Magic Fest London – Team MoM Retrospective

Kristen GregoryCommunity, Event Coverage

Magic Fest London took place in London this weekend, and the Master of Magics team were out in full force to enjoy the weekend, give out free pens, and play some Magic. Abbie, Chris, James, Kristen, Sam & Seb were all in attendance, and all involved had a great time. The team share their own personal highlights of the weekend below.

Abbie

This event was by far the best event I have been to yet. I’ll be the first to admit that my actual playing of Magic was almost zero, but I got to do something I have wanted to do since before I found Magic: cosplay. For a long time, I had a list of characters I could cosplay as but none of them made me certain I wanted to do it until I saw Judith, Scourge Diva. Something about her called to me; dramatic, assertive, glamorous – she felt like my Inner Demon.

After over 70 hours, a lot of trial and error and some cuts and burns, my costume was just about complete. I realised I made some things too big to fit together, oops!


I met some other great cosplayers and many fans – I love talking to people at events and it turns out wearing a VERY in your face costume invites people to come and talk to you. Other than little things that only I could see or know as the artist, and the numb feet after walking around London all weekend in heels, my debut was one of the best experiences I have ever had. I can’t wait to be Judith again and I can not wait to start on another costume.

Chris

“Almost every time in the past when I attended a Grand Prix, most of my energy and preparation is devoted to my performance in the main event as I hope to be competing for most of the time. The structure of the main event for Magic Fest London was very different to those past events. I therefore decided to take a more relaxed approach to the whole event, embracing the enamouring feeling of a ‘big pre-release’ and relying on opening a good sealed pool to ‘live the dream’. We didn’t open well, and also slightly mis-built our deck (I boarded out the same three cards for every game two)! However, it was fun (while it lasted) dismantling opposing mythics from my first few opponents with Chainwhip Cyclops. On the other hand, I would also like to congratulate fellow Leeds player Anthony Zupnik, who I have had the pleasure of battling a couple of times at my LGS, on making Top 8 of the event! I’m also now pleased to announce that my Commander Colourless All-stars which you may have seen in some recent articles now have a more permanent home in a deck of their own, led by Hope of Ghirapur! Look out for an article from me about it soon! I also met several more content creators, which was very enjoyable! I won’t list them all, but I’ll shout out @Spice8Rack who let me know about some of his upcoming ideas for exploring the lore of Magic (while casually annihilating me in the finals of a Chaos draft with Tetzimoc, Primal Death) and @AtlasCrafts for telling tales over dinner of building Karn, Scion of Urza‘s armour and his love for boardgames!”

James

“Each time I go to a large event like a MagicFest I’m blown away by the scale of the event, and London was no exception. I wasn’t originally going to be able to attend the event but thanks to some last-minute adjustments in my schedule, I was able to drive down Saturday morning to take part in the main event. How did I do? Well I didn’t make day two. But that allowed me to drop early from the event and catch up with some great people from the community. I spent most of the rest of the weekend playing Commander with the likes of @junglefiver and @emmmzyne, as well as many games with my fellow writers here on the site. I also dropped by the Mythic Championship and even watched the finals unfold live. Overall, I had a blast down in London with friends new and old. The highlight of the weekend though was eating pizza on the top floor of a double decker bus with these fine individuals.”

Kristen

Commander with Kristen, James, @emmmzyne & @junglefiver. Kristen managed to go off with a Wheel of Fortune over a Smothering Tithe and #makeborosgreatagain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“This was my first major Magic event, so I was brimming with excitement as I traveled down to the capital. It was great to meet Sam, Seb & James, catch up with Abbie & Chris, and also say hello to lot of other content creators I’ve grown to appreciate over the past couple of years, like Pleasant Kenobi, Connor from Spice8Rack & Wedge who hosts the Mana Source. I played the main event, War of the Spark Sealed on Saturday, and although I didn’t make it to day 2, I did beat a Pro player in a very difficult game, so that’s a story I’ll happily share! Over the course of the weekend, I managed to pick up some cool foils for some of my EDH decks, hang out with some cool people like Kirsty @heyworstartist, Emma @emmmzyne & Max @junglefiver, play a chaos draft, and finally obtain the Wheel of Fortune I’ve wanted for so long. Sitting in on the Q&A with Mark Rosewater was also great – I got him to spill the beans on the ongoing tweaks to White for Commander, where he revealed we’ll see a new direction for White in this year’s fall set. I’m super excited to find out what that is! Oh and I also won like six games of Commander, so there’s that.”

Sam

“London was my second big Event, and after the great time I had at Liverpool late last year, I was really excited to be able to spend even more time with the rest of the MoM team and jam some games of Magic. I spent the Friday grabbing some cards for a Tasigur, the Golden Fang deck I was building, bummed out of some Modern events on the Saturday, and spent the Sunday doing some more trading and playing a tonne of Commander. As someone who doesn’t get to play much Magic in person, it was great to be able to spend an entire weekend doing so. The highlight of my weekend had to be meeting members of the community and chatting with the MoM team. It was the first time I had met Kristen in person, and being able to throw ideas around with everyone present got me super pumped for the future of the website. Another highlight was seeing Abbie’s cosplay, as well as those of all the other cosplayers who attended. They all did a fantastic job and looked awesome!”

Seb

For a first foray into big Magic events I can’t have asked for a better experience! The actual Magic didn’t go so well, my inexperience with Modern Spirits (thank you Chris for lending the deck!) and an opponent topdecking The Rack left me 1-2 in the only event I played, but I did have great fun with Sire of Insanity playing EDH. My haul of guild symbol sew-on patches and beautiful faerie rogue tokens by rk post will be a lasting momento, as will hearing Mark Rosewater try his hardest to not spoil the plot of War of the Spark during his Q&A (try being the operative word). Properly meeting with the MoM team since I’ve been geographically split from them was great, as was chatting with @AtlasCrafts about his upcoming boardgame VIAE and meeting Sam Ihlenfeldt (@ihlenfeldt). I even made a momentary Magic friend on the platform leaving ExCel at 11pm.  The cosplay was fantastic, whether Abbie’s magnificent debut, @goberthicks as Teysa, @NissaCosplay as Kasmina, an incredibly Jace I didn’t catch the name of – there were just so many!

In Closing

For some of the team, this was the first time we got to hang out in person. It was great to catch up with people we’d been working closely with for some time, and great to chat about the future and what the site is aiming for. Abbie booked a great Tapas place too!

We’ve got some cool stuff planned, and we’ll be sharing it with you in the coming weeks. In the mean time, we’ll be taking a little time to build up some content.

How was your MagicFest London? How was Pre-release? Let us know on Twitter @MasterofMagics!

Liked it? Take a second to support Master of Magics on Patreon!

In response...