Wait, we’re a casual site. We don’t play tournaments.

Until now, that is!!!

Welcome to the Avatar Week tournament! Prizes: well, remember the casual thing from a sentence ago. When you’re a casual player, your prize is the fun of the game, right? Unfortunately, we are unable to offer prize support. This is actually a good thing, for two reasons. One: it discourages cheaters. Why cheat if there’s nothing on the line? Two: There’s no pressure. If you play with money, cards, whatever on the line, you feel like an idiot when you splice Horobi's Whisper without a swamp on the table (this may or may not have happened to me). When playing for fun, you still feel like an idiot, but at least all you lost was your pride. When playing for prizes, you may as well have just handed the other guy the cards.

For the four of you in the back rummaging through your bags, looking for your ‘tog decks, note that this won’t be exactly a normal constructed tournament. Remember the whole “avatar week” thing? Everyone who just googled “Avatar Tribal Deck”, you can come back…this isn’t a tribal tournament. It’s not to fun when every deck is basically a carbon copy. Instead, we go with the other type of avatars…Vanguard Avatars.

That’s right; MDV will be hosting a Vanguard constructed tournament. Don’t know how to play vanguard? Don’t worry. Head over and check out my most recent “The Games People Play” column for all the details. Note:  It will be posted on Thursday. ~Streetz~ For even more specifics, read on.

Tournament Basics:

To play in this tournament, you’ll need two things.

1. Magic Workstation. To get it, visit www.magicworkstation.com.

2. You’ll also need MIrc. Visit www.mirc.com  to download it.

They are both free. On tournament day (see below), we’ll be setting up a room in MIRC where attendance will be taken and important announcements made.  You must also be a member of the MDV forums to participate, because you need to post your reports.

The tournament will be held on Saturday, September 16th. It will start at 10:00 AM US Eastern time (GMT -4). There will be five rounds of Swiss pairings, followed by a cut to top 8. Round length will be 40 minutes. Yes, I know this is ten minutes less than normal, real-life tournaments, but you don’t lose as much time shuffling online. Matches are best 2 of 3 games, with sideboarding after games 1 and 2.

The format will be extended. That means that all cards in the blocks from Invasion-Ravnica and Coldsnap are legal. Also, 7th, 8th, and 9th editions are all legal as well. Decks are sixty card minimum, with no more than four copies of any cards, other than basic lands. You know, the usual rules. In addition to submitting a deck, you must also indicate which vanguard avatar you will be using with your deck. If you don’t know what the avatars are, go here*. Note that the avatar card does not count towards your sixty card minimum.

*I am linking to WotC's page on this, but at some point this week, MDV will have its own page for Vanguard avatars.  ~Streetz~

Deck Submission:

If you wish to play, you will need to submit a decklist to myself via Private Message(PM) by Thursday 9/14. Decklists need to include two key things. First, you’ll need your MWS deck code. To get this code, go to the “test deck in solo mode” option under the games tab. You’ll get a window with the deck and a series of numbers and letters in bold. The bold letter/number pattern is your deck code. This code is how we ensure that everyone is playing with the deck they submitted. The second thing you will need to include is which avatar you will be playing with. This is important. Any decklist without an avatar card will not be considered part of the tournament.

Starting the tournament:

Five minutes before the tournament starts, a roll call will be taken in the MIRC room. Everyone who has submitted a deck is expected to be there. If you are not in the room for roll, you will not be put into the first round pairings. Once roll is taken, random pairings will be formed and posted in the forums. It is your responsibility to contact your opponent and start the game. MIRC has a PM function. Use it. Also, MWS has a nice lobby where you can hook up with your opponent. Simply start a game with the description “Tournament—lionden_56 only”, and wait for your opponent to join. Simple enough.

Beginning the game:

While there is no set way in MWS to start a game, I want you to follow this specific pattern. When the game loads, the first thing each player must do is create his/her vanguard avatar. To do this, right click anywhere on the tabletop, and go create token. From there, name the avatar with its name, make it colorless, and type its ability into the appropriate box.

For setting the power/toughness, follow this pattern: the first number is your max hand size. When the avatar is listed on the above site, the power is the +/- of your max hand size. Take that number from seven. The toughness will be your starting life. The second number listed is life alteration. Take this number from twenty. When all necessary fields are filled in, be sure to hit add token. This will put it in your list of tokens. This way, you only have to type everything in once. Once it is in your list, simply click create token to put it into play. Move the token to the upper-right hand corner of your play area. Be sure it stays visible.

Be sure to have that site open during the tournament, so you can check what your opponent is doing against the hard copy online. Once the avatars are in play, and both players have said OK to the avatars, both players set their life totals simultaneously. This should only take one click. After the life totals have been set, each player rolls a twenty sided-dice. Whoever gets the highest number chooses to play first or second. After N choice has been made, each player draws his/her hand MANUALLY. Do not use the ctrl+m hotkey. Because of hand size alterations from avatars, it is easier to prevent players from drawing extra cards if they do it manually. Once you have manually drawn your opening hand, any and all mulligans may use the crtl+m hotkey.

Reporting Matches:

After the match is done, each player must report in a specified thread on the MDV forums. The post can simply be: Streetz def. Lionden_56 2-1. All players must report.

Now that you know how we are doing this, there are some specifics you need to know about certain avatars. Any avatar with a randomization factor will use the dice roll feature. Here’s how they specifically will work:

Flametounge Kavu:
Roll a 5 sided dice, subtract 1 for the amount of damge it deals.

Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Roll a 7 sided dice once. Find the number on this list, and apply it to the creature:
1=Flying
2=First strike
3=trample
4=haste
5=protection from red
6=protection from black
7=Vigilance
Roll the 7 sided dice again. If you roll the same number, simply roll again, until you get a number you haven’t used. Note that you don’t get to reroll if you get an ability that creature already had.

Eight and a Half Tails
If the creature doesn't have any pre-existing protection abilities, roll a five sided die. Go in WUBRG order for numbers. If it has one protection ability, roll a four sided dice, and bump everything behind the color up one. Remember that this ability can be used more than once a turn.

Karona, False God
This avatar is a pain. There are a few different ways to do this, but I think I’ve found the easiest way. Whenever a permanent comes into play, count the number of permanents you have in play, and add that many counters plus 1 to that permanent. Then, when Karona’s ability triggers, roll a dice with sides equal to the highest number permanent you control. Whatever number comes up is the permanent you will be giving up control of. Change the number of counters on the permanent you receive to the number on the permanent you just lost.

Momir Vig
This avatar is an even bigger pain. So much that it is banned from this tournament.  You cannot choose Momir Vig as your avatar.

Higure, The Still Wind
Higure is getting errata for our purposes. Because there is no way to get a truly random creature from your library in MWS...we go with an Oath of Druids-esk ability. For this tournament, Higure will say this:
Whenever a creature you control deals combat damage to a player, shuffle your library and reveal cards until you reveal a creature card. Put the revealed card into your hand, and shuffle the rest into your library.

Wow, this introduction to the tournament ran a lot longer than I thought it would. I hope you are still with me. If you are, then be sure to send your decklist by Thursday. Good luck, and enjoy Avatar Week.  Please post in this thread to confirm you are playing and/or ask any questions about the tournament.

~Nate Lisko (lionden_56)~

NOTE: Any changes to the above, if any, will be announced in the forum.

You can discuss this article in the MDV forums here.

Articles Spotlights from 2006
The Games People Play - Tactical Magic.
If I worked at R&D
The Beginner’s Guide to Rogue
Druid Week Primer
Opting In: Ravnica
MDV Idol: Finale!
Avatar Week Primer
Delusions of Mediocrity: Getting Stuffy in Here.
Raiding Ravnica: Guildmages and You!
Lands-More than Mana: Part One