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Only 5 days left to register for your event package for the 8th Magic Cruise!

The cruise is sold out, there isn’t any more room for new cruisers, but if you registered for the cruise and haven’t paid for your event package (or tshirt and playmat add ons!) then you’ve got until midnight on Sunday January 24th to get it done.  The registration page will be taken down at that point. Anyone coming in after that date can contact me and I will make arrangements if possible, but there will be no guarantees!

Steve

For the first time since we started the Magic Cruise, the ship is fully booked over a month out from the cruise.  There are currently no spots available. If you intended to book at the last minute, it’s too late! there’s always a chance that something frees up and if you are interested in going and have not yet booked your space, please check in with Lainey to let her know to keep a look out.

For those of you who DID book in time, I’m posting the tournament package purchases in just a few minutes, so you can begin buying your packages and add ons.  That page will be located HERE.  Packages will be available for purchase up through January 24th to allow me to produce and send the materials needed to LLoyd to bring to the cruise.  Tournament packages can still be added after that time (if for some reason you need to wait a little longer) but shirts and playmats will not be able to be added after January 24!

We’ll be putting together MC9 in the weeks to come, so keep an eye here for details!

Steve

Hello Magic fans!

As many of you know (and now the rest of you will) Legion Events has been working with the Magic Pro Tour for the last year and a half coordinating retail and singles sales. We’ve brought you those sweet sweet Mana symbol hoodies and some pretty awesome short run T-shirts available exclusively at the PT.  We’ve also been producing a commemorative playmat available for purchase at each PT stop.  Starting with Portland we got permission to do some pretty awesome melding designs integrating magic art with real world locations.  The Photoshop time on these is pretty intense but we’ve had some really sweet results.

We just got approval on our Barcelona mat (for the World Magic Cup) and would love to share it with you all!  Neal has about 15 hours into this one. There’s a small bit of finishing touchups to do (you probably wont see it in this image, just super fine detail we want to take care of before it goes to print at high res) but i’m incredibly proud of the work he did on this one.  The task seemed near impossible when we saw they art we were given to use.  I’ll post a pic of the original art side by side so you can see the work!

First, the original piece.

When we got it there was a lot of groaning, there isn’t a lot of flexibility here for putting in known landmarks or skylines.. then Neal found the perfect picture to meld and it ended up so amazing! The pic we’re using is a “night-scape”. It was the only real way to get the city to pop at this distance/perspective. The sky was darkened to make it feel like early evening. He needed the light to help contrast and it allowed us to be able to see the famed Barcelona Cathedral, which is lit up and glowing on the hill way at the back of the city, between the 2 Eldrazi. The viewpoint is from the Plaza de Espana.

I present to you the WMC Barcelona Commemorative playmat in all it’s glory!

These will be for sale at the WMC Magic cup on a 1 per person per day basis for the cost of €25 (includes VAT). There will only be 400 of these playmats made. So they are also incredibly rare! Come see us in Barcelona to get yours (as well as the mana symbol hoodies!)

Steve

Hey all! As you can probably see, I’ve ACTUALLY gotten some time to give the cruise page some updating and such. I’ve put a tentative schedule up on the website at legionevents.com/mc/. I will make the plan (and extras like playmats and Tshirts) available on the website starting in December. The Tournament package will be $100 as usual and will include all events (and if you opt out of playing in one of the sealed events, you can get your 6 packs instead) and prizes for the events including TRIVIA NIGHT! woohoo! More details on the various events as we get closer to the Cruise!

I’m working with the Fabulous Lainey Melnick to get the group excursion assigned and I think based on the previous time we were supposed to go to Belize (and didn’t) that a bunch of folks were planning on cave tubing, we could probably have lainey set up another group excursion for those who want to do that as well. She might be able to get us a break going direct to the excursion companies instead of contracting through Carnival.

Interested in that? let me know and we’ll put it together!

Well. That’s it. About 1800 played in GP Madison for Legion’s Last* GP. I was fairly overwhelmed all weekend with all of the good will and assurances of so many people who expect that I will be back on the schedule for 2017.

And then this happened:

Dan Bock and the folks at Powernine.com spent a bunch of time putting this together and while I was whisked off to dinner Sunday night made an announcement to the room and had a bunch of people come sign “Shrine of Loyal Legions” to put in a binder. the binder has sections for vendors, staff and players and there are hundreds of signatures and notes from so many amazing people.

It’s no secret that Dan and I have been good friends for a long time.  Back in the old PTQ days when it was sometimes hard to get vendors to show up at the 100-120 person PTQs we had, Dan was always there at mine. We occasionally even traveled together and shared hotel rooms.  He’s become one of the most recognizable sellers on ebay over the years with a rating that is both incredibly high and incredibly well deserved. I’m thankful to call him my friend and thankful to all the years HE’S given the Madison community as well.

When I was approaching high school graduation, I wasn’t sure what to do. I grew up on a farm in rural northwest Illinois but spent most of my childhood not feeling like I fit in terribly well. So many kids in school knew what they were moving on to and I just… didn’t. I eventually settled on becoming an electronic tech and got an Associates Degree for that and worked as an electro-mechanical tech at various jobs over the years. I ran various leagues and games for my friends and eventually Magic was created. The first couple events I ran, I ran because, well… no one else really wanted to do it and we had a pretty good community around us that I wanted to be a part of. So I threw in. Many years later, several years after I began running PTQs and Prerelease events for WotC I figured out that this… THIS is what I had been waiting for. I’d been stuck in the traditional role of what a job ought to be and it took me a while (and some personal struggle) to figure out that I could do what I wanted to AS my job if I applied myself.

This weekend so many people thanked me for my time, and for the years of giving them a fun thing to do. To all of you I say – thank YOU. Magic players gave me the opportunity to “figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up”.  It took me till I was well into my 30s before I figured it out.  Its a special thing when that happens and I hope it happens for each of you. Find your joy.

“Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life” That’s a pretty truthful statement. It’s not uncommon for me to put in 70-80 hour work weeks, but it rarely feels like work to me (except when I have to do book work.. THAT part of the job feels like work!).

Each and every one of you gave back to me FAR MORE than I ever gave to you. You allowed me to do a job I love and provide for my family at the same time. There is not much greater than that. Thank you all.

Steve

(*I’ve been told this could change in the future, but its not clear)

I’m sure many or at least most of you have seen this by now, but just in case… WotC as released their procedure for registering pools at competitive events starting with GP Madison.

Read the article on the mother ship HERE.

Each booster pack you receive will be marked in a specific way by us.  You will be told on site what that marking is.  You will be asked to review the packs to ensure they came from us. The mark will be distinguishable and easy to identify.

We’re over 1500 Preregistered players now, the projections still indicat we’ll be over our cap of 2250, so don’t delay! Preregister online now!

Steve

Today and tomorrow folks.  That’s the last chance you get to register for $5 off ($55) for GP Madison. ~36 hours from now the price goes to $60 and will remain there through registration onsite on Friday.  The numbers are still trending towards 2500 players, so I implore you to register online in the coming week to make sure you don’t get left out.  We will almost certainly have some room to take registrations on Friday, but it wont be too much and if you wait too long, you’ll miss it!

In case you haven’t seen/heard about it… We’ve got part 3/3 in a series of art by Dan Scott being given away as playmats to every single main event competitor, as deckboxes to EVERY SINGLE MAIN EVENT COMPETITOR and as a sweet tin that holds 3 deckboxes which is yours FREE if you played in all 3 Legion Grand Prix in 2015, and is $3 off for each one you DID play if you didn’t.

Register now!

Steve

If you were a player at GP OKC who did not receive your playmat and opted for the “mail me one!” option, those playmats are hitting the post office this week. They will be coming in a Legion branded triangle “tube” and should be arriving at your indicated address over the next 4-5 days.  Thank you all for your patience!

GP Madison has almost 1000 Preregistered players and is still trending towards a 2500-2600 player event.  The cap has been lifted from 2000 to 2250 and Friday’s hours have been expanded to open at Noon instead of 2pm to help accomodate check in and the drafting we expect these extra players will want to do.   I would *highly* recommend Preregistering online *here*, if there are any spots left by the time Friday of the event rolls around, it wont be that many and it would be a pity to travel to the event only to find out we’ve sold out!

I just found out that Aaron Forsythe and Ben Hayes from MtG R&D will be coming to GP Madison!  I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to talk them into doing some gunslinging for us Saturday afternoon.  Check the onsite monitors in the room for updated info on when and where that will be happening!

Steve

When I scheduled this event about a year and a half ago I thought if we got 1700 for Madison we’d be pushing it.  I took into account a new set, proximity to the Pro Tour and the general awesomeness of Madison as a whole. I set the initial room size and layout based on a 2000 player cap (expecting we’d be closer to 1700 if it went well).  When I crunch initial preregsitration numbers into the tracking spreadsheet I use (designed by L3 Rob McKenzie) that compares this data to others, it’s telling me we’re well on our way to 2500 players total.  So I went back to the proverbial drawing board, did a room redesign and added 400 chairs. This allows me to lift the cut off to 2250 players and still leave some extra room for between rounds and folks who are not playing in the main to hang out.

In addition to changing the cutoff number, I am moving start time for Friday to 12pm (noon) from the usual Legion start time of 2pm.  This will allow us a little more time for check ins, for players to play grinders, and we can move one of the Saturday scheduled events over to friday to alleviate some of the early round space constraints.  We will be holding all on demand (8 player) side events on Saturday until we determined there is enough room.  If you’d like to come down and draft or play in another 8 player event on saturday, I’d suggest you wait for early afternoon, though we will start some if space is available for us.

I’m hoping this makes everyone a little more comfortable on Saturday, and allows us to get much closer to what our current total expected attendance to be. I want as many people who want to be able to play in GP Madison to be able to play!

That being said,  Preregister now! If the preregistration trends continue, we will run out of the 2250 spots slightly before registration on site. If you don’t preregister online, you may not get to play at all!

Steve