Thursday, July 08, 2010

Uber-Geek-ery

I'm a geek. I think that's fairly obvious to anyone who spends enough time with me or reads more than a couple of posts on this blog. I've always loved comic books and I've always loved "Lord of the Rings" and I've always loved the whole fantasy genre of books. Tales of adventure, dragons and other fantastical creatures.

Before there was the Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh card games, there was a game that came out called "Magic: the Gathering". You buy cards and use the cards to put a deck together to play the game with. The cards are collectible and therefore some are valuable. I started playing M:tG when I was around 13 or 14. I bought cards off and on for about 10 years and when I finally sold my collection, I had a pretty good number of cards. I sold out because I never played anymore.

M:tG also has a pretty strong tournament and organized play circuit. A few players have even managed to make a living playing the Magic pro tour. The vast majority of these tournaments, you bring a deck of cards with you. However, when they release a new set of cards, they usually have pre-release tournaments where you buy a certain number of packs when you enter and then build a deck from those cards to play the tournament with. A lot of how you do depends on the cards you open in the packs, but for the most part, it's a level playing field. You don't have to worry about someone having a deck full of really expensive, rare cards that you can't compete with.

This Saturday, there's a store in Crestview hosting a tournament like this. In the 15 years I've been playing this game off and on, it'll be the first tournament I've ever played in. I'm not sure how I'll do, but it's a Swiss style pairings system, so I'll get to play at least four rounds even if I don't make the top 8. It's going to be incredibly geeky and I'll be spending hours in a room full of complete nerds, but it should be a great, great time. I've been trying to convince DeAnne to go and support me, but I don't think she's going to be up for it. She's always known about this side of my personality and she's always tolerated it, but it's always been from a distance. We'll just have to wait and see.

Have a good rest of the week and a good weekend.

--Paul

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