{"id":6482,"date":"2018-08-25T18:20:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T18:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deepspawners.com\/?p=6482"},"modified":"2021-08-29T00:12:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-29T00:12:19","slug":"gpla-tale-of-the-deep-spawner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deepspawners.com\/blog\/events\/gpla-tale-of-the-deep-spawner\/","title":{"rendered":"GPLA Tale of the Deep Spawner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the Sopranos pilot episode, Tony explained to Dr Melfi that he missed getting in on something (the mob) at the ground floor, that he \u201ccame in too late for that\u201d, and that he realizes now he came in at the \u201cend\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The Sopranos  - &#039;&#039;What line of work are you in&#039;&#039;\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/X_ZSb2Hwjkw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Remember that for a moment \u2013 we\u2019ll come back to it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Without getting all philosophilosicalacious on you, here in Southern California, our contemporary western culture seems, too many, as if it is being yanked in different directions.\u00a0 Pulled apart at times, what-have-you.\u00a0 Societal friction, economic pressures, political disagreements.\u00a0All that rancid mess.<\/p>\n<p>But for those of us in the Deep Spawners, we get a break from all that\u2026\u201dstuff\u201d.\u00a0 For a while, every so often, we get to \u201dpause\u201d all the sharp shrapnel swirling around us and step aside.\u00a0 Like a Jet Li fight scene, we get to stop action, and move around all the flying bullets and broken glass frozen in air, and go have a seat.\u00a0 Relax a bit. Let our mind wander to different things.\u00a0 Rest our muscles a minute and catch our breath.\u00a0 We get a mental break, before having to dive back into the fight.<\/p>\n<p>Aug 18<sup>th<\/sup>, we had one of our \u201cpauses\u201d at our own GPLA event we hosted at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.barcitola.com\/\">Barcito<\/a>.\u00a0 Approximately 30 Duelists (along with other guests in the wings) went head-to-head, drank, ate from the buffet, all in a terrific atmosphere in the heart of downtown.<\/p>\n<p>I ran an odd Erhamgeddon-ish (GWub) pile because I was jones-ing for a fix of Spirit Link &#8212; Force of Nature action:<\/p>\n<h6><strong><span style=\"color: #333399;\">Magic The Gathering<\/span><\/strong><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Old School Player<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><span style=\"color: #333399;\"><strong>Grand Prix<\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Los Angeles 2018<\/span><\/p>\n<h6><strong><span style=\"color: #333399;\">1993 \/ 1995<\/span><\/strong><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"color: #999999;\">Card Formats<\/span><br \/>\nGWub pile for Deep Spawners GPLA. SB is bottom row.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"color: #50d18e;\"><span style=\"color: #2b2e2c;\">I ended the night in 4th place<\/span><\/h2>\n<h3 style=\"color: #50d18e;\"><span style=\"color: #2b2e2c;\">but, what may be more entertaining or interesting<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3 style=\"color: #50d18e;\"><span style=\"color: #2b2e2c;\">is where I started\u2026<\/span><\/h3>\n<h3>I first tapped mana sometime back in 1994.<\/h3>\n<p>I was a newlywed idiot, and we were living in married housing attending a Louisiana university.\u00a0 I was studying secondary education, thinking I would teach high school Art and English for a living (<em>Ha!<\/em>)<em>.<\/em>\u00a0 One day in Baton Rouge, I took my (now) ex-wife to a book store my friends and I used to frequent when I played DnD and painted miniatures back when I was a kid \u2013 Elliot\u2019s Book Store &#8212; now known as <a href=\"https:\/\/littlewars.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Little Wars<\/a>.\u00a0 While browsing around, there were a group of teens frantically opening packs and \u201cjazzed\u201d about\u00a0 some card game.\u00a0 They even played, standing up, on a little 18\u201d round table, designed for book displays.\u00a0 It was the only space around to play.<\/p>\n<p>I asked the cashier what \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/magic.wizards.com\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Magic the Gathering<\/a> \u201c was and he described it as \u201csome silly card game these guys are addicted to\u201d.\u00a0 Then he showed me the packs he had next to the register and explained he had to limit them to buying 2 packs a day.\u00a0 We then giggled about \u201climiting teens to 2 packs a day\u201d and I ended up buying a Vampire the Masquerade RPG rulebook.\u00a0 Wrong choice, huh?<\/p>\n<h3>A few months later, a classmate insisted I try playing this \u201cmagic\u201d card game,<\/h3>\n<p>Which I did\u2026<em>My grades that fall semester sucked.\u00a0 Bad.\u00a0 Thanks, Richard.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Between then and Aug 18<sup>th<\/sup>, 2018 a whole bunch of malarkey happened.\u00a0 Mainly, we moved to Los Angeles and I sold <strong><em>all<\/em><\/strong> my collection in 1996 to a little comic book store in Whittier named \u201cI\u2019m Comics\u201d\u00a0 (<em>pssssst \u2013 anyone with any information regarding the owner of I\u2019m Comics, please let me know \u2013 I am trying in vain to hunt down my original Lotus, which was pretty distinctive, and the trail ends with him).\u00a0 <\/em>We moved back to Louisiana.\u00a0 Hurricane Katrina.\u00a0 Relocated <em>back<\/em> to Los Angeles.\u00a0 Divorced.\u00a0 Raised 3 kids.<\/p>\n<h3>But over the last 10 years I have slowly rebuilt my MTG collection<\/h3>\n<p><em>Probably a few times over.<\/em>\u00a0 With only one or two people remotely interested in playing those old decks I used to love playing.\u00a0 So, I was forced to play standard and modern crap, just to get games in.\u00a0 The formats were, well\u2026.at times \u201cOK\u201d.\u00a0 But the crowd of punks you always ended up playing against, man those little dudes suck.<\/p>\n<p>And WoTC\u2026.I\u2019ll save those thoughts for later.<\/p>\n<p>But now, my oldest son and I enjoy MTG 93\/94 Old School.\u00a0 By odd circumstances, we ended up connecting with the Deep Spawners, who I had only heard about, but could never connect with.\u00a0 Chris\u2019s handle \u201cElusiv\u201d is pretty spot on \u2013 trying to track these dudes down was like trying to catch Bruce napping in his Batcave.<\/p>\n<h3>As a father, getting to enjoy this hobby with your son is amazing.<\/h3>\n<p>My greatest wish for all of you Old Schoolers is that one day you get to do the same, if not already.\u00a0 Its one of those rare things in life where there just aren\u2019t enough words to describe it.<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward to our event, my lazy red-neck recollection of my matches went as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em><strong>Round 1<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 I faced a Living Plane\/ Tim deck piloted by a hilarious fellow Deep Spawner. Won 2-1 in some fun \u201cswingy\u201d games where we exchanged control and momentum back and forth a few times. Ernie finally brought the meat across for the win.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>Round 2<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 Paired up against another Deep Spawner running R\/U \u201carti-tog\u201d (I don\u2019t know what he calls it).\u00a0 Lost 2-1 in some honestly fun games, keeping a poor hand and ultimately getting hosed never drawing G in one game and getting crushed by a perfectly timed City in a Bottle in another.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>Round 3<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 I won the Father-Son match, getting revenge on my kid for destroying me all week at home in play testing. He was on Mono Black Discard Dreams (finished 3-2 I think), but Whirling Dervish can punish that deck like a Skynet T1000<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>Round 4<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 My first match ever against a Beast of the Bay. The couple of them who came down for our event were terrific and meshed right in as if we had been playing together for a while.\u00a0 Unfortunately for him, he was on a RB Shops deck, which this deck has done well against.\u00a0 I was fortunate enough to get a Serra and spirit linked Force out, then \u2018Gheddon away all lands game one.\u00a0 After Boarding in 4x Energy Flux, my turn one was Land, Lotus, Flux, Go \u2013 which was enough for me take the match 2-0.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>Round 5<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 I was paired with one of the greatest The Deck pilots, and I believe one of it\u2019s developers from \u201cback in the day\u201d \u2013 Jason Murray (who won the GPLV OS event). I had been getting my behind handed to me for the past two days at the GP OS side events by Jason, but had a blast trash talking, getting to know him, and laughing it up with him.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t won a single game against him all weekend \u2013 his deck and his skills are simply that good.\u00a0 And, game 1 was no different.\u00a0 He quickly gained control and \u201cmanaged\u201d my lands to where he could then outdraw me and counter key spells I cast.\u00a0 I boarded in 4x Flux since The Deck has so many key artifacts, but I also shifted gears and brought in 4x Dervishes to attempt to up the aggro.\u00a0 This strategy worked, as I eeked out a win of game 2, on the back of Flux and multiple creatures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Game 3 was rough.<\/h3>\n<p>We went far into both decks, before I was able to get 2x Flux on the board and gain momentum.\u00a0 We finally went to time in the round and at the end of turn 5, I wasn\u2019t able to hit him for the last few points of life he had.<\/p>\n<p>So, we go to Orb flips for the tie-breaker, and after about 9 flips, he finally missed on a corner\/edge bounce, giving me the match, and ending the night 4-1.<\/p>\n<p>Looking around, talking to everyone, watching other matches, I was extremely fortunate.\u00a0 Many of the decks that showed up, being run by some of the smartest, most experienced players around would have smoked me if we matched up against each other.\u00a0 I could have very easily had a 2-3 night instead.<\/p>\n<p>But driving home, my son chatting up a storm about \u00a0all the fun he had, and cards he wants to collect, and decks he would like to try\u2026that was probably the best part of the night.\u00a0 I am very, very fortunate.<\/p>\n<p>I may have missed <strong><em>fully<\/em><\/strong> getting in the game at the ground floor, and the game itself, with all the junk surrounding newer formats, maybe its nearing the \u201cend\u201d as Tony puts it\u2026But not for me.\u00a0 Not now.\u00a0 Not at my house.\u00a0 Sometimes, every so often\u2026.the timing\u2019s right, and life\u2019s good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Sopranos pilot episode, Tony explained to Dr Melfi that he missed getting in on something (the mob) at the ground floor, that he \u201ccame in too late for that\u201d, and that he realizes now he came in at the \u201cend\u201d Remember that for a moment \u2013 we\u2019ll come back to it. Without getting&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>GPLA Tale of the Deep Spawner - Deep Spawners Magic The Gathering Social Club<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/deepspawners.com\/blog\/events\/gpla-tale-of-the-deep-spawner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"GPLA Tale of the Deep Spawner - Deep Spawners Magic The Gathering Social Club\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the Sopranos pilot episode, Tony explained to Dr Melfi that he missed getting in on something (the mob) at the ground floor, that he \u201ccame in too late for that\u201d, and that he realizes now he came in at the \u201cend\u201d Remember that for a moment \u2013 we\u2019ll come back to it. 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