Beyond the Norm: Adventures at the Secret GP

By the time early April had rolled around, I was raring to go. After a year of pandemic life, I was fully vaccinated, and I was acting like it. I went to bars, licked public toilets, and ran with scissors. I was invincible! Life was for living! COVID couldn’t catch me!

Of course, the one thing my nerdy little vaccinated heart wanted more than anything was the one thing that still wasn’t around: paper Magic: the Gathering events. The morning after I was lamenting this to my buddies, my prayers were answered in a hard-to-read Facebook post by a company I’d never heard of.

My mind was blown. In the last days before the world shut down, GP’s were basically 2k’s with no coverage that awarded a trophy from a different event two years earlier along with a Super-Mythical Showdown Invite that would get cancelled when WotC did their annual casting of “Cleansing Wildfire” targeting Organized Play.

Fifty-five thousand dollars of prize money for Magic tournaments all at one event was something I could get onboard with. So as the Facebook post instructed, I had a pyrotechnics-fueled “bye-bye Covid-19” party out in California, then I marked my calendar and booked my flight.

Admittedly, as we drew closer to the event, I grew worried as the new Delta variant of COVID-19 was causing a spike in cases.

Luckily, Computer and gaming Universe knew how to put me at ease!

What better way to test my MTG mettle and my newly amped-up immune system simultaneously?

I caught a flight into New York City on Friday night, then took a taxi into the Shadowlands – I mean, New Jersey – to my hotel.

Saturday, August 7, 2021

I woke bright and early on Saturday morning, excited to sign up for the main event. I wasn’t exactly sure how to make my way over to the convention center – everything looked different in the daylight – but I was lucky enough to spot a group of three scruffy men in hentai hoodies who I correctly surmised were also headed to the event.

I climbed the many steps of the Meadowlands Convention Center, breathing deeply of the vape and smoke from the crowd outside the front doors. As the toxins flowing into my lungs shaved minutes off my life, I smiled: Magic was back.

A strong hand grabbing my shoulder snapped me out of my contact high. A twitchy, maskless man with heavy stubble glared at me.

“There’s a fee, bud,” he snapped.

“Oh! I thought we paid for the events when we got inside.”

“You do,” the man replied, “but getting inside costs thirty dollars.”

I chuckled and patted the man on the shoulder.

“Very funny,” I said.

I turned back to the door and pulled on the handle, but the man moved quickly until his body was against mine. I felt something hard and sharp press against my side.

“I said,” the man whispered in my ear, the stench of $15 convention center hot dogs stale on his breath, “it costs thirty dollars to get in.”

“Are… are you with the store running the events?” I asked, trying not to move too quickly.

“Sure,” he answered. “I’m a big fan of pokemans. Thirty dollars.”

I glanced around, but the smokers only feet away couldn’t see me through their fat clouds.

“Alright, I’m going to reach into my pocket to get my wallet,” I said.

The blade pushed harder against my side.

“Slowly,” he said, burping a little. This time, overpriced nachos complemented the hot dogs.

I pulled out my wallet and handed the man a twenty and a ten. Immediately, the pressure against my side vanished. The man shoved the bills down the front of his pants and grinned at me.

“Have a great time in there.”

I nodded, smiled, and headed indoors. While I was a bit shaken by the experience, I decided that it was probably a good thing that CGU was stepping up security at their $35K event. Wizards had always been a bit lax on security, and the presence of a knife-wielding bouncer out front did a lot to enhance my sense of safety.

I finally entered the convention center and surveyed the scene. Thousands Hundreds Tens of players milled about, waiting for the main event to begin. Instead of neat rows of long, rectangular tables, a mish-mash of circular dining room tables, foldup gaming tables, and hand-carved coffee tables were strewn haphazardly across the hall. The seating was equally eccentric, with sofas, upright logs, and a disgruntled young man with a sign taped onto him that read “SEATING” strewn about the hall. All had Magic players seated atop them. There was only a solitary vendor against a wall, a long line of half-asleep players waiting in line before them.

I wandered over to get a closer look. At the vendor booth, a man with a sinister grin slowly scanned each of the six hundred cards a Magic player had placed before him.

“They’re all bulk rares!” the Magic player cried tearfully. “Can’t you just give me a couple cents each?”

The vendor grinned, raised a card up to his face, and slowly scanned it.

BEEP.

The Magic player sobbed harder.

BEEP.

“STOP! PLEASE! I CHANGED MY MIND!”

BEEP.

The player collapsed to the floor in front of the “SEATING” man he’d been sitting upon.

It was then that I noticed a disturbing thing; the vendor was the same man who’d charged me for entering the hall, but as I turned to peer outside… that man was still there. Weird. Twins or something, I supposed.

I wandered over to the concession window, which was selling hot dogs for $6.90, and was manned by a third creepy copy of the man who’d threatened me. In the bathroom, the toilets were uniformly clogged, the lights flickered, and nobody had thought to clean up the rotting corpse that lay sprawled across the floor.

When I saw that the face-painting table (also manned by a clone) had run out of red paint, and had taken to using pasta sauce as a replacement, I began to question whether this secret GP was all it was cracked up to be.

The main event was limited, so I found my listed seat, which was a fluffy pillow in front of a stack of textbooks, and one of the many clones tossed down six packs in front of me. Three of them were Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, one appeared to be a counterfeit laden with misspellings, one was a deck of 52 playing cards, and the last was a coupon book. While not what I expected, I was admittedly excited to get 15% off the purchase of my next Tigtone playmat.

My deck was relatively powerful; I tried to cram as many bombs into the 40 as I could. I was base Green, but splashed Red for Inferno of the Star Mounts and the Queen of Hearts.

I moved to my assigned seat, a pile of dirty clothes, for Round 1, and my opponent sat down across from me.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Rob,” he said, extending a cheese dust-encrusted hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I replied, holding out a fist for a bump.

He grabbed my fist firmly and shook vigorously. I looked up at his face, preparing to rebuke him, and froze. His mask, which was below his nose, was black fabric with red lettering. It read, “THIS MASK IS FASCIST.”

Uh-oh.

“You like the mask?” he asked, nodding. “Glad to meet a fellow patriot. Lotta sheeple around here.”

“Mmm,” I said noncommittally.

I just have to get through one match, I thought. A single match.

As we both kept our opening hands, my opponent ripped off his mask and tossed it over his shoulder.

“I forgot what it was like to breathe oxygen!” the man exclaimed.

“JUDGE!” I cried out.

The man’s eyes narrowed.

“How DARE you deny my nose’s freedom! Americans died all over the world for my right to breathe this red, white, and blue American air!”

An exhausted judge, with torn clothing and a small fire smoldering on her shoulder, approached.

“Yes?” she asked.

“My opponent removed his mask,” I said, pointing.

“Mhm,” the judge said. She pulled out what looked to be a flier and ran her finger down the page. “Removal of mask… that’s a game loss.”

My opponent grinned.

“Game Two, I guess,” he said, coughing into his hand before handing back one of my cards.

I gritted my teeth, leaned back in my seat, and played on. Game Two was unremarkable; my opponent got stuck on two lands and I locked them out with the Queen of Hearts.

“Unbelievable!” my opponent cried. I saw a flash as he pulled something from his belt. My eyes widened as the light caught the words “MADE IN CHINA” carved into a small knife.

“TASTE MY AMERICAN STEEL, SNOWFLAKE!”

The man lunged across the table and stabbed me in the shoulder. I cried out in pain as the room around us erupted into jeering and cheers.

“JUDGE!” I cried out. The same judge from before approached me, lying in a pool of my own blood.

“Opponent stabbed you?” she asked in a bored voice, trying to extract a leech that had dug its way into her throat.

“Yes,” I replied weakly.

She ran her finger down the same flier she had previously. She sighed and shook her head.

“According to the tournament organizer, stabbing an opponent results in… a game loss,” she said sadly, then walked away.

Across the hall, there was a hush, and then a murmuring as people realized what this meant. All at once, thousands hundreds tens of players who lost their first match pulled knives, pencils, and pool noodles from the ball pit and began to vigorously attack their opponents.

Someone kicked a rusty pile of metal in the corner of the room, and the Christmas-style lights hung around the convention center hall in lieu of actual lights all went out. Screams echoed through the venue, and slowly, I dragged myself toward the front door, a hopeful rectangle of light in an abyss of madness.

I managed to escape, only getting stomped on once and stabbed one more time, and I patched myself up in my hotel room. I began to peruse Spirit Airlines’ website in the hopes of moving my Sunday flight up, but there was a surcharge of my spleen to move flights, so I kept it. I would just hang out in my hotel room, alone, the next day.

But at 11pm, my phone lit up: I’d received an email titled “Congratulation on makings these Day 2!”

I opened the email and scanned it. As surprising as it was, the small number of players combined with the large number of fatalities meant that anyone with a 1-0 record made the second day. Additionally, another exciting gem was linked to from their Facebook page:

Sure, getting stabbed was rough, but could I really pass up the opportunity to play in Day 2 of the Biggest Card Game event of 2021? And even worse… could I pass up the opportunity to see MTG character, a Mermaid, and a Anime Character?

I’m not sure anyone could have turned that down.

Sunday, August 8, 2021

I woke up earlier than I’d wanted because my shoulder hurt. It looked like my never having bandaged anything before was coming back to bite me. The blood had soaked through the bandage and stained the bed.

Dizzily, I climbed to my feet and headed over to the convention center, half-heartedly applying pressure to my shoulder in a futile attempt to stem the bleeding. As had occurred the previous day, I was accosted by a clone at the front door, who held out a hand expectantly.

Anger flared within me. Maybe it was the man’s self-satisfied smirk. Maybe it was blood loss. Maybe it was the fact that my bandage just didn’t fit that well over the knife still embedded in my shoulder.

But I was done.

If everyone else was going to play by the rules of Computer and Gaming Universe, then I was too. I pulled the dagger out of my shoulder and thrust it through the clone’s skull. Then, blinded by pain, I fell to my knees.

I tightened the bandage and caught my breath before standing. I tried to enter the hall, but someone moved to block me. It was the clone, the knife still embedded in his skull.

He grinned.

“Thirty dollars, bud,” he said.

Defeated, I reached into my pocket and handed him some bloodstained money. He nodded and moved aside so I could enter.

The hall hadn’t been cleaned since yesterday. Nor had the power been restored; instead of getting the lights fixed, small fires burned in every corner of the venue. People dressed in rags, torn-up clothing from the previous day, huddled around the fires trying to stay warm. Somewhere in the darkness, a fight broke out over the remnants of a convention center hot dog. I pulled my mask tighter as I heard a coughing fit break out from another corner of the room; it was my Round One opponent from Saturday.

As I moved toward the burning pillar that I was pretty sure had the pairings, I encountered a smiling trio.

“Autographs?” one of them asked.

“Uh… who are you?” I replied.

A smiling woman pointed to her fangs.

“I am a mermaid,” she answered.

The man to her right pointed to his stomach, where he’d drawn six boxes with Sharpie. To the right, a Sharpie arrow pointed to them and labeled them as “Abs.”

“I am a anime character,” he answered.

I looked at the second woman, who sat on the ground, on fire.

“And, uh, what about you?” I asked.

“She was MTG Character,” the other woman answered. “But now I think she is dead.”

She eyed me and pulled out a lighter.

“Would you like to be MTG Character? We could really use a new one.”

I thought my knife wound would prohibit me from sprinting, but fear is quite the motivator. I dashed over to the flaming pairings pyre and read off my seat.

The seats from the previous day had been burned, so I plopped myself down onto the cement.

“Hey, man,” a quiet, quivering voice said from the shadows. I turned and saw a short woman wearing a trench coat.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Sure are dangerous times we live in,” she said. “You look like you could use a COVID-19 vaccine.”

She pulled out a syringe, the tip gleaming in the firelight.

“Brewed this one myself,” she confided with a smile. “So guaranteed not to have any microchips in it.”

“I’m already vaccinated actually, but thank you,” I said.

The woman frowned and tucked the syringe into her pocket. Then, she pulled out another one.

“How about something for that shoulder? I’ll give it to you cheap.”

“I… I’m alright,” I said. “I’m just here to play.”

She grumbled something before approaching another player, who nodded eagerly and handed her some money. She jabbed him with her syringe and he collapsed to the floor, foaming at the mouth.

I shuddered, and tried not to look around as I waited for my opponent to show. A woman with an array of knives buckled around her waist and an angry red welt left by a syringe in her arm sat down in front of me.

“Hi, I’m Joe,” I greeted her. She raised an eyebrow in confusion.

“I’m MTG Character,” she said. “Who are you really?”

“Uh… Joe,” I replied.

She looked me up and down.

“You’re MTG Character, too,” she growled.

“An MTG character,” I corrected. “But I’m not.”

She just looked at me in anger. Around me, I heard the surviving Day 2 players introduce themselves.

“I am a mermaid,” one said.

“I am also a mermaid,” their opponent replied.

“I am MTG Character.”

“I too am MTG Character.”

A chill went down my back. Peering around, I spotted injection marks on each and every one of them. Slowly, I stood up.

“Where are you going, MTG Character?” my opponent asked.

“Bathroom,” I replied weakly.

“The bathroom burned this morning,” she replied suspiciously.

A loud, deep voice echoed through the chamber.

“BEGIN! ONLY ONE MTG CHARACTER, ONE MERMAID, AND ONE A ANIME CHARACTER SHALL REMAIN! THEY SHALL BE CROWNED THE WINNERS OF THE SECRET GP!”

Throughout the hall, players attacked each other. I narrowly dodged my opponent’s knives before fleeing toward the door again.

Gunfire echoed through the hall, screams pierced my ears, and an explosion generated a deep rumble that pulsed through the hall and into my body, rattling my teeth. I heard a cracking sound above me, felt something incredibly heavy collide with my body, and everything went black.

*

I awoke to the sound of sirens. A flood of light blinded me. I forced my eyes open and looked around blearily. The convention center was… gone. The entire thing had collapsed. There was rubble everywhere, fires and bodies strewn among the stones. Firefighters were spraying down the most aggressive fires, and ambulances and police swarmed the premises.

A shadow fell over me and I looked up in relief, expecting to see someone who could help. Instead, I saw a clone.

“Congratulations,” he whispered. “You are the sole surviving MTG Character. You have won the Secret GP.”

Then he tossed down a playmat and $80. The money promptly blew away, leaving me with one of the most remarkable works of art I’ve ever seen.

As the rescue workers moved the rocks off my crushed legs and the darkness of blood loss again crept at the edges of my vision, I was left with this remarkable artistic masterpiece to admire. What kind of visionary must the artist have been to consider painting Liliana’s face as though it were carved from soft, melting wax? Why is the head of the girl in the pink dress in the background so inhumanly attached to her torso? Why is Dragon Ball Z Character angrily failing to crush the cards in his hand? So many questions, and no answers. But as consciousness slipped away, I felt an epiphany burst into glorious being in my mind.

The playmat was a metaphor for the Secret GP itself, for life itself. Sometimes, things that seem ugly, poorly planned, and inexplicable are best appreciated when you have multiple stab wounds, broken legs, and a rapidly fraying grasp on reality.

Ryan Normandin is a grinder from Boston who has lost at the Pro Tour, in GP & SCG Top 8's, and to 7-year-olds at FNM. Despite being described as "not funny" by his best friend and "the worst Magic player ever" by Twitch chat, he cheerfully decided to blend his lack of talents together to write funny articles about Magic.