Tundra Wolves Challenge 5

As we head into Thanksgiving 2025, I’m feeling nostalgic and thinking about Canada 2022, as one does. Here is my trip as I remember it. There is a much better tournament report available at the TWC website here.

In June of 2022 I was fortunate enough to tag along on my wife’s work trip and attend the Tundra Wolves Challenge V. This is more of a travel report than a tournament report because I’m writing it 3.5 years later, and have forgotten all specifics. What I do remember, though, are great vibes from the Montreal crew. It was a fun tournament run by some of the most gracious and hospitable titans of old school magic on a beautiful Saturday in June in the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest in Canada, and the eighth-largest in North America - Mount Royal, aka Montreal. What a place. My family and I can’t wait to go back some day soon.

PLANES

If you didn’t travel internationally during or shortly after the COVID pandemic, you really missed out. We had seats on United going through one of the New York City area airports to Montréal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport and had to prove vaccination status and pass through several random and not so random screenings and swabbings.

Luckily with the distraction brought about by the virus, nobody in airport security asked why I was carrying a box of cards into their country, and nobody questioned my deck list choices.

HOTEL

We arrived a few days before the tournament and my wife had to work, so my son and I were on our own for much of the trip. We stayed at Hotel Omni which was across the street from McGill University; a nice urban campus from what I can tell. McGill has many famous alumni, according to the Google search you can do yourself. We were also near the bottom of a very large hill, which turned out to be the namesake of the city. Mount Royal is 4,500 feet tall, which is about 38,000 meters when converted to beaver tails. We climbed to the top and it was really nice up there. Somehow a small lake exists at the top of the mountain and it’s stocked with goldfish. Quirky! You can get snacks up there too, so definitely make the hike.

TRAINS and AUTOMOBILES and BUSES

My son and I took the double decker bus tour and I couldn’t hear the tour guide so I am making up these facts. But the bus ride was really fun, taking us all around the city up and down busy streets and near old buildings with interesting history and cool stories, and my kid only complained a couple times. We also took a car to the Montreal Olympic Park and checked out the olympic sized pool. I remember the cabbie giving me his number and driving off. When we were done with our tour, I called his number and he said “yeah that’s a bit far, just take the train” so we figured out the Montreal train system. I hope he’s doing well.

Caitlyn Jenner: The Montreal Olympics were in July 1976, the bicentennial, at the height of patriotism.

NATURE

Right (or maybe left) next to the Olympic Park, or maybe part of the park; anyway situated within the same concrete paved area, is the Montreal Biodome.

Bud: I propose that we plant these seeds and I know what your thinkin’ “Illegal! Illegal!” but the value of purple sticky punch goes way beyond just tokin’ it!

This place is cool. They have penguins, starfish, birds, fish, biomes, and a huge lobby. If I went back to Montreal I would be tempted to visit the Biodome again.

BOATS

I think it was the night before the tournament that we booked a river cruise boat ride and I recommend you do the same when you visit Montreal. But, when you do, make sure that there isn’t a prom or homecoming or wedding or bar mitzvah taking up the entire boat. Or if there is, dress accordingly. We wore jeans and hoodies to a black tie event on the water but luckily had the excuse that we were simple American tourists who didn’t understand French Canadian customs. We also walked there from our hotel which took a bit over an hour and made our kid a bit cranky, so we tried to just go with the flow and everyone laughed with (at?) us and it was fine. Actually it was quite nice and we even got to join a class action lawsuit against the boat company for improper credit card charging or something to that effect. I invested our $3 check wisely in Chi-Chi’s stock.

The Tundra Wolves club at the time had a penchant for sharing the ‘kit’ they were bringing to the tournament, so I shared mine when we got back to the hotel:

CARDS

On to the tournament! Imagine how excited I was to meet Foggie, Patrick, Guillaume, Martin, Yanick, Sebastien, Sebastien, Jean-Sebastien, Guillaume, Guillaume, Guillaume, and the crew. I had received some of the fanciest mail from these guys and they seemed really cool in Discord.

It’s no surprise that in person they are even nicer, given their Canadianness and their awesomeness. It was a bit strange walking into a bar in another country while not really knowing anyone, but they were so hospitable that there was no reason to be nervous. They even gave me a prize pitcher of local beer for being the person who traveled the farthest! Rich Borque and Pez were also there and might have been the rightful winners, but they didn’t object at the time. Nice guys.

While designing my deck list, my only real ideas were that I wanted to play Tundra Wolves and I wanted the name of the deck to be “Timmy’s Trip to Canada” - and without any better ideas, this is what I came up with:

I was afraid to bring all my real cards across the border so I made myself some proxies for the list I actually played that day.

I’m quite sure I didn’t win a match. I don’t believe I won a game. I can only partially blame the prize pitcher for my losses. I got a view of the top tables when I arrived, sure that I would never see them again. But I do sort of recall that I played a match on stream at some point in the day.

Ok I guess it was round 1: watch me embarass myself in another country

And as it turns out, I did manage a few wins! According to the final results anyway:

They had the classic cool swag such as signed cards, custom playmats, 3D printed d20 dice, you know - the usual stuff. I also picked up a fun souvenir copy of Diamond Valley that has nothing to do with anything, but I still have this card and think about my trip every time I see it.

So there you have it. A trip down memory lane and a call for all old school wizards and warlocks to pay a visit to our friends in Montreal so that you can play cards with them, drink beer with them, eat their poutine, climb their mountain, and check out their Bio Dome!

Young Doyle: Can we do it again Squirrely?

Hell yeah!