Musings from Long Beach(Part 1 of 2)

[Daniel Gray]

Here's a report on the second Pro Tournament at Long Beach from my
point of view. This is probably a little different than other reports people
will write, mostly because I didn't actually play in the PT. I hope you enjoy
it nonetheless.
Dan Gray

Thursday, 2 May 1996
8pm: I'm finally released from my Thursday night class. I hop in my car and
hit the 101 Freeway, headed, eventually, for the Queen Mary in Long Beach to
attend, although not to play in, the second Pro Tournament. First, however, I
have to stop at LA Airport to pick up my friend, Kai Martin, from Chicago who
is landing at about 10:20. Strangely, for a weeknight, the infamous Los
Angeles traffic is not present, and I make it to the United Airlines terminal
at LAX by 9:45. I park and go in.

10pm: Typical for airports, most of the United terminal is under construction.
It takes five minutes just to find a door I can go in, and a further ten
minutes to find the gate Kai's flight will be arriving at. I get to gate 75B
just as the "Arrivals" monitor changes his flight's status from "On time" to
"Landed."

10:30pm: After some problems with the jetway, Kai shows up. Not wanting to
miss anything fun or anything important, we high-tail it out of LAX, speed
down Sepulveda Blvd., and jump back onto the freeway, headed for Long Beach.
During the trip, Kai mentions that most of the Big Daddy's Crew(Big Daddy's
being the comic store he and his friends play at near Chicago) has taken to
playing Netrunner, and urges me to check it out. We discuss the state of Type
II and our general disgust with the overwhelming dominance in LA and Chicago
of the Necrodisk and Willowgeddon decks.

11:10pm: We finally get to the Queen Mary. After being utterly baffled by the
layout of the parking lot, we park, almost running over Scott Johns and
several other prominent LA players standing in the parking lot talking. We go
into the hotel/boat, hop on the elevator, and take it up to hotel
registration. We grab our key, go down one deck to our room, and dump off our
bags. We then go back upstairs, as we noticed several people playing and
trading in a small lounge right off the lobby.

11:30pm: Several players from Japan are trading massive quantities for
Japanese Fourth Edition cards from OOP's. Not being all that interested, we
head back into the lobby, where we encounter Max Szalgor, another Chicago
player, a friend of Kai's, and a member of the Big Daddy's Crew. Max, playing
in the Junior Division, doesn't have to do anything Friday morning, so he's
still up, but he mentions that Sam Heckman and Ken Roth, the other two Big
Daddy's Crew members and friends, competing in the Seniors, have already gone
to bed. Kai and Max discuss strategy for booster draft with a couple other
guys standing around, while I run into my friend(and local tournament
organizer/judge) Scott Larabee. Scott asks me if I've checked out the Exhibit
Hall, where they're holding the event. We haven't. Scott then mentions that
WotC might need more volunteers to help referee and setup tomorrow, and would
I be interested. I certainly was. Scott and I chat for a while, but then he
had to go.

Friday, 3 May 1996
12:05am: Since Kai, Max, and I aren't tired, we decide to do some playing. Kai
and I go back to our miniscule room to grab our backpacks(and decks). Kai and
Max find some available floor space, and start duking it out in Type II, Max
with his Necrodeck, and Kai with his newly constructed Howlingbind deck. I
watch for a while as Max does unpleasant things to Kai's deck, and then Marc
Aquino(a player from New York who all of us know) and his friend Bill wander
over. Marc decides to watch Kai and Max, but Bill and I decide to go off and
play some Type II. I elect to use my WIllowgeddon deck, while Bill rotates
between his five different Type II decks, some serious(a good U/W Millstone
deck, and an R/G Erhnam & Burn 'Em deck), some not(a large artifacts deck and
a goblin deck). I win two games, Bill wins three. Kai, Max, and Marc have
gotten bored by now, so the four of us decide to go check out the Exhibit Hall
where all the fun will be held over the next three days. The Hall is huge-- it
covers three floors, with information/registration, the WotC Store, food,
Netrunner demos, artist signings and the giant TV monitor on the first floor,
and the player's lounge and the play space for both PT's and the other open
tournaments on the other two floors.

1:15am: Since Kai actually is in the PT, having qualified by DC points, we
decide to go to bed. Kai gets us a 6am wakeup call. Sleep was not in the
cards(if you'll pardon the pun), though, and we discuss booster drafting
strategy for almost two more hours. I recommend to Kai that he try to draft
the "uncool" colors of blue and green. I point out what I think, despite my
limited booster draft experience, are good cards, putting in my usual vote of
confidence for Power Leak, one of my favorite sealed deck cards. Kai is
skeptical, but eventually decides to take, at least in part, some of my
advice. This would eventually turn out to be a bad idea.

6am: Wake up. Three hours sleep. Ugh. Tiredness, thirst, and hunger plague us.
Kai has to report in, so we were told the previous night, by 7:30. We go to
find food.

7:05am: We finally find the damn restaurent, wedged up in a corner of the
boat's fourth deck. We get the buffet, and eat really bad bacon and eggs,
along with cereal from bowls that look(and act) like plates. The rip-off
artists running the hotel squeeze $9.50 apiece from us for this fare.

7:35am: We get to the Exhibit Hall. Having been told the previous night that
the booster drafts for the PT would be closed to open viewing, I wonder what
the hell I'm going to do for three hours until the playing starts, as I'm too
tired to play any games or make any trades. Scott Larabee sees me as we walk
in, and motions me over. It turns out that one of the volunteer refs was in a
car accident and couldn't make it, and they needed someone who could make
rulings. So I got to referee in the PT, although I wasn't sure whether I
should be honored or have my head examined(at least, that was to be my
reaction some 11 hours later). Paul, the volunteer coordinator, gives me a
really cool maroon t-shirt signifying my "offical" status. I get to wear the
tap symbol on my back all day :)

8am: We volunteers(including myself, Scott, and about 25 others) are put to
work. We first head downstairs to the the bottom deck(where the actual playing
will take place), and fix up the tables by clamping the tablcloths down and
sticking little flags in them to signify the various playing positions.
Charlie Catino(from WotC) sends me and two others back up to the middle deck
with a roll of duct tape to tape over the seams in the tablecloths on the
tables where the actual booster draft would occur. The three of us break the
world record for using a whole of duct tape, taping down all but one table
before we run out.

9:15am: Having separated the Seniors into two "waves" for drafting purposes,
and running, at this point, only fifteen minutes behind schedule, Andrew from
WotC, the chief-guy-in-charge of this PT, gets us set up to judge the booster
draft. Each wave was to have twelve tables of eight players each, and each
table would be overseen by one volunteer referee, and one judge from the WotC
staff. I get table #2, but due to some mishap, have no WotC judge at the
table. Andrew hauls out the megaphone, and began calling the first wave down
by table. At my first table, I have no "famous" players, only a couple local
LA players, Mark Venhaus and Jeff Broido, who I've met a couple times before.

9:35am: Andrew finally gets me a WotC judge-- Richard Garfield. Dr. Garfield
and I posiiton ourselves on either side of the table, as Andrew explains the
drafting rules and time limit. The players would do standard booster draft,
with a set amount of time to draft each card, decreasing as each booster got
smaller. To ensure there was no cheating, WotC had opened all the boosters,
marked them in a complicated way(which I don't think anybody but Andrew,
Charlie Catino, and Tom Wylie really understood) with purple blue mana
symbols, and stuck them into little plastic boxes and sealed them. The players
would look at the booster, pick their card, and stick it into the plastic deck
box they had been given, then lay out the booster, counted in stacks of
three(so the next person could count the cards easily) to pass. The rules
prohibited a player from having both a booster and his/her selected cards in
hand at the same time to prevent cheating, so the players could only look at
their cards already picked after drafting a card.

9:45am: The draft gets under way. I stand directly behind a player named Jason
Pass at my table as the draft goes on, so I see what he drafts most clearly.
Unforutnately for Jason, he elects to play green, but the player to his left
does so as well. Several mishaps occur during the draft, as Andrew forgot to
tell everyone to count the cards in their first 4E booster before drafting.
Mark Venhaus has 18 cards in his, and someone else at my table has only 14.
This happens at other tables as well. Mark gets another booster, looks at the
cards, even worse than the first pack, then counts and discovers he once again
has 18 cards. He gets a third booster, opens it, and grins, finding a Serra
Angel and Jayemdae Tome. The draft continues normally. Jason Pass gets very
few green creatures from the first pack, as the player to his left grabs most
of the good ones. Jason also did rather badly in the second pass(although the
guy to his right was not playing green), probably due to bad cards in all the
boosters. Homelands makes Jason's day, as he drafts in sucession Autumn
Willow, Spectral Bears, Hungry Mist, and An-Havva Inn. The draft thus
finished, the players get escorted downstairs, are given 20 of each land, and
told to make decks.

10:50am: The first draft wave was supposed to start at 9am and finish at 9:30.
So much for the schedule. My second table has local LA player Randal Newell,
the Bay Area's John Immordino, and reigning World Champ Alexander Blumke,
among others. We finally get underway about 11am, and despite Andrew's warning
to count the boosters, there are still many with too many or too few cards.
The cards at my second table are absolutely fantastic, and everyone gets
something good. The player who I stand behind gets a major air force, drafting
a Phantom Monster, Phantasmal Forces, Giant Albatross, Mesa Pegasus, and three
Zephyr Falcons. Ouch. About 11:30, wave two gets to go downstairs and make
their decks. After the decks were made, each player was to turn in their deck
for a receipt, which also designed to help prevent cheating. Since there was a
momentary lull, I headed back upstairs to grab some more chow from the
"Dominia Diner," whose motto should have been, "You need to sell Moxes to pay
for this food." What a rip-off.

12:40pm: I head downstairs to help ref. The first round starts soon
thereafter, and the referees are put to work doing various things, including
handing out decks, watching the entrances(no one except players and judges
were allowed in the play area), and helping Skaff Elias do random checks of
player's sideboards. WotC used a nice computer system to do all the pairings.
Today, the 177 players in the Seniors would play five three-game Swiss rounds,
with the top 64 players, by game record(match record as first tie-breaker)
advancing to redraft and play again on Saturday. I wander around during round
one, watching games, making a few rulings, and recording the scores of the
matches. Kai, it turns out, has drafted blue and green, but had wound up at a
table with terrible cards. He has some good stuff(including a Leviathan), but
no flyers(he would later admit to having made mistakes by passing up a Leaping
Lizard). He wins one game, but loses the other two. After only a single round,
they decide to call a Lunch break.

2:45pm: Round two starts. Ken Roth from Chicago had gone 2-1 in the first
round, and does so again. Kai once again gets shafted, and is swept 0-3. I
made several more rulings, and watch a bunch of games.

3:55pm: Round three begins. The marquee matchup this round is the 6-0 Mark
Justice versus the 6-0 Henry Stern, in something of a rematch from last year's
National finals. Among the other still undefeated players is Santa Barbara's
own Brian Weissman. Ken Roth goes 1-2, and Kai gets swept for a second
time(and then drops out). By now, the players had calculated that they
required nine wins(or at least 18 points) to make top 64, although several
players with only 8 wins would make it, it was iffy due to the complex series
of tiebreakers.

5:15pm: Round four. Justice is now 9-0, having swept Stern, and is the only
remaining undeafeated player. Ken Roth gets swept, and despairs of making top
64. Several notable players are doing poorly, including Blumke, Pacific Coast
Legends members Mario Robaina and Scott Burke, and 1995 SW Regional
Champion(and Santa Barbara resident) Joel Unger.

6:25pm: Round five. Justice is now 11-1, as is Brian Weissman, followed by a
large group of folks at 10-2 and 9-3. Ken Roth as well as Marc Aquino figure
they must sweep in order to make top 64. Several other prominent players,
including 1994 World Champ Zak Dolan and 1995 SE Regional Champ Adam Maysonet
are also in this boat. Roth sweeps, giving himself a good chance of making it,
but Aquino, Maysonet, and Dolan fail and all go 7-8 for the day. Also ont he
borderline is Shawn "Hammer" Regnier, who made top 8 at PT1.

7:40pm: The judges and referees now proceed to count the decks of all those
whom the computer says should make top 64. Ken Roth makes it at #60, as does
Regnier at #61. Justice is #1 at 14-1, with Weissman at #2 with 13-2. We count
the decks. A problem arises, as a deck I count(played by a notable player)
somehow has 41 non-land cards instead of the expected 38. Tom Wylie is called
over to adjudicate, and we haul out the player's decklist. It turns out he is
over by 2 Drudge Skeletons and a Murk Dwellers. Wylie is about to DQ the
player when one of the other referees discovers that the player's last
opponent had only 35 cards, and the Skeletons and Dwellers were what was
missing. Tom postulates that the opponent had purposefully stuck the player
with the extra cards in hopes of DQ him. The player is allowed to remain in.

8:50pm: Skaff Elias announces the top 64. In, in addition to those already
mentioned, are Mike Loconto, Preston Poulter, Henry Stern, Mark Chalice, and
John Immordino. Notable "outs" include Dolan, Maysonet, Unger, Robaina,
Blumke, Burke, and Bertrand Lestree.

9:05pm: Mark Rosewater is about to hold the Magic game show. I hook up with
Kai, and we try and find a third member for our team. We ask Joel Unger, but
he already has a team. We eventually hook up with a player from New York named
Vaughn Sandor(who had made top 64). We make a good team as we answer the
questionnaire asking such obscure questions as what "Bad Touch" is an anagram
for, and how many Beta cards have exactly four words in their text boxes. I
handle all the goofy card questions, Kai gets the flavor texts, Vaughn does
the anagrams. Ken Roth, Max, and Sam Heckman have also formed a team. Only the
top three teams would get to compete in the actual game show, so we try our
best. We didn't make it, but we were the only team to correctly list ALL the
Beta cards with only four words in their text boxes(for the record-- Sinkhole,
Ice Storm, Stone Rain, Holy Strength, Unholy Strength, Flight, Burrowing).
Ken, Max, and Sam beat us by over 10 points, and gloat. Three teams make it,
including one with PCL member Frank Gilson and Randal Newell. We watch the
fun, but eventually get really tired and go to bed.

<END OF PART 1>