The final piece of coverage on Wondercon 2009 has to do with one of the interest here at Rarityguide.com: Magic The Gathering. While I’ve played Magic with friends, I’d never played competitively before. The only tournament experience I’d had previously had been sealed deck tournaments a friend ran and my participation in the Pokemon TCG sponsored by Kay-Bee Toys a fair number of years ago. While inexperienced in the tournament environment itself, the game of Magic is something I’m very familiar with. It was something new for an old love that I’d never honestly tried before. This was set to be a Swiss-style Tournament in the 1.5 Legacy block.



    Within the world of Competitive play, there are various formats and systems used. The Swiss-style of tournament allows for a great amount of balance. The system is initially random (or seeded if there is information available), but after the first set of rounds played, people are paired with others who did as good (or as bad) as they did. The 1.5 Legacy refers to the Card Pool that can be used. This is a very open format, with all of the blocks in Magic the Gathering included. The main difference in this format to Vintage is simply the Banned List. This particular tournament was set to be 4 rounds of play.

 

Getting into the tournament was fairly easy. All I had to do was talk with a few people, get a ticket and to get my deck registered and checked for the format. For this tournament, I chose to use a Highlander (One of each creature card in the deck) variant of the Sliver Deck I use, “The Hive”. Registering a Highlander deck I learned is extremely tedious and something I wouldn’t do again. I had to account for all the cards in the deck, down to the basic lands. “The Hive” is exactly 60 cards, most of them being Slivers, one of each of them. I practically got a hand cramp from writing the same thing so many times. However, knowing it would preserve the deck if I were to change it back to standard format, I pressed on. After that, I started shuffling my deck, getting the land properly disputed throughout it. I was nervous, but once I sat down at the table to honestly play in the tournament, I felt as comfortable as I always did.



My first game was against a Goblin deck unfortunately. It was also one meant to work very quickly and get a large number of goblins in play very cheaply too, mana-wise. I paid attention throughout and put up as good a fight as I could both rounds, but I also lost both rounds. My first opponent and I had enough time to start into a leisurely game of Magic before the next round was announced. My second round of play put me against another Sliver Deck. This one ran things very differently than mine. His had spell components to augment his draw. This gave him a slight advantage in terms of what he could do. Still, I managed to pull off the Infinite Combo in my deck and learned just how powerful it ultimately is, simply because of how hard it is to stop when all the pieces are present. We had a minute as well just to talk Slivers, which was nice. While he beat me as well, I had a glorious win and the pleasure of pulling and playing an unexpected card, Dovescape.



    I had to leave the tournament early unfortunately, time waits for no Writer who needs to cover a panel. Still, having played, it was fun and I still got something for it; two booster packs of Stronghold. As a great number of Slivers I used are from Tempest and Stronghold, I had to laugh a bit at my prize. I only got one Sliver in the two boosters, but I got a lot of good cards as well. The Legacy format is a great way to get into competitive play as it allows for a great variety of cards to be used in your decks. While meant to be relatively quick in play, there are instances where it would drag. Every Magic player should attempt competitive play at least once with a deck they’re very familiar with. It’s a great way to test any deck and meet a number of people who share the same interest. Even though I lost way more than I won, I found myself enjoying the experience. Many people were willing to talk about their strategies and were open to criticism on their decks and offered suggestions on what I could do to improve my own. This was something I wished I could participate in more when I have the chance.