Sitting up in the balcony at noon, at table #634, looking out over the crowd still waiting to register decks two hours after player registration had ended, some of the nervousness and excitement of attending my first Grand Prix had definitely worn off. When the T.O. announced that this was officially the largest Grand Prix ever, at 1353 people, the Belgian kid at my table said in English, "That's not good news." Maybe he was right. You be the judge.

I'm a longtime Magic player and level 1 judge from Alaska, living in Oviedo, Spain for six months. It was an incredible stroke of luck for me that a Grand Prix would be held in Madrid while I was here, since I'd never attended a GP or Pro Tour before. Moreover, the format was my favorite, and the only one in which I had a ghost of a chance of doing well. I had no illusions about storming Day 2 with my sub-1800 limited rating; I was just praying for a good enough deck that I wouldn't embarrass myself completely. Still, you never know. Well, you do now, since I'll tell you right off the bat that I finished in 383^rd place. This tournament report is about how it feels to go to a major event for the first time, in a foreign country, with some lessons about Limited along the way. If you want to go along for the ride, come on.

Start by climbing into a little Spanish car with four other large men and driving two hours south to a small town, there to meet a bus full of Magic players coming from Galicia (further west). Early on it was christened "Frikiboos," in the mix of Spanish and English that I'd be hearing from Magic players all weekend. The bus was running late because of snow in the mountains, and we arrived early, so we killed time in the bus station by opening three practice sealed decks I'd brought along, debating the construction, and playing with the resulting decks. A foil Oblivion Stone went a long way toward paying my travel costs. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign for the rest of the trip, or if it meant I'd just used up a whole weekend's worth of luck. When the bus finally arrived, we waited while everyone on board had some food and drink and a smoke (it sometimes seems like every single Spaniard smokes), then wedged ourselves into the few open seats at the back, and set off once again.

Based on my experience, I can only describe a Spanish road trip as a stately procession, featuring frequent, leisurely stops. Having left Oviedo at 5:30 for what's normally a four- or five-hour drive to Madrid, I had some reason to expect that we would arrive by midnight. We did actually enter the outskirts of Madrid at about 2:30 a.m. But it was another hour of dense traffic and tight maneuvers in tiny streets before we were actually at our hotel. I hadn't planned on going to bed at 4:00 the night before my first GP. I've read all the advice about eating well and getting lots of sleep, but there was no choice. It turned out that this was just the first of three nights in a row that I wouldn't get to bed until 4:00. The Freakybus wouldn't let me.

After almost three hours of sleep, we got back on board and headed for the venue. As we had the night before, once again the bus found a "ruta turistica," Spanish for "scenic route." By the time we arrived Devir, the Spanish DCI, had already given out all 1000 or so of their free shirts. We must have been among the very last people to register. Nobody was expecting 1300 people, especially since PT Kobe was coming up the following week and most pros would be practicing for that and leaving early in the week. But Magic is very big in Spain, and the euro just hit an all-time high against the dollar, so there were players aplenty.

As you can see from the country breakdown on the Sideboard coverage, more than 1000 players were from Spain, another 200 from Portugal, and the remaining 100 or so from all over. I was one of only eight Americans. (I never met any of the others.) Like the previous record-setting GP in Japan, this was going to be a hometown event - at least on Day 1. Only two Spaniards made top 8, and both lost in the quarterfinals. Day 2 belonged to the Pros from Dover - although you knew this before I did, if you were reading the online coverage. If you want more details of Kai's brilliant comeback run, after losing two rounds early on the second day, go read about it here. I'm going to give you the view from the floor at the back of the auditorium, over by Rob Alexander autographing his art, and the authorized dealers selling cards for prices that might have been reasonable in dollars, but looked pretty steep to me when figured in Euros. Back where you can't understand the Head Judge's announcements over the PA, either his originals in English or the translations in Spanish. This is the down-and-dirty from a rookie's-eye-view. This is about the losers as well as the winners. Well, more about the losers, actually.

Are you still with me? Vale, adelante, pronto.

After we registered we had, as I said, a couple of hours to kill. At first, I just followed my friends from Oviedo around the huge room like an annoying baby brother, watching the artist sign stuff, watching people trade, not talking to anyone, more nervous than I'd want to admit, but probably less nervous than I'd have been if I wasn't so tired. The experience was intimidating. It felt like major victories when I figured out that there was a drawing to sign up for, and again when I picked up a free Magic score pad (one per person), and later another, different one. The second one was cooler, with a nice cover, but it turned out to be too small for me to use that day, since I was playing the single most annoying card in the format: Pearl Shard. [I still think it's Sun Droplet, but I can see a few votes for Shard. - Knut] I used up the whole three games' worth of columns for just one game.

Just about at the time I was realizing that I'd been up this morning for just about the same length of time I'd been asleep last night, we were dispatched to our tables. Well, "dispatched" is the wrong word, suggesting as it does some measure of speed. The table postings were at one of three locations, one-third of the alphabet each. I was lucky enough to be standing close to the correct location when the names went up, but after I'd gone to my table up in the balcony ("Tables 561+ are upstairs" read the sign) I had an excellent view of the gridlock below. Twenty minutes later when it was starting to thin out, many of the people who'd been trading or playing starting looking around, thinking about perhaps finishing up so they could wander over and see what all that fuss was on the other side of the building.

During the stretch I spent sitting at my assigned seat, waiting to register a deck, I chatted with two of the other three people at my table. They were Spaniards, one younger and fairly new to Magic, one closer to my age who had been playing for some time. They were extremely nice, as was every single Spaniard I played or met the entire weekend. The younger was full of questions and eager to practice his English. The elder had a copy of Serra, something like a Spanish version of Scrye, and the three of us carried on a halting-but-enthusiastic discussion of the quality of various cards in Darksteel for Limited play.

The fourth person at our table, the aforementioned Flemish-speaking young man, looked about twelve, but had an intensely world-weary air about him, implying that he endured such trials as these annoying Grand Prix delays almost as often as he endured delays at the airport for his frequent transatlantic flights. Except for one or two desultory comments to us, like the one at the beginning of this article, he spoke only to his girlfriend, who either hovered over him or sat in his lap for the entire time, and to an older man who might have been his father and who was wearing a Staff badge. I got the feeling this kid played a lot of big-time Magic.

He thought nothing of doodling in green ink all over the sacred deck registration sheet. He not only peeked briefly at his Mirrodin cards before we were officially allowed to, he commented that if we were smart, we'd do the same. I could only marvel at his chutzpah and cynicism, and cravenly look down at the intact plastic seal on my deck. I saw him many more times that weekend, and always with girlfriend in tow.

Are you ready yet for some actual Magic? Believe me, so was I. The deck I opened was absolutely horrendous. It had a Mindslaver and nothing else. None of the power commons or uncommons, mediocre removal, and a truly depressing array of boring creatures. Boy was I happy I wasn't going to be getting this back! At first I was racing to do the registration, but it turned out I had plenty of time to ponder just how bad that collection of cards was, because there were not enough deck registration sheets available, and some people still hadn't gotten their sheets by the time I was finished. The allotted thirty minutes stretched into an hour, and it was actually an hour and a half before we were allowed to start building.

I was very happy with the deck I got.

I played B/W splashing Red for Shatter, Unforge, and Goblin Replica. My two rares, Sword of Fire and Ice and Leonin Abunas, were very good, and if I got them both on the table at the same time, I won. I had four nice Black removal cards in Barter in Blood, Irradiate, Betrayal of Flesh, and Echoing Decay. The rest of the deck was almost as good. For Equipment I had Mask of Memory, Whispersilk Cloak, Vulshok Gauntlets, and Neurok Hoversail, and only played the first two maindeck (along with the Sword, of course). I wanted the Gauntlets, but just couldn't make room for a fourth piece of Equipment. (Feel free to criticize that choice; I did all day. This is about life at the lower tables, remember.)

I had Darksteel Brute and Darksteel Gargoyle, and two Modular creatures that I hoped to use to pump them. I had one Pewter Golem and Myr Enforcer for bulk, and Emissary of Hope, Skyhunter Patrol, and Dross Prowler for evasion. Round it out with Iron Myr, Loxodon Punisher, Auriok Glaivemaster, and Great Furnace, and there you have it. Not the absolute bomb, but everything I could have hoped for and more than I deserved. May you be blessed with this level of luck at your first big Limited event.

I bet you want to hear what else I had that I didn't play, and despite it being so embarrassing, I'm going to tell you. I ended up bringing in eight to ten cards for second and third games in the last four rounds, having concluded that I botched my deckbuilding. The second string included the Gauntlets, Disciple of the Vault, Razor Barrier, Chittering Rats, Greater Harvester, Goblin Dirigible, and sometimes Neurok Hoversail or Auriok Siege Sled, in for mostly White creatures and sometimes one of the removal cards, plus a couple of Swamps in for Plains. One of my problems as a deck builder is that I don't value combat tricks as highly as I should, or rather I value big permanents more than I should. I can't believe I didn't play Razor Barrier main deck, but that's just the kind of mediocre player I am.

I didn't play Blue, although with Spire Golem, Silver Myr, Inertia Bubble, Regress, Echoing Truth, and Vedalken Engineer I came very close. I think now I should have, but that would have meant either giving up Leonin's protection of my Sword, or splashing White as a fourth color, and I just didn't have the cojones for either of those choices. My Green had Fangren Hunter and Wurmskin Forger to go with Tangle Golem, but nothing else, and I couldn't even think about a commitment to double-Green and forest-affinity for only three cards. I had Slagwurm Armor, but no Nims to play with it. That's about it for playable cards. Would you be happy with those choices? I was.

That happiness lasted through the first round, when I faced a local who had actually learned to play Magic the night before. The night before. Can't get any luckier in the pairings than that, I suppose. I dutifully reminded him to draw his card each turn, and at one point a passing judge reinforced my suggestion about tapping to ninety degrees. Still, he managed to beat on my head pretty hard in one of the games, putting out one big creature after another against my slow start. But in the end it was all good. 1-0. Three points. I will not get skunked. Only eight more rounds to go.

Now's when it starts to get ugly. This is not going to be a round-by-round report. I'm after describing what it feels like, the whole experience, and a few general reflections. That means I'm going to skip right over a whole bunch of gruesomeness and get right to the point at which I am 1-3 and in 1066^th place. Remember what I said about just hoping not to embarrass myself? Some would say I was past that point already. It helped my feelings a little that all my opponents were so nice. I got tired of hearing that my opponent's draw had been perfect, that it was just amazing luck. It certainly seemed that way to me. I didn't make any horrendously stupid plays, in fact I thought my play was remarkably solid, especially on three hours' sleep. And the decks seemed no better than mine overall. I may have kept a questionable opening hand or two, particularly the one with five lands and two expensive spells. (Too bad Mulligan Week on the Wizards site wasn't the week before the GP instead of the week after, so I could have read Scott Wills' article explaining why a particular one-land hand was better than many five-land hands.) Certainly the quality of my opponents' play was high, but I wouldn't expect any less at a PTQ.

About now you're wondering why I hadn't dropped and headed for either the side events or the nearest bar. Well, one consequence of the enormous attendance is that there weren't enough tables or judges to run any side events. For today, anyway, this was the only Magic in town. Plus, I'd always rather play than watch. As for heading to a bar, I was without a map, or a companion in losing who could be a companion in drinking, in what looked to me like a scattered and relatively empty corner of Madrid. I couldn't get back to my hotel downtown - I was hostage to the Freakybus, which wouldn't be leaving until the end of the last round. Why not play? Things could hardly get any worse.

It was a surprise when the cafeteria closed around 5:00, which for Spaniards is still four hours before supper. I managed to scrounge a piece of pizza later from a new friend who made a run a couple of blocks away, but the food situation was a little frustrating. I've read this before in accounts of very large tournaments, but now it was real. Each round took about an hour and a half, and I ended up with breaks long enough that I could have gone away and probably come back with some food in plenty of time. Unfortunately, I was worried about getting back, not knowing where I was going in a strange town, not knowing how long it would be until the next round would start. The "Next Round Starts At" blackboards never had anything on them when I looked, although I might have missed them.

I did manage to catch the ends of a couple of feature matches, and fulfilled my one celebrity goal of having a brief conversation with and taking a picture of Kai Budde. It turned out to be his weekend, and watching him was really fun, especially since he lost a couple of matches early and had to fight his way back to make Day 2, not to mention the top 8. But it was difficult to see much with the crowd around the feature matches, and usually they ended before my matches anyway. As often as not, all the conversation between the players was in French, so I couldn't even follow that. Honestly, there wasn't much choice besides continuing to play, for honor if for nothing else.

Which explains how I managed to climb all the way to 383^rd place, ahead of almost 1000 other people, finishing at 5-4. That finish is a testimony not to success, but to endurance. The vast majority of people who lost three or four times dropped and went home. Since points accumulate only to those who stay and win, eventually I got fifteen of them. Fifteen points at a GP may sound respectable, but believe me, it's not. I finished the lowest of the seven players I knew from the province of Asturias, except for the one who dropped at 4-3 and would no doubt have finished ahead of me if he'd kept playing.

The best player in our group, Pablo, the only one with a bye, went 8-1 the first day and had to be back at the venue at 9:00 the next morning. The rest of us wouldn't be back until after noon, which was a good thing for me, considering the Freakybus didn't pull out until 3:30. I pitied the poor judges, who were busy when we left setting up round tables for the drafts, and would have to be back in the morning even before the players. In the last couple of rounds some of them were obviously goofy-tired, punch-drunk, happy for the chance to chat with players. I can't imagine working an event that size. They were on their feet for at least eighteen hours. At least I was sitting down for most of that time.

Naturally, this being Spain, when we got back to the hotel, Pablo and some of the others put on their party clothes and went out. The streets were just as crowded at 4:00 a.m. as they'd been the night before at that hour, and there were still several hours of partying available. It was Carnival, Spanish Mardi Gras, the week before Lent. Pablo made it back to the hotel just in time to get straight on the Freakybus and head to the tournament. Never mind plenty of sleep - how about no sleep at all? Still, it's better than the experience of my Alaskan friend Ben at GP: Dallas, who forgot to ask for a wake-up call and slept through the first draft, starting day two with three straight losses (he still finished in the money). Pablo finished 40^th on no sleep; I shudder to think of how he might have done with another whole three hours like he had gotten the night before.

I fell asleep immediately at just past 4:00 and never heard the party-goers come in. At 10:53 a.m. the phone rang, and the management informed us that we had to be out by 11:00, not, as we'd believed, 12:00. Remarkably soon there were thirty-odd Magic players in the corridors and foyer, with an hour to kill before the Freakybus returned for us. My small subgroup of Asturians found the nearest café and downed some coffee. It was a beautiful blue day in Madrid, and I had some excellent scenic views en route to the venue. The next time I poked my head outside, however, some two drafts later, it was raining again, and snowing up on the meseta.

I was much more relaxed this second day. The huge room was by this time extremely familiar territory, and not only didn't I follow my Spanish friends around, but I was actually the first of our bunch to sign up for a side event. I had no idea how these would work, and they turned out to be a lot more casual than I'd expected. The side-event table was covered in sign-up sheets, eight people to an event, with the choices being Vintage, Extended, Standard, English Mirrodin-Darksteel draft, and Asian-English Mirrodin-Darksteel draft. Scrub that I am, I didn't think I knew the cards well enough to play with Asian boosters, so stuck with the English, which was two and a half euros cheaper anyway.

Speaking of card languages, I thought I'd have an advantage on day one since the cards were all in English, and every single one of my opponents was Spanish. Ha! Spaniards are used to foreign cards. I spent more time reading my opponents' cards than they spent reading mine. Partly that's because the only Darksteel I'd seen so far was in Spanish, and ironically I didn't even know the English names of many of the cards.

My first draft deck was amazing. I had both Auriok Steelshaper and Leonin Shikari, with Bonesplitter, Mask of Memory, Leonin Bola, and Vulshok Morningstar to move around cheaply and instantly. I had no myr, but I did have Vedalken Engineer and Talisman of Progress for acceleration. I had both Pearl and Crystal Shards. I had Altar's Light and Arrest for removal, Razor Barrier for tricks, and Neurok Spy and two Neurok Prodigy for evasion. I had Arcbound Lancer, Arcbound Hybrid, and Clockwork Vorrac for counters, Mirror Golem and Myr Enforcer for beef, and a couple of Wanderguard Sentries filling out the creature count. I wondered at the paucity of Blue and White flyers, but it turned out that despite my amazing cards, I was surrounded by Blue and white drafters, who were skimming off the good flyers.

In my first round I faced a truly broken affinity deck, and managed to barely win after losing game two to a 10/10 Broodstar. Then I lost in the second round to the person drafting W/B right next to me, both games because of slight mana screw and quick 3/3 fliers beating on my head. As you can imagine, I was a little disappointed at losing with that amazing deck. But this was my first lesson of day two: if you're drafting an amazing deck, it's probably because other people are too, not because you're surrounded by scrubs. Of course, I opened two broken White rares, but notice that I was unable to pick up any good White common creatures to back them up, despite having the equipment to make them go. Why? Because there were good players taking them ahead of me.

The corollary of this rule was brought home to me in the second draft: if you're seeing nothing but crap and think you've drafted the worst deck ever, wait. It might turn out that there are some other really bad decks very close at hand. I drafted a mediocre G/B deck that was heavily dependent on permanents with a casting cost of five or more, and was convinced that in this format that I was increasingly coming to see as faster than I'd thought, I was going to get steamrolled. No such thing occurred. I won my first two rounds and drew with a friend in the finals. He had a R/U deck that was probably better than mine, but still nothing to write home about. Sometimes it's all about the card pool. I couldn't have had a more vivid demonstration of that principle than those first two drafts. One practical use of that lesson is to put extra emphasis on control and removal when a draft seems exceptionally good. For instance, in my first draft I might have passed up a couple of mediocre creatures in favor of mediocre removal, or even considered splashing Black or Red and drafting some extra removal in the last pack, despite being very firmly settled into B/U.

The only remotely good card in the four prize packs I got for splitting the finals was a March of the Machines. The judges basically printed out the bracket, briefly explained the format, and then left you entirely on your own until you were ready to show up back at the table for your prizes. Like I said, I was surprised at how casually the events were handled, but I suppose this was typical. There were more than a dozen small events going on at the same time, as well as the main event way up in the front of the room. I wanted to spend more time watching celebrities play, but the play area was roped off. It turns out that I could have gotten a better idea of what was going on in the GP from reading the internet than from being in the same room. The venue was low-tech all the way - no raised platforms, big screen coverage, or anything like that. Nothing to do after checking the standings for Pablo's progress except return to the fray.

I got into one more draft, one of the last of the day (although they ended up declaring "the last draft of the day" at least six or seven different times, eventually provoking laughter every time they said it), and ended up with a strong B/G/r deck that I thought might have a chance. Ha! I lost in the first round to an absolutely amazing R/G deck, with every good Red removal card and every good Green creature. So my three drafts went 1-1, 2-0-1, and 0-1, absolutely middle-of-the-road, just like my GP record. I hate to admit it, but I think this means something. Consistent results must demonstrate a certain level of skill. After all, Kai won his seventh Grand Prix with yet another amazing Day 2 performance. Me and Kai: two very different elements of proof for the importance of skill in this game.

The Freakybus pulled out of the venue at about 7:30, while the top 8 were drafting. This put us right on schedule for our arrival back in Oviedo at precisely 4:00 a.m. We were held up by heavy snow getting up onto the meseta leaving Madrid. Some of the Gallegos, as the people from Gallicia are called, had never actually been in snow. Or so I understood. By this time, I was so tired that my Spanish had improved enormously, and I had some excellent conversations in Spanish on the way home - or at least I thought we were communicating extraordinarily well. That may have been a sleep-deprived hallucination.

I also got in "the last draft of the day" on the bus. Once again I thought I had an amazing deck, more Black removal than I was able to squeeze into the deck, solid creatures, a couple of good Equipment, and, just for fun, a few excellent Red cards including Spikeshot Goblin. Both games of the first match, my Spikeshot was Arrested immediately upon showing his ugly face. First game I drew twelve of my sixteen lands; second game I didn't draw the third until the sixth turn. That was fun. But this was a draft for the rares, so I got to play out the other two matches, splitting them, and taking what I thought was my best deck of the four all weekend to a crummy sixth place out of eight. One last chance to confirm everything I'd learned already. Learning and putting into practice are two different things.

It was a strange, surreal experience, playing in the largest Grand Prix ever in a foreign country, on a road trip with a bus full of people I didn't know (and a few I barely knew), never entirely sure what was going to happen next (either on the bus, at the hotel, or in the tournament). I wish I'd played better. Still, I didn't leave Grand Prix Madrid with the cynical attitude of that well-traveled pre-teen from the low countries. That was mainly because of the extraordinary good will of almost every person I met in three days, including the players, judges, hotel staff, acquaintances-turning-friends from Oviedo, and even the bus driver.

I'm not in any hurry to attend another GP, at least until my skill levels improve. But it was an excellent adventure, and a valuable reality check. I'll be back again some day. This time, however, I'll have put in a little more practice, because the main lesson I learned is that anyone who wants to do well at this level of Magic play has to have practiced a lot, and has to know the game well. You can't make it on charm and good looks, or even brains and maturity. There's no substitute for knowing how the cards fit together, which good commons are better than which flashy-but-mediocre rares and uncommons, when to mulligan a particular hand from a particular deck, how to predict what the opponent might do based on what you've seen of his deck, and all that other stuff that comes only with practice. And now it's time for a nap. Hasta luego.

Eric Heyne