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friday july 5th
ugh...nine o clock isnt' five o clock but it's still too early!! cedar point really wore me out. but, i wanted to get up and going to origins. pkmnx had wanted to play in a tournament starting at 11, but i suggested the pokemon arena might be more enjoyable and give us all the opportunity to play and hang out and just enjoy each other's company. and i wouldn't have to be quite so awake. so that is what we decided to do. vash and i got to the convention hall at around 10:30 and got in line to register. i'll tell you what, the origins program or guide or whatever is like the size of my town's phone book. i looked through it but i couldn't find where the arena was. after we got our badges, we wandered into the exhibit hall. holey smokes was there a lot of stuff in there. we walked around there a bit, then decided information was best obtained at the information booth.
so we went and asked the cat-ear-wearing attendant where we would find the ccg section, and she replied 'oh, stuff is all over' and gestured around (well, words to that effect). i was digging around looking for sensei's phone number when wonderland spotted me, said sensei was looking for me and took us back to the arena. thanks wonderland! it was great to see the mt's and sensei, and vash and i signed up for arena. we got nice laminated si mews to wear around our necks. mtm said he tried for shining charizards but it didnt work out. awww.....
anyways pkmnx and ang were there waiting for us, so we headed over to the table they had spread out on. after just catching up and stuff we settled down to play. i played my reworked rat zapper against pk's dark gengar. wow was that deck good, he creamed me. vash and ang decided to go look for phat and they soon returned with her. saber and warlord and peeptoad were there as well so we were a fairly large group by then. i worked on my dark gengar deck and played saber. he had a beedrill sandslash deck that ran really well. my poor dark gengar deck! oh well. it was the first time i played it. phat and vash wanted to play but didn't have decks, so i pulled out the two unlimited decks i'd brought -- lucky duck and the unnamed neo hay -- told them to count and see if they each had 60 ( i couldn't remember if they were complete or not) they were so they settled down to play with ang acting as coach. they seemed to be having a really good time. i took some pictures with my izone to start covering my deck box with, went up to bother sensei and the mt's for a while. then we decided to go get some lunch.
we rounded ourselves up and headed for the food court. i have to say the columbus convention center is great as far as food goes....they did have a food court and the prices were NORMAL. no $8 hot dogs. if you were at san diego you know what i mean.... anyways the one thing was it was as far away as possible from the pokemon area of the convention. ah well. walking is good exercise. we had a nice and varied lunch and watched peep toad eat whole dried peppers out of his general tsao's chicken. he claimed in a high strangled voice that they 'weren't spicy!!' but his eyes teared up for some reason..... i also learned that phat likes chicken fingers. at lunch pkmnx declared a wish for some booster draft. i asked what set, he said 'genesis'. sealed play legendary was also commented upon favorably. well, i like to provide what people express a wish for, so i said i'd see what i could come up with. after we ate, we headed back for the ccg hall (stopping on the way to pick up some cookies from subway to take back for the arena staff). we got back, and a few people started new games while i headed off to see what i could do about getting some packs. around this time i ran into joe and charwolf, and remembering that warlord and saber needed a place to stay, i asked if they had room. they said they'd need to talk to ray, but they thought it would be ok. so, that was a weight off my mind.
box of legendary collection located and secured, i brought it back to the table and asked who wanted to do sealed play. phat had disappeared to go check in with her mom, and saber had gone to see if there was still room to do the miniatures painting activities. chris fulop had turned up and offered to participate, but we figured fair was fair and we should play with the group we'd been in when the plan to do a limited event originated. so we waited... phat came back, and i gave warlord my phone to call saber on. he came back and announced that he'd made a lot of money selling cards in the exhibit hall. i showed him the box and asked if he wanted to do sealed play and of course he did. so i opened up the box, and we figured with 8 of us four packs would do. i was happy to see a charizard box topper :D but then we realized peep had disappeared! ack! i mixed up the packs in a pile on the table, and told everyone to grab four. there was this little kid that vash had played earlier that was still hanging around. he asked if he could take some too, and when i said no, we were going to be playing with them he sat down and said he'd play too. so i had to tell him we didn't have room. everyone opened their packs. argh..i had crappy packs! hehe...saber was showing off his reverse holo venusaur and warlord displayed his reverse holo charizard. -_- i had a niiiiice reverse holo pidgey tho!! :D and that reverse holo tentacool.... anyways, grass psy and water -- tentacool and magikarp water -- was all i had so it looked like psy for me. i will say sealed play goes faster cause theres no passing boosters around. everyone sat busily building their decks. peep still hadn't come back...ang said that he had to leave in an hour anyways so he'd just skip playing. he offered to return his packs but i said no of course not, those are for you.
i looked at what i had... grimers.... gastlies..... drowzees.... haunters...... abras.... blaaaah!! all these cards only do about 10 damage!!! hmm..oooh, kadabra does 50! i had 2 of those and a telekinesis mewtwo, so threw in 4 gastlies, 3 haunters, 3 abras, 2 kadabras, the mewtwo, a grimer, and 2 snorlaxes. i didn't get many trainers, but among what i pulled i did have a scoop up and a bill. few more trainers and filled the rest with psy energy. i was sitting there thinking 'man i'm going to get my butt handed to me' but what do you know, i won all three games! i steamrollered poor phat....the kadabra was up and going by turn 3, and she had psy weakness to her nidorans. :( sorry phattio! next i played warlord. he made strangled noises as i benched the mewtwo, and it did plague him. i drew a few prizes, he nearly killed the mewtwo, but i had my scoop up and saved it. back it went on the bench. i had an abra with 3 energy on it, and i sat there hoping for a kadabra. my haunters and gastlies stalled while i built up the mewtwo again, then i sent it back in. he managed to take it out. by now he had a dewgong building up. boy did i need that kadabra. my haunter was barely hanging in there (thank you transparency) and then FINALLY i drew the kadabra. i had one prize left, and kadabra finished off the dewgong. that was a close match. then i played vash. he'd actually been doing really well. he'd won his matches too, first against saber and second against phat...... vash is in the funny position of having more play experience in draft than constructed and his deck had been performing pretty well. i got that mewtwo and kadabra out and going tho and i managed to beat him. pk had to leave soon so we left the rounds at three rather than having half of the people there play four and half play 3.
peep turned up halfway through and was sad to have missed out. i guess we hadn't been clear that we were starting and i felt bad that he missed it. i gave him a pack. all in all it was fun, and i'll definitely do legendaries sealed play again. i think everyone had a good time and they all got four packs worth of cards so there's nothing wrong with that. it counted for arena points too which was nice. we had a good time.
pk had left, ang had left, phat had to go soon....belatedly we began thinking about dinner. ray and joe and charwolf had found us. poor joe wanted to play me but i was tired by then so had to turn him down. ray along with joe and charwolf were willing to let warlord and saber stay in their room, which was really nice of them. phat's mom had turned up, and we decided to run out and eat. no one knew where anything was, so we figured we'd go out and see what turned up. joe and charwolf had started to play, and ray tagged along with us. phat's mom knew of a bar and grill place so we went there. short wait to get in, looooong wait for the food. it was good tho and the conversation was nice. dinner finished, warlord, saber, peep and ray were headed back for more gaming, phat and her mom were headed home. we said goodbye to phat, i gave her all the hugs people had told me to give her and said 'come visit us in new york!' we sure did love that phatgnome.
vash and i told the other guys we'd see them tomorrow, and split up as they headed for the convention center. as we headed off down the sidewalk i called sensei to see what he was up to, couldn't reach him, but then he called me back and said they were at martini's and to stop by there if we wanted. they were already eating, but what the heck. we went in and asked for a lot of water and the dessert menu. sensei, mtm, pat, and dmtm were all seated and i walked over and talked to them a few minutes then went back to our table. we had a really nice waitress who thought it was pretty cool we were ordering half of the dessert menu. (give us a break! they all sounded good!) so we had the chocolate hazelnut bread pudding, the raspberry creme brulee, and the blueberry tazzo. they were all REALLY GOOD. dmtm came over when they were going to order dessert to see what we recommended cause they could see that we ordered most of them. we said 'they're all good!!'
mtm came over a little later to say they were going to go do some team play afterwards at their place and we could come too if we wanted, so we headed that way after we were done eating. we finally found them and sat down to watch. dmtm and pat were teamed up against mtm and sensei. dmtm was playing psy with espeon, and pat was playing crobat. mtm and sensei had fire decks that went together. it's fun to watch them play, and i'm still light on team play skills so it was educational as well. some other people i don't know came in, and this one guy was telling some really funny jokes. the fact that it was past midnight and i'd eaten three desserts might have had something to do with it but boy, we laughed and laughed. this one was really funny --
a duck walks into a grocery store and says to the clerk, 'do you have any grapes?' the clerk says, 'no i don't have any grapes, go away!' a half hour later the duck comes back. 'do you have any grapes?' the clerk says 'no! we don't! get out of here!!' a half hour later the duck comes back. 'do you have any grapes?' the clerk is mad and says, 'look! we don't have any grapes! if you come in here again i'm going to nail your little webbed feet to the floor!' so a half hour later the duck comes back. he asks 'do you have any nails?' the clerk says, 'no' 'do you have any grapes?'
tee hee!! that's a real funny one right there.
aaaanyways we sat through a couple of games, and then it was time to call it a night. we said 'goodbye see you tomorrow!' and everyone went back where they belong. later than we had planned but it was really fun. we ran into peep and warlord and joe and ray and all as we headed home, and said see you tomorrow.
saturday july 6
i woke up really unwillingly. still tired!! anyways time to get on with the day. i'd decided the day before i didnt want to play in the professor event.....i figured it would last too long and i didn't think i'd hold up for the whole thing. plus there was a lot of things i still wanted to check out at the convention. we headed over, went by to see if the mt's needed any of my energy cards, (they'd had an energy card crisis. they needed em for the draft part of the prof event and they'd been offering one random holo for every five mint energy cards. peep dropped off a thousand or so and they gave him a BOX of legendary. ) they didn't so we sat down to wait for people to show up. talked to ray a bit, talked to warlord and various other people i hadn't seen for a while. pokenaut was there and it was nice to talk to him too. vash needed to go get another visitor pass, so we went out to do that. and who was in the line but phat and her mom! that was a nice surprise cause the night before it wasn't likely she'd go again. her mom basically dropped her off with us, which is a nice compliment for us and once vash had his pass we went back to watch the prof event start off. i took some pictures. warlord and saber came by and said dugtrio was there but still in the registration line.....ouch. the prof event was going to start any minute. poor dug didn't make it there in time. when he did he came over and introduced himself (it was nice to meet him after knowing him online for like 2 years) i felt bad that he missed the event, so i pointed out sensei who was up behind the arena table and told dug to go talk to him, and see if they could get him in the event (they'd already started to draft so that was out) as a judge, or help, or something. they seemed happy to have him and so he got to participate at least on a judge level.
i went over to ask sensei and pat if they wanted anything from the food court, since i needed to go get batteries. pat was ok but sensei wanted food. i got the batteries (five bucks for 2 AA BATTERIES!! AND THEY WORKED FOR ABOUT AN HOUR!!!) dropped off sensei's food and took some more pics of the event. then as i was walking over to the bathroom andy light kai spotted me and gave me a hug. he joined our party, and we all went over to the exhibit hall to do some SHOPPING! but before i tell you about the shopping i'll give you a rundown of the prof event.
the prof event had 79 players, and it started off with 3 rounds of booster draft. rather than gym they used rocket and genesis. saber was happy to end the draft portion of the event in first place. then they moved on to 4 rounds of new modified. rankings rose and fell rapidly in that part of the event. after the constructed, the top 8 went on to rochester draft heroes and challenge. the event started at noon and it finished around MIDNIGHT. that was a serious long day. i'll post the top 8 at the end of the rounds later. chris fulop ended up winning.
ok...shopping. we went in and first i wanted to pick up those batarangs. ang wanted one and phat told me he hadn't gotten one so i went to get one for him. then i saw em and decided i wanted one too. so i bought two. then we walked up and down the aisles looking at everything. i had a list of things people wanted me to pick up for them. i managed to locate dragon shields, but no electroflips. i found the shiny red deck sleeves that i like so much, and got 2 packs of those, and i bought some dice. we stopped by the rook display to look at the keen steel storage system. they had an inshow special that sounded really tempting.....as i was counting my money to see if i had enough, vash slyly bought it for me. $35 got you the carrying box, 4 metal deck cases, a good looking baseball hat and a keychain. i put the hat on and walked around advertising rook for the rest of the day. i also bought a game called 'unexploded cow'. purchases made, cash stores depleted, we headed back to the prof event. i showed off my rook case and demonstrated its suitability to be used as a weapon. i checked the standings and sat down to rest for a bit cause i suddenly realized i was really tired.
i checked in again with everyone to see if they wanted food from the food court, since vash and phat and i wanted to go eat. i collected money and orders, we went and ate, and then bought the stuff to take back. i sat and sketched for a bit, and watched vash and phat play the unexploded cow game. it looked really fun. people checked in as they finished their matches and kept us posted on how it was going. they still had a few more rounds of constructed to do at this point. i worked on my sketch a bit more, and we watched this guy go around and take unattended stuff off the tables. don't leave things on tables if you're not there at conventions, folks. we took a picture of him and i went and reported him. later he came by and tried to get saberslash to give him a bunch of stuff out of his convention bag....i went over and murmured in his ear that this was the guy who tried to steal his bag earlier so saber put him off. honestly, i can't believe some people.
time went by, and the last round of constructed ended. saber got knocked out of 17th place by charwolf, who was unhappy at not being 16th cause the prizes were better. aww.....anyways the top 4 had i'd so there wasnt much people could do. since i figured mtm and dmtm could have a bit of a break as the rochester draft got underway, i went over to see if they wanted any food or drink. dmtm was looking pretty beat and couldnt make up his mind so i decided for him and told him what he wanted was a milk shake. mtm asked for apple juice. on my way out to go get the food joe and ray headed off for another event, we shook hands and said see you later. then i trotted back to the f ood court (which felt like it was a mile away, i might add :D ) and it stood to reason that the ice cream place had the longest line. they were out of chocolate, so i substituted a coffee shake. dmtm is from seattle, so it stands to reason that he must like coffee. they didn't have cold apple juice so i went and got in another line for that. juice and shake secured i headed back to the event. on the way i ran into pat and sensei who said they were headed to dinner and to talk to vash and dmtm if they wanted to go. so i brought dmtm his shake, he said coffee was fine, took mtm his apple juice and then went to talk to vash about dinner. peep and warlord wanted to go to the japanese steak house but i'd already told pat and sensei i'd eat with them. i said goodbye to them and wished them luck in the team event the next day. it was great to get to meet them. then i went over and asked mtm if i could help him with anything else but he told me to go eat with dmtm and everyone. so we went to drop our stuff off at dmtm's room and go get some food.
i have to say tho that the mt's work really hard at these events. it's a huge amount of work and stress and attention they have to pay to everything and a lot of times people aren't very well mannered and appreciative of what is going on. yeah, you had to pay to play but THEY aren't getting any of that money. i felt bad for mtm being left to run the draft, but it seemed like daytona gymleader (he was the head judge) was doing a really great job and they certainly had it under control. the prof event was a real test of skill and mtm worked really hard pulling it together.
so, vash and i and dmtm and pat and sensei went to...i totally forgot the name of it.. it was some brewery/ restaurant place. everything looked good on the menu.....pat ordered garlic fries appetizer and dmtm ordered the ahi sashimi. i had sashimi a looooong time ago.....they brought it to the table and we all looked at it. it was very prettily arranged to look like a flower but yeah, i mean, it was still raw fish. without so much as rice and seaweed to back it up. oh well! a little wasabi and a little soy sauce, and it was actually really good. and the pickled ginger was great. i love that stuff.
it was a really nice dinner and nice of those guys to let us hang with them. it was getting late and everyone was tired, so after picking up our stuff from dmtm's room we met up with sensei in the lobby and headed over to see if the draft was done. we met pokedok ( he was in the top 8 and i think finished 4th) and he said it was over. mtm was right behind him so we talked for a bit then let him go get to bed after saying goodbye and see you at worlds. said the same to sensei, walked back to the car, drove back and were really happy to get to sleep.
today was just getting up and packing and driving back to new york. right now we're in jersey, just passing secaucus (those are some memories!!) and about 15 minutes from home. haza!! i'll see you all soon! i'll post this in tonight's update. i'll work on the pictures but i don't know if i'll get those up or not tonight.
to all the people i hung out with at the event, thanks for making it a really nice vacation. i had a great time, vash had a great time, and i hope you all did too. ohio was nice, cedar point was great except for the fainting thing but even then people treated me really well, and i DID ride that millenium force. it was a great four days.
here's looking forward to worlds!
pure
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