This weekend, I went to the pre-release for Innistrad, the fall release for Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast. As is customary, I attended and had a great time. Here's a brief tournament report.
The closest event to me was being held at Redcap's Corner, in Philadelphia, but because my friends and I do monthly gatherings to play Magic, DnD, and other wonderful games like that, I instead went to All-Stars Collectables at the Oxford Valley Mall, about 45 minutes away, near Trenton, NJ.
We walked in at the crack of dawn, almost. Forgive me the exaggeration, but it was a weekend, and I figured that starting at 10am was beginning to get a little insane. I was used to noon-starts, but since the shop owner was planning on running two events, he wanted to start a little earlier. I guess that's why he owns a store and I play at one, because he ended up being correct, in spades.
There were some technical issues with getting started, between making sure the printer was running and signing up the over 100 (!) people who wanted to play in the first event. Our wonderful Tournament Organizer George was on hand, with his beaituful wife providing support and acting as a salesperson. When I went over to buy my intro pack, she seemed like she was doing some pretty swift business. On the other side of the room, we had Joel and his crew, who were the official singles vendors for the event. I'm told they didn't do too badly either, and picked up a fair number of good transactions for the day.
First event started at around 11am, by the time everyone was seated and started cracking their packs. I opened my set of six and admittedly, I was a little disappointed. Not that opening a new set isn't exciting, but I was less than thrilled by what I had opened. From what I'd looked at in spoilers and such, I didn't feel like I wanted to be in green, but lo and behold, there it was. There were just too many good werewolves to ignore, and beyond that, I had about even choice between:
-Red with a good removal suite, but a pretty poor creature base
-Blue with not enough to make it work
-White, with 8 cards in total, most not playable
and the option I ended up going with – Black with some removal and a few evasive creatures.
Taking the evasion to creep some damage through after my green fatties clogged up the ground seemed like the best choice, so I sleeved up the deck and sat down for my first round.
Admittedly, I did not expect to be writing this post, so I didn't take any kind of significantly accurate notes on individual games and rounds. I'll just sum this one up as an overall feel.
First, werewolves are interesting. Since the duel-side cards are kind of the elephants in the room, my opinion is that they're very dynamic, and easy to keep track of. I never found myself missing triggers on them, and everyone I was playing with felt that they were a very intuitive answer to them. Some of my opponents used the checklist cards, though I opted to sleeve up the originals. The only issue that I noticed that was detrimental at all was having to de-sleeve and re-sleeve so often in more constructed situations. A full-on tribal werewolf deck seems like it would be a hassle to switch back every two or three turns. Other than that, however, they played wonderfully. It was an interesting mini-game to switch them how I wanted, but it was never insurmountable. Overall, I liked it.
Morbid played well too. I found myself actively refusing to block, taking the damage rather than risking activating morbid at an inopportune time. It made me afraid of death in the games, and that's a wonderful translation of flavor to game mechanics.
Hexproof also seemed to fit here very well, giving me a real feel for the inevitability of certain creatures. The removal all felt powerful, but conditional. Bomb rares still felt powerful, but less overwhelming than normal. Making the format slower than m12 meant that I could effectively hold removal for the 'real threats', which mitigated their effect once they hit the field.
My first four rounds went 4-0, putting me in a great place to get into the top-8. I needed to win one of the last two rounds to seal my spot. Unfortunately, I lost the fifth round to an onslaught of blue and white flyers, and the sixth round to Garruk. A sad end to the first round of the day, but my friend Marshall managed to make it into the top-8 despite his round 3 loss (to the person I faced in round 6, actually. He also made top-8.)
The second sealed started just as the top-8 was running, and I made sure to get my name on the list. I opened a fairly solid pool, where I could have chosen any color but red. I ultimately decided to go with White/Black on the strength of the evasive creatures, even though there was only a single rare in those colors – an Elite Inquisitor. I was rewarded with a 3-0 record, and then an intentional draw into the top-8.
This sealed had three rounds that were very memorable for me, so I'll recount them a bit.
In the first round, I was paired with someone who unfortunately didn't have nearly the grasp of the rules that I did. He pulled a Liliana, but he was misplaying left and right. Even though the games were incredibly one-sided, I tried to keep the mood light-hearted so he wouldn't be discouraged. We had a bunch of laughs, and I got a handshake and a smile at the end of the game.
Playing against someone who's worse than you is always tough. You want to win and advance, but you don't want to hurt someone's feelings – it is, after all, a game, even if there's 100 bucks worth of boosters on the line. That round left me feeling a bit somber.
Second round, however, was a bit of a wake-up. The first game was pretty routine, with me winning on the strength of my flyers. Game two, however, was normal until my opponent got a rather large looking treefolk ready to beat me in the face. I counted a bit, doing the math, and figured that I could kill him before he could break through and counterswing for lethal. I even had a counterspell for backup. I swing out, and proclaim “So, that's it?”
He blinks at me, confused. “I'm at four.”
I look down at the spindown on my side of the table. He's at two by my count. He missed the swing last turn for two damage, by my reckoning. That said, his spindown still read four, and I didn't really have any way to prove one way or another. I all of a sudden realize why so many competitive players count with a pad – because it takes priority over a simple die. Without any method of deciding who had the correct count, I consider calling over a judge. That's probably the correct move, but I don't understand if there's anything they can do to correct the issue. I look over at the clock, and see fifteen minutes left, then make the snap call.
“That's fine. You're at four.”
He looks a little penitant, and protests that he doesn't want to be a (bad word redacted), but I assure him that it's fine. On his turn, he gains fifteen life, putting him safely out of range of my flyer and kills me on the backswing.
It bothers me, but I know it's not HIS fault. He clearly didn't miss the damage deliberately. We go to game three quickly and continue playing. The game goes down to the wire, but I manage to push enough damage through to kill him with less than a minute before turns.
I don't quite know if I handled that situation how I should have. There was a disagreement, but I didn't want to seem like 'that guy' by calling the judge – who knows me and doesn't know the guy – and ask him to make a ruling on the matter. I know George would have been impartial, and probably would have ordered us replay the game. (Since there's no other way to find an equitable solution, that I can see, at least.)
I gave him the match because I was fairly sure of my ability to win the third match, but the whole thing still left a sour taste in my mouth. I'll be bringing a pad next time, to avoid something like that.
We have to evacuate the community room at this point, because it's after 9pm. We go back down to the shop proper and resume the third round, with the shopkeep calling out that the soda is on him for the rest of the night. Thanks Warren!
The third match was one of the most technical games of magic I've ever played. It involved staring down a Bloodline Keeper in three successive games, and managing to win out over it despite having nothing on the field that could directly answer it. It was a long game of trying to fight tempo games and not fall behind while still maintaining enough offensive pressure that I didn't lose to a transformed Keeper. Winning that round, and against someone I knew from FNM's as a great player, gave me a nice ego boost – and happy day, my opponent managed to get into Top-8 on the strength of his breaks, so good news all around.
Because it was after 10pm, the top-8 decided to split the prize fund amongst us, rather than playing it out. We split to 9 packs each, and the shop closes. Total of about 14 hours of magic, all said and done.
I also did a healthy amount of trading, picking up a bunch of the utility lands that I needed, as well as a playset of Mentor of the Meek. By the end of the day, I had half a play set of Stromkirk Nobles as well, which makes my RDW nearly complete, and my Puresteel Deck 'finished' and ready for testing to prepare for the next constructed tournament I'm able to make it to (which depends largely on free time, sadly, since my Saturdays are notoriously terrible for the rest of the month).
Innistrad is the first set to have me really excited for the mechnical side of things. Ironic that as a long time player, I was more interested in New Phyrexia from a lore standpoint, but Innistrad really has me sold on a blending of the mechanics with the flavor of the set.
Overall: Favorable impression. Would buy again.
Till Next Time Everyone,
-Andrew
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