A Limited EDH Attempt

Some friends and I decided to try an EDH draft yesterday.  Here's what we decided to do:

* Draft 3 packs as usual.

* Choose any creature you drafted to be your general.

* Include all cards legal with that general in your deck.  In other words, all cards that don't include colors or mana symbols not included in the general's colors and casting cost.  Draft some green cards you don't want to use?  Too bad; if your general is green then you have to include them.

* Each deck must have at least 40 cards.  (As with regular EDH, your general doesn't count as one of those cards.)

* Ignore the Highlander part of EDH; if you draft multiple copies of the same card, include all of them in the deck.

We wacky drafted this (meaning use any 3 packs you want).  Packs used included: Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Magic 2013, Avacyn Restored, Innistrad and Alara Reborn.

We then each built our deck and played three cutthroat EDH games.  I ran a Grixis Grimblade deck for games 1 and 2 and switched to Bloodbraid Elf for game 3.  Nathan's general was Bant Sureblade all three games.  Victor chose Sewn-Eye Drake to lead his army in game 1 and Esper Sojourners in games 2 and 3.  Victor wound up winning all three games!

Some interesting notes:

* Drafting a three-color creature was really vital, if only to make sure you have a deck with enough spells to fill out a deck.  In the last game my red-green deck had only 16 spells.  Oof. 

* I had to run Vampiric Fury even though I had no vampires.  :)

* Nathan had too many spells to stick to a 40-card deck.  I think he wound up with about 44.

* The drafting part was really complicated.  We allowed ourselves to review our previous picks at any time, which seems vital.  I was often conflicted about whether to choose cards to go with Bloodbraid Elf or Grixis Grimblade.  It was very tough.

* It was common to choose basic land over a spell to avoid taking something you did not want in your deck.

* Taking mono-colored creatures early on was good because they were more likely to fit in any deck (and creatures are good).

* 40 life per player may have been too much.

* Extort was way too powerful.  We had exactly one extort card between the three of us and it was a powerhouse.  This has been a problem with all multi-player limited formats I've seen, though.

* All three of us had a lot of fun!  We will definitely do this again!

Things I would like to change for the next attempt:

* Draft 4 packs instead of 3.  This might make it easier to play with 2-color generals (for those that don't have access to Alara-block packs).  It should also help give players more general options.

* Draft Anaconda style.  Want to change your entire strategy mid-pack?  Go for it!  Seriously, this sounds like a lot of fun.

* Lower the life point total to 30 or something like this.

* Lower the lethal general damage to 16 or something in that area.

Please let me know if you give this format a try or have ideas to improve it!

WittCon X Magic Results

WittCon X was a blast!  We had four different decks for our EDH tournament and seven different people show up for the sealed tournament.

In EDH: Darren ran a The Mimeoplasm deck; Victor played Doran, the Siege Tower; Aaron brought his Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck; and I used Radha, Heir to Keld.

Since there were four of us, we played rounds of 2HG.  We gave each team 60 life but ruled that 21 damage from any single commander was still enough to kill an entire team.  60 may have been too much life, but we were still able to finish three rounds (and nearly finish a fourth).

Aaron, apparently channeling this guy, managed to win each round, winning the tournament.

In the sealed tournament, Aaron again saw success and managed to go 5-1, losing only to Campbell.  His was the best record, meaning he won both tournaments that day.  This earned him two picks from the WittCon prize pile at the end of the convention. :)

Another great year in WittCon Magicking!  With any luck there'll be even more magic contestants next year!

WittCon X: March 23, 2013

WittCon X is coming to town in two months!

We're going to follow the usual pattern of doing the first session as a constructed event followed by a sealed event in the second session!  The first session is 10:30am to 2:30pm.  The second session is 2:45pm to 6:45pm.

Last year we had two people build decks for the constructed part of the tournament.  (Thanks, Aaron, for not leaving me in the dust!)  This year we're going to change it up a bit and make this an EDH/Commander tournament that way the decks are not just one-time deals.  I sincerely hope this will bring in more people!


We are still going to alter the play structure, however, so that the games are not just free-for-all chaos games.  We'll play a different format based on the number of people we have.  If we have

• 2 people, we'll just have duels.  Gosh, I hope this isn't the case!
• 3 people, we'll play 3-player cutthroat games.  This means that whenever you attack, you attack both opponents.  They can "team"-block as they see fit and whatever damage gets through is dealt to both of the defending players.  (For the purposes of cards like Scroll Thief and commander damage, the attacker chooses which opponent is actually being damaged.)
• 4 people, we'll play two-headed-giant (2HG) games.
• 5 people, we'll play cutthroat-star games.  In this variant of cutthroat (or variant of star) your two opponents are the players across from you.  If they die, you leave the game (on a positive note, having beaten them).
• 6 people, we'll either play emperor or cutthroat with three two-headed-giants.
• 7 people, we'll have one cutthroat game and one 2HG game going simultaneously.
• 8 people, we'll have two 2HG games simultaneously.
• 9 people, we'll have one 2HG game going and one star-cutthroat game.  (Or, possibly, three 3-player cutthroat games.
• 10 people, we'll have two cutthroat-star games.
• 11 people (I wish) we'll have one 5-player and one 6-player game going.
• 12 people (this will never happen) we'll have three 2HG games going.
• ... I'll make something up following a similar pattern.

I know this may not be as fun as your usual huge chaos game of Commander, but there are two very good reasons for doing this:

• we always try to mix it up... even more than usual for WittCon.  (Okay, this is a terrible reason.)
• It would be nice to play more than 1.7 rounds in 4 hours.

"How will scoring work?" you might be asking.  Very simple: outlast your opponents.  (Actively trying to kill them will help!)  Okay, so it's a bit more complicated.  There are three important parts to this:

• Base Points: Each round will be worth the same number of base points.  For example, if there is a star game, then whomever wins that round earns 4 points.  Whomever comes in second earns 3, then, 2, then 1, then 0.  (If two people tie, they split the points.  Thus, if they tie for second (and third) place, they split the 3+2 points so they each get 2.5.)  In a 2-team game (regular 2HG or duel), the winning team gets 1 point, the losing team gets 0.  With three teams (cutthroat) it's 2-1-0.  Not terribly complicated.
   
• Even-it-out Multiplier: "But what if there are uneven numbers, like with 7 people and we have one 2-team game and one 3-team game?"  That is the only sort of case where this part matters.  In one of those cases, you multiply your score by the maximum number of base points in the game you weren't a part of.  Thus, the players from the 2-team game would multiply their score by 3 and those from the 3-team game would multiply their score by 2.
   
• Round Multiplier: In order to make the latter rounds more exciting, those games will be worth more points.  For the first round, the multiplier will be 3.  For the second, the multiplier will be 4.  Then 5 and 6 (if we get that many rounds).  Just multiply that your score for the game by that multiplier and you've got it. :)

Examples!  If there are 5 total people and you come in (in this order): 2nd, 5th, 1st, then you get a total of: (3 x 3) + (0 x 4) + (4 x 5) = 29 points.  If there are 7 people and three rounds and you win the first 2HG then come in 2nd in the second cutthroat then win the third cutthroat, you get a total of: (1 x 2 x 3) + (1 x 1 x 4) + (2 x 1 x 5) = 20 points.  (These last ones are of the form (Base x "Even it out" x Round).)

We'll set up each round so that the players with highest current point totals are playing in the same game.

Important Question For You:

It would be great to keep these rounds to an hour each. What should the life-point totals be for multi-team games to make this a bit more reasonable?  Perhaps 26 life for a cutthroat game and 20 for star?  Let me know in the comments!

Final note: if you are coming please please please follow the deck construction rules for commander.  Seriously.  They might change between now and WittCon, so pay attention!

See you there! :)

Bonus: Another Mediocre Magic Blog

There is another Mediocre Magic blog.  Clearly that means this is an excellent blog title.  Props and awesomeness to this other journal, especially with the amazing subtitle of:

"Losing at Magic, so you don't have to!"

The last post there was 2.5 years ago, but perhaps it'll come back.  In any case, I'll add a link to the sidebar here.

Bonus!

Empty Booster Boxes -> EDH Deck Boxes

I just followed these steps and made an awesome deck box for EDH.  Very nice!