Missing IATC 2025? Recreate the experience in 5 easy steps.

IATC is, without a doubt, expensive. Now that it's a full week of events, the championship has become a major investment for, like 95% of throwers in the world. But, dear reader, we can't help but feel a real FOMO about missing the ding dang thing.

So let's say you're in the very real situation wherein you want to go, but simply can't justify the small loan you'd need to manage it. Well, don't worry. The cure is here.

If you want the experience of IATC without the cost (or time away from real life), simply try these IATC-inspired, at-home experiences!

IATC 2025 experience number 1: Draw $1,000 dollars from your bank account and re-buy your own axes.

Now you can feel all the regret and anxiety of dropping big bucks on hardware that, realistically, you don't need at all. To make it an HD experience, when you "buy" your own axes from yourself, go ahead and give that money to a friend to hold onto for a few months. Now you get the panic and the pang of regret.

IATC 2025 experience number 2: Simulate the nerves of throwing at Worlds by slamming 5 Red Bulls and trying to throw a league match.

Having the yips is a real thing at Worlds. Now, I've only ever gone once before, and I lost IMMEDIATELY to some lovely people - but it was like I'd never, ever thrown before. I forgot everything. How to throw, what an axe was, how my hands worked - it all fell apart.

So if you want the same sort of experience but can't make it to Toronto, go ahead and fill your tummy with synthetic, legal drugs (a la Red Bull), then try to control the shaking long enough to throw at your local league.

Sure, your heart might very well stop, but it's probably the closest approximation I can come up with to how I felt last year. Well, closest legal approximation.

IATC 2025 experience number 3: Have an IATC watch party, but only invite people who are much taller than you and have them stand in front of the TV the whole time.

Okay, probably just a personal experience, but if you really want to feel like you're there: get 20-30 people to crowd into your living room and turn on the IATC stream. Make sure you can only kinda hear the commentators. Stand the whole time. Have folks pleasantly bump into you every few seconds and scream at random. For ultra-immersion, make sure every single one of them hasn't bathed in a while. You know, for the atmospherics.

IATC 2025 experience number 4: Put a bunch of stuff on fold-out tables. Walk by them for 5 hours, nodding and smiling.

What the stuff is isn't really that important, but if it's axe-throwing adjacent, all the better. In your backyard or living room, set up three or four fold-out tables with stuff all over 'em. Spend a good chunk of your day walking between them. Pick stuff up, look at the price (you put on them), nod and put them back down.

The key here is to seem like you appreciate the effort and beauty of whatever the thing is you picked up, but not completely put-out by the price. Do this so many times that you dream about [whatever the items were] for about a month after. Bonus points if you have a friend or partner who can sit at one of the tables and say "hey what's up, good to see you" while sounding as disinterested as possible.

IATC 2025 experience number 5: Play Pico 8's Desert Bus video game emulator.

One of the most realistic things you can take part in, no matter where you are, is the monotony and mind-bending agony of traveling to Toronto. Now, I could suggest that you just hop in your car and drive around your local area for the approximate amount of time it'd take you to get to Toronto (I'd love to see your calculations, Aussies and Europeans), but there's a much better way:

Desert Bus is a game (well, one of six games included) in Penn & Teller's unreleased (I think) SEGA game Smoke and Mirrors. The goal is simple: Drive at 45 miles per hour from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. That drive, at 45 miles per hour, takes 8 hours. And that's 8 real hours you'll need to spend in the game driving down a slightly curving, zero-scenery highway.

Now, that's about 1 hour, give or take, longer than it'd take me to get to Toronto, so I've lucked out. You might have to play quite a bit longer (maybe 2 or 3 times through) to really reflect your own experience. Make it feel like the real thing by holding your pee, not standing up, and listening to AALOTO or Not Axe Murderers podcasts the whole time. Have a fellow axe thrower join you and experience the uncomfortable silence when you've run out of things to talk about around hour 4. By the time you "make it" to Toronto, you won't care that you're not really at Worlds. You won't care about anything. You'll be broken.

I hope these tips help out everyone who isn't independently wealthy and/or simply can't make it to IATC this year. You will be missed - but hopefully, with these tips, you won't feel like you're missing out.