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!

End-Of-Semester Magicking

****Update Dec 5: I can't stick around tonight, so there won't be magicking!  This draft is cancelled!****

Hello all!

Wednesday of this week (Dec. 5) is the best day for magic, so let's do it!  I think we'll plan on doing some sort of limited team format.  Thus, it'll probably be a draft, but there will be teams since we'll likely have lots of people not used to drafting.  Probable options are: Emperor, 2HG, Tag-Team or Archenemy.  If you've got another idea, just let me know.

I would guess that we'll start around 6:10ish.  (We'll probably go until 10 or 11; maybe not quite as late.)  As normal, let me know if you think you'll be running late; we can start later.  I'll bring a few decks so we can play a bit before things get started.  Naturally, if you show up early, feel free to come extract me from my office (329R).

The cost is $10 for three packs.  I'll have plenty of basic land.

I won't post my phone number here, but feel free to email me and I can give it to you. :)

Awesome! :-D

If you are planning on coming, it would be helpful for you to let me know.  Either email me or post here.  (Please don't do both or I'll double count you.)

Bonus! :)

End-of-Semester Magicking!

This week is Thanksgiving.  After that there are two more weeks of classes.  Let's play some magic!  :-D

There was some clamoring for a casual constructed night.  Also some people are interested in drafting.  Hmmm...  I think we should probably shoot for a casual draftish thing.  Perhaps some sort of team format will work well.

We also really need to determine what our constructed WittCon event will be.  I'm thinking along the lines of EDH.  Last year fell through a little bit because only two people built decks for the format; it is probably better to have deck construction be less stringent.  (Despite the fact that I love crazy constructed formats!)  So, should we talk about this at our next event or should I start a separate blog post about that?  Please let me know!

Either respond to my email or post here about which nights are good for you in the final 2 weeks of class (Mon-Thurs are what I'm looking for usually).  I can already tell you that Thursday, Nov. 29th is not going to work.

Awesome!  See you all soon! :-D

Tested out a Tag Team Format

At the last Wittenberg draft, we had four people and decided to try out a Tag Team format.  This idea was first formulated by Don Goldin many years ago.  I don't know how faithful I recalled his original idea, but however well we (Patrick, Nathan, Earl and I) figured it out, it was lots of fun!

The basic idea is that you have two teams of two players.  One player from each team is inside the ring at any point in time, facing down one of their opponents.  Players can switch places by paying ever-increasing amounts of mana.  While "in the ring", that player can attack and target their opponent, etc.  While outside the ring, that player still takes turns, etc, as usual, but can't attack or target anything any other player controls.  Any spells they cast only affect their own board state.

Here are some more specific rules:

• Each team takes a simultaneous turn.
• The swapping of players can be activated whenever a player has priority.
• Swapping places costs colorless mana to activate.  The amount of mana is exactly one more than the last time that team activated it.  (We had different starting values; see below.)
• Players cannot swap out during combat after blockers have been declared.  If the defending team swaps places before blockers are declared, all attacking creatures are still attacking, and the newly in-the-ring player is the new defender.  If the attacking team swaps places (also before blocking) all those attacking creatures leave combat and there are now no creatures attacking.
• Targets of spells and abilities opponents control "vanish" when their controller tags out.  This can cause those spells and abilities to be countered as normal.
• The effect of swapping places does use the stack.
• Permanents owned by players who are out of the ring do not die just because they are in another player's zone.  This became important because my team (me and Earl) used Stab Wound to kill Nathan in the second game.

(Note that you can never target your teammate or anything in their zone during the game.)

We played two games, using different rules for tagging out.  In the first game, the first swap per team cost 3 colorless mana, and went up by 1 each time.  Either player could activate the swap.

In the second game, the first swap cost 1 colorless, but only the player in the ring could ever pay the mana to tag out.

To set up, we drafted like normal (triple Return to Ravnica) sitting across from our teammate.  I decided to change my strategy in two ways.  First, I would be on the look out for cards that would be good to play while I was tagged out (this led me to value Inspiration highly and take it early).  Second, I figured we would be able to set up a long game, so I didn't mind taking cards with high casting costs.  When all was said and done, I had something like 6 cards with CMC 7 or more.  (I also didn't mind dipping into all 5 colors, but that is not a change from my usual drafting strategy.  :-P)  Looking back, I would probably value targetted removal slightly lower since teams can always swap places to fizzle those spells.

This wound up working out really well as Earl drafted Rakdos-Golgari.  We were good to go: he started both games in the ring, going aggro, and we tagged it up as necessary.  Tapping out became a more dangerous move since not only did it mean that you didn't have any tricks, but it also meant you couldn't swap in or out unexpectedly.  Even though we only swapped about 5 times per game per team (an estimate) the potential to swap was often a big deterrent to opposing plans.  I don't think I ever felt like I had too much untapped land available.

It's important to note that these games tended to run long.  Even longer than 2HG, probably because although there are less card interactions going on at any one time, there are still a large number of potential interactions, thus making decisions about when to switch really tough. 

We discussed adding a mechanism for one team forcing another to swap.  That could be very nice.  In either case, both of the variants we used were awesome; I definitely want to play this again!

Think of something we didn't?  Anything I forgot to mention?  Questions?  What can be done to nail down the rules for this more?

Also, if you give Tag Team a try with your play group, I want to hear about it! :)

One More Before Thanksgiving?

Wanna get together one more time before Thanksgiving?  Cool!  We need to pick some time in the next two weeks, because after that I will be gone for a full week.  Again, we're looking for evenings, MTWTh, starting around 6.

I guess it's not clear whether we'll play constructed or limited.  If you've got a preference, let me know! :)