I headed down to the Snakes & Lattes Agricola tournament yesterday after work. They ended up playing 4 player games, not 5 player games, which was both good and bad. It was good in that I prefer to play 4 player games, and that the tables they have are dimensioned well for 4 players, and the games are just faster. It was bad in that we had more first round winners and fewer spots in the final.
Yesterday I mentioned that ideally I'd want the games to go fast in order to squeeze an extra round it but it turned out that really wouldn't have been feasible. I'd forgot just how slow some people can be, especially in a more casual setting. My game was the first one finished and the estimation was that there'd be another hour before the slower table would finish up. (I used that time to get a burger from Hero Burger.) S&L runs these tournaments more as a way to have fun and encourage people to show up than they do to actually determine a champion and I completely understand the logic which is why I'm not surprised or disappointed that some games are just way slower than others. But an extension of that is cramming more rounds in can't work.
They ended up with 7 tables with a cut to top 4. The idea was just to advance the top 4 scores which ended up with an interesting dilemna... The first and third best scores came from the same table. Do you advance people with wins first (with total points as tiebreaker) or do you advance people with total points first (with wins as tiebreaker)? In general I think you should advance winners and in this format for Agricola in particular I think you have to advance winners. The order of the actions and the cards dealt to each player are a big deal in terms of total points available at the table.
To makes things more complicated the 4th and 5th best scores were a tie. So if you do include the guy who came 2nd at his table you then need to break that tie in some previously undefined way. (Flip a coin? Play a 5 player final?) They ended up excluding the guy who came 2nd at his table which I think made sense.
I ended up winning my table in a fairly low scoring game. (43-41-23-21) Family growth came up at the last available time and we ate a lot of animals. And by we I mostly mean me. I ended up building up to a size 5 house pretty quickly and got family growth on turns 8, 10, and 11. I ended up scoring a lot of animal points with 8 sheep, 3 boars, and 4 cattle.
43 was the highest winning score when my game ended as we were the first game done, but after 4 games were finished I was in 4th. 53-44-44-43. The last table was the aforementioned table with the best and third best scores so I got bumped out. Oh well. I probably could have squeezed another point out somehow but it would have been easier with a different board setup!
A bunch of people started up second games of Agricola afterwards just for fun but I didn't get a spot in any of those games. Instead I learned a new game with Sara and Duncan. Kingdom Builder from the designer of Dominion. It felt like a game with a low amount of strategy where you mostly just flip up a card and make the 'obvious' choice. Not a terrible game but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone who likes to make relevant choices as they play a game. I suppose it might actually be a decent game for older children?
Showing posts with label tournament report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tournament report. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Innistrad PTQ
There was a PTQ for Honolulu in town today using the new set. It isn't out on Magic Online yet and I avoided playing in the pre-release a couple weeks ago due to my extreme dislike of huge crowds. (401 continues to claim it will cut off entrants at 64 people but actually took money from 129 people... It's generous to say they have room for 64.)
I spent some of yesterday and I bit this morning actually reading the card list for the set and hoped that would be good enough. How good are werewolves? Who knows! How do they even work? I don't know! Realistically I shouldn't have expected to do very well but I think I'm pretty good so I expected to go in and win. Smash!
At any rate, I went to bed very early yesterday since I was tired (7:30ish) and ended up waking up at 3:40 this morning. Plenty of time! I finished reading the set list and headed out to Matt's house to snag a ride.
They ended up getting 84 people which meant 7 rounds of swiss with a likely record of 5-1-1 needed to make top 8. The deck I registered had two foil rares in it which meant the card pool actually had 8 rares compared to the usual 6. A couple were dual lands but it also had a couple bombs. Sadly I didn't get it back. Instead I got what seemed to me to be a pretty weak card pool. I had one card which seemed like it could be a bomb (skirsdag high priest) and not a lot else going on. The rest of my black seemed pretty weak but it looked like I had a lot of cheap white and green humans. I had a black/green dual and a land searcher so I decided to spash the priest and an unburial rites into an aggressive white/green deck with three pieces of equipment.
Round 1 I have 1 land in the opener and mulligan into a 1 lander and mulligan into 2 lands. I end up getting flooded after that and only cast 3 creatures which all met creature removal. Games 2 and 3 my opponent stalled on mana and I beat him up with a bunch of cheap dudes. (He was playing double coloured spells in 3 colours I think so I'm not too surprised he got colour screwed a bit.)
Rounds 2 and 3 are very similar. I curve out in both games and quickly kill my opponents. My deck doesn't feel very powerful but an aggressive deck will sometimes just beat the opponent up when they don't have a good way to deal with the pressure.
Round 4 I have 1 land in the opener. I have a 1-drop (though it is equipment) and 3 2-drops including my bomb which I have yet to play. It's pretty unlikely I'll draw a black source to play him (I have no green so the land searcher won't help) but I decide to go for it. I tell my opponent I feel like losing and keep. I don't draw a land for 6 turns and unsurprisingly die. Game 2 I draw land and spells and demolish him with a fast start. (Turn 1 mana elf, turn 2 2/3 flyer, turn 3 5/5.) Game 3 my draw isn't quite as fast but I do play out my high priest. I'd sided in some removal which kills spirits and was able to use those to proc the priest. (Tap the priest and two other creatures to put a 5/5 flying demon token into play. You can only play this ability if a creature died this turn.) I used the Death Star and the Ace of Spades as demon tokens and blew him up with demons.
So I've started 4-0 and likely just need one more win in order to draw into the top 8.
Round 5 my opponent plays an early mayor. This is a flip werewolf that makes a 3/3 wolf every turn. It's a real problem if it ever flips. So what do I do? Decide to not play a spell on my next turn so I can keep tapper mana up. His mayor flips and destroys me. In retrospect I might win if I just play out a spell on that turn but it isn't clear. Doh. Game 2 he plays a cagebreaker (3/4 dude with a trigger that goes off when he attacks which puts a 2/2 wolf into play attacking for each creature in your graveyard) and that alone is enough to kill me. I don't have cards nearly as good as the mayor or the cagebreaker and have little in terms of removal so I got blown up. He was also playing a green/white beatdown deck but he had bombs, in colour, and they were less situational than mine. Also he drew his and I didn't draw mine.
Round 6 is essentially another mirror. He is playing white/black/green. None of the colours seems to be a splash as he has double coloured spells all over the place. He has 2 tappers, 3 rootwallas, 3 black kill spells... Basically his deck is like mine but a lot better if he draws the perfect land mix. He does so in both games and we frequently end up trading a bunch with him playing double-regrowth to generate enough card advantage to win both games.
Round 7 probably shouldn't matter but it turns out there are nine people at 13 points or more. Two of them have 13 points and one got paired down. If he looses then a 5-2 makes it. My breakers aren't spectacular but they aren't terrible either so there is an outside chance. Especially since my opponent is one of the people with better breakers than I have. Like the last two rounds this is essentially another mirror. But while the last two opponents had better cards than I did this guy seemed more on par with what I had. Game 1 I stall on lands and he gets me down to 5 life. He has 2 creatures in play and a +3/+0 equipment so any creature he draws is a threat. I have a tapper. Each turn I play a dude, tap his bigger guy, and trade with his equipped dude. Then we both cast another dude. This happens over and over and over. He has an empty hand so if he ever draws a land I'm free and clear. If I ever draw a land I can start doing multiple things each turn and get free and clear. Neither of those things happens for about 8 turns. Eventually though he runs out of gas and I kill him with my juggernaut.
Game 2 featured my making a misplay right out of the gates. He equips a 1/1 deathtouch creature with an equipment that gives first strike (also +1/+1 if the creature is human). For some reason I think it gives +1/+1 (also first strike if human) and attack into it with my 3/3. He blocks and my guy dies and I'm behind as a result for a lot of the game. I do end up getting my high priest out though and he doesn't really have a way to kill it. I throw a creature away to get my Death Star online, and I equip it with silver inlaid-dagger and inquisitor's flail which makes it into a 7/5 flyer that both deals and receives double damage. I crack him for 14 the turn I equip this stuff and he's in real danger. Unfortunately he has his +3/+0 equipment and a 2/1 flyer which he holds back on defense. I have a 2/2 flyer so I figure I can throw away the Death Star, hit him for 2 (he's at 2) and win. Instead he has a spell which gives +2/+2 and lifelink which gains him 14 life when he kills the Death Star. (Stupid flail making him take double damage... I probably should have equipped something else just in case.) At any rate, I build a new Death Star because that one died. He has 14 life so I can't alpha strike him down anymore so we end up playing draw-go for a while. He gets a tapper online to shut down the Death Star and makes a couple 1/1 flyers. Then for some reason he attacks with them. I block one with my 2/2 flyer and he has another +2/+2 to kill it. Ok, fine... I replace it with The Ace Of Spades and he gains 3 life. Seems like an ok trade to me. A couple turns later he gets bored and attacks with his 5/1 first striker... So I kill it with a spell that only targets attackers and build an Acrobatic Ninjas because it died. Now I have a trio of 5/5s and he doesn't have a first striker to kill them so I start beating his face in and win.
The 13 pointer who was paired down won his game so it was all for naught. I got some planeswalker points out of it and had fun so it wasn't a waste of time by any stretch but it's a little disappointing to start 4-0 and not manage to make top 8. Oh well! There's a PTQ in Waterloo next month and I may try to head to that for a second shot...
I spent some of yesterday and I bit this morning actually reading the card list for the set and hoped that would be good enough. How good are werewolves? Who knows! How do they even work? I don't know! Realistically I shouldn't have expected to do very well but I think I'm pretty good so I expected to go in and win. Smash!
At any rate, I went to bed very early yesterday since I was tired (7:30ish) and ended up waking up at 3:40 this morning. Plenty of time! I finished reading the set list and headed out to Matt's house to snag a ride.
They ended up getting 84 people which meant 7 rounds of swiss with a likely record of 5-1-1 needed to make top 8. The deck I registered had two foil rares in it which meant the card pool actually had 8 rares compared to the usual 6. A couple were dual lands but it also had a couple bombs. Sadly I didn't get it back. Instead I got what seemed to me to be a pretty weak card pool. I had one card which seemed like it could be a bomb (skirsdag high priest) and not a lot else going on. The rest of my black seemed pretty weak but it looked like I had a lot of cheap white and green humans. I had a black/green dual and a land searcher so I decided to spash the priest and an unburial rites into an aggressive white/green deck with three pieces of equipment.
Round 1 I have 1 land in the opener and mulligan into a 1 lander and mulligan into 2 lands. I end up getting flooded after that and only cast 3 creatures which all met creature removal. Games 2 and 3 my opponent stalled on mana and I beat him up with a bunch of cheap dudes. (He was playing double coloured spells in 3 colours I think so I'm not too surprised he got colour screwed a bit.)
Rounds 2 and 3 are very similar. I curve out in both games and quickly kill my opponents. My deck doesn't feel very powerful but an aggressive deck will sometimes just beat the opponent up when they don't have a good way to deal with the pressure.
Round 4 I have 1 land in the opener. I have a 1-drop (though it is equipment) and 3 2-drops including my bomb which I have yet to play. It's pretty unlikely I'll draw a black source to play him (I have no green so the land searcher won't help) but I decide to go for it. I tell my opponent I feel like losing and keep. I don't draw a land for 6 turns and unsurprisingly die. Game 2 I draw land and spells and demolish him with a fast start. (Turn 1 mana elf, turn 2 2/3 flyer, turn 3 5/5.) Game 3 my draw isn't quite as fast but I do play out my high priest. I'd sided in some removal which kills spirits and was able to use those to proc the priest. (Tap the priest and two other creatures to put a 5/5 flying demon token into play. You can only play this ability if a creature died this turn.) I used the Death Star and the Ace of Spades as demon tokens and blew him up with demons.
So I've started 4-0 and likely just need one more win in order to draw into the top 8.
Round 5 my opponent plays an early mayor. This is a flip werewolf that makes a 3/3 wolf every turn. It's a real problem if it ever flips. So what do I do? Decide to not play a spell on my next turn so I can keep tapper mana up. His mayor flips and destroys me. In retrospect I might win if I just play out a spell on that turn but it isn't clear. Doh. Game 2 he plays a cagebreaker (3/4 dude with a trigger that goes off when he attacks which puts a 2/2 wolf into play attacking for each creature in your graveyard) and that alone is enough to kill me. I don't have cards nearly as good as the mayor or the cagebreaker and have little in terms of removal so I got blown up. He was also playing a green/white beatdown deck but he had bombs, in colour, and they were less situational than mine. Also he drew his and I didn't draw mine.
Round 6 is essentially another mirror. He is playing white/black/green. None of the colours seems to be a splash as he has double coloured spells all over the place. He has 2 tappers, 3 rootwallas, 3 black kill spells... Basically his deck is like mine but a lot better if he draws the perfect land mix. He does so in both games and we frequently end up trading a bunch with him playing double-regrowth to generate enough card advantage to win both games.
Round 7 probably shouldn't matter but it turns out there are nine people at 13 points or more. Two of them have 13 points and one got paired down. If he looses then a 5-2 makes it. My breakers aren't spectacular but they aren't terrible either so there is an outside chance. Especially since my opponent is one of the people with better breakers than I have. Like the last two rounds this is essentially another mirror. But while the last two opponents had better cards than I did this guy seemed more on par with what I had. Game 1 I stall on lands and he gets me down to 5 life. He has 2 creatures in play and a +3/+0 equipment so any creature he draws is a threat. I have a tapper. Each turn I play a dude, tap his bigger guy, and trade with his equipped dude. Then we both cast another dude. This happens over and over and over. He has an empty hand so if he ever draws a land I'm free and clear. If I ever draw a land I can start doing multiple things each turn and get free and clear. Neither of those things happens for about 8 turns. Eventually though he runs out of gas and I kill him with my juggernaut.
Game 2 featured my making a misplay right out of the gates. He equips a 1/1 deathtouch creature with an equipment that gives first strike (also +1/+1 if the creature is human). For some reason I think it gives +1/+1 (also first strike if human) and attack into it with my 3/3. He blocks and my guy dies and I'm behind as a result for a lot of the game. I do end up getting my high priest out though and he doesn't really have a way to kill it. I throw a creature away to get my Death Star online, and I equip it with silver inlaid-dagger and inquisitor's flail which makes it into a 7/5 flyer that both deals and receives double damage. I crack him for 14 the turn I equip this stuff and he's in real danger. Unfortunately he has his +3/+0 equipment and a 2/1 flyer which he holds back on defense. I have a 2/2 flyer so I figure I can throw away the Death Star, hit him for 2 (he's at 2) and win. Instead he has a spell which gives +2/+2 and lifelink which gains him 14 life when he kills the Death Star. (Stupid flail making him take double damage... I probably should have equipped something else just in case.) At any rate, I build a new Death Star because that one died. He has 14 life so I can't alpha strike him down anymore so we end up playing draw-go for a while. He gets a tapper online to shut down the Death Star and makes a couple 1/1 flyers. Then for some reason he attacks with them. I block one with my 2/2 flyer and he has another +2/+2 to kill it. Ok, fine... I replace it with The Ace Of Spades and he gains 3 life. Seems like an ok trade to me. A couple turns later he gets bored and attacks with his 5/1 first striker... So I kill it with a spell that only targets attackers and build an Acrobatic Ninjas because it died. Now I have a trio of 5/5s and he doesn't have a first striker to kill them so I start beating his face in and win.
The 13 pointer who was paired down won his game so it was all for naught. I got some planeswalker points out of it and had fun so it wasn't a waste of time by any stretch but it's a little disappointing to start 4-0 and not manage to make top 8. Oh well! There's a PTQ in Waterloo next month and I may try to head to that for a second shot...
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
King of Tokyo Results
On Monday I headed down to Snakes & Lattes to play in their tournament for King of Tokyo. They've apparently acquired the adjacent store and have been working to use that store to expand their space. They held the tournament in the new store which was a pretty sweet space.
I think they had around 24-25 people and played mostly 5 player games. 3 rounds, cut to top 5 for a final table. I hadn't really played before and decide to go with a brawling strategy. Getting points seemed pretty random and smashing faces seemed really awesome so I went for it. It turns out that's not a very good plan at all. I eliminated many people in the 3 tournament games I played, and never died myself, but someone always managed to score enough points to win.
I played most of a game before the tournament in a teaching game for a new player and also played a game during the finals. I've come to the conclusion that trying to kill everyone is not very feasible. The problems with trying to kill people is you can't choose who you attack unless you try to attack everyone at once. But in order to do that you first have to let everyone else attack you AND you can no longer use the healing result on the dice. Maybe it's better in a smaller player game but in a 5 player game it really felt like everyone was just rolling for very random points while doing enough damage to anyone who thought about being aggressive to shut them down.
People seemed to _really_ like the game. People were talking about how it's in their top 5 of greatest games of all time. I'm not a fan. The fact that you often can't make use of any of your rolls makes it feel really hard to control what's going on. Contrasted with Roll Through The Ages, for example, where the faces all do different things but they almost always do _something_ so no matter what you roll you can make some choices and further your board position.
The turnout was really varied, too. There was a 7 year old kid and a large number (for a board game tournament, anyway) of cute young women. Everyone seemed to be having fun despite all the randomness and the fact that there's a lot of attacking going on. (I could have imagined people getting really bitter when I kept re-rolling points in order to try to eliminate them from the game but no one seemed to mind.) I was pretty much playing kingmaker by eliminating a couple people who were trying for points each game. But since I wasn't actually choosing who to attack it doesn't seem as bad, I guess... It helps that the flavour of the game is large monsters brawling each other!
After the tournament I hung out for another hour and a half and taught Tichu to Duncan and a couple other guys from the tournament. It's been a long time since I'd played that game and enjoyed playing it more than King of Tokyo. A good evening in all!
I think they had around 24-25 people and played mostly 5 player games. 3 rounds, cut to top 5 for a final table. I hadn't really played before and decide to go with a brawling strategy. Getting points seemed pretty random and smashing faces seemed really awesome so I went for it. It turns out that's not a very good plan at all. I eliminated many people in the 3 tournament games I played, and never died myself, but someone always managed to score enough points to win.
I played most of a game before the tournament in a teaching game for a new player and also played a game during the finals. I've come to the conclusion that trying to kill everyone is not very feasible. The problems with trying to kill people is you can't choose who you attack unless you try to attack everyone at once. But in order to do that you first have to let everyone else attack you AND you can no longer use the healing result on the dice. Maybe it's better in a smaller player game but in a 5 player game it really felt like everyone was just rolling for very random points while doing enough damage to anyone who thought about being aggressive to shut them down.
People seemed to _really_ like the game. People were talking about how it's in their top 5 of greatest games of all time. I'm not a fan. The fact that you often can't make use of any of your rolls makes it feel really hard to control what's going on. Contrasted with Roll Through The Ages, for example, where the faces all do different things but they almost always do _something_ so no matter what you roll you can make some choices and further your board position.
The turnout was really varied, too. There was a 7 year old kid and a large number (for a board game tournament, anyway) of cute young women. Everyone seemed to be having fun despite all the randomness and the fact that there's a lot of attacking going on. (I could have imagined people getting really bitter when I kept re-rolling points in order to try to eliminate them from the game but no one seemed to mind.) I was pretty much playing kingmaker by eliminating a couple people who were trying for points each game. But since I wasn't actually choosing who to attack it doesn't seem as bad, I guess... It helps that the flavour of the game is large monsters brawling each other!
After the tournament I hung out for another hour and a half and taught Tichu to Duncan and a couple other guys from the tournament. It's been a long time since I'd played that game and enjoyed playing it more than King of Tokyo. A good evening in all!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Great Canadian Board Game Blitz 2011 Recap
I woke up Saturday morning with no sore throat so I figured I was good to go. I headed down to the convention center for Fan eXpo and got directed to the volunteer office to get my pass. It turns out I had a volunteer pass which let me in early bypassing all lines. Pretty sweet, and makes me wish I'd felt up to going down on Thursday and Friday. I had baked in some time for lines so I ended up with a lot of time to kill beforehand and learned to play King of Tokyo which seems interesting enough.
The first two rounds of the blitz have you pick games in a random order, and then in the reverse of that order. I ended up pulling the 2 of diamonds with spades picking first then diamonds, A-K. So I would be picking about in the middle of both rounds which is a pretty good place to be. The number of people playing each round fluctuated as people came and went and I think they ran 7 or 8 games each round. With only 8 games to choose from this meant pretty much every game was started.
Round 1 - San Juan
I believe I've played San Juan in the first round of every blitz thus far. It has the rare combination of being a game I really like to play and a game that I've really put a lot of thought into mastering. I ended up with a near perfect set-up in this game. My first building was a coffee roaster (with an opponent choosing to not null-trader in 4th seat, instead he crafted a coffee for me and 3 indigo total for my opponents). Then I put out a gold mine (it didn't proc for a while but eventually came home for a hero and a palace), a library, a quarry, and a carpenter. From there it was just a matter of scoring points. All 3 statues, chapel, city hall, and palace. I buried one of the guild halls, though it didn't much matter. The final scores were something like 47-26-22-16.
Round 2 - Alhambra
I didn't really want to play any of the games up in this round. My choice came down to playing Alhambra or St Petersburg which are both games which I know the rules to, and are decent at, but which I don't really like and I have never really looked into how to be good at. I decided to give Alhambra a shot this time.
I don't really know what I'm doing so basically I just start off buying things I can afford and then try to transition into having barely more than other people. As it turned out the stuff I could afford early was exactly the stuff the guy to my left could previously afford. We ended up tying on almost every colour we had early on, but I was able to overpay for specific buildings in order to just edge him out as the game progressed. Unfortunately for both of us he tried to fight back, and I had to keep staying barely ahead of him. This resulted in his score being abysmally bad, but mine wasn't quite good enough. The final scores ended up being something like 123-114-113-66. I was second by a mere point.
Round 3 - Factory Manager
I'm honestly not sure what I was thinking when I picked this game. The only other game I've really played in the round was Roll Through The Ages which I really should have picked since I at least like to play it. I was thinking it was really random (though I have never lost in person) and wanted a higher skill game. I'm certain I got a higher skill game, but unfortunately it wasn't one I'm skilled at.
The game itself wasn't very interesting at all. It was a three player game where one guy was taught the game on the spot and the other guy knew what he was doing. I'm actually not sure how he was able to get so much more stuff than I got but it wasn't even close. The scores were something like 300-220-120.
Round 4 - Notre Dame
If we're talking about games I like and really know how to win, Notre Dame might actually be on the top of the list. It was the first game I wrote about on here, and that was back before I was looking to post a lot.
The game itself was a three player game, but when I sat down there was only one other player. We waited a bit and she hadn't played before so I figured I'd teach while we waited and hope the third guy knew how to play when he finally showed up. Full rules explanation later, still no third opponent. Marc (the man in charge of the blitz) came over and didn't know where the third guy was. It had been at least 45 minutes from when the round was supposed to start and he asked if Notre Dame could be played with 2 people. It actually has pretty good 2 player rules, so we started with the understanding if the third guy showed up soon we'd restart.
The third guy eventually showed up, but by this point we were a third of the way done the game. (2 player games are really fast, and my opponent was a fast learner and picked the game up right away.) We sat around in a 'should we restart, should we not' holding pattern for a little bit before the decision was made to screw him since he was an hour late. We probably could have ended up delaying the round a lot if we'd restarted at that point so it was the right decision I think. Though from a scoring standpoint really awesome for the people in the 2 player game.
The game itself wasn't actually close since Notre Dame is really a game you need to play a couple times to understand which of the limited resources you can afford to skimp on. My opponent missed a couple bribes and I got a perfect minstrel of two cubes and Balki from cube house to the hospital. The final score was in the 69-40 range.
Round 5 - Agricola
I was 4th pick in this round so I was pretty sure I was out. So I picked a game I wanted to play, Agricola. If I'd been 2nd pick I probably would have attacked 1st place but with all of the top 3 picking different games I didn't really have a hope. I wanted to farm!
Seating doesn't get randomized at GCBGB, and sometimes it works in your favour. My game featured someone learning the game, the guy teaching the game (who was the guy who missed out on Notre Dame the last round), an older woman who had played a few times, and me. I was the 4th one over, and took the empty seat. It turned out the guy teaching the game was the only one who really knew what he was doing, and he was to my left.
I gambled early on, and built my 3rd room on the 4th turn, setting up for a turn 5 family growth. Family growth did come out on turn 5 and I was off to the races. I also built the first fireplace and the guy to my left considering first picking 3 sheep on turn 6 to spite the 6 food from me. His other options were 6 wood, or to build a room so he could family growth on turn 7. He made some snide comments about how he was screwed on family growthing anyway but ended up taking the wood. The new guy failed to build rooms as his next action which allowed lefty to build two rooms on turn 6 anyway to get in the family growth. I got the 6 food from the sheep which powered me for a few turns.
I had the card which let me build clay rooms for 2 clay, 1 wood, 1 reed. I used that to build two more rooms and got to family growth a 2nd time before lefty got his 2nd one. I then also had cards which let me plow 6 fields with 2 actions, and which gave me one of each animal when I built 4 stables. I used those to fill my farm. I failed to renovate to stone (I forgot the new guy could renovate without reed and therefore thought I could hold off on renovating when I couldn't) but it really didn't matter. The final scores were in the neighbourhood of 47-30-25-12.
As it turns out, with the win in round 5 I actually vaulted ahead into a three way tie for first. After going through the tie breakers it turned out that 3 wins and 2 seconds is worse than 4 wins and 1 second so someone else came 1st. Me and the other guy were tied all the way down the tiebreakers so we tied for 2nd-3rd. I actually didn't play a game with any of the guys I tied with, just like the one in Toronto a month ago when I came 3rd but didn't play against any of the people ahead of me. The blitz is certainly a fun format, but it doesn't really offer a good way to determine 'the best' since you don't have to play with each other.
Afterwards I stuck around and taught Innovation. I also learned Hive in the middle of the day, so there was lots of fun board gaming to be had.
And on the plus side, I wasn't the only person at the blitz in costume this year, as the girl in my San Juan game was dressed up as something I didn't recognize, probably from an anime.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Magic Nationals 2011 - Day 2
I got up bright and early and decided to brave the buses today. Saving $50 seems like a good idea and if the bus was really slow I could just get out and call a cab from the middle of nowhere. I was a little afraid the bus wasn't going to run that early on a Sunday but the worry was unfounded and I made it to the tournament site with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately between watching Dude, Where's My Car? the night before and getting up in time to make sure I caught the bus I didn't get a full night's sleep. This whole staying on site thing seems better ad better...
At any rate, I am currently 5-2. I haven't bothered to look at the standings or crunch any numbers but from overhearing other people it seems like not every 9-3 will make it in. If any 9-3 doesn't make it in it's going to be me since my breakers are terrible, so I guess I need to win out.
Round 8
My opponent is playing black/red beats with some bloodthirst dudes. He gets a pretty fast start in game 1 and I trade a bit. I end up at 16 life with him having a 4/4 and a 5/5 (Al Gore) in play. I have nothing, and it is my 6th turn. I've had inferno titan in my hand all along, but doming him for 3 seems a little weak. I draw for the turn and it's a basilisk. In retrospect the right play here is to play the basilisk. If he has removal that kills the basilisk it also kills the titan. I can block the 4/4 with my 3/5 and even if he has removal for the 1-for-2 I still have titan back and he'd need another removal spell for another 2 for one next turn. And maybe he'll even play some cheap dude I can kill with it.
Instead I just run out the titan for no good reason. My plan apparently is he has nothing at all to back up his dudes. I block the 5/5, he has chandra's outrage for the 1-for-2. I then bust out the basilisk and he has no immediate answer for it. I get out both my crown and my satchel but he beats me down to 4 life. I can either tap his 4/4 or his 1/1 unblockable. I choose the 4/4 (he'd killed the basilisk somehow by this point or maybe I'd attacked with it) and he incinerates me.
In retrospect I almost certainly win if I play my creatures in the right order on turn 6. Or if I'd tapped his unblockable guy I likely have chances. (I have a 1/1 to chump with.)
Now, there is a pretty big downside to drafting on a different day than you play. And it's that if you aren't on the ball you can forget what's in your deck. Like I did this game, with combust, which is terrible against a red/black deck. I didn't draw it but it was still a huge mistake to leave it in.
Game 2 he stalls on 3 land for a long time. I am mana flooded. Unfortunately his deck is full of terrible cheap dudes and the fact he only has 3 lands means he has lots of cheap dudes. I trade as much as I can but eventually lands don't trade with creatures and I get run over.
I am sad, since I now almost certainly can't make top 8, but I made a couple mistakes so it is my own fault. Going home at this point seems silly so I decide to stick it out. Also there are prizes to top 16 (only pro points, but I have to get Hall of Fame eligible somehow, right? Right?).
Round 9
My opponent this round is playing black/green. He has a lot of lifegain in his deck (stupid brindle boar) but it turns out it doesn't matter how many brindle boars you have, they don't block volcanic dragon and I kill him in game 1 without much fuss.
I decide to sideboard something in against him and find the combust. This is when I realize how terrible I was last round. I try to aggro him out but he has brindle boars to stay alive and trollhide on his 3/1 hexproof to bash me to death.
Game 3 he again has trollhide on wolf to make a 5/3 regenerating untargetable. For some reason he doesn't swing it into my 2/2 on turn 4. He didn't have regen mana up, but I couldn't kill it anyway. Except I had naturalize in my hand and totally would have killed it. He doesn't attack and I naturalize anyway. I'm mana flooded but I have a 4/4 trampler and my own trollhide. I decide if he has a removal spell right now I'm probably dead since he'll kill my dude and beat me down so I go for trollhide on my rhino. He doesn't have removal so I have a 6/6 trampling regenerator. I punch him for 6 over and over. He has brindle boars to stem the damage a little and 2 skeletons that he throws in front to absorb damage too.
Eventually he gets a second trollhide and makes his 5/3 regenerator again. I skip an attack for a turn because I'm stupid (just because his creature doesn't die doesn't mean I don't get to trample in). I'm afraid of overrun (I sided in a fog as well since he seemed to be playing the previous games like he had one in his deck) and want the game to end fast but don't really have a way to make that happen. Until I draw inferno titan, anyway. That kills a couple of his dudes and the next turn kills him off as well.
Round 10
Round 9 ended really fast so they decide to just start round 10. My opponent had looked at the clock, saw 16 minutes left in round 9, and went to the bathroom. So I got to wait around with no opponent for awhile, but because they started early she wasn't going to get a game loss for a long time. She eventually shows up, we get extra time, and we start.
She is playing caw-blade, and in game 1 uses a sac land to lose a life and busts out timely reinforcements to go up to 25 with 3 dorks in play. At this point I have 3 1/1 elves. I decide to play an archdruid and bash. She trades 2 tokens with an elf and chumps another. She casts a few powerful spells (wrath, jace, and gideon I think) but also draws a lot of land. She tapped out to wrath away my archdruid and I played a lead the stampede, nabbing 2 Ezuris to go with the 1 in my hand. 3 Ezuris end up being enough to power through her few actual spells and win me the game.
Game 2 is a complete blowout. She has a reasonable mix of lands and powerful spells. I do not. She ends the game having taken 1 damage from a painland (immediately healed up with timely reinforcements). I didn't hit her with any dudes after that, except with my poison guy who got in for 4 poison total.
As we're shuffling for game 3 I flip one of her cards. She doesn't think I need to call a judge but I do anyway since I had seen what it was. I get a warning as a result.
The actual game 3 had me stick a fauna shaman early. I filled my graveyard with vengevines and killed her. I think Ezuri also helped some elves survive a wrath.
Round 11
This round was not very interesting at all. My opponent was playing a pod deck, but he didn't draw a single pod the entire match. I played some elves and killed him easily both games.
Round 12
I get paired down (again) though it doesn't really matter. Even if I win I'll be 9-3 but 10th. My opponent is playing caw-blade and draws multiple wraths each game. Game 1 he actually gets gideon and karn online and uses that to steal my Ezuris before wrathing. Game 2 I have to mulligan twice and decide to risk playing out what little I have left after the first wrath. He has the second wrath. He then kills me with 1/1 flyers as I keep drawing land.
Ultimately I end up 8-4. The 8-4s spanned from 12th place to 25th place. I am, of course, 25th.
I run into Josh and he says at least there will be gaming later. I ask when and he makes a face. He's actually working and the top 8 is important to cover, I think. He says it won't be for a long time and sends me home. I decide there's not really much I'd be doing at home (I consider calling my D&D friends and seeing if they're both all available and willing to pick me up at the airport) and decide to just hang out in the hotel lobby reading my book until Nationals ends. I finish off Clash of Kings and get a good way into Storm of Swords. Eventually Josh is done working and I teach him Roll Through The Ages and Innovation before heading home to sleep before work on Monday.
As I said earlier, I didn't enjoy this Nationals as much as previous years because all the cool chrome was gone. I don't know if that was just this year or if it is a fact of life going forward but I do wish I hadn't bothered with it this year. Probably I won't bother going forward either, if I am even qualified anymore, but we'll see.
At any rate, I am currently 5-2. I haven't bothered to look at the standings or crunch any numbers but from overhearing other people it seems like not every 9-3 will make it in. If any 9-3 doesn't make it in it's going to be me since my breakers are terrible, so I guess I need to win out.
Round 8
My opponent is playing black/red beats with some bloodthirst dudes. He gets a pretty fast start in game 1 and I trade a bit. I end up at 16 life with him having a 4/4 and a 5/5 (Al Gore) in play. I have nothing, and it is my 6th turn. I've had inferno titan in my hand all along, but doming him for 3 seems a little weak. I draw for the turn and it's a basilisk. In retrospect the right play here is to play the basilisk. If he has removal that kills the basilisk it also kills the titan. I can block the 4/4 with my 3/5 and even if he has removal for the 1-for-2 I still have titan back and he'd need another removal spell for another 2 for one next turn. And maybe he'll even play some cheap dude I can kill with it.
Instead I just run out the titan for no good reason. My plan apparently is he has nothing at all to back up his dudes. I block the 5/5, he has chandra's outrage for the 1-for-2. I then bust out the basilisk and he has no immediate answer for it. I get out both my crown and my satchel but he beats me down to 4 life. I can either tap his 4/4 or his 1/1 unblockable. I choose the 4/4 (he'd killed the basilisk somehow by this point or maybe I'd attacked with it) and he incinerates me.
In retrospect I almost certainly win if I play my creatures in the right order on turn 6. Or if I'd tapped his unblockable guy I likely have chances. (I have a 1/1 to chump with.)
Now, there is a pretty big downside to drafting on a different day than you play. And it's that if you aren't on the ball you can forget what's in your deck. Like I did this game, with combust, which is terrible against a red/black deck. I didn't draw it but it was still a huge mistake to leave it in.
Game 2 he stalls on 3 land for a long time. I am mana flooded. Unfortunately his deck is full of terrible cheap dudes and the fact he only has 3 lands means he has lots of cheap dudes. I trade as much as I can but eventually lands don't trade with creatures and I get run over.
I am sad, since I now almost certainly can't make top 8, but I made a couple mistakes so it is my own fault. Going home at this point seems silly so I decide to stick it out. Also there are prizes to top 16 (only pro points, but I have to get Hall of Fame eligible somehow, right? Right?).
Round 9
My opponent this round is playing black/green. He has a lot of lifegain in his deck (stupid brindle boar) but it turns out it doesn't matter how many brindle boars you have, they don't block volcanic dragon and I kill him in game 1 without much fuss.
I decide to sideboard something in against him and find the combust. This is when I realize how terrible I was last round. I try to aggro him out but he has brindle boars to stay alive and trollhide on his 3/1 hexproof to bash me to death.
Game 3 he again has trollhide on wolf to make a 5/3 regenerating untargetable. For some reason he doesn't swing it into my 2/2 on turn 4. He didn't have regen mana up, but I couldn't kill it anyway. Except I had naturalize in my hand and totally would have killed it. He doesn't attack and I naturalize anyway. I'm mana flooded but I have a 4/4 trampler and my own trollhide. I decide if he has a removal spell right now I'm probably dead since he'll kill my dude and beat me down so I go for trollhide on my rhino. He doesn't have removal so I have a 6/6 trampling regenerator. I punch him for 6 over and over. He has brindle boars to stem the damage a little and 2 skeletons that he throws in front to absorb damage too.
Eventually he gets a second trollhide and makes his 5/3 regenerator again. I skip an attack for a turn because I'm stupid (just because his creature doesn't die doesn't mean I don't get to trample in). I'm afraid of overrun (I sided in a fog as well since he seemed to be playing the previous games like he had one in his deck) and want the game to end fast but don't really have a way to make that happen. Until I draw inferno titan, anyway. That kills a couple of his dudes and the next turn kills him off as well.
Round 10
Round 9 ended really fast so they decide to just start round 10. My opponent had looked at the clock, saw 16 minutes left in round 9, and went to the bathroom. So I got to wait around with no opponent for awhile, but because they started early she wasn't going to get a game loss for a long time. She eventually shows up, we get extra time, and we start.
She is playing caw-blade, and in game 1 uses a sac land to lose a life and busts out timely reinforcements to go up to 25 with 3 dorks in play. At this point I have 3 1/1 elves. I decide to play an archdruid and bash. She trades 2 tokens with an elf and chumps another. She casts a few powerful spells (wrath, jace, and gideon I think) but also draws a lot of land. She tapped out to wrath away my archdruid and I played a lead the stampede, nabbing 2 Ezuris to go with the 1 in my hand. 3 Ezuris end up being enough to power through her few actual spells and win me the game.
Game 2 is a complete blowout. She has a reasonable mix of lands and powerful spells. I do not. She ends the game having taken 1 damage from a painland (immediately healed up with timely reinforcements). I didn't hit her with any dudes after that, except with my poison guy who got in for 4 poison total.
As we're shuffling for game 3 I flip one of her cards. She doesn't think I need to call a judge but I do anyway since I had seen what it was. I get a warning as a result.
The actual game 3 had me stick a fauna shaman early. I filled my graveyard with vengevines and killed her. I think Ezuri also helped some elves survive a wrath.
Round 11
This round was not very interesting at all. My opponent was playing a pod deck, but he didn't draw a single pod the entire match. I played some elves and killed him easily both games.
Round 12
I get paired down (again) though it doesn't really matter. Even if I win I'll be 9-3 but 10th. My opponent is playing caw-blade and draws multiple wraths each game. Game 1 he actually gets gideon and karn online and uses that to steal my Ezuris before wrathing. Game 2 I have to mulligan twice and decide to risk playing out what little I have left after the first wrath. He has the second wrath. He then kills me with 1/1 flyers as I keep drawing land.
Ultimately I end up 8-4. The 8-4s spanned from 12th place to 25th place. I am, of course, 25th.
I run into Josh and he says at least there will be gaming later. I ask when and he makes a face. He's actually working and the top 8 is important to cover, I think. He says it won't be for a long time and sends me home. I decide there's not really much I'd be doing at home (I consider calling my D&D friends and seeing if they're both all available and willing to pick me up at the airport) and decide to just hang out in the hotel lobby reading my book until Nationals ends. I finish off Clash of Kings and get a good way into Storm of Swords. Eventually Josh is done working and I teach him Roll Through The Ages and Innovation before heading home to sleep before work on Monday.
As I said earlier, I didn't enjoy this Nationals as much as previous years because all the cool chrome was gone. I don't know if that was just this year or if it is a fact of life going forward but I do wish I hadn't bothered with it this year. Probably I won't bother going forward either, if I am even qualified anymore, but we'll see.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Magic Nationals 2011 - Day 1
I wasn't 100% on how long it would take for the bus to get to the tournament site, and I wasn't 100% that I had enough cards between Duncan and I for my deck, and I needed to register still, so I built in a ton of extra time into my morning schedule. I set my alarm for 5:30 with the tournament to start at 9. I went to sleep pretty much as soon as I got home from work on Friday so I'd be well rested. 9 and a half hours of sleep apparently wasn't enough as I slept right through the alarm for another hour and a half. 11 hours of sleep definitely put me into the well rested camp, but it did make me worried I wouldn't make it to the site on time.
I ended up calling a cab. I didn't have a number for a cab so I searched on the internet and was told to dial 416-TAXICAB and they'd find a cab for me. Great, I called up and they said they'd send a cab over. I went to wait by the street when two cabs from different companies pulled up beside me. Both men clearly didn't have a great grasp of the English language. They were both yelling at me that they were the ones I called. Neither seemed to know where I was going, though one guy did guess the airport. I don't know if the phone number told me what cab company was coming or not, or if they'd even sent just one cab. It was too early to figure it out so I went with the guy who guessed airport. The taxi fare ended up costing about what my deck did, which is sad. I hope that extra hour of sleep was worth it, body.
I get to the site with an hour to spare and run into Duncan in the lobby. Apparently he's staying in the hotel despite living in Toronto. In retrospect taking the bus out and staying in the hotel is probably cheaper than taking the cab multiple times and it certainly allows for more sleep so I may want to consider doing so in the future. At any rate, he'll have my cards down in the site in half an hour. I head over that way to register.
When I get to the registration desk I'm greeted by the distinctive hairstyle of Sleep Yoda to my Sleep Skywalker - Josh Bennett. I sneak up and say boo, he is surprised that I don't have a moustache. Clearly Josh needs to come to Toronto more often since I haven't had a moustache in 9 months. We chat a bit, he asks if I'm feeling confident. I tell him I tentatively cancelled my D&D session on Sunday and actually did some drafts beforehand which about as confident as I can get.
Duncan brings in the cards and everything is there. I sleeve up, write a decklist, and have time to burn so I read some Clash of Kings.
I complained about the setup yesterday so I'm going to gloss over that today. Today is for making fun of my Magic playing!
Round 1 I get deck-checked right off the hop. The match to my right is Valakut vs Valakut. To my left is Valakut vs Cawblade. My deck can't beat Valakut. On the one hand it's good that 3 of the Valakut decks in the field are playing not-me right now. On the other hand maybe Valakut is going to be popular at Nationals and I'm boned. I passed the deck check (yay!) as does my opponent (boo!) and we're off. It turns out my opponent is also playing Valakut. (For those who don't know, Valakut is essentially a combo deck. The namesake card turns mountains into lightning bolts if you have enough of them, and you power both the Valakuts and the mountains out with Primeval Titan. The deck plays a lot of land searchers too like rampant growth. Elves can't win because they side in cheap sweepers and are just a more consistent fast clock.)
I win game 1 since I don't think he was maindecking sweepers and I had a decent draw. Game 2 he ramps up to 7 mana but doesn't cast anything. Clearly he kept a hand with no gas for some reason (probably he had some removal to slow me down) but I had some vengevines and Ezuris and have him on the ropes. Another turn and he's dead. He says something about needing a great topdeck, draws a card, and plays avatar of zendikar which is pretty much a 5/5 dude and 6 3/4 dudes in one card. Suddenly he's not nearly so dead. Two swings later I am, though. I misblock on the first one to guarantee I die to the second one but I don't think I had any possible outs one way or the other and was certainly dead in 3 swings no matter what.
Game 3 is also kinda close but he has a primeval titan on turn 5 which puts the game away. I didn't draw a torpor orb in either games 2 or 3. Also, I mulliganed every game, and twice in game 3.
Round 2 I'm paired up against a straight UR splinter twin deck. He kills me on turn 4 in game 1. I mulligan a mediocre but playable hand in game 2 trying to get a torpor orb. I keep a 6 card hand without one that at least has a mana elf, which he countered with mental misstep (2 life, 0 mana: counter a 1 drop). I end up topdecking 3 torpor orbs in 4 turns. I also get out 2 archdruids and an elf and he pyroclasms for no game effect (they're all 3/3). He scoops when the 3rd orb hits play. Game 3 my 7 card hand has 3 torpor orbs and 0 forests. I'm forced to mulligan, and then again, and don't get a torpor orb. I do actually put out some decent pressure with a fauna shaman and some vengevines and he's dead in a turn. So he busts out an exarch to stunt some of the damage and says he needs to topdeck a twin here to win. He topdecks a twin. He also has a counter for my nature's claim and I am dead. Twin is actually a decent matchup I think, but not when you mulligan 4 times and never draw an orb.
So I'm 0-2, with 8 mulligans thus far. I consider just dropping and leaving but I do like to draft and going 0-2 pretty much guarantees my rating will fail to qualify me in the future. I keep going.
Round 3 I play a guy from New Brunswick who comments, after I roll a 19 to go first, that while he wasn't sure before he is sure now. I must be Ben Page's brother. Once upon a time Jamie was my brother. My opponent is Jeremie Vienneau and is playing UB control. Game 1 he doesn't have a sweeper and I blow him up good. Game 2 he casts Black Sun's Zenith 5 times and gains a lot of life with Wurmcoil Engine. (BBX - Put X -1/-1 counters on all creatures and then shuffle the spell back into your deck.) This includes him using it on turn 3 to kill 3 of my elves. I had chosen to not pump up my joraga treespeaker since I was worried about dismember setting me back a turn. Sigh. Game 3 he doesn't have an early zenith and I kill him on turn 5.
I'm now 1-2. I run into my first round opponent in the bathroom and he says he's also 1-2 now. As if my tiebreakers weren't bad enough! And then my draft pod contains only 7 people, and includes the people at 0-2-1. As foreshadowing I will get paired down in both rounds 4 and 5 to these people. So my tiebreakers will be really, really bad. I pretty much had to run the table from 0-2 to make top 8.
Anyway, draft 1. My opening pack had no bombs and had 3 potential picks in my mind. Sacred Wolf, Griffin Sentinel, or Chandra's Outrage. I went with the removal. I get passed a pack with a Serra Angel and another Chandra's Outrage. Ordinarily I probably would have taken the Serra but I was operating on plan mono colour if I could. Outrage is really, really good since it kills almost any blocker and gets some damage in to the dome as well. And it kills Serra. Red then dries up in a real hurry. I manage to table a fiery hellhound (I think most people will really underrate him. I think he's awesome!) and my on colour picks after pack 1 are:
2 chandra's outrage
2 goblin arsonist
1 fling
1 fiery hellhound
Yeah, only 6 red cards. Not good enough. I also have griffin sentinel (which tabled from my first pack!), swftfoot boots, and a bunch of questionably playable cards. (zombie infestation, rites of flourishing, negate, hideous visage, buried ruin, celestial purge)
In pack 2 I open a fireball. Huzzah! I'd noticed in pack 1 that both white and green seemed to be open but that blue and black were pretty non-existent. As was red, really, but I'm stubborn. The red cards I got from pack 2 were:
1 reverbate
1 fireball
1 bonebreaker giant (which I long-ranged to 13th pick somehow)
1 lava axe
1 slaughter cry
1 act of treason
1 goblin arsonist
I also had manic vandal and combust for my sideboard. The other cards were rusted sentinel, gladecover scout, wall of torches, taste of blood, and guardian's pledge.
I still have my eye on being mono red. I have a couple ok artifacts (boots and sentinel) that I can play and I'm not against running wall of torches either. I open my 3rd pack and scan for the best red card. It turns out to not exist. My 3rd pack actually has no red cards at all. It doesn't really have what I'd call playable cards even. I'm left deciding what to hate draft from the two decent cards in the pack: mana leak or arachnus web. I take the web.
Right passes me a Chandra's Phoenix which is pretty insane in my deck with all the domey burn spells. Pack 3 brings with it a real choice... My deck doesn't have a two drop yet, and there's a red mage. There's also an arachnus spinner. 5/7 reach for 6 is pretty ok on its own. The fact that it can search out a pseudo-removal spell in arachnus web is pretty insane. And I just so happened to have hate-drafted one of those with my first pick. I decided that since red was dry in pack 1, and since green was wide open in pack 1, that my mono deck wasn't going to get there. So I should take my bomb. Cards that made my deck from pack 3 after that were:
2 act of treason
1 chandra's phoenix
1 fiery hellhound
1 runeclaw bear
1 titanic growth
1 greater basilisk
1 arachnus spinner
1 cudgel troll
1 arachnus web
The unplayed cards from this pack were wall of torches, manalith, pride guardian, and stave off.
I decided to actually run the fork in my deck. I had 10 spells to fork with it and some of them would be pretty sweet to fork. (Fireball, lava axe, and fling in particular.) I showed the deck to Josh after I'd built it and he thought it looked pretty bad. In particular he held his nose when looking at my 3 act of treasons but I actually thought they were pretty key to the deck. I was all about beating with cheap dudes (though I didn't have very many with 3 1-drops and only 1 2-drop) and then going to the dome. Act of treason goes to the dome with the best of them!
Round 4 I get paired down. I lose game 1 due to drawing lots of acts of treason but no fling or pressure. I do axe him down to 9 but he has a fair amount of life gain in his deck and recovers. (2/1 lifelink dude and drain life in a UB deck) He's playing 42 cards including 2 mind unbounds! I side out 2 of the act of treasons (he had a crown of empires so I bring in the vandal and he's playing blue so I bring in combust). I blow him out in both games 2 and 3, taking 4 damage total between the two games.
Round 5 I get paired down. I don't remember a lot about the games other than I blow him up with cheap dudes and burn. He says after the match that if he'd realized he'd been paired up he would have just scooped which was nice but misguided of him. There's no sense helping me out at the expense of someone else.
Round 6 I don't get paired down! Game 1 features me with 2 goblin arsonists and a mitt full of spells. I get him down to 12 with arsonist swings and he casts a 2/5 flyer. I'm at 16 at this point, but have since burned away whatever was hitting me. I have fork, titanic growth, lava axe, and slaughter cry in hand. And 4 land in play, 2 of each type. I decide to go for it, and swing. He blocks one and I growth+fork the other, hitting him for 9 with the unblocked guy and 1 with the blocked guy, knocking him to 2. He does something to gain some life (sorin's thirst I think, killing my dude). I draw a land and axe him out. Game 2 features Chandra's Phoenix beating him down for a while. He gets low and he decides to thirst it to gain some life. Instead I fling it at him. This prevents him from gaining 2, does 2 itself, and actually gets me the phoenix back into my hand. My hand is full of gas, I'm still at 20, and I topdeck axe to kill him a turn earlier.
My 'terrible' draft deck went 3-0 in matches, 6-1 in games. I only had 1 2-drop but I drew 'da bears' an awful lot of the time and it was very key. I won one game with Arachnus Spider pulling out a web but I forget which one. Act of Treason pounded through a lot of damage as I'd hoped it would and I was pretty happy with the result.
Off to the second draft. I'd recovered to 4-2 but I didn't think any of my opponents were giving me above minimum breakers. (Turns out they were at 41.66% which was more than 5% behind the next worst 4-2.)
First pack, first pick... Inferno Titan. Giddy. Up. I shift into mono-red gear again, though the wheels very quickly come off this time. Here are my red cards after pack 1:
1 inferno titan
1 combust
1 fling
1 reverbate
1 wall of torches
I did not see an actual good red card after my opening pack. I was getting cut, hard, and it was obvious what was going on. But what was I going to do about it? I started taking good cards when I could, but cards in other colours weren't very good either. Here's the rest of my pack 1:
1 crown of empires (good for staying alive to titan)
1 manalith (good with whatever colours I end up playing)
1 wurm's tooth
1 trollhide
1 lifelink
1 guardian's pledge
1 celestial purge
1 auramancer
1 spirit mantle
Now, spirit mantle is actually pretty good and my plan was to probably go RW. My hope was that pack 2 would yield an ungodly amount of red cards since I'd passed pretty much nothing playable the entire pack after the first one and that I'd go white in pack 3.
Pack 2 my choices are between shock and druidic mantle. Shock is pretty good but I figure the mantle will help control the game long enough to get the titan out. I am frankly astonished by how little red comes my way in pack 2. My red cards from this pack are:
1 shock
1 volcanic dragon
1 fiery hellhound
1 goblin fireslinger
1 fling
1 manic vandal
My other cards are:
1 druidic satchel
1 llanowar elf
1 runeclaw bear
1 stampeding rhino
1 vastwood gorger
1 naturalize
1 flight
1 demon's horn
Green had looked pretty open in pack 1 (I didn't take any of it, but I passed a lot of it) and it was coming back in pack 2 as well. White was not, so the couple of good white cards I had in pack 1 didn't look like they were going anywhere. So I went into green when there were no red cards.
Pack 3 was pretty bad for red. My first pick was a crimson mage which is pretty hot but it died out very quickly. The red cards:
1 crimson mage
1 goblin war paint
1 act of treason
Yeah. Sweet. The rest:
2 rampant growth
1 lurking crocodile
1 sacred wolf
1 garruk's companion
1 cudgel troll
1 giant spider
1 greater basilisk
1 fog
1 jace's erasure
1 disentomb
I had some rough choices in the building. I eventually decided to cut out the cute spells this time and didn't play with fork, fling, or act of treason. I did maindeck combust this time. I decided that 70% of the possible two colour decks can get hit by it and since I was playing RG (which can't get hit by it) I'd have pretty good odds of having it be live. It was live all 3 rounds last draft, though I started it on the bench there. My only removal was shock so I figured it was worth the risk. Possibly I should have run the flings to have more removal instead.
I ended up playing 17 land along with an elf, 2 rampant growths, the manalith, and the satchel. My goal was to get the mana in play for titan, or to be able to keep activating satchel and crown.
I want to note that over the course of 2 drafts, while trying to play mono-red, I saw exactly one red bloodthirst creature. And I took inferno titan over it. I didn't open or get passed a single other one. Where are you, Al Gore?
Round 7 game 1 featured a turn 1 elf, turn 2 lurking croc against a blue deck. I followed that up with turn 3 cudgel troll (bounced with unsummon). Turn 4 stampeding rhino. Turn 5 volcanic dragon. Yeah, he was dead. Game 2 my hand was fireslinger, rampant growth, volcanic dragon, 4 land. My opponent played out a bunch of cheap stuff and then on his 5th turn activated jace's archivist. By this point I'd had 5 draw steps, all 5 of which were land. And the fireslinger had gotten killed, so I had nothing in play. And now had to discard my 6 drop before I could play it. This gassed up his hand and combined with the dudes he'd already played he beat me down. Game 3 he didn't do a whole lot (I think he stalled on land) and inferno titan put the final nail in his coffin.
I started 0-2 and considered just going home. I'd recovered to 5-2 and felt like I had a pretty decent deck for the next two rounds of draft. So I went home and resolved to come back the next day. Josh told me to bring games so we could play after everything was done. I had a bit of a headache from the endless drone of a room full of people along with just not feeling too happy about the crowds and the smell so I decided to do something mindless when I got home... I booted up Netflix on my Wii and turned on Dude, Where's My Car? It doesn't get more mindless than that! Hilarious movie.
I ended up calling a cab. I didn't have a number for a cab so I searched on the internet and was told to dial 416-TAXICAB and they'd find a cab for me. Great, I called up and they said they'd send a cab over. I went to wait by the street when two cabs from different companies pulled up beside me. Both men clearly didn't have a great grasp of the English language. They were both yelling at me that they were the ones I called. Neither seemed to know where I was going, though one guy did guess the airport. I don't know if the phone number told me what cab company was coming or not, or if they'd even sent just one cab. It was too early to figure it out so I went with the guy who guessed airport. The taxi fare ended up costing about what my deck did, which is sad. I hope that extra hour of sleep was worth it, body.
I get to the site with an hour to spare and run into Duncan in the lobby. Apparently he's staying in the hotel despite living in Toronto. In retrospect taking the bus out and staying in the hotel is probably cheaper than taking the cab multiple times and it certainly allows for more sleep so I may want to consider doing so in the future. At any rate, he'll have my cards down in the site in half an hour. I head over that way to register.
When I get to the registration desk I'm greeted by the distinctive hairstyle of Sleep Yoda to my Sleep Skywalker - Josh Bennett. I sneak up and say boo, he is surprised that I don't have a moustache. Clearly Josh needs to come to Toronto more often since I haven't had a moustache in 9 months. We chat a bit, he asks if I'm feeling confident. I tell him I tentatively cancelled my D&D session on Sunday and actually did some drafts beforehand which about as confident as I can get.
Duncan brings in the cards and everything is there. I sleeve up, write a decklist, and have time to burn so I read some Clash of Kings.
I complained about the setup yesterday so I'm going to gloss over that today. Today is for making fun of my Magic playing!
Round 1 I get deck-checked right off the hop. The match to my right is Valakut vs Valakut. To my left is Valakut vs Cawblade. My deck can't beat Valakut. On the one hand it's good that 3 of the Valakut decks in the field are playing not-me right now. On the other hand maybe Valakut is going to be popular at Nationals and I'm boned. I passed the deck check (yay!) as does my opponent (boo!) and we're off. It turns out my opponent is also playing Valakut. (For those who don't know, Valakut is essentially a combo deck. The namesake card turns mountains into lightning bolts if you have enough of them, and you power both the Valakuts and the mountains out with Primeval Titan. The deck plays a lot of land searchers too like rampant growth. Elves can't win because they side in cheap sweepers and are just a more consistent fast clock.)
I win game 1 since I don't think he was maindecking sweepers and I had a decent draw. Game 2 he ramps up to 7 mana but doesn't cast anything. Clearly he kept a hand with no gas for some reason (probably he had some removal to slow me down) but I had some vengevines and Ezuris and have him on the ropes. Another turn and he's dead. He says something about needing a great topdeck, draws a card, and plays avatar of zendikar which is pretty much a 5/5 dude and 6 3/4 dudes in one card. Suddenly he's not nearly so dead. Two swings later I am, though. I misblock on the first one to guarantee I die to the second one but I don't think I had any possible outs one way or the other and was certainly dead in 3 swings no matter what.
Game 3 is also kinda close but he has a primeval titan on turn 5 which puts the game away. I didn't draw a torpor orb in either games 2 or 3. Also, I mulliganed every game, and twice in game 3.
Round 2 I'm paired up against a straight UR splinter twin deck. He kills me on turn 4 in game 1. I mulligan a mediocre but playable hand in game 2 trying to get a torpor orb. I keep a 6 card hand without one that at least has a mana elf, which he countered with mental misstep (2 life, 0 mana: counter a 1 drop). I end up topdecking 3 torpor orbs in 4 turns. I also get out 2 archdruids and an elf and he pyroclasms for no game effect (they're all 3/3). He scoops when the 3rd orb hits play. Game 3 my 7 card hand has 3 torpor orbs and 0 forests. I'm forced to mulligan, and then again, and don't get a torpor orb. I do actually put out some decent pressure with a fauna shaman and some vengevines and he's dead in a turn. So he busts out an exarch to stunt some of the damage and says he needs to topdeck a twin here to win. He topdecks a twin. He also has a counter for my nature's claim and I am dead. Twin is actually a decent matchup I think, but not when you mulligan 4 times and never draw an orb.
So I'm 0-2, with 8 mulligans thus far. I consider just dropping and leaving but I do like to draft and going 0-2 pretty much guarantees my rating will fail to qualify me in the future. I keep going.
Round 3 I play a guy from New Brunswick who comments, after I roll a 19 to go first, that while he wasn't sure before he is sure now. I must be Ben Page's brother. Once upon a time Jamie was my brother. My opponent is Jeremie Vienneau and is playing UB control. Game 1 he doesn't have a sweeper and I blow him up good. Game 2 he casts Black Sun's Zenith 5 times and gains a lot of life with Wurmcoil Engine. (BBX - Put X -1/-1 counters on all creatures and then shuffle the spell back into your deck.) This includes him using it on turn 3 to kill 3 of my elves. I had chosen to not pump up my joraga treespeaker since I was worried about dismember setting me back a turn. Sigh. Game 3 he doesn't have an early zenith and I kill him on turn 5.
I'm now 1-2. I run into my first round opponent in the bathroom and he says he's also 1-2 now. As if my tiebreakers weren't bad enough! And then my draft pod contains only 7 people, and includes the people at 0-2-1. As foreshadowing I will get paired down in both rounds 4 and 5 to these people. So my tiebreakers will be really, really bad. I pretty much had to run the table from 0-2 to make top 8.
Anyway, draft 1. My opening pack had no bombs and had 3 potential picks in my mind. Sacred Wolf, Griffin Sentinel, or Chandra's Outrage. I went with the removal. I get passed a pack with a Serra Angel and another Chandra's Outrage. Ordinarily I probably would have taken the Serra but I was operating on plan mono colour if I could. Outrage is really, really good since it kills almost any blocker and gets some damage in to the dome as well. And it kills Serra. Red then dries up in a real hurry. I manage to table a fiery hellhound (I think most people will really underrate him. I think he's awesome!) and my on colour picks after pack 1 are:
2 chandra's outrage
2 goblin arsonist
1 fling
1 fiery hellhound
Yeah, only 6 red cards. Not good enough. I also have griffin sentinel (which tabled from my first pack!), swftfoot boots, and a bunch of questionably playable cards. (zombie infestation, rites of flourishing, negate, hideous visage, buried ruin, celestial purge)
In pack 2 I open a fireball. Huzzah! I'd noticed in pack 1 that both white and green seemed to be open but that blue and black were pretty non-existent. As was red, really, but I'm stubborn. The red cards I got from pack 2 were:
1 reverbate
1 fireball
1 bonebreaker giant (which I long-ranged to 13th pick somehow)
1 lava axe
1 slaughter cry
1 act of treason
1 goblin arsonist
I also had manic vandal and combust for my sideboard. The other cards were rusted sentinel, gladecover scout, wall of torches, taste of blood, and guardian's pledge.
I still have my eye on being mono red. I have a couple ok artifacts (boots and sentinel) that I can play and I'm not against running wall of torches either. I open my 3rd pack and scan for the best red card. It turns out to not exist. My 3rd pack actually has no red cards at all. It doesn't really have what I'd call playable cards even. I'm left deciding what to hate draft from the two decent cards in the pack: mana leak or arachnus web. I take the web.
Right passes me a Chandra's Phoenix which is pretty insane in my deck with all the domey burn spells. Pack 3 brings with it a real choice... My deck doesn't have a two drop yet, and there's a red mage. There's also an arachnus spinner. 5/7 reach for 6 is pretty ok on its own. The fact that it can search out a pseudo-removal spell in arachnus web is pretty insane. And I just so happened to have hate-drafted one of those with my first pick. I decided that since red was dry in pack 1, and since green was wide open in pack 1, that my mono deck wasn't going to get there. So I should take my bomb. Cards that made my deck from pack 3 after that were:
2 act of treason
1 chandra's phoenix
1 fiery hellhound
1 runeclaw bear
1 titanic growth
1 greater basilisk
1 arachnus spinner
1 cudgel troll
1 arachnus web
The unplayed cards from this pack were wall of torches, manalith, pride guardian, and stave off.
I decided to actually run the fork in my deck. I had 10 spells to fork with it and some of them would be pretty sweet to fork. (Fireball, lava axe, and fling in particular.) I showed the deck to Josh after I'd built it and he thought it looked pretty bad. In particular he held his nose when looking at my 3 act of treasons but I actually thought they were pretty key to the deck. I was all about beating with cheap dudes (though I didn't have very many with 3 1-drops and only 1 2-drop) and then going to the dome. Act of treason goes to the dome with the best of them!
Round 4 I get paired down. I lose game 1 due to drawing lots of acts of treason but no fling or pressure. I do axe him down to 9 but he has a fair amount of life gain in his deck and recovers. (2/1 lifelink dude and drain life in a UB deck) He's playing 42 cards including 2 mind unbounds! I side out 2 of the act of treasons (he had a crown of empires so I bring in the vandal and he's playing blue so I bring in combust). I blow him out in both games 2 and 3, taking 4 damage total between the two games.
Round 5 I get paired down. I don't remember a lot about the games other than I blow him up with cheap dudes and burn. He says after the match that if he'd realized he'd been paired up he would have just scooped which was nice but misguided of him. There's no sense helping me out at the expense of someone else.
Round 6 I don't get paired down! Game 1 features me with 2 goblin arsonists and a mitt full of spells. I get him down to 12 with arsonist swings and he casts a 2/5 flyer. I'm at 16 at this point, but have since burned away whatever was hitting me. I have fork, titanic growth, lava axe, and slaughter cry in hand. And 4 land in play, 2 of each type. I decide to go for it, and swing. He blocks one and I growth+fork the other, hitting him for 9 with the unblocked guy and 1 with the blocked guy, knocking him to 2. He does something to gain some life (sorin's thirst I think, killing my dude). I draw a land and axe him out. Game 2 features Chandra's Phoenix beating him down for a while. He gets low and he decides to thirst it to gain some life. Instead I fling it at him. This prevents him from gaining 2, does 2 itself, and actually gets me the phoenix back into my hand. My hand is full of gas, I'm still at 20, and I topdeck axe to kill him a turn earlier.
My 'terrible' draft deck went 3-0 in matches, 6-1 in games. I only had 1 2-drop but I drew 'da bears' an awful lot of the time and it was very key. I won one game with Arachnus Spider pulling out a web but I forget which one. Act of Treason pounded through a lot of damage as I'd hoped it would and I was pretty happy with the result.
Off to the second draft. I'd recovered to 4-2 but I didn't think any of my opponents were giving me above minimum breakers. (Turns out they were at 41.66% which was more than 5% behind the next worst 4-2.)
First pack, first pick... Inferno Titan. Giddy. Up. I shift into mono-red gear again, though the wheels very quickly come off this time. Here are my red cards after pack 1:
1 inferno titan
1 combust
1 fling
1 reverbate
1 wall of torches
I did not see an actual good red card after my opening pack. I was getting cut, hard, and it was obvious what was going on. But what was I going to do about it? I started taking good cards when I could, but cards in other colours weren't very good either. Here's the rest of my pack 1:
1 crown of empires (good for staying alive to titan)
1 manalith (good with whatever colours I end up playing)
1 wurm's tooth
1 trollhide
1 lifelink
1 guardian's pledge
1 celestial purge
1 auramancer
1 spirit mantle
Now, spirit mantle is actually pretty good and my plan was to probably go RW. My hope was that pack 2 would yield an ungodly amount of red cards since I'd passed pretty much nothing playable the entire pack after the first one and that I'd go white in pack 3.
Pack 2 my choices are between shock and druidic mantle. Shock is pretty good but I figure the mantle will help control the game long enough to get the titan out. I am frankly astonished by how little red comes my way in pack 2. My red cards from this pack are:
1 shock
1 volcanic dragon
1 fiery hellhound
1 goblin fireslinger
1 fling
1 manic vandal
My other cards are:
1 druidic satchel
1 llanowar elf
1 runeclaw bear
1 stampeding rhino
1 vastwood gorger
1 naturalize
1 flight
1 demon's horn
Green had looked pretty open in pack 1 (I didn't take any of it, but I passed a lot of it) and it was coming back in pack 2 as well. White was not, so the couple of good white cards I had in pack 1 didn't look like they were going anywhere. So I went into green when there were no red cards.
Pack 3 was pretty bad for red. My first pick was a crimson mage which is pretty hot but it died out very quickly. The red cards:
1 crimson mage
1 goblin war paint
1 act of treason
Yeah. Sweet. The rest:
2 rampant growth
1 lurking crocodile
1 sacred wolf
1 garruk's companion
1 cudgel troll
1 giant spider
1 greater basilisk
1 fog
1 jace's erasure
1 disentomb
I had some rough choices in the building. I eventually decided to cut out the cute spells this time and didn't play with fork, fling, or act of treason. I did maindeck combust this time. I decided that 70% of the possible two colour decks can get hit by it and since I was playing RG (which can't get hit by it) I'd have pretty good odds of having it be live. It was live all 3 rounds last draft, though I started it on the bench there. My only removal was shock so I figured it was worth the risk. Possibly I should have run the flings to have more removal instead.
I ended up playing 17 land along with an elf, 2 rampant growths, the manalith, and the satchel. My goal was to get the mana in play for titan, or to be able to keep activating satchel and crown.
I want to note that over the course of 2 drafts, while trying to play mono-red, I saw exactly one red bloodthirst creature. And I took inferno titan over it. I didn't open or get passed a single other one. Where are you, Al Gore?
Round 7 game 1 featured a turn 1 elf, turn 2 lurking croc against a blue deck. I followed that up with turn 3 cudgel troll (bounced with unsummon). Turn 4 stampeding rhino. Turn 5 volcanic dragon. Yeah, he was dead. Game 2 my hand was fireslinger, rampant growth, volcanic dragon, 4 land. My opponent played out a bunch of cheap stuff and then on his 5th turn activated jace's archivist. By this point I'd had 5 draw steps, all 5 of which were land. And the fireslinger had gotten killed, so I had nothing in play. And now had to discard my 6 drop before I could play it. This gassed up his hand and combined with the dudes he'd already played he beat me down. Game 3 he didn't do a whole lot (I think he stalled on land) and inferno titan put the final nail in his coffin.
I started 0-2 and considered just going home. I'd recovered to 5-2 and felt like I had a pretty decent deck for the next two rounds of draft. So I went home and resolved to come back the next day. Josh told me to bring games so we could play after everything was done. I had a bit of a headache from the endless drone of a room full of people along with just not feeling too happy about the crowds and the smell so I decided to do something mindless when I got home... I booted up Netflix on my Wii and turned on Dude, Where's My Car? It doesn't get more mindless than that! Hilarious movie.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Collapse of the Prerelease
I can still remember my first Magic prerelease. It was February 6th, 1999. I was living in Waterloo and a group of strange, large men invited me to go on a road trip to Toronto to play in the Urza's Legacy prerelease. We could crash in Jer's parent's basement, they said. According to my DCI rating summary I'd played in all of one sanctioned event before this, a PTQ where I managed to go 0-2-1, getting my second loss from one Ken Rosevear. I was a wild man, so I went along.
The event was held in a massive hall with hundreds of people in attendance. They ran one huge sealed deck event to kick things off (I went 1-1 drop) with a lot of side events over the course of the day. I remember getting into a triple Legacy draft where I ended up with _five_ rancors. I was mono-green with random dudes, treetop villages, and a lot of +2/+0 and trample going on. I can recall activating treetop village, casting 2 rancors on it, and getting in for 7 on multiple occasions. Apparently I played Gab Tsang, Byung Chun, and Allen Pengelly beating all three of them. It was glorious. I then played in two other drafts before we left. I remember it being a great time - a little packed in the hall maybe - but a lot of fun.
Prereleases evolved over time. They stopped running one monolithic tournament with everyone in it and started running many smaller tournaments over the course of the day. Once 32 or 64 people signed up they started a sealed tournament for them. They innovated the 'team sealed' format which became my favourite format of all time. The first time I played it was at the very next prerelease, for Urza's Destiny. I teamed up with Jer and Tom P to form a very silly team. Tom wore a crazy orange BOO! hat and I was wearing a rubber camel puppet (his name was Camel and he loved Jer). Jer was just made fun of by all passersby for associating with such lunatics. The format didn't allow sideboards so I played, I think, 6 different runes of protection. I had an academy rector but I think we left him on the bench. At any rate, a ton of fun.
Today was the M12 prerelease. I'm trying to get ready for Nationals next month so I wanted to get some practice in with the new set. Apparently we'll be drafting a core set at Nationals. I went to look for where the prerelease was going to be held only to find they don't hold big events anymore. I'm not sure why, but they're letting individual stores run events instead of just having a single big one. I guess this will help people in Waterloo, for example, since they won't have to drive for over an hour and crash at Jer's parent's place. I went to the Wizard's site and found a location for an event. The first one on the list was at 401 Games, and I know where that is, so that's where I went. Here's what they had on their website:
I didn't exactly get there early, but I was there at 11:40. There was a big line-up to sign up, but when I got to the front and paid there was no indication we were over capacity. I went to look at their board games (I ended up buying Roll Through the Ages and the new Eurorails) as more and more people lined up to sign up. Eventually someone in charge said something about finding a place to sit, anywhere. So I went hunting only to find every seat in the place was filled. The normal game room was filled with people sitting at the tables and there were probably a dozen people standing in the aisle. (It didn't smell great.) I couldn't find a seat so I at least found a quiet corner to stand in. Then one of the guys in charge came upstairs and said they had more people sign up than they could fit in, so if anyone wanted to drop they're give them their product, along with some extra stuff if they'd just leave. (2 boosters from the previous block and a deck box, I think.) Some people got up to take advantage of that 'great offer' (the prize pool was 2 boosters of M12 per person so the store probably made out by pawning off 2 older packs instead of M12 packs) and I slipped into a vacated seat before other people standing around figured out what was going on.
Now every 5-10 minutes someone would come upstairs, look in the room, and mutter about how all the seats were filled. About 50 minutes after the scheduled start time they finally came up and posted seating assignments for deck building. I thought that's why were finding a seat in the first place. No, it turns out we were finding seats because they simply didn't know how many seats they had, or people they had, and decided the solution was to play musical chairs until everyone magically had a seat. I was assigned a seat in the same room for deck building. My card pool seemed really, really bad. A couple decent cards in each of red, white, blue, and black but no real substance. My green, however, had 21 cards. 20 of which were playable, including a guy who's power and toughness are equal to the number of forests you have in play. I did have a rampant growth and an 'any mana' artifact so I could splash if I wanted to. Turned out my best splash card was going to be either gravedigger or merfolk looter so I just played the green horn (gain a life when anyone casts a green spell) and went mono.
My first round pairing was also in the same room. By now, having cleared out all the people who were just standing around, the room was becoming reasonable to sit in. I was paired up with a pretty girl who was also just getting back into Magic after a break and was also disappointed that they'd changed prerelease formats. Her deck had 2 sengir vampires and a serra angel but she only drew 1 of them total over the match and I had a spider which kills a flyer when he comes into play to deal with it. I won one game with a 7/7 trampler and one game with a 9/9 untargetable. It was a fun game.
Round two I'm paired at a table that's not in the upstairs room. In fact, it's not even a table. I'm playing on the store counter, without a seat. And with a match going on less than a foot behind me, so I had no room at all. And if anyone wanted to leave? I had to actually walk away from my game to make room. My opponent was playing with a lot of unblockable creatures and played a planeswalker both games. Unsurprisingly, I lost.
Now, if I knew I'd be able to play in the 'nice' room upstairs I would have kept playing. But facing the prospect of having to cram into the ground floor (no AC) on makeshift tables (or even a non-table) I had to drop. I didn't think my sanity could handle being crammed into a pile of loud, sweaty men.
I believe they ended up taking money from like 90 people, with something like 78 actually playing. Now, when I read on the website that they're capping it at 64 so you should get there early I'd think they'd actually turn away person 65. Not take their money, try to bribe people to leave, and then make everyone have a bad experience dealing with the overflow. I guess it's good for them that they got extra business and maybe at a younger age I'd have been willing to put up with the heat, and the noise, and the smell, and the crampedness. But I just couldn't handle it today. I was going to go back tomorrow too, but now I'm not.
I want a big prerelease in a nice venue with actual drafts, team tournaments, and the like. I want it to feel like a big important event and not just a bunch of people cramming into a tiny store. I guess I'll have to put off experiencing M12 until it comes out online. At least there I can be sure that I won't have a large man sneeze on me because I'm forced to stand in his personal space in order to play a game.
The event was held in a massive hall with hundreds of people in attendance. They ran one huge sealed deck event to kick things off (I went 1-1 drop) with a lot of side events over the course of the day. I remember getting into a triple Legacy draft where I ended up with _five_ rancors. I was mono-green with random dudes, treetop villages, and a lot of +2/+0 and trample going on. I can recall activating treetop village, casting 2 rancors on it, and getting in for 7 on multiple occasions. Apparently I played Gab Tsang, Byung Chun, and Allen Pengelly beating all three of them. It was glorious. I then played in two other drafts before we left. I remember it being a great time - a little packed in the hall maybe - but a lot of fun.
Prereleases evolved over time. They stopped running one monolithic tournament with everyone in it and started running many smaller tournaments over the course of the day. Once 32 or 64 people signed up they started a sealed tournament for them. They innovated the 'team sealed' format which became my favourite format of all time. The first time I played it was at the very next prerelease, for Urza's Destiny. I teamed up with Jer and Tom P to form a very silly team. Tom wore a crazy orange BOO! hat and I was wearing a rubber camel puppet (his name was Camel and he loved Jer). Jer was just made fun of by all passersby for associating with such lunatics. The format didn't allow sideboards so I played, I think, 6 different runes of protection. I had an academy rector but I think we left him on the bench. At any rate, a ton of fun.
Today was the M12 prerelease. I'm trying to get ready for Nationals next month so I wanted to get some practice in with the new set. Apparently we'll be drafting a core set at Nationals. I went to look for where the prerelease was going to be held only to find they don't hold big events anymore. I'm not sure why, but they're letting individual stores run events instead of just having a single big one. I guess this will help people in Waterloo, for example, since they won't have to drive for over an hour and crash at Jer's parent's place. I went to the Wizard's site and found a location for an event. The first one on the list was at 401 Games, and I know where that is, so that's where I went. Here's what they had on their website:
401 Games will be hosting 2 Magic 2012 Pre-Release Events, one on Saturday, July 9th and one on Sunday, July 10th.
Both events will start at 12 Noon.
We will be limiting the numbers of players for each event to 64.
We will not be doing prereg for this event so i you want to get one of the FOIL promo cards get here early. :)
I didn't exactly get there early, but I was there at 11:40. There was a big line-up to sign up, but when I got to the front and paid there was no indication we were over capacity. I went to look at their board games (I ended up buying Roll Through the Ages and the new Eurorails) as more and more people lined up to sign up. Eventually someone in charge said something about finding a place to sit, anywhere. So I went hunting only to find every seat in the place was filled. The normal game room was filled with people sitting at the tables and there were probably a dozen people standing in the aisle. (It didn't smell great.) I couldn't find a seat so I at least found a quiet corner to stand in. Then one of the guys in charge came upstairs and said they had more people sign up than they could fit in, so if anyone wanted to drop they're give them their product, along with some extra stuff if they'd just leave. (2 boosters from the previous block and a deck box, I think.) Some people got up to take advantage of that 'great offer' (the prize pool was 2 boosters of M12 per person so the store probably made out by pawning off 2 older packs instead of M12 packs) and I slipped into a vacated seat before other people standing around figured out what was going on.
Now every 5-10 minutes someone would come upstairs, look in the room, and mutter about how all the seats were filled. About 50 minutes after the scheduled start time they finally came up and posted seating assignments for deck building. I thought that's why were finding a seat in the first place. No, it turns out we were finding seats because they simply didn't know how many seats they had, or people they had, and decided the solution was to play musical chairs until everyone magically had a seat. I was assigned a seat in the same room for deck building. My card pool seemed really, really bad. A couple decent cards in each of red, white, blue, and black but no real substance. My green, however, had 21 cards. 20 of which were playable, including a guy who's power and toughness are equal to the number of forests you have in play. I did have a rampant growth and an 'any mana' artifact so I could splash if I wanted to. Turned out my best splash card was going to be either gravedigger or merfolk looter so I just played the green horn (gain a life when anyone casts a green spell) and went mono.
My first round pairing was also in the same room. By now, having cleared out all the people who were just standing around, the room was becoming reasonable to sit in. I was paired up with a pretty girl who was also just getting back into Magic after a break and was also disappointed that they'd changed prerelease formats. Her deck had 2 sengir vampires and a serra angel but she only drew 1 of them total over the match and I had a spider which kills a flyer when he comes into play to deal with it. I won one game with a 7/7 trampler and one game with a 9/9 untargetable. It was a fun game.
Round two I'm paired at a table that's not in the upstairs room. In fact, it's not even a table. I'm playing on the store counter, without a seat. And with a match going on less than a foot behind me, so I had no room at all. And if anyone wanted to leave? I had to actually walk away from my game to make room. My opponent was playing with a lot of unblockable creatures and played a planeswalker both games. Unsurprisingly, I lost.
Now, if I knew I'd be able to play in the 'nice' room upstairs I would have kept playing. But facing the prospect of having to cram into the ground floor (no AC) on makeshift tables (or even a non-table) I had to drop. I didn't think my sanity could handle being crammed into a pile of loud, sweaty men.
I believe they ended up taking money from like 90 people, with something like 78 actually playing. Now, when I read on the website that they're capping it at 64 so you should get there early I'd think they'd actually turn away person 65. Not take their money, try to bribe people to leave, and then make everyone have a bad experience dealing with the overflow. I guess it's good for them that they got extra business and maybe at a younger age I'd have been willing to put up with the heat, and the noise, and the smell, and the crampedness. But I just couldn't handle it today. I was going to go back tomorrow too, but now I'm not.
I want a big prerelease in a nice venue with actual drafts, team tournaments, and the like. I want it to feel like a big important event and not just a bunch of people cramming into a tiny store. I guess I'll have to put off experiencing M12 until it comes out online. At least there I can be sure that I won't have a large man sneeze on me because I'm forced to stand in his personal space in order to play a game.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Great Canadian Board Game Blitz: Toronto - 2011 Recap
Yesterday was the Toronto GCBGB event held in the back room of a pretty nice pub in downtown Toronto. It was definitely a fun time with a lot of new faces in attendance. Overall 21 people showed up to play at some point during the day with a couple people only playing a few rounds. One change to the format this time is they didn't run any 5 player games. I believe the reason was time concerns (many games just take 25% longer with 5 people instead of 4) though I think for scoring purposes it's pretty bad too. Of course with 21 people we ended up playing a lot of 3 player games which have scoring concerns of their own. Oh well. Off to the games!
Round 1 - Bohnanza, 7 Wonders, Carcassonne, Wizard, Dominion, San Juan
I was randomly assigned to pick 5th. We had 18 people to start off so we were going to be playing 3 4-player games and 2 3-player games. When it was my turn to pick I could still pick any game I wanted so I went with San Juan. It is both the game I'd enjoy playing and the game I think I have the best chance of winning so it was the obvious choice. We ended up being one of the 3 player games. A 19th player showed up just before the game start and he chose to join the other 3 player game instead of ours so we were the only 3 player game in the round. One of the other players had played before, the other hadn't. In fact, the guy who had played before was in my game of San Juan last year too. He seemed vastly improved from then when I think he was pretty new to the game.
The game opened with righty going first and building. I played a tobacco storage. I never crafted or sold myself and it remained my only trading related card for the game but just having it in play meant I wasn't falling behind when they were crafting and selling either. I followed it up with a carpenter, a cycled archive, and then a quarry. With the purple building combo in play I went into playing lots of purple buildings and actually ended up building almost all the good ones. Chapel, then library, then prefecture. I didn't end up with a large building but I did build all 3 statues as well as putting 6 cards under the chapel. I ended the game and was multiple buildings ahead of the other players, I think. One had a zumft hall with a good selection of production buildings but it wasn't quite enough as I won by 7.
Round 2 - Alhambra, Ra, Roll Through the Ages, Saint Petersburg, Medici, Glen More
This round featured 2 games I've never player before, one I've played exactly once, and one I really dislike. Picking 5th last meant I might have been in a bad spot but fortunately one of the two games I like and know was still available. I hadn't played it in like 2 years (since WBC2009 I think) but figured I could pick it back up again. The game was Saint Petersburg and featured 2 new players, myself, and the guy from San Juan who seemed like he really knew the game.
I opened up in the noble seat on the first turn and we ended up only taking 1 building off the board in the building phase. That meant I got the only noble on the first turn which was a pretty big boost to my game. I then managed to manipulate the board such that we'd get 6 workers on the second worker turn when I happened to be 2nd. Those two things combined meant I was making 15 gold a turn compared to 12, 9, and 9 from my opponents. After another turn I pretty much stopped generating more income and focused exclusively on victory point buildings, managed to snag the 7 point per turn building pretty early on. I ended up winning very handily 84-65-58-55.
Round 3 - Ingenious, Ticket to Ride, Two by Two, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Thurn and Taxis, Yspahan
I got to pick first in this round which seems like it should be good. Unfortunately there isn't a single game in this selection that I both know and tolerate. If I'd been thinking ahead I would have played some T&T on BSW last week to refresh myself on the game so I could have played it. I don't really like the game though, and since I didn't know it either I stayed away. I ended up picking Ticket to Ride which is the only game from the set that I thought I knew.
I was doing pretty well for myself in the game and was in a good position near the end of the game. I counted my cards in hand and trains left and figured out I could end the game in like 3 actions. Instead I went for more tickets. Now, I had 6 yellow cards in hand and was connected to the 6 yellow and the 5 yellow so I had a pretty good chance of pulling a ticket near my track worth a fair amount. Observant people will note I said I had 6 yellow in hand and there was still a 6 yellow track in play. I could have taken it and ended the game in 2 turns. That seems strong. Instead I went for tickets. One I could do trivially, building just one 3 track. Great! Then there was another I could do with the same 3 track, and the 6 yellow, and a singleton. I decided to keep it as well despite knowing fully well that I could have ended the game in 3 turns and therefore someone else probably could have too. (One guy built a bunch of 6s and didn't go for tickets ever either, so it should have been obvious that I wasn't getting 3 more turns if he didn't want me to.) He then immediately built the 6 yellow, dropping down to 4 trains in stock. The game ended one turn later, so I both only got 2 turns and didn't get to build the 6. I ended up coming a pretty distant 3rd place. In fact I was exactly the negative point value of the route I took, so I could have tied for 1st if I'd just taken the 1 ticket. Probably I just win if I build the 6 yellow myself instead of taking tickets at all. The guy who came last was actually the guy building all the 6s. It turns out he got spited out of a critical piece of track and failed to do all of his tickets.
Round 4 - Egizia, Puerto Rico, Santiago, Stone Age, Settlers of Catan, Container
By this point we were up to 21 people so we were playing 3 3-player games and 3 4-player games. All 6 games were now included. I was tied for 3rd at this point, with Duncan. This round featured 3 games I've never played before, 2 I have played a ton but don't like, and 1 I both like and know. Stone Age time! It ended up being a 3 player game. In fact only 2 people had chosen it when the last person was to pick and she was forced to play it. Neither of them had played before but both seemed interested in playing it and both seemed like they wanted to play again later so that's good. The game itself was less good. There are things about Stone Age that you just can't know until you've played it at least once, like how to properly value the different cards. I ended up winning by over 100 points.
Round 5 - Agricola, Power Grid, Caylus, Tigris & Euphrates, El Grande, Steam
Everyone ahead of me or tied with me lost in round 4, so I was back at the top of the pack. This round had lots of interesting options, and I almost wish I was 2nd going into the round instead of 1st. Someone asked me what I'd do if I was 2nd and I said I'd go to whatever game 1st picked (unless they picked the one game I didn't know). Sadly no one else seemed to feel that way as the top 6 all chose a different game. As for what I was going to pick, well, Steam was out since I've never played it. I think El Grande is terrible with 3 players and didn't want to risk it. I just don't like Caylus and would never pick it over Agricola since I think Agricola solved the problems Caylus has. So it was down to Agricola, Power Grid, and Tigris & Euphrates all of which I like to play and think I'm pretty good at. I went with Tigris & Euphrates since I never get to play it and wanted to practice for WBC. It ended up being a 3 player game with 1 new player which was a little unfortunate. I would have prefered a 4 player game. In retrospect I probably should have gone with Agricola since I like it a lot with 3 or 4.
The game itself featured me beating up on the new player and the 3rd player building an empire with 2 monuments in it. I screwed up a blight and failed to take over one of the monuments when I really needed to, and after that failure (using my last blight) it was very hard to stop him. I managed to set up one chance where we would do an external red fight. Red was both of our lowest numbers by far and the winner of the fight was going to score up 5 or 6 red points. He ended up having enough to successfully defend (I had to attack since he was guaranteed to win since he had a red monument) and as such won by an incredible margin. 16-8-7.
Coming second in the last round meant a lot of people could pass me with a win. It turned out two people did so. Sara and Duncan. Both of whom already have passes to Fan Expo since they're volunteering for the gaming convention. So while I didn't end up actually winning (exclusively to that screw up in Ticket to Ride!) I did get the prize I wanted. And as an added bonus I got to play 2 games on Roll Through the Ages with Sara and Duncan afterwards. Fun game. I'll probably try to pick it up since it's short and similar to Ra! Dice but better.
Round 1 - Bohnanza, 7 Wonders, Carcassonne, Wizard, Dominion, San Juan
I was randomly assigned to pick 5th. We had 18 people to start off so we were going to be playing 3 4-player games and 2 3-player games. When it was my turn to pick I could still pick any game I wanted so I went with San Juan. It is both the game I'd enjoy playing and the game I think I have the best chance of winning so it was the obvious choice. We ended up being one of the 3 player games. A 19th player showed up just before the game start and he chose to join the other 3 player game instead of ours so we were the only 3 player game in the round. One of the other players had played before, the other hadn't. In fact, the guy who had played before was in my game of San Juan last year too. He seemed vastly improved from then when I think he was pretty new to the game.
The game opened with righty going first and building. I played a tobacco storage. I never crafted or sold myself and it remained my only trading related card for the game but just having it in play meant I wasn't falling behind when they were crafting and selling either. I followed it up with a carpenter, a cycled archive, and then a quarry. With the purple building combo in play I went into playing lots of purple buildings and actually ended up building almost all the good ones. Chapel, then library, then prefecture. I didn't end up with a large building but I did build all 3 statues as well as putting 6 cards under the chapel. I ended the game and was multiple buildings ahead of the other players, I think. One had a zumft hall with a good selection of production buildings but it wasn't quite enough as I won by 7.
Round 2 - Alhambra, Ra, Roll Through the Ages, Saint Petersburg, Medici, Glen More
This round featured 2 games I've never player before, one I've played exactly once, and one I really dislike. Picking 5th last meant I might have been in a bad spot but fortunately one of the two games I like and know was still available. I hadn't played it in like 2 years (since WBC2009 I think) but figured I could pick it back up again. The game was Saint Petersburg and featured 2 new players, myself, and the guy from San Juan who seemed like he really knew the game.
I opened up in the noble seat on the first turn and we ended up only taking 1 building off the board in the building phase. That meant I got the only noble on the first turn which was a pretty big boost to my game. I then managed to manipulate the board such that we'd get 6 workers on the second worker turn when I happened to be 2nd. Those two things combined meant I was making 15 gold a turn compared to 12, 9, and 9 from my opponents. After another turn I pretty much stopped generating more income and focused exclusively on victory point buildings, managed to snag the 7 point per turn building pretty early on. I ended up winning very handily 84-65-58-55.
Round 3 - Ingenious, Ticket to Ride, Two by Two, Ticket to Ride: Europe, Thurn and Taxis, Yspahan
I got to pick first in this round which seems like it should be good. Unfortunately there isn't a single game in this selection that I both know and tolerate. If I'd been thinking ahead I would have played some T&T on BSW last week to refresh myself on the game so I could have played it. I don't really like the game though, and since I didn't know it either I stayed away. I ended up picking Ticket to Ride which is the only game from the set that I thought I knew.
I was doing pretty well for myself in the game and was in a good position near the end of the game. I counted my cards in hand and trains left and figured out I could end the game in like 3 actions. Instead I went for more tickets. Now, I had 6 yellow cards in hand and was connected to the 6 yellow and the 5 yellow so I had a pretty good chance of pulling a ticket near my track worth a fair amount. Observant people will note I said I had 6 yellow in hand and there was still a 6 yellow track in play. I could have taken it and ended the game in 2 turns. That seems strong. Instead I went for tickets. One I could do trivially, building just one 3 track. Great! Then there was another I could do with the same 3 track, and the 6 yellow, and a singleton. I decided to keep it as well despite knowing fully well that I could have ended the game in 3 turns and therefore someone else probably could have too. (One guy built a bunch of 6s and didn't go for tickets ever either, so it should have been obvious that I wasn't getting 3 more turns if he didn't want me to.) He then immediately built the 6 yellow, dropping down to 4 trains in stock. The game ended one turn later, so I both only got 2 turns and didn't get to build the 6. I ended up coming a pretty distant 3rd place. In fact I was exactly the negative point value of the route I took, so I could have tied for 1st if I'd just taken the 1 ticket. Probably I just win if I build the 6 yellow myself instead of taking tickets at all. The guy who came last was actually the guy building all the 6s. It turns out he got spited out of a critical piece of track and failed to do all of his tickets.
Round 4 - Egizia, Puerto Rico, Santiago, Stone Age, Settlers of Catan, Container
By this point we were up to 21 people so we were playing 3 3-player games and 3 4-player games. All 6 games were now included. I was tied for 3rd at this point, with Duncan. This round featured 3 games I've never played before, 2 I have played a ton but don't like, and 1 I both like and know. Stone Age time! It ended up being a 3 player game. In fact only 2 people had chosen it when the last person was to pick and she was forced to play it. Neither of them had played before but both seemed interested in playing it and both seemed like they wanted to play again later so that's good. The game itself was less good. There are things about Stone Age that you just can't know until you've played it at least once, like how to properly value the different cards. I ended up winning by over 100 points.
Round 5 - Agricola, Power Grid, Caylus, Tigris & Euphrates, El Grande, Steam
Everyone ahead of me or tied with me lost in round 4, so I was back at the top of the pack. This round had lots of interesting options, and I almost wish I was 2nd going into the round instead of 1st. Someone asked me what I'd do if I was 2nd and I said I'd go to whatever game 1st picked (unless they picked the one game I didn't know). Sadly no one else seemed to feel that way as the top 6 all chose a different game. As for what I was going to pick, well, Steam was out since I've never played it. I think El Grande is terrible with 3 players and didn't want to risk it. I just don't like Caylus and would never pick it over Agricola since I think Agricola solved the problems Caylus has. So it was down to Agricola, Power Grid, and Tigris & Euphrates all of which I like to play and think I'm pretty good at. I went with Tigris & Euphrates since I never get to play it and wanted to practice for WBC. It ended up being a 3 player game with 1 new player which was a little unfortunate. I would have prefered a 4 player game. In retrospect I probably should have gone with Agricola since I like it a lot with 3 or 4.
The game itself featured me beating up on the new player and the 3rd player building an empire with 2 monuments in it. I screwed up a blight and failed to take over one of the monuments when I really needed to, and after that failure (using my last blight) it was very hard to stop him. I managed to set up one chance where we would do an external red fight. Red was both of our lowest numbers by far and the winner of the fight was going to score up 5 or 6 red points. He ended up having enough to successfully defend (I had to attack since he was guaranteed to win since he had a red monument) and as such won by an incredible margin. 16-8-7.
Coming second in the last round meant a lot of people could pass me with a win. It turned out two people did so. Sara and Duncan. Both of whom already have passes to Fan Expo since they're volunteering for the gaming convention. So while I didn't end up actually winning (exclusively to that screw up in Ticket to Ride!) I did get the prize I wanted. And as an added bonus I got to play 2 games on Roll Through the Ages with Sara and Duncan afterwards. Fun game. I'll probably try to pick it up since it's short and similar to Ra! Dice but better.
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