Really, it was SCGCON Dulles, VA 🙄 but I digress.

Anyways, a fun weekend! My friend was playing in the RC and crashing at my place, so I was driving her up, but I was just playing side events and hanging out. Thought about doing LCQs but it would have required me to prep a Pioneer deck and take Friday off, so ended up not doing that.

On Friday I just headed over to the expo center work after work, had a few card drop-offs to make and then did my card signings and sales while it was relatively quiet (I did hear the morning was hectic, but by the time I got in the lines were pretty short. I think the LCQs had ended by that time, so probably a lot less people than earlier in the day.)

Tedin was closed for the day so I had to get my fish Ponder signed Saturday morning instead. I had also planned on getting a playset of borderless DMU Sulfurous Springs done but the cards I ordered never came (ordered 09-12, seller marked shipped on 09-12, when I reached out on 10-03, the estimated arrival date, seller claimed it must have been delayed by the hurricane. The hurricane that made landfall on 09-26. Yeah I’m calling bullshit seller absolutely just marked as sent without actually dropping it off. Anyways.)

Also did a big clear out of my trade and “staples” binder and cashed in for a few duals. Big ticket was the Miku Snapcaster I opened as a bonus card - if it turns out to be the winter bonus card, I’ll be very happy with that sale, but even if not I’m not so in love of bling that I’d give up 500 cash/600 credit I can put towards other cards lol. That being said, I really liked the art so I am hoping it ends up being the bonus.

Saturday was RC day, player’s meeting at 10 so we got up early to get coffee and breakfast and made our way over to the expo center. Friend went off to play and I went to wait in Tedin’s line. At the time I thought there were no on-demand drafts, only sealed and constructed side events (since literally nowhere on the website or signage did it indicate OD drafts existed), so I went to go cube with a group at a local brewery (might have done this anyways, because cube rules)

Penrose Cube Sultai self-mill deck

This was Kapernaumov’s Penrose Cube, an excellent synergy/graveyard bar cube at a ~legacy power level. He’s local to the area (recently hosted the Capitol Cube Championships actually, and he’ll be bringing this cube to CubeCon which I’ll sadly be missing). I drafted a horrendous Sultai self-mill deck with Psychatog as basically the only wincon (Urborg Lhurgoyf kind of counts) and had a blast

Mystery Booster 2 green red draft deck

Sunday much the similar, except I hosted a Mystery Booster 2 draft in addition to the cubes on offer. We had a pod running Penrose and a pod on MB2, good times all around. I believe the 3-0 player got there with an excellent Dimir control deck. I was drafting a Ux deck with a few cantrips picked up in pack 1 and a Thermo-alchemist before slamming a p2p1 Minsc & Boo and hard pivoting into GR. Pretty happy with my deck, though I was definitely scraping for playables near the end (see Gigantosaurus lol). My Bear ended up being a 2G deathtouch mana dork

We did end up doing the draft phantom, and the big pull was a foil Echo of Eons which I cashed in before we left the con. Not even close to positive on the box, but a reasonable return and the draft itself was a ton of fun. I’m hosting my second box tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, so excited about that.

Overall the experience was… fine. I barely engaged with the con itself at all - and admittedly, this one had a large amount of space taken up by the invite-only RC which isn’t the case for all SCGCONs - but space and event registration both kind of seemed like a mess. Getting cards signed and access to vendors is always nice, but basically all the Magic I played was self-hosted cubes and drafts that the con had nothing to do with lol. Definitely would have been disappointed had I have had to fly or get a hotel, but since it was driving distance for me it was alright.