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In every person’s life, there is always that special someone, who helps create you. If that person was not there, who knows how it might all have turned out? It might not have been the same, but it most certainly would not have been as wild and fun. For some people, this special person could be a mother,
father, brother, sister, or wife; in my case, this person was my best friend,
Patrick. He was my partner. This is our story.
That was my first experience with him, and I thought he was an arrogant a-hole. I was right all along. Man how we clicked. The Department Manager started making the mistake of scheduling us to work alone together. That error only lasted a few months. We had a huge sword like knife in the back and were sword fighting watermelons and packing the pieces in the garble (a big machine that crushes vegetables into a liquid for disposal). We had food fights with those nasty strawberries. There was even the evening when I got the brainiest idea; throw a grape into the bug zapper. No sooner did that grape leave my hand, the Store Night Manager walks into the room. B-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!... He stopped about half way into the room and said, “Damn that must’a been a big one!” The good ole days. Those days didn’t last too terribly long; I was kicked out! They told me I could go and be a bagger. I didn’t like it, but hey, where do the hot teen girls work? They work as cashiers in a grocery store. Patrick remained working back in produce, and would constantly call me over the loudspeaker, or I would wander back on my own and goof off some more. We were kids. Just good ole boys; didn’t mean any harm.
I told Patrick about the cards I bought, and he insisted that I tell him about the game. Little did I know, Patrick was a Dungeons and Dragons buff. Not only was I hooked on Magic from this point, but they snagged Patrick as well. I happened to catch him driving past work and into Sandy’s the next day. He had spent his entire paycheck on cards, just like I had. I was happy just tossing cards into play on the floor. I didn’t care about strategy. My first and true love has always been football. This was just a diversion for me during the winter off season, or so I thought. Patrick bought a deck checklist, and a Scrye magazine, which just so happened to have an entire run down off all the cards in Revised (3rd Edition) and Fallen Empires. He always had an obsessive focus on certain things that caught his attention. He was one of the first people in our area to see the strength (and numbers I might add) of discard. So while I was happy getting bad Merfolk from Fallen Empires, Patrick began to buy Revised packs like they were going out of style, which is exactly what was happening and we did not know. (In case you were wondering, when you bought a Revised pack, hoping to get a Dual Land, or any other good rare, you got a Lace. Thanks Wizards for making Laces rares. I really appreciated that. It could have been a Royal Assassin, Shivan Dragon, Force of Nature, Regrowth, Mahamoti Djinn, Serra Angel, or even a Dual Land. No, you made the five most common rares ever and spammed the packs with them. I am not bitter.)
I became friends with the card store owner, and ended up organizing some events at the store. I don’t remember when these things got started, but we began to play cards at the store, I think on Wednesdays, and only around six people were showing up to play. I decided to put up a flier, advertising a tournament on a Saturday, and around 12 people came. Patrick and I talked about it, and being the business minded person that Patrick is, he suggested doing more events, hoping to bring more people into our store. This was one of the first times we had claimed the store to be our home store. So I did just that, and it worked great. I ran around two more normal, single elimination tournaments, and attendances for these tournaments were staggering for the time period. We were getting around 16 people per tournament. Soon afterwards, Ice Age was released, and I got the idea to hold a weekly league at the store. The people loved it. I had more fun watching the people have fun and answering questions then I did playing in it. I think that was where I learned to play the game; in the trenches, playing with Snow-Covered Lands and Goblin Ski Patrols. The league was tremendously successful. We had nearly 20 people packing the small store a week. It was going so well, that Alex bought the other half of the store building, knocked out the dividing wall, and made it into a gaming room for us. He probably could have added a heat vent for us, but we were happy to have a table, instead of a glass display case, to play on. These successes lead to our next huge tournament. The tournament ended strangely and we lost some interest. As people came into the store we saw a lot of people, and wondered if we would have enough product, but Alex was ready. He had bought a few extra cases of Ice Age just in case. He made out like a bandit. I looked like the fool though. See, odd numbered people is not a good way to go in a multiple round tournament. So the solution, which was not suggested by me I might add, was for me to not only judge, but to play. It was decided that all the players would buy a starter and two booster packs of Ice Age to start, and at the end of each round, buy one additional booster pack of Ice Age. We went five rounds, then the top eight people went to the playoffs. When you beat someone in the playoffs, you took all of their cards and made a new deck. The winner got all the top eight player’s cards. Everyone knew the rules going in, but no one likes to pay and get nothing. The other problem was that I was a good player and could play with any amount of crap you handed me. Long story short, I rode Seraph and Matron Stromgald to the finals, and finally lost. The consensus was that I had planned this to happen and set the cards somehow. As crazy as that sounds, that is what they thought, and we lost a good portion of our following. After a little while, we were redeemed with landing a huge tournament. A tournament chain was starting up, and looking for a few stores to start making their rounds at. We stepped up to the plate and in they came. We had 32 people show up for the tournament, and it went awesome. This was the origins of the Grand Prix Tour. When it was small, and no one thought it could do well. Look at it now.
Since this was the final match, spectators were allowed to watch. While watching, and having been Patrick’s beating victim while he perfected his deck, I thought the first game went fairly predictable. He tore the small man’s hand apart and picked him off like a wounded duck. The second game began the same way, but this time around, the little guy was drawing all kinds of creature removal and kept the specters and sorcerers at bay. Somehow, he also was able to keep a single card in his hand during all of this time, and of course, there were no Hymns to be found for Patrick. That’s when Patrick thought he had the game in hand. No spells were resolving, no creatures being drawn, and land drops one after another as the little opponent kept his head in his hand, and a single card in the other. A quick glance at Patrick’s hand revealed a fist full of black creature kill cards, which was perfect against an aggro deck right? Well, Terror does not kill a Channel (GG, pay X life; add X colorless mana to your mana pool), nor does it kill a follow up Disintegrate.
Patrick was stunned. He sat there for around three minutes just looking at the man, who was about 1/3 his size, and was now vigorously shuffling his deck with his face down. They finished shuffling up and offered up cuts to each other and Patrick began. I noticed from a quick glance, he was not going to have a nice game, but the last one went long, so he would have time to recover. His opening hand was all blue cards with only swamps. The small man went second; Forest, Tinder Wall, go. Next turn for him was as follows; Forest, sacrifice the Tinder Wall for RR, Channel, pay 19 life, Disintegrate you for 20, offer a handshake. Again, Patrick seethed at the small man and refused his handshake. I felt that something need to be said to break the sudden tension, so I asked him, “Why don’t you use Fireball instead? You can split it up and kill creatures too.”
Patrick was scheduled to work many hours at Reni’s. I, on the other hand was steadily being decreased in hours at. So I made up for it by spending my few dollars and many hours at the card store. I organized a few more tournaments, and for the most part, it ended up being like today’s Friday Night Magic, only on Saturday afternoons. Patrick and I quickly became the best players in our store, and also the most feared. He always got a kick out of it when people would get paired up with him and say something like, “Oh crap, not you.” I didn’t like it though. I felt it was a show of respect, but I preferred to just have a friendly game. Another difference in us was the level of intensity of our competitiveness. I would not mind having fun and going 3-2 in swiss, while Patrick needed to be 4-1 or better to be having fun. However, he also had a back-up plan for enjoyment in the game. See, I never have made very good decks, I just played the ones presented to me lights out. Patrick was a masterful deck maker, but an average player. So typically, Patrick would either make my deck, or re-construct my idea and give it nastiness and fangs. He would then treat my victory as his. That’s how our relationship worked. To be continued… You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here. Most Popular
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I
met him when I was 16. I had just gotten my first job at Reni Rego’s (a grocery
store) as a produce clerk. I arrived a few minutes early for my first day of
work, only because I lived across the street, and even before I had a chance to
see the entire department, here came Patrick. “Is this the new guy?” Next thing
I know, he is having me straiten the veggies, bringing out bananas and picking
through the strawberries (if you never worked in produce before, you have no
idea how nasty strawberries truly are).
During
that time, a kid in my woodshop class at school came to class with a handful of
life changing material. That’s right; he had two decks of magic cards. I was
mesmerized. I just had to get some. He told me where he had gotten them, and one
night I went up to the store and bought the guy’s last three packs. He told me
to stop back in after a couple days, because the card makers just released a new
set of cards. So I ignored him like any 16 year old does and went home with my
unopened packs of The Dark. (In case you were wondering $0.99 a pack and got
nothing but a freaking Sorrow’s Path for my troubles. I didn’t even get my
moneys worth in gas, which coincidentally was around $0.85 a gallon then; just
wanted to toss that tid-bit in for you. There ya go.) I got home and was not
satisfied with the three packs and remembered that there was a new set coming
out. So when I talked to my mom about it, she mentioned seeing a card store next
to the bank, which was across the street from my work. Do you see how location
is everything for a card store? I think they had this all strategically planned.
I go in for six hours a day, take that check and turn it into cash at the bank,
then hand that cash to Alex, at Sandy’s Collectables, and get a fist full of
Fallen Empire’s. I felt better about these cards this time.
Patrick
assembled all of the random discarding spells / creatures available and put them
into a deck. It was ruthless. All I wanted to do was play my Merfolk! No, he
wanted to discard. So when I refused to play him anymore (like all of you would
have done as a 16 year old and you know it), he made a fun deck just for me. So
freaking fun. His idea of fun is to torture someone. It was full of
Dopplegangers, Clones, Royal Assassin, and other blue and black nasties. He
somehow got an Illusionary Mask and a Demonic Tutor and made the deck work. “I
can’t tell you why, but I am targeting your creature when I cast this creature
face down (due to the Mask and the Doppleganger or Clone copying your
creature).” He was so annoying.
This
tournament, you may remember, was the grand showing of my mighty Merfolk /
Goblin deck. Of course, I was a one round wonder player in those days, and did
my best New Orleans Saints impression and lost in the first round (sorry, it was
cheap and easy). That, of course, is not a good story. However, Patrick had a
nice showing in our first big tournament. He was playing a Counter-Discard mess
with Prodigal Sorcerers. Surprisingly, he made the finals with this deck. He was
playing, basically, an early version of what Necro became by concentrating on
crushing your opponent’s hand, and countering any surviving spell that you might
draw, and poking you to death with the Sorcerer (trying to forget that Hypnotic
Specter and Sengir Vampire were his main kill creatures for a better story). So
in his glorious match, he gets paired with a very small man (around 4’-10”, 100
lbs.), who was around 15 years older than us, and was playing a red – green agro
deck. Mind you, in these days, there were respect rules which did not allow for
people to walk around and watch other decks. Win, lose, or draw; when your match
ended, you respectfully left the playing room with your eyes averted as to not
scout your opponent’s decks. What I am saying is that we did not know what was
about to happen to Patrick. 
“Well,”
he said, taking a moment gather his thoughts and his few cards from the table.
“I think you have a good idea, but I like to be a little bit different. I like
the art, and I like this...” He stood up quickly and blew really hard across the
table right into Patrick’s face, trying to scatter the dust remaining of
Patrick’s disintegrated championship aspirations. Finally, Patrick relented and
shook the champions hand.