After this the top 8 players sat down for a Rochester draft.  Rochester draft is kind of confusing, but it involves the packs being laid out on the table one at a time, and the players take turns drafting from the face-up cards.  Thus each player can - if they are good - figure out exactly when the players around them are drafting, and what their opponent (the person sitting across the table from them) is playing, and draft accordingly.  There was some confusion initially, as many of the players had never Rochester drafted before, but they settled in fairly quickly.  There were a number of catcalls and other reactions from the audience, as several of the players made picks that they disagreed with - the very first pack saw a Pentavus taken third, for one.  Repeated yells of 'Blessed!' were also sent at Cyril, who opened an Oblivion Stone, an Arcbound Ravager and a Qumulox for his mono-blue affinity deck, as well as being passed a Broodstar and an Acquire.

Greg, Kyle, James and Cyril managed to advance to the semifinals, with the best story of the quarters coming from the James-Robb match.  Robb fell behind early in the third game, but was on the verge of stabilizing at two life when James played the card he had just top-decked: the oft-maligned Spark Elemental.  James was then taken down by Greg in the semifinals, while Kyle emerged victorious over Cyril in a very close-fought match.  Greg and Kyle agreed to split the first and second place prizes evenly, but wanted to play off for pride and bragging rights.  Greg took a quick first game, but Kyle had a Vex to stop a lethal Stand Together in the second, and Kyle's deck again took him through in the third game.  Congratulations to Kyle Smith!

Overall the tournament was a great success.  The only real problem we had was with the printer - C'n'M wasn't used to doing the results slips that are used to report the outcome of matches, and started to have problems when we were printing multiple sheets at a time.  We ended up not using the results slips for the later part of the tourament, but with only 17 matches running at a time, that was not a large hardship.  The players all seemed to be having fun, and several have asked me if this is going to become a recurring event.  Well... maybe.  For now, let me just say that nothing else will happen in 2004, and we'll see about next year.

I would like to thank, again, all of our sponsors.  This website will be remaining up for the forseeable future, so if you're ever going to be in any of these cities and need somewhere to play, consider stopping in at one of them.  You can find the list on the qualifiers page, and can get directions to the stores from the linked pages.

-- Duncan McGregor
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

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