So. Unless you've been living under a rock, you'd know that TSC's latest fad is MtG. It's in the topic of the chat. (This makes it relevant.) You may have seen the Extended Tourney topic in this very forum. But how many of you have seen this?
Truth be told I've wanted to implement this type of thing on my own for about 5 months now. Just hadn't had the time. (I was working on my senior design project at the time.) Now that school is behind me, maybe I'll let the proverbial cat out of the bag.
But first... intro!
Let's take a look at the current backdrop of Magic here at TSC. Right now most of us use MWS (though a few have dared to try GCCG). There are a bunch of newer players. Even the experienced players using MWS (i.e. me, mike) have different play styles. Most of the newer ones will just play with what works. Usually this comes from the unlimited pool and it's usually not the uber-powerful stuff. (By that I mean Power Nine aren't running rampant.) Mike usually plays Extended because he's been out of the loop for a while and feels at home in Odyssey/Onslaught. I'm starting to get more competitive, so Standard/Type 2 (currently Time Spiral block, Coldsnap, 10th Edition, and Lorwyn) is more of my game.
Adding to that, we're just picking the best cards we can get (well, at least I am) to put into our decks, with no notion of limit (other than the basic Rule of 4). This is fine, but in my eyes there just isn't as much of a challenge. Therefore I've looked into alternative formats.
Mike's talked about Sealed and/or Draft. (I think Sealed can be generated in MWS. Draft can't as of yet, though I go to a site where you can draft and export the deck to MWS.) SM's been running his "Three-Card Blind" at GameFAQs for a while now. All of these are fine, but each is missing one key element: they're not typical constructed Magic (by which I mean 60 card minimum etc).
I've actually had some of these problems in my play group as well. There's also been somewhat of an urge for me to play casually. I've gotten a lot more competitive over the last couple years and part of me misses the old days.
Then at the end of July I saw an article on WotC that seemed to solve everything. Apparently WotC employees have started a "You Can Go Home Again" league, where each participant grabs a box of a particular set (in their case, 10th edition), builds a 60-card deck out of those, then plays for a while. You have unlimited basic land. You could play as much or as little as you want. (Some of the WotC guys apparently trade whole decks away and start from scratch every so often.) Trading is allowed but not required. The catch is that you couldn't use cards from your regular collection. Big deal.
(If you're curious, you can read the
whole article here.)
The question is, would you want to do this at TSC?
And if so, how would you go about it?
1. Whole box or half box? (Too many cards + too many people become a problem, though I doubt we'd run into that.)
2. Which set(s) would we start out with? A core set like 10th? (More condusive to new players) Lorwyn? A block from the past? A random collection of sets? Input plz.
3. I'd actually need someone else to help me run it (unless someone can set up a GCCG server to use and somehow limit buying to only the first box/half box) so I can participate as well while being fair.
Discuss.
