Does Nostradamus Want Cake?

I should probably be writing a Halloween-themed blog, right? I mean, it is Halloween after all, and Magic has tons of witches, zombies, skeletons, bats, vampires, zombies, and sweet, sweet broken tricks to play on people. But, really, who wants to see another mono-black deck?

Likewise the white deck with Children of Korlis and Ivory Mask seems lackluster.

Probably because it’s white.

As an aside, my girlfriend’s opera teacher, who was (well, is still I assume) also the husband of her voice teacher and the director of Wittenberg University’s musical theatre (and who kind of looked like Skeletor, and was called thusly), greeted all of his classes with, “Hello, cheeldren.” That’s pretty much what I think of every time I see reference to Children of Korlis, and I’m sure that will be my catchphrase whenever I drop the Children on some unsuspecting Tendrils player.

Is it weird to anyone else that you can now have a handful of Children while playing Magic?

Right, so I’m going to stop talking about this now.

Anyway, we’re like a week and a half away from the Sapphire in Sandusky tournament on November 11:

Mox Sapphire Tournament
$20 entry gets you Unlimited Proxies!
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Registration starts at 12 noon; round one commences at 1 p.m.

The Gamers Lounge
127 E. Market St.
Sandusky, OH 44870
(419) 621-0282

Remember to tell your friends, and if you can, remember to tell me that you’re going as well. I’m hoping we can get the entry fee lowered for sweetness-sake.

For me, anyway, the last Sandusky tournament’s metagame was totally unexpected. Turns out Cleveland decided to bring its Smokestacks west with it, so nearly a third of the field (including myself) was Workshop based.

It was pretty ugly unless you were playing Ichorid, and even then you could have been random killed by Counter-Goblins(!?)

Speaking of ugly…

I was at the library the other day (Tuesday last week, I think) to get a library card, and when I walked in I saw there was a lady behind the counter who I thought was in Halloween makeup. I didn’t really put too much thought into it because Halloween was approaching and maybe the library had a special kids’ program going on early or something. Anyway, I go do the library thing and look at some books and movies and stuff, and I go up to the counter to get my card.

When I get there, though, lo and behold it’s the same woman in the makeup. The makeup that was actually just covering horrible ugliness! She wasn’t dressed up at all because it’s what she looks like everyday!

AAAAAAHHHH!!!

Seriously, you know how they’ll add lines to someone’s face with stage makeup to make them look older? I’m pretty sure this woman had accented her own natural wrinkles with lines to make them look deeper and darker. Then she powdered her whole face to pasty white and used comically dark lipstick in a shape I can only describe as jagged and awkward.

It was quite possibly the worst looking attempt at beauty I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen college girls try to make themselves look good for 9 a.m. classes when they’re still drunk from the night before.

She had a great personality, though.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh, right, the Sandusky metagame.

Right now it’s largely unknown, I would expect some Stax and some Fish at this point, probably more Ichorid than people are used to, not too many Drains but a few vastly different Drain builds including Slaver, Gifts, and maybe Bomberman. Some number of those decks will make up three quarters of the field, and the rest will be decks that are somewhat less than respectable but that are still threatening if the game suddenly takes a turn; last time it was Goblins, Elves, Worse Than Grow, and Mono-Blue.

If you’re interested in seeing the full list of decks and the top-eight, check out this here website here: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=30416.0.

This time, though, we’ll allegedly be getting more players from both the local scene and from far-away lands like Dayton and Canada.

Unfortunately, the only real information one can glean from this is that there will be more players—familiar and unfamiliar with Type 1, good and not good at attacking, large and small, old and young, Midas and Tuffy, those who appreciate dark comedy and those who prefer puns. Probably the only sure thing for this tournament is that food will be consumed at Diana’s immediately following.

Regardless of poopcake.

For those of you who don’t know about the poopcake, the first time we were going to go to Diana’s after playing Magic at the Hero Zone, Dave tried to dissuade us by saying the restaurant had some health code violations a while back because they were trying to serve cake with, you know, feces in it. We said we were okay with that and ate there anyway, though none of us has ever had the cake. Especially not the German chocolate cake.

Whenever I order the coconut cream pie there, though, I think of that scene in Fight Club where Jack and Marla are at the diner towards the end of the movie, and Jack warns the waiter to bring “Clean food, please,” when Marla orders pie.

For those of you who do know about the poopcake, I’ve got three words for you: toilet-paper mitten.

So there’s a tournament coming up, and that’s awesome. I think the decks that show up, though, will be a total crapshoot. By which I mean that some of them will be shooting stars, and some will just be crap.

Really, though, the Sandusky metagame is just too young to predict, especially since it hasn’t yet reached its full potential of drawing players from Cleveland, Columbus, and Michigan.

It’s as exciting a time as you’ll ever see for metagame prediction. There could be almost anything depending on who shows up. If you make a guess at what to play and hit it right, you could do really well with something totally unexpected. If you guess wrong, you could end up going Ornithopter or Phyrexian Walker and spending the rest of the day at the bar across the street.

Plus, right now there’s a wildcard element of sorts as the November 11 tournament is the last weekend before Star City Roanoke and Time Spiral will be, for the most part, an unexplored set. This means that we could see something unlike anything that’s shown up before—maybe using Suspend cards or focusing on Split Second for more than just utility. Maybe someone will dig something out of the bottom of their box and break that in half. (I’m looking into Gamble, myself).

There are a lot of unknowns right now—more than the extra-terrestrial heritage of music professors, the sanity of librarians, or the “secret ingredients” of cake. Good luck in your predictions.

I recommend ICT.