[ti]private[/ti][S][C/Altair][OFFLINE] CommandFest NYC

It was absolute luck that today was his day off from work, and today also happened to be when one of the few other concessions he allowed himself was being held:

CommandFest.

Good thing he lived in New York city, so he didn’t have to travel too far! Although, he had to find parking for his bike (as he literally commuted there with his phone, wallet, and a backpack full of a mishmash of boxes of cards) and make the rest of the walk on foot.

Consider it doubly lucky that there weren’t that many people out here yet, all things considered! He knew some of his MtG friends were coming later in the day, so he’d made plans—who could he play against today?

(Never mind if all of his current cards were even barely legal, he’d been playing since the OG Kamigawa came out!)

After clearing security, he would let out a low whistle—boy the place was packed, considering that it was still early in the morning; mostly because all the local NY players were still asleep.

As the saying went, ‘early bird gets the worm’ or something, right?

He would walk by, shuffling around his backpack and shoving his ponytail out of the way—never mind if some people were giving him second looks because of his purple hair, but hey.

(The bonus was he looked absolutely nothing like his in-game avatar so he was, for most intents and purposes, mostly anonymous.)

Once he’d found a table that had an occupant but nobody else seated across, he would walk over—never mind if he thought he was having déjà vu when he saw the black-haired young man, “Hey—that spot taken?” before gesturing to the position opposite the other.

Oh, wow. This guy was fucking loaded.

He idly wondered if the other had a Birds of Paradise.

Josh Devlin

Oh, shit—it was a Commander format—did he actually bring that deck along with him?

“Sec, lemme check if I brought it along with me,” he would mutter as he started pawing through his backpack. No, wait, that wasn’t the one he needed—no, hold up, was that—

A few minutes of shuffling later he would pull out a well-worn deck box and cracked it open; had to make sure it was the 99-carder and not the standard one he’d pulled out by mistake!

“Okay, yeah, I got my shit, let’s go,” he hummed—although for a few seconds, the voice of his opponent was seriously throwing him off! What the hell!

He could fucking swear he’d heard this voice’s owner somewhere before…

“Honestly, if I didn’t bring this deck along, my friends are going to kill me, I usually only bring my Standard deck along most days. But I figured, why not give this one a little spin?”

“Evert, by the way,” he would introduce himself while shuffling his deck.

One shuffle later, he would pull his own top seven, make a face—he’d been through worse odds than this shit.

He would then flick down a Port Town, pull out an Island to reveal before pulling it back into his hand—and then for some reason pulled out Preordain.

“Give me a bit,” he would continue as he looked at the next two cards—his poker face not revealing what he’d seen before putting one at the bottom, and the other back on top.

Another card joined his hand after that and he would lightly tap the table—whoops, wait, maybe the other didn’t know that was the gesture for ‘done’—he would then point at his opponent’s direction.

“Your turn.”

(Okay, it was a major pain in the ass getting a lot of copies of the OG Kamigawa land cards but he managed it. Somehow.)

Josh Devlin

“Who, Gandalf the Red?” he would chuckle as the other took a second glance at his Commander.

Truth be told, today was actually the first day he was going to be testing this deck his friends had built for him, so…

“Yeah, he’s a Planeswalker. But see, here’s the thing. I’ve been playing in Standard format for a very long time. It’s only recently I’ve made my foray into the Commander format.”

He had his Merfolk deck with him somewhere in his own backpack, and that deck box was just as faded as his opponent’s own.

“My friends—who are most likely coming by later in the day since they’re not early risers—were the ones who threw this deck together for me. The only concession I had to fight for was that all my single lands had to be the original Kamigawa plains and islands,” he would chuckle.

“Why, what about your Commander?” he would hum as he tried to get a squint over on the other’s Commander.

He would then start on his turn, drawing a card and then keeping calm because—

Down went a Plains, and not too long after that came down Serum Visions, which allowed him to draw another card and then scryed for two.

He chuckled quietly, before slipping one to the bottom, and the other to the top of his deck.

After Serum Visions, he would then drop Skyclave Cleric onto the table; he had two lands now so time to get started.

“Two life to me,” he would confirm, before tapping both his land cards. “Attack,” he would cackle quietly.

“That’s my turn.”

Attacking first was always risky no matter what the circumstances were, especially if you were not the one who had the first turn because there was always a chance of getting your creature knocked out too early…

Josh Devlin

“Let me guess. You have enough disposable income, don’t you?” he would tease, not realizing that the crack he would make was actually true—to an extent.

And that Merfolk deck he was carrying around with him had an… interesting story that accompanied it, and how it had ended up in his possession.

“Alara, Alara…” he would hum, quietly musing on the term before untapping his mana that signified the start of his turn. Drawing one card, he blinked at it for a few moments, before realizing that he was also in a very interesting situation. At least he now had enough mana to drop just in case something came from the opposite side of the field.

“I haven’t read into the recent lore, admittedly. Can you give me a refresher?”

He would then drop an Island onto the table; and now that he had three mana—wait, wait, hold up.

This was only going to work if he had four mana on the field; why did the mana turn have to be so damned slow even in this format?

His turn was done for now, at least, because who knew what the other was brewing.

(Hopefully nothing too suspicious.)

“You know how expensive those Japanese-resdesigned lands are?!” he would groan, resisting the urge to bang his forehead on the table. “They’re not cheap! I wanted them for this deck, but my pals said that they’re still too expensive to have multiple copies of. Which is why I’m stuck with the OG lands… for now. For freaking now.”

He sighed.

“As for how long? Pretty long. Like… I started playing with my dad’s mono green deck. Some of the shit in that deck of his is much older than I am, so there’s that.”

Josh Devlin