Empire Entertainment’s Magic The Gathering Results – September 15th, 2007: The Foreman Conspiracy!

Magic The Gathering Results – September 15^th, 2007

It was supposed to be a night of Magic the Gathering for the ages, as the challenge was put forth on the Empire Entertainment message board late last week that would pit the so called “Shake and Bake” team against James L. Seagraves and whoever was present at the store at the time. On top of that awesome match, there was supposed to be a clear cut winner of a round robin tournament that would challenge the current Empire Entertainment tag team champions (Tony Ames and Jason Foreman) in what would be their first ever tag team title defense match.

But things don’t always work out the way they’re supposed to. First of all, we saw a new group of competitors arrive at Empire last night, as two people from Clinton (Aaron and Jen) came in and entered the tag team tournament at the very last minute. They’re friend Nate (who has been at Empire before) came with them also, making an odd number of people showing up for Saturday night’s contest.

Since there was an odd number of players, James decided to sit the night out, as opposed to have a customer sit the night out…besides…there IS supposed to be work getting done at our store. Thus, Aaron and Jen entered the tournament together, Nate was paired with Giggles, then there was the “Shake and Bake” tag-team of Magic and Wolf-Man, and finally the current tag team champions – Jason Foreman and the one and only Tony Ames.

The first round of matches went off without a hitch, as Shake and Bake defeated Giggles and Nate, and the Tag Champs defeated the newcomers.

Then Giggles and Nate took on the Clinton Connection, and were defeated, while the tag team champs stomped the Shake N Bake tag-team.

It was about at this moment that two very interesting developments occurred: 1) Jake Eberhard showed up to play, and since there were an odd number of players leaving Seagraves out of the mix, James took Eberhard on as his new partner, and thus accepted the challenge of playing Shake and Bake. And 2) While the Seagraves / Eberhard vs. Shake and Bake was happening, Jason Foreman simply took off to parts unknown, leaving the other Tag team champion there with nobody to team with, thus ending the chance at having someone else face them for the tag-team championship.

The realquestion, however, is where exactly did Jason Foreman go? Why did he abandon his tag-team partner? There is a lot of talk around the town, and several conspiracy theories are being formed.

One such theory is that Foreman simply didn’t care about retaining the tag-team championship, and that he went to Morenci to go to a party on Saturday night. Seems like a likely scenario, but did he really just go to Morenci to go to a party, or did he have alternate plans in mind? Foreman was there on Friday night when Erik Mepham purchased not one, but TWO Platinum Angels from Empire Entertainment, including the one that had formerly been in Foreman’s elf deck. Was Foreman feeling loveloss at participating in the first tournament without his beloved angel? Perhaps. Did he plan on going to get her back on Saturday night? Perhaps. Where was the alleged party at? Morenci. Where does Mepham live? Morenci. Coincidence? Perhaps….perhaps not.

Another conspiracy theory floating around is that Foreman had inside information that he and Tony Ames were going to lose the belts on Saturday night, potentially to the team of Nate and Giggles. Did Foreman have this inside information, and where did he get such information? One thing’s for certain: if he did legitametly go to Morenci, was he going there to vandalize the house of the next would-be champion? It’s a proven fact that Nate is from Morenci, and if Foreman was heading that way…maybe he knew more than he let on, and decided to abandon the tournament in order to prevent Nate and Giggles from being crowned the new champs.

Yet one more theory is that Foreman and Tony Ames have had bad blood brewing for the past week because of all the media hype surrounding Foreman’s departure from Michigan to go into the Army. The local media has been pushing the issue of “what’s going to happen” when Foreman leaves? How will the GM handle the situation? There has been talk in the locker rooms that Ames is having a hard time dealing with the media, and that maybe he paid some kid in Morenci to actually throw a party, just to lure Foreman away from Empire Entertainment, and to take the media with him. This theory seems pretty justified, since everybody is going to be talking about Foreman for the next week, and leave Tony Ames alone, for at least a little while.

Controversial, for sure. So, what’s next for the Empire Entertainment tag-team championship, since Foreman is leaving for the military this week? Well there have been a few rumors circulating around the area: one theory is that the general manager will hold a special individual tournament, and give the winner of the tournament the vacated championship spot. Another theory is that the GM will allow Tony Ames to CHOOSE his championship partner. Yet another theory circulating around the area is that since the cowardly acts of Jason Foreman on Saturday night, that Tony Ames will simply be stripped of his tag-team belt, forced to choose a new partner, and then have to enter a new tag-team tournament to see who truly owns the tag-team championship.

Nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen to the Empire Entertainment Tag-Team Championship, not even the general manager! He has released a public statement saying that he will reveal his decision this Wednesday night’s Magic the Gathering game at Empire.

Empire Entertainment Crowns Magic Tag Team Champions!!!

eptember 8th was a night that will go down in Empire Entertainment history! It was the night that we held our first ever tournament for the newly created Empire Entertainment Tag Team Championship belt! 8 people showed up, and we decided that as opposed to going by store ranking for teams, we would just randomly determine the teams by having each player select a random land card, and the two who’s cards were the same were on a team. Here’s how the teams ended up:

Team 1 : Jason “Magic-Man” Heckel and Travis “Wolf-Man” Schilling

Wolf-Man was using his trusty white deck with flanking, while Magic was using a newly created white deck that I never really got to see much of.

Team 2: Tony Ames and Jason Foreman

Tony Ames was using a black and blue deck, while Foreman (suprisingly) was not using his elf and platinum angel deck. He instead used a newly constructed black deck.

Team 3: James L. Seagraves and Tyler “Giggles” Miller

James was using the newly revised Traumatize deck, and Giggles was using a newly created blue and white deck.

Team 4: Paul “Poofy Head Paul” Lewis and Nate “Staz” Nastase.

Paul was playing with some black contraption of his, whiel Staz was using a white (and potentially lethal) rebel deck.

Here’s how the matches broke down:

Round 1:

Magic and Wolfman defeated James and Giggles – barely
Foreman and Ames defeated Poofy and Staz

Round 2:

James and Giggles defeated Poofy and Staz – barely
Foreman and Ames defeated Magic and Wolfman

Round 3:

Foreman and Ames defeated James and Giggles – barely
Magic and Wolfman defeated Poof and Staz

In the end, it was Tony Ames and Jason Foreman who went undefeated, thus claiming the tag team title. James and Giggles nearly beat them though, which would have caused a 3 way tie for the best record; thus meaning a 3 way 2 on 2 on 2 match would have been scheduled.

All in all it was a great evening for Hudson, Michigan. Next weekend look for a similar contest to determine the #1 contenders for the title, and soon after that there will be a title match!

Empire Entertainment’s Magic The Gathering Results – September 2nd, 2007:

Despite the fact that our store wasn’t even supposed to be open, we ended up having an on the fly round robin tournament last night, and, just as he did during our last official round robin tournament – Wolf-Man (aka Travis Schilling) went undefeated against four other competitors.

Here were the decks being used last night:

Wolf-Man: White deck – flanking – many low cost creatures – Gaze of Justice

Tony Ames: Green and White deck – all flyers almost – tons of enchantments – Glorius Anthem mass production

James L. Seagraves – Newly created all red deck – no sorceries or instants – all creatures with firebreathing and defenders – pumpable to the max.

Jason Foreman – the dreaded elf deck that spits out mass insect tokens – blanchwood armor – thornweald archer / lure combo – and oh ya, that damned Platinum Angel.

Samwise Brown – Don’t even know what this kid was playing with, but whatever it was wasn’t built properly – as NOBODY saw hardly any creatures. We think it may have been white and green, but we’re not sure.

Wolf-Man made quick work of Tony Ames, Jason Foreman, Samwise Brown, and James L. Seagraves in 1 on 1 contests, raising his Empire Entertainment Magic ranking very close to that of John Macey’s.

Tony Ames went 1 and 3, defeating only Samwise Brown. The game between James and him was extremely close however.

Jason Foreman used his elf/platinum angel deck, which was brutal as usual in 1 on 1 play, as he went 3 and 1, losing only to Wolf-Man.

James L. Seagraves went 2 and 2, defeating both Tony Ames and Samwise, but losing to Wolf-Man and Foreman. Despite losing to Wolf-Man in a ranked game, he challenged him to an unranked rematch and narrowly defeated him. But, as it was an unranked game, nobody cared!

Samwise Brown went 0-4, as he really needs some help building a deck. He’s still looking for his first ranked victory, and nobody has any idea when that might come.

Magic The Gathering Results – July 28th, 2007

Today’s Magic the Gathering game was a bit of a disappointment in terms of turnout, but the veteran players took the opportunity to capitalize on the low turnout by offering key lessons for the novice Magic players in the area.

Today only four players showed up at Empire Entertainment to play Magic: Tony Ames, Eric Clark, Cody Halsey, and James L. Seagraves. Cody and Eric have only been playing the game for a couple of weeks, so Tony and James decided that this weekend would be a great opportunity to show them a few things.

The first game was a true David Vs. Goliath story, as Tony Ames and James Seagraves teamed up against the two newcomers. James was playing his famous blue and black deck with only four creatures, while Tony Ames was playing a much more normal deck. While Seagraves was drawing dead, searching desperately for a swamp to come up, he did manage to get a couple of psychic venom’s on the opponents lands, rendering them almost useless. While James was busy handcuffing the opponent’s lands, Tony provided the creature support. In the end, it was an “early frost” that forced Eric to tap both of his psychic venom cursed lands, dealing the final four damage and killing them both.

In the second game, Ames teamed up with Halsey, and Seagraves with Clark. Seagraves changed decks this time around and went with his newly constructed blue and white deck. Seagraves not only took control of most of Ames’ creatures with the Rootwater Matriarch, he also Traumatized him, causing Tony to throw half of his deck into his graveyard. Seagraves and Clark proved to be far to tough for the Halsey and Ames, as they stomped them rather quickly.

In the final game, Ames and Clark took on Seagraves and Halsey, and everyone used the same exact decks. This one was the closest of the battles, as Tony Ames broke out the infamous “Ninja Cats,” (Nacatl War Pride,) and Clark broke out heavily enchanted Razertooth Rats (which had fear, thus no creatures could block them on the other side.) Those two creatures caused a ton of damage to the other team, and by the time Seagraves finally broke out his Rootwater Matriarch, it was too late, as he could not steal both the Nacatl War Pride AND the heavily enchanted Razertooth Rats. Ames attacked with the War Pride, and it was all over.

The Nacatl War-Pride proved too much for Seagraves in the final game!

So, despite the fact that hardly anyone showed up to the event this Saturday, it was at least a good chance for some new players to learn some advanced strategies, and get a good look at some highly powerful (and highly expensive) Magic Cards.

Wednesday, August 1st will be the next organized Magic game at Empire Entertainment. If you’re anywhere near Hudson, Michigan, stop on in!