Greetings all,
I am on Magic the Amateuring this week, talking about Journey into Nyx and GP Minneapolis – I chat with Maria, Meghan, and Ben to chat about new cards in the set, side events at the GP, and being on painkillers for my wisdom tooth removal.
You can listen to it over at the Magic the Amateuring site.
—
Rob McKenzie
Event Manager, Legion Events
www.legionevents.com
Greetings all,
Adrian Sullivan recently posted an update in his article about this, which means it is time to unveil something great happening at GP Minneapolis:
Be at Grand Prix Minneapolis for the first show in a new feature you’ll be seeing at participating Grand Prix!
Planes Talkers, Hosted by Adrian Sullivan will be your chance to see some of the great minds from the game of Magic: The Gathering talking to our live audience about the current tournament format and taking questions! Watch the discussion streaming live on Twitch. We’ll be taking questions from both our live audience and Twitter.
Since Grand Prix Minneapolis is the Modern format, this Planes Talkers will be exclusively about Modern!
Our panel will be composed of:
Brian Kibler – two-time Pro Tour champion, Hall of Fame member, and Dragon Master
Craig Wescoe – champion, Pro Tour Dragon’s Maze
Shaun McLaren – champion of the most recent Modern Pro Tour, Pro Tour Born of the Gods
Toby Elliott – Head Judge, Level 5 responsible for tournament policy, and Commander Rules Committee member
The event begins Friday, May 9th at 8pm CST. We’ll see you at Grand Prix Minneapolis for Planes Talkers!
You can sign up for GP Minneapolis through our Preregistration Site – you don’t need to be a GP attendee to attend Planestalkers. If you want to attend and play some Magic, but for some reason don’t want to or can’t play in our main event, check out our side events. We have Legacy and Modern Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and a ton of other stuff to do.
See you at the GP!
As of right now we have 8 VIP slots still open for registration. If you are interested in getting VIP status at GP Minneapolis, please be sure to sign up quickly before all the slots are gone.
You can register for GP Minneapolis at this site.
Greetings all,
We have ten great vendors at GP Minneapolis. You can check out the GP Minneapolis Vendors Page to see them, and head over to their websites if you are looking to order things from them for onsite pickup.
Greetings all,
With GP Minneapolis just a few weeks away, I am chatting with the artists.
Today I have the third and final artist I interviewed, Tom Baxa. Tom is the star of our featured artists, having done the playmat for GP Minneapolis. Check it out:
Rob: You’ve done a lot of Magic art. (For the readers, you can see all that art here.) What piece do you think is under appreciated?
Tom:
With a game like Magic, there are many factors that make a particular card near and dear in the hearts of the players. Art is one factor, but usually not the main one. So sometimes you do some of your best work and it ends up on a card that isn’t very powerful and doesn’t see much play. And that’s just part of the MTG, and that’s cool. Two of my favorite pieces of art I did for Magic, that didn’t have much excitement around them are: Dripping Dead and Smokespew Invoker.
Rob: What is your favorite Magic art to sign or alter?
Tom: I love when people are excited about my cards and like to have them signed. It’s always cool to see how many Relentless Rats a guy has collected for me to sign. But it’s a hard one to alter. I do like altering Festering Goblin.
Rob: Do you have any great stories about Magic events you attended?
Tom: This was kinda funny…it was my very first signing for the Tempest set way back when. I had a measly 5 cards to my name, and who do they sit me next to? Ron Spenser a huge fan favorite who had done 100 cards already. He had a long line all day, and my was sporadic at best. But it was a lot of fun and a neat first experience. Luckily, in my first offering I did a powerful card, Lobotomy, so people brought a lot of those by.
Rob: Is there anything you really want to sign or alter at GP Minneapolis that you have not had the chance to yet?
Tom: I’ve done them all, so I’m not fussy. I just want the players to get their faves signed. It is neat when someone brings me some off -beat (usually non-Magic) item to sign like some Shadowrun Cards or old Dark Sun books.
Rob: Are there any non-Magic things you are bringing to the GP that you want to tell people about?
Tom: I’ll be bringing copies of my art book Blood Rituals: the Art of Tom Baxa, which actually has a lot of Magic art in it along with work spanning my 25+ year career. I always have lotsa goodies like playmats and prints of some of my personal work . You can always see more at www.BaxaArt.com .
Rob: How did you get into doing Magic art?
Tom: When Magic hit the scene I was already doing a lot of work as a fantasy illustrator in the role-playing game industry for Dungeons and Dragons and Shadowrun, etc. The game was making waves and seemed like a really cool thing to work on. Over the years, the Magic universe has gotten cooler and cooler. I love doing Magic art!
Rob: Do you do traditional paints, or digital, or a mix of the two? If you have done both, which do you prefer and why?
Tom: I love painting with oils – that’s probably my first love. But I also like to paint digitally. There’s a lot of neat things you can do with digital, so there’s lotsa room for experimentation and happy accidents, which is fun for me as an artist. The thing I like most about oils is the interaction of your brush strokes with paint that’s already on the canvas. You can blend paint, mash things together, erase away for effect, etc. And it’s more immediate and intuitive. You can replicate some of these things digitally, but you miss out on inhaling all those toxic fumes!
Tom, thanks tons.
You can catch Tom Baxa at the GP, or on his site www.BaxaArt.com – as the playmat artist expect him to be busy all weekend.
As a reminder, our group rate of $105/night at the Minneapolis downtown Westin ends Friday the 25th – if you are looking to get our group rate for GP Minneapolis you will need to book before this Friday.
Westin Downtown Minneapolis
88 South 6th Street
Minneapolis MN 55402-1114
Constant Contact has fixed the issue it had – preregistration is live again, you can preregister at this site.
Hey everyone, quick update: the site for registration for GP Minneapolis is currently offline. it’s an external page we link to (constantcontact.com) and apparently they are having trouble right now. I expect it wont take long and we’ll be back up and running. thanks for your patience while they sort out the issue.
Update: as of 9:30pm CST constant contact is still down and no indication of when it’ll get back online. We will keep you apprised and apologize for any inconvenience.
Update10:22pm CST: we’re back online!
Steve
GP Minneapolis is drawing closer. You know who else is drawing closer? Marco Nelor, one of our featured artists. (The other two are RK Post and Tom Baxa.)
I had the privilege of interviewing Marco Nelor for this GP, which happens to be the first GP he is attending as an artist. Check it out:
Rob: You’ve done a lot of Magic art. (For the readers, you can see all that art here.) What piece do you think is under appreciated?
Rob: What is your favorite Magic art to sign or alter?
You know what GP Minneapolis has?
Some great artists. You may have heard of them – they are RK Post, Marco Nelor, and Tom Baxa
I’ve been chatting with these artists for the last week, and I am going to be posting some short bio and interview information about them over the coming days.
Let’s start with RK Post.
Rob: You’ve done a lot of Magic art. (For the readers, you can see all that art here.) What piece do you think is under appreciated?
RK: (I will have a visual card list at the event, with all the promos and stuffs too.)
That is a tough question. There are pieces that I like, but the play value really isn’t there. At the end of the day, most players will value a card if it has playability. So, just for giggles…Avatar of Hope. Not the best of Avatars, but I liked the art best of the five.
Rob: What is your favorite Magic art to sign or alter?
RK: For giggles, I number all of the Burning Earths I get. I am up to almost 1800. Ichorids are always fun to alter.
Rob: Do you have any great stories about Magic events you have attended?
RK: Hahahah! I have done so many events over the years, that what some people call crazy isn’t so crazy any more. Ok…quick one. I signed a guy’s butt at two separate occasions in Mexico. It was hairy.
Rob: Is there anything you really want to sign or alter at GP Minneapolis that you have not had the chance to yet?
RK: I have a similar answer to the question above. I am amazed that people will always come up with things I haven’t thought of or encountered yet. 😉
Rob: Are there any non-Magic things you are bringing to the GP that you want to tell people about? (Or not bringing to the GP and want to plug?)
RK: I bring it all…two sizes of prints, dice bags, playmats, lovely Legion sleeves and boxes, some pencil art, me, stuff I do….
Rob: How did you get into doing Magic art?
RK: I was a staff illustrator with TSR…WotC bought TSR…I came along for the ride!
Rob: Do you do traditional paints, or digital, or a mix of the two? If you have done both, which do you prefer and why?
RK: I’ve done all three. I didn’t have a place to paint for years. I am correcting that now.
Thanks tons, RK.
You can see more art by RK, and order prints from him directly at http://www.rkpost.net – that is, unless you want to catch him at the GP. You can preregister for GP Minneapolis here.