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Recently, Lionden and Haggis invited me to join the MDV League staff as a Tournament Organizer. After a lot of thought, I decided to join up. What I decided to do was introduce the theme and casual-ness to the league that I felt it was missing, but at the same time offer a little something new to the mix. Perhaps I should not say new, as it is not new at all. However I should just leave this as a teaser and allow you to follow me, to a time and place where all things were fun in war and love. The O.S.S on MDV! Yes, that is the second time you have seen that. What exactly is the O.S.S? It is an abbreviation that means a lot to me, as over the years I have dreamed of bringing back to life certain things. Respect for your elders for example. Somewhere along the lines respect for elders went to the wayside and now the youth think they know everything. Yes, yea… maybe I think that because I am getting older, but as I said from day one… Don’t Call Me Old! Oh… wait. Did I just slip a little nugget out there? Old? Does the O stand for Old? Yep! If you are familiar with my writing at all, you know that I tend to live in the past a little too much. I must admit that I am showing some of the whipper snappers a thing or two about Standard and maybe to some extent, Extended, but this is not a brag session either… Uh Oh, I did it again. I slipped up… Does S stand for Standard? It is all making sense to me now. OLD SCHOOL STANDARD! Tell them what they have won! … What’s that? I told them the answer? Oh… … … Well phooey, give them a prize anyways. Folks, we never run out of imaginary prizes around here. I can just dig a little something up for you; just give me a minute to tell you about my tournament scene. You see, there was a time when there was no block rotation. That is because there were no blocks. There were no stand alone sets, nor expansions to those sets. There were just Plain Jane expansion sets. But even before that happened, there was Magic: the Gathering. Yep, we now call it Alpha. After a few bugs were worked out and a fresh printing was ordered, Magic released a more complete set which we now call Beta. Both of these sets were black bordered and print levels were fairly low, as they didn’t know if it would take off or not. However once it did, they decided to go full on with the game and out came the big release in its white bordered glory, Unlimited. Later on, we know that they released Arabian Knights, Antiquities, Legends, and so forth. This is all ancient history to us. What I want to do is offer you all a chance to live, or at least play, in an era that you most likely missed out on. Some of us actually were playing during those glorious days, and for you I offer a second chance to bask in these days again. With the technology called Magic Workstation, we are able to limit ourselves to playing old cards that most of us don’t even own. So, what is stopping us from having a tournament… Old School Style? My first tournament will be using Unlimited only. Each tournament following will use cards found in the following sets, in the order that they were released. This means that the second tournament would include Unlimited and Arabian Knights. The following one would include Antiquities. We will continue this process until we get to the Ice Age, where blocks began. As each major junction of Magic history rolls in, we will have a sort of final exam. In the upcoming weeks you will read about a tournament I am designing called "Redeemed". I will utilize that tournament style to allow us to leave each era on a high note. The first of these will be when Ice Age begins and all of the old sets fall off. We will use the entire card pool available, including Ice Age, in this tournament. Following that tournament, we will begin the current format of Block rotation. As we get to a time when a new block comes around, we will have another "Redeemed" (or similar) tournament to send off the old block off and welcome in the new. One of the important things for this scene of Magic is to know that we have to follow the Restricted / Banned lists for each period. We know that in the beginning there was not such a list, therefore as I announce the first tournament, the Unlimited tournament, you may begin salivating, as all the cards available in this set are only restricted to the normal four copies of any non-basic land per deck. Yes, this includes the Moxen and Lotus. I will update you with future articles as the tournament rolls on with updates to the lists and sets allowed. Now that the table is set, I would like to announce how I will be setting up the casual theme of the MDV League. I will be hosting the Payout Tournaments that you may or may not have heard of. These tournaments will be designed to get more Texens out into your hands. They will not have an entry fee and will be awarded with an ISS chip payout. The casual feel comes in when I announce the tournament and introduce the wacky style of deck construction you will be limited too. What? I can change the deck construction rules?! You’re darn tootin’ I can. I am not a DCI honk, and these are not DCI tournaments, therefore I can do whatever I want. I also would like to take this opportunity to announce the first Payout Tournament. It is inspired by the winner of Running Standard #3, Boiwithteeth, “I win!!! 2-1 Boi vs Neo. I am a champion??? They were fun games. I can tell why Neo got as far as he did. My deck had 220 cards for those who didn't play me. =]” Can you say Big Deck for the win?! With that said, I will be setting up the tournament with an open invitation to anyone who is interested. Here are your modifications to the normal deck construction:
It sounds overwhelming at first, but when you really sit down and look at the possible cards, it’s not so hard after all. As a matter of fact, I will even give you some assistance in building a decent mana base for a big deck. Before attempting to offer this contest, I first sat down and created one of my own. Guess what! My deck is very competitive against 60 card decks. As Boi mentioned, he played 220 cards and it was not a Battle of Wits deck. The main thing to remember is that you are not going to see every card in every game, so you must think about your card selections very carefully. Card drawing spells are very important as well, as they allow you to get deeper into your tower of power and get at some of the other cards you are hoping to get a hold of. Also, you can help yourself out by not depending on one source of creature removal as an answer to an aggressive deck style. Normally, you could play four Wrath of God and depend on drawing one before your fourth turn in order to stave off the attack. This is not going to happen in a Big Deck game. Instead, you need to pack more than just Wrath of God. In my deck, I am playing Wrath, Hallowed Burial, and Austere Command. My deck has four copies each (breaking my own rules), but gives me 12 board wiping spells instead of just four. I am playing a ton of card drawing, mana ramping, and turn taking spells, in order to ‘overcome my weakness’ of having a ton of cards to sift through. Now as far as your mana base: in a normal deck you would run around 24 lands, which breaks down to 40% of your 60 card deck (24/60 = .40). Doing the backwards math, 60 cards – 24 lands = 36 spells. So doing this equation, reveals that we are playing 60% spells, which makes sense since 60% + 40% = 100%. Now, what I would advise is that you look at the ratio of lands to spells to get the number you REALLY need, and that is 24 lands / 36 spells = .666. Now we are getting somewhere. Your magic number, ironically is .666. What you need to do is scrap thinking like a normal deck and just figure out what you want to do with the deck, and pick cards. Keep adding them to the deck in Magic Workstation, and when you think you have everything you want, take your total number of spells and creatures and multiply it by .666. The number you get will most likely be a decimal, so round it up to the nearest whole number. You need that many lands in your deck. Example: I have: 80 spells, 16 creatures… how many lands should I play?!? 80 + 16 = 96 * .666 = 63.936 or 64 lands! How many do I have in the deck? *double checks math…. *smacks own forehead* 65, but all I need would be 64. The great thing about the Big Deck tournament in MWS is that you don’t have to shuffle 150 cards. You just hit CTRL+S and it is done. cpn
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