Patriot Games

Friday 5 July 2013

So long and thanks for all the Merfolk!

I'm sorry there has been no updates to the blog for the last few weeks but I have been very busy with non-magic related things and just not had any time to update it.  There are a number of things which I have to go through and the first of them is this.  On 22nd June we had an Invitational Qualifier where 8 more people qualified for the invitational in October.  Here are the names of those who were successful;

Richard Fuller
Jimmy Wild
Sam Waters 
Ian Picker
Sean Crowley
Thomas Hogg
Matthew Riggall
Steven Pickles

They will be added to the already qualified taking the number to those with invites to 42.  Only 18 more slots to go with 8 of them being up at the final qualifier in September.

I wrote the above a few days ago and things have changed for me since then.  Last year I was fed up and disillusioned with Magic (Delver of Secrets anyone?) and was at the point of giving up.  Following a post I made on facebook to that effect we ended up creating FNM Relax and Elite and that seems to have turned out pretty well.  We also came up with the invitational and the qualifiers to be run this year and that has worked out pretty well too.

However, I was still very aware that I had already reached a point where I would be happy to hang up my cards and walk away from Magic but the fact that it has been something over the last 4 years that Robert and I have done together kept me playing.  As some of you may know Robert has decided to give up Magic and sell all his cards for mostly financial reasons and this turn of events has given me the excuse to do the same.

As a result I am currently in the process of listing a lot of cards and finding out how much they are worth (currently at $7,500 and still a long way to go for me).  Neither of us are really interested in selling things in bits and pieces and we are looking to sell our whole collections to a person or group (if you are interested offers around the £3,000 mark will be considered as my collection seems to be worth in excess of £6,000 - pm me on facebook (instalment plans are possible) and we will talk).

I might have continued to play for a few weeks but with FNM being draft this week and then pre-release next week it seems the best time to stop playing as I really don't want to buy any more cards!

Today is the first anniversary of this blog and we are just over 11,000 hits over the last 12 months which seems pretty cool, I am hoping that someone else might take up the mantle of doing the blog but it will have to move to a new URL as this is tied into my e-mail address.  Thank you all for your support over the last 12 months and making FNM Relax and Sheffield Magic very much a "Thing".  I have had some great time and I fully intend to continue going down the pub on a Friday with you all as I will still be around just not playing Magic at all.

Mark Smith will be taking over the running of FNM Relax as of today as he has done on the few occasions when I have been unable to attend for some reason.  I am truly thankful for all the great friends I have made through Magic and I wish you all the very best in the future - Go wreck 'em dead.


Richard Tinsley 5th July 2013