Tournament #2: My second tournament attempt with High Tide and a lesson to many on store dynamics...

Today was a pretty normal night for me, when it comes to a tournament. When it came to the tournament itself, the only problem came from the fact that the store owner wanted to run the event, so I was fine with showing him how to use the program. The tournament went pretty simply - 9 people, so 4 rounds of swiss to a t4 cut; my only complaint is that that thing lasted just over two hours. Round 1 was a bye, and round 2 I was paired against a friend with Affinity, which I already feel I don't like the matchup, and lose quite simply in two; one game I stalled him all the way to a turn-8 kill on his end, and I never drew anything to help my end. Round 3 was against Salvagers combo, which is another deck I don't like playing against; this one more, though, because this one deck can perfect-shoot a turn-2 kill that I barely stand a chance to combat. I lose in 3, first two games were fast and back-and-forth, the third game I lose to the turn one Therapy of the one FoW in hand (didn't counter it, as it wasn't worth it) and a turn 2 full-kill. Round three I got a scrub match and won out into a 2-2 end result, sneak into the t4 through tiebreakers. The top 4 contains the same 4 people that drove here from campus, so we decide that we should try to get a prize split out of it; first place was supposed to be an UNL Bayou, but none of us had much interest in that, so we ended up splitting free entry into another event and a pack. (...now I'm up to 38...)

Two of the other three people that I was talking with when it came to the split were conscientious of the amount of money that seemed to be getting thrown by the wayside in the differences of value of entry fees and prize support. It ended up being just under an 80% prize return, which was perfectly fine with me, especially given the low turnout. For those of you that think that's pretty bad, also take into account that these were Legacy players. Usually, you get a tournament of 20+ people and play for something bordering the P9 cards. Here, though, we were brought down to the normal structures, which the prize structure fit quite well.

... I really should go off on one of my rants that I have on the backburners...