Shadowmoor prelease – my first magic tournament
I guess it was a tournament, I don’t know all the terminology – but I went to the Shadowmoor prelease thing in Portland this morning and played in the first (limited) sealed tournament. I figured this would be a good time to try something competitive because most everyone is seeing the new cards at the same time, and everyone’s deck is limited to what you get. So, you know, more equal footing and all that.
And I did ok for my first time out. 1 draw 2 losses 1 win. The first draw should have been a win though – the round ended with me in the lead and able to smash him on the next turn or so, but the time was up so it was called a draw. Alas! If that had been a win I would have won a pack (lowest prize) or something, but oh well. It was still a lot of fun and, for the most part, people were a lot more normal than I expected. I mean, the freaky-freakys were there, don’t get me wrong, but for the most part there were a LOT of average Joes (the good kind) there.
My deck wound up being blue/white with some white/green hybrids & blue/black hybrids thrown in because I could play them for the blue & white. All around, I’m pretty pleased with it – it played different every single game, which is kind of frustrating, but that’s the way it goes with sealed I guess. The really frustrating thing is that I had my “killer” card (of which I only had one of in a deck of 41 cards) in my hand from the first draw for 3 games in a row and was unable to use it – very frustrating!! (It was a 5/7 flier with “all attackers have lifelink” if you care). All my opponents were red/black I think – some with green splashes. I found that very weird because everyone at my starting table built blue/white. I wonder if that has to do with the way the cards are distributed in the box & clustering. Whatever.
First round the had 1 copy of Beseech the Queen that he managed to draw & play in all 3 games. He made good use out of Conspired Giantbaitings – I think he had two in the deck. We were pretty evenly matched I think, and I got a lot of (mis!) use out of my Leech Bonders for whom I didn’t realize their untap ability cost 1U – but neither did so eh!
Second round the guy obviously didn’t like some of my cards and was kind of pissy about it, but I did beat him one game. I might have had him the last one two, except that he had an enchantment that let you tap to make a token on a creature that could untap to tap mine – so he could tap mana/2 of my creatures and make that many tokens every time. For some reason he didn’t, so the game took a lot longer than it should have.
Third round I managed to win all 3! We put 2/1 on the scorecard because he said/thought he won one, but I realized afterwards that I had won all 3. But he was really nice, so I don’t hold it against him. I don’t think he managed to get any of his heavies out, but he had some nice non-blockable blue/blacks and I forget what else.
Last round was against a nice guy who happened to be …probably 8 – 15 years older than me and was also a father, so that was cool. I won the first one, then didn’t mulligan when I should have on the second and started out with 2 lands…and stayed at that for like 5 turns. Last round was really, really, really close. He had a rare that tapped for X to give him X life though, and some other groovy stuff I forget. Anyway, I was one turn from dropping my fatty lifelink flier, alas.
I really like my randomly built deck, and will be improving and tuning it when I can buy the cards (pre-release allows you to get some new cards a week or two before they come out). I’ve got some great semi-accidental combos in there. It was lots of fun, even to lose (and I did good for a newbie – hell I didn’t even know about the second main phase after you attack – WTF is that about?).
Thank you Jen for watching Z for so long!! (It took at least an hour longer than it should of I think due to lack of organization at the beginning or something).
And yes, I know I’m a geek.
Wow. I it’s hard to wrap my brain around the fact that someone’s first MtG tourney would come in 2008, since I’ve been out of the game for 10 years now.
I remember my first tourney, in the UU at CPSLO. I was eliminated by a dude playing a blue deck who used Mana Vortex to destroy my lands so I couldn’t defend myself with my CoP any longer. My play style was not aggressive enough for a tourney back then and I hadn’t tuned my deck enough to be a judo as I liked to play.
I’m always surprised that MtG is still around. We did start doing some sealed deck stuff with each other for awhile last year, but all quit again.
Starting a game with 2 mana isn’t bad unless you didn’t pay attention to mana curve. Sounds like you might have been heavy on high-cost cards; generally you need only 2 or at most 4 of those in a tournament. With 2 mana you should have been able to summon at least one creature/spell per turn.
Interesting that your opponents were playing black and red. I’ve looked over the spoiler and am leaning mono-black, with blue/black and red/black hybrids — though I won’t actually be at the tournament until tomorrow.
I’m glad you had fun babe! You’re ready to take on Andy and Toby when we see them next.
But what about when you see me next?
@Josh: Well, it’s just one of those things that I never got into – comics were my usual $$ dump. I’ve cut back on those a bit though, and was looking for something a little bit more social – especially since there’s probably not a chance in hell I’ll ever get to play D&D again.
So, when I lived in SB, I picked up a few Judgement/7th(??)/whatever that block was cards and learned how to play with Stevens. Then, I stopped playing for about ..5?? years maybe until Andy (W) was over here visiting one day and I asked if he wanted to try, so we pulled out some of my old cards or something and it was a lot of fun.
Then he went back home, and got Toby & etc. into it, and the rest is history so they say.
@Stevens: You know, I’ve really liked the cards from the last 2 years or so, a lot more than the ones when I started playing with you guys. Ravnica was very cool – but hard to get good cards. Even the Timespiral block was pretty cool (but I don’t have many cards from that). The most current one – Lorwyn I’m really liking. Maybe because of the focus on creatures? Shadowmoor looks like it will be lots of fun (although I witnessed a few kinds of early uber-cheese already).
If we have time when we see you in July I’d love to play, but I don’ know how much time we’ll have :(.
@warren: Let me know how yours goes. I was actually hoping for blue/white based on the previews I’d seen, but didn’t get any of the cards I thought were cool. I had some decent red cards (a persisting rare that gives all creatures tap for 2 damage when he comes into play among others), but no support.
I noticed that out of the 8 or so people around me, all but one appeared to go blue/white – we pooled our lands in the center of the table and there were huge piles of mountains/swamps and a small pile of forest & no islands or plains.
So, I’m wondering if it just has to do with card distribution in packs – you know how when you get like 5 packs and 3 of them have all the same commons? Well, the various tables received adjacent packs… I suppose it could just be luck of the draw that I got so many red/black opponents. Interestingly – none of them went burn (I think it’s called) – no one was using direct damage on me, which I thought was odd.
@Jen: Hopefully that won’t be too long :). It was a lot of fun, especially for playing against randoms, I was really expecting more people to be dicks, but only one of them was a little bit dickey – and even he was pretty cool.
Honestly, I read the first 2 paragraphs and then you started talking about blue/white and hybrids and I skipped ahead to the end and then I started reading the comments, and the only one that made total sense was Jen’s.
I just like the idea that average Joe’s are getting into the groove of geek life. it’s sweet.
p.s. my Andy will kick your ass.
Heh. Your rationale for attending a pre-release tourney sounds exactly the same as mine was for attending an in-store sneak peak for Morningtide. Although in the end it turns out to be a little false I think because the really fanatical Magic players will have been examining the ‘leaked’ cards and card lists prior to any tourney!
I’ve only been playing Magic since late last year and I have to say I’ve been enjoying it a lot. As a tabletop war-gamer I’m pretty much a confirmed geek (no shame in that man)! Magic wins over tabletop war-games for a bunch of reasons (cheaper/much less prep time/much more portable/quicker play time but yet in the similar fantasy genre).
As I’m a father myself (38 with a 4 and 1 year old) I’m looking forward to gaming with my boys in 5-6 years. Magic is attractive there too because it has some of the benefits of war games (teaches you maths/statistics/tactics/strategy/logical thinking etc.) with a lot less cost! Particularly when you look at the price of a deck of Magic cards ($20NZ locally) compared to say a 1500 point Games Workshop 28mm Warhammer Fantasy army (say oh, around $700-$800nz locally).
Have fun with it man!