GP Philly Pt. 2

The continuing adventures of Greg and Spencer into Day Two!

After an exhausting Day One, we all crashed early. The tropical storm was upgraded to a hurricane, which was moving up the coast. Coming right for us! Stores were boarding up their windows. Sandbags around the doors. Starbucks was closed! But the Marriott was connected to the convention center by a skybridge, so we never had to go outside. Up and atom for more Magic!

Day Two means drafts, so G&S got their seats into 8-man pods. Greg drafted a aggro GW pool with the GW Guidemage and Wild Beastmaster and a splash of black. He rolled to a 3-0. Spencer, unfortunately, did not get a good draft pool and bombed out 0-3. He decided to keep playing for the free cards and planeswalker points.

Greg's second draft wasn't as good as his first, but he beat his first round opponent and could draw the next two to get into the Top 8. Wow, what a ride! For more deets, check his webpage: GregsDayTwo

Russell and I did some side drafts and got food for the players. We also checked out some of the local sites.

Philly Mint

Philly Cheesesteak

Hanging with the Bell

Meanwhile, Greg drafted in the Top 8 and got paired up with Yuuya Watanabe, who has two Pro Tour Top 8's and 16 GP Top 8's to his name. Not bad. And Greg beat him. He's in the Top 4!

Some Czech beat Greg the next round, but Greg was in the money for $1500, a travel voucher to PT Quebec and the right to call himself a pro. So proud of our boy! Read the GP coverage at the mothership!

We partied later at the hotel and because of the hurricane, flights were cancelled and we ended up stuck for two extra days. So we played more Magic in the lobby with the other stuck players. LSV, Kibler, Wrapter and even Marshall from Limited Resources were all there. We played on team draft with him and his posse.

Weird format - draft normal then randomly pick 4-man teams. Teammates can help each other build decks. Then everyone randomly picks a player on the other team that they don't play. So now you have your opponents. Best team record gets all the rares. Then they pulled the rares "Italian" style. They put them all face down and each teammate would pick and flip one over. Whichever card had the highest CMC, that player would get them all. If there was a tie, then repeat. Spencer played on Marshall's team and they won in  a tie-breaker round. Best rare? Foil Jace. But Spencer didn't pull it. Oh well, still fun.

Whew, what a trip! Congrats to Greg's BIG win! Philly was fun and I look forward to another trip there.