Community Cup PureMTGO Coverage

Great players and writers in the MTGO community are playing against the Wizards of the Coast at their headquarters in Renton! Follow along as we provide coverage of the interviews, games and pretty much everything that we can!
By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 11 2009 11:42pm
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For those of you that are unaware, Erik Lauer is one of the members of the Wizards of the Coast Research and Development team and if you've enjoyed Magic 2010, Conflux or Alara Reborn you've seen his work in action.  This interview is by far the longest (over 3500 words so far) and doesn't even have everything from the audio... I spent more time with Erik than any other Wizards person last week (beside Mike and/or Marcella), and I must admit that this was an amazingly fun interview session.  Such great topics as Erik beating Flores with old janky cards, the exact length of a Doom Blade and others.  I must thank Erik Lauer for his and for being a great interviewee and competitor during the Community Cup itself.  It was an honor to play against him and an honor to have spent so much time with him.  I hope you all enjoy this last (for now?) interview spawned by this event!

By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 10 2009 11:31am
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By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 07 2009 11:29am
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By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 06 2009 11:41am
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By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 05 2009 9:40pm
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After a WotC routing in round 2 our heroes run into a very painful round three.  After starting 0-5 Alex, the Community Side MVP is able to score the first win of the round for the Community.  Shortly after this, Pete storms through with a win of Mike Turian with an amazing win via Profane Command for just enough to finish Turian off.  A great win out of nowhere thanks to the tag team of Ob Nixilis and Profane Command.

This brings us to 2-6 for the round... the good guys are needing a late format rally to come back into this one.

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Thanks to Alex's (Spike) 3-0 results in the Zendikar draft we are now ahead of the WotC group by one point and we're sitting at 59-58 going into the 100 Card Singleton section!

Aaron Forsythe was working on the WotC decks until last night and I think that will be their downfall as they were loading decks to see thier changes even today.  I certainly hope that more than once a WotC player will think a specific card exists in their deck but that has actually been removed.

Lee Sharpe has already started the trash talking during lunch, and will make it all the sweeter when he's dream crushed for the next four rounds. 

But in all seriousness, I think this has been a great time so far and am really looking forward to seeing how this goes for the next few hours!

By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 05 2009 3:23pm
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After some insane top deck luck in match one that stole victory from my waiting hand (seriously, 0 cards, draw Windborn Charge for exactly lethal?)  I return to the world of minor victories with a 2-1 win over WotC Chris! 

Round two started in bad style with me stalling out with four lands, a spire barage and 2x Goblin ShockGuy in hand.  I battled back to win the next two in grand fashion and have pulled my results to 1-1!

The current standings are 24 wins for the Wizards folks and 24 wins for the Community Members and we're heading.

I am now heading into round three against WotC Alexis, and will have to deal with giantic woodcrashers of doooommmmm!

By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 05 2009 11:06am
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We had a fantastic welcome party at the Claim jumper with some of our WotC competition and all of the Community Cup participants that had arrived. Pete Jahn had been scheduled to attend but a double whammy of a delay and a broken plane kept him from joining us.  John (geekdad) is not scheduled to be town until late into day one which left us down a player from the get go.  Luckily enough for us WotC PR has found us an acceptable replacement... I won't spoil the surprise yet, but it's safe to say that we are going to be well covered despite being down a player.  I hope that all works out for Pete and John on their trips, delays are so frustrating.

We had a great time at the Claim Jumper, the food was fantastic, and the WotC folks are terrific hosts so far.  We were all able to hang out, chat, and just get to know each other a bit as this was the first time many of us have met in person.  Walter, Sam, Mike, Alex, Thomas and myself were in attendance along with various WotC competitors such as Marcella, Tolena, and Eric.  We are a bizarre mix of players, but at the end of the day we're all MTG players at heart.  I'm really looking forward to the events today and will keep things updated as we play.

There's a definite 'vibe' throughout the WotC offices about the Community Cup and MTGO in general.  It was hard to go anywhere without seeing screen shots of the new UI, or something MTGO related up on a wall or pinned to a cubicle, etc.  The more I see the dedication and efforts going into MTGO and the new UI and the general feeling of the company towards it I am becoming far more comfortable with the future of our preferred medium. 

Alas, my time is up and I must get ready for breakfast and the first events!

By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 04 2009 10:40pm
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By: hamtastic, Erik Friborg
Nov 04 2009 12:45pm
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I'm not sure why Delta allows cats on their planes, but I can safely say that I'll take Snakes on a plane over cats on a plane any day of the week!