Magic 8/21/04

Magic Magic Magic! We signed up at 10 and got set up, and started at 10:30 Saturday. This time, instead of just being a judge, I went ahead and played in the booster draft tournament. Counting me, we had six players: Me (Dave), Lance, Shella, Ty, Sam and John. We drafted from Mirrodin, Dark Steel and Fifth Dawn, same as last time. My first pack had a decent black rare (Promise of Power), and blue seemed to be coming around pretty well, so I drafted black and blue, going for flyers. My strategy was to aggresively draft for as many flyers as possible, going for evasion over utility and removal. I actually got a bit of counter but made the mistake of passing up a couple of good black removal cards. The final deck had 44 cards, with 19 lands (counting Stalking Stones, 9 islands and 9 swamps) with the remaining cards divided pretty much in thirds between artifacts, black and blue--pretty much all creatures except for about 6 or 7 cards.
My first duel was against Sam. He played mono black with artifacts, and had much better removal than I did, and much better utility, and a surprising amount of life-gaining. But my fliers came up pretty well. After I had a few small creatures on the board that were starting to get picked off, I dropped the Desecration Elemental (3B, Fear, whenever a player plays a spell, sacrifice a creature, 8/8) which pretty much cleared the table of creatures in a few rounds. Sam played a black creature enchantment (I forgot what it was called) that made me pay 3 life during my upkeep just to keep that fatty on the table, so it cost my 9 life, but he chump-blocked his creatures away and eventually took the 8 damage. I ended up winning, two games to none, but the second game was very close (I was at 2 life at the end). Good fun games, and I definitely saw where all the good black cards had gone to. We shook hands and smiled.
Next, I played Ty, who is an outstanding guy and a great player, who was also 2-0 so far. He even brought donuts for everybody! His deck was green and blue with great utility and speed, and strong counter-ability. As usual, Ty had very smart gameplay but unfortunately nothing came up for him with any real size or power. My mana and fliers came up nicely, especially cards like Spire Golem (a 2/4 flier that would cost 6, except with Affinity for Islands, it usually cost me about 3). I won again, two games to zero, putting Ty at 2-2 and me at 4-0. I was feeling pretty good about my choices and my deck, but after seeing Sam's and Ty's decks, I could see that I had made a big mistake to pass up a couple of good black removal cards in the draft, and a bit more counter would have made my deck better.
My next opponent was Lance, who was 4-1 at this point. Another great guy. He was playing green-white, with heavy anti-artifact, equipment and big fatties, including a big anti-flier spider, playable as an instant. The first game was pretty long, considering his overwhelming dominance. His deck almost seemed custom-made to beat mine. I sideboarded eight cards and beat him quickly in game 2, everything just came up quickly for me, and didn't for him. I lost game 3, as his creatures just outmatched mine. So now I was 5-2. Lance went on to win the tournament, 8-2.
John E. was also 5-2, so I figured it might be an even match. Boy was I wrong about that. He was playing red-white with lots of fast weenies beefed up by useful equipment. The real surprise was all of the little red creatures with Prodigal Sorcerer-type abilities. They came up pretty well for him, and that kind of recursive removal made his deck dominate, by being able to deal from 1 to 5 damage to any creature or player. If I had had some anti-artifact, that would have helped, and so would some spot removal, since he was creature-short a couple of times, and just piled a bunch of equipment onto one or two guys and "Timmed" me to death. He beat me 2-0, and it wasn't even close. John took second, at 7-1, since Lance had beaten him (all that anti-artifact stuff did well). We finished the tournament at about 4:00.
I didn't play against Shella, but her deck was mono-red and artifact, and she ended up being 2-5 (Actually, 4-5, I guess, since Ty had to leave before we could finish the round robin, and Shella had a "bye" that round). A lot of her games were close, but I think another color or two would have helped her.
Analyzing the players and the colors they played is interesting. I could assign 1 point for each color used, 2 points if used as the only color in a deck, and total everything as follows:
Artifact: 6, Black: 3, Blue: 2, Green: 2, Red:3, White:2
My feeling is that black and red were weaker due to mono-drafting, but that in general everything was pretty even. Everybody played lots of artifacts, because there were plenty. By this logic, it makes sense that green-white won the tournament, but blue-green should have done better if you think of it that way.
We played one big five-player game after the tournament, using decks we had along. Sam had a really good idea for a format, where everybody writes down their names on pieces of paper, which are drawn out of a hat. You have to take out the opponent you draw first, then whatever name he or she had, and so on until there is one final winner. It seems to work pretty well. John won, with his deck of new beasts and elves. Everybody else used decks of mine, built mostly of older cards that were tourney-legal about the time of Invasion, about 2-3 years ago I guess. So maybe the newer cards are a bit more powerful, or maybe my deckbuilding needs improvement, but anyway a lot of those newer cards were pretty great, and John's a good, serious player.
After the tournament, Richard had prizes for first-third place (I won a pack for third in this case). All the losers (not just Sam, who finished last) got plastic bugs for consolation prizes, which was nice (I got a rhino beatle, which makes a great token creature). A lot of people, including me, bought stuff, and Richard said he had a good business day. I'm looking forward to the third Saturday in September to do all of this again, this time maybe with some Core Set to change things up a bit.

Thoughts

Saturday was a good game. Roddy's paladin, Revan fought off four four-armed Jaramonians (16 attacks total). Good thing he has a decent AC, since he's only fourth level! Carson, Phil, Shane and Zach were also there (Aug. 14 '04, 12-6 p.m.) for the session. It was pretty fun. The idea of a powerful transmuter allied with the evil elven Purple Order invaders is fuel for a lot of creative ideas for me, as I've always thought Polymorph and variants have a lot of possibilities. The salt zombies in the Black Desert proved interesting, and I think I will tap into Dark Sun a bit for a while.

Wednesday, yesterday, only Phil showed up, so I sent him back home--again. No explanations were given, and in fact Penny said Jon told Debbie he planned on coming. What am I supposed to think or do? I guess I really need more reliable players to keep the Wednesday night game going, or maybe I need to join someone else's group, or be patient, or throw up my hands and give up on the idea of a Wednesday group altogether after about four years of a good campaign. Is this it, and if so I'd like to know. I always thought we were happy with our regular game session. If it's over I guess it's been a good run, but I'll miss it. What tears me up is not knowing what the problem is, whether it be the time scheduling, the place, the people or what. Did I offend someone? Now I hear Mat and Ava played at Jon's place with Alex and Rob. What am I supposed to think, and what can I or should I do next. Most of all, how come people just bail without letting me know they're not coming, or better yet, have the courtesy to call and tell me why they won't be here? I was really upset last night. Next time, I guess I won't send Phil home.

Saturday (Aug. 21), there's going to be another booster draft Magic tournament at Old Town Hobby from 10 to about 4:00. I hope lots of people show up.

Sat. Aug. 14, 2004

Jaramon's Kingdom, a section of Aarde controlled by an evil elvish member of the Purple Order, the Transmuter Jaramon, at the other side of the Black Desert from the City State of Moporia. It was a fun session, starting where things left off last time in Moporia as the party decided for themselves what to do. They hired a merchant sandskiff to get there, fought sand zombies, an animated rock creature, and several four-armed transmutations called the "Jaramonians." Roddy's paladin, Revan did very well. Taito was full of surprises, Aelfprin was a bit of a nuisance, Zach was there to play Dante Blackmorg ( a human rogue), Shane had Flegal, and besides that it was just NPCs. There are a lot of cool possibilities with a county-sized area ruled by a chaotic evil transmuter, and I feel like I'm just getting started.