Ok well, I've given this a little thought and bounced the idea off of mike and he approved of this, though he's not going to post his thoughts till hes awake and cpnscious at the same time.
Basically, my opinion of MWS is that its fantastic, but it has one real, major downside (which mike agrees with): You have everything available to you.
Now I can see why most people wouldn't view that as a downside, but I'll tell you why I do. It takes out the fun of having to use only what you have available (as in a limited card pool and not like infinite copies of every card ever) to build the best deck you can. For example, I have a Pokemon TCG deck that I will go on record as saying as the best TCG deck I have ever made, because I assembled it from the ground up over a period of about 6 years, collecting cards for it here and there until I eventually made it into the brutal, energy sucking deck I have today. And I love playing with it, because of all the effort that went into making it, which is something that just churning out decks with MWS (As fun as it is) just doesn't do.
However, I have a solution to this, or there wouldn't be much point to the topic. MWS has a sealed deck generator function, and I'd like to propose a sort of..well, its not a tourny, not a league, more or less just a fun thing to do for the Magic players among us that feel like doing something different.
Basically, we'd use the sealed deck generator to give us our card pool first, Im thinking one Starter and then 5 Booster packs (This gives us 112 cards to build a deck with, though I dont see any reason why people who dont get enough land like this shouldnt be allowed to ad in more if they need it, providing they only add basic lands). For the Starter I'd like to use Fifth Ed, because Fifth Ed has some really nice cards in it that are overlooked by people that play Extended, which a lot of us here play solely. As for the boosters, I'm unsure, but Im thinking a Ravnica, ColdSnap, Ninth Ed, Lorwyn and Urza's Saga (Because Urza is awesome.)
Now then, we'd then select the cards we want in our deck and play each other with them.
Winners receive 5 "points" and the loser receives 2. Using these points we'd then "buy" more boosters. I'm thinking that different boosters would have different costs, like a Beta booster should cost more "points" than, say, a Ninth Ed booster because of the possibility of getting some really epic cards.
Obviously we'd also be able to "trade" cards with each other and stuff. Now this obviously relies heavily on people being honest with each other, but for the majority of TSC I don't really see that as a problem.
As for rules, I'd say that we don't ban any specific cards, as a) this'll be for fun and b) chances are people won't be getting terribly broken cards very easily. I'd also like to allow using 4 copies of Restricted cards in decks too, as again, the chances of someone getting 4 Black Lotus' doing this is incredibly low and if they do manage to get more than one they should be allowed to use it.
The only cards I'd say that should be ommitted are the UN-series, if only because most of them can only be realistically used in an actual game.
So to recap and summarise, this is how my idea would work for those interested.
Generate a sealed deck with:
- 1 Fifth Ed Starter
- 1 Urza's Saga Booster
- 1 Cold Snap Booster
- 1 Ninth Ed Booster
- 1 Lorwyn Booster
- 1 Ravnica: City of Guilds Booster
- Any additional basic land you require.
- The only banned cards from this are the UN-sets.
- You are permitted to have up to 4 copies of any nonb& card
- Any cards you may acquire that have "Banding" in their rule text, you ignore the Banding ability.
- A booster from a set legal in extended costs 5. (Any set up to Invasion)
- Boosters from Prophecy to Tempest cost 10.
- Boosters from Weatherlight to Antiquities cost 15.
- Alpha/Beta/Unlimited/Arabian Nights boosters cost 20.
Then, using these cards you build yourself a deck, though I recommend leaving the cards you dont use in your sideboard for easy checking.
I'd imagine that some people might not be able to make a deck of 60 immediatly, or may choose not to, as such Im proposing a minimum deck of 40, and a maximum deck of 60, until you have X amount of cards or something.
Winning a match against someone nets you 5 Points, and a loss nets you 2.
You then use these points to buy more boosters. The costs of boosters is undecided, but it would probably best if someone with good magic knowledge (like Spinny or SM) could help out here.
I also have another idea for this to discuss with just Spinny at some point, but for now Im saying no more, but it would spice things up. Hopefully this might generate either some new interest in Magic/something fun to do for those of us tiring of it, as well as provide some general fun for those of us that play seriously~
So, thoughts?
PEOPLE DOIN' THIS - Current Points
RPG - 15 (7W 0L)
Sondow - 0 (0W 0L)
Achlys - 0 (0W 0L)
Mike - 0 (0W 0L)
Sephgara - 0 (0W 5L)
Spinny - 4 - (0W 2L) Just go to #tscmagicks for now