The Avengers Sneak Preview was on Sunday. At first, I was planning not to go and just stay home to wait for the mobilization to happen. However, I was so convinced by so many people (Himura, Miya, Shoujing, even Chris) that there would be absolutely no mobilization during this NDP period that I just decided to go.
I've always had problems waking up early for all the VS events so far, but this was the first time that I managed to get up at 9 am and reach Suntec at 10 am. The Sneak Peek was supposed to start at 9 am and I thought I was early. To my surprise, they were already on their 5th flight even though it was only an hour after the start time. It just showed how popular this event was. Technokia and JokerZ were there early, too. I went to sign up and we sat around and chatted. Reno was excitedly telling all his friends that he cracked two money rares in his sealed (Hulk and Avengers Assmebled).
At around 10:30 am, my phone suddenly rang and I saw an unfamiliar number. I answered the call and realized that I have been mobilized. I quickly called my Mum since she said that she would help give me a ride in the event of a mobilization. I then went to the counter and asked the TO Julian if I could get a refund or something. He told me that I could opt to drop out and leave with all the boosters and goodies, which was exactly what I did. I had my choice of either the play mat, shirt or deck case, and I went for the deck case since I missed getting one during the Green Lantern Sneak Peek.
After I was done, my Mum drove me home. I had all my equipment ready from the night before so all I had to do was get changed and go. Since the Mob time was at 10:30 am, I had to report within 4 hours, but of course, the earlier everyone gets there, the faster we will be dismissed.
We left home at around 11:30 pm. My reservist camp was at Sungei Gedong; I have no idea where that was, but it was probably somewhere in the extreme West end of Singapore since the papers mentioned Boon Lay MRT Station. (Ah, living in the East is such a sucky thing.) The journey was super duper long. When we were near the camp, the roads began to widen and there were trees all around with no buildings in sight. The journey took nearly an hour and we arrived at Sungei Gedong camp at around 12:30 pm. We were directed by road marshals to a civilian carpark. I got off there and boarded a 3-tonner with other people that drove us into the camp. Most of the men were surprised when we realized that tonner had seatbelts like the ones you'd find on a plane. The interior of the tonner now had padding, too. Looks like safety was the 'in' thing now; no more banging your head against the hard wall or falling face-first into the floor whenever the tonner hit a bump in the road.
Once we arrived at the reporting point, I scanned my card and signed my attendance. Then we were told to sit around and wait till we were allowed to be dismissed. Alright, that didn't sound too bad. At least we didn't have an inspection or have to draw arms or anything. I just sat on the ground and disturbed all my friends with my SMS to past the time. Most of the men around me were older guys and spoke in various dialects; there were obviously not of my generation. I wonder why was I the only young guy there. (Was I even young? Well, no one there seemed to speak English.) All I knew was that a few guys were pointing out how 'on' I was because I was the only one there who brought his SBO in addition to his field pack. Hey, the papers did say full battle order. I feel like I've been cheated! Grrr.
After around an hour of waiting, we were finally released at 1:30 pm. I guess they were waiting for a certain percentage of people to report first. We then waited for around 20 minutes for the tonner to take us back to the civilian car park. My Mum was there waiting for me because I SMS'ed her when the thing was over. It was another long ride and I reached home at around 3:00 pm.
I showered and surfed the net a bit. My Mum said that she was free for the rest of the day and offered to take me out if I wanted to. I jumped on the offer and she drove me back to Suntec at 5:00 pm to continue where I left off in the morning. hehe.
Everyone else I knew were there already. I joined the last flight of the day and cracked opened my packs. The stuff I had were pretty okay; I'd be happy if I could keep them. I had a few multiples and even had 3 copies of a particular pump card. It was rare to get so many multiples in draft. But then we swapped decks and I ended up with uber crap. Deck construction took very long, and we finally began the first round at 6:00 pm.
My first round was against WanXin aka Xiaomei. At first, she had the upper hand with a better board, but She-Hulk: Gamma Bombshell saved me 10 life thanks to her invulnerability on turns 5 and 6, allowing me the lead in endurance points and surviving to turn 7. Xiamei accidentally put her 7-drop without Range into her back row (I also didn't realize it or else I may have told her during the formation step), so I stunned all her small guys, leaving her in the negatives and ended my turn to win. Our match was the first to finish, so I went to walk around and idle.
The 2nd round began. I was up against a guy named Anthony. He was unbelievably quiet and didn't clearly announce whenever he passed, making me repeatedly ask him if I could make my move (He probably think I am rude, but it's better than both people staring at each other, waiting for something to happen.) On turn 4, I had Quicksilver and Warbird. I team-attacked into his 4-drop, sending it back to his hand, realizing how powerful Warbird was. He chose to stun-back Warbird, so Quicksilver readied and went for his 3-drop. Wow. On turn 5, he recasted his 4-drop and went for all my guys with his pumps. On turn 6, I missed my drop and recruited another 5-drop, but he had more pumps to finish me off. I revealed that I had 2 team-ups and all-Reservist characters in my resource row. I didn't drew any other plot twists for this game.
As usual, I was the first to finish my game. I walked around and realized that this was taking far too long. Most of the games were going past the 30 min time limit but I think the judges all had their hands full. Come on, I understand that this is a new set so everyone had to read the cards, but all those guys probably joined 2-3 flights already; they couldn't be slower than me.
Kyo started calling me and this was when I realized it was taking too long. I was feeling tired since it was a hectic day and it was near 8 pm already. I was also rather pissed that everyone who wore VS shirts got free extra boosters (I was wearing my VS shirt in the morning, but not now).Since there were no more prizes to redeem (deck cases and play mats were long gone) and I had no incentive to play my crappy sealed deck, I decided to just drop out and shared a cab with Akira and Amerell to AMK to meet Kyo.
At AMK, we had dinner at KFC. I finally decided to order chicken since I haven't tried it in a very long time. However, the chicken tasted strange; it had some sort of fishy smell. I hope it wasn't bad or something. All I knew was that the fishy after-taste lingered in my mouth for the rest of the night.
After dinner, we returned to Chris' shop, chatted a bit and looked at the new cards we got. Then we called it a day. This has been one of my most packed Sundays and I am so glad now that my recall manning is over. Wee.
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