WPN Boy (Part 2)

[This is part 2 in a series, and assumes that you've already read Part 1 (not to mention the entire Road to WPN series, which begins here)]

Q&A Session

Behrooz 'Bezman' Shahriari checked in last time with more Q's for me to A!

- What's the most rewarding part of being a WPN event-organiser?
- What's the most difficult part?
- Do you enjoy magic more or less? How has your relationship with the game changed since a year ago?

Most rewarding part: To be completely honest, I get a blast out of seeing people having fun playing Magic, and knowing that I had a hand in arranging that experience for them. Also, I love the fact that if I want to play Magic myself, I'm never more than a couple days away from another opportunity to do so!

Most difficult part: The time commitment is quite more than I thought it would be. Between logging the events in WER, keeping the event calendar up-to-date, getting a decent newsletter out every week, keeping the stores apprised on what booster packs they need to have on stock for any given event, advertising the events, writing the blog - and all of that is on top of the time I put in at the actual events themselves!

Enjoying Magic: I think there's give and take here. I was disappointed to learn just how many people go to the 'net for deck ideas (sometimes with minor tweaking) for constructed events. I would SO much rather see a bunch of home-brewed decks battling it out, like kitchen-table Magic at an epic level :) As it stands the events often end up being won by those who can afford the cards needed for the "best deck" (whatever that may be at the time).

On the other hand, I definitely find myself having many more ideas for decks, and build a lot more (and enjoy playing them) than I used to. They're unlikely to win too many of my own events, as they are not the "best deck" (nor am I a world-class player) but I have a blast with it.

DIARY OF A WPN KID

November 25, 2011: Tonight we held FNM at Novel Places instead of the usual location, and was a Standard event. I knew we'd have trouble, it being the night after Thanksgiving. Adding in the fact that it was at an unusual location, I was worried. Unfortunately my fears turned out to be founded. Only 2 players showed up, so I joined in to make it more interesting. We played three rounds, round-robin style.


The idea came up tonight of running a casual Magic night (since this was essentially that). Something to pursue later?

November 26, 2011: Innistrad Draft at Novel Places. Patrick had another event taking place on the main floor of the store, so we surreptitiously held the event upstairs. That area is used mostly as storage right now, and is filled with antiques and curios. The open rafter design of the old building made for a rather spooky setting, just perfect for an Innistrad Draft. We had 11 players, and (despite my having to rush back home to get my basic land box which I had forgotten), the event went off rather well. I owe a HUGE thanks to Craig, who had come out to help me run the event so he could make sure he knew what would be needed to run WER for the Dark Ascension prerelease events he'll be running at Novel Places at the end of January.

5 players had never played at Novel Places before, which helped with our bottom line for maintaining Core Level. Thanks go to Serg for helping arrange for so many new people to come out!

December 2, 2011: Standard event FNM at Beyond Comics. 8 players, so we ran a sanctioned 3-round event. Also tonight I picked up a used netbook to use as a back-up, especially when we'll have multiple Dark Ascension prerelease events going on at once.

One player was new to the DCI at this event, and two of the players were brothers who attended together. Hopefully some or all three will become regulars!

December 9, 2011: FNM was Innistrad Booster Draft tonight. All three of the new-to-us players from last week made it, along with another new DCI member and 6 others for a lovely 10-person Draft. The event itself ended up rather oddly, as the prize distribution was originally set based on the "perfect" result which would have had 2 players at 9 match points (we only run 3 rounds for limited events due to time constraints). But after round two, when I expected to have 3 players at 6 points, we instead had only 1 (the player who won round one but got paired down in round two didn't win as the model predicted, and two other round 1 winners ended up in a draw). I made adjustments to the prize distribution (increasing the pack payout at each level, since there'd be fewer people at the very top), and STILL had 3 packs left over at the end to randomly give out amongst 4 players who hadn't won a pack.

Strangest moment of the draft was possibly the situation where a player who had mulliganed down to 5 cards had an early board state of 2 copies of Blazing Torch and 2 copies of One-Eyed Scarecrow (in addition to his lands). So bizarre!

December 10, 2011

Bigger news is that Patrick has agreed to give the Casual Magic night a try, so the first one will be this coming Wednesday (December 14). He'll keep the shop open two hours later than normal, and the official posted times will be 6-9 pm.

December 14, 2011: The inaugural Casual Magic Night was tonight. My sons have karate on Wednesday nights, so we showed up late (~8:30) but there were three other players there (including one that had never been at Novel Places before). Not too bad for the first time out. I'll continue to advertise it in my weekly email newsletter, and try to drum up interest at FNM.

December 16, 2011: FNM at Beyond Comics, Standard Constructed. 10 players again tonight (this time I did not need to play!). We ran 4 rounds, and I think it went quite well. Next week is Two-Headed Giant, Innistrad Sealed. I'm looking forward to it, and hope we have at least 4 teams!

Tonight I scheduled the FNMs for February. The first week we'll sacrifice FNM to run a Friday night Dark Ascension Launch Party. Second week will be Innistrad/Dark Ascension Draft. Third will be Standard, and fourth will be my first ever Block Constructed event. Haven't 100% decided if it will be Scars of Mirrodin Block (allows cards from Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia) or Innistrad Block (which will allow cards from Innistrad and Dark Ascension). Leaning toward the latter.

December 21, 2011: 7 players for Casual Magic Night at Novel Places tonight. Much insanity ensued when we combined my deck of Plane cards from Planechase (1 copy of each Plane in existence, including promos) with EDH/Commander. Turns out that a 5-player EDH game with Planes takes a LONG time. We called it (with no-one really clearly in the lead) at 9:30, a good half-hour after the event was supposed to end. Lucky for us Patrick seemed to be enjoying us being so goofy!

Also tonight, Patrick gave the thumbs up to extend the Casual Magic Night through January at least.

December 23, 2011:  FNM at Beyond Comics was Two-Headed Giant Innistrad Sealed Deck. We had (barely) 4 teams, so an official FNM. One player (Josh) had just shown up to observe, but he was convinced to team up with one of our regulars, Dan, who had shown up without a partner. Dan was willing to pay for both of them, provided he got to keep all the cards at the end of the event. Josh was happy to get to play for free.

Team "Last Minute" (myself and Craig) played pretty well together, winning Rounds 1 & 2, and were only 1 land drop away from winning Round 3.

I take issue with the WER on something, though. I had decided that the 12 prize packs would be distributed as follows:

• 1st place: 5 packs
• 2nd place: 4 packs
• 3rd place: 2 packs
• 4th place: 1 pack

That way everyone wins something. But in this case what happened was that two teams had identical scores at the top (win %'s, opponent win %'s, in every way identical) and the same for the 3rd & 4th slots. For the top two slots one team (myself and Craig) had beaten the other team, so you would think that the 1st place slot would be given to us. But instead it was given to the other team. And in the lower two slots the same thing happened. The team who ended up 4th place had actually beaten the team that was put in 3rd place. I don't know what criteria the WER bases places when the stats are identical (random would seem logical?) but in this case it seems to me that there's clearly a way to determine ranking: if the two tied teams played each other, rank the one that won that matchup higher than the other!

I'm worried about tomorrow's event at Novel Places. Despite this incredibly awesome flyer Craig came up with:

Santa Garruk wants YOU for the Draft!

Still it is on Christmas Eve, and with folks on vacation or with family obligations, we may have a hard time hitting at least 8 players. We'll see!

December 24, 2011:  Well, it was not as bad as it could have been! 5 players showed up for the Innistrad Draft at Novel Places today. I joined in as well so that there'd be an even number (although, as my 0-3 record will attest, we might as well have just given a Bye to everyone who was paired up against me). I proved once again that I am absolutely hopeless when it comes to drafting, and my deck was just God-awful. But, the players seemed to enjoy themselves nonetheless, and for that I am grateful.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3]

WPN Boy (Part 1)

As I said at the end of The Road to WPN Part 27, I feel like that series had served its purpose. I set out to document the process and struggles involved in getting a store set up as a Wizards Play Network site, and bringing that store up to Core Level so that it could run Friday Night Magic, Prereleases and other such events.

A lot of oddities happened along the way (not the least of which was picking up a second store to run events at), and the series was overall very well received and developed a rather large following. Still, however, I felt that it had run its course (especially given that its name, which implied a trip to a destination which I feel has already been reached).

So, that brings us to this: the inaugural "issue" if you will of a new series. "WPN Boy" (pronounced "whippin' boy"*) will chronicle my further adventures in TO'ing for Novel Places and Beyond Comics. My intention for this series is to act as two functions:

1. A simple diary of events after they occur (which will mostly consist of date, type of event, attendance, and then anything noteworthy that happened);
2. A vehicle to answer questions from you, the audience, sent in either as comments to these posts, or via Twitter (I'm @TheSundry over there) or email (TheSundry at gmail dot com). So PLEASE feel free to ask away - it will give me something to write about!

*For those who are unaware, a whipping boy was a boy who would be punished instead of a prince when the prince had done something wrong. In this analogy, I will be taking the beating for you as I stumble through the always tricky process of being a TO, so that hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. I guess that makes you the prince - so make of that what you will :)

I will publish these basically as they fill up and seem a reasonable size for release out into the wild, so there will likely be no regular schedule to them. I hope that these posts continue to amuse and entertain, as well as (hopefully) shed some light on what happens behind the scenes at events you attend (for you non-TOs out there) and even offer advice and assistance for those of you who are TOs (or wish to be some day).

Q&A Session

The first question I want to answer came from Behrooz 'Bezman' Shahriari in the comments to the last Road to WPN entry:

I suppose one interesting point that you haven't really gone into would be what kind of advertising you do. Do you leave flyers at BC or NP? Have they had much success? Do you use FB to advertise events? How do folk tend to find out about it?

We do have flyers that each store uses, most of which are put together by my rather talented friend, Craig. Here's a sample, for the Innistrad Draft that I'll be running at Novel Places on November 26:

I thought the celebratory art fit with the fact that this event will be the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Craig usually makes full page flyers as well as smaller ones that cam be printed out 2x2 on a sheet and cut down to size. The stores post the larger ones on their door or in prominent locations in-store, then have the smaller ones out by the cash register as take-aways. For FNMs I make up a simple monthly list as a 2x2 for Beyond Comics to have sitting out by the cash register. It looks like this:

Not pretty, but functional. The Comic Sans can be forgiven - it's a comic store!

I used to get a pile of the event flyers (large & takeaways) and post them up at local community centers. I found, however, that when I asked folks how they learned about the event, not once did they say "I saw a flyer at the community center." so I stopped. I also used to post ads in Craig's List (different Craig), but found the same to be true.

I have found that the biggest source of new players (besides word-of-mouth, "come with me to this event run by this guy called Don" type referral) actually is the Wizards of the Coast Store & Event Locator. For those of you who don't know about this amazing resource, any officially sanctioned and scheduled event is in a large searchable database, complete with map, location info, etc. (you can see it for yourself here). You can search for specific types of events, like a prerelease or FNM. It's really quite something. I've lost track of the number of people who told me they found our events using this system, so I'm VERY grateful that it exists!

DIARY OF A WPN KID

November 11, 2011: Not a very auspicious FNM on 11/11/11, I'm afraid. The format was Innistrad Draft, and only 3 players showed up. I joined in to make it 4. P1P1 for me was Bloodline Keeper, and I managed to get some good support. Lost Round 1 horribly, tightened up the deck, and won rounds 2 & 3 to take 2nd place in the event (this guy took first).

November 12, 2011: Standard constructed event at Novel Places. Two regular players brought friends (3 between the two of them) and a few other regulars showed up (plus someone who had been meaning to make it to an event for a while now). When the dust settled, we had 8 (without needing me) - so we could actually run it as a sanctioned event. Hooray! This was my first event with a "super promo prize pack" for the 1st place player (who was regular-attender and big supporter of our events, Roger). He took home, in addition to his prize booster packs, all of the following promo cards from my ever-growing collection:

1. WPN Promo Maul Splicer;
2. WPN Promo Vault Skirge;
3. WPN Promo Auramancer;
4. WPN Promo Tormented Soul;
5. WPN Promo Bloodcrazed Neonate;
6. WPN Promo Curse of the Bloody Tome;
7. Innistrad Prerelease Promo Mayor of Avabruck;
8. Innistrad Prerelease Promo Wolf Token;
9. Innistrad Launch Party Promo Ludevic's Test Subject;
10. Innistrad Game Day Promo Diregraf Ghoul

I plan to offer the same prize pack for the next three Saturday events at Novel Places (Nov 26, Dec 10, Dec 24). I figure I need some sort of extra draw, especially if I want people to come out the Saturday after Thanksgiving and (even worse), on Christmas Eve (that wasn't on purpose, I swear! It just happens to be the 4th Saturday in December this year!).

November 18, 2011: FNM at Beyond Comics. Format: Standard Constructed. 10 players made it (sanctioned!). One of them was new to DCI, and two others had never played here before. The former was invited by a friend, and is unlikely to make it regularly as he lives a good deal away. But they latter 2 (brothers) seemed to really enjoy themselves and I think will come back for events here as well as at Novel Places. We played 4 rounds, since it was a Constructed event and that would have us end about the same time as 3 rounds of Limited (once you factor in draft/build time), and we were still done around 9:30.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2]

The Road to WPN (Part 27)

[This is part 27 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, Part 14, Part 14.5, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, Part 25, and Part 26]

October 28, 2011: FNM tonight went reasonably well. We had 8 participants for a Standard event (and I didn't need to sign up to make it 8!).

It turned out that the FNM&Ms that we received last week were supposed to be used TONIGHT (which I found out from the WPN newsletter this past Wednesday). It would be nice if the instructions on use of these promotional items went out in advance of their arriving at the store so that we know these things! [Side note on these: the reverse side does not have the Planeswalker symbol as I had previously reported, but instead the symbol of Avacyn from the Innistrad set.]

Anyway, the majority of the players had been here last week as well, so I handed out FNM&Ms and deck boxes to those who hadn't been. We ended up getting the ideal distribution after three rounds (1 player with 9 match points, 3 players with 6, 3 with 3 and one with 0).

This was, in a way, to be a test night for me. If, as I was concerned, the issue was one of format in competing with Dream Wizards, then (I hoped) running Standard more often at FNM would lead to larger turnouts. But last week's Draft actually had more players. Not sure what to make of this.

This is the beginning of a Magic intensive weekend for me, as I have not one but two Game Days to run tomorrow. And there's a rare October snow storm forecast for tomorrow, so I'm a bit nervous.

October 29, 2011: The weather this morning was mostly cold and rainy, not snowy. We ended up with 7 other players at Beyond Comics, so I joined in to make it 8. This meant that everyone got not only the participation promo (non-Foil full art Diregraf Ghoul) but also the "Top 8" foil full-art Elite Inquisitor promo as well (turns out it's easy to top 8 an event when there are only 8 players - who knew?).

I played my "Tokens of my Affection" deck, which does not have a sideboard at the moment. It played okay, but not great. I only won one match (Round 1), but, as mentioned before, still managed to Top 8. We had the same match point distribution as last night's event.

The afternoon Game Day at Novel Places was not so rosy a story. By the afternoon, the snow had really started coming down. We ended up with only 4 players (1 of whom was me). This meant that I had to cancel the official Game Day and run things as a casual event instead. The good news was, though, that all four of us got both of the promos!

I played the same deck, and defeated two of my opponents. One of the players lost each match, while the other three of us won 2/3 matches. Strange ending record.

This makes two events in a row at Novel Places that only had 4 players show up (and I was #4 in both cases). I'm really not sure what to do about this. I had seriously thought that having a Saturday Magic option was going to be attractive to folks, and it may simply be that I'm not doing a good enough job getting the word out that we're doing them.

So, mixed results on my first experience running a Game Day. My hope is that the weather was a major factor and things would have been different attendance-wise if we didn't have the snow.

November 3, 2011: Stopped by Novel Places today to pick up some books I had ordered, and discussed with Patrick some conflicts that will be coming up on some of our Saturday events. The 4th Saturday of November and the 2nd Saturday of December he had to schedule some other programs that will be set up in the space we normally run the events. We think we have a solution moving into an alternate space. I think it's important that we maintain our "2nd and 4th Saturday" schedule so that folks get used to it and know that if it's one of those Saturdays they can come out to Novel Places and play Magic.

November 4, 2011: FNM tonight was Innistrad Sealed Deck, and we only managed to get 6 players out (not including me - if a seventh had shown up I would have joined in to make it 8). This, of course, means cancelling the official event and running a casual instead. I am, to be quite frank, getting sick and tired of having to do that.

The other big news tonight was that John asked if it would be possible to cancel the FNM scheduled for November 25. Here in the US, the Friday after Thanksgiving (Nov 24 this year) is known as "Black Friday" and is, historically, the biggest shopping day of the year. It's the unofficial beginning of the holiday buying season, and a day that most retailers depend on for a huge influx of revenue.

As could be predicted, then, Beyond Comics plans to have a huge sale, and will need some of the tables we would ordinarily use for an event to set up special sales items. Also, whoever is on duty that day (and they're down an employee at the moment) will likely be wiped out by the end of the day, and not really looking forward to having to stay late for a FNM. Add that to the fact that I had scheduled that night to be Innistrad Sealed Deck (the most expensive of the formats we run) which would likely reduce the potential number of players....yeah, you can see why he'd want to let this one go.

BUT, I had already received the FNM promos for that week. And there was always the possibility that Patrick would be interested in running an FNM for once (if the event could be transferred from one location to another). So I resolved to check with Patrick and find out.

November 6, 2011: Turns out he would, so I contacted Brian (through the new interface system with WotC customer support) to ask if it was possible. He told me it would be possible - I needed to create an event at Novel Places for that evening and send him the sanctioning number. He would change that event to an FNM, and I would then need to cancel the scheduled FNM for Beyond Comics.

We got that all cleared up, and now Novel Places will host its very first FNM on November 25. I decided to make it a Standard event, in the hopes that it will be more attractive to folks (a Constructed event is the cheapest of the events). We have an Innistrad Draft event scheduled there for the day after that as well. It is the Thanksgiving weekend, and many folks will be away. But, on the other hand, a number of college students will be back home for the holiday, so maybe those two will cancel out?

ON ANOTHER NOTE: This will likely be my last regular update to The Road to WPN. As many regular readers already know, it's rather overdue anyway. Things have become a bit more routine lately, and simple reports of FNM attendance does not for riveting reading make.

If something of note should occur (like the FNM transfer mentioned above, or an especially large event, or some random big-name Magic celebrity showing up - something like that) I will be sure to post an update on it.

I want to thank everyone who has made this journey with me, both by attending events and reading about it. Without the former, neither store could have made it to Core Level, and been able to run FNMs, Prereleases and Game Days, not to mention that I've had a blast meeting new people and playing more Magic than I've been able to play in years. And without the latter, well - this certainly would not have been as easy a trip without the support and well-wishes I have received from readers.

[TO BE CONTINUED, EVENTUALLY...]

The Road to WPN (Part 26)

[This is part 26 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, Part 14, Part 14.5, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24, and Part 25]

October 14, 2011:Tonight's FNM (another Innistrad Sealed Deck event) was, unfortunately, as sparsely attended as last week's was. Only 5 players signed up, so I again joined in so there'd be an even number. Since we were under 8 I had to cancel the actual FNM and run the event as a casual one.

I found out one big strike against us is indeed Dream Wizards. As mentioned before, they are the "big fish" in our local gaming pond. They are at Advanced level in the WPN, allowing them to run two FNMs each week. As of this week, in response to the new Planeswalker Points system (mainly, I believe, although some expressed the opinion that this is perhaps to help market against us - I'm not quite that paranoid yet), they've changed their policy to make one of the two ALWAYS a Standard event, and will let it run extra long if they've got a large enough attendance (they used to run only 3 rounds, regardless of how many people show up). To quote their calendar description:

Weekly FNM Standard Format Tournament: • Best Chance to Rank up Planeswalker Points: 3X Multiplier • Participate in the proper Number of Swiss Rounds: • 9 - 16 players = 4 Rounds • 17 - 32 players = 5 Rounds

I can't really ask whatever store employee is running Beyond Comics to stay any later than they already are with a 3-round FNM (although since Standard doesn't have a deck-building time, I could probably squeeze in a 4th round now that I think about it).

Several people have commented that they would prefer to play a Standard FNM with us than with Dream Wizards, so I have decided that I will start alternating weeks with FNM. Every other week we'll do Standard, and on the "off" weeks we'll do Limited formats, other Constructed formats, Two-Headed Giant, etc. The big test will be October 28, as that's the next Standard FNM we have scheduled. I won't be able to start the new schedule until December, since November's FNMs are already scheduled, and you have to declare the format when you register the event.

October 21, 2011: What a difference a week makes! In all honesty I left Beyond Comics tonight feeling like I had just had the most fun running an event that I have had so far in my (granted, short) WPN career.

The evening started off with presents! I arrived at the store to find several boxes awaiting me. I started cracking them open and found that they represented two things. The first was a promo kit for the Innistrad Game Day on October 29, including a big advertising poster and the promos for the event:

My first Game Day promos :)

The second item (which was in two boxes) was a FNM promotional kit. WotC is really playing up the Innistrad/Halloween synergy and has pulled out all the stops with items to help promote FNM (especially the FNM on the Halloween weekend, next week's Oct 28 event). These included:

Big 3D promotional poster.

Planeswalker M&Ms. How freaking cool is THAT?!?!

 Quotes of the evening came from these M&Ms (I handed them out between Rounds 1 & 2):

• "Should be dark chocolate."
• "Hmmm....Tastes like Liliana...."

Garruk deck boxes.

 These deck boxes are really cool if you can figure out how to assemble them properly!

Liliana shopping bags. My boys will be using some for Trick-or-Treating!

Also included was a gigantic door-cling (like a window-cling, but MUCH larger) with the same Liliana art as the bag above. Yes, they are milking that Liliana art for all that it's worth. I can only hope Steve Argyle (the artist of the piece) gets royalties for every time it gets used!

So, anyway, when the event was ready to start I already felt like a kid in a candy store, excited to get going.

And then tonight's FNM (Innistrad Booster Draft) had 11 people at the start! SO much better than only 5!

There was no need for me to join in (I don't mind Byes if there's over 8 people, as I can play against whoever has a Bye if they're interested so they don't have to sit around bored for the round).

Of the 11 players, 6 had never played at Beyond Comics before. Of those, 4 were new to the DCI entirely, and needed to get cards. Always cool to have new faces.

After the Draft was over, one of the players dropped (he knew he had to leave early, he just wanted to sit in and draft some cards he was looking for), leaving us an even number of players for Round 1. Then after Round 1, someone else had to drop as he needed to get ready for the SCG Open tomorrow in Baltimore (more on that later). This left us with an odd number of players for Round 2. One of the DCI newcomers got the Bye, so I played a variety of my constructed decks against his drafted deck, as well as against a constructed one he had brought along. As he described it, he was here to learn (he had never seen any Innistrad cards before tonight, which gave the Draft an extra degree of difficulty for him, I'm sure!).

Everyone stayed in for Round 3, so I got to play one of regulars who had gotten the Bye. He had a Zombie deck he wanted to playtest, which seemed a good match against my Humans deck. So we had an epic Humans vs. Zombies showdown.

Random extras from the evening:

• A girl in her teens stopped in and asked if she could watch, as she's never seen Magic played and is interested. That was fine with all involved - unfortunately a Draft is not the most exciting thing to watch at the beginning (especially if you don't know what's going on) and she had to leave before Round 1 began. I gave her a copy of the Magic 2012 Rulebook, and hope she may be back in the future.
• One of the oddest "small world" scenes I've seen in a while happened. A guy dropped into the store because one of the women he was with knew Johnny, the guy running the store this evening. While he was there he happened to look into the back room and recognized one of the players. He came back to say hi, and realized he knew a second one of the players. After chatting for a moment, he called the 2 ladies back (as they had met these two players before) and one of the ladies realized that ANOTHER of the players was her cousin! So amazingly random.

Anyway, as I said - I had an absolute blast.

Tomorrow we have a Modern Constructed event scheduled in the afternoon at Novel Places (this months "4th Saturday" event). I'm a little nervous because:

1. It's a relatively untried format (and therefore not as popular as it could be);
2. Star City Games has their Open series in Baltimore this weekend, and many of our regulars will be heading up for that instead of coming to us.

I'm hoping we have enough folks who aren't interested in the big guys' tournament to run a decent event tomorrow, but we shall see...

October 22, 2011:Yeah, that didn't happen :(

Only three players showed up today, so I joined in to make it four. This meant, of course, that I had to cancel the sanctioned event and run a casual one. We played three Rounds, with each of us playing each other player at one point or another.

I don't really have a Modern deck, so I used my Blue/White Humans deck, which is Standard-legal.

To say it sucked would be an understatement.

I managed to win only one game all day with the deck. After losing in Round 1 and 2, I played my Mono et Mono deck against that opponent (as my matches were over much quicker than the other match each time). And even THAT deck just did not get the job done. I am just not cut out for the Modern world, I'm afraid. The decks I faced were just too nasty and fast.

Unless I get a sizable clamoring from my player base, I'm not sure we'll be running Modern again any time soon.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 27]