Editor’s note, this is very image heavy and quite a long read. Probably should have split it up, but here we are. Also, I forgot to get a group photo and a photo of the winner 🙁
Well, it’s been a few weeks since the first Winter Blast occurred, and this post is far later than I’d originally planned, but thanks to Joel, at least we were able to give some insight into the experience before now. I’ll start off with some of my own thoughts and experiences as the organizer and then get into decks and standings.
Leading up to the Saturday, I had a laundry list of things to cross off before go time, and I think that I did a reasonable job of getting most of them taken care of. One big wrench in the operation was going to San Fran for a week for work, one week before the big day, which meant missing the meeting to finish paying for the space, meaning I had to frantically call and hope that I could pay later or send someone else to pay. The venue only takes cash and checks; very not 21st century. I am not good at delegating, unless they are things completely outside of my wheelhouse, or are things I know a specific person will enjoy, such as Chris making the awesome 93/94 Spotify Playlist (and indulging me in some heavy, less accessible stuff I wanted on there). This meant doing loads of things on my own, and the most important one was making certain that I’d secured the prizes ahead of time. Face to Face Toronto had generously offered to donate the prizes, but working out a time for two parents who also work full time and live/work on opposite ends of Toronto to meetup proved very difficult, resulting in this being a Thursday-before-the-event meeting. It all worked out fantastically though as Kelly was amazingly generous and just kept pulling cool cards and adding them to the pile. At one point, he asked me if some card would be a good prize, and I stepped back and said “at this point, Kelly, it’s whatever you are comfortable throwing in” because we’d already fulfilled every card I had on my list.
Saturday morning, we arrived at 10am to get setup, and the venue finally let us in around 10:15. We had to scramble to find enough tables, which was a bit of an issue. I was assured there’d be plenty, but once everything was set up, we had room for 6 more people at a table, and that was it. No big deal though. Friends were there helping get everything ready, and I forgot the prize cards, so I had to drive home in a very dangerously slippery snowfall to grab them, about 30 minutes before go-time. We got started about 40 minutes later than I’d wanted, which ended up crunching the day a lot, and we somehow missed one registrant in the pairings, so I dropped and gave him my spot. Definitely for the best as I don’t see how I could have played and kept things rolling.
After round one, we had all of the community prize pool cards laid out for people to sign, and all of the raffle prizes out and on display. During round 3 we ordered pizza (thanks to Jae for organizing that, Kelly for buying, and players for donating money), which was eaten after round 4, iirc. We also had the Chaos Orb flip contest that was a load of fun. In order to streamline it, we set up 4 stations on a table and had people come up, hand over their money, and start flipping. When they missed, the next person in the queue came up, paid and got started. The prize was a Revised Tropical Island, and the winner was Joel. It took him 3 entries to finally get past the 17 hump, but he got there.
We also had a “guess the card” contest, that I completely failed to take photos of, that involved 16 old school cards placed backwards in dark sleeves w/ small windows cut out of the sleeves to reveal bits of the card. This one had a tie, so I had to think quickly, and decided to have the two finalists write down the artists for all 16 cards, which was very close, but Morgan pulled off the win by a single artist. He took home a Presence of the Master and a signed Anson Maddocks’ art print of Serendib Efreet.
Next up we had the raffle drawing that was super hot. People were very into the donated prizes, with the Chaos Orb mat being a fan favorite.
Round 6, the final round of Swiss, was finally upon us and there were was a single 5-0-0 and several 4-1-0 players vying for the win. A huge upset, which required a Judge ruling (seriously Brendan?!?) resulted in 4-1-0 Brendan defeating the undefeated Joe, but the victory was short lived as Joe had a better record and still came out on top.
And then came the moment everyone was waiting for; the prizes. First up, we had prizes for the spiciest decks, which consisted of an altered Shai Hulud, I mean Elder Land Wurm, that went to Owen for his super rad all Legends deck, and a CE Hurricane that went to Beverly for a creative mono-green Thallid deck that went so wide! We did a sufficient job of making the community pool prizes beyond valuable for those who participated, as well as provided some other wonderful cards. The way I arranged it was starting at the bottom, each player was called to come to the table and choose one signed card and one prize card, which meant that everyone had something pretty cool, and thanks to the generosity of Face to Face, we had more than enough cards for everyone, so even the top placed players got some decent cards, imho.
Decklists in semi-random order
