It's been so long!

My friends and I all used to play Magic: the Gathering. A lot. We'd go to tournaments in Las Vegas, Albequerque, L.A. and San Diego. Jacob played in something like 11 Pro Tour events, and won thousands of dollars. All I ever won was $600 at one tournament, and $30 here and there at local smaller events.

Whenever a new Magic set comes out, they have what they call a Prerelease tournament, about a week before the cards hit the shelves. We always used to like going to those because it was a chance to see (and get) the new cards, and we were good so we'd usually come home with a box or 2 of new packs between us. Last year when I was in Seattle for the 4th of July there was one of these Prerelease things, and my buddy Alex Rockwell was planning on going. My college friend Jeremy lives in Seattle now (he was one of the better Magic players - ranked 5th in the world at one point) and he and I decided to go with Alex (who still played Magic regularly) to the Prerelease.

To make a long story short, it was a lot of fun, and between the three of us, the guy who still plays did the worst, and the guy who hadn't played in the longest (Jeremy) did the best.

Jacob and Tyler came over a few weeks ago with some packs of Magic cards, and we drafted them for the first time in forever. I'm not sure what brought that on, but we found out there's a Prerelease this weekend for the new set coming out, and we decided to head up to Phoenix this weekend and check it out.

When I played a lot, I remember being paired against a guy with a 4 digit DCI# (DCI is the organization that does the rankings - when I played everyone had 6-digit DCI numbers) and thinking I was in trouble, because that meant he'd been playing forever - and maybe that meant he'd be good. I think DCI#s are up to 8 digits nowadays.... now I get to be that guy :)

It's always fun to return to these tournaments and play against some hotshot kid who thinks he's "all that" because he knows all the latest decks and keeps up on the internet posts about the game. When you have to read every card they get all cocky and think they have an easy win coming. They don't seem to realize they're sitting across the table from 10+ years of experience and seasoned skill ;)