The Road to WPN (Part 14.5)

[This is part 14.5 in a series, and assumes that you've already read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, and Part 14]

August 14, 2011: A quick report this time, to follow up from yesterday (thus it's only 14.5 instead of 15!)

My brother (John) and his wife (Kathleen) came out to Beyond Comics today to learn (in her case), relearn (in his case) and play some MTG.

I set up a 3-man casual 3-round single elimination event. I taught Kathleen the basics of the game (filling John in on the new terminology they've added since he last played ["Reach?"]), then John and I played round one (conveniently chosen randomly by the computer!).

I just brought some various constructed decks I had lying around. I have a 10th Edition GW common-only deck, my Prolifer8 UW deck, Chandra's Burning, Mono et Mono, and The Charge of the Boros precon from Ravnica.

John and I played a few games to show Kathleen how things work. To make sure the 3-round thing would work with single elimination, I logged us in as 1 win each and 1 draw. Next up the computer chose to put John against his wife, so they played while I advised Kathleen. Oddly enough she tore him apart with my silly little GW common 10E build against the Boros precon (to John's defense, he did get a mana glut that just put the brakes on his deck). So in the final round I got paired against Kathleen and we played the same two decks. With John advising her, she squashed me as well, so she ended up winning her very first MTG tournament.

She was a very good sport about the whole thing, and actually enjoyed the game (which worried John, as he does NOT want to end up having her buy a bunch of cards from me!), and I logged the results with a feeling of anticipation, because here is what the WPN Report Card looks like now:

Are we there, yet?

So, I checked the WER. Nope - still says we're Gateway Level. Maybe it just takes a little while for the system to process. I'll check again when I get home.

A few hours later I checked again. No dice. Still Gateway. I whined about this on Twitter (as I am want to do when I'm not happy about something), and Luis (AKA @AuranAlchemist on Twitter) offered that he had a similar thing happen to him. It turns out that if you have new DCI members in your event, they aren't officially tallied towards your total until their cards are received back at DCI headquarters. Therefore one of the folks who came out Friday night, as well as John & Kathleen, don't YET count towards our 30. They will once their cards have been received, but even if I mailed them overnight mail tomorrow, they wouldn't get there in time for us to register for FNMs in September (deadline is tomorrow, August 15).

So, on one hand I feel a good deal of pride. Our first event at Beyond Comics was July 2. So in just a month and a half I have gotten that store up to Core Level (well, I say "I", but really there were lots of folks working together, not the least of which are the 30 unique players who showed up).

However, on the other hand, I feel a great deal of frustration. I busted my butt, and called in some favors from folks to have them come out at odd hours to play MTG at the store, only to have it be for naught. We probably would have made it at our next event (August 27). Getting to Core Level right AFTER a major deadline just feels like such a let-down.

So, mixed emotions over here.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 15]