Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Great Debate

Hey all,

Since we got so bloody off-topic, I thought I'd just summarize the actual points we were discussing.

First, objectively:

Should we allow our outside M2010 cards to be brought into the tournaverse, and if so, how should it be done?
Facts: There are roughly 10 people worth of sealed deck and M2010 (so 60 packs, or 7-8 packs per tournaverse player) out there that are currently not in the tournaverse, + one draft deck (green, red and white).

Article 1: These cards be added to the Tournaverse by dividing them up by rarity, shuffling, then dealing them out.
Yea or nay?
If your vote is Nay, please explain. This isn't an attempt to discredit your explanation, but it would be nice to know if, for example, you were okay with adding cards in, but not in this particular way.

Now, a subjective description of the issue:

Christos and Stu: why don't you two retards get your heads out of each other's asses and let us get to the point of playing a little bit quicker, hmm?

"Oh, but I want to see my deck evolve, watch it blossom like a beautiful flower"

You wanker. You want to watch shitty things evolve into slightly less shitty things? Go play Spore. Oh wait... that sucked too, didn't it? Yes... things that sound interesting in theory may still go on to be shallow, boring and mindless.

Bring on the imports!

'Elements'

Gentlemen...
It's not strictly on topic, but it is relevant to our interests.
Having just wasted an evening and night on this online strategy trading card game, I wanted to share it with you so that you might as well. http://www.elementsthegame.com/
It's not Magic, but it's pretty fun.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Next Sealed

This Forum was made to discuss the next sealed set which we are looking for.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Outside Cards

Hello again,

Many of us have piles of non-tournaverse Magic Cards and nothing to do with them, so I'd like a way to somehow bring them into the Tournaverse. Now, by saying that, I don't mean that I want to add them to my card list so that only I can benefit them; I'd like to bring them in in such a way that they're spread out in a fair and even way, with no preference given to the donator whatsoever.

For me, the fun of the Tournaverse is that everyone is given an equal chance and less-so that there's such a limited selection of cards. As it stands now, deck building can be quite frustrating. If you decide to play a particular colour, you're shit out of luck if 2+ others had decided that already and had already collected all those cards. 'Well yeah man, you have to pick a colour combination that has the cards you'll need available!'; great, now I have minimal say in what colours I play.

Jesse and I talked about this briefly and he suggested that something as simple as each of us choosing a selection of these cards of roughly equal power to be added to their Tournaverse list. I feel that this would work, but that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to do things, so an suggestions?

Your Reigning Champion, Coolness Idol and Spiritual Leader,
- Christopher Beresford Bebbington

Trading Guidance

Greetings,

I've been scouring through the spreadsheet trying to find some appropriate trading partners, but I've been struggling with keeping track of who wants to play what, making things very difficult.

I'm building 2 decks:

1. A fast, goblin + direct damage red deck. I need things like seismic strikes, a couple more seige-gang commanders, ball lightnings... etc.
2. A weird, blue/black control deck. I need things like various counter spells, black 'kill target thing' spells, sign in bloods, divinations, ponders, rise from the graves...

Big things I have to trade:
Black: Xathrid Demon, Cemetery Reaper
Blue: ... it's basically all crap
Red: Infernal Elemental, Prodigal Pyromancer, Beserkers of Bloodridge
Green: Elvish Archdruid, Overrun, Awakener Druid, Enormous Baloth, Nature's Spiral, Prized Unicorn (don't doubt this card!) and LOTS of good green commons like borderland ranger, stampeding rhino, llanowar elves, giant growths, etc...
Land: Two dual lands: Drowned Catacombs and Glacial Fortress

What colours are each of you aiming to play?


Post-draft reflections

  • How would you all feel about playing more rounds in future tournaments? Facing off against a mere three opponents, particularly in a huge eight-player tournament like the one we just had, feels a bit silly. Particularly when individual decks can perform so dramatically differently against different ones (or when they, e.g., get mana-screwed once and it loses the match). And, plus, you just don't get to interact with the majority of the players. It would also add a lot of drama and interest to it if the people who were getting ahead, for example, were guaranteed to all play one another (I never played Stu and therefore didn't get to vie for second place with him, for example). And with more rounds there would be less need to do funny tiebreaking calculations, which I still find to be a disquietingly... a priori way of determining as weighty an issue as Tournaverse rulership.
  • On that note, we should clearly sort out how rulership is being determined, if that's not already sorted.
  • Is everyone on board for sealed with 2x(Shards, Conflux, Reborn) in two weeks' time? I'm very much in favour of getting out of M10 by now. Part of the reason I dumped all my soldiers on Christos was because I couldn't stand those being my only standby creatures in white -- and my other two decent colours, black and blue, are both rather mana-demanding. Most of the good cards want to be monocolour cards. So it should change things a lot to get all this crazy multicoloured shit, and it may make all our decks much more interesting. (On top of giving us the mana-fixing we'd need to ACTUALLY get a multi-coloured M10 deck off the ground.)
  • I think everyone found making the spreadsheet keep up with our trades more or less impossible. I'm not sure what a good solution to that is, as recounting every card would be a bit odious, and it'll get considerably more complicated when new sets arrive. Suggestions?
  • If anyone wants to do some constructed test-play in the next couple weeks, I'd be up for it. Although that means I have to actually make a deck.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Finalization

The draft shall be at the Rusak house circa 4 pm, Saturday August 8; it shall be attended by Chris, Christos, David, Gavin, Jesse, Shamus, Stuart and dark horse Costas; it shall raise our total count by 3 boosters of M10; its prize shall be a raredraft; and I shall win it.