Well, here I am again. Glad to see that I was missed. No need for you guys to worry. There are no problems. My relationship with Pojo is fine. And no, I'm not getting tired of doing this. I had somewhat of a personal "crisis" happening in my life AND I had some major projects come up and I honestly wouldn't have been able to write a quality article for you to read. But I'm back and now I've got some interesting things for you to read.

Man, so much has happened since I last wrote here. We have a new national champion here in the US. We've got a whole lot of spoilers for Ravnica hitting nearly every day. You'll have to read the Card of the Day reviews to find out more on those though. And obviously, there was the hurricane. I've been involved with helping people manage some of their communication in a business sense. And I've spent time helping with some donations and such. So, obviously, that's kept me busy. I guess it's in my nature. I'm Texan!

Anyway, back to fun news.

I also had some fun at GenCon a few weeks ago. That was definitely fun and interesting. I got to help judge and organize games and tournaments for three and a half days straight. It's always a bit tiring, but it's damn fun. This year I even helped negotiate a deal that got WWE Superstar Rod Van Dam over to one of the tournaments I was running. I took some picture with him and such. Good times were had by all.

And here's proof!

I bet you guys didn't think this would be a pictorial. But I had to show you guys that I'm legit. I'm sure you didn't doubt me, but this just reinforces the issue. And for the record, ignore the dude on the left, he's one of the guys that helps me run events for Raw Deal. And for those of you that don't know, the guy in the middle is Rod Van Dam. He's the whole DAM show. He's Mister Monday Night! He's hardcore! He's....umm...nevermind. I'll put my "wrestling mark" hat away. What can I say. I'm a huge wrestling fan. I even have tickets for a televised event in late September.

There's something else I want to show you from GenCon. There was this guy that was making card buildings and such. By this, I mean, he was making large structures built from MTG cards. They were cracking boosters and giving him the cards to build with. Here are some pictures of his work.

There are some interesting facts about this stuff. The structures were roughly ten feet tall at their highest point. The guy also worked on these fore about 20 hours. That's a long time to build cardboard buildings. The guy's name is Bryan Berg by the way. He's the guy standing next to the ladder in that first photo. He's even built replicas of Cinderella's Castle in Disney World to set a Guinness Record and he's built a replica of the White House. The cool part though, is that he doesn't bend, cut, or otherwise shape any of the cards. He simply builds with the cards as they are. In 2004, Berg earned his Master of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He previously served as design faculty for three years in the Department of Architecture at Iowa State University, where he received his Professional Degree in Architecture in 1997.

They guy is insane. But that's a damn nifty skill. He's appeared on TV, magazines, and special presentations. They guy has mad skills. I'm sure his parents aren't too impressed after spending money on a Harvard education, but you never know where life is going to lead you.

Hrm... what else happened at GenCon...? Oh there was a HUGE card gaming hall. There were literally MTG players in there for 24 hours a day. The crazy part is that the big tournaments didn't draw large numbers. At GenCon there are so many other events going on, that the Legacy Championships and such only drew like 16 players. So, in the future, show up to the large MTG events, because the numbers aren't that big. There was Pro Tour Qualifier and a Grand Prix trial also, if memory serves correct and neither had a large turnout. And what's even crazier is that prize support seems to be guaranteed. So, even with 16 players in one of their events, they still gave away what they promised. Show up. Play MTG at GenCon. Win big prizes.

Here's an idea of the number of players in the CCG room:

You can tell from the picture that there are a ton of other games going on as well. Another thing is that there is a ton of trading going on. Every player seems to be looking for something different. I don't think there was a single card in the game that wasn't able to be found in the room during the course of the weekend. But that's not unreal when you are talking about THAT many players. I mean really...look at the pictures. It's like a sea of gamers that goes on forever. And before anyone makes a comment...believe it or not, there was no gamer funk. And don't ask. If you've ever experienced gamer funk, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about and you'd be relieved to know there was none.

And if you haven't seen the RCA Dome, here's a look.

Oddly, the city of Indianapolis and the NFL seem to think it is a great idea to have a preseason home game for the Indianapolis Colts the same weekend as GenCon. I'm not sure why. It seems to clog traffic a bit. But I guess it does get a few more butts in the seats for a preseason game. Oddly, the RCA Dome is attached to the convention center that hosts GenCon. And by attached, I mean literally right next to each other. Not even a long walkway or hallway. You just walk to some double doors, show your ticket and head up to your seat. It's a beautiful facility though. And if you're a football fan, it's a neat added incentive to the later part of your Saturday evening while you're there.

And don't just think the CCG hall was large. There is an exhibitor hall that holds 270+ vendors and manufacturers. It's humongous. You can waste so much time looking around the place. And needless to say the little bit of time I had was a pure time crunch. I had to speak to so many people about products, demos, writing, etc. For example, imagine stopping at even 20% of the vendors/manufacturers that were present. That's still 54 booths you'd have to stop at. And if you spend at least 5 minutes per booth you're looking at 270 minutes. And that's not taking into account places you get a 10-15 minute game demo, or look through T-shirt options, or wait in line to sell cards to a dealer. That's roughly four hours you could waste in there. That's how massive GenCon is.

 

And that photo doesn't even show one complete aisle in that massive room. It's like DisneyWorld. It's like the game geek equivalent of DisneyWorld at least. And as you can see, there is an endless amount of things to do.

It was a fun trip. It was tiring. It got me remotivated. It wore me out.

But it's behind me and I can't wait to do it again next year.

Until next time,

DeQuan Watson
a.k.a. PowrDragn
at Pojo dot com