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The day before the event.

I like arriving early at places. It gives you time to adjust to your new surroundings and take in all that is around you before the distractions of others. And, when you are sharing a small villa with the people that I am, quiet time becomes something highly valued.

As it stood I ended up with several hours of it, due to the majority of my villa mates taking a small Lengthy rural detour from Sydney to Canberra via Nowra. It was enough time for me to get on Bill's (the bus drivers) bus which ended up at an entirely new stop in Dickson (conveniently near somewhere to have lunch) due to our conversation about my being from Brisbane and he having family there.

Further I was lucky enough to catch his bus on the way back and reiterate the conversation while meandering back to the Carotel.

I wiled away the afternoon with the company of a Japanese language game show on SBS, a snooze and a much awaited telephone job interview for a job I had applied for in Sydney. Eventually, a distressed sounding telephone call came.

It was my boyfriend. It went something along the lines of:

Him: "Hi, you get in OK?"
Me: "Yeah, I have been here for a few hours now, where are you guys?"
Him: "Um... (Long pause) We took a little detour... and kinda drove off the highway for a couple of hours.. Um.. But we had a nice lunch in rural NSW."
(In the back ground I can hear a blend of giggling and swearing from others in the car)
Him: "We will be there in around a hour and a half."
Me: "Wow, you really must have gone off track.."

I hung up the phone and expected I would see them stumble in some time in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

It wasn't that long after that that I greeted the occupants of my neighbouring villa. Kieren Otton, Jim Bandas and their friend Garth were later joined by Ernie "The Guru" Hurst and Adam "Deck Check" Dunphy. Softshoe Scott Smith joined my villa and Ray, Ting, and others came and went from next doors congregation. The arrival of Otto and Jim also saw the arrival of beer and good times. Rain fell that late afternoon, and it was a pleasure to wile the late afternoon hours away in good company with a beer or four.

Much to my poor estimation and lack of faith my other villa mates, Ryan, Dan and Chris arrived. There was a air of frazzled tension between the three of them, which relaxed into a concession that all three of them where prepared to take some part of the blame for that afternoons Nowra shenanigans. All is easily laughed off with the assistance of beer and pizza during the evening.

Now that everyone had arrived, it was time for the ones playing to prepare for the extended tournament tomorrow.

The morning of the extended tournament the boys, mainly Scott, were running between the two villas in a rush to finish their decks. Those that were running debated with the rest about how badly they were going to go down. In the end, the extended tournament went without major event. I was on my feet for countless hours like the other judges and in the end - red deck wins, well, won! Adam Witton put in a solid performance and seemed genuinely stunned by the end of the day that he actually won the event. It was midnight upon getting back to the villa and all to early when the alarm roused us for the most fun day of the Cancon Calendar. Prerelease Day.

Prereleases are great. A huge turnout of all ages participated in three morning flights, an afternoon flight and Cancon's now famous "Dinner" Prerelease. The judge team had to pull together strongly today in the absence (for most of the day) of our illustrious Cancon TO, David Low, who was off being a new Dad. Running the daytime flights went reasonably well. I think after a few Cancons Merlyn Evans has become rather a pro at it and in the absence, I think we did rather a good job to keep everything running as it did. We were all kept busy with rulings on new cards and interactions and battling off hordes of opportunistic youngsters who, with crazed looks in their eyes, would trample over their best friends to get empty Darksteel boxes.

As prerelease day progresses, your feet can get stuck on autopilot, your eyes may take on a glazed appearance, your nerves may be elevated due to constantly being on guard from the very young players nicking deck boxes and land and chest sighing as you walk around looking at what seemed to be a very good new set wishing you were playing it. There is one thing that can break you from such a state. Dave Low dragging in a flat bed trolley of pizzas and soft drinks. The time for dinner pre release was upon us.

So far it has been a Cancon tradition that the judges for the even get to play in the dinner prerelease and Dave runs it. However, before one must play in the dinner prerelease, one must satisfy the dinner component of the tournament. It's a great social occasion to eat prior to battling it out in the tournament and I can assure anyone wishing to come to Cancon in the future to take part in this to stand as close to the pizzas as possible. They are gone as soon as its laid on the table and once fed the crowd is ready for more competition.

I was pleased with the deck I ended up with. I am a simple magic player. I always have been and am unlikely to graduate much past that level. Notwithstanding my complete and demonstrated inability to retain a decent level of concentration past anything more than three rounds when playing. I am not one for complicated spells and combos, however I have found on average, that my surprisingly simple philosophies when building decks have led to at least a good two thirds more successes than failures in my most recent limited outings.

In short (and from memory) I built blue, green and splashed red with as many flying creatures as would fit the build and splash worthy burn. Being someone who rarely plays three colours, I was unsure of what success I would have with the deck. My first opponent was a lovely fellow who had returned to magic this weekend from a two year exodus he had limited understanding of the new mechanics and the first rounds was essentially spent as a discussion of how it all worked and probably how he should have built his deck after I won quickly 2 - 0. The match put me in good spirits for the rest of the tournament, not just because I won, (psychological advantage of getting off to a winning start) but because it was a fun relaxed match with neither of us being serious competitors and just being there for the fun of it as opposed to the glory of winning.

My match 2 opponent was well-known Canberra and Australian player Anatoli Lightfoot. I have seen Anatoli play on numerous occasions from the judging end of the table and knew that this game was unlikely to be the chatty and relaxed match that the first round was. It was time to take the game seriously. Given the difference in our play styles and the amount we play, I was confident that Anatoli would romp in the match in record time. When I took the first game off him, I had serious concerns that he may have some form of coronary failure, and I the same. However, due to a combination of mana screw and playing against a better deck the next two matches were relatively simple wins for Anatoli. I was 1 and 1 and starting to get a little sleepy.

I woke up abruptly with news of my third round opponent. None other than my villa mate. Soft shoe Scott Smith. It was a feature match for the ages. With so many eyes on us, my goal wasn't to outplay or beat Scott. It was not to make a complete arse of myself by making unbelievably stupid play errors. While I don't intentionally play slow, when I am trying to concentrate I am nothing like the speed of someone who plays competitive magic so frequently, I think both Anatoli and Scott tolerated me in this regard. Being the sort of tournament it was helped that too I thought. It was probably a combination of a lot of things, the simple strategy of flying creatures being underestimated, tiredness, mana screw for Scott, the "playing a woman factor" + "playing a judge factor" + "playing a woman judge factor", but I won both games 2 - 0. And even though Scotty has a reputation for being, well, Scotty. He did lift my hand in victory, and was a decidedly good sport about it all. He even let me take this now famous photo of him with our result slip 2 - 0 to me - to go under a "They would talk about it always" heading at the Sydney games Centre with the framed results slip and all.

Day three at Cancon is another unique and famous tournament. An 8 round type two tournament where the winner of the gruelling swiss, goes to finals and goes on to play Dave Low for his $1000. Since Dave already wrote a brilliant report about this event I will refer all readers to it. It is far funnier and better written than ever I could have done and I will leave it to that report to tell the story of how it nearly all went horribly wrong thanks to a young fellow by the name of Mark Leyba.

I on the other hand did not get much of a chance to watch the fabled final between Dave and Mark. It was my dubious honour of running the fun and outrageous, Italian Legends, Mirrodin and Unglued Sealed event. I had 16 very good humoured players who put up with my frazzled running around with the interpretation book (which unfortunately did not have the pictures) and the ruling that the removal of pants in response to Denim walk could only in fact be done at sorcery speed. I am infinitely thankful to Jason Smith, Miki Salonen (who both played) and Dave Redfern (a fellow judge who bit the bullet and played this year) for helping with the translations of the Italian Legends cards. In the end throughout the odd chicken clucking and player compliments, everyone kept their pants on and had a good, albeit confusing time with not a single one of my match winners electing to take an unglued booster, or a mirrodin booster!

The mandatory pack up ensued and we could all return to the villa. It was a quiet draft following it all, but in the end I did not have the voracity to keep up with my villa mates and took a relatively early bedtime after round one of the villa draft. Some of them had even returned to Sydney that night. The next day it was time to say good bye. Dan tells me that he, Ryan and Chris, accompanied by Tim He made it back to Sydney in record time - he seemed pleased they had avoided rural New South Wales this time. All that was left was for me to return to Queensland and make a concerted effort following my return to leave again and pursue my life in Sydney. It was a great experience to be a member of Dave's judging team this year, but the plane trip back to Brisbane was spent debating whether I might take a different tack next year - and play.

Epilogue:

Samantha Hepworth vs Scott Smith at Thursday night Draft 4th March 2004. Scott won 2 - 0. The score is settled.

• The occupants of both villas. Special thanks to Ryan Dare for all the driving.
• The players of Cancon who continue to make judging a pleasure and keep turning up to keep these great events going and make them the success they are. Special thanks to Dominic, Tarquin, Jens, Chris Williams, Jason Smith, Gabz, Corey, Dave Redfern, Jim "the shonk" Bandas, Jogs, Miki for the translations. Scott Smith for that infamous round and subsequent sportsmanship.
• The rest of the merry band of judging 5. Michael Mason, Mark Brown, Dan Gow and Kerry Sammut also Merlyn Evans and the merrier level 0s who helped during the madness that is the pre release and the type 2.
• Dave Low for asking me to judge.

• To some of the very young, younger players at the prerelease who clearly have what very few manners, respect and decorum they demonstrated, taught to them by a Play Station 2. Honestly, some of their was surprisingly appalling even for children of their age.
• Not being able to arrange a translation list with pictures for the Mirrodin, Italian Legends and Unglued tournament. But then one has to ask oneself - would it have been as fun?

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