I wasn't planning on going to this Grand Prix, but Spencer had a wedding to go to and the MacDonald brothers needed a third for their team. So, I did some quick rearranging of my schedule and back to Portlandia. My last GP here gave me my first Day Two in Modern, no less. I also love this town because of bookstores and donuts.
Flew in Friday afternoon, but missed the free mini-masters event. Dang. Found Ryan, Russell and Jeff in the hall selling some cards. They had also played in a practice team sealed event, but no prizes from that. We piled into the car that Jeff and Ryan drove up in and hit the hotel. It was a few miles north from the convention center and was a bit run-down. But it was clean and in a good neighborhood and had mini-fridges for much beers.
Greg and Jason met up with us later that night. We hit Frank's Noodle House (stay away from the Black Bean sauce), Whole Foods for snacks and the Spirit of '77 bar. The later had Skee-ball and Pop-shot Hoops, but only one of them worked. The Love Muscle chatted up a Major League Soccer player's wife, who was also from New Zealand. You can't make that stuff up.
Saturday morning, we found a cool little bagel place up the street, that was also a bar at night. Pinkie's had delicious bagel sandwiches with egg and cheese. We loaded our backpacks and then fit 6 men into a 4-seater Mazda. We all took turns in the truck since it was cool, spacious and smelled even better.
689 teams showed up for the GP. Team MacLall (Jeff, Jason and I) and Team Russ, Ryan and Greg. They handed out red plastic bags with 12 packs of M15, 3 pens, 3 sets of sleeves (Channel Fireball), tokens and score pads. We cracked, sorted and registered them. Then everybody passed them one team down. Bingo! That's our pool.
After sorting and building for 50 mins, we had our decks. I was piloting a GB control one with Hornet Queen as the finisher. My opponents all day whimpered when the Queen came down. Jeff had RU tempo and Jason was all-white tokens with two Sanctified Charges. We played and split the first two rounds, but then rolled off 6 straight wins for Day Two! We lost the last one of the day for a 7-2 record. PARTY TIME!!
Team RRG didn't make it unfortunately, but were also ready to celebrate with us. We weren't going to get too blitzed, since we had more Magic to play the next day, but found a great place, the Cascade Brewery. They had several sour beers and those are my favorites. Then on to Voodoo Donuts. Oof, so much for my diet! No line there on Sunday nights at midnight, by the way.
Sunday was another Team Sealed for us since they changed the format from draft. We got our cards, this time stamped with numbers. We all agreed our pool wasn't as good as the previous one, but you work with what you got. I ran RG midrange with Nissa, Jeff had UB flyers and Jason was white again. We won our first two rounds, but then lost the next two. This meant we would make some money this trip, but how much depended on the last and fifth round. Jason and Jeff split their matches, so it was down to me. I was playing against a UG deck and we split our first two games. In the rubber game, we rolled out dudes to a standstill, then he Negated my Nissa. Dang-nabit! I did get out Krenko's Enforcer and was hitting him for two a turn. I pumped it once with a Titanic Growth and then he bounced it next turn. It was played again and got in there with a Stoke The Flames for the win. WHEW!
We finished in 21st place, one position away from a higher prize. But we were all "stoked" to place in the money at all. And we all got our first Pro Point. It's not a big thing, but it's on our Magic resumes.
We cruised out to Ground Kontrol, an arcade bar, and had beers and retro gaming. I dug all the cool pinballs and Jeff geeked out on Dig Dug, Joust and Donkey Kong. There was a 4-player PacMan game, which was great fun. Then onto food trucks, Powell's Books and some bars in the Mississippi district. The Bungalow Bar had cool swings and rope chairs on the back patio. We Chaos drafted and had appetizers. It was warm and humid around 80 degrees at 10pm! Ryan ordered Habanero Poppers and survived the heat. The next bar down had a delicious Belgian White Cider by Woodchuck that was all kinds of good. Greg bought the group some whiskey shots to toast a great weekend.
The next Team Sealed is in San Jose on January 31st. I would highly recommend your attendance!
