On Thursday evening as I was wrapping up work and finalizing my packing before leaving for the airport, I heard from my good friend David that a Mox Sapphire had just been won in ante by Rob. I’d always dreamt that I would be the first to win or lose a piece of Power in ante. It’s weird to say I hoped to be the first to lose a piece of power, but I’ve already won a lot of amazing cards and that way I could still be a part of ante history.
With hopes of winning power from the mysterious Gwen who was running Mox Sapphire in his ante deck, I set off for UTC. My trip was straightforward enough; direct flight to AMS, train to Leeuwarden, and a short walk to the venue. On the train platform I ran into Steffen, Nicolai, and Mads from Denmark who I was happy to sit and chat with. As per usual I didn’t get much sleep on my journey, but adrenaline carried me onwards. I walked to the hotel Svante had found for us, showered, and headed off to the Hotel Catshuis to get in on the action.
Shortly after arriving I sat down to play some ante games with Rob who had won the Mox Sapphire the night before. Rob explained to me that he had agreed to sell the Mox back to Gwen for €2,000 because Gwen needed it to play during the weekend. With a pocket full of cash, Rob went on a bit of bender, waking up to the realization that he’d spent €400 at the bar the night before. Still, he was up €1,600 on the weekend from ante which is nothing to scoff at.
During our ante games, Rob was running ice cold. I ran away with the first three games we played and won a Bayou and 2 Birds for my efforts. Rob’s face says it all about those games.
Our fourth game was more of a back and forth affair. After I used a Tempest Efreet to steal and cast a Scryb Sprites which traded for one of his two Scryb Sprites, slowing down his clock, Rob was at 6 but in control. He was pecking away at my life total with a freshly drawn Pendelhaven and his remaining Scryb Sprites and my life total was dwindling. On my second to last draw step before dying, I ripped Demonic Tutor for Contract into two burn spells and stole the game, winning an Elves of Deep Shadow as my blind ante flip.
Slightly dismayed at losing four games in a row, Rob altered the cards he’d lost to me and I figured we were done playing. I think he did too until he realized that he had another deck that he’d yet to play against me. We shuffled up and played another game, with me winning a Disenchant at which point Rob realized that his deck had a proxied Chaos Orb in it.
We shared some laughs about what would’ve happened had I won it in ante, how it’s not Swedish legal, etc. and then Rob told me he wanted to play another game because “There’s no way I can lose six straight games without winning one.” I’m not one to turn people down for games of Ante40k, so I obliged him.
This game was a nightmare for Rob. I won the die roll and had a dream start, laying Mox Crystal, a land, and Ankh of Mishra. Rob took 2 to play a Library and passed. I dropped a 2nd land and Stone Rained his Library. Rob took 2 to play a Maze. I layed another land and dropped a 2nd Ankh, holding up Shatter in case he played a Bird. Rob played a 2nd Maze, going to 12 and passed. I top decked a Bird saving my Demonic Tutor and drawing me into Black Vise, again kept up Shatter for Bird. Rob fell to 9, realized he’s totally doomed and conceded. His ante card for the game is…
Immediately after flipping over the Chaos Orb Rob said, “f**k man, why did I play another game?” I didn’t have a good answer for him and instead mentioned the irony of him losing the Chaos Orb immediately after replacing the proxy in his deck. Just like that, Rob was basically back to even on the weekend and called it quits on playing me that night which was a decision I endorsed.
Riding high I sat down to play with Richard. In retrospect I didn’t play the first game particularly cleanly, running a Jeweled Bird activation straight into his untapped Scavenger Folk. Maybe the lack of sleep was hitting me, maybe I was playing fast and loose because I had just gone 6-0 vs Rob winning a Bayou and Orb, but what I know for sure is that it sucks to suck. As I lost the game and was about to flip my face down ante card I said to Richard and Reindeer who was watching, “Was it Mox Ruby?” The answer to that question was yes.
The rest of the evening was a blur due to my lack of sleep. I won some birds and lost some birds in games with Richard and Reindeer. Before I called it a night I got to meet and play a single game with Gwen in a matchup of the two people who had lost a Mox that weekend. I mulliganed to five cards and fell relatively easily to Gwen’s fully powered UWx Midrange deck. The noteworthy part of the game was when Gwen used a Bird and revealed that his ante was Mox Sapphire. He told me that this was the 5th time he had Mox Sapphire in ante that weekend…
Svante and I had a nice long walk back to our hotel and chatted about all things Magic. The Deck, his Goblins deck for Swaffel, the idea of me trading the Chaos Orb I won that night because it was the second I’d won in ante, and much more.
We slept, ate breakfast, and walked in the rain to the venue. On the way I got a delicious donut which I liked significantly less after eating it than I did while I was consuming it.
In the main event I finished 5-2, picking up losses in the 3rd and 4th rounds which meant that my hope of making Top16 was extinguished early. My losses were due to a combination of bad variance, tilt, and a greedy keep. I was feeling a bit tilted after round 3 which certainly did me no favors for round 4 and likely contributed to me keeping a sketchy hand in game 3. Such is life.
I had several fun matches which put me into circumstances I’d never navigated before. Games like these are part of what keeps me coming back to Magic after playing for 20+ years. One game in particular stands out in my memory.
Game 1 vs UR Atog I managed to stabilize at a precarious 2 life facing 3 Black Vises with 4 cards in hand. I managed to get two Books going, but had to be extremely careful to always keep 4 cards in hand as one more Vise trigger would kill me. At one point, I had to play Balance and Counterspell it just to get myself under Vise and ultimately with 3 cards left in my library I found a Recall to get back Fireball and close the game.
After the main event ended I was hanging out with Koos who offered to buy me dinner. Not loving the food at the venue, I graciously accepted his generous offer. While waiting to order, I complimented him on his Hurloon Minotaur jacket and he suggested that I try it on to see how it fits. He has a small and the sleeves were a bit short, but otherwise it fit really well. We agreed that a medium would be perfect for me, but also talk about how hard those employee jackets are to come by. I showed him a picture of Lucy’s unofficial Nightmare vest which she received as a gift from Reindeer at Lobstercon as a belated wedding gift and talked about how cool it would be if I had a jacket to match her vest.
As has become customary for me after eating a meal, I went for a walk to aid in my digestion. Before leaving I asked Koos if he wouldn’t mind holding onto my cards while I was gone for an hour and he agrees without hesitation.
When I came back from my aimless wander around Leeuwarden in which I chatted on the phone with Lucy, I found Koos to get my cards back. At dinner he had mentioned that he’d bought a slot in a Beta Booster Pack opening and while I was gone they cracked it. Serendipitously, the card he got was a Nightmare!
I spent the rest of the evening trying to no avail to find someone to play Ante with. Each person that I asked declined and told me that I should ask someone else who then did the same thing. Regardless, I had a great time swapping tales with my friends as I always do.
Next thing I knew, Svante and I were making our way back to our hotel, discussing the events of the weekend. After discussing The Deck minutiae with Svante and packing, I called it a night. My trip home went smoothly, with me getting a few solid hours of sleep on the plane. On the flight I spent a good bit of time pondering potential trades of ante won cards. As soon as I landed I reached out to Paul about trading the Chaos Orb I won at UTC for the Wheel of Fortune I lost to him on my wedding night in the last game of the weekend.
By current market prices, my trade offer was lopsided in Paul’s favor, but Ante40k trades are a weird niche because it is generally frowned upon to sell cards you win in ante. As a result, trades are much more in the “schoolyard trade from 1993” style where you’re trading one card won in ante for another. Both Wheel and Orb are chase rares so it seemed like a fair deal to me. Paul agreed to the trade and was OK with me touching up the Chaos Orb to add some vibrancy to it while staying in the spirit of Rob’s original alter.
Upon receiving the Wheel of Marriage in the mail from Paul, I decided to touch it up. I had originally done the alter at 3am after getting married earlier in the day, so I wasn’t at the peak of my powers. I added detail to the Ouroboros to make it look more like my wedding ring which is also a Ouroboros, got my wife Lucy to sign it, and replaced the Posca writing with more permanent ink because this is my forever Wheel.
Now that I had my dream Wheel, I decided to make my existing Wheel available for trade or sale. No one else has lost a Wheel of Fortune in Ante40k while I have lost three, with this being my first. The game where I lost it took place on my wedding night at the after party and in case you didn’t know, my nickname in the Old School community is Wheel. The Wheel of Marriage is perfect for me.
Before my wedding last summer, an argument could be made that my existing Wheel might have been the coolest out there. Daniel Gelon is not taking new commissions, and I’ve heard from friends that they’ve been waiting 2+ years for him to get alters back to them. Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic is not currently signing any new cards. As you can imagine, a Beta Wheel of Fortune that was both altered by Daniel Gelon and signed by Richard Garfield is highly sought after in, especially to the right person.
Thankfully for me, I know a lot of the people who would be a match for a Wheel like this. Over the years I have made many friends in the Magic community and taken the time to learn what speaks to most of them from a collection standpoint. Everyone has their own aesthetic and thus value different aspects of cards differently.
An example of this is Kalle, who has a beautiful collection of alters and was thus the first person I thought of when I decided to make my Beta Wheel available. Kalle entertained the possibility of a trade before deciding not to. He explained that he’s in a place where he would rather acquire more sentimentally meaningful cards and part with more expensive versions in much the same way I am.
The next person I asked was Brett, who has an extensive collection of Beta alters. I figured Brett might be interested in it and was right, but the offer he made was all cash. Nothing wrong with cash as it is of course king, but I felt like this Wheel might be a golden opportunity to acquire some really cool stuff that I otherwise would never have access to.
I kept Brett’s offer in mind and decided to reach out to Shane who had sold me a Garfield signed Beta Balance and Mishra’s Workshop over the summer. I figured Shane himself probably wasn’t interested in the Wheel, but that he would likely be able to connect me with someone who was as a byproduct of having just moved a lot of cards similar in nature to my Wheel.
Shane immediately suggested that I reach out to his good friend Sébastien. I’d crossed paths with Sébastien over the years at various events and he’d even sold me a Beta Copy Artifact several years ago, but mostly I knew him through his epic deck pictures. Pretty much his whole collection is altered at this point and at various points I had seen the progress pictures that he’s shared with upgrades he’s made to his already legendary collection.
Upon reaching out to him I immediately knew I had asked the right person. He told me he was interested, but he already had several altered Wheels, though none of them also signed by Garfield. He agreed with Brett’s price point and said that he would be open to working out a trade for it.
Like that, he opened up the vault. I was immediately flooded with picture after picture of amazing stuff. Not only were there fantastic alters and Garfield signed cards, but also tons of Magic memorabilia as well. At first, I lined up a potential trade for cards which were upgrades over what I already had which centered around this Garfield signed and KMJ altered Erhnam Djinn.
Other cards I was interested in were a double signed Tormod’s Crypt, a double signed and Richard Thomas altered Beta REB, and a pair of Anson altered Mazes of Ith. My Erhnam’s are just signed by KMJ so the upgrade there was obvious. I had recently acquired a Garfield signed Crypt, but Chris Rush is no longer with us and so a double signed one would be a clear upgrade for me. My REBs are a bit more subjective in terms of if they would be an upgrade as I have a personalized trio; one for the Brothers of Fire, Sisters of the Flame, and Bong Wraiths with signatures by members of the clubs. Still though, the alter was killer and I felt I couldn’t go wrong with having it in my collection.
As for Maze, I am hoping to get alters done at Glorycon in January, but there’s no guarantees. My understanding is that Anson’s backlog is 2+ years long at this point for mail in commissions and he only does so many on site alters in a Magic weekend. Acquiring one of these would be a major coup, despite the fact that I rarely find myself playing Maze.
I slept on the framework of this deal and woke up feeling like I was making a mistake. It’s not that these cards weren’t all cool because they certainly are. It’s just that I felt like I was moving on from a grail and getting back things which weren’t really “grail worthy”.
With a new goal in mind of finding a grail in return, I looked back through the pictures Sébastien had sent me and saw something which should’ve been obvious. I was so focused on acquiring more Garfield signed cards in return that I had overlooked the Magic employee jackets and other memorabilia that Sébastien has.
Luckily for me, he had recently found a small Hurloon Minotaur jacket. This meant that he was willing to make his medium Nightmare jacket available in a trade for my Wheel!
When I found out the jacket was a medium I knew that I had to include it in the trade. All in all we agreed that I will get the Nightmare jacket, Garfield signed KMJ altered Ernie, the punk rock Maze which I heard originally came from KungMarkus of Arvika fame, the Garfield signed Richard Thomas altered REB, and a Shivan Dragon deck pouch. The swap will be completed in Las Vegas at the Sin City Open.
I feel that I have found a dream piece in the Nightmare jacket and am also quite excited about the other pieces I am acquiring in the deal. The synchronicity and full circle nature of it all is certainly not lost on me; I feel like that dinner with Koos opened so many doors. Without it I wouldn’t have tried on his jacket for size, shown him Lucy’s Nightmare vest, given him my cards to hold, who knows if he gets a Nightmare in the pack, I could very well have decided not to trade for the Wheel of Marriage or accepted the cash offer for my Wheel and never get a jacket which perfectly matches Lucy’s vest. Who knows what other strange events that didn’t transpire might have taken place, dreams or nightmares.
Wheel’s Blog 