A true malady has descended upon the Magic community of late, and I, too, have fallen victim to it along with so many others. I remember years ago, before the internet was had many Magic strategy sites, after every major tournament I would anxiously await the inevitable flood of tournament reports that went up all over the newsgroups and on The Dojo, that venerable ancestor of all internet Magic sites. They all told a little part of the great epic tale that is the game of Magic – stories of harrowing victories and crushing defeats, tales of dreams fulfilled and goals left still wanting. Each was a glimpse of the huge interwoven world of the Magic community, with its heroes and its villains. Who could help but to root for Jamie Wakefield, in his doomed quest for Pro Tour greatness while clinging desperately to his love for fat creatures? Every time I’d return home from a Boston PTQ Jamie attended, I’d tear through the newsgroups and Dojo reports, just looking to see if I’d been immortalized in one of his yarns. The one time I ever played Jamie in one of those tournaments, even though I lost, I couldn’t help but smile, knowing the story of our hard fought battle would go down in the annals of Magic history. Today many lament Jamie’s departure from Magic, not only because we was a tremendously friendly person and an asset to the game, but because gone with him seemed to go the art of tournament reports.

I’m sure many of you are wondering what in the world this has to do with the Invitational. Well, I once said – and many times since have repeated – that I’d rather win an Invitational than a Pro Tour. Most people I’ve told this haven’t understood how I could feel this way. I mean, I have to admit, it’s hard to pass up one of those oversized checks, let alone the $30,000 that goes with it. But the money isn’t the reason I play Magic – if I was just looking to fatten my bank account, all that time I spend designing and testing decks would be better spent researching and buying stocks, as a good friend of mine from high school has long argued that I should do instead of slinging cards in my free time. I play Magic because I love the game, and I love the story that surrounds it.

No, I don’t mean that story about Urza and Gerrard and Squee – quite frankly, I know next to nothing about any of those characters, except that Urza gets mighty upset, Squee’s really hard to kill, and Gerrard is really annoying when your opponent has him in draft. What I mean is the story of Magic as more than a game – as a community, as a culture. What I mean is that which is etched upon the collective consciousness of all of us, as Magic players, about just what Magic is all about. What I mean is the fact that a large portion of those of you reading this probably have no idea who Frank Adler, Paul McCabe, or Terry Borer are, but you know without a shred of doubt who Chris Pikula is – he’s the Meddling Mage.

For the trivia buffs out there, as well as those of you who are desperately hanging on to figuring out my point rather than just waiting for me to get to the gory details, Frank Adler, Paul McCabe, and Terry Borer were all Pro Tour Champions – Pro Tours-Atlanta, Dallas, and New York, respectively, and Paul McCabe was even Player of the Year in his time. All of them got their paychecks and moved on, leaving their marks on the history of the game, but hardly causing so much a stir as Mike Long – the Rootwater Thief.

What I’m getting at (at last, I’m sure you’re thinking – but bear with me; I am a philosophy major after all) is that while of course I’d love to have someone hand me a big check and pay for the rest of my tuition, the less practical part of me would rather hear people complaining about how lucky their opponent was to get a Kibler in their sealed deck. I would rather sign cards with pictures of my pretty face instead of some big dragon. That part of me would rather be a part of the story. That is why I was so excited to be given the chance by all of you who voted to me to take part in the Invitational this year in Cape Town, and while you won’t be seeing any cards with my smiling face on them anytime soon, you will get to hear my part of that story.

Pikula and Kibler

I arrived in Cape Town a few days early, flying in with Chris Benafel and Dan Clegg, who both connected in Atlanta so we could all meet up and go together – what pals. We met up with Gary Wise, Kai Budde, Scott Richards, and Scott’s friend James White when we arrived, and spent our first few days enjoying the exchange rate and the bars. Gary wasn’t much of a drinker, and our dour German Juggernaut only drank beer, as per what I imagine is a German law punishable by death, but the rest of us took full advantage of the dollar drinks and found ourselves enjoying all Cape Town had to offer in a somewhat fuzzy mindset.

The pre-tournament activities on the tour and the days before everyone else arrived stick out in my mind far more than the gaming itself. With its relaxed atmosphere, the Invitational is far more conducive to socializing and just having a good time with your fellow gamers, as well as to getting a chance to check out the local flora and fauna – and I don’t just mean the cheetahs we were so picturesquely captured petting. On the night prior to tour day, Jon Finkel, Chris Benafel, and Dan Clegg and myself went out with one of Chris’s mother’s friends, who took us out to dinner and pointed us in the direction of a local nightclub, which, despite a rather embarrassing incident I’m sure one of my fellow invitees will see fit to share with you all (but if they don’t, I certainly don’t intend to), was a good introduction to the South African nightlife.

The tour was, quite simply, amazing. I never really thought I’d see some of the things we got to see on that trip, with perhaps my highlight of the day being the excursion to the cheetah preserve. While I’m not sure having the cheetah visit come after two wine tastings was the best idea, it was nonetheless an amazing experience, and one I’m not likely to soon forget. The boat ride, on the other hand, is an experience I’d like to soon forget, as it seemed like about thirty hours of cold wind, sea sick gamers, and one very drunk (and very annoying) person dangling precipitously over shark-infested waters, while we were all waiting anxiously for sharks to show up and chow down on the chum our drivers tossed overboard, or on Matt Vienneau, whichever happened to come first. Top it all off with a dinner of African cuisine, at which I feasted upon delicious ostrich (yes, ostrich) curry, and it was one great day.

One LONG day, too, and I awoke the next morning for the actual gaming portion of the tournament not nearly well rested enough. If I thought the day before was long, however, I was in for an unpleasant surprise. To play six rounds on the first day of competition took something in the vicinity of twelve thousand hours, approximately eleven thousand of which were spent waiting for the Dutch in some fashion or another. Not only did Tom and Kamiel disappear to construct their 5-color decks in the break between formats and not return for upwards of an hour, but Kamiel managed, single-handedly, to take away three hours of my life I’ll never get back with his “methodical” (some might say “molasses-like”) play in the Duplicate Limited rounds. I could feel myself aging between every one of his upkeeps and end steps.

I built my deck for the Duplicate Limited portion fairly poorly, getting far too excited by the prospect of beating people down with Carnophages and Sarcomancy tokens enchanted with Unholy Strength and Predatory Hunger (the closest thing you can get to cloaked dragons with all one casting cost cards) and dropping the ball by not playing with white cards. The white cards, you see, had the interesting distinction of being “good”, while the rest of the cards were more aptly described as “bad.” This was problematic for those of us who played with the “bad” cards, and led to a less-than-stellar 1-2 record in the format. I managed to squeak one out against Chris Pikula despite my best efforts to the contrary, and then went down in flames to Gary Wise before losing an anticlimactic battle against Dr. Evil (MikeyP). I joked in the New Orleans Masters commentary about Mikey’s penchant for playing three-color decks in Limited and ALWAYS drawing his mana on the first three turns, and this was no exception. While MikeyP played out a plains, an island, and a swamp on consecutive turns, while I found myself a bit mana flooded. By “a bit”, I mean I drew eight of my ten lands in game one, and seven in game two. These lands, of course, were forests and swamps, and as such my cards were not white, but green and black, and lacking the quality of being “good”, they were unable to carry me to victory.

Up next was the 5-Color portion, which was the format I was most excited about leading up to the tournament. I had the distinction of being the only Invitational competitor who actually PLAYS 5-Color on a regular basis, and this, coupled with the fact that my deck is really well set up against pretty much everything in the field, led me to believe that I wouldn’t have a particularly difficult time 3-0’ing the format. Alas, it was not to be, due in large part to the ante rule and the miniscule value assigned to Jeweled Bird. I mangled Jon Finkel, who was playing Randy Buehler’s control deck, completely decimating his side in one game with a single Dwarven Miner and continuing my lifetime undefeated streak against Jonny Magic himself. My match against Kai continued a trend I’m much less happy about – that is, losing to him - which was particularly frustrating given just how good my deck is against his. I lost one game due to mana problems, and lost a dual land in ante, and despite winning the next game, I don’t cut well enough in ante to outweigh the value of my dual land, so he takes the match. The one game he won was only the second time he beat me in 5-Color over the entire course of the trip, so I’m understandably frustrated. My last match of the day is against none other than Dutch speedster Kamiel Cornelissen. He and his cohort in crime are both playing Domain builds with no dual lands and Destructive Flow/Collective Restraint, and before the tournament started I asked them if they had Back to Basics. Tom told me they hadn’t thought of it (!), and that they’d add them. Coincidentally enough, Kamiel beat me with Back to Basics in game one, as I drew nothing but comes-into-play-tapped lands after he plays it on turn three. Game two I killed him with fattie/Geddon, and game 3 I made a pretty big mistake, forgetting that Erhnam can’t give walls forestwalk, and lost because of it, ending the day 2-4 and 1-2 in my “best” format. Exhausted and frustrated, I went to bed.

The next morning my frustration continued, as the draft was delayed as we wait for a few stragglers who decided that sitting down for breakfast was more important than showing up on time for the tournament. I was really unfamiliar with Odyssey as a draft set, so I didn’t have high expectations going into this portion of the tournament. I figured that because there will be so many bombs in the format, I wanted to have the ability to beat my opponents quickly, so I tried to draft a fast and aggressive g-r deck, starting with my first pick Shower of Coals. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out as I’d hoped, as three other players ended up drafting green and I had to scramble to draft creatures just to make sure my deck would have sufficient manpower. I ended up with a fairly solid, but unamazing beatdown deck, and lost a very close match to Fujita before running over Tom van de Logt’s slow green-black deck, closing the format out with a resounding mauling at the hands of Chris Benafel and his u-w deck. 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 – I’m showing remarkably consistent mediocrity so far!

I went into the Standard portion of the tournament with higher hopes, but again failed to perform. I’d spent a good deal of time playtesting my deck against all comers, and had found it to be a very solid choice, but I made a few poor decisions about the sideboard and they cost me. I lost my first round to Scott Richards and his extremely aggressive, burn-heavy g-r deck, largely due to my lack of Jungle Barriers in my sideboard. I then took down Antoine Ruel, playing more of a mid-range r-g deck. This match had one of the more amusing moments of the actual tournament for me, when I Fact or Fiction’d into Beast Attack, Beast Attack, Call of the Herd, Persuasion, Island, and Antoine just sat there staring at the piles and laughing before conceding in disgust. My last match of the day threatened to pull me out of my string of mediocre results, with an extremely good matchup against Scott Johns and his u-b Braids deck, but I managed to continue my streak by drawing TWO action spells in about 12 turns and a pair of Fact or Fictions which revealed a total of one Bird, two Elves, and seven lands. 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 – a picture of consistency.

That night I was not quite so tired, and I didn’t quite go to bed, and neither did Dan Clegg, Chris Benafel, Dave Price, Chris Pikula, Matt Vienneau, Thomas Pannell, Ben Seck, or the lovable Mikey P. It’s likely that we ended the night more invigorated than we began, in fact; Mr. Benafel more than the rest of us. I’m just curious to see what his credit card bill said.

The next day was the Auction of the People and the finals. I’d come to some conclusions about the format, and one of them was that some of the decks really are THAT bad. Because of that, I wanted to bid fairly aggressively early on, because I was certain that once many of the good decks were already gone, people would bid extremely aggressively to be assured that they would get a deck that could win. So when Kai nominated the Homarid deck off the bat, I got into a brief bidding war with Jonny Magic before getting it at 6/14 – a tad lower in life than I might have liked, but perfectly acceptable for a deck with the Accumulated Knowledge engine and Mana Drains. In the first round, I played Dave Price, who got the Imp deck. Neither of our games are particularly close, as in both of them I drew Sol Ring and was able to gain control of the board – it’s very likely that I am the first player to ever say “Mana Drain your Fire Imp – untap, Stroke myself for five.” After that I got Earthcraft/ Recur/Homarid Spawning Bed going and make infinite Camarid tokens. What fun. The next round, my Camarid tokens stared down Olivier Ruel’s Fungus tokens, and I was able to Firestorm away his Elvish Farmers to hold on long enough to go infinite and win. The final round saw me playing against Dan Clegg, who was in contention for the finals. The first game I took a lot of early beats from his Spies and he got me down to three. I tapped out to activate my Spawning Bed, and Dan took a dip in the think tank. This is only a dip by Clegg/Kamiel standards, however, as if any other person was submerged for that long would certainly drown. Clegg starts asking to see a list of card types, and inquires whether Mana Drain is still an interrupt, and all sorts of questions of that sort, so after an agonizingly long wait, I just tell him to show me the Blood Oath, as I have one instant, one creature, one enchantment, and one land in my hand, and I’m pretty certain he’s not about to name artifacts, so we head to game two. Again, the early Spy beats take me down to a low life total, as I’m unable to draw a Viscerid Drone (how often have you read THAT in a high-level tourney report?), and Dan was able to force me to burn off a Mana Drain on a crucial turn, taking the game and the match.

That victory put Dan in the finals, which made it less stinging for me. Sadly, Dan was unable to prevail over Kai, making it two years in a row that a talented Bay Area player has fallen to the unstoppable juggernaut of the time – Ben Rubin last year and Clegg this year. After the finals, I plead with Kai to make his card a creature of some sort, not only to follow in the Invitational tradition but also because it just seems so much cooler to me – I mean, how great is it that you can attack with Pikula, and how funny is it that people choose removal spells for their decks based on the fact that they kill Finkel? I mean, I’ve occasionally had the desire to kill Finkel, but when people expound upon the importance of being able to kill you in their internet strategy articles, you’ve got to start to get a little nervous. I know I would.

So there you have it – my Invitational experience. It had its ups and its downs, but all in all, I was delighted to be a part of it. Lots of unforgettable memories, and even a few I wish I could forget. And hey, I got to eat KFC on a continent not even Pat Chapin has conquered in the name of the Colonel. Thanks to everyone who voted for me who let me be a part of this particular sliver of the Magic story – I owe you one. Thanks to everyone who helped me test and loaned me cards – from people I’ve never met online to Dave Jafari in Atlanta and Cutting Edge Collectables in England. And seeing as I’ve picked up Chris Pikula’s torch as finals color commentator at Pro Tours, perhaps that means I’ll continue his legacy as perennial Invitational competitor – or maybe it means that I’ll just get the “never do well on the Pro Tour again” part of the legacy. I, for one, hope for the former. Thanks again – hope you enjoyed reading this, and, as always, feel free to email me at majesk@aol.com.