of you who have been smart enough to get into this game at the beginning [4], have an amazing opportunity here in that Upper Deck decided the best way to promote their new game would be to essentially stuff booster packs with cash. This, of course, has led to some mercenary action, but more to the point, it has hastened the coming together of a community that you people are going to love and nurture. This is going to be a big part of your lives for a long time, and when all is said and done, a lot of you will have experiences on your life’s resume that you wouldn’t have come close to had you not started playing this game. You’re on the brink of traveling all over the world, making friends in more countries than I’ve time to mention . . . these are the things that transcend cash, but the fact that some will be able to make some money in the process, well, you can’t get much better than that without a 95 mph fastball.

There are a lot of old friends from Magic here: Paul Sottosanti and Rachel Reynolds, who work at Wizards of the Coast. Osyp, Eugene Harvey, Craig Krempals, Adam Horvath, Antonio De Rosa . . . all members of the same Team TOGIT that I was lucky enough to have membership in. Brian Kibler, Neil Reeves, Gabe Walls, Rob Nieves . . . the ritualized renewing of acquaintances that begins each premiere level event reasserts itself, but is cut short as round 1 gets under way. That’s when I meet one of the greatest beings I’ve ever encountered at a tournament: Trevor.

At just six years old, Trevor was the youngest and friendliest attendee, introducing himself by flopping on his side and begging me to scratch his belly. Trevor’s a Seeing Eye dog who was accompanying Jamie Tachiyama, a 28 year-old blind man playing a seeing man’s game. Jamie’s sleeves were indented with braille, allowing him to know what was where, relying on his mind’s eye and opponent’s communication skills to remember the game state, making this a far harder game for him than anyone else. I sat down and did an interview with Jamie, who let me get as blunt as I wanted with my questions. He was happy to answer this dumb seeing guy’s inquiries into what he “sees” (He just doesn’t—he receives his environmental information from four senses instead of five. There is no darkness. Only a lack thereof.), how his blindness occurred, how he reads the Internet and so on, leaving me feeling remarkably fulfilled at the end of the interview.

Over the day, a number of questions arose as to what would happen if he made Day 2. After all, he could pre-prepare his Constructed deck easily, but how would he draft the sleeveless boosters, and once he did, how would he know what he’d drawn in the ensuing matches? After starting 1-4, Jamie went on a four-match winning streak to put himself on the brink of Day 2 play, but he lost his final match to just miss the cut. Here’s a brief look at what would have happened if he’d won, at least for this tournament:

In the draft, Jamie’s table would have drafted separately from the others, and likewise, Jamie would have been separated from the table. A judge would be assigned to bring packs passed to him over to him and read the cards. Jamie would then select one, and the pack would be taken back to the table. Then, after the draft, a judge would be assigned to Jamie, who’d have brought his braille machine with him. The judge would read off the names and functions of the cards, and Jamie would indent his sleeves with their translations. All told, the process would likely have added an hour to each draft.

Now, if you’ve never done coverage, let me tell you, the reporters are always hoping that the fastest result occurs. I can recall matches in which sworn enemies of mine had taken a 1-0 lead over close friends and found myself cheering internally for the enemy to win game 2. Of course, when it comes to a good story, I’m a bit of a bloodhound. I love the rush of not only seeing it develop, but then being entrusted with its telling so that others might derive the same pleasure. When Jamie lost that last round, a part of me was relieved—after all, we’d end up working until midnight on Saturday as it was, and adding another three hours to that already-sixteen hour workday could aptly be described as “hell.” [5] At the same time, the other half was saddened, because at least for now, it was the end of a great story. Here’s hoping Jamie “wastes” three hours of my time on his next try.

I next met Scott Hunstad, the owner and administrator of VsParadise.com. A displaced American living in Australia, Scott’s was the classic sacrifice for love: His eventual wife was a visiting student who he literally followed to the ends of the Earth so he could be with her always. Not much not to like about a guy like that. Scott educated me about his beginnings in the game and the Australian team that’s built up around him. Sponsored by the site, Team VsParadise is a group of really friendly guys who were constant fun throughout the weekend, amongst them TBS (The Ben Seck), after whom Turner Broadcasting was named. Ben and I go back a long way, having met in Los Angeles back in 1997. (If I might take a moment for a private joke, 208, Ben, 208.)

The Aussies live up to their nation’s reputation. No, they don’t constantly barbecue shrimp, wear snake-skin hats with teeth hanging off them, wrestle crocs, or constantly say “That’s not a knife . . . that’s a knife,” but they are laid back and friendly to a man. I actually can’t say I’ve ever met an Aussie who doesn’t live up to this description. Amongst the team members I met was Scott Smith, who was rated first in the world in Sealed Pack coming into the tournament. Smith talks a mile a minute with enthusiasm for all subjects, and again, he really loves the game. When he found out later that Hunstad had won his last game in order to make Day 2, he literally full-on punched a concrete pillar in celebration. I’m guessing that when he finds out Hunstad’s expecting his first child, Smith will be so happy he’ll repeatedly head butt iron until his forehead’s a bloody pulp). Smith’s message in our conversations was clear: This was all about friends. You don’t shell out money for a trip from Australia to L.A. just because you have a 1-in-300 shot at the prize: you do it because it’s a chance to go on an adventure, to create the stories you’ll be telling for the millionth time over a beer ten years from now.

The rest of the day was spent doing interviews and watching games as I tried somewhat-unsuccessfully to familiarize myself with the big decks and how they work. The mechanics of the game are easy to learn, but taking the next step is difficult. To the layperson’s eye, understanding the ins and outs of formation seems impossible, and while I know I’ll eventually get it with practice, for the moment, it’s a daunting hill to climb. I interviewed Jason Dawson, who seemed more task-oriented and stern than most of the players I met. I chatted with the former John Rich, whose similarities to Bam Bam Bigelow forced a new nickname upon him [6].

See, that’s the way the days go. Social mixing is part of the job. Without knowing the people, I can’t help you get to know the people. With games like baseball and football, the television tells all. We know if we like our stars because we can see them right there on the screen, allowing us to react based on how they stand, sit, run, walk, speak, shrug, nod, and move to decide whether we like them or not. With online coverage being the only thing that gives you, the reader, an impression of the Vs. System players, the job is to give color to what is otherwise black and white type on a webpage. For that color to be true, I have to experience it myself.

The day finished at around 9 PM. The Metagame staff chased it with some Italian food which was chased in turn with drink before I headed back to what was now unequivocally my room. Exhausted at this point, I still found time to read a little [7] before setting the wake-up call.

I’m going to cut this short (mostly because it’s already too late to do so). Part two will look at the remainder of the weekend and how I need your help. Thanks for reading,

Gary Wise

Presently nickname-less (teaser)