Magic question

Gottaa

Full Member
Been speaking to Rorsch today and trying to pin down the magic rules/start-up idea.

So a question really, what do people want ?

I'd like a random deck/sideboard (library) which we can then pick cards from and make a deck we use in the ladder, this would mean hopefully random games, not killer decks and make it a little easier and fairer on people new to playing.

But with that idea 2 starting decks, 1 land and 2 boosters may not be enough, we could end up with people with not the cards they need to make say the one colour deck they want, so we can increase the number of decks to make your library larger or just have totally decks of choice, where you pick the cards you want and make the deck you want.

If that's not clear (and I know I'm not often clear, must be the tin foil hat) say and I'll try and be clearer, but in general what are people after ?

Me, I want a fun/casual ladder where games can go on for a while and aren't over in 5 or 6 turns :)
 
Yeah, I wouldn't mind playing with fully pre-made decks, but I realise that this disadvantages the newer players, and games could get a bit silly (my first mucking around game last night lasted 4 rounds :p).

The problem is that with the current system, you basically get 180-odd random cards. Even with small decks of say 40 (60's minimum deck size usually), you've got sod-all choice. It's also possible you just wont have enough cards to actually make a single-colour deck.

So, my recommendations are 1) use pre-made decks, like normal ladder comps. A bit of a rite-of-fire type entrance to the game for some, though I'm sure the more experienced people will be happy to talk the newer ones through deck building tips.
2) Play like we're planning, with you choosing packs, and getting random cards to make your ladder deck with (obviously trusting you not to switch in a bunch of wtfpwning cards ;)), but with a larger number to muck around with. 300 or so would give you some leeway; it's a lot of cards to read, but you can ignore the ones of the wrong colour. Shame you can't sort them by colour.
3) Best way imo, would be if there was some way to choose a colour, and get a bunch of random cards of that colour to make a deck from. However, I can't see any way of doing that (unless otherclients allow that, which might be enough reason to switch ;)).
 
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Requiel

PVC Love God
The pregenerated deck I got from 2x9th Ed packs, 2x boosters (antiquities ftw) and a land pack was dreadful. Five colour deck with some expensive spells that you'd never ever have the mana to cast. I spent ten minutes making it a two colour deck and it was better but still pretty pants.
 

Gottaa

Full Member
I'd suggest now with a little playing around 5 9th edition decks, 1 land pack, 3 booster decks.

This of course assumes MWS can do something like this, as I've still not got it runnin yet I don't know.
 

Chick

Cartwheel RIGHT
From what i can see, mws only gives you uptions to make pre-made decks. Having a bit mroe of a fiddle with it now.

Edit - Found it :) tools - Sealed Deck generator. Add whatever you want, then hit generate.....

Personally speaking, i prefer the MWS interface as it shows the card info alot easier, sorry to be a tfpita

Other thoughts, i liek the idea of the 5+2 thing, a few quick generates do give a nice wide range of stuff. Apart from Land though, odly enough. 5 islands in a deck. Eeeep. That brings forward the question, should you be free to add as many land as you feel is required, or does that get silly?

Soemoen with a bit mroe of a clue on what's in what need to figure out what to draw from though, as i'm a bit confused, and stuff. (starters, boosters, what?)
 
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Kelger

Sexy?
I'd say add as much land as you feel you need with standard lands, special ones (dual lands etc) if you've got them in your selection.

Looking at a couple of champ decks it seems they follow a rule of no more than 4 of any particular card in a deck with the exception of basic lands.

And yeah, much prefer mws ;P
 

Treebeard

Ranger of the North
You can have as many basic land as you want in a deck. Non basic lands and spells you are only allowed up to 4 of, apart from Relentless Rats, which is an exception.

The way I would do it, if the program allows, is to start off with just five 9th Ed boosters, which is the equivalant of a sealed deck tournament, and use basic lands as you need them. At first this may seem limiting, but in this format that you seem to be leaning towards, which is called Limited funnily enough, your deck only needs to be 40 cards and that includes lands.

Maybe every week if the programs lets you, each player opens a new booster and adds those cards to their collection until everyone gets enough cards to build 60 card decks. Maybe you could also incorporate trading with the other players as well? I would avoid using boosters from sets like Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Antiquities and the like as a lot of the cards are very broken.

If anyone has any questions throw them up here and I'll answer them.
 

Gottaa

Full Member
Can you trade between players in MWS then ?

I've still not got it installed (well it's installed but not working right), and if people want to use MWS then we can use MWS. If someone wants to either write up some instructions or host a zip of the complete and correct install would be easier as we have a few people that want to play :) That or use MWS if you want but also apprentice as the decks seem compatible and apprentice is so easy to install there is no reason people couldn't use both ?

Gonna spend monday getting the MWS client up and running, if anyone is around to have a few practise games during the day give me a shout on msn or skype :)
 

Gottaa

Full Member
Little bit more fiddling.

I'd suggest 6 starter decks (9th Edition), and land you may want to add (single colour, normal, nothing fancy), and 3 booster decks. From that you seem to get a good mix, can make good single colour decks and your off.

What do people think ?
 

Entropy

Full Member
Rich, Tom and myself have had a few games using MWS. We've been using 10 8th Ed boosters, and 1 6th Ed starter. We've added as many basic lands as we wanted, but kept all other cards to a max of 4, and didn't dupe any of them (ie, you needed to randomly gen more than 1 of a type of card to be able to put more than 1 of that type of card in your deck).

To be honest though, this hasn't really been enough...I would suggest adding more starters if anything, and maybe letting people choose from a selection of boosters, rather than limiting them to 8th ed (need to disallow certain booster types - Antiquities that Req mentioned for example has a lot of cards that break the game).

Oh, and we've been using 8th ed boosters because 9th ed doesn't have graphics loaded for it yet.
 

Gottaa

Full Member
Hmm wierd, were you using the full or cropped card graphics ? I've only ever picked the full size graphics and the only thing MWAssist didn't get was some booster decks I've never even heard of anyway.

as far as card choice I've no idea what cards break the game, I know there are lists of cards that aren't allowed in competitions and I was thinking that list may well be the thing we should use, and also no idea what difference there is between 8th and 9th edition cards (excluding the graphics). I'd be happier with the 9th edition as it's been so long since I played anyway I'd like to be playing up to date stuff :)
 

Entropy

Full Member
Gottaa said:
Hmm wierd, were you using the full or cropped card graphics ? I've only ever picked the full size graphics and the only thing MWAssist didn't get was some booster decks I've never even heard of anyway.

as far as card choice I've no idea what cards break the game, I know there are lists of cards that aren't allowed in competitions and I was thinking that list may well be the thing we should use, and also no idea what difference there is between 8th and 9th edition cards (excluding the graphics). I'd be happier with the 9th edition as it's been so long since I played anyway I'd like to be playing up to date stuff :)

I was using cropped, but I just tried again with full. and it still didn't work. If you could zip the pictures for 9th up and send them to me, I'd appreciae it. Pmed you my email address.
 
Unglued is a release of cards, that are a bit, erm, unconventional. Such as "Rip this card into bits, through them in the air, and whatever permanent the bits land on is removed from game" and so forth. Needless to say, they're usually banned as hell from normal games. :p
Zeus, if you can work out some way of working that into an online client, go for it. :D
 

Gottaa

Full Member
currently I'd say it will be the MWS client (I'm working on getting a full install on my PC and then hosting an image people can download and place over the top of an existing install, to make the registery okay and get everything else) and possibly going back to edition 6 cards as MWS doesn't have higher versions than that in starter packs, and then trying to sort out which boosters will be allowed (Entropy and others hopefully help with these bits).

If you have either client installed though angel at the mo and fancy a random game I'm sure people will be up for it. I'd just like to get the card/starter/booster choices down soon so people can start making there deck
 

aleatoryuk

Full Member
I don't have anything downloaded at the moment, been waiting to see what people settle on. Happy to wait until we have decided how we are going to do this and join in then. As long as I can get my Icy Manipulators I will be happy :)
 
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