The UK's most predominent pro brings you yet another literary masterpiece. This time it's a tournament report with a difference, in which he recounts all there is to tell about his PTQ last weekend other than the PTQ itself. (Better late than never - got a bit lost!)

There’s no feeling better than sitting down in a dark, slightly funny-smelling room filled with 60 or so like-minded individuals who have literally nothing better to do with their lives and cracking open pack after pack, flicking through the fresh-smelling cards in the hope of maybe, just one time, getting that godly sealed pool of which you have only heard in 3^rd- generation stories passed onto you by a friend of a friend of a friend. Ok, perhaps there are a few better feelings, but they’re really not worth mentioning. It is for this reason that despite being incredibly behind on university work, having next to no available funds, and not being the greatest fan of sitting in a car for 6 hours in 1 day, not to mention already being qualified for PT: San Diego, that I decided it would be a good idea to make my way down to Gravesend for the PTQ last weekend.

Now this isn’t a PTQ report as such, as the actual PTQ experience, in terms of results, was a fairly bad one. I received a pool that I was reasonably happy with, but through a mix slow and uneventful draws (which, considering my deck was about half 2-drops, were fairly disastrous) and a possible mis-evaluation of the pool, I found myself out of contention by the 5^th round, at which point I conceded to my housemate to give him some rating, and decided that it was time to head back home. Meeting up with the GB National Champion was nice and all, and it’s great that Glen did such a good job of cleaning up the mess that his original venue made*, but these aren’t the reasons I’m writing the article.

*For those unaware, Glen was planning to run an all-weekend magicathon, in which drafts would be available throughout the night, along with a games day on Saturday and a PTQ on Sunday. The venue cancelled on him on Sunday, and as a result Glen was left in a right pickle. Despite this, he did a stellar job of booking new venues, getting the news out in as many ways as possible (facebook, email, google news group), and went so far as making sandwiches himself to make up for the fact that the venue had no food available locally.

Anyway, back to the article. The reason I’m writing this is that I felt like writing a story. A story about Halloween. Odd I know, and nothing to do with Magic, so if you were hoping to read about cutting edge strategy I suggest you stop reading now, and go and read the other great articles that have gone up recently. On other sites.

Depending on when you read this, you may be unaware of the relevance of the date of the PTQ. It took place on November the first which, as you will all undoubtedly be aware, is the boxing day of Halloween. The PTQ itself was held in Gravesend which, in terms of name, could not be more appropriate for the location of a tournament on Halloween weekend. The Weather was horrible and we were subjected to torrential rain the entire drive which, upon arrival, weakened to a heavy drizzle and was paired with a thick fog. This, combined with narrow country roads with gloomy, ominous-looking trees arching overhead and the morning sun creeping in through the woods, resulted in possibly the spookiest and most surreal scenery I’ve ever been to. To be honest, I was shocked at the fact that a horde of Zombies did NOT suddenly make their way out of the fog and towards our car.

As I finally gave in to my alarm clock and stopped bashing the snooze button every 5 minutes, I made my way to the living room where the Limfactor had crashed the night before to make lift-giving less of a chore for Adam. He told me that our house makes some very odd noises during the night, which I had warned him about the night before. I didn’t really think anything of this at the time, but upon reflection I realise that this was obviously all part of the horror-film story that our day would become. I simply nodded and turned towards the bathroom, at which point the doorbell rang.

“If this is Adam, he’s in for a long wait. He’s over half an hour early!”

*picking up the receiver* “hello?”

“Taxi.”

At this point I assumed it was Adam deciding to eschew the mundane response of “Hi I’m here to pick you up” in favour of a slightly more light-hearted reply. I therefore thought I’d play along.

“We didn’t order a taxi, sorry”

“96a right?”

That didn’t sound like Adam’s voice.

“yes, this is 96a”

“Henleaze Road?”

DEFINITELY not Adam.

“Yes, Henleaze Road... 100% sure nobody here ordered a taxi though...”

“Ok.”

I’m not really sure what to make of this. A taxi turned up at my house at 6:50am on a Sunday morning and told me my exact address, claiming that somebody had called a taxi. Only 2 people live at the address, and the other was snoring, and had no reason to call a taxi considering he too was to make the trip in Adam’s car to Gravesend. The same canalso be said about Limfactor. Weird.

Just before arrival at the venue, as we drove through the spooky surroundings, we decided to discuss how perfect the setting would be for a horror movie. Somebody quipped that it wasn’t quite perfect as our phones still had signal. If something were to happen to us it would only be horror-movie territory if we reach to our pocket only to find our phone has mysteriously and rather inconveniently lost signal. As we arrived at the venue, we check our phones.

“Bah, no signal. Can I borrow your phone for a sec?”

“Sorry, non here either.”

“Anybody?”

Chorus: “Nope, sorry, all dead”

And that was when the zombies started flooding in. After making an attempt at fighting them back we realised that none of us had opened a blazing torch, and the struggle was all in vain. Turned out they were actually magic players anyway, and our lives were at no point in danger.

As I said, the event itself was fairly uneventful. Other than having to face the horror of losing to a Hedron Crab in one round and to a curve of Oran-Rief Survivalist, Ondu Cleric, Nimana Swellsword, Seascape Aerialist in another, not much happened that contributed to the horror movie theme of the day. We played some topdeck, made fun of Richard through the use of a bag of Haribo Super Mix (though the man himself wasn’t there), and wondered why Joe wasn’t there after calling me the night before and saying he was definitely coming. It was assumed that either he had been turned into an undead or he was still running around the Kent countryside in a frantic search for the venue which was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere. We thought the Halloween-themed events were over, until we had left and Adam checked his voicemail. The message he had received from an unknown number came from what sounded like a very old lady, and went something like:

“Hello.”

*long pause*

“Call me, you know my number.”

*longer pause*

“This is getting beyond a joke.”

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