Ignore this unless you want to know what playing in a giant Magic tournament is like.

It´s done. I played 20 games of magic today, 19 of them sanctioned, and I won 10 and lost 10. Not good enough, but better than I feared. One guy I beat went on to qualify for day two. My overall matches were 4-5
It all started last night. I had purchased an apple, a pepper and tomato (all sleva, though) and some buns as I walked home from registering. I made myself a lunch for the next day, put my sleeves, my dice, my camera, a notebook of fun stuff from Nikki, and pens and pencils in the detachable part of my bag. Then I tried to fall asleep. I did a very poor job of that, including one dream where I was sure I was awake and it was after 9 and I was at my parents´ house. Somehow I couldn´t figure out that it was a dream, even though I knew that I wanted to be at the grand prix in Prague. I think I was frustrated at the quantum probability fields that sent me to WI. Anyways, I was so upset in the dream that I woke myself up, and then spent another hour trying to fall back asleep. It was worse than childhood Christmases.
I finally got up at 7:43 even though the alarm was set for 8. I took a shower, which I hadn´t planned to do, and put the lunch I´d made in my bag and ate jelly-syrupy delicious stuff that my host has in the fridge in a water bottle on buns with fake butter for breakfast.
I walked to the palace. This time there really was a stream of geeks headed in. Noteworthily, There were a countable number of women playing as well... the proportions were probably 60 to 1 or worse, but it was good to see more gender diversity than could be feared. I arrived 10 minutes before 9, as they had warned us to get there before nine. I then wandered around and did nothing, as they didn´t actually start anything until 10.
Everybody was assigned a seat and was given 6 boosters. These we were to record on a deck list, ... well here´s the play by play:
I received 6 boosters (and my promo Chrome Mox). They said we wouldn´t be playing with the boosters we opened. This is a mechanism to prevent cheating, of course. Then I recorded on a checklist they gave me all the m2010 cards that had come in those 6 boosters (liliana vess and
royal assassin!), and I alphabetized and colorcoded them as required.
Then We were instructed to check the list of the person sitting across from us. We did, everything was in order, and we were instructed to pass the cards and list to the person to our right :(. then again. then again. And this one we kept. I counted all the cards in each
color that I wanted to play with. Each color had 11. poop. So I played green and white with 1 foil mountain and 1 fireball.
Here, you may not care, But I´ll get my cards and tell you everything I had. First and foremost, a wolf token, which I loved, and used a lot.
In my deck:
Stampeding Rhino
Windstorm (which I never used)
8 plains
Howl of the night pack
Giant spider
griffin sentinel
blinding mage
master of the wild hunt
foil mountain
2 excommunicate
silvercoat lion
fireball
white knight
llanowar elves
entangling vines
elite vanguard
2 serra angel
elvish visionary
razorfoot griffin
mist leopard
rampant growth
8 forest
craw worm
veteran armorsmith

not in my deck:
lightning bolt
trumpet blast
lava axe
clone
snapping drake
zephyr sprite
magma phoenix
sage owl
canyon minotaur
wind drake
jackal familiar
essence scatter
seismic strike
negate
dragon whelp
divination
air elemental
goblin piker
merfolk looter
raging goblin
ice cage
emerald oryx
solemn offering
spellbook
2 oakenform
wurm´s tooth
2 siege mastodon
tome scour
fabricate
convincing mirage
open the vaults
holy strength
2 lifelink
angel´s mercy
shatter
panic attack
weakness
sign in blood
2 drudge skeletons
vampire aristocrat
wall of bone
warpath ghoul
mind rot
howling banshee
underworld dreams
soul bleed
whispersilk cloak
gorgon flail
Demon´s horn
fog
bountiful harvest
nature´s spiral
bramble creeper
pithing needle


Anyways... So I did what I did, and played my first match against Jan.

I beat jan (even though he went at least 6-2 later). He made some play mistakes, and I capitalized on them.
My day goes like this
win
loss (Lots of play mistakes by me)
win
loss (a few play mistakes by me)
win
loss (some play mistakes by me)
win
loss (Lots of play mistakes by me) won 1 of the games, though
casual game won - played at the special tables
loss (Lots of play mistakes by me)
I suppose I could have dropped when other people did (you couldn´t go on to day two unless you had fewer than 3 losses), but I´m in prague to play magic, dammit, and play magic I did.
At some point I decided that I really wanted to play at the special tables. I got Sony (my second
loss) to play with me at the tables where they hold the feature matches when no one else was using them. Other than that, though, it was really hard to get people to play just for fun. But I did see Raphael Levy, a pro, play in a feature match.
There were 1543 people there, the third largest grand prix ever. I came in 293rd of the people that stayed till the end of the blue portion... out of 350 people or something. not at the bottom, certainly. Yay!
what else... 3 people noticed my untap upkeep draw a card shirt, two of them judges, and the
third an opponent from Romania who took a picture of it for his friend who always mutters the names of the phases when he´s stalling (and bluffing).
Just before my last round, I couldn´t find one of my cards. I went on a wild expedition with a judge, and she replaced the missing card with a plains. No stampeding rhino for me.
I´m proudest that I never broke a rule, that I successfully bluffed in 1 extra point of damage once (attacking with my griffin sentinel into a razorfoot griffin with green mana available), and when I went out I was 5050.
Burnt soybeans taste like burnt popcorn.
That was my grand prix experience.