For those familiar with Firebranded, welcome to the new site! For those that are new here, I’m Anthony Lowry, a competitive semi-grinder from the New York City area. I’m usually known for doing/wearing something that an average person would consider “out there”. My most recent “thing” has been goggles, on rare occasions, there’s a card around my person, usually symbolizing an inside joke (most recently, Sanctuary Cat at Grand Prix Baltimore). Outside of Magic, I’m an aspiring Electronic Dance DJ and audio engineer.

You can follow me on Twitter, @aulowry

This past week or so has been my most successful week in competitive Magic, Posting up a top four and top two finish in the last two Grand Prix trials. I hoped to take the recent momentum and bring it to the Grand Prix in Baltimore, the first Grand Prix that I’d be participating in.

12:11am

I arrive with Morgan Chang, Tony Busciano, and Lambros Doulos at about midnight on Thursday-Friday. I didn’t really want to do much else other than sleep, since I started coming down with a cold, a cold that would fight with me the entire weekend. I quickly grab a half of a bed and attempt to sleep.

4:21am, Friday

I wake up to what I thought was a lawnmower trying to be turned on in the room, after being startled for a second, I realize that it was just snoring. I’m a very light sleeper, so the slightest noise will wake me up. This also means that the slightest noise will keep me from sleeping. I wind up laying there until about 7am, to which I concede the night and head downstairs to get breakfast.

More tired than Stephen Whalen’s jokes, I drag myself to the hotel restaurant, to which I was greeted by a group of very nice waitresses who made some positive comments about my goggles. I grab some pretty good food from their buffet (which consisted of bacon, obviously), and take the time to register my deck for tomorrow:

• 4 Primeval Titan
• 2 Inferno Titan
• 4 Huntmaster of the Fells
• 3 Solemn Simulacrum
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 1 Birds of Paradise

• 4 Galvanic Blast
• 4 Rampant Growth
• 4 Slagstorm
• 2 Green Sun’s Zenith
• 1 Dismember
• 4 Sphere of the Suns

• 4 Copperline Gorge
• 4 Rootbound Crag
• 4 Inkmoth Nexus
• 2 Kessig Wolf Run
• 6 Mountain
• 5 Forest

Sideboard:

• 2 Dismember
• 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter
• 2 Karn Liberated
• 1 Naturalize
• 2 Ancient Grudge
• 1 Corrosive Gale
• 1 Whipflare
• 2 Beast Within
• 2 Thrun, the Last Troll
• 1 Autumn’s Veil

After realizing how much bacon I ate while finishing the deck registration sheet, I head to the event site early with Morgan, getting some sweet deals before people were allowed in (Marsh Flats for four bucks? Sure!). Most of the day was spent hanging out with friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, random drafting, and laughing hysterically at how it takes two humans to kill a Sanctuary Cat…

2:21am

I arrive back to the hotel after hanging out with some old, amazing friends that I haven’t seen in a little bit over forever. I’m completely full from eating the best cheese/ranch/bacon/sex fries ever. I make a real attempt to go to sleep without interruption this time, since there were only 2 out of the 4 of us in the room. I quickly doze off and have a pretty awesome sleep.

2:51am

I wake up to a car doing a burnout, or so I thought until I tried to move. There was a large body on top of my shoulder, and snoring directly in my ear.

Seriously?

4:44am

At this point, I scooped and got off of the bed, sat on the chair, and tried to rest as best as I could. With my cold getting worse, it wasn’t going to be easy. I wind up sitting there for about 3 hours before I just go down and get breakfast. I was going to tough out this Grand Prix the hard way…with one bye…on hardly 2 hours of sleep…

Easy, right?

~