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Day 3 - Day of the Victorians

As mentioned in the previous article, my thirst has been sated by something else other then victory the night before the Nationals. I woke up when the alarm sounded at 7:30am and I moan "Damn, how can it be 7:30 already?" Still feeling drunk, I rolled in bed for a while but was forced to wake up because we had to clean out our stuff before we check out. To our surprise, Matt was missing from the room so we had to pack his stuff up for him as well as our own. As a result, we ended up being in a hurry and I barely had time to brush my teeth. [Ed - did Matt turn up in the end?]

My situation didn't improve as we got to the convention centre, as even Sam, a 15 year old noticed that I was still drunk. Just when I was feeling absolutely miserable and thought that nothing worse could possibly happen...

Dan Gow: "Minga, you got a feature match"

Me: "(A 4 letter word that starts with F)"

Though I wanted a feature match, I did NOT want one under my current condition. You can see the match coverage on Sideboard (whenever they decide to post it), which is a good thing since I don't really remember what happened. All I recall is that Andrew ripped opened his jacket in a very superman style half way through the game, revealing a Death Dealer t-shirt. He also had little Richard Johnson tokens to beat me up with.

I thought I was suffering from hallucinations for a second.

After loosing my first, second, third AND forth rounds plus making at least 20 mistakes in between, I finally realised that not only was I in no condition to play but that my deck was utter crap. So to stop my constructed points from bleeding out, I dropped and went to watch the team sealed matches instead. One thing did pick my spirits up from all that loosing and that was when Ben Seck decided to rip up his hideous purple hat after getting mana screwed in a match against Dan Turner. If anyone has a photo of that moment, please email it to me so I can share it with the world on MtG Paradise, for it was truly a Kodak moment.

Since my room mate Scott Hunstad was slaughtered at the Nationals the day before, him, Sab and Adam Kemp went in to the team sealed event under the name of "YankOzzieFrog" hoping to at least get something out of the trip to Canberra. I remember Scott and Sab talking about how they wanted a 3rd teammate who was willing to go to Boston for the PT if they won during dinner the night before. I said nothing at the time, as I secretly thought that they were planning ahead a bit too much since they had not actually won yet. Maybe it is because fate has decided to spite me on that day but they DID end up winning that PTQ so it was fortunate that they managed to find Adam as their third who is willing to go to Boston with them. Bravo boys, it goes to show that article writers aren't always right.

After bumming around for god knows how long, Dan Gow came over and asked if I would like to do Sideboard coverage for the top 8. I practically jumped at the chance and did the match coverage between Andrew Grain and Dante Rosati, which you can see on Sideboard. Doing a match coverage actually required a lot more work then I thought. Not only do you have to watch for everything that goes on but you also have to write down all the cards that they draw, play interaction and witty remarks while the players play in a normal speed. At the beginning, I wrote down play by play from the players but soon couldn't keep up so I just wrote what was important. Fact or Fiction was probably my most hated card while doing the match coverage because whenever it resolves, I had to write down all the card names, the split and the choice the player made in a matter of seconds. If I missed anything, I couldn't really well ask, "Ah, can you repeat that please?". On the bright side, at least I did not have to do the Psychatog mirror match that Ryan Dare had to do, I think I probably would have fallen asleep due to the boredom.

Having read a large number of boring match coverage, I was determined to write something groundbreaking for the readers on my coverage. However, what I did not know is that there is a time constrain that you have to finish your coverage by. Although our National was not a live coverage, and did not get posted for weeks after the tournament, we had to split a computer between the 4 of us, so I could not justify hogging it all to myself. In the end, I spent around 40 minutes doing the whole thing and it was really nothing worth writing home about. Hopefully I would write something better next time.

I waited around for a while after the coverage for Scott and his team to receive their prize. The top 8 ceremony was done in between and Justin West got a deserving round of applause for winning the Australian Nationals 2002. Good luck team! Best of luck in doing well in the worlds with the home ground advantage. I will definitely be cheering in the background somewhere when you guys are playing.

So with everything finished we decided to head home at around 10:30pm but decided to eat before we left. After getting lost for a bit before finding the right direction (I think we headed to Melbourne at one stage) we got back to Sydney at 2:00am and I had to catch a cab and got home at 3:00am. Thanks to my clubbing experience, I know that if I sleep now it would be likely that I will not be able to wake up for the exam at 10am tomorrow so I just swallowed some coffee beans and stayed up studying. I got to the university and did the damn exam, which turned out to be piss easy but I nearly pass out when I finished due to the relief.

Hopefully, going to the Nationals next year will be less traumatising.

Major props to

Dan Gow for giving me the opportunity to write for Sideboard.

Scott Hunstad for driving me down to Canberra and organising the accommodation

And

Everyone at the Nationals who understands that having civilised conversations with Magic players from other states is probably one of the best parts of the tournament. People who only hang with their little in groups are really missing out if you ask me.

See you at the Worlds

Minga Wong

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