Jace, The Great Pull

So it was Magic Celebration day and I had to go. We made a three and a half hour trip to conquer this event and get free packs of cards. Here’s a link if you didn’t catch wind of it. What happens is: you show up, get a free booster, open it, choose which sample deck color you want to go with, add / swap cards from your booster to make up a deck, have three matches then get another free pack of cards. Well, that was how it was supposed to go. On Saturday we made the trip all the way to Matsue. From the Wizards locator radar that little shop seemed the most inviting of stores near (I say that loosely) us. I had no idea what to expect so what the hey 🙂

Table Game Square Rise <- Wiz Link

We arrived about an hour early and upon entering the shop we greeted with a western saloon welcome, you know, when you push through the pair of batwing doors then the bar abruptly goes silent and everyone looks up and glares at you for a moment, you walk in, then they return to what they were doing. This was just like that. Not the warmest welcome. But you could understand seeing a foreigner and a girl both wearing bright colors walk in to a geek zone can elicit such a reaction.

There were around six people there playing games of MTG with the owner and a few others hovering over. Looking down I saw genuine dual lands on one side of the field. I remembered a Savannah, Scrubland and a Bayou challenging the fellow on the other side with four unsacrificed fetchlands from onslaught and a few shocklands back from the original Ravnica. I didn’t stay long enough to see what their game was about but I deduced that these guys played the game as more than just a hobby.

The shop is very small and run by one man who is a card game lover who runs and manages the store so he can live his life every day surrounded by the people and card games he loves. I find this admirable. As for running the event, he was somewhat lazy but much more easy going and relaxed compared to other stores. By lazy, I meant he didn’t have any idea how to run the event as he was only interested in ‘high stakes’ events. But, he was happy to give every one free boosters and give a choice of a sample pack. The store could handle twenty-four players but being such a small town in a remote part of Japan, only a handful of people showed up. I would say there were about ten people there including the two of us. From what I saw, he had around a hundred of those sample packs. The first thing he did wrong was that he asked which sample pack you wanted then gave you a free booster. It was supposed to be the other way around so you could pick the strongest color according to the booster then choose that color to make a deck from.

Well, I wasn’t upset. Everyone was playing with the same handicap and hey, free cards! So we got our free booster, check list and sample deck. I chose blue.

Then I opened up the booster and low and behold Jace, Anime Adept was in there!!! Not only was he the perfect rare for the color I chose the booster was seemingly biased toward blue. As pictured below, Time Ebb, Frost Breath, Cancel, Phantom Warrior, Millstone and Elixir of Immortality. Of all the cards, the one I wanted to see was Tomb Scour. This was not in the pack but I was not disappointed at all. Quite the opposite.

That is possibly one of the luckiest pulls I have had in my history of Magic.

So here’s the cool thing about the owner. There were so many sample decks that he made up the rule that after every three matches he allowed everyone to get another booster and sample deck. Therefore everyone got three to four boosters and sample decks that night. People were making new decks between matches but I was happy just playing this deck and opening the other boosters later on.

• So my first match I was playing against black and won 2-0 by beating the opponent down both games strangely enough.
• My second match was a 1-2 loss against red first game a turn 2 mill stone creature lock down,  second game being overrun, third taking too much damage to the face.
• Third match against black 2-0 win, beat and a Millstone mill.
• Fourth match against red 2-0 win, two slow games with millstone mills.
• Fifth match against white 2-0 win, locked and countered his creature while mine were giving him beats on the first match. Second game was a looooong drawn out life gain creature locking out eventual mill. Elixir of Immortality really helped me out here giving me the life I needed while the Millstone came late.
• Sixth and final match against black 2-1 win. First match I lost to Sengir Vampire enchanted by two Dark Favor’s. Second match I locked him with Claustrophobia and slow milled him with Millstone. Last game finally Jace came out turn five and milled his ass!

Booyah! Five games out of six.

So back to the shop, I bought some countdown dice from a bucket full of them for ¥50 yen each including one from Graveborn usually ¥500. Singles were inside enclosed boxes. There were mostly bulk rares that he sold for ¥10 each. Silence and Chandra’s Phoenix and a few others were among them.

All and all a great shop to frequent often if you want to hone skills with serious local Legacy players. He stocked English boosters which was a bonus for me.