I’ve been on vacation for a week now, and it’s been pretty swell. Last Sunday was my final day of work before the paid holiday, and smack in the middle of my time of was the trip to Las Vegas for Magic Fest 2019. I managed to play a lot of Magic: The Gathering over the course of the week, and thought I’d share some words and pictures to commemorate the events.

So as I said, I got off of work last Sunday morning, and still won’t go back to work until Wednesday early am. From there I had a couple of days of rest and relaxation ahead of me. My sister and her husband-to-be came over to visit us on Tuesday, and that meant we’d play some MTG in between catching up conversations and pizza (yay pizza, by the way). I had finished up my Yuriko build that I wrote about the other day, and really wanted to try that out so I ended up playing it vs. her Teysa Karlov and his Jodah, Archmage Eternal decks. He ended up beating us pretty readily with an early turn Sneak Attack into an Utvara Hellkite that we couldn’t answer. Yuriko still looked to have potential but it’s the only game I had played with her since finishing the build. I wanted a win and we only had time for one more game, so I pulled out my Zur the Enchanter deck which I had never played against them (it’s considerably higher powered) and pulled off a quick win.

Wednesday was prep and pack for Vegas day, so I ran some errands and gathered up my stashed recycling, coinage and bills and got those all turned in for cash for the trip. I left for Vegas on Thursday morning at 10am. I arrived by 2 pm. Unfortunately my friend who had reserved the room at our hotel wasn’t able to get off of work, so he left later in the afternoon and didn’t arrive until almost 9 pm. Needless to say I had to find a way to kill some time. Luckily our other friend who had moved to Vegas a couple of years ago had a place for me to hang out, and I did just that. We had some food, drank some beers and played some 1v1 Commander.

We ended up playing three separate games, and I won two of them. He’s had some money troubles and sold off a large portion of his collection. This meant he only had a total of three EDH decks and that would prove to be more frustrating for him than us as the weekend went on. Yuriko performed much better in the game at his house, and nearly won but he had a well timed Empress Galina that kept stealing my shit and pissing me off. My Zur game was a win, as was a game with Jodah. Later I would leave him behind (he had work in the morning) to go meet up with my ex-roommate to check into the hotel. We weren’t ready for bed yet, but at this point the first day of the convention was winding down, so we ended up ordering a pizza (yay pizza again!) and playing a few rounds. We got four games in before he was falling asleep with cards in hand. I won three of those games, probably the most fun of which was with Jodah, where I managed to drop Emrakul, the Promised End for 5 mana and basically took over the game. We crashed out looking forward to attending the convention in the coming days.

On day two, after waking up and getting cleaned up, we decided to play a few games in the room before heading over to the convention. Our other friend didn’t get off of work until 2pm, so we figured we’d hit the con and then go swoop him up to do something. Once we were at the convention center, we quickly learned that the venue was at the same hall as last year, so everything was very familiar this time around. Some things changed though, in that this year the cornered off area with the orange table cloths was called the “command zone” and we had to check in to get our passes to access the area at will.

Beyond just the pass giving us access, we also received a alternate art foil Sol Ring, four commander on-demand passes, and a 100+ deck box with Channel Fireball livery. I slammed the new Sol Ring into my Zur deck immediately as I’ve been pimping that deck out for a while now. We ended up wandering the hall for a while and checking out the vendors and things, and then ended up back in the command zone where we sat down and played some 1v1 waiting on other players. It seems that this wasn’t the best method, as we waited for a while and didn’t see lone players LFG or have anyone invite themselves to play with us. We decided to do some on-demands and found pods to play with that way, and had a bunch of fun. As soon as we had sat down to play our friend was bugging to come pick him up, but we ended up hanging out for a while before doing so.

We ended up back at the hotel room after picking up our friend and getting some dinner. We drank and played cards for a few hours, but later in the evening my ex-roommate had the commander party to attend. He ended up getting the Populate C19 Precon and since that was the one I wanted and he wasn’t as interested, I ended up buying it off of him. He got some Liliana sleeves as well, but I put those on my Varina deck since that’s the only place I have any Liliana cards. I sleeved up the precon and set it aside. We had plans to get the others the next day.

On day three we spent more time in the room than anywhere. Our third wasn’t in a spot to really do much at the convention so we decided to do some day drinking and play some games in the room before we went to go grab lunch. We went back to the hotel and played even more before we headed to the convention center for the last time. Between the two of us with money to burn, we wanted to get all four of the precons and only one was had at this point. I also wanted to get either a t-shirt or a playmat as a souvenir to commemorate the occasion and ended up with a new lightning bolt playmat that featured Magic Fest, the Channel Fireball, MTG and WotC logos on it. We ended up pooling our prize tix from the on-demands and I was able to pick up the Flashback precon as well. He ended up buying the other two at good prices, mainly because he traded in some valuable cards he wasn’t using for credit towards them. I was happy with the new purchases and we headed back to the room to finish our last night out playing more cards and drinking some brews.

Overall the convention was fun, the trip was memorable but I think I overdid it with the extra day. It turns out that one can only play so much Magic and be away from home for so long before wanting to do something else. I left early on Sunday morning despite originally planning on staying the day. I missed my family and wanted to sleep in my own bed. I still had a good time, but I think if I do this again next year some things will have to change. I’m hoping to maybe get my sister and her man to get interested in the trip and make it with me… would be really nice to have a pod of 5 before even heading to the con. We’ll see, I might end up just doing the Los Angeles convention next year instead, as it’s much closer and I’m sure the room prices would be about the same. Whatever the case, I’m glad to have done it, and I’m glad that I ended up with two extra days off after arriving back home. It’s back to the grind soon, but I’m glad to have had this opportunity again.