I’ve been playing magic for a long time. I’m not a tournament grinder, but I still have a competitive itch I need to scratch every once in a while. When I saw an RCQ registered near me this past weekend, I decided it would be a good way to spend my saturday afternoon. Little did I know what the decision would turn into.

I’ve been following the modern format close enough for the past few months, so I was aware that Nadu was the heavy tournament favorite going in, with good matchups across the board. I chose to play Boros Energy, knowing in full well that I was at a disadvantage. The deck was more accessible to me, and I enjoyed the play patterns.

After a hearty breakfast and a pleasant drive to the venue, I turned in my decklist and made some pleasant chit-chat with my fellow competitors while waiting for pairings to be posted. At 10am, I was seated at table 4, where me and my opponent introduced ourselves and talked a little about how nice the weather had been.

This first match was rather uneventful. My opponent was on Nadu, as I feared they likely would be, and I lost two quick games to standard combo lines. What happened in the next round is where this story really gets interesting.

For round two, I was at table number 17, as I’m sure you all have heard by now. Me and my opponent made the standard prematch niceties, and proceeded to mulligans. Game one went well for me, as I had a fast draw and my opponent was forced to swap the stormdrake with an ajani to prevent it from flipping. Bombardment came down next turn, and I had the win even after opponent drew two cards with Nadu + shuko, because they fizzled from there. Game two was a standard combo win for my opponent, they just had it and we went to game three. Game three is where things really got interesting. I had my opponent on two life while having a bombardment + one creature in play, meaning they were effectively at one. This forced my opponent to go for a combo kill earlier than they would’ve liked, but unfortunately they were able to string together a nice series of topdecks that had me dead before I could untap.

I extended my hand, and gave a “GGs”. At this point I was 0-2, and my tournament was effectively over. Luckily, it was quite early in the afternoon, and I had an old friend in town for the weekend. I gave them a text, letting them know that my day had cleared up, and we agreed to meet at a local malt shop we had frequented as children. Little did I know what that would entail.

        As I arrived at the shop, my friend was already sitting at a booth, waiting for me. I went over to their table, we embraced and began to catch up. When our server came over, I gave the order I had become familiar with since grade school, a California Cheeseburger with no Mayo, and a Peanut Butter Banana malt. Here’s where things took a turn for the worse. The server informed me they were all out of bananas. I paused for a moment to reconsider. Luckily I had a second favorite, the Choco cherry malt. Luckily, they had the materials to make it. I thanked my server, and me and my friend got back to catching up. It had been a while, they had since graduated college, started their career, and had a wonderful partner of almost two years I was learning all about. The conversation was great, but unfortunately I was unprepared for what was to follow.

10 minutes or so later, our server returned. The food looked just as I remembered, and I was excited to dig in. When I did, I was met by a surprise: the burger had mayonnaise on it, the opposite of what I had asked for. Luckily, I didn’t really mind, and it still tasted great. Me and my friend enjoyed our meals, and talked about what kind of fun activities we could spend the rest of the day doing. We settled for a walk around a local lake, where we continued to catch up on how our lives were progressing. It really was beautiful outside, and I had a great time.