Party in the Lounge Like It's 1971

Hello everyone! This weekend I was at the HVSC Staff Reunion (me working at Summer Camp is what stopped me from making posts from June - August), and it was awesome to see all my friends again. Almost everyone wound up staying inside the lodge we were at, and there was all kinds of gaming, chilling, eating, and raving going on. And not fake raving. One guy brought a dozen kinds of strobe lights/party lights, a disco ball, and a scratch table that he has hooked up to his computer so instead of scratiching real discs, he mixes MP3s on his computer. It was awesome, but so many people were waiting to get their chance to be the new DJ Sammy that I never got a chance to play that funky music right.

However, I did get many games of Magic, Settlers of Catan, Dominion, and Chess in (Chess at 1:30 am is funny. We were board of playing normal chess to we turned the bored 45 degress and came up with new rules on how pieces move and proceeded to play chess diagonally). Other games going around included a 4-hour epic of Phase 10, Monopoly, Cribbaige (I have no idea how to spell that...), and whatever people could come up with. For those who were feeling more adventurous than playing cards, there were Nerf battles going all day.

I have no idea why my camera put that stupid grey block there.

I also just found out I have no program on my computer to remove it

I arrived as lunch was starting, btu after lunch, Magic simply wasn't firing off yet, so I played some Settlers of Catan (and the dining hall steward had his 2 starting settlements place him with 1 touching nothing but 3 Captain Crunches, while the other was at the 2:1 port. That seems quite appropriate). I then decided to teach some guys how to play some Dominion, and this is what our first game presented us with:



Yeah, of the 10 action cards, 4 costed 4 (Smithy, Feast, Militia, Beaurocrat) and 5 costed 5 (Council Room, Market, Festival, Witch, and Labratory). The mystery card up top was Cellar. In case it isn't obvious to you, I bought Feast every time I had 4 because I could trash it to gain a 5 casting card, almost all of witch were epic. Unfortunatly for me in this game, I got really bad draws all game and couldn't get enough witches to hold off the Curses, and I lost by 4 points.

After some games of Dominion, the Nerf Guys came back and I could play my tentmate from the past 2 years, and probably next year too, named Spaz. Spaz and I are pure opposites. He is a 100% bona-fide Timmy while I am a tried and true Johnny-Spike. Our conversation was something like:

Me: "Hey Spaz want to play a game?"

Spaz: "Only if you don't kill me on 2 turns!"

Me: "Aw, can I just play you with my new Reanimator deck once? Then play with something less insane?"

Spaz: "I hate that deck! I can't beat it!"

Me: "Ok, so you can go first."

Spaz: "Fine, I will play it with my white deck"

*draws hand*

Me: "By the way, you lose"

Spaz: "What the Christ! I haven't even played a land yet! How do I already lose?"

*I proceed to play Misty --> Entomb --> Iona --> Reanimate, cutting off white*

Spaz: "You know what?! You're a dink!"

Quick Aside

{

I read John Medina say once that you can always identify what type of player someone is based on how they label their decks. Timmy calls is his white deck. Johnny calls it the Infinite-X deck (turns, tokens, etc). Spike calls it Boros Bushwacker or Valakut Ramp. He uses that as a way to determine what kind of cards you may want to draw their attention to when you're trading.

}

I believe I played Reanimator a total of 4 times all day, guess how it went down (I seriously can't wait to take it to a big Legacy Event. Oh, hello there GP Providence RI). We had our usual mix of multiplayer games including an Emperor game where one of my wingmen was piloting Pyromancer Ascension, the pre-rotation infinite turn build, and proceeded to go off turn 6. That made my job a lot easier.

I tried to avoid playing too much magic and do other things to enjoy the time with the guys, but from time to time I swung by and saw such crazy things as Vengeful Archon, Kozelik, and Iona all in play under Spaz's control together.

To say the least, I didn't have to wait more than 5 minutes for that game to end. But It's funny to point out how EVERYONE who plays magic who was there had a mono-white deck of some variety, including me (Elspeth deck from the Duel Decks with some crappy cards *cough* Angel of Salvation *cough* removed and with less crappy cards that worked really well with the deck like Conqueror's Pledge tossed in). In case you were wondering, Conqueror's Pledge + Catapult Master (which has one of the funniest flavor texts I have read in a long time) is in fact quite good. I can remember at least once having a 2HG player all mono-white battle, although one guy couldn't draw a second land so it was a 2-on-1 beatdown.

I can honestly say that playing at camp is a complete different kind of fun. Multiplayer is the dominating format, mainly 2HG and Emperor. Politics are abundant (and guess who is always on the losing stick of political arguments?), and craziness isn't a requirement, it just happens. Like when I made my BG Poison deck just to find out Joe, the dining hall steward, had the poison pre-con with him, so we put out the challenge for anyone daring to take on the Phyrexian menace. If for whatever reason I doubted Gigantiform in Poison, I do not anymore. Turn 5, they have 2 poison counters (This was a 3 vs 2, with Joe + I being the 2) and we get to look up at them and say, "yeah... you lose".

[Although here is what actually happened: We attacked, pumped with Giant Growth, and they blocked with Overgrown Battlement bringing them to 9 poison. Then on their turn they played Traitorous instinct on the 8/8 and bashed back as a 10/8. We were already at 1 poison from Ichor Rats, but we thankfully had 2 toughness in creatures to block with. THEN we won. So we did win, but it was a lot more dramatic]

So overall, it was a superfantasic day of friends and plenty of gaming, although at the price of sleep. I slept through almost all of breakfast, just waking up at the seconds call. Besides that, and getting fairly lost on the way back as I went to drive Spaz home (driving down route 3, being completely confident in where we are going, then all of a sudden popping onto the intersection of a highway. We then noticed how we recognized everything around us and realized we had somehow driven in a full circle while being fairly convinced of being correct the whole time), it was epic. I can't wait to go back this summer to the land I love so well.

Speaking of which, I might as well explain the title of this post. At the end of the summer, Spaz made a version of Ganster Paradise called Scouting Paradise, which describes how is slowly going mentally insane and is trying to avoid scutemeisters. Somewhere in there he says the line "and we can party in the lounge like it's 1971" [the year HVSC was opened]. I realize that I haven't explained most of my off the wall titles, so here's an explanation for a change.

And one last thing with changes, I hope you noticed I got my camera working with the computer (next step, photoshop). Here's a picture from 1.5-2 months ago when I was going crazy with control decks:

These are all cards in U/X control decks.

Up left corner: White cards like Day of Judgement + Baneslayer

Center Column: Blue cards that are in all the decks like Jace, Preordain, Mana Leak

Up right-ish corner: Proliferate cards and Lux Cannon for a failed MU Cannon Control deck

Right Column: Lands

Lower left corner: Pyromancer Ascension board into UR Control (since brought back to infi-turn combo)

Lower right corner: Black cards for UB Control

I figured this is such a pretty picture I couldn't withold it =D. But anyways, I am back to the real world now, which includes going to work, so I must grab some Z's before it's too late. Until next time, stay classy!