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Field of RealityBy El Jugador on March 15th, 2006 · Filed in MTGO · 16 CommentsMany of you are primarily paper Magic players. Your experience of Magic involves sitting in a game store with a sleeved deck of cards, an opponent you can look in the eye, and a hand that you continually reshuffle so your opponent won't realize the land you just played came straight off the top of your deck. You have a massive box of commons in your basement. Do I look like a Darkblast?! After everyone has registered their decks, the organizer will distribute your actual sealed card pool. Quickly open it and realize that the cards are not sorted by color and not in alphabetical order. You only have a short amount of time to build your deck, possibly 20 minutes, but first you need to verify that all the cards in the pool are registered on the sheet, or you might risk a game or even a match loss later. On my sheet, I had a Dark Confidant listed which actually turned out to be a Darkblast. Call the judge over and have him fix it, but not until you have checked for other errors. I made the mistake of calling a judge as soon as I discovered the discrepancy, which just irritated him. I had to call him over again after verifying the entire card pool. This is one area where experience helps. I took more than five minutes just to verify the card pool and correct errors, which cut down on my deck-building time. I also needed to sort the cards by color and quickly see if I had any rare bombs that would be auto-includes. This takes seconds online, but takes a lot longer in real life. Once I got everything organized, here's the pool I found staring back at me: The white has a good flyer in the Conclave Equenaut, and a couple playable weenies, but nothing that really stands out. None of the Selesnya or Orzhov cards really scream "PLAY ME!" either. I'm not sure what to think of the Orzhov Pontiff, but I don't think he's enough to push me into white with the quality of the other cards. The blue has some nice tricks in Peel from Reality and some decent draw spells, but almost no good creatures. Dimir has Moroii, which I've found to be very strong in sealed since few cards can deal with him. The Izzet Guildmage could be nice with these other blue tricks, especially peel from reality. Black has Brainspoil, which is decent removal, but worse since Guildpact introduced more playable Auras. The best removal I have is Ribbons of Night, which I'm happy about, although something cheaper would be nice to go with it. Helldozer is great if you can get him out, but triple black mana might be tough in sealed. Along with the Moroii, black is looking pretty solid, but again lacks decent ground creatures. Who needs ground creatures? Red is just terrible. Almost no playable cards at all. Green has the solid creatures I'm lacking in the other colors, as well as some needed mana-fixing. I only have one signet and one bounceland, so I really don't have much of a choice here if I'm going to be playing three colors. The Dowsing Shaman can be good in this format, but I didn't get any Auras at all, so he's just an overcosted vanilla creature in my deck. I decide to build around Green and Black and see what other color best fills out the mana curve. White doesn't have much to offer since I don't like splashing a color for weenies. You almost never get the color in the early game when the creatures would make a difference. Red has the Savage Twister, which is ridiculous in this format, and makes me want to splash red, despite the complete lack of other cards in the color. I decide to bring in blue, as this gives me more draw spells to find my Helldozer and Moroii, which is another solid win condition. Also, it makes my Ribbons of Night better. After looking at the pool so far, I realize I should at least try to play the Twister, since I can support it with the Boilerworks and a Mountain, which I can Farseek for. Plus it might make the Izzet Guildmage easier to cast and make the Torch Drake a little better. By the time I got this far, the tournament organizer was announcing that we had little time left. In an online sealed deck, I'd have been testing my mana base by now in solitaire games, and I still hadn't decided on mana or started registering the deck I intended to play! I quickly put all the good cards together and came out with this:
For some reason I played the Orzhov Signet|Signet thinking it would help me get black and accelerate my mana. Also, I should have played the Mourning Thrulls, but I didn't understand how good they were. I think I was hurt by the time I had to waste organizing my cards and getting the judge to fix the registration error, but I also should have realized the judges would not be so strict about build time. On Magic Online, once the clock to build your deck runs out, very bad things happen if you haven't submitted a deck yet. I rushed to mark my cards down and made some mistakes, but those didn't become apparent until Round 2. In reality, the judges didn't start forcing people to finish until five minutes after I handed in my sheet. Lesson #3: There is no play clock After another round of "crowd around the pairings sheet" we were on to the first round. I sat down, introduced myself, and shook my opponent's hand. Wow! This personal interaction is a lot more fun than "hi gl, u2." Game 1: I got out an early Moroii while my opponent played a hasted Gruul Scrapper. We traded life points for a while until I got the mana to play Ribbons of Night, erasing his tempo advantage. I went down to three life on my last turn and attacked for four. With him at one life and empty of creatures, I played Consult the Necrosages to remove the last two cards in his hand, in case he had some burn. He topdecked a Galvanic Arc and played it on my Moroii targeting me for three. Where'd that Guildmage go?? Playing Magic Online breeds impatience. You have a little clock in the bottom left-hand corner ticking off the seconds. As soon as that clock runs out, you lose the match, regardless of the game record so far. This encourages you to play quickly, especially if you sense a game 3. I should have mulliganed into a better hand game 2, but shuffling in real life is slow, so I didn't. I also worry too much about unintentional draws since I know it takes a solid record to top 8 at these PTQs. In retrospect I shouldn't have worried. All the games going long in the room involved either inexperienced players or incredibly slow control decks trying to win by attacking with a Tidewater Minion. I should have taken my time and made the right decision at the start of game 2. Lesson #4: Don't leave the table without your stuff After the match, I got up and walked over to see how my friend that came along was doing. I made sure to put my deck in my pocket since I didn't want to lose it, but I left my cardbox sitting in my spot. In my disappointment at the early match loss, I thought it was empty anyway, but actually it contained my sideboard. I came back in a minute when I realized my mistake, but the box was already gone, including all the cards I was thinking about swapping in between games, such as Petrahydrox or the Mourning Thrulls. Unless you deal regularly with Paypal scammers, no one can steal your cards on the Internet. If you are a new tournament player, make sure you keep your cards in your pocket or in your hand at all times. I'm not sure what would have happened if my actual deck was stolen rather than the sideboard. Lesson #5: Register your deck properly Before the start of Round 2, a judge came by and asked to do a deck check. Since he only took my deck, and not my opponent's, I was a little confused. When he came back he explained to me that I had only registered 39 cards (leaving off the Greater Mossdog) and that I would be issued a game loss this round. Wow, that never happened online. The MTGO interface doesn't even let you submit a deck with less than 40 cards. Now I feel really dumb. We played a game 2 and he beat me with an early Vulturous Zombie. I managed to play the Helldozer but it was too late. My opponent suggested we play a phantom game 2 and see how I might have done without the game loss. I won the next two games easily since my opponent didn't see the flying zombie and had little else in his deck. Savage Twister also made an appearance in phantom game 3 to wipe the board clear of his weenies. After this I filled out my drop form and headed to Giordano's for a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. I also took a trip to the top of the Sears Tower, so the day wasn't a total loss, even though my hopes of playing PT Prague were now gone. I hope that this report doesn't discourage current online players from trying out paper Magic tournaments, but rather prepare them. I fully intend to play at the next Prerelease and also in future limited PTQ formats. It's imperative to find some good strategies for organizing my cards quickly during the deck-building, and also learn to register the deck properly. For tournament newcomers, take your time and mark down all the cards. If the deck is already built, the judges will probably let you finish writing it down even after they've called time. Also, don't leave your stuff lying around. Luckily I don't even have a trade binder so I couldn't lose that. Finally, take your time and pay attention to what is going on around you. Playing online in the privacy of your own home has some advantages, but the disadvantages of real Magic can be overcome by careful observation and some common sense. If you want to play in the Pro Tour, you are going to need to step outside your house and deal with the world as it is: messy, but worth it. By El Jugador on March 15th, 2006 · Filed in MTGO · 16 Comments |
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