Pax Day 1

by Jon Loucks | posted at 2010-09-04 11:35:00
tagged: MTG, Magic, Magic the Gathering, Jon Loucks, PAX, Penny Arcade Expo, DND

 

PAX has arrived! I was there Friday morning, ready for the doors to open. I would spend most of my day following past Wizards employee Tyler Bielman around, listening to him reminisce about when he was on the original Mirrodin design team. I soon discovered that following an old WOTC guy around has its perks.

 

Puzzles!

 

Standing in line waiting for the doors to open, when what do I see? Why, it’s a green mana symbol!

 

 

Mark Jessup jumped in and began our official tour of the Magic puzzles. You see, there’s a Magic party going on Saturday night, and if you want in you’ve got to solve the puzzles – one for each color in Magic. The colors are hidden all around the hall, but if you can find one they can usually point you to the others.

 

The puzzles are generally word hunts of some kind. (Anybody familiar with last year’s party will know that Mark Gottlieb is probably behind the madness.) Each stop also has a board with some tidbits of storyline involving the assault on Mirrodin (which apparently will climax at the Magic party with some impressive glass sculpture). The puzzles are generally pretty cool and flavorful: green makes you feel up a tree, the red puzzle brands you – but it was the black puzzle that was really impressed me.

 

In the middle of an art gallery sits a Skull surrounded by slightly creepy (or at least creepy in context) black-and-white paintings. These paintings are part of the convention hall – Wizards didn’t bring them. The word puzzle, however, has you hunting through the real painting’s names for some hidden words. Apparently Wizards had something completely different in mind, until they saw the gallery the puzzle would be placed in; props to Wizards for some quick unique puzzling.

 

The next stop was the Wizards of the Coast booth. It was just about what you would expect – people were learning to play Magic, planeswalkers were dueling (in Duels of the Planeswalkers), and schemes were being set in motion. Before I had time to bug anybody about Mirrodin spoilers we were whisked away to a Magic place:

 

The Bus!

 

This wasn’t just any bus – it was the Dungeons and Dragons bus, just a block away from the convention center. Not only were there snacks inside, but the bus was covered in original Dungeons and Dragons artwork. I could see the old-school players around me drooling. It was all to promote a new starter set catering to the old-school players that remember the original red box.

 

 

I don’t know a lot about Dungeons and Dragons myself, but I would recommend taking a look at this product if you are. I can tell that a lot of time and thought were invested into this project by people that care deeply about the property – something I can really respect.

 

From there it was lunch time, and then back to the floor. I didn’t get to scour the hall in its entirety, but a few booths stuck out. Epic Mickey, something I knew nothing about going into PAX, had a cool setup with a lot of projectors and panels. The booth you have to check out, though, is the Tron booth. I feel dirty even calling it a booth – it’s definitely a work of art. I hope I can take some pictures tomorrow that really do the light-bike justice.

 

I also found myself constantly thinking about Plants vs. Zombies, an addictive casual tower-defense from PopCap games, though I never did find their booth. I couldn’t help but see the game everywhere I looked, though: everybody was wearing it! Orange cones (a recognizable zombie accessory from PvZ) were the PAX hat of choice. Somehow PopCap got these things everywhere.

 

The Secret Level!

 

I parted ways with my posse and headed to the secret level – the tabletop hall. This is where Wizards was hosting its events, and their area was overflowing with players. I met up with a few friends playing in the GPT or finishing up the Magic Online Live qualifiers. (Congratulations to Seattle’s own Martin Goldman-Kirst for taking the first of four this weekend down.)

 

I joined my own event – a $10 Minimasters tournament. There are multiple ways to play Minimasters, and it looked like the tournament organizers were trying out a few things, as nobody seemed to know the rules until Tim Shields declared them. For this tournament each player began round one with two M11 booster packs and six of each basic land, though I think players were allowed to use basics from the land station. From there we built 30 card decks (in five minutes!) and battled. Each round win got you another pack to add to your deck, and the deck size was upped to 40 after round 3. But watch out! It’s single elimination, one game matches. First place got a foil set of Rise of the Eldrazi.

 

I took down round one with a UWB build featuring double Assassinate, double Wild Griffin, Mind Control, and Stormtide Leviathan. My opponent played a turn two Jace’s Erasure (eek!) but I managed to win the race as he didn’t play any creatures to stop my assault. (Sure, the Leviathan helped my clock, too.)

 

My new pack gave me a third Wild Griffin and a third Assassinate, as well as a second Infantry Veteran and a second Armored Ascension. I decided to ditch the blue for this round and get aggressive. Armored Ascension easily brought home round two.

 

I changed the colors of my deck once again for round three as I picked up a Shiv’s Embrace and a Lightning Bolt, not to mention a fourth Wild Griffin. Black became red. Now I went full-out aggro, complimented with a Lightning Axe. I liked my chances with two Armored Ascensions and a Shiv’s Embrace – talk about consistency. My opponent was stuck on one color of mana, and that’s all the room I needed to take it down.

 

Again I switched my deck for round four, bringing blue back onto the team thanks to a second Mind Control and a few other solid cards like Scroll Thief and Augury Owl. Unfortunately my Armored Ascension deck ran into the Mystifying Maze and Blinding Mage deck, and that was the end of me. Event Stormtide Leviathan couldn’t bring that one home. Thus, I exited at 3-1. (Sorry Twitter followers, it appears I over-counted my wins, or my memory is shot.)

 

One last thing – perhaps the most important thing in this article. If you’re at PAX you can’t miss out on the best deal in the hall. Go to the tabletop area (often referred to as the hidden level) and find the World of Warcraft TCG zone. In the back corner there’s a wheel. You get one free spin of the wheel, they punch your card. The wheel is full of cards, and when it lands you get the item it points to. I think most of the cards are pretty cool, but there’s one spot you really want to hit – the money spot. If you hit that spot, the man at the booth lets you randomly pick one card out of nine, apparently the nine most expensive cards in the game (including a Spectral Tiger) and it’s yours.

 

It just so happens yours truly hit the money spot and walked about with this $100 bill, Kiting.

 

See you tomorrow PAX!

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