FranceYeah, I'm pretty sure a bunch of new players just decided to join only a few days before the event, last year.
Hey!
I'll obviously join this event, like last year. Which set is going to be used for the sealed event? I assume either Shadow over Innistrad, or a mix with the recently released Eldritch Moon. (edit: nevermind, I just can't read, it's SoI + EM) I might have some booster boxes at the time ESA happens.
I'll bring at least my main EDH deck (Hanna, Ship's Navigator), and possibly an Ulasht deck if I can finish it one day, and a Legacy deck if it's still playable after all the bans - it's a storm deck.
Gonna be hard to do some specific shout-outs but let's try it.
The #gta community first, because I probably wouldn't have gone to ESA to begin with if not for them. You're all a bunch of awesome people (and way too many for me to quote, too scared to miss some of you). Then the Magic crew, especially the last 4 of us (Fatzke, Lighnator & eTholon). We gonna rekt ESA16 with new shitty ~ commander ~ decks. All the techs and hosts for still having time to spare to talk and shit. All the finnish people that went to the boat with me. Sorry for mispronouncing the word "finnish" for the whole event btw! Finally the mafia players.
Plus a lot of individual people I really enjoyed talking and spend some time with. List is not going to be exhaustive because if you start to remember me, you'll know I lack memory, sorry for everyone I forget! Shoutouts to Robosparkle for being an amazing tea drinker and a cool lad, eidgod the conqueror of brazil, Adam who seems to somehow have enough time to spare to talk to ANYONE in ESA, suzy & bang for being the two first people I met almost every day of the event and helping me wake up nicely, Curseddolls that didn't reject my french accent, Meridian my partner in crime while exploring the swedish population, tyr because tyr, S, even tho we didn't play hide & seek, Fatzke the best german gentleman, oasiz with who I shared some of my memories about old consoles and computers, Mhmd the meme, and all the others. <3
Hope to see you guys before ESA16, cause it will be way too much of a wait otherwise.
And if the couple is not dead yet, focus Naegleria, you should get a free mafia kill.
And here we go, my pics! Clearly not as much as I wanted to, I'll make sure to spam that pic button next year. http://imgur.com/a/aaDiN If anyone is interested, I can also upload pictures of Skövde and the surrounding, I've got a decent amount of them.
This was a really nice event, I enjoyed it a lot despite some flaws. Let's get to the point then.
· The venue: The building picked for ESA was an awesome one, easy to access, lots of wide corridors, big rooms filled with computers and stuff without feeling like we're going to fall because of cables everywhere. The space wasn't really used like it could have been tho. The Mafia room was mostly unused - except for Mafia - and I feel like it could have been either a practice room or a chilling room. At some point, Adam used it for some practice, and there were 2 or 3 more computers/consoles, but that's about it. The room with the kitchen and that small fighting game practice space probably could have been used better too. After the initial first day of delivering the wristbands in there, it was just an empty place. The smell of that kitchen probably didn't help though.
· The kitchen: Too bad it wasn't possible to cook, even simple meals. It made the whole trip more expensive (it was a problem for some people) and I was under the impression of always eating the same thing more or less. The first kitchen, next to the fighting game practice room, was pretty nasty, so I dodged it for the other one. People took care of the second one and I thank them for it. I did help too in it, it's easier to be motivated when you don't have to spend more than 10 minutes cleaning everything. And we could actually make some tea on this kitchen!
· Mass housing: I wasn't that disturbed by the distance, and it was okay-ish for the price. I don't know if that was because of the distance tho but I assumed it was going to be more of a chilling point to hang out with people before/after going to sleep, instead of being litterally a dead zone of sleepiness. I'll probably go to an hotel room next year just to get some quality rest. But it definitely did its job, so nothing to say against the mass housing.
· Practice zone: Technically speaking, it was well designed. As long as people don't shout, it does not disturbe the two streams and their runners. But sometimes there were some contests (Fighting games, F-Zero,...) that were pretty loud, either because of the TV or the players. There were at least 3 rooms to do this kind of stuff just to be sure I think, even if that gave F-zero a nice display by being the first thing you saw when attending the event!
· Events: Please don't do the Magic the Gathering tournament and Bowling on the same day again. :( That was sad.
· Check-in: There were some incidents about random people showing up at the venue. Thanksfully nothing important happened, but I guess some kind of check-in should be enforced, not necessarly to prevent anyone to enter, because it could help visitors about taking a look for a day or something. Could be really fastidious though, so I have no answer to that.
· Cleaning and packing: This is going to be mostly about the last two days, because everything was said about the others. Preparing the venue to be emptied should be more planned, not only to make things smoother, but also to not forget anything like we did. Basically, Edenal was the only one - sort of? - that knew what we had to do, and that's an awful lot of work for one single mind to remember about everything. I did my best at cleaning and taking care of those pesky cables and tables but some stuff was meant to be forgotten, especially considering we had to leave at 8am on the last day, dead tired.
I feel like I only complained in this post, but that was a really cool event and I'll make sure to come to the next ones. That was great to meet all those players, not only the ones I wanted to see, but also those unknown to me before ESA. Sadly, ESA is too short and we were way too numerous! :P
I will post my photos once I'm back at home in a few days. May have to delay for a while if I don't find my cables!
I just paid for both, if everything went well.
