Prologue.. A friend of mine had a car with an oil leak. It needed a new cylinder head gasket, which is a pretty big job. Even though it needed the work really bad, she continued to drive it until everything went BAD. No offense to her or anything, I probably would've done the same. The water pump froze, cracked, and shredded the timing belt. All the coolant practically leaked out faster than it could be poured in, and with the deficiency of oil, the engine obviously overheated causing two valves to get bent. Having to replace the valves is no joke! It ended up being a two week job costing almost $1000. To be honest I'm not sure if that's supposed to be confidential or not, but it's not like anyone reads my blog anyways... What made matters the worst was that winter is coming to an end and spring is quickly approaching. Mother nature decided to pour a bucket over Fremont for practically the entire two weeks, so we had to lug the dead car into our garage.
Ultimately, the job wasn't THAT bad, but I have to say, it was on my mind constantly. For some reason, the entire week I felt unnecessarily stressed. I don't remember what sort of school work I had going on, but SOMETHING was stressing me out and I couldn't figure out what. I didn't even realize I was stressed at first, but as the week progress, I just kept feeling mad. Like REALLY mad for no particular reason. My mom was stressing over my stress, as I would bang the piano keys over my frustration of sucking at playing. It was childish, but I was just really pissed for some reason, and I needed to knock it off right away.
My dad and I finished the car on friday the 18th. And as soon as we finished, I BOOKED straight for the local card store. Hobbies make for good escape, and that's exactly what I was doing. I drafted that night and did a pretty bad job, but as long as I was playing cards it made me happy. It was my first time drafting MB/SoM/SoM.
The following day, I decided to check a new card store that opened recently in Castro Valley called Ronin Games and Hobbies. But then I decided to draft there for fun on a whim. The place is very customer oriented, so they supply based on what the customers want. Since they're new they don't have very many singles of any card game, but they do supply quite a number of card games: Magic, Yugioh, Pokemon, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, etc. I wanted to draft Pokemon, but the pokemon tournaments aren't run by the store, so it's really unstable. So I drafted Magic instead. Since Mirrodin Besieged released just recently, all the customers wanted to draft triple MB, without Scars of Mirrodin. I thought it would be pretty fun, but it didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to..
Here I typed this to a friend on facebook:
On a random sidenote
I drafted yesterday at Ronin Games and Hobbies in Castro Valley (not too far from foothill/mission blvd). They JUST reopened recently. Their old store used be called Epic I think (but I could be totally wrong). Since the place just opened, they don't have enough supply to do pack per match or anything, but they're very customer oriented. They draft with whatever packs the customers want to draft with, which are mostly high school kids. So lately all they've been doing is Besieged Besieged Besieged. Sounded interesting to me so I gave it a shot. Half of the people there didn't know how to REALLY draft if you know what I mean. So you got kids taking Shriekhorns and going nuts over Spine of Ish Sah's and whatnot.. We drafted in like a 10 or 12 man pod too..
Anyways, my first pack had the blue Zenith, but I dunno.. I dunno how good it is, so I took Spread the Sickness instead and forced infect. I ended up with 2 Rot Wolfs, 2 spread the Sickness, 2 Flesh-eater Imps, 2 Lead the Stampede, 2 Copper Carapaces, 2 Blightwidows, 2 Scourge Servants, Viridian Corrupter, Go for the Throat, and I was PASSED Phyrexian Hydra AND Inkmoth Nexus... I seriously thought my deck was nuts.
The problem was that Rot Wolf was my cheapest guy. Unless I got turn 1 inkmoth nexus, my deck was super slow. I got my ass handed to me (0-2) by my first opponent who went boros battlecry. It bothered me because he had a bunch of those white 1/1 metalcraft guys and barely any artifacts, and played masters call at sorcery speed, and still outran me. But then again I was slightly mana screwed in both games, but only slightly (game 1 I kept hand full of swamps and mostly green cards, game two I had 1 forest and a bunch of a double green cards the entire game). But then for the rest of the night I proceeded to 2-0 everyone else I played and ended up going 3-1. Third place netted me 2 zendikar boosters (because they had a lot of excess zendikar boosters I assume, but I aint complaining. I could go for another fetchland anyday). Unfortunately they had poop rares haha. At least I have another beastmaster ascension for Ernest now!
And soooo I learned that infect can still be good in MB/MB/MB, but without plague stinger and blight mamba and whatnot, its a LOT slower, and battlecry outruns it pretty hard. But then again I'm not sure what we would be drafting tomorrow, so its up to you guys.
Oh yeah, Ronin Games is pretty big on L5R, and they're really big on Pokemon. They actually have pokemon drafts there can you believe that? It's just like magic drafting too.
Oh yeah, yugioh made a draft format recently too. It's the weirdest thing, you make a 20 card deck..
Anyways, on another random sidenote:So the drafters at Ronin Games weren't as good as the people I'm used to drafting with, but Mirrodin Besieged is unbalanced without the other two SoM packs. And based off that message you can tell I drafted the following day at Superstars in San Jose too. The above message pretty much sums it up. Basically, since I was expecting like $500 from the job we did on the car, I decided to go out and blow some cash that weekend. I preordered a box of the new Mirrodin Besieged set, so that's where the bulk of my money went, but when I stopped by at Super Stars on Sunday, I suddenly decided to draft for no reason. 3 days in a row I drafted. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of money spent as well. I was out all weekend playing cards...
I whimsically did another draft at Superstars today (sunday), since I had to go there to pick up my $90 Besieged box. They were having vintage for mox and type 2 for a box with $10 drafts inbetween, and I just HAPPENED to be the 8th person to sign up when I walked through the door. The reason I really wanted to do it was because I saw 3 kids sign up for the drafts. Like.. LITERALLY kids. Maybe 7 or 8 years old? One looked to be 12-ish. I know that's kinda shady of me to think I can enter a draft with noobs- ..errr kids.. But it was just for fun, right? I didn't sit next to them anyways. It was MB/SoM/Som, pack per match win, and 3 rounds, so the prize payout was a little better than at Ronin Games.
In the first pack, I was taking mostly red cards (2 burn the impures and slagstorm SWEET), and some green cards (hoping to get some dinosaurs in SoM). I noticed I was passing some pretty good white cards (creatures AND removal), so I figured, "Okay I'll force my left to go white, and cut all the red so pack two looks nice" Unfortunately white kept wheeling! So I grabbed 2 Master Calls in 13 and 14th pick... Then for the rest of the draft I was being passed hella white... Just comes to show how horrible I am with signals... I actually read online somewhere that white is actually under-drafted in Besieged, so you can take advantage of that. I also read somewhere that Ichorwell Spring is like 2nd pick worthy... But anyways, the dude next to me passed Mimic Vat in pack 2 and I was like WTF??? I was also passed 2 Galvanic Blasts and 2 Arrests, it was crazy..
In the first round I played against one of the kids. It was hilarious. This was the 12 year old kid. He seemed kind of retarded. Not mentally retarded, but like "slow". The way he handled his cards and placed them on the table. And he would read to me super slowly exactly what every single card did. "Okaaay uhh... I tap ooone. Inkmoth Nexus becomes a-a-a 1/1 B-blinkmoth arrrtifact creature with...... flying unti-"
"OKAY I'm at one poison counter, my turn???" I butted in. I didn't want to be a jerk, but I could see the dude sitting next to me cracking up.
Turns out he drafted every single rare he saw. Inkmoth was his only infect card. Carnifax demon never hit the board. He, for some reason, decided to Prototype Portal his Venser's Journal, and managed to get Painful Quandary out in both games. But hey whatever floats his boat, right? I stayed as polite as I could. One of the other kids was playing a 60 card mono red deck (and artifacts). He took every single red and artifact card he saw apparently, whether it was good or not, and played it. And he beat the 3rd kid, so I have no idea what his deck looked like.
What was even crazier was that the kids ruined the draft. It was bothersome for everyone else but I didn't really care. In pack 3 I was handed a pack of 6 cards, then another pack of 6 cards, and I was like "what...?". Then a few picks later, I was handed a pack of 1 card and then 3 cards. At that point I was like "UUUUHHHH....... Guys......" Hahaha.
I don't think you're gonna care much about this (and I could be wrong of course), but it might affect what combination of packs we draft with tomorrow:
I noticed that besieged has significantly less artifacts than scars. So if its MB/MB/MB, you're probably not gonna get metalcraft, but it's easy to get Battlecry, and infect is slower. If its MB/MB/SoM, then its still hard to get metalcraft and battlecry is a tiny bit harder, but infect gets a little better. But when it's MB/SoM/SoM, it's a LOT easier to get metalcraft (and harder to get battlecry of course), and infect is definitely faster.
Anyways, on Monday, it was President's day, so my friend invited me to come out drafting with him and his friends using his own booster packs he had saved up from winning other drafts. We were going to meet up at Tapioca Express and draft there, maybe have a drink or something, then go to Madfish next door for some Happy Hour sushi goodness. That would have totally made my day! Unfortunately all of his friends had things to do, or work. So my chance of drafting 4 days in a row went splat shortly after waking up, but as the day progressed I could feel a sort of weight coming back. Something pressing down on me gradually heavier and heavier. That's when it hit me. The stress was coming back. After spending my entire weekend playing cards, all of my responsibilities and obligations had been left unchecked. Homework, upcoming tests, chores, etc; all the basic stuff. Now it might not sound like much, but after doing something you enjoy for an entire weekend, being plunged back into reality the following day leaves a bit of a shameful feeling..
Although I have to say, that week wasn't as stressful as the week before. Honestly I don't know why I stress in the first place, the school work isn't all that bad at all. I just need to learn to man-up. Seems like all my inner self wants is fun, but isn't most other people like that too? I guess I'm just not very good at controlling it.
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