PO Magic Tournament - "Guild Wars"

[Ming]

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY!!!

What is is?
The PO "Guild Wars" Magic tournament will be a Magic: the Gathering tournament held during this year's Anime Weekend Atlanta, and utilizing the Guild system from the Ravnica block.

How does it work?
The tournament will be open to the first 10 people to show interest in participating. Once all 10 slots have been filled, each participant will be randomly assigned a number between 1 and 10. Then, starting with number 1, each player will choose a Guild to represent in the tournament. Players may only pick a Guild that has not yet been chosen by another player. For reference, the Guilds (and their respective colors) are as follows:

AVAILABLE GUILDS:
- Boros (White/Red)
- Selesnya (White/Green)
- Golgari (Black/Green)
- Dimir (Blue/Black)
- Gruul (Red/Green)
- Izzet (Blue/Red)
- Orzhov (White/Black)
- Rakdos (Black/Red)
- Simic (Blue/Green)
- Azorius (White/Blue)

Please PM me if you would like a more detailed breakdown of each Guild.

Tournament Format
The tournament will be Constructed format (meaning you must build a deck and bring it with you). The tournament structure will be round-robin, meaning you must play each other person once, in a best of 2/3 match. There will be no time limits enforced, and players may play at their leisure at any time. The only requirement is that all matches must be completed by a TBD time on Sunday.

Deck Construction
Decks will follow standard deck contruction guide lines, meaning that decks must have a minimum of 60 cards, with no more than 4 of any particular card in a deck (except for basic lands). Sideboards will be allowed (and are highly encouraged). If you choose to use a sideboard, it must contain exactly 15 cards. Please PM me if you need an explanation of what a sideboard is.

In addition to standard deck construction, decks must follow the following guidelines:
1. Decks may contain only cards of the chosen Guild's colors.
2. Decks must contain a minimum of 10 cards of each color.
3. Decks must contain at least one of each of the following:
- Guild legend
- Guild hall
- Guild land or respective dual land
(For a list of Guild legends, halls, and lands, please PM me.)
4. Decks may not contain cards affiliated with another Guild. (Guild affiliated cards all contain a shadowed Guild symbol which shows up in their text box. Please let me know if you need an example. The exception to this rule is the card Hypervolt Grasp, which has a misprinted Guild symbol. Hypervolt Grasp may only be played by the Izzet Guild.)
5. Decks may only contain a maximum of 2 each of a Guild's "Dual Land" from Ravnica. The Dual Lands are Temple Garden, Sacred Foundry, Watery Grave, Overgrown Tomb, Stomping Grounds, Steam Vents, Godless Shrine, Blood Crypt, Hallowed Fountain, and Breeding Pool.

Decks may only contain cards from the following sets:
- Ravnica: City of Guilds
- Guildpact
- Dissension

(Note: cards from older sets that have been reprinted in any of the above sets are legal to play. For example, a copy of Birds of Paradise from ANY previous edition is allowed to be played, as Birds of Paradise has been reprinted in Ravnica: City of Guilds.)

Proxies
To be fair to everyone, and to make deck contruction more fun, each deck will be allowed to have up to 8 proxy cards in it. Please PM me if you would like an explanation of what a proxy card is. These will be discussed more later on.

Signing Up
If you are interested in participating in the tournament, please send me a PM letting me know that you are interested. Sign up will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

This Thread
Please use this thread as a means of communicating with each other, setting up card trades, working on decks together, card/strategy discussions, questions, etc. And please check back for any updates and/or announcements.

PARTICIPANTS (now in pick order, with chosen Guilds)
1. Girkon (Rakdos)
2. Rollergirl (Azorius)
3. Shino (Boros)
4. Hoth (Orzhov)
5. Reverend (Golgari)
6. Therin (Selesnya)
7. Tobias (Gruul)
8. Ming (Dimir)
9. Daijaga (Izzet)
10. Faye (Simic)

RESULTS
Results Spreadsheet

[Shino]

I have some concerns.

1. 9th edition.
I've mentioned this to 2 other people on my front. Both are concerned about the fact that none of us have much ninth edition. And whether you like it or not... the Ghostway, Wrath combo is there for anyone running white and it's scary.

2. Dual lands.
With the cost associated with dual lands (one or the other lands, not bounce lands), having more than one in an opponent's deck could be a huge disadvantage. I personally don't have more than one of any of the Rav block duals. And there are several that I don't have. And I'm not willing to front the cash for the dual lands. So to have a deck that has 4 of them in it has a huge advantage. I understand that proxying is ok, but I personally would rather build something out of stuff that I have and not do that. So my thought would be to say no more than 2 duals in a deck.

My other thought which I also brought up to 2 people on my side was doing something sealed. However this would have a cost associated with it. My thought was theme deck + 2 boosters. Question stands are the boosters same set or one of each different set.

The cost per person for this would be somewhere in the area of $15. So that's the down side. The upside is everyone gets something for playing, and we are all on even playing ground since the themes are pretty balanced.

Thoughts?

[Ming]

Yes, white Guilds do get access to Wrath of God, but each other color also gets access to power and good staple cards from 9th. And every color has the potential to have crazy combos like Wrath + Ghostway. (Imagine Traumatize in a Dimir deck...)

- Red gets Wildfire, Pyroclasm, Shock, Magnivore, Rathi Dragon, Blaze, Kird Ape.
- Black gets Dark Banishing, Nantuko Husk, Cruel Edict, Diabolic Tutor, Consume Spirit, Phyrexian Arena, Grave Pact.
- Green gets Llanowar Elves, Verdant Force, Rampant Growth, Elvish Champion, Elvish Piper, Giant Growth, Might of Oaks.
- Blue gets Air Elemental, Mana Leak, Tidings, Mahamoti Djinn, Rewind, Temporal Adept, Traumatize.
- Then of course White gets Wrath of God, Blinding Angel, Glorious Anthem, Leonin Skyhunter, Paladin en-Vec, Savannah Lions, Serra Angel.

As far as duals go, it doesn't matter much to me if we want to set a limit of 2 in each deck, or even if we want to just say dual lands aren't allowed. 2 seems fair though. And I, personally, own full sets of most of them, and am willing to let anyone borrow if they really want.

I still don't know about the Sealed thing. I see your point, but it just seems like it would water down the nature of the interguild conflict. That, and you lose access to good monocolored spells from other sets. For example, Rakdos and Orzhov lose access to Last Gasp. Plus, what do you do with the off-colored cards that you open? For example, what do I do if I'm playing Selesnya and open up a Szadek? A potential solution to this is to use your Guild's theme deck + X amount of packs. And maybe allowing a bit of trading between players so that you don't get stuck with cards you can't use. The only problem is, again, that there is a cost associated with this.

And if anyone is concerned about people not getting something out of this, I was planning on putting a little something up as a participation prize for each player, and maybe putting something a bit bigger up for whoever wins.

[Rollergirl]

I somehow see my *** being kicked early on... but Shino - my awesome cool big bro - you'll help me, right! *stikes pose and makes puppy dog eyes...*

[Shino]

[Reverend]

As some thoughts coming from the other guy who helped to think of this last night.

In regard to Rav dual lands
Admittedly, Ming and I have a fair number of the Ravnica dual lands and would be happy to share with everyone, seeing as we'll only be playing one color combination of them ourselves. Also, I suggested the idea of proxies initially to alleviate the pressure of not having the Ravnica dual lands and/or the 9th Edition pain lands.

Using myself as an example: Say I was given the Azorius Senate to build a deck for. I have no copies of the U/W pain land Adakar Wastes, or the Ravnica Block U/W dual land Hallowed Fountain. I could just decide to make my 8 allowed proxies to be those cards and build a deck with whatever else I had or borrowed.

In regard Ninth Edition
While Ravnica, Guildpact, and Dissension are able to be played just as their own game, they were designed with the cards from the core set existing side by side with them. There is a reason that Llanowar Elves was not printed in Ravnica block, same as why there are no real "staple cards" that show up in the set as well. Those cards exist in the core set, 9th Edition.

In regard to sealed play
You will not find a bigger booster (heh, I made a punny) for sealed play than myself. However, the idea behind sealed was that it took the cost disequillibrium out of the mathematics of the game. What we are trying to do is actually eliminate that problem by allowing proxies, loaning cards for people to play, and keeping it more informal. I will gladly share my bounty of cards with people to build decks out of, and we can always discuss bumping up the number of proxies should the situation arrise.

We don't want to make people go spend any more money than is really necessary, we just want to be able to have a good time. And if I get my head kicked in by my own Lightning Helix's, or Watchwolfs, or Burning Tree Shaman's, so be it.

~Rev

[Ming]

I agree, fundamentally, with everything Rev said. But I'll leave it up to the participants to decide. If they want to do some form of Limited, then I'm all up for that. And if they all decide that 9th should be out, then that's fine also. We just all thougt that it would be a cool and interesting way for everyone to have fun playing, since so many of you guys play now. But I do hear and understand the concerns being voiced, so let's wait and see what everyone else who expresses an interest thinks. What I will do, however, is go ahead and limit the use of dual lands to 2 for each deck, as we stand right now. I also hereby decree that the same will hold true for the pain lands from 9th Edition, should we decide that we want to ultimately use 9th.

And speaking of participants...Rollergirl is now signed up to play!!

[Shino]

cool... I'm glad you guys understand some of the issues I'm bringing up.

The real issue is, like Mingy said, we do play... now. But remember that the group down here pretty much started with Guildpact. I did front the cash to go back and buy Rav stuff, but my extent of 9th is a Starter and 6 boosters from the fat pack. And I'm pretty sure that's more than most of us here in GA with the exception of Ultra who started it all.

I'm fine with whatever is decided, just wanted to give you guys something to think about.

[Reverend]

Hey, if I get to play, I'm going to be a happy Revvybear. And happy Revvybears give out hugs.

I say we start the engines and get ourselves ready!

[Ming]

Like I said, let's see if we can get enough people interested. When that happens, we'll poll everyone and see what they prefer to do. If Limited is the consensus, then we'll work out a way to do a Limited version. So basically, let's get those slots filled so that we can decide how this is going to go down!