GP Boston-Worcester Report and a Request to the Community

This last weekend, I attended Grand Prix Boston-Worcester. I went in with high hopes for making day two, on the strength of my previous experience with Sealed in M13 and the pair of byes that I had. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be – I ended up dropping at 2-2 to draft with my remaining time that day – which featured Twisted Drafts (Scourge, Scourge, Guildpact is an *interesting* format, to say the least)

That’s not to say that it wasn’t a great time. I ended up doing quite a bit of trading and selling, finishing with my Legacy deck nearly complete thanks to the Judge Conference.  I’m only five cards away from complete now – two Dark Confidant, a Wasteland, and two Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Counting the two Urborg that I and a friend have coming with From the Vaults, that leaves a paltry three cards before I can actually play in legacy events. Nothing that a couple of FNM wins can’t fix. Now I’ve just got to be able to actually *attend* some. Luckily, my Fridays are looking more open than they had previously, so I might be able to give some reports on those in the future.

So, today was supposed to involve a report of that tournament, but “I got crushed” doesn’t make an especially good story. Instead, I want to talk to you all about a project that I’m working on at the moment. My previous article on the Shard Wars decks was received well, but this one has a little bit more in it for you – I’m actually looking for a core group of people who want to give imput and help with something.

I’m designing a custom set.

The set is tentatively called Illyria, and is going to be a set designed around Legendary creatures, heavy color commitments, and strong warfare themes. I’ve got ideas for a full block of cards, but at the moment, I’m working primarily on the common slots.

The goal is to have a fully functional draft set printed up and ready for public use by October 26-28, where I’ll be unveiling the set at GP Philadelphia. While Cube drafting at GP’s is fairly common, I don’t know if anyone has ever done a complete set with storyline, plot, and printed cards – with the intent to draft  publically.

But I need feedback, so I’m going to try something out.

Below is a link to the White Commons that I’ve planned for the first set so far. Please take a look at them, and feel free to leave comments on the file by right-clicking. I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts so far.

[Illyria – White Common Design Skeleton]

Some words on the design – white in this set is supposed to be a two-faced force. On the one hand is the Inquisition – an aggressive purifying force devoted to the ideal of purging the plane of all non-white mana. They utilize Glory and Chroma as their primary mechanics, and feature heavy color commitments. On the other hand is a group of heretics under the command of Terash Lightblade, who take a more moderate cooperative stance with some (read: Green and Blue) colors. His forces are more defensive, and also focus more on Leadership and Glory, but are more easily splashable.

This is very much an experiment to see what kind of feedback I can gather from the community. If it goes well, then we can look at doing additional passes for later groups of the cards.

-----

Sorry that this post was a little on the anemic side of things. I’d honestly planned on playing more than two rounds this past weekend and reporting back. This Thursday will make up for it with a guest post by Marshall – detailing the color war decks and his view on the format that he’s lovingly crafted over the years.