I just donated to give you Evil Presence. Hope you wear waterproof boots! (And have good insurance)

Excellent! Thank you. I’ll put that one in.

And let’s see… A story…

Since the last one was a Wizards story, this one will be a tale from my time as a player. Appropriately, it’s a time that I was (sort of) an Evil Presence.

Here we go!

Let’s flash back to 2007. GP Dallas was on the horizon for me. The format? Invasion-forward Extended. Planar Chaos was brand new, and the format was wide open.

Some of the many decks you could play at the time were Destructive Flow, Blue-White Urzatron, Domain Zoo, Mind’s Desire, Boros, Psychatog, Goblins, Affinity, and Friggorid. (Which was basically early dredge, before Future Sight came out.) This was riiiiight as Sensei’s Divining Top and Counterbalance was beginning to become a deck, and some very early Magic Online results looked “promising.” (It would later, of course, go on to be a dominant force.)

Our story takes place the week before GP Dallas.

Wizards had recently changed the rules about Pro Points accumulated at Grand Prix, so that only Pro Tours would remove your amateur status for MSS tournaments. (Formerly the Junior Super Series, where you played for scholarship money.)

Up until then, I’d been playing on the junior circuit and hadn’t wanted to risk picking up a Pro Point and losing my eligibility. Playing on a Pro Tour would remove my junior status, but Grand Prix were just fine. (It was a weird system, but that’s how it was nontheless.)

Now that the rule had been removed, I was ready to hit up Grand Prix close to me. Dallas was on the list.

I’d been working on Aggro Loam - a Red-Green-Black deck that used Seismic Assault and Life From the Loam to good results - and had a version I knew how to play inside and out. I felt pretty confident in my deck after playtesting for hours each day and had a unique sideboard plan, but I needed some actual tournament experience with it. Playtest games can only show you so much.

I was in Phoenix at the time, and there was a PTQ coming up, so I diligently traded to build my deck up and then decided to play in the event just as practice for the GO. I even didn’t have the Terravores (Yes, Terravore - it’s awesome with Devastating Dreams!) until moments before the PTQ started, when a friend literally yelled around the room to try and get them for me.

The PTQ began, and after narrowly pulling out round 1, I lost round 2. Hm, perhaps my deck wasn’t as awesome as I thought.

I won a few matches that I was favored in (Devastating Dreams is a pretty unbeatable card for some decks), but I still wasn’t feeling confident about my chances.

And then somebody turned on the improbability matrix.

In round 6 I played against Heartbeat Combo. (piloted by fellow hat-lover Rashad Miller, though I didn’t know who he was at the time) This was not a good matchup for me.

In game one, he handily beat me, as expected.

In game two, I used an awesome little-known card that, to this day, I don’t know anybody else played in this deck called Last Rites to strip his hand.

In game three, I tried hard, but despite my best efforts, he went off. He Mind’s Desired for four and then cast a bunch of free spells, Fact or Fictioned, Mind’s Desired for eight…

And whiffed entirely. He hit all lands and ramp spells. I untapped, ripped exactly the Devastating Dreams to make Terravore lethal, and killed him.

It was statistically improbable. I don’t know what the odds were, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were one in a million. And yet, I won.

In round seven, playing for Top 8, I was paired against Blue-White Urzatron. He showed me he had Spell Snare in his deck on turn 1 of game one by countering a Dark Confidant, and then in both subsequent games I went all-in on Devastating Dreams to take the match. After the match, my opponent was incredulous that I had gone in against him when I would instantly lose if he had a Snare.

Before I could take everything in, I had locked up a Top 8 slot.

In the quarterfinals, I played against a guy with an Red-Green Blood Moon deck and managed to draw my way into basics despite him quickly locking me under a Moon.

In the semifinals I played against Affinity, which I drew both of my Ancient Grudges against after sideboarding.

After all of that, I was in the finals. I was one match away from qualifying for my first Pro Tour.

There was only one problem. Remember what I said earlier? I actually didn’t want to go to the Pro Tour.

If I won the invite and attended the Pro Tour, I’d lose my junior eligibility. I still had two years left, and, at the rate I’d been winning at, that was probably worth at least $3,000 in scholarship money.

The entire event, I knew what my fate was. I sat down and told my opponent that I would take the box and he could take the Pro Tour invite. (Splitting the finals of a PTQ like this is allowed, one player is just marked as dropped.) It was the offer of a lifetime: for a single box, he could go to the Pro Tour.

There was only one problem. One hiccup in my plan. Ten little words that made everybody else around me gasp.

“Oh,” He began. “Well, I’m not going to the Pro Tour either.”

… What?

It was a complete farce. We were in the finals of a PTQ… and neither of us cared about winning the slot!

The people watching us were completely incredulous. Imagine the rest of the top 8 that we had just beaten seeing this. It was… not a bunch of happy people.

We talked for a little while, and eventually he told me that there was a chance maybe he would go, but he needed the packs. (He was also playing the “brand-new” Countertop deck, and to this day, I wonder if he just refused the split because the matchup was incredibly in his favor.)

In any case, he wasn’t going to budge, and I wasn’t going to drop for only one of the two boxes. So there was only one thing to do: slay him.

He quickly took the first game. In games two and three, he mulliganed to five and four. I stripped his hand and won the match.

I went home with my empty victory and a box of cards.

After debating on it for a long time, I decided to not go to the Pro Tour. Despite the fact that I had always wanted to go to Japan and that really wanted to play on the Pro Tour. I wanted to be responsible.

I mean, there were two years of scholarship money on the line here. I needed to pay for college, and I should make the responsible decision. There would always be more Pro Tours - but I could only play in the junior leagues for a limited time.

I decided not to go. I let the travel deadline pass and prepared for the upcoming junior championship.

Shortly after making my decision to not go to the Pro Tour and letting the deadline pass, Wizards sent out an e-mail that they were canceling the junior leagues after this year.

Oops.