On campus there exists a club for a multitude of races, ages, religions, nationalities, pursuits, and degrees. Among these various specialty groups stand The Gamer’s Guild, a club devoted to devotees of fun. No, really.

For instance, on March 16, the Guild sponsored a random draft Magic the Gathering tournament. Anyone rolling their eyes and recalling the nerds of days past can just move on to the next review. For the purposes of this review, MtG is awesome.

The tournament was initially designed to handle up to 50 entrants but, perhaps from lack of advertisement, only a few people showed up, resulting in reduced rounds. The tournament also was delayed by the need to draft, drawing handfuls of cards from a bin, and designing and building a deck from scratch.

Once things got under way, though, the College Union rang with cries of victory and the occasional epithet as battle commenced.

The Guild encouraged side games outside the tournament, and due to the low number of entrants, side games occasionally slipped into being tournament matches if both parties agreed.

Also set up was a table to instruct new players on how to play, and to give players who had no interest in the tournament a chance to play as well.

The tournament followed a tiered structure, and matches were played on a best two out of three basis to ensure that every draft deck had a chance to play out to its fullest.

I got lucky and and drafted a large number of white mana defensive cards that allowed for a rapid deployment of defenses, and red mana cards that allowed for sudden death to rain down on one’s opponent’s creatures. Once impregnable, my deck could take potshots from behind a wall and take the other player out slowly, while turning my creatures into juggernauts.

Much to my surprise, the matches appeared fairly even, with one exception.

In the first match, I was paired against a young lady who had the misfortune to draft a deck that needed time to build up. The result was two sweeping defeat in my favor, with no chance to retaliate.

The second match was far more even. My opponent’s deck was built to do vast amounts of damage as quickly as possible. Every game in that set, which I won two to one, followed the pattern of quietly panicking as my life total counts down for the first few turns needed to bring up my defenses, then a long siege until he or I broke through.

The final match was sudden death to determine first place, and I lost soundly.

My opponent’s deck powered up in two turns, and had me tapping out at lightning speed.

Overall, the tournament was fun, and not just because I placed second.

It was a chance to get together with a group of people who shared a hobby with me, to talk shop and play games. The only thing that could have made it better was a stronger turnout.

Rating: B+

To contact Jeremy Cloud, email editor@occc.edu.