Xpo's Magic

Monday, May 5, 2008

Shadowmoor Prerelease I

So on April 19th we headed up to College Park, Maryland because it is the closest Magic: the Gathering venue. The annoyance factor of that is a topic for another time.

Typically only V and I attend pre-releases. That was the case for both Lorwynn and Morningtide, but as a result of drafting Lorwynn and Morningtide with our prize packs from those pre-releases K and A were more interested this time. So for the Shadowmoor pre-release the four of us packed ourselves into V's car and drove on up.

The experience of a pre-release? It's unique. My first was Mirrodin. At the time I was still primarily a multi-player Magic fan. V was with me for that one, but he had arranged to join a 3-man team flight and the team was already full, so I was on my own. I joined up with the owner of our local gaming shop and a friend of his and we made our own 3-man team. That was all I did back then.

Since leaving college the formats have change, along with my address. The only team events they have now are Two-Headed Giant sealed. Not quite my cup of tea, though I'm sure I'd enjoy it, and it's something I'll have to try in the future. For now, though the only choices were sealed and draft. The organizers have a special deal. Buy two sealeds at the beginning of the day and you get a $5 discount. Given the prices they charge ($30 per sealed, which I calculate to be a $13 premium at a minimum) this is almost a necessity! So all four of us signed up for this deal and immediately got ready for the first sealed. My very first crack at a new set, it's always exciting. I've seen the promo cards over at Wizards but nothing else. The full set has not yet been revealed to me because I enjoy the surprise. But I already know what I want. I want to pack an Oona and a handful of the other cards. I particularly want as many Leech Bonders as I can grab. To my chagrin, by the end of the day I had not packed an Oona, and had managed to obtain 0 copies of Leech Bonder. All the same, this was likely my most successful pre-release to date. Let's look at the cards first.

Sealed Deck Pile #1[Show]

The very first thing I notice, of course, are the rares. Actually that's a flat-out lie. I opened the sealed first and read through them commons first, then uncommons, then rares. The rares are probably the first thing you noticed, though. An impressive collection. The goal for me, though, is speedy and accurate deck-building, and the key to that is quickly discarding poor avenues of deckbuilding. The sooner I can eliminate a color or two, the better I'll be. It gives me more time to playtest the deck, get sample draws, and make minor adjustments. So my first run-through I'm looking for the bad cards, the ones that will never go into any deck I make unless I'm intentionally making one with the worst cards I can find. My first run-through I am looking for the Chimney Imps of the set. Out of the 75 cards I opened not too many went there this time. This is an OK grab, but not great by any stretch of the imagination, and even then the cards I'm clearly going to toss? Slinking Giant, Illumniated Folio and a few others. This did not help me make any color decisions at all.

My first run-through is also looking for the bombs. Sure, those are usually the rares, so let's take a moment to look at each of the rares, and then the other cards that are clearly winners:

Winners![Show]

Frankly, at the end of this I had piles of cards that were working well together, but nothing clear. A lot of good cards, but not really enough anywhere to make a decision. I really wanted to play either blue or white to get some of the really powerful cards I had in U/W hybrid, including Plumeveil going, but I just didn't see enough there. Similarly red seems like a shoe-in because it clearly has the best selection of creatures, but a lot of that dips into green, where I've got good stuff, and black where I've got good stuff.

I ultimately went with a R/B deck because I thought it would give me more synergy with the hybrids I had. I tossed in the Deus because I figured I could fix into it with the Cairns. And honestly, I was able to play it most of the time without issue, which was probably lucky. In order to fill things out I tossed in Boggart Arsonists and Ember Gale, main deck. The Arsonists curve out nicely and aren't terrible for a red creature, and I knew most decks I'd be seeing would have scarecrows in them to compensate for color problems. The Ember Gale I figured would make a nice finisher letting all my creatures through on a last turn. The second ability if it ever went off would be merely gravy. Lastly, in goes Spiteful Visions. This was a bit of a curiosity play, but also because with my Leechridden Swamps, my solid creature base, and my direct damage I figured I'd be able to race better than most decks. This turns out to be one of the most important choices of all.

Shadowmoor Prerelease Deck #1 R/B[Show]

Results:

Round 1: vs. (R/B)

The first game turned very ugly very quickly. His deck was full of great cards in both colors and clearly had the better of me, but my play was able to disrupt him sufficiently with the creature destruction I did have and some crafty play from the Rustrazor Butchers. As I said, these guys made people's lives miserable at the prerelease. As a result the game started to drag and I got Spiteful Visions down. At that point I wasn't sure if it was a good play or not, because with about even life, while it was going to hurt him first, it would also help him first as he got to draw more cards. Luckily, it seemed he had drawn most of his best stuff and I'd weathered it. Eventually the Spiteful Visions and my solid enough defenses won out.

The second game was a rout against me, but it took a while to get there meaning our third game was close on time.

Right as time is being called, giving us 5 turns to complete or call it a draw, I drop the Visions again. What a play, with both of us under 10 life it confirmed a win for one of us, and as the case would be, it went to me. My opponent went on to do quite well with his deck against his next opponents, and I'm not surprised.

Won. 1-0

Round 2: vs. (U/W)

Steel of the Godhead. On a Silkbind Faerie. Seriously. 3/5 flying locks me down and gains him life. I had the combo in my hand to deal with it for three turns before I saw it, and those three turns hurt. 1) Aphotic Wisps to drop it back to a 1/3 and then 2) Burn Trail it. I couldn't even convoke it. But with the Faerie gone, I was at least still alive. Clinging at 1 life to his 24. And he failed to draw anything else all game that could hurt me. One point of damage was all he needed. Oh, for a splash of red. Or for me to get stupid and mana burn. But no. No. It was not to be. His 23 life point advantage faded quickly as I brought the forces to bear. But good grief did it take a while.

The second game went much more in his favor. U/W isn't terribly speedy and my deck is pretty fast, but he got a good start and I couldn't keep up. Onto the third game where we got into a lovely position where he had an advantage but couldn't press it fast enough. Time was called and even if I made mistakes he couldn't deal enough damage to kill me in time. I certainly couldn't kill him.

Drawn. 1-0-1.

Round 3: vs. (R/G/B)

He was late arriving so our time was cut short, but it ended up not mattering, because unlike the first two matches, this one went quickly. Scuzzback Marauders all over the place! I won the first game quite quickly, and had this been a higher level event that would've been it, because of his tardiness. But we played on. I got a bad draw and end up losing the second game, but come back and trounce him again in the third. Even the second game felt like one I probably should have won.

Won 2-0-1. With this record I'm in the packs.

Round 4: vs. (G/W/R)

He's in a bad spot, his record is worse than mine, but I can't really offer him a draw, either. It's not economically sound for either one of us. So we play it out, and his deck is just outclassed. The first game he only damaged me at all because he payed 5 mana to Flame Javelin my head right before he dies. The second game he got manascrewed.

Won. 3-0-1. Prizes: 11 packs.

The fact that my two easiest matches were against three-color decks is not surprising. Shadowmoor is very, very picky about colors. Monocolor is playable. Two-color is playable. Three is right out in these situations. My pool of cards might have made for an interesting three color deck scheme, but I know it would not have made a good three color deck.

White/Blue is every bit as good as I figured it would be, and the initial releases coming back from the pro-level stuff seems to confirm this. So if you're looking at your cards and not sure which colors to go, W/U isn't a bad choice if you've got nothing else pushing you one way or another.

There seem to be a lot of surprisingly good cards in this set. The wisps are incredibly useful on attack or defense, the godly auras are amazing on hybrid creatures of the right colors and pretty decent on a creature of a single color. And the combos and level of intricacy set up by this set is absolutely insane. I saw judges being called for truly bizarre questions.

K took three packs, which is terrific for a first event. He'd built a W/U deck himself and played it quite well. A didn't manage any in this event and V also took 3. All in all this was a good sealed that I felt I played better than I pulled on.

There are going to be a lot of sleeper cards out of this, I can feel it. I think my experience with Spiteful Visions may have me feeling it a bit more than anyone else right now, but it's a good card. It can be played in either red or black by itself, which means it's also quite easy to team it up with blue or white. Card draw and damage prevention...

I started playing around with a hypothetical deck with 4 Spiteful visions in mono-red burn Type 2. It's a bit slow coming out (without acceleration) for a constructed deck, and it does have a serious potential to backfire (here have some more cards to beat me with), but it also really hoses a lot of blue 'draw cards' types of builds and requires action or attention. Multiples are particularly insane. One down and it gets reduced to "draw two, take two", a painful situation, no doubt. Two down and it's ratchets up the agony scale to "draw three, take six". Yes, you're going to draw three and take six too, but he's taking it first. Here are the cards I see comboing well with Spiteful Visions:

Burning Command -- Great for options. You can pyroclasm if you're worried about his creatures smacking you too hard and making the Visions too painful an investment, you can deal 4 right to his head, and the real killer combo is making him discard his hand and draw that many cards. If he's been holding on to crap, it hurts and if he's been holding on to good stuff it really hurts.

The problem right now is that constructed is all about "Dredge". Which means they'll never draw anyway. But then, if Dredge never draws... why not play Spiteful Visions. You'll get an extra card a turn and only take one point of damage (if that) compared to your opponent. The answer is, for now, Dredge is too fast to worry about putting in this slow enchantment.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Magic: my way.

I substantially prefer Limited as a form of Magic to constructed. I don't have to worry about net-decking, or keeping up with the latest trends. I don't have to worry about endlessly and tediously playing the same deck over and over again; either myself or my opponents. Limited is fresher and always hopping.

That has its drawbacks too, no doubt. Limited is inherently more random. Good players will lose more often in Limited than in Constructed, and likewise mediocre players will win more. From my perspective, that where I think I'm pretty good, but definitely not pro level, that makes Limited more appealing, not less. I can go toe-to-toe with a pro if I have better cards than he does. That's only ever going to happen in Limited, or if he's intentionally giving me a handicap.

But what does Limited mean? It doesn't just mean "40 card deck", although that's a big factor in the differences. It is a tough thing to lay a label on. A limited deck can be built out of as little as a single tournament deck. Technically even less! Grab a pack, toss in about 5 lands of each basic type and you've got a limited deck of 40 cards. 15 from the booster and 25 lands. It would be playable, if increadibly painful. It would also be primarily luck. And not just the luck of who can draw the right combination of mana to cast his spells first and who top-decks the game winning card. That kind of luck exists at every level. If a pro has 4 copies of his 'win the game now' card left in his library but will lose next turn if he doesn't draw it and he's got 40 cards left... 10% chance to win. 90% to lose. That's luck. It's a part of Magic. And if you don't embrace it, you will get burned by it. The luck in Limited also comes in the form of who opened the 'better' pack. The cards are more balanced now than they have been in the past, but there are still good cards and bad, and there always will be. It's a design issue. Did I open the Loxodon Warhammer or the Mindbend? Clearly the guy opening the hammer is going to win far more often than the guy with the Mindbend. It's just a substantially better card in the format. That brings us to Rule #1 of Limited.

The fewer cards you have to chose from the more random the effects will be.

That statement is so critical that I'm leaving it all by itself so that it stands out, and I will now repeat it: The fewer cards you have to chose from the more random the effects will be. I will get to the corallary in a moment. To view this in action, think about the two examples above, the tournament pack and the booster pack. With the booster pack, you're upping your land count to 25 just to get to 40 cards, but it's also beneficial because you're going to have cards of all 5 colors. With the tournament pack you can eliminate one color easily, and a second without significant effort. If you get lucky you might even be able to eliminate three and have a playable two-color deck. Automatically your deck will now be more consistent. The odds of drawing the type of mana to cast a spell in hand are improved, the choice to mulligan is clearer, the selection of spells to bring to the table is greater. X>0 as long as X!=0.

I suppose the booster pack deck could also eliminate some colors, and the tournament pack could force a two color deck, but if we're keeping a 40 card minimum you're replacing potentially useful spells, if awkward to cast, with non-functional lands. Some of that might be worthwhile. If the booster pack contains One With Nothing, it probably would be a safer bet to not play it and stick in an extra land. One's a dead draw the other is a bad draw. Some experimentation in this level of ultra-limited play would be fun, but at the end of the day the result that shows up time and again is that limited card choice means increased randomness. Red must be so proud.

The corollary to Rule #1 of Limited is The more cards you have to chose from the more consistent your deck is. This gets right back to the point I started with about constructed. I actually dislike the utter consistency of constructed. Pain lands, sac lands and all sorts of mana smoothers, mulligan rules, tutors and deck filters are all top-level cards because they ensure that the deck does the exact same thing every time it's played. Or at least, that's the idea. Consistency is something like the Black Lotus of constructed. Highly sought after but never quite obtainable, and probably illegal if it shows up.

When you get right down to it, Constructed is Limited. You are limited to the cards that have been printed. The cards that have been printed and not banned, limited to only one of those that have been restricted, limited to a single time-period of the game, limited to recent cards, limited to a single block. Assuming everyone has a sandbox full of 4 each of every Type 2 card in their sealed deck, deck construction would look like Constructed. Except for the 40/60 card decks.

So Limited is the random side of the same coin as the consistent Constructed. But certainly you don't see very many people clamoring to play single tournament deck Limited. Part of that is history and culture, but some of it is that you need a minimum threshold of consistency in order for the game to be fun. Red can't be random unless White gets to impose a little order.

The question is: where's the sweet spot? There's an awful lot of room between the 15 cards of a booster pack and the 45 cards of a tournament pack and an even larger gap between that tournament pack and the same number of cards from a booster draft. That topic alone could fill an article. But the increase from even the powerful booster draft decks to 4 of each card in the appropriate format is almost incomprehensible. There's lots of room for Limited in there that rarely gets touched.

The closest I see is League. League gives you the simplicity of a sealed but also some scalability. It's curious that the League format isn't more popular. It's likely not because of the time it takes. Limited tends to go quick. Booster drafts are very quick. Sealed deck tournaments are a little slower but obviously faster than Leagues. Leagues also get a bad rap; as if they're for beginner players. That's unfair. Since you have a larger card selection it's clearly bridging the gap between Limited which is enjoyed by some pros and plenty of experienced Magic players, and Constructed, the format of the Pro. And what's to stop League from going more creative? Instead of making it go longer, make it go more consistent in a different route. Draft League? Never heard of it? Another topic. Trade League? The possibilities are almost as endless as the game of Magic itself.

So what is the sweet spot for Limited Magic? Is it Constructed? Is it a booster draft? Or is it something we haven't seen yet?

Friday, April 25, 2008

Introductions

I’m cheating a bit and I’m actually going to have three ‘first posts’. This is the second. Expect the third mid-week. Last post I set the ground rules, today I talk about what this will be, and who we are.

First, an introduction of the major Magic: the Gathering players that will appear in my postings.

X: That’s me. I am a fairly intent Magic player. I didn’t start playing until college. To date myself, my first block was Invasion. My first deck ever was red/black and chock full of Invasion and Planeshift creature destruction. It was fun, but as unbalanced as a beginner’s deck is wont to be. Since that time I’ve gotten better and played in a lot of different formats. In college it was primarily Grand Melee multiplayer with between 3 and 7 players, most of whom I continue to play with now in other formats, and will appear below.
X is for Xpovos, my handle, and a sort of bridge to the title of this blog. It’s pronounced “Chronos”, as it’s a transcription, not a transliteration of the Greek. To be strictly accurate, it would be Χρονος. As a result the title of this blog is more accurately “Cro’s Magic”, which is itself a pun, based on the fact that there’s a fairly popular and well known deck of Tarot cards called “Crow’s Magick”; which I also happen to own and use from time to time. The artwork appeals to me.

V: V is the guy who really taught me the ropes of Magic. He’s probably the best player in our circle. He’s also the other one, besides me, who keeps up on current events in the world of Magic: the Gathering. V and I tend to attend events together, in particular pre-release tournaments.

A: A is the one who introduced me to all my friends at college. An odd story in itself, but not related to Magic: the Gathering. A likes to build themed decks that are cohesively impressive, but not necessarily good—like an “Ant” deck—a classic Johnny. That doesn’t mean he’s a pushover, though. In our drafts he frequently does better than most anyone else. A pattern recognition gift makes it so that he sees tangents in cards and in drafts that others don’t.

P: P is the everyman: a very good player, but never the best. He also rarely seeks Magic out, but is almost up for a game when other people are playing. In that sense he’s done a very good job of staying out of the lure of the cardboard crack.

D: D is the Legacy player. He is control and Spike. Though in drafts he’ll frequently go red/green because of the nice combinations they provide in fatties and removal, always potent in Limited. His other big gift is being able to put a plan of action into effect once deciding on it.

K: K just recently started playing with us and re-kindled the joy of Magic, since he hadn’t played in years. As a result a lot of the new conventions and terms are difficult for him to puzzle through, but he’s getting better very fast, and was right from the beginning making the right decisions in most cases.

L: L is my brother-in-law, and a brand new convert to the game. He knew a few bits of the game, but has come under my wing for education for the more complex rules.

TZ and VR: These guys I play with online via a site that I help run. There are others there as well.

Now that you know the major players, here’s a little more about what you can expect from this.

Every post will be a little insight into the recent goings-on in Magic for us. The topics will range from in-depth draft coverage of a recent draft between friends, to rants on mechanics, to event synopses. These will primarily be about Limited events, because I have neither time, nor patience, nor money to play Standard.

The primary purpose of this is to provide a consistent perspective from an actual player’s point-of-view. Not a pro. Not a WotC employee. Not even a paid columnist. As a result I can tell it like it really is. If I see a card, I can talk about it freely. I don’t have to try to pump it up, or downplay it. I can say almost anything I want without fear of anything but losing readership, which, seeing as there’s currently none of you, isn’t a factor either.

The secondary purpose of this is to provide another outlet for my hobbies. I enjoy writing and I enjoy playing cards. Here they fit together nicely. And I get to spend more time on Magic than I would otherwise. I can read all the posts that are made, two a day, five days a week over at Wizards, and sometimes it’s not enough. Sometimes I want more information. Well, I’m not a great new information source, but I can rehash the old information and repost it into a format that no one else has seen yet. And the new information I do have fits back into category one. The ground-level player’s perspective of the game, as it happens.

Again, I encourage feedback. If you want more of a specific style of story: tell me. If you think I’m full of it: tell me. If you think I’m dead wrong, for goodness sakes: please tell me! Sometimes this site may help you become a better player, but I’m guessing far more often it’s going to help me become a better player.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

First Entry

Greetings to anyone who finds this little slice of the web.

As this is a first post, I feel it is important to introduce the subject matter fully. This will be a blog about Magic: the Gathering, the collectable and mildly addictive card game invented by a mathematics PhD and developed by Wizards of the Coast, now wholely owned by Hasbro.

As this is a high-level IP type of thing, I will only reference cards by names, with links to www.wizards.com/magic for specific images of cards, rules, and other fun things. That should keep the lawyers off my back for the most part.

As for myself, I am a just a player. I happen to be OK, I'll win often enough to come home with packs from events I go to, but I don't play competitively at any high level. Nor am I some shill for a website designed to sell cards. I will never sell my own cards here, nor is this an audition for a regular column with some site. I post here because I want to write about the game and think I may have some interesting things to say.

Lastly I intend for this to be an excercise in my writing, particularly in picking a deadline and sticking with it. Therefore, I will post a column to this blog weekly, starting this week. The new post will be up prior to 11:59PM Eastern each Sunday, and viewable for you Monday mornings. The length of the column is not set in stone, but I expect each will be between 1000 and 5000 words. Generally if they start getting over 3000 I'll probably break them into two-parters. Though I may post the second part of those not on a Sunday to keep on my weekly topic schedule. The schedule may also be changed at some point, but I will make a notice about it.

I encourage a response, and will leave comments open. Feel free to contact me with ideas for columns or other items.