Tournament Update #4 - Eric Deschamps

I have been working a lot on this card tournament since I decided to start raising funds for my 5K. I've gotten people to help with the tournament itself. I went and got a venue free of charge (still have to go put the cleanup/damages deposit down soon). I even looked through all my cards to find stuff as either prizes or raffles.

What I don't think I really told anyone, minus a select few close to me, is what I'm doing for those prizes and raffles. Well, I can tell you that this will be the first one to show you, since it is the first one I have received.

So the first thing I decided to do is think about what the Magic players would really want for prizes. I think I have gotten most of those down and can promise some pretty awesome prizes for the tournament itself (mainly the top 8, still trying to figure out the rest of the people). But what I am really excited about are the raffles. I feel that raffles are the way to the gamer's heart. There will be some amazing items up for raffle that I hope will get a lot of people interested.

When I began organizing this event, I wanted to reach out to everyone. So the first thing I did was go through every Magic card that I have sitting in my room and scoured through the Gatherer website to find some of the best artists in the game and see if there was a possibility of them being able to donate prizes. Granted, I'm sure that they first assumed I was trying to cheat them out of stuff for free but once I began showing them the website and show more interest, I began to get replies. At least 15 replies so far. I don't want to go into the list of who until I start getting some of the things in the mail but let me introduce to you the first piece that will definitely be prominent at the raffle.

Grand Abolisher by Eric Deschamps

Click the picture to make it bigger

Eric Deschamps was one of the first artists I wrote and one of the first I got a reply from. He wanted to look through his merchandise and decided on sending this bad boy over to me today. It is autographed in the bottom corner in gold Sharpie and is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I'm sure the other artists that I am going to be getting things from will send stuff just as equally as amazing as this.

Let me tell you that I am super serious about this event succeeding. I know people that already want me to try and do this again next year. I hope that by showing you the first raffle item will tell everyone that I'm dedicated to this event. 

There will be more reveals as soon as I get them. I'll keep everyone posted!