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June 14, 2006 7:56 AM

Gathering for Magic - So after a few nostalgic talks of days gone by, filled with geekery courtesy of Magic the Gathering, I'd like to put together a casual sealed deck tourney for myself and a few friends, but seeing how I have not played since Ice Age there's

My initial thought was basically "everyone show up with one sealed starter deck and two sealed boosters" but I wonder now if things could really be that easy.

Are there certain sets/editions of the game that are so amazingly overpowered so as to limit the casual fun?

On the other hand, given that there must be dozens of editions/sets/expansions/whatever by now, which one would produce the most 'bang for the buck' by way of cost?

Are there premade decks and if so, should they be allowed or will they be overpowering as the cards are actually designed to work together?

Do starters still come with land? I saw a few boxes of 'Expert' sets recently and have no idea what that means.

How should a casual tourney for, say, 6-8 people be set up?

Should trading be allowed?

Finally, what beer goes best with reliving our past shame?

posted by robocop is bleeding to sports, hobbies, & recreation (21 comments total)

Maybe you should run a booster draft tourney instead?
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:04 AM on June 14, 2006

Oh, and as for beer, I'm thinking Red Stripe.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:04 AM on June 14, 2006

Hrm, the two problems of booster draft I see is that 1) we've all sold/lost/discarded our cards and therefore our land cards years ago and 2) it looks like booster draft requires some familiarity with the cards in order to make good choices.

But still, it (and the Red Stripe!) is a good thought, thanks!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:16 AM on June 14, 2006

I second the booster draft idea. That way you don't have to be limited to the cards that come in your pack, because less than half of those will probably be useful for you. It's also fun to do the draft itself, as you can pick cards for your own deck, or screw your friends out of cards they need.

As for what set to use, I don't rightly know. I've been out of the game for years and years, and it seems a lot of the new expansions are way more overpowered than I remember. I did recently check out the full card list for the 9th edition of the basic set, and it seems pretty cool and balanced. Lots of good cards and old favorites. I've been pondering doing something similar and that's what I'd use.

Magic: The Cardsearch is a great resource. If you want to get a feel for a set, just select it on the opening page and browse. I've also whiled away quite a bit of time just hitting Random Card.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:18 AM on June 14, 2006

Supplies of loose land cards can be obtained from practically any game store for literally pennies. It'd be a tiny fraction of the beer budget. And the way I see it, the lack of familiarity with the cards and the need for split-second construction decisions help to level the playing field and add to the fun.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:20 AM on June 14, 2006

Should have previewed... if you're set against booster draft, you should allow trading. A starter and a few boosters on their own aren't going to produce a very good deck. Of course, everyone would be playing with the same amount of random cards, but someone's going to get lucky and get some awesome card no one else can defend against.
posted by yellowbinder at 8:22 AM on June 14, 2006

yellowbinder, thanks for the link! The first random card it tossed up for me was Sleight of Mind, one of my favorites from my blue/white multiplayer days.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:06 AM on June 14, 2006

/geekout
posted by raedyn at 9:27 AM on June 14, 2006

My initial thought was basically "everyone show up with one sealed starter deck and two sealed boosters" but I wonder now if things could really be that easy.

Yes, they are that easy. Though you do want to pick up some extra lands, as others have noted. They are cheap.

Are there certain sets/editions of the game that are so amazingly overpowered so as to limit the casual fun?

No, but some of the non-basic sets are fairly complicated. Make sure you know where to find the FAQ online for clarification of the powers/rules.

On the other hand, given that there must be dozens of editions/sets/expansions/whatever by now, which one would produce the most 'bang for the buck' by way of cost?

There are usually only 2 or 3 sets in print at any given time. You can either just go with the one whose theme you like better, or ask the guy at the game store which he thinks would be easier to pick up. The 'base set', which will be called '9th Edition' I believe, is the simplest, and yet still lots of fun.

Are there premade decks and if so, should they be allowed or will they be overpowering as the cards are actually designed to work together?

The premade decks will be more powerful than decks put together from sealed decks or a booster draft. I would disallow them unless you're allowing everyone to construct their decks from the ground up.

Do starters still come with land? I saw a few boxes of 'Expert' sets recently and have no idea what that means.

Any set has 'tournament packs', ie, a sealed starter deck, and 'booster packs'. Tournament packs have 30 lands, 6 of each kind. You might want more than 6 of one kind, but you can certainly allow trading of lands without causing any harm. You should probably still get some extra lands just in case.

How should a casual tourney for, say, 6-8 people be set up?

The winner of each round is determined by playing three games (or just two if one player wins twice).

Round 1: Randomly pair off each person.

Round 2: The winners of round 1 play the winners of round 1, and the losers play each other.

Round 3: Pair everyone off as evenly as you can based on win/loss records.

After three rounds (or however many you want to play), if two people are tied for the most wins/losses, they can play one tiebreaker round. This is the simplest way I know of to run a tourney. There are probably better/more official ways, but I think they're more complicated. Do some research if you'd like to explore them.

Finally, what beer goes best with reliving our past shame?

I recommend serving whatever soda and munchies you used to fuel your late-night gaming sessions so long ago.

Hmmm, should I have posted this with a sock puppet? I have the feeling I know far too much about this for a man my age. At least my recent playing has been mostly online (which I highly recommend).
posted by agropyron at 9:28 AM on June 14, 2006

Also: Make sure everyone buys the same set. Or buy them all yourself and have people reimburse you when they show up.
posted by agropyron at 9:29 AM on June 14, 2006

Should have previewed... if you're set against booster draft, you should allow trading. A starter and a few boosters on their own aren't going to produce a very good deck. Of course, everyone would be playing with the same amount of random cards, but someone's going to get lucky and get some awesome card no one else can defend against.

Booster drafts are fun and all, but they're more complicated to organize and execute, and everyone's going to be trying to read every card in their hand every time you pass the cards. Sealed deck is just as fun, imo, and much easier on the players.

Yes, the decks are weaker, but they're all weaker. Yes, one guy's going to have a really powerful card, but when you build your sealed deck you're supposed to take that into account. You should include any card you reasonably can that's designed to remove threats.
posted by agropyron at 9:38 AM on June 14, 2006

If you're going for 'casual' instead of serious, you could always play the classic 'attack to the left' or 'star' variants.

For 'attack to the left'.. everyone sits around one table and plays one player at a time. You can only target spells 2 within 2 players to your immediate left or right, and you may only attack (with creatures) to your left. Everytime you take out a player, you get some amount of life points (we used 5, i think).

You probably want to play with a larger deck if you do that.

The other option if you have exactly 5 players is the 'star' game. You all sit around in a circle, and you can only attack the two players opposite you (but only one in a single turn), but you can tartget anyone with spells. The first person to take out both of his 'opponents' wins. For extra fun, split all the cards by color before playing and make everyone sit in their color's seat. (pass out artifacts at random or have a draft-- toss out multi-colored cards)
posted by empath at 9:43 AM on June 14, 2006

oh, and for the 'attack to the left game-- you can actually have multiple players taking turns at once if you have a large table. I used to play in 20 or 25 player games back when magic was popular, and we used 3 tokens passed around the table. You had to stop if the guy 2 ahead of you was still taking a turn.
posted by empath at 9:45 AM on June 14, 2006

Hey, RiB, from your profile, it looks like you don't live far from Davis Square. There's a store there called Your Move Games, where there are some very knowledgeable Magic-playing folks. You might want to stop by and talk to them about what is appropriate to purchase.

(I hang out at that store regularly, but I haven't played Magic in years; I play V:tES these days. I'm there more-or-less every Monday night.)
posted by jozxyqk at 11:00 AM on June 14, 2006

If this was a meetup, I would come, bearing beer. Every six months or so I miss the good ol' Magic days of my youth.
posted by Plutor at 12:07 PM on June 14, 2006

Definitely don't do a draft, as it requires knowing the cards too well. Personally I've done the following methods when re-visiting Magic:

Buy 3 boosterpacks and some land (5 of each) per person. Everyone shuffles their deck without looking at the cards. Alternately, buy lots more of any 1 land (forests, say) and only shuffle those in. Then, when you play a land you can substitute it for any other basic land. Or, buy 1 more booster and no land. then, any card can be played face-down as any land instead.

Buy a pre-constructed deck for each person. Shuffle and play. Ths problem I've found is that some precon decks are far more fun than others.

Buy 3-4 boosters and a good supply of land. Each player makes a 40 card minimum deck from their cards and the land pool. The issue I've found with this is that one persons deck is frequently much better than the others. Attack left or across may solve that aspect.

Make sure to allow much more time for a single game than you expect. Reading every card and trying to keep all the new interactions straight in your head slows the game down considerably.

Have fun!
posted by Four Flavors at 12:08 PM on June 14, 2006

jozxyqk, I walk by Your Move most every day (and when they were still in their old location I was pretty heavily into the L5R scene there), so they'll be my source for cards and, thanks to the ideas here, land.

Back In My Day, we used to play a lot of Generals multi (six players in a circle with two Generals across from each other, each with a teamate on their left and right flank. Each flank can only send creatures at the one next to them, Generals need to pass creatures to their flanks to bring them to fight, but their spells can hit anybody. We had a pretty tuned Blue Denial General, Greenie Weenie, and White Weenie team going for awhile.). It'd be nice to get my local crew that into it again, but I'm not going to hold my breath
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:48 PM on June 14, 2006

I think that you might find Rochester draft a good option. This lets everyone get familiar with all of the cards in the pool. The draft itself is often more entertaining than booster draft or sealed deck, since you can see what other people are selecting and try to pick your own cards based on that. It's also a good opportunity to figure out how cards work in conference before you start to play.

This kind of draft worked pretty well when I got together with some friends who had been out of the game for a while. It does have the downside that it can take quite a while before you get around to the actual games.
posted by agent at 1:54 PM on June 14, 2006

Sorry, I meant to take a stab at the question about what sets to use/avoid as well. I think it's best to play limited (draft/sealed deck) with expansion sets rather than basic sets like 4th through 9th edition. The reason is that limited with expansion sets is used as a format for tournaments; as such these sets are explicitly designed to be well-balanced for these formats. With the basic sets this is somewhat less of a design concern.

Power level has fluctuated quite a bit from set to set. For best results, you'll probably want everyone to show up with the same distribution of packs/decks. All that said, I can't really recommend any particular recent sets; I've been out of the game for about a year and a half.
posted by agent at 2:13 PM on June 14, 2006

Update: First afternoon of dorkery went off well. The ensuing "what to do from here?" question has been dogging us, though.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 7:52 AM on June 28, 2006

Magic The Gathering has a really interesting relationship with its patrons. I find that of the people who finally quit the game only do so far a short period of time, usually until a set rotates out then get back into the game.

Also due to the nature of the MTG market, you can quiet easily sell up your collection then start all over again just as quickly with cards from the new set. This is becuase the MTG Market itself is quite well supported with many stores like Manaleak.com offering to buy, trade and sell you Magic The Gathering cards.
posted by TuNguyen at 11:07 AM on April 18, 2007