Balanced Budget?

I have long felt that players would benefit by maintaining some spending parity in creating and maintaining their casual leagues.

If I ran a comic book/game store, I would probably at least TRY to create a budget league in which all of the players spent the same amount of money to build their collections. If players started with an M13 core set and then limited their spending (and deck building pool) to maybe an additional $10 a month, play parity could be maintained between the players.

In such a system, players would have to inventory their collections as they were built. It would seem to me, that the emerging technical tools- such as Deckbox- make it much easier for players to inventory their collections. It would be very easy for casual players to build a new Standard collection by maintaining a database of their new card resources on a service such as Deckbox.org and restricting their deck design to the cards they acquired this way.

Obviously, luck would play a larger role in such a setting, but Magic has never been a game in which luck played no role. Nor has it ever been a game of total parity, but a game of design which rewards those who improve their chances through creative and interesting play strategies. When players allow themselves the use of unlimited budgets in deck design in an environment of unexplainable prices and manufactured scarcity, the player experience can be poor. If the players themselves opted to maintain moderate investments that struck the appropriate balance between luck and skill in deck design, the role of money would be dramatically reduced and some integrity could be restored to the game.

Another thing, which I certainly have some experience in, worth exploring is the elimination of the tournament prizes at some events. When I ran my Monday Magic events, we did not have a tournament structure, but instead simply played a few hours of casual anything-goes multiplay games and eventually held a drawing for a booster pack. (Actually, the drawing was eventually replaced by a dice rolling scheme in which the highest roll won the booster pack). My system rewarded participation and play more than merely winning. This project continued until I was unable to finance the boosters for the event. A simple $1.10 per player cover each week for every four players could probably sustain the enterprise indefinitely. The players could opt to get one a booster every four weeks from the money that was collected rather than hold any drawings.

I tend to find that competitive tournament style magic does not necessarily bring out the best in players and that the mistakes which are often made in a game as complex as Magic are less serious when there is no prize at stake.

Comics Plus Tournament in St. George

I am in the process of moving so I stopped in at Comic’s Plus in St. George for some Saturday Night Magic. I brought my Magic cards with me with the hopes that I might have some opportunities to meet players and play some games even while I am moving. It turns out an event was scheduled for today at Comic’s Plus in St. George, Utah.

Comics Plus Tourney in St. George, Utah, May 26, 2012

I lost the first round 1-2 and, unfortunately, a scheduling conflict may prevent me from playing another round.

Comic’s Plus had a nice selection of commons for 5 cents and I picked up quite a few cards that my collection was missing. It also had some good land prices.

> Penny Land

Most players are already discussing the upcoming changes to the Standard format and the arrival of M13. Hopefully, I will be able to get some more Magic games in during my stay.

The Magic of Elko

This is my last weekend in Elko and I am playing my final rounds here.

I began the morning with some casual play at Starbucks. My friends there had prepared some cards for signing- Dark Ascension proxy cards for Chalice of Life. Logan gave me the proxies I needed for the SLC-GP and so it was fitting they all gave me a signed Chalice of Life proxy card.

After a morning of fun and casual play, we headed over to 5J for a two-headed giant tournament. 5J allowed us to pay only $5 per team to enter. Turnout was fairly good. The events are just beginning and it seems like more people are showing up each time. There was plenty of in-store activity. People stopped in to trade and sell singles, people purchased boosters and supplies from the store, and of course, we all prepared for the tournament. My partner was Colten and we had not really prepared in advance of the tournament. Our decks did surprising well together.

Amazingly, we were undefeated* until the finals. The * however, does denote the confusion that occurred in our round against Matt and Jessica. Jessica is a regular at Saturday morning magic, and an erroneous ruling ended up muddling the match with too many tokens. After discussion, Matt and Jessica opted to allow the match results to stand rather than redo the match.

In the finals, we met Zack and Brian. Both players had deep collections and since they play with us on Saturday mornings at Starbucks, Colten and I knew their decks would be designed to deal with our threats.

We were right. Zack and Brian ended up winning the tournament, while Colten and I finished second.

For second place, I ended up with a Dark Ascension booster pack and some penny sleeves. In my DA booster I pulled Sorin, Lord of Innistrad.

I certainly feel good about our performance as a team. There were a lot of very interesting deck ideas and strong competition at the tournament. As a team, we were lucky enough to have some good draws at critical times. Luck still plays a large part in these things.

Tournaments are certainly more stressful than the serious, but friendly, casual matches I normally play and I am certainly used to the disappointment of losses, so it was refreshing to do a bit better at this event.

I will certainly miss the casual anything goes atmosphere of play here in Elko as well as the good friends I made through Magic.

The most broken combo in Magic

Luck, Money, or Skill

Recently, I have had several extremely lucky pulls from booster packs. Normally, I don’t purchase booster packs and I doubt I will purchase many more in the near future. Two of the boosters were purchased to play in a sealed draft, one booster to show support for the emergence of in-town tournaments, and one as a going away purchase at another LGS since I am moving.

With the addition of several new “lucky” pulls, new difficulties emerge. First, as I have already explained, the lucky pulls undermine the goal of playing budget decks.

I don’t want to rely on the lucky pulls to boost the effectiveness of my decks. Nevertheless, I owe it to my opponents to provide them with competitive matches. These two realities are at odds with one another. If I play an ineffective deck, it deprives my opponents of the challenges they deserve. It wastes my time and theirs. It is unfortunate that some cards provide so much advantage and simultaneously cost so much- most notably dual color lands.

I am tired of playing in overmatched MTGO matches. My ability to create competitive decks is undermined by my unwillingness to invest more in the MTGO environment. As there is no budget section, I sometimes feel overmatched by more expensive cards. Mentally, I say to myself turn 5 or 6 is usually when the money shows up (though in some cases, such as the dual colored lands, earlier). Even if I made modest improvements to my decks, they would be just that- modest. My opponents won’t enjoy playing against most of my decks in their current state.

While MTGO might in a strict sense be somewhat cheaper and more available than paper Magic, it is decidely less social. For those of use who played other versions of Magic, there is some skepticism that digital Magic needs to be as expensive as it is or is future proof.

As I have a few “lucky” cards, I will undoubtedly include them in my local play as the local players at least understand where I am coming from in terms of deck design. I would like to challenge them with competitive play. Still, it is not without some conflicted feelings over this.

Meanwhile, I’m taking a break from MTGO for a while. As I am moving, I won’t have access to it. Notwithstanding that, I decided to play some CS:S instead of MTGO today and found the parity and competitive, yet cooperative, teamplay refreshing- even if my play was subpar and somewhat rusty.

I’ll sort through these issues over the next few weeks and perhaps come up with some clearer answers to some of these conficts after my move.

Budget Stars

I’ll just take the time to write about a few of my go-to standard cards.

Let’s begin with an essential standard card:

Elixir of Immortality.

There is nothing wrong with this card. It’s a very low cost card that does a lot. You get life gain and can shuffle your graveyard plus Elixir into your library. This card is a solid performer. I own thirty of these and still feel the need to buy more.

Alloy Myr

An artifact creature that allows you to add one of any color mana is always a welcome addition to any deck.

Pristine Talisman

Life gain and add a colorless mana? This card consistently makes the cut in many decks because it provides two things players can always use.

Trepanation blade.

It mills and adds a lot of damage to whatever it is equipped too. There are other pieces of equipment I like in certain situations, like Demonmail Hauberk with Act of Treason, but Trepanation blade does more than mere damage- it mills. Trepanation blade is especially effective on unblockables, like Blighted Agents, Nuerok Invisimancer, Invisible Stalker, or indestructibles. It also mixes very well with decks that include an Undead Alchemist.

Aether Adept

Bouncing creatures is always handy. You can bounce an opponent’s token creature and get rid of it. You can bounce a transforming creature and force the opponent to recast it. You can bounce your own creature (Wing Splicer) and recast it to trigger its battlefield entering ability again. All this for 3 mana and you get a handy blocker.

Blighted Agent

Unblockable infect? This is a mean little attacker who goes extremely well with a Trepanation Blade or just about any other handy enchanment. An early Blighted Agent is a great step towards a win.

Mind Control and Corrupted Conscience

Nothing levels the playing field like stealing your opponent’s creatures. Corrupted Conscience ups the ante by making the stolen creature infect as well.

Undead Alchemist

The Undead Alchemist is a sleeper hit. Most people overlook this blue zombie- but why? Again, any milling combo works great with Undead Alchemist as you can simply create more zombies.

Viral Drake

It flies, it infects, and it proliferates. With a four toughness, it’s a decent blocker. This is a really great card.

Diabolic Tutor

For those of us trying to overcome the disadvantages of a 60 card minimum, Diabolic Tutor is a handy card that allows you to pull the card you need when you most need it.

Gravedigger

This little zombie goes great in just about any deck because it can pull creatures out of your graveyard.

Reassembling Skeleton

This is one skeleton who can block or get sacrificed and just keeps coming back.

Royal Assassin

Need to keep an opponent’s creature in check? Look no further than the always classy Royal Assassin. Once on the field, opponents hesitate to tap anything.

Acidic Slime

One of the most versatile cards in MTG, it can deal with a multitude of threats and still becomes a deathtouch blocker to boot. It’s expensive to cast, but well worth it for the ability to destroy a target land, artifact, or enchantment.

Increasing Savagery

This card, in many respects, is pretty broken. Even a Bird of Paradise becomes a menace once Increasing Savagery comes into play.

Llanowar Elves

These elves never go out of style. Often times, the Llanowar Elves provide just the mana necessary to turn things around.

Stingerfling Spider

Okay, it is a bit expensive to cast, but look what it does. It destroys a flier when it enters the Battlefield. After that, it still has reach.

Spinebiter

Assigning infect damage even if you were blocked? Add a Trollhide or an Increasing Savagery, and players can often win quickly.

Act of Aggression and Traitorous Blood

Stealing your opponent’s creatures cards is fun. Couple with Fling or a Demonmail Haurberk and you can kill their creatures after using them.

Blasphemous Act

An affordable field wipe. It costs less to cast for each additional creature on the Battlefield. It’s a good idea to run creatures with protection from red (Vulshock Refugee) or that are indestructible.

Goblin Tunneler

I miss Dwarven Warriors. Really, I do. But time marches on and the Goblin Tunnelers have taken over. Paired with Razor Swine, Goblin Tunneler really helps out. There are many situations in which a Goblin Tunneler can get a critical attacker through.

Goblin Fireslinger

Low cost and constant damage. Essential in any deck that runs a lot of bloodthirst creatures, especially Stormblood Beserkers.

Arrest

Slightly better than Pacifism (another classic and worthwhile card), Arrest goes one step further and prevents creatures from activating abilities.

Fiend Hunter

A bit risky at times, but particularly effective against tokens.

Serra Angel

A classic card which is still useful today. Serra Angel continues to impress with flying and vigilance.

Spirit Mantle

Put this on a Serra Angel, or just about any other card, and you have an attacker which is a serious threat and a blocker that can stop most threats.

Sunblast Angel

Let them attack and surprise them by casting this somewhat expensive potentially board-wiping creature.

Anyway, those are some budget cards that provide a lot of utility.

Not a budget deck?

I picked up some boosters and I have some nice rares now.  Unfortunately, the other cards in the pack are less useful to my deck building needs. 

Boosters can increase the chance you’ll do what I did and take a simple budget deck- like my current Zombie deck– and add the Havengul Lich you luckily pulled.  One question is: Is the deck really a budget deck anymore?  Well the average card cost is about 34 cents, so possibly, but- probably not.  I hate it when a budget magic deck focuses on using great budget cards and then throws in a non-budget deck and still pretends to be a budget deck.  I suppose since I only paid $4.18 for the booster, the average price of the cards at 27 cents seems like a budget deck.  

Of course, it gets a bit murkier when one considers the fact that I considered my coalition deck to be a budget worthy deck, even with the Peacekeeper- though I suggest some substitutes for those not willing to purchase a Peacekeeper.  I got my Peacekeeper a long time ago and it was not a singles purchase.   

A lot of times, I’ll be reading a budget magic article and suddenly one or two super expensive cards will appear on a decklist and I’ll think- is this still a budget deck?

Anyway, back to my current Zombie deck. and the inclusion of my luckily drawn Havengul Lich: I’ll just admit, my current zombie deck is probably not a budget deck even if the average card cost is 34 cents.

My zombie deck is pretty good without the Havengul Lich, but I have to agree, it is better with it.     

It’s not that often that I purchase boosters at all. I consider boosters poor investments.  However, as I pull a few rares now and again, I just have to remember, its okay to use them- so long as I am at least honest enough to admit these are probably no longer budget decks- they are lucky decks.

MTGO: Day of Judgment

Rather than invest in MTGO, players should probably stick to paper, if they can.

MTGO is no Microprose Magic. MTGO requires you pay a lot. Sure it is 24/7, but you’ll meet some of the least social players in the world there and many players who do not care about play parity. Many players join the Casual Play Just for Fun Section with tournament quality decks. You can build a deck or two for almost no money that will give you a chance at winning, but it gets very old playing the same one or two decks.

Who knows what you’ll experience in the new player section? There are really no restrictions in place there just a label. But the label Casual Play Just for Fun means nothing, so I’m not sure that New Players label means anything.

I also tried the Planeswalker format where you get the same cards, but found that while the matches were competitive, I didn’t feel the brewing was as good.

Good luck trading. The orcs will jump over anyone who tries to solicit a trade in the general chat.

I don’t have the money for both paper and online. While Skylanders combines realspace products with unlock codes for virtual products, Wizards refuses to.

The only upside to MTGO is that over time you get to see a lot of deck ideas from a lot of players.

Creating a space for new players, attempting to create any kind of parity, encouraging social activities are all beyond the scope of MTGO.

MTGO was a gaming relationship that I tried to make work, and it hasn’t. Save your money and energy for something else.

A Draft?

I played in my first draft format tournament today here in Elko at 5J. The limited format focused on Avacyn Restored. There were 6 players in total.

I have not played in the draft format before and there was a lot to learn. Not unsurprisingly, I lost most of my rounds as I struggled to overcome picking cards which would eventually work well with my decks rather than simply focusing on the draft at hand. I also failed to get my mana distributions to align with the cards, particularly in blue, and in the future, I would try to do a bit better job.

That being said, it was still a relatively decent way to spend some time. The players were all very nice and we struggled through understanding some of the newer cards together. Likewise, a draft is better than simply buying the boosters outright. I maintain boosters tend to produce rather poor results for budget deck builders. By incorporating the social aspect of gaming into the booster buy, I felt that I was finally getting more value out of the booster purchases. I’ve said before, I would appreciate a dual-use digital/real space combo booster that allowed me to unlock cards in MTGO and build my real space collection instead of the pay twice track model Hasbro has in mind. Skylanders has no problem with marketing dual-use products.

5J does not, as I said, currently sell singles, so players were free to trade cards from their collections with each other before, during, and after rounds.

Anyway, I lost my rounds, but I did get one highly sought after card in the draft:

For someone who plays a lot of blue, that was an incredible draw.

Overall, a nice way to spend an afternoon with some local Magic players.

The Sunshine State

So, I’m back from my travels to Florida. I had a fun and productive trip to Florida. Not much time for Magic, I’m afraid. I did manage a short trip to Quick Stop Games (aka Magicinferno). They do not keep their primary singles cards on site, but they did have some bargain bins which I hastily went through. It was great to be able to pick up a wide variety of cards for 5 and 10 cents. It reminded me of purchasing singles when I began playing. Had the bin even been loosely alphabetical, I might have ended up with a few more cards. Still, I was lucky to fit the trip to their store at all. I’ve ordered cards from so many places across the country, it was sort of nice to actually visit an online retailer’s establishment in person. Florida seems to have a healthy collection of local game stores and I will undoubtedly get a chance to explore more of them in the near future.

I also managed a short trip to Universal Studios in Florida. I took some footage of a few heroes who were engaged in a promotional event.

Apparently, a hero’s work is never done. I found Cyclops look a bit interesting- seemed a bit Gambit to me- but apparently this is considered an age of Apocalypse look. The group of heroes selected was also somewhat unique- Spiderman, Storm, Rogue, Captain America, Cyclops, and Wolverine.

Here is a before photo of me at the Hulk- the upside down roller coaster at Universal Studios.

The Hulk

I started my morning with this one. I ran into a nice couple from the United Kingdom in line who were working in the area of HIV research. I inquired if they were considering Gamma radiation.

Universal Studios Theme Park has moved to a system of biometric security systems as well as a tiered pricing system for park visitors. Apparently, you can pay for express access to the rides which can only be considered ironic, given the name of the park itself. As I was visiting a bit earlier in the season, most of the waits were pretty short for the rides anyway.

I really feel the emphasis towards locker storage greatly reduced the likelihood that a park visitor would buy souvenirs as they would then be a hassle to store while riding. I’m glad I only had a camera and wallet to deal with.

Some of the rides, like the Harry Potter and Spiderman, made an excellent use of a wide variety of technologies to provide an immersive experience that was really pretty incredible while others offered straightforward thrill rides. It’s too much to see in one day, but I made the most of the time I had there.