My girlfriend, Anne, and I arrived in Montreal on Thursday amidst poorly
planned street layouts and crazy drivers - a scary combination indeed.
Luckily, I brought my "No Cheeze" hat along with me to protect me from
brain
damage. Some would say that it's already too late. ;-) We
stayed at Jimmy
Chen's place in downtown Montreal along with Josh Grace and Andrew Sitte. Jimmy was an excellent host for the week that we stayed there. He just
needs to learn to get used to alcoholic drinks that actually taste like
alcohol. ;-P
On Friday, Jimmy and Josh played in the Open Qualifier for Worlds while I played in the
Dutch sealed deck, generously run by Arco den Boer. It was
great meeting all the participants and putting faces to the names that I've
received so many questions from... over... and over again. Right Charles
J.? ;-P Many of the players appeared older than I expected... much
older. But that's all good. This way I could expand my available
"vocabulary" for
the weekend. ;-)I had a blast with the awesome deck I pulled in the Dutch sealed deck. I had corruption cards and cave-drakes coming out of my ears. The best combination I had made Luc's eye's pop out of his head: late game Elrond and the Elves of Lindon. I know there have been bigger sealed deck combos before but this one had cool and powerful written all over it. I won all my games against Wim, Bill Kenyon, and Luc. Unfortunately, I didn't get to play Simone whom I came in second behind. I had a blast anyways!
The Drinking Game followed that same night. Anne was pretty excited since
she hasn't played MeCCG for over 3 years. I tried to prep her as best I
could on the plane and on Thursday night. I think she just wanted to drink
me under the table, which most anyone can. Her wish didn't come true that
night but Bill Kenyon got his. I paired up with him the first round.
I had definately used up all my pack-luck during the Dutch sealed deck earlier
because I had an awful deck. I was able to keep the game close with Bill
because his deck was pretty bad too. It came down to the last turn when he
moved all his companies to my site thinking of initiating CVCC. A well
timed Lost in Free-Domains took care of that ugliness. I would have
conceded the drink-a-thon right from the start and faced the music. If he
could, I think Bill would have taken another shot just to force me to drink
to try and cancel his CVCC initiation. Not this time Bill. ;-P
4-2 for me
I think.