Unexpected Events

I successfully managed to survive Guildpact PreRelease this weekend, though I'm sore and tired as hell (playing soccer last night didn't help, but it sure was fun). As usual, I drove Friday night to Long Island, stayed in a nearby hotel for the night and then got up obscenely early to drive to the location and start the show. I think we had about 130ish unique players on Saturday. Everything went well, save for a fire alarm which required us to evacuate the tournament room with 3 flights in process. This was a new experience for me, but the arrangement I decided on worked well. We had everyone evacuate with the judges leaving last. When it was safe to go back inside, we let the judges in first and had them watch the tables. Then we let players in flight by flight, but only if they had their cards on the table frozen "mid-game." Finally, we let everyone else in. Worked like a charm. Beyond this, there were no drawbacks except that it was a very long day and I was beat. I drove back Saturday night and got some sleep (not much) before heading down to Neutral Ground for day 2 of the PreRelease. Again, there were no major problems, though by the end of the day I was so exhausted that I was barely able to think straight - let alone understand the questions players were asking (now imagine me going to soccer and playing in goal -cause that's what I did). I think Northeast attendences for Guilpact were pretty much as expected. Not sure how this set compated to Ravnica, because I had to leave before our boss got to Neutral Ground (soccer freak that I am), but I suspect it was close enough. The real shocker of the weekend was finding out that my mentor was re-hired by the company he worked for (though in a different department), so he will in fact not be leaving and will in fact remain head judge for NYC. The plus side to this is that I won't have the pressure of head judging everything, but the downside is that I don't get that nice pay increase that comes with being a head judge. Well, that's life for ya and it doesn't really impact my plans - I'm still going to pursue my Level 3 status because one never knows what the future may hold.

In homage to The Girard, the above-left image is the card he was referring to in the comments section of my previous post...sort of. Problem is, so is the guy to the right, who happens to have the specific text of interest. They are both good, but will the real Girard please stand up?