The Card Trade

The first official trade of Tournaverse occurred tonight. It won't be common to blog about any old trade but since it is the first one it is appropriate to provide some detail. In order to facilitate some transparency about these kinds of things we added a woefully inadequate section to the spreadsheet with some details about who got what. When/if you decide to trade please update the section with your trade. I think it is good to have a public record of it so that people have an idea of what is going on.

Anywho, let's get to the juicy details!

The trade negotiations kicked off last night with Chris and Stuart discussing what the other was interested in. Chris declaring that he was going to play a typically Chris deck while Stu decided to break the mold and go with Red/Green. This conversation though fruitful did not lead to a new trade but rather to Christos and Stuart having a similar discussion this afternoon. It was then that a deal was struck and the executed some hours later.

The deal was big with a total of 20 cards changing hands. While the details can be found on the spreadsheet the highlights of the deal include the only Rare (Coat of Arms) going to Christos along with one uncommon (Undead Slayer) and a collection of commons. Christos got Blinding Mage (a common) which Stuart insists "was a great pickup, one of the best commons in my opinion". Christos was overheard yelling "what the hell else do you want man, it is a common I am offering some pretty fucking good commons".

Stuart left the trade with a net increase in the number of cards in his roster. Some of his notable pickups include the possible game winning Overrun (uncommon) and the pesky Pyromancer (uncommon). His mana ramp also got a further upgrade with the addition of rangers, elves and rampant growth.

Both traders felt they got fair deals and both feel close to ready to start testing their constructed decks. Stuart has informed The Tournaverse Blog that he has in fact constructed the first version of his deck and it is playing well on 5 turn opening simulations. He is likely full of shit.

It is rumored that both players have been in conversations with Chris trying to hammer out other deals with a few high profile cards getting quite a bit of attention. We have been asked not to reveal too much detail on ongoing negotiations.

The other four players have been relatively silent on the trading front. When approached (on the street in the rain) Gavin indicated that the North Knight team was unlikely to begin trading until after the draft. Will their wait and see strategy work out or will the players with a head start have secured strong positions on their future decks? We will find out soon.

Thanks for your time!

P.S. Do we think some uncommon are so powerful (Sara Angel, Fireball etc..) that there should be a Rare and Uncommon draft?

Updates and Upcomings

Hey all,

Our blog is missing something: a Reigning Champion acknowledgement on the sidebar. As I so generously allowed someone else to experience the glory of victory, this week's champion is Stuart Lally; if that name doesn't sound familiar, he also goes by 'Monique' on weekends, or weekdays by appointment.

Second is the issue of our next event. If we're going to stick with our once every two weeks plan, then that takes us to the weekend when I'll be away for at least Friday, possibly the whole weekend. I have a wedding to go to on Friday in NB and I may stay over for a couple of days afterwards; I'll know more shortly. I suppose there's not much to discuss in terms of planning until I do know more... hmm... what a useless paragraph...

Anyway, the other issue is what we're going to do for the next tournament. It sounds like most people are up for a draft, is that right? I'd prefer one, but I'm not hugely opposed to another sealed. I'd be up for a Shards 0f Alara block draft, but we do have some M2010 packs left, so we could draft that instead. Monique suggested we draft a combo of M2010 and Shards, but I'd rather not do that as Shards is so heavily oriented around playing multicolour (3+, really) decks that I think you'd need the 3 Shards packs to get enough mana fixing to make the 3 coloured gold cards playable, but that's just my opinion.

Any thoughts?

Rewards, Riches, Doubloons

So the question of how to motivate tournament success — and how to equally demotivate drafting for the sake of enhancing one's previous decks — still hangs. It would probably be wise to resolve this before the night of, when we will all be drooling impatiently at things shrink- and foil-wrapped, so let's sort this out. The options on the table right now are, as far as I know:

1. The winner may bring in outside card/s of his choice. This is a very tactically interesting reward and it attracts me because of all of the cards, even from our two recent tournaments, that I'd really like to get to use in the Tournaverse. However, despite the fun of it, getting to bring in even one or two cards of your choice, especially early on, will probably be immensely powerful — probably over-powerful. One way to balance this would perhaps be to allow everyone to bring in some limited number of cards, and maybe to limit by rarity. e.g., the winner can bring in one rare or two uncommons or four commons, second place can bring in two U or three C, everyone else gets one U or two C, or something like that. That way the power creep would be spread out a bit.
2. Extra boosters go to the winner. This dilutes the advantage the winner gets from the previous one, as only a portion of the cards will be applicable to your deck and you're not guaranteed to get any game-winners in the pack. A mild disadvantage is that this increases the cost a bit, and, more acutely, tomorrow night we won't have any extras anyway unless someone goes and gets some. A bigger disadvantage to both this and the previous one is that we don't generally want to make repeat tournament winners all that much more powerful than everyone else in the first place.
3. Honour. The winner's only reward is to be celebrated in the tournament rankings on here. We are all fairly mature game players who can comply with an honour system pretty well, as far as I know, and I suspect we'd mostly just be smart and draft for the situation instead of for our pool's pre-existing cards. Drafting to your on-going constructed deck isn't even that advantageous, because we can always trade afterward anyway. What's more, we also enjoy having bragging rights, so posted rankings aren't without their own incentive. But still, some of us may be more closely wedded to single colours than others regardless of how hard we try to draft fairly, which makes it still seem like a bit of a problem. I'm not such a fan of this because of that, and also because trading isn't quite that free and easy (are you really going to not take that huge mythic you want and just hope whoever takes it will be happy to part with it?).
4. Raredraft. This usually makes me kind of sad, as I get attached to the cards I draft, but it solves the drafting-best-cards problem and rewards the winner withou providing him with a vastly superior pool of cards. My favourite option so far.
   
5. Shamus' Magical Map. I will leave this to someone else to explain. It looks like...a lot of work. And fun?

That's all I've got for now. Votes? Suggestions? Refinements?

The House of Rusak

We shall meet for battle at the House of Rusak. We have a 7th participant in Shamus though we will only have 6 for the games. This does bring up a question though... I have 36 cards in the box and we now need 42. Can someone please secure the remain 6 packs. I believe Christos wanted to come down to open his packs but he was going to be unavailable to play.

I am busy today so will not be able to get these packs.

Fancy New Shrink Wrapped Box

We have cards! I met up with Steve today to pick up the box of cards and they are now sitting on one of my TV tables. It is wrapped in that official wizards' shrink wrap that only makes me want to rip open the box right now. I will try to refrain from doing that, though it does have a picture of Alluring Siren on the top of the box.

I also may have been a bit premature announcing the location of this shin-dig. David is checking out with his parents about the availability of the Rusak abode... so we will wait for results of that before we finalize the location.

END TRANSMISSION

Card Spreadsheet!

Christos has put together a spreadsheet for the list of cards we collect. I've added it to a section on the right, "Important Links." Other suggestions for such links are welcome.

Genesis

Greetings, fellow magi.

This Friday we all shall embark upon a grand endeavor – one which shall shake the foundations of the universe as we know it. Each of us shall set forth to expand our power and compete for riches untold. [citation needed]

As we grow in strength, so too do our enemies. Fight as we may, all are bound by the rules of the Tournaverse. On these humble pages will the Tournaverse's history be chronicled.

Let the battle begin.