EPTI had been training for this event since KJ messaged me in January asking if I would like to return to my roots of casting a DC based LAN event. It gave me about 6 months give or take to work on improving my skills/game knowledge to hold my own with
PengWin & Temp0 which was very intimidating. I took a 2 year hiatus from the Sc2 Scene (which you can read about in my previous blog) to focus on real life (getting married, becoming a full time teacher, going back to grad school for a masters in Special Education) and start doing coverage for magic the gathering specifically modern. + Show Spoiler +
2 Years now I've dived head first into the world of Magic the Gathering competing and casting. We started a league that has a 10 week long season, after the 10 week the top 8 players who have earned the most match wins over this time period battle it out for store credit and cash. The prize pool is directly proportional to the number of attendees during the weekly modern tournament. We average 5 rounds of Modern and average 21 players a week. Every now and again we will have crazy high numbers like over 30 on a Tuesday night.
www.twitch.tv/ModernMagicMondays
www.youtube.com/ModernMagicMondays
We are currently on our 8th season of Modern Magic Mondays with 6 unique champions with 1 two time champion. Every Season we've had At least 2 new faces in every top 8 invitational.
www.twitch.tv/ModernMagicMondays
www.youtube.com/ModernMagicMondays
We are currently on our 8th season of Modern Magic Mondays with 6 unique champions with 1 two time champion. Every Season we've had At least 2 new faces in every top 8 invitational.
My casting style has evolved over the last 2 years, previously I was very focused on being the play by play commentator but I've since developed a more analytical style of casting. With Magic there are some very high level lines of plays that most people don't see on first glance or don't understand why the player would choose to play 1 card over another. I've enjoyed developing my skills to break down those plays during magic and wanted to bring something similar when I returned to Sc2 coverage.
6 months is not a lot of time to rise your game knowledge up to the level to break down the ins and outs of every match up and every map. Especially when the map pool was updated in May. I did all my old prep work of getting a bunch of Replays and casting the matches. (Solo casting is very different from having a co-caster and I'll take someone knowledgeable or someone with good chemistry over solo casting any day!) One new thing I practiced was pulling up VODs of matches that I might have missed and loading xsplit and record myself casting over the muted VOD. Then I would unmute the VOD and compare the information that the casters were presenting on the game to the information that I presented in my casts. I also jumped on that community coverage of WCS Challenge right before the event to get back into that game observing while casting. (It is so hard and I always feel spoiled when I get to have an observing with my casting)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/fOQZXWL.jpg)
Fast forward those 6 months to the actual event. The event took place in the county government center for Fairfax Virginia. Which the lay out for the LAN was really cool considering where it was at. The event had 39 participants ranging from Gold-Grandmaster (Code S players) Instead of doing pool play quickly knock out the lower league players KJ and the tournament organizers decided we would do a Swiss style tournament. Swiss is the go to style for Magic the Gathering tournaments so I was very familiar with that style. If you have never seen it before it is designed to have everyone play the same number of games. So if you win your first round you will play against someone else who is 1-0. So by round 3 of the tournament the better players will have to face of while those that have been struggling 1-2 or 0-3 would have a more even match up. https://challonge.com/psistormcup6 With 6 rounds we were able to have a cut to the top 16 players advancing to day 2 of the tournament.
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Now day 1 I was super nervous especially the first two rounds of the tournament since I had never casted with
PengWin before and I had not casted an offline tournament in over 2 years. I was lucky to have worked with Temp0 back in the day when Ravi and I would do rotating coverage with him. So I wasn't that worried about having to find the right flow for our casting. However Temp0 was also participating in a D&D stream That meant that PengWin and I would be marathon casting day 1. Which I had no problem with casting that way since that was what I was used to back in the old DC LAN days. I used to solo cast for 8-10 hours for a 1 day event. Luckily for me but unluckily for the viewers there was also a lot of down time on day 1. During the downtime I was able to take some videos which I threw together as a little behind the scenes VLOG style Of course I had to walk around and take pictures of the players at the event.
+ Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/E50O6L7.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/L48FyNM.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/DUFdhbq.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/nqexKw1.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/oZwocO7.jpg)
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/QOOc01u.jpg)
Day 2 I felt great going into the playoffs. I got to the event early and took a bunch of notes for the event. Just little things to help me during coverage I also went back through day 1 bracket to see if any player had meet to help develop a story line for the playoffs. + Show Spoiler +
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/pIS257z.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/eWb64M8.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/FSxp5VE.jpg)
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/272275004
https://www.sc2links.com/tournament/?match=549
This event felt like I was coming home, I felt so welcomed by all the players and coverage team. I was lucky to catch up with people that I hadn't seen in almost 3 years. I was super lucky to get the opportunity from KJ to work with such a great team, Joe, GuantletSc2, PegnWin, Temp0, Miss Magitek. I'm hoping that I will be able to attend more LAN events like this one. LAN events have always been my favorite way to get involved in the Sc2 scene and I hope everyone has a chance to experience one.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/8RAea3O.jpg)
-Nan-
