Today is of course the release of Magic’s Xth edition, Magic Game Day.
As usual, I played at Neutral Grounds in Galleria. Helluva lot of people there, more than I was expecting for a Core Set Release tournament.
The format is, as usual, Sealed Deck with four rounds of Swiss pairings. Players were grouped in Flights of 32 people each (previous prerelease tournaments had 48-people flights), each win gets you an Xth booster pack and the top 2 of each flight (the ones who went 4-0) get something extra. Apparently the extra prizes were stuff like a bag, a shirt and a big (cardboard) Kamahl card box. I of course got the crappy box.
Yes, I went 4-0. I’m not too surprised. Since a release tournament is more “casual”, the competition is not very fierce. Usually things get tricky in the last two rounds. Anyway, I won all 4 rounds, not even giving up a game loss. My sealed pool was awesome, lots of removal and acceleration. Beacon of Destruction and Mobilization are bomb rares, with Cone of Flame and Overrun as bomb uncommons. Awesome deck, good on tempo and usually giving quick wins (gave me time for lunch)
After the Sealed portion (and assembling my crappy box), I was in a fighting mood so I signed up for an 8-man draft. This was more serious competition, and the prize for the top 2 places was an additional promo foil Reya Dawnbringer (and a couple of packs). I won the first match 2-0, got my first game loss in game one of match 2 won two games in a row to make the top 2. Yay!
The art for Reya Dawnbringer is quite the awesomeness.
Final record: 6-0-1 matches for the day. 12-1 games. Not bad at all. My plan of going to work for 3 hours before tournaments to increase my mental strength is working!
Next: Nationals Qualifiers
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