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Possible Magic Tournament List

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Magic: The Gathering Tournaments in WARSoc?

Postby Shandz on Thu May 22, 2008 8:04 pm

I am posting this as a proposal for how WARSoc could be more than just a meeting ground for new players, specifically for Magic: The Gathering players.

I want to make it clear that I think the spirit in which Magic is played in the society is great and hopefully will never change. The idea is just to make the games a bit more structured to make it more fun, not for it to get overly serious and competitive. It doesn't matter who wins necessarily but I think it's just kind of fun to have a winner each night.

What I think could be cool, would be if each week there was a planned tournament. This is a list I made up but could be changed depending on the interest level in each format.
Note that Shards of Alara is released in early Oct 2008 with the next part of the block "Paper" coming out in Feb 2009 and the final part "Scissors" coming out in May 2009.


Semester 1:-
Week 1: Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block Constructed
Week 2: Shards of Alara Sealed Deck
Week 3: Standard Constructed (two-headed giant)
Week 4: Shards of Alara/Shards of Alara/Shards of Alara Booster Draft
Week 5: Extended Constructed (proxies allowed)
Week 6: Shards of Alara Two-Headed Giant Booster Draft
Week 7: Standard Pauper (commons only) Constructed
Week 8: Cube Draft
Week 9: Standard Constructed (no proxies)
Week 10: Shards of Alara/Shards of Alara/Shards of Alara Booster Draft
Week 11: Vintage Constructed (proxies allowed)

Semester 2:-
Week 1: Shards of Alara + Paper/Paper/Paper Sealed Deck
Week 2: Shards of Alara Block Constructed (two-headed giant)
Week 3: Paper/Paper/Paper Booster Draft
Week 4: Standard Constructed (proxies allowed)
Week 5: Extended Constructed (no proxies)
Week 6: Shards of Alara/Shards of Alara/Paper Booster Draft (two-headed giant)
Week 7: Extended Peasant (commons + 5 uncommons only) Constructed
Week 8: Block Wars Constructed
Week 9: Shards of Alara/Paper/Scissors Booster Draft
Week 10: Legacy (proxies allowed)

Playing a tournament every week, new players like myself could get tournament practice in a more casual and forgiving environment, something which would be much harder to do without the society helping to organise it.

Each tournament could allow the use of proxies or could be multiplayer however you saw fit. I think a mixture of using and not using proxies would be nice as players who bother to get a nice collection should get to use it on occasion but other times newbies need to be given a chance.

I think the limited format tournaments (Sealed Deck and Drafts) could also be timed with when new sets come out, so as people are buying new cards they can open their boosters and use the cards in the tournament. Formats using smaller card pools could be put nearer the start of the semester as these are easier for new players to get into.

Notice I have included some much more casual events like Block Wars where people like Dave who have older cards could make say an Urza's Block deck and see how it faces up against Jonathan's Lorwyn Block deck or my Ice Age Block deck. Also, a pauper tournament where we are only allowed to use commons which I think would be fun. There are a lot of possibilities, you could even keep society player rankings and have prizes for each tournament and the player of the year, the only downside is that it requires people to commit to playing for 4-5 hours.
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Re:

Postby Lee.Cairns on Thu May 22, 2008 8:22 pm

How many people playing MTG in St Andrews do you get? What do you mainly play? T2 Extended?

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Re:

Postby Shandz on Thu May 22, 2008 8:36 pm

Quoting Lee.Cairns from 21:22, 22nd May 2008
How many people playing MTG in St Andrews do you get? What do you mainly play? T2 Extended?

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So there has been about 10 people playing since I have been going. The games we play are just for fun mostly and played in a very friendly and light hearted way. Like no one is stressing about the rules. I propose this list as the current president Jonathan suggested that the society could have more direction and I think this one thing that could be done.

Just be very clear though, I think the tournaments should still be played in the same friendly spirit I have enjoyed over the last few weeks. It doesn't matter if new players like me can't make a competitive Extended deck, I can just make the best deck I can and once I am knocked out just play some games for fun with other people who were knocked out.
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Re:

Postby Jono on Fri May 23, 2008 10:27 am

Quoting Lee.Cairns from 21:22, 22nd May 2008
How many people playing MTG in St Andrews do you get? What do you mainly play? T2 Extended?

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We've got a fair few people playing on most nights. Between 6 and 12 really. Most of what's played would fall into Extended format; although we're all pretty casual. Anything that's not utterly banned, or from one of the "Un" sets goes!

I like the idea of running occasional tournaments. However, I'd be worried about running one every single week. I think people might get bored of it after a while. Also, If we're going to run constructed formats, I'd rather avoid blocks. There are a lot of people who don't have the new cards, and I don't want to exclude them. At SABRE, we ran the constructed tournament as Extended for this reason.

I'm personally in favor of a few drafts, and maybe a sealed-deck each semester. maybe we could also look to some of the competitions (for example, at the student nationals).

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Re:

Postby Shandz on Fri May 23, 2008 1:23 pm

Quoting Jono from 11:27, 23rd May 2008
I like the idea of running occasional tournaments. However, I'd be worried about running one every single week. I think people might get bored of it after a while.


Yeah fair point as I think people enjoy the casual gaming quite a lot because they can use several decks in a night and play multiplayer games. I'm just throwing this out there as an idea, you could obviously run the tournaments much less frequently, say once every 2-3 weeks and then do more or less depending on the interest level?


Quoting Jono from 11:27, 23rd May 2008
Also, If we're going to run constructed formats, I'd rather avoid blocks. There are a lot of people who don't have the new cards, and I don't want to exclude them. At SABRE, we ran the constructed tournament as Extended for this reason.


Yeah that's a good point, I kind of assumed people would be buying the most recent block which is not necessarily the case. This is one worry of Sealed Deck and Drafts since in order to play people would have to pay somewhere between £7.50-£15, which might put some people off. If running tournaments caused some players to be excluded, that would definitely be a bad thing.


Quoting Jono from 11:27, 23rd May 2008
I'm personally in favor of a few drafts, and maybe a sealed-deck each semester. maybe we could also look to some of the competitions (for example, at the student nationals).


You could consider organising more trips to the Dundee games, although those guys take it pretty seriously. One thing with the Sealed Deck and Draft tournaments is that the CCG Rep. or someone could take payment for the tournament the week before and organise buying cards in a bulk order for players who needed help getting the Tournament Decks and Boosters.
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Re:

Postby Jono on Fri May 23, 2008 3:32 pm

I aim to do more trips to Dundee for the pre-releases and whatnot. Hopefully, we'll go to the Shadows of Alaria Release in October.

As for cost, I intend to bulk-buy, and then run drafts and sealed-deck like for like. Which could come to something like £5.85 per person for a draft, and £11.70 per person for Sealed-Deck. The advantage is that we cover the costs, and can do it all again!

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Re:

Postby Dave on Fri May 23, 2008 4:15 pm

Something that was quite successful a few years back (Kamigawa time) was a sealed environment tournament that lasted several weeks. Everyone paid for a starter and a couple of boosters, and then played using those cards for a few weeks. Because it was a fairly loose tournament (i.e. people could play as an when they wanted), there were a lot of players who joined in who don't usually play on a Wednesday night.

Another option was a sealed environment for ante. Same process as above, except that you play for ante (you only ante from the deck you're playing, so anything you really want to keep you don't need to rsik losing in the ante). Again, we did that a few years ago and it was quite popular.

I agree that constructed tournaments are not a good idea to hold too often - mostly because people either aren't up to date (so ruling out block and standard), or don't have the depth of cards (ruling out extended). It's only fun up to a point getting trounced by people with more cards than you - and I say this as the person with the most cards.
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Re:

Postby Shandz on Fri May 23, 2008 5:03 pm

That sounds like a pretty cool idea Dave either with or without the ante. It would be cheap to play and easy to organise.

Do you think there is anyway the constructed problem can be overcome using proxies? Seems a shame that you don't get to use the cards that you have.
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Re:

Postby Dave on Fri May 23, 2008 6:32 pm

I think I'm veering down the line of "constructed tournaments will separate the casual players from the more serious players". And by that I mean that you'll have one person who has loads of cards (me), perhaps one or two people who can be bothered to go online and look at what's good in whichever format we're playing (and proxy up the necessaries to make a deck) and everyone else who will put together the best deck they can - and then you end up with slightly more people trouncing everyone else than just the person who has all the cards. I think if people want to play constructed tournaments, they can go to Dundee. I'm all for the occasional constructed tournament here, but I think that sealed/draft is far better because everyone comes in at a level footing.
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Re:

Postby Jono on Sun May 25, 2008 1:59 pm

The advantage of playing limited formats is that they give the society a modicum of usefulness. Because we're not doing them for profit, we can run them far cheaper than usual. On top of that, it gives everyone the the chance to get hold of some new cards.

it also gives us the option of running the occasional subsidized tournament (although that'll probably just be SABRE).

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