MTG Salvation

This is the story of the rage-inducing knife. This amusement park has a pretty expansive picnic area, and they schedule company picnics and family reunions constantly throughout the summer. This particular story occurred on the day of a labor Union picnic, one of the consistently nasty picnics too. These Union workers are incredibly entitled and feel the need to belittle my workers in a feeble attempt to validate their own sad existence. Nothing against labor Unions or Union workers in general, but these workers always try to put our poor teenage/college summer workers down.

In the midst of our lunch rush for the day, one large family ordered 5 whole pizzas (each one different) and proceeded to take up most of the tables in our dining area. Now behind on orders, I took over pizza making duties and started cranking them out. As the register worker (Lee) was getting through our line, I hear some lady from the back say, "Could we hurry this up? I ain't got all damn day!" Lee gave me a look and I just shook my head, knowing her to be a pretty rude worker. Finally the impatient lady got to the front of the line and ordered a whole Sausage pizza. As our menu clearly states, we only keep Pepperoni and Cheese pizzas on hand so Lee informed her that it would take ~8-10 minutes to make. Not happy, the customer started whining and asked what we had ready, to which we told her Pepperoni and Cheese only. She made a fuss about it but decided to take a Pepperoni for her family.

*Side note- As is standard procedure for us, we try to get the food to the customer as quickly as possible. Because of this, we usually end up placing the food in front of the customers before they finish paying.*

Well this lady decided to take the pizza and walk away before paying. Lee was already getting flustered with the long line so she wavered on what to do and let the lady sit down with her food but without receiving her drinks. After serving a few more customers, this lady pushed her way to the front of the line and gave us back the pizza saying, "This is nasty. I need a new pizza." Being a smart ass, Lee responded saying, "Well are you actually going to pay for this one?" This sparked an argument over whether she payed or not. I finally step in and show her the register tape, proving that she didn't pay. In a huff she pays and demands a sausage pizza be made fresh. I make the pizza and put it in the oven. The oven takes 7 minutes to run a pizza through, yet customers don't seem to grasp the concept that we cannot control how quickly the food comes out. After just 3 minutes, this lady shoves her way up to the counter and asks where her pizza is. After hearing our answer, she reaches over to the caddy where we put our knives, forks, napkins, and assorted condiments. To her apparent dismay, she thinks that there is hair in our knife bin. Since I'm not going to give out knives with hair in them, I pick up the 4 remaining knives and wipe out that bin. Since I've worked here so long I know that it wasn't hair in there but plastic shavings from the knives. Not wanting to pick a fight I just let her sit down and wait for her food. Once her pizza is done, Lee calls her up to the counter to pick it up. After getting her pizza she starts telling every customer in line about how disgusting my restaurant is and how we have hair in everything among other things (most notably how "my job could be done by a mentally challenged person." Now I'm a senior Engineering student at the University of Notre Dame so I'm an extremely intelligent person, not trying to brag, and it pisses me off to no end when the trash that frequents my restaurant insult my intelligence based on the fact that I work in food service).

At this point, I'm done with this lady. I walk out from behind the counter and start to talk to her,
"Ok ma'am that's enough," I say. "That wasn't hair in there, it was plastic shavings. They always show up when we reach the end of a box of knives. And I'd like it if you stopped spouting out lies about the cleanliness of my restaurant. I keep this place clean and don't appreciate baseless rumors to the contrary."
Not to be deterred she comes back with, "Oh well if it wasn't hair then why'd you clean it out and throw away all the knives?"
"First, there were 4 knives left in there. Second, I cleaned it out because regardless of what it actually is, I'd rather not have to deal with complaints about health code violations, be they true or not. Now please just eat your meal and then enjoy the rest of your day."
"Who the **** do you think you are?" She yells, "I'm a paying customer and you treat me like this? **** you!"
"Treat you in what way??" I ask incredulously. "I'm merely trying to diffuse a ridiculous situation."
"**** you kid! You think you're better than me while you make my ****ing food for me? Learn your place in life."
"Hahahahaha that's cute lady. I have an IQ of 152 (actual number) and use this job to pay for college. I'll be making more in one year than your whole family will make in 10 once I graduate. I use this job to pay my way through college, which you clearly never attended. Now if you continue swearing in front of these children, I'll have security come put you in their detention center."
"Are you ****ing kidding me? I'm a paying ****ing customer you retarded fatass!!!"
"Ha yeah and that money goes into my paycheck so thanks sweetheart."

At this point the husband is literally dragging this lady and their kids out the door. Having heard enough, I call security and tell them to come immediately. I didn't want to let this lady get away so I walked outside and told her, "Ma'am stay right where you are, security is on their way to kick you off the premises." This absolutely sent her into a rage. She started screaming obscenities at me and trying to get away from her husband to do god knows what to me. Security came sprinting up and saw the lady trying to rip my eyes out. They took my story, a few onlookers who were eating their food at the times' stories, and my workers' stories. When we all told them the same thing, they handcuffed the lady and took her away. I don't know exactly what they did with her, but I think they uncuffed her once she was outside the gates and made her wait for her family to leave and pick her up.

So I transferred from Notre Dame to University of Cincinnati for my senior year. Sarah, Bill, John and I all go here as well as a ton of friends from high school. I've been spending a lot of time at Sarah's place and have become pretty good friends with her friends from the business program she's in. Well they have a fundraiser thing that started recently and ends in December and decided to throw an event as a kickoff for the fundraiser. It was $25 per couple and you got a bus to and from the event, dinner, and an open bar (just beer and wine for those over 21 even though they had no one policing people giving out drinks which we did all night). So the guys that were going thought it would be fun to dress in crazy clothes while the girls still went in normal dance dresses and ****. While most of the guys went with floral patterned shirts and seersucker pants, I decided to take it to a whole new level. Most of the 21+ year olds in the program went to a local bar next to campus before and they had a happy hour deal for all you can drink beer for $5. So I had a bunch of beer while the girl had mixed drinks. She noticed a crack in the top of her cup and it was leaking a bit, so she asked me to ask for an extra cup to put under it when I went for a beer refill. They made her an entirely new drink for free. She hadn't even finished her first drink when I noticed a drink of Fireball whiskey, apple vodka, and cranberry; obviously I got got Sarah and I one. While I was waiting for them to be made, one of the guys (Craig) came up to the bar to refill his beer and asked if I was getting shots. When I said no he asked if I wanted to take a shot. Obviously I said yes so about 6 of us had a shot of Fireball. Right after I got back with the drinks, Sarah was starting on her second drink and they were saying we needed to head out to walk to the buses to be there on time. They wouldn't let us take the drinks out of the bar so I had to chug half of both drinks. Thankfully we made it to the buses on time.

The ride over was pretty uneventful other than random pictures being taken and people mooning the other buses as they passed us. The girls all booked it to the bathroom when we finally got there, leaving all the guys in our group just standing around. What do men do while their women are away? Keep drinking, so we went and got a beer and claimed a table. Everyone was just sitting at their tables waiting for someone to say something or tell us to get food. I hadn't eaten in about 9 hours and I was dangerously hungry for drinking so much so I just walked up to the food, took the lids off all the serving pans and got a plate of food. Everyone was staring at me (partially because of my pants) and I had sat down and started eating by the time anyone else actually went to get food. After everyone went through line once, they combined the two serving lines and moved it off to the side a bit to open up a wooden dance floor.

Now I'm assuming you all have been to these kinds of dances, or at least something similar, so you know what I'm talking about. No one wants to be the first person to do anything at these kinds of things. There was good music being played and a wide open dance floor, but everyone was too scared/embarrassed to actually get up and dance. Usually there needs to be a huge group of people break the ice. Since I didn't see anyone stepping up to the plate I put down my beer, took off my sport coat, held out my hand for Sarah and said, "Let's dance." I dragged her out to the dance floor and simply said, "Let me lead." So you guys know how a lot of places do Father-Daughter dances? Well I went to an all male high school so we had Mom Prom. Senior year, everyone goes out to dinner with their friends and their friends' moms then has a fun little dance with them at the Cincinnati Music Hall. Because we're clearly not going to be grinding or whatever on our moms, my mom came up with the brilliant idea of enrolling us in ballroom dance lessons. For about 2 months preceding Mom Prom, about 5 of my friends had dance lessons with our moms. If you guys have the opportunity to learn to ballroom and/or salsa dance, I HIGHLY recommend it. Girls LOVE a guy who can dance, there's no greater feeling than getting to show off your lady and dancing is something they absolutely go crazy over. Also, dancing is a direct analogue to sex in the minds of most women. So I take her out to the dance floor, position her hands properly, and slowly begin to lead her through the dance. The song wasn't a pretty terrible one to ballroom dance to and she was very clearly shy and nervous at first. Because of this, I started slow taking her through the basic 4 step rotation, then slowly I sped it up and added some twists and spins. As we were coming towards the end of the song I went through all of the spins and arm play that I knew and ended with a low dip (I know, I know, I'm smooth as hell). Turns out half the place had been watching us and most of them started clapping for us. Ice being broken, everyone flooded the dance floor. A couple of Sarah's friends told us, "That was the hottest thing I've ever seen." I even heard one whisper something about being turned on. As the night went on, we all kept drinking and having a great time.

When we were getting off the buses back on campus, one of the couples with us started arguing. Apparently the guy drank too much and was puking out the window of the bus. The girl (also pretty drunk) was pissed that he always got too drunk and ruined their nights out and that they could never have a nice date night out like this because of it. So she stormed off pissed off and Sarah and their friend ran after her to make sure she was ok. We lost the 3 of them so we walked the guy back to their house to find that the window to their door was punched through (it ended up being one of the housemates) so I put the guy in bed while one of the guys called the cops. It was at this point that I remembered that I had Sarah's shoes and phone, which had died earlier in the night. I wanted to get back to her and the cops clearly were not going to come over a broken window with 0 stolen items so we started walking back towards her place/where all the bars and stuff are. Well Craig (really drunk) stopped a random group of 3 guys outside his house and was yelling at them that they broke into his house. When I came out of the house and saw this, they were already pushing and throwing punches. The other guy landed a decent punch and I got pissed off so I stepped in and got in the guy's face. I started talking **** straight in his face so he swung at me at connected with my cheek bone under my eye. This just made me more angry so I cracked my neck and smashed him with a left hook. When he was stumbling backwards I grabbed his shirt and slammed his back into a car. He spit in my face so I hit him in the jaw again and he was out. I dropped him and got up in his friends' faces. They backed off and grabbed their friend and started dragging him away. We finally heard from the girls and they were at a bar so we went to meet up with them. When we got there, I was still in full on fight mode and was bleeding from where I got hit. Sarah flipped when she saw me, I ordered shots for everyone, and Craig started telling everyone how "freaking badass and crazy" I was. I just kept drinking since I was pissed off. After a while of girl drama (from earlier) and guys just hanging out, another couple we knew walked in and yelled that they'd gotten engaged! Completely changing the mood of our group, they bought everyone in our general bar area 3 or 4 rounds of shots. All of us extremely drunk at this point, we stumble out of the bar and go get food. We went to the drunk favorite pizza place and one of the girls buys it all for us using her parents credit card (:ROFL:). We make it back to Sarah's place and a couple of the girls crash in her one roommates room while a few of the guys pass out on the kitchen floor. Sarah and I go to her room and start to get busy. Not going into details on what we were doing, but one of the guys drunkenly walks in, making Sarah scream and jump off me to get under the covers. The guy asks:

"Is this the bathroom?"
"Does this look like the effing bathroom? Get the hell out!" I yell at him.
"But where's the bathroom?"
"Down the effing hall go the f away!"
"Oh...ok. Why would you have the bathroom over there."
I started to get out of bed to kick him out when he leaves. I lay back down and say, "Moods completely killed for you now isn't it."
"Nope." She says and jumps on me.

The next morning we see that he'd gone through the front door not the bathroom door, stumbled down their porch steps, and passed out in the grass!!! He didn't remember walking in on us. My heads been pounding ever since I woke up at 730am. I tried to get back to sleep but I couldn't so I got up and made everyone eggs, bacon, and toast. People gradually all got up and ate. Once everyone else had left, I made Sarah go back to bed and went back to my place. I slept from about 10 until 230 then again from 530 until like 7. My head still kills right now even though I drank a crap ton of water whenever I was awake. I can't even stand the thought of alcohol right now.

I FREAKING HATE PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO COMMON DECENCY!

This happened at last night at the store. I showed up at around 6 to hang out with John, we got Chipotle and just lounged around with his dad for a bit. A few regulars were there in addition to a group of 3 ~30 year old men. These guys were loud and obnoxious and had even tried to smoke inside the shop. After a little bit, two kids got dropped off by what I assumed was one of their parents. They nervously shuffled into the store, bought 2 of the Return to Rav intro decks, and started to play in the corner. I figured I'd be nice so I grabbed them both a Gatorade and introduced myself. I found out that they were 8 and 9 years old and cousins living with one of their moms. The mom had to work the night shift as a nurse and the dad was away as a semi driver. These boy told me that they'd just learned about the game from their neighbor and had spent all week selling lemonade and cutting grass to make enough money to buy cards. When I asked them how they'd be getting home, the older of the two just said, "We don't know. I hope my neighbor can pick us up."

I felt bad for these two kids so I threw a bunch of cheap rares/uncommons their way to help make their decks less clunky and gave them advice on how to play. At this point, Sarah showed up and I got distracted. After a little socializing, I dragged Sarah over to these boys to see that they've just been playing quietly for over an hour now. Sarah fell in love with the two kids immediately. She gave them a few more cards to play with and gave them sleeves for their decks. One of the nerds tried to heckle us about having kids so soon. Sarah's response? "What can I say, the sex is just too damn good I can't keep my hands off him." And then she remembered the two young boys and said, "Oh **** kids don't tell your mom that I said that!" The nerd blushed and looked away.

We were trying to get a count on whether or not we could do a draft when I finally remembered the older guys (older than me, not actually old, 30 is still young). When I looked over to them, two of them had gone up to the two boys. I edged over to listen in and I heard one of the men say, "Oh man you don't want these cards, they're worthless! Here let me get you some better cards." He grabs both decks, walks over to his stuff, grabs some things, and throws about 10 foil Forests down in front of the kids. "These are worth way more than those crappy decks you have there. I'll do this trade just because I'm nice." I was FURIOUS to say the least. The kids were both too scared to say anything, especially since they knew nothing about card values. Let's just say I'm not too proud of what I did next...

I stormed up to the main offender, grabbed his shirt, and said "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He told me to back off and John ran up and tried to push me back. The man threw John to the ground over a table and I snapped. Spoiler alert I'm a 240lb 21 year old with 4 years of varsity Hockey, 3 years of amateur boxing training (for Bengal Bouts at Notre Dame), and 2 years of college Lacrosse. I'm not someone to mess with in all honesty. One left hook straight to his chin knocked him out cold. His two friends just looked from him to me and back again. My adrenaline was still pumping so I turned on his friends and started to taunt them to come at me too. When they backed off, I went to see if John was ok, his nose was bleeding but he said he was fine. Then I hear, "YOU ****ING RUNT." Still amped up I turned around to shut this guy up again when Sarah jumped on me and this guys friends dragged him away. They left the store immediately after. I told the owner that I wouldn't be able to focus for a draft so we did some EDH. I taught the two boys the basics and they helped me throw around my Kangee deck. Everyone was just there to have fun at this point so they allowed all the misplays and poor decisions, eventually letting the kids win.

When it came time to leave, I didn't know what to do about the boys so I asked them if they'd heard anything yet about getting a ride. When they said no, I asked if they knew their mom's phone number. They didn't but they told me which outpatient center she worked at, so I looked up the number and called. It took me a little while to get a hold of her but when I finally did I introduced myself and recounted the entire nights events, including the punching of the guy. When I'd finished telling the story I said to her, "Ma'am, I know we don't know each other at all and I know I may have overreacted earlier so I will completely understand if you don't want me around your son and nephew but I really do want to make sure these kids are ok. I've been in their position before and everyone needs a person to keep an eye on them. If it's ok with you, I'd like to drive them home, I'll stop and get them some food on the way too. If you'd rather them not be home alone or they couldn't get into the house anyway, I'll drive them over to your work and sit with them in the lobby until you're done with your shift." I'm met with complete silence. "Ma'am are you still there?" And then I hear hysterical crying. "Oh my god are you ok?"
"Yes yes I'm way more than ok! I honestly don't know what to say, never in my whole life has anyone shown me so much kindness. I have no idea how I could ever thank you enough!"
"You in no way need to thank me! These boys remind me of me from their age, I couldn't leave me hanging...I'm way too self-absorbed (insert laugh here)."

Well how it was resolved was that Sarah and I took the boys back to their house, let ourselves in with the key they had stashed, and got the kids to bed. Sarah left and I stayed around, eventually falling asleep sitting at their kitchen table. When the mom finally came home it was around 3am. I introduced myself and apologized for still being there but I that didn't want to leave them alone. I wanted to make sure I didn't come off as creepy so I just started telling her about myself. We started talking and didn't realize when it got to be 5:30. As I was leaving I offered to take them to FNM with me every Friday and keep them occupied. I also offered to help with school if they needed it. The mom really broke down and cried here and offered money. I refused. Many times. The dad will be back in town next weekend so I'm just going to call then and see if they want to go with me to FNM.

So this night was modern, WOOT WOOT!!! Seriously modern is my thing, I love the format aside from the Second Sunrise ban. So Sarah and I hung out before hand and game planned while watching LotR Fellowship. I got promoted at my summer job this year so I've been making $11.50/hour for 60+ hours each week and I have WAY more money than I ever have in my life so I've gotten a bit impulsive with my card buying. Well due to this, I have 4 modern decks that are complete or at least about 90% complete and then a few more that are just half complete. Of the complete-ish decks, I have RWB, Grixis control, Doran Junk (only 2 Goyfs), and a janky but fun combo deck that uses Spellweaver Helix, Raven's Crime, and Time Warp. I guess I do have eggs still as that was my original modern baby but we all know that's just dead now. Sarah, on the other hand has 2 decks in UB mill and Infect combo. I keep telling her that mill just isn't well positioned currently but go figure, she won't listen to me. We talk a bit and I decide to play my Junk list while she goes with Infect.

When we get to the store, the owner sees me and yells, "And he makes his triumphant return!" to general laughter. I just roll my eyes at him and give him the bro handshake and shoulder bump/fake hug that we men do. I nod to a couple of the nerdy guys in the corner and go take a seat at one of the tables. Sarah gets stopped by one of the nerds saying hi to her. Since we're a little bit early, 5 of us decide to play some EDH. Played Kangee, Aerie Keeper against Progenitus, Kaalia, Mimeoplasm, and Omnath. Came in when Omnath one-shotted me after Mimeo one-shotted Kaalia. Progenitus ended up winning by just enchantment locking the whole board.

Anyway onto the actual modern portion. We do a 3 round round-robin to determine seeding for the actual tournament. Bill and John show up right as we're starting. 3 of the nerds are playing while only 2 of the skaters showed up. We also had a large group of first timers show up expecting standard. I think there were 7 of them that all showed up with just Standard decks. For the sake of a big tournament, I lent out my other 4 decks (one guy said he'd play eggs without Sunrise) and the store owner fronted half of the entry fee for anyone playing a fully Standard deck. Because I'm not stupid, I held these guys' Standard decks as collateral. The store owner and I also came up with a fun idea to help sweeten the odds too, for an additional $5 you were entered into a second pool where you had to bet on the winner. Problem was that you couldn't pick yourself and the person/people who bet on the highest placed finisher split the pool. When I put my bet on Bill, Sarah screamed, "Oh you little *****!!" I just laughed and kissed her. Bill and Sarah put money on me. 3 of the nerds and John bet on Sarah while 2 of the randoms who were playing Standard decks bet on each other for the hell of it.

Round 1 vs Skater #1:
He was playing Merfolk and is totally the reason I'm building the deck now. This deck looked insanely fun to play and really strong. The guy was a regular that I'm friendly enough with. He has an Izzet symbol tattooed on his wrist so I give him **** about me being a Dimir guy. He's on the play game 1.

G1: He turn 1's an Aether Vial while I get Deathrite. He passes turn 2 and I Abrupt Decay his Vial on my end step when he cheats in a Cursecatcher. He untaps and Spreading Seas' my land with 1 mana to spare. T3 I whiff on land so I use DRS on my fetch to put Loxodon Smiter out. He drops Lord of Atlantis and Master of the Pearl Trident. I swing with Smiter. He drops Mutavault, I path his Master he swings with his 2 creatures. I drop Stirring Wildwood and Abrupt Decay his Lord. He scoops.
G2: He mulls to 6 but T1 Cursecatcher stops my Inquisition of Kozilek. T2 Spreading Seas hurts so I pass. He casts Silvergill Adept revealing Lord of Atlantis. My Tidehollow Sculler grabs his Lord and I see no other merfolk. I top deck a Smiter and just run over his Kira and Spellskite.

1-0

Round 2 vs John:
He's been playing UWR control ever since Worlds because "it's obviously the best deck if they all played it." His problem is that he doesn't really know how to play it that well, he's more of a play creature turn sideways kind of guy. I love the kid but he's not the brightest crayon in the tool box.

G1: He Paths my Deathrite turn 1. I turn 2 Smiter and just flatten him.
G2: I don't know what hand he kept but the only spell I saw him play was a Lightning Bolt on my Goyf.

2-0

At this point my games had gone so fast that most of the other matches were still in game 1. John and I go to watch Sarah play one of the randoms. I'm assuming this guy didn't know I was dating Sarah because he kept trying to flirt with her. Sarah swings in with her Glistener Elf and rando doesn't know if he wants to block or not. Midway through deciding Sarah leans forward and pushes her boobs together to show off some more cleavage (she was wearing a strapless shirt so he had a pretty good view already) and he let it go through at which point she pumped him for the win. I drag a chair next to her and tell the guy, "You just fell for the oldest trick in the book." Sarah grabs my hand and moves it onto her leg when the guy tries to ask her what she was doing afterwards and says "Him." I just smirk and stare the guy down. She wins pretty easily so I go to watch Bills third match but got distracted talking to the store owner.

Round 3 vs Nerd:
Most of the nerds brought Twin with them. This game was really uneventful honestly. Abrupt Decay and Path just crapped on the kid. G2 I knew he'd grab Spellskites so I boarded in Go for the Throat (specifically in the board for this) and won easily.

3-0

We took a short break after this while the owner made up the bracket and a few people got food. A couple of the nerds puppy dogged Sarah around the store while I sat back and laughed. Me and a few of the randoms looked through trade binders and stuff and I got 4 Mutavaults and an Aether Vial overall for a few Remands and Snappys. At this point Sarah was at 3-0 and John was 0-3. One of the randoms ditched at this point so Sarah and I had to decide who got to take the first round bye. Being the perfect gentleman that I am, I insisted that she take it. She said she'd dump me if I tried to baby her so I took the bye and watched her match from the front row seat of her chair with her on my lap. She played John first round. He burned out all of her creatures while she held onto Vines of Vastwood hoping he'd run out of burn and she'd draw another infecter. She didn't and dropped G1. G2 was a turn 2 win with double Groundswell and a Mutagenic Growth. G3 was a close one with John at 8 poison counters he double pathed the Blighted Agent after a Vines of Vastwood shut off the first one. John eventually ran her out of pumps so she couldn't attack safely and he won with Colonnade.

Round 4 vs Random:
This kid had piloted his Standard deck to a respectable 2-2 after winning in the first round of the tournament. He actually raced me G1 with Bant Hexproof. G2 Path, Decays, and Tribute to Hunger allowed me to grind out a win with Stirring Wildwood. G3 was about 3 plays away from being an exact copy of G2.

4-0

Round 5 vs Bill:
Bill was actually running a normal deck as opposed to a weird homebrew. He played Mono U Tron. Bill complained a lot about Sarah sitting on me so she pulled a chair next to me and just put her legs over my lap.

G1: Turn 2 Goyf started to do work after he popped Chromatic Star and I hit a fetch and Lingering Souls next turn. Was able to get him low enough that he couldn't stabilize and drop a Wurmcoil or anything.
G2: He boarded in more countermagic and kept me behind until I stuck a Smiter and eventually Path'ed his Wurmcoil. He was 1 mana away from Emrakul when I won.

5-0

Now is where things really start getting interesting. So I'm back in the finals and I've already gone farthest for our betting pool so I can't get the money from that. When I sat down, I realize I'm playing a girl that I hadn't really noticed before now. She wasn't unattractive but she isn't nearly as hot as Sarah. Despite this, she clearly is used to being the hottest girl at FNM and acted like it all night. Now her and Sarah played in Round 1 of the round robin. (I found some of this stuff out after the night was over) Well apparently when they sat down for their first game they started talking about all the regulars at this shop and who played what, etc. Midway through their G1 the random girl asked Sarah what my name was and what I did. Sarah told her and then the girl asked if I was single. ***** mode activated and Sarah laughed at her. Then the conversation went as this,

"You seriously think you have a shot with him? He wouldn't ever go for you."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" girl said.
"He can do WAY better than you"
"Excuse me?"
"Come on let's be real here, you're not that pretty."
"What the hell is your problem?"
"I don't have a problem sweetie, just bringing you back down from the clouds."
"Shut the hell up you don't even know me *****. You clearly think you run this place but I know it's all just a fake way to get attention."
"So close, I DO run this place and I don't even like all the awkward attention. It's mostly just creepy but you clearly need the attention more than I do to affirm yourself as the pretty girl at FNM."
"Whatever, I'm not going to take this anymore." And she gets up and leaves the table before they even finish G1, giving Sarah the win.

During our short break while the bracket got made, this girl had come up to me and started talking to me while I was trading. She was really aggressive about it too. When she first walked up she dragged her hand all the way across my back and left it on my forearm. I took a step away from her and just said "Hi." She introduced herself (not putting a name since I never got her consent to put her name on the internet) and I just nodded and went back to trying to trade. She kept butting in and laughing at everything I said clearly trying bother Sarah. Eventually Sarah walked up to me and jumped on my back and I carried her over to get a drink. From that point on I kept seeing that girl staring at me. She would smile and wave whenever we made eye contact to which I would give her a weird look, nod, and then look away.

Round 6 vs Girl: FINALS
When I sat down, this girl slid a piece of paper across the table to me. I knew it was going to be her number but I didn't want to piss off Sarah so I just started shuffling my deck. Sarah decided it was time for some PDA and to put this girl in her place so she took my deck, put it on the table, straddled me and started kissing me. When she got up off me, she turned to the girl and said, "I don't think he'll be needing this." while she ripped up the piece of paper. This girl was just LIVID for the rest of the match and honestly that may have been the biggest reason why I won. She played storm combo to which I really don't have many interactions outside of Deathrite main.

G1: This basically was just a race and I lost. I didn't see my Deathrites and was a turn or two too slow. The girl was really shaky playing the deck though and just blew through the combo, almost making a fatal error in the process.
G2: My cheerleader sat down on my lap for this game. I boarded in my 2 Dryad Militants and 3 Kor Firewalkers. Firewalker on T4 meant that she needed to get a bigger combo so she just ended up going with Empty the Warrens to which I responded with my singleton Golgari Charm. She scooped.
G3: An IoK and Tidehollow Sculler kept her stopped up early. Then T4 Tidehollow grabbed Past in Flames and she scooped giving me the win.

6-0

I shook her hand then went to collect my winnings. I blew the money (and some of my own) on 3 Aether Vials and 3 Coralhelm Commanders. When I looked back over for Sarah I see Bill holding her back from trying to get at the girl. Apparently the girl kept calling her a ***** and saying that if she didn't change her attitude someone else would come and steal me. Thankfully Bill was able to grab her before she did any damage to the girl. I ran over and picked Sarah up and dragged her away. The girl left so things went back to normal. The store owner started joking with me that I wasn't allowed to play anymore since I never let anyone else have any fun or win. I laughed and told him to shut up since I'm the life of the party there and keep people coming back. When Sarah and I got back to my house she started crying about how she didn't want to lose me and blah blah blah (she smacked me when I typed this because I'm mocking her), so we had a long talk. Eventually I cheered her up and she went home.

The next weeks FNM wasn't as eventful so I'll keep it at a short write-up down here. Well at this past weeks FNM, a group of 4 girls walked in in front of me, Sarah, and Bill. When I got in, the owner says, "Hey you ladies, just wanted you to know that he's taken," and points at me, "So if you think of getting any ideas he's already in a relationship." Sarah flipped him off and didn't say anything. John called out from the back, "Just give Andrew his prize money now, Dad!" I laughed and said, "Nah eff that I'm playing eggs tonight." I went 1-3 but had a blast with it, joking around when my combo fizzled in half the games. I eventually just passed on playing my last round to watch Sarah's matches. One of the nerds came in first with Splinter Twin. Just to make the kid feel awkward I went up and slapped his ass and screamed "good job" in his face.

I don't really like keeping up with Standard as I'd rather spend my money going out and drinking on the weekends. I prefer Modern since it doesn't rotate and isn't hugely expensive to get into. My friend, however convinced me to do Standard this night so I finished up my Jund Varolz deck and went with him. As usual, we did a round-robin tourney. This LGS is pretty laid back so we just went with however many rounds people still wanted to play and ranked the winners based on highest #wins-#losses, only counting people with 4+ rounds played and giving tiebreakers to the player(s) with more games played.

We have a pretty consistent group of people that show up to this shop so a lot of us know each other and can talk pretty easily but it's still very clearly separated into a few groups. My group consists of me, Bill, the store owners son John, and on a rare occasion a random assortment of Bill's friends from college. John's dad has a personal collection I drool over. He collects a playset of every card from every set so John can literally play any deck he wants at any time. You'd think this would make him hard to gameplan against but he's not really smart enough to strategize so he just plays the most recent MTGO daily winners deck. Bill always has some crazy homebrew that comes out of left field but still can win a lot. Then there's this crazy hot girl named Sarah. Sarah's the local girl-next-door that every guy's in love with. She's insanely hot, she knows it, and she sure as hell uses it to her advantage. She usually shows up by herself but always has a crowd around her. Sarah and I are decent enough friends as far as friends who only see each other once a week go since I'm the only one who doesn't creep on her. The next group is about 6-7 really nerdy guys with poor hygiene. They almost always play similar decks only branching out a color or two so it's pretty easy to gameplan against half the meta. This group also looks at Sarah as some sort of goddess and it's pretty sad. The last group is a bunch of skater/punk rock dudes that are generally really nice. The same 2 guys always show up and bring a few new friends each week it seems. Some of these guys are mean and try to cheat but overall they're good dudes. Other than that we get a pretty decent showing of randoms that overall keep to themselves. Every now and then one tries to hit on Sarah and fails miserably and it's absolutely hilarious to watch.

So background out of the way, let's get into the games. As I said above I ran a really explosive Jund Varolz list that can still function late game. I started out testing Naya Blitz but scrapped it because it felt fragile and too all in to me.

Round 1 vs Bill:
He plays some weird deck that was part White Weenie/Humans and part Conjurer's Closet.dec. The deck could smash out an amazing early game and then generate huge amounts of advantage late game, but lacked all semblance of a mid game.

G1- I curved out near perfectly. T1 Vexing Devil. T2 Lotleth Troll discarding Gravecrawler. T3 Varolz. T4 Vexing Devil + scavenge = dead.
G2- Kept a hand of Dreadbore, Dreadbore, Lotleth Troll, Domri, Landx3. Killed his Champion, dropped Troll, killed his Mentor, dropped Domri and just destroyed him in the mid game.

1-0

Round 2 vs Skater:
This wasn't one of the regular skater dudes. I tried to make small talk but he just stared at me. He played reanimator.

G1- He got an early start with 2 Avacyn's Pilgrim but couldn't find much else after that and I killed him before he could do anything worthwhile.
G2- Longer game than I usually have. He killed some of my early dudes so I was struggling a bit. Late game I was able to scavenge onto Vamp Nighthawk safely and win from there.

2-0

Round 3 vs Sarah:
This girl is dirty! She will try everything she can think of to distract you. She shows up with low cut shirts, flirts with you, compliments you, bats her eyelashes, the whole shebang. Well it may work wonders on everyone else, but none of it works on me and it drives her NUTS. In the last few weeks we actually started talking outside of FNM's and hung out a few times. I know it makes all the nerdy guys jealous so I flirt with her and do all sorts of little things (putting my hand down on her back when I walk up, get up and hug her when she comes in, buy her drinks, etc), I've asked her if it was creepy but she says she likes it. I also call her on her crap all the time, even if I'm 4 tables away I'll yell it out. Lately she's been helping me out distracting my opponents for me (see round 4), it may not be the best game etiquette but it sure is fun. So anyway, she was playing a Junk token-y deck. As usual she had a few people following her around

G1- She played a few cute creatures that just got trampled over by a huge Lotleth Troll. After this game she started sideboarding while I just left my deck sitting, leaned back and just smirked at her a bit. One of the guys watching asked why I wasn't sideboarding and I just said that I didn't need to. A couple of the guys laughed but Sarah kicked me under the table.
G2- Both of our decks grinded against each other to a stalemate around turn 6, she had 4 small creatures and I had one Gravecrawler with 2 +1/+1 counters. I top decked a Domri and thought I had it won but she revealed a land. Sarah top decked a Gavony Township and it was over from there. After this game she went digging through her board while I just sat there again bringing on a few comments like, "Still think you don't need to sideboard." Sarah gave me a little smile and asked, "If I flash you will you give me game 3?" I told her I didn't need to drop games to get her naked. A few of the nerdy guys giggled like school girls, Bill just shook his head at me, and Sarah started laughing a lot and shrugged her shoulders at me.
G3- I won this easily, not much else to say. She pretended to be mad at me but gave me a hug.

3-0

Round 4 vs Nerd:
This kid was watching the last game and is notorious for texting and calling Sarah all the time. Before the game he looked around then leaned towards me and asked if Sarah and I were dating. I just smiled a bit and gave a small shrug. He was playing Naya Blitz. I may not have won this game if Sarah hadn't been standing behind me with her arm kind of around me the whole time, the guy made so many misplays and bad decisions because he was staring at her all game.

G1- He kept a poor hand. No T1 play for him into a T2 Burning-Tree Emissary that didn't lead to anything else basically spelled game over for him.
G2- He curved almost perfectly T1 Champion, T2 BTE into Mayor, T3 Frontline Medic. I was able to hold off with a Dreadbore and Lili OTV for a while. Midway through this game Sarah moved my arm and sat down on my lap so I just put my arms around her and kept playing. I almost cracked up seeing how much this distracted the guy. I asked her after the night was over and she said she did it because she knew I was in trouble there and wanted to try and help out. Eventually I didn't draw enough creatures and he pulled out the win.
G3- This was a complete race, we both hit curve but Experiment One into a BTE to a non-buffed Flinthoof Boar wasn't as impressive as his G2 draw and I was able to grind out a win behind a 6/7 Vamp Nighthawk. After this last game Sarah kissed me on the cheek and got up and walked away. I jumped up, ran after her, grabbed her and kissed her. I think a couple of the geeky guys clapped but I wasn't paying attention. NBD but we're going out now ;).

4-0

The store owner kept making jokes about how we aren't allowed to play as a couple anymore because it's too unfair. A couple of the skater dudes seemed a little sad that she was taken but I don't care sucks for them!

Round 5 vs Skater#2:
This guy tried to stare me down but I was way too happy and kept talking to him. He eventually started laughing and said he couldn't keep a straight face for that long. He was really nice and we exchanged numbers after so he'd let me know when he was going to FNM. He played Aristocrats.

G1- This was an Aristocrat vs Nighthawk game that I eventually won after I cast Domri and -2'ed, forcing him to sac his last creature so I could Dreadbore on his turn.
G2- Boarded in Lili OTV and rode her to victory.

5-0
At this point I wanted to call it quits but everyone was in for a few more rounds and I didn't want to risk someone going 6-1 and beating me so I kept going.

Round 6 vs Nerd#2:
B.O. almost won this game. He smelled so badly I didn't even want to be near him so I played a little too fast. He played Junk aggro.

G1- I dropped a Troll and a Varolz consecutively without guarding against removal and lost them both to a Tragic Slip and an Abrupt Decay. This game went way downhill after he dropped a Voice and was over when he dropped Sorin.
G2- I was far more prepared for his removal but I didn't need it, he had mulled to 4 and could never recover from being in top deck mode after turn 3.
G3- 2 Gravecrawlers into a Troll put on a lot of pressure early. Once Domri dropped he was done.

6-0
After here I was the only undefeated player with only one player remotely close. Sarah had gone 5-1 so everyone else called it quits but they begged us for a rematch that could potentially force a tie.

Round 7 vs Sarah:
To say that this was the main event of the night would be a huge understatement. The owner of the store offered 5 packs of Modern Masters to the winner. I jokingly made a big deal about how either way I couldn't lose so we should split if we tied overall but I was having fun so I didn't care.

G1- Lingering Souls and Township kept me at bay without a Lotleth Troll out but my 2 Gravecrawlers + Nighthawk were too much to handle for her and I hit for lethal while I was at 5 life.
G2- This one wasn't even close. I blew her out with T1 Devil, T2 Spike Jester, T3 Troll + Crawler, T4 Varolz, T5 Scavenge Devil and Jester.

7-0

I felt bad so I gave her 2 of the MM packs which she promptly gave back to me when she opened a Goyf and wouldn't be able enough to keep it in good conscience. I also opened an Aether Vial, Figure of Destiny, and the all-powerful Squee. Overall it was one of the best nights of my life.