It’s March Break for the boys and with restrictions lifting fast in Ontario (masks will not even be required indoors in most places within days), it does feel like some kind of normal is returning to our lives. So, I took Friday and a few days off next week to spend time with the family. First up were some gaming related activities.

On Friday, the boys and I headed down to Comicon at the Metro Convention Centre. It was our first time attending as past (pre-pandemic) March break activities always conflicted with this event. Fan Expo, which runs in the summer, is a regular event for us so I was curious to see how Comicon would stack up against it.

Given that both events are run by the same organization, I was not expecting much difference. The biggest one was definitely the scale of the event. Fewer events, fewer vendors, fewer artists, you get the idea. Rather than occupying both the north and south buildings, Comicon only took up the south one. I’m not sure if this was always the case or if this due to the pandemic and the current restrictions.

The boys found that there was greater emphasis on cosplay, anime and comic books. While games were represented, they weren’t to the scale of what we had seen at Fan Expo. Video games were almost absent except for vendors selling older console games and Mortal Kombat tournaments in one corner. Also missing were the big Sony, Microsoft and EBGames (now GameStop) booths.

Board and card games in general also felt under-represented with the huge gaming room normally seen at Fan Expo completely absent (or we just missed it) and no Dungeons & Dragons events that we could see. Christian had hoped to find some Warhammer stuff but we found none, leaving him a bit disappointed. Magic was also a bit of an afterthought with only a few vendors offering singles and sealed products.

Noah picked up two posters, one from Totoro and the other from Princess Mononoke. He is definitely a big fan of Studio Ghibli movies.

The one event we attended was a sketch duel between Johnny Desjardins and Hugh Rookwood. While I don’t know either artist (out of comics for too long, I guess), I thought Noah especially would get a kick out of something like this as he enjoys drawing. While the event was interesting, it was not quite what I expected. I thought we would have a chance to watch the artists in action. Unfortunately, we did not get to see them work on the sketch itself (except for one glimpse about halfway through). Instead, both answered questions from the crowd and the MC as they drew.

All in all, I’m glad we went down but I think we’ll focus on Fan Expo going forward unless there is some very specific event or guest that we would be interested in.

On Saturday afternoon, Noah and I headed off to Face to Face for our first draft in a very long time. Christian is not a fan of the format and opted not to join us.

A total of 18 players showed up. In a sign that restrictions are nearly a thing of the past, we were split into a pod of 10 and a pod of 8. Noah and I ended up in the former. Not much social distancing but everyone wore a mask.

My ‘Pack 1 Pick 1’ was Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Definitely a fun card to build around. At first, I thought I might focus on Samurais as my second pick was Asari Captain but I quickly found myself leaning towards Gruul instead. I ended with a mid-range deck in Gruul colours that played up the Reconfigure mechanic.

Other fun cards in the deck were my lone ninja, the Spring-Leaf Avenger and the Reinforced Ronin (which reminds me a lot of the Shatterskull Charger that I have in my Giants deck.

First round started with me losing the first game despite my opponent flooding out (even showing me his hand at one point of 5 lands and a combat trick) because I made the fatal and stupid mistake of not blocking an attack when I should have remembered that his hand was likely mostly lands. I won the second handily as he struggled to find the right mana mix. The third game went down to extra turns and the combination of a number of smaller creatures as well as a 4/5 green Spirit creature courtesy of Harmonious Emergence and Walking Skyscraper was enough for me to deal lethal with only a turn to spare.

In my second round, I found myself facing Noah. His Enchantments deck proved to be too fast for my deck and I quickly found myself collecting two losses. Another mistake probably cost me a game when I used my Fable of the Mirror Breaker to copy a 1/1 Deathtouch rather than the larger creature I had on the board.

In the third round, I played against a deck full of vehicles. Prodigy’s Prototype pumped out pilots that crewed a few other vehicles such as the High-Speed Hoverbike and the Mobilizer Mech. Between not having enough removal and little to answer flying threats, I went down in two. The first was a quick affair but the second was a much more entertaining game.

By the time the dust settled, Noah finished 6th out of 18 while I finished in 11th place. We finished things up by picking up some some delicious Spanakopita (spinach pie) and Loukoumades (honey puffs) on the way back home.

All in all, a good couple of days!