The Oxbow by Thomas Cole (1836). Ramos, Dragon Engine by Joseph Meehan

Yarglefest.

What can I tell you about Yarglefest?

It was like Woodstock, but without the rain.

Also without the drugs . . . 

and without the musical numbers . . . 

and without the hippies.

So basically, it was exactly like Woodstock, but only if you replaced everything about Woodstock with a bunch of Commander players gathered together at a local game store to play commander with Mono-Black Yargle decks.

Also, to be perfectly accurate, you'd probably need to define "a bunch" with a number . . . 

and that number would be three.

Yes, you should be laughing now, and to be perfectly honest, you should probably be laughing at me.

I'm laughing too, so technically you're laughing with me.

It's worth learning how to laugh at your own missteps in life. You're going to have plenty of them so you might as well learn to take the bumps in the road with a sense of humor.

Today's post will be a reflection on some of the takeaways from the weekend.

Much Ado About Nothing

I don't think the commenters were just humoring me and I don't think my friends were messing with me.

Many commander players online said they would have loved to come play but the hard reality is that announcing a local event on an online forum can give you a false sense of having actually spread word.

In my defense, I actually had folks from as far away as Montreal suggest that they were playing with the idea of coming down, so at the time it didn't feel unreasonable to think I had a chance of getting a dozen or more New England or even Boston area Commander players to come out for Yarglefest.

Our local Commander players already share their Saturdays with us, so it's unsurprising that they have commitments on Sunday. Laundry and grocery shopping don't happen on their own, and relationships and family require time commitments as well.

For whatever reason, we barely got anyone to show up.

A Bullet Dodged

I'm something of an optimist. I had planned out what to do if I had 40 or 50 people show up, and I genuinely wasn't sure whether I'd get next to no participants or get flooded and have to turn folks away.

Maybe that means I'm something of a dumbass, but fortunately I didn't go overboard.

I didn't bake cookies or bring any food.

I didn't make any decorations.

All I did was print out a stack of 50 score sheets for players to use.

It certainly could have been worse.

So while that's a little sad (and a little funny), it's also a bullet dodged. I'm an optimist but I'm not so foolish as to have done more than just set aside a Sunday afternoon to try to create a fun day of Commander for anyone that wanted to join in.

There's no shame in trying to do something for other people, even if it fails. I'd much rather try to plan events and see them fail than not to try at all. That's not even something I'm telling myself to feel better about what was objectively a colossal failure.

I have no regrets about trying to make Yarglefest happen, though clearly I should have gone about it differently.

About the Games

Alan Partridge.

Alan was my saving grace this past Sunday.

He alone, of all the people who saw my idea and thought it looked like fun, took time out of his Sunday to come play with us. Without Alan, I would have been a truly sad person. Because he gave the idea a chance, we wound up playing some Commander and having fun.

The guy running the store had also prepared a Yargle deck and was there for the day with plans to join us, so including myself we had three players.

Alan had said that an online friend had told him about the event and was probably coming as well, but ultimately the friend never showed. We waited a while and when it became clear that he was our only attendee, we shuffled up and played some games.

I hate three player Commander games, but there wasn't much we could do about that.

I came out of the gate strong and won the first two matches. My build was from an old Skithyrix deck that was absolutely brutal in one-on-one matchups. Alan's build was a Relentless Rats deck with Yargle at the helm. Our third player, Paco, who was also running the store, had a build that was more similar to mine but possibly a little less mean.

After the first two wins, I started the third game by telling Alan and Paco to kill me first. I then played a turn two Isochron Scepter with Tainted Strike imprinted on it to show them I meant it. They were able to get me down close to twenty before I was able to rebalance, use some removal and make a push for the win, but it wasn't enough. I never got to use Tainted Strike on my Yargle. They killed me and then duked it out. I think Alan won that game.

We wound up playing a bunch more Yargle games that afternoon and got to see all manner of dumb stuff. Everyone got at least one win, which made me really happy. I actually high-fived Paco at one point when he was able to Yargle me (kill me with his Yargle) out of nowhere with a Tainted Strike.

We all played cards that each other hadn't seen and we honestly had a great time. It was fun, and the kind of fun that you don't get when you're playing highly competitive decks. There was no worrying about how to deal with a certain commander or a certain type of deck. It was just old fashioned, straightforward Commander with an obviously limited meta and an understanding that when everyone is on Yargle, nobody is going to take things too seriously.

Your Grand Yarglemaster

I'm not sure if Alan Partridge actually won the most games. It's possible he tied with me or that I won a game more than him over the course of the afternoon.

We simply weren't keeping track.

Alan was such a good sport about the low attendance and such a genuinely fun person to play with that I asked him if he would like to take the 2018 Grand Yarglemaster playmat as my thanks for coming and playing with us.

He was happy to take it, and I think that makes him our Grand Yarglemaster.

Congratulations, Alan! I can't thank you enough for joining us!

Final Thoughts

I still think the idea was a good one, even if my planning was clearly insufficient.

One comment that came up again and again online was why Yarglefest wasn't being held on September 3rd or possibly March 9th depending on whether or not you write your date as 9/3 or 3/9. They may have had a point, but I didn't want to wait months to try to make this happen. Maybe I should have.

I wish I had taken more notes about our games, but to be perfectly honest, I was pretty upset about only having two people to play with. While I think I put forth a good attitude and made the most of it, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to focus on remembering the details of each game.

The sad hilarity of planning an event and only having one person show up does make me want to start calling any big event that only one outside person shows up to a "Yarglefest". Alternately, I could start calling three person games "Yarglefests" but in reality, the only thing that should be called a Yarglefest is a game with only Yargle decks.

I definitely do not want any of you to come away from this article with the idea that you shouldn't put yourself out there and try to plan stuff. You should, but you should also be prepared for the eventuality that sometimes folks don't show up or your efforts weren't good enough. Sometimes they won't be enough, but it's still worth trying.

As I write, we are in the middle of a pretty amazing set of spoilers for Battlebond and I'm going to be gearing up to write about Najeela, the Blade-Blossom for next week's article. I never expected to see a five color legendary that cares about warriors, but the pieces of my old Zurgo Helmsmasher deck are going to get dusted off and I'll see what I can throw together for you guys.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!