Magic: The Blathering #1: Eldritch Moon Pre Release - Phill

Novice

by Phill Vincent

For my first foray into the world of online blogging (not even my own blogsite!), I thought I’d start with my attempt to play ‘Magic The Gathering’.

I, along with my good friend Andy Clarke, attended the pre-release of the new ‘Eldritch Moon’ series, which along with the ‘Shadows over Innistrad’ series completes this two parter. I was unsure what to expect, as I had no prior knowledge of how these competitions work, and what sort of clientele I would find (I was expecting the super competitive). We arrived at the excellent ‘Patriot Games’ around 10 for the competition to start at 11. This gave us time to warm up and play some pre-Magic Magic and to check out the surroundings. I never saw the back room of the previous shop so have nothing to compare the new one to, but I was very impressed with the venue – the other shop was looking a little ‘used’ and was a little out of town, Patriot’s now in a great central location on Union Street in the centre of Sheffield city centre. Above the shop is a long room that I reckon easily fits fifty to eighty gamers, it’s brightly lit with vending machines for any long gaming sessions (of which I am sure there are many). As people arrived it was good to see a father and son and a female gamer, in a world mainly dominated by males it’s great to see that we are getting more women involved and playing, and that someone felt comfortable enough to bring his young lad who I guessed was around 12. The rest of the players ranged in age from early twenties to about my age (although I think I was one of the oldest there at 40), and numbered around 25. One of my favourite things about gaming is that it breaks down some of the social barriers some may experience and gets everyone involved.

So to the format. Games were played in a best of three to complete a match, of which there were five matches. Each match had a 30 minute time limit - with any games going over classed as a draw - although I thought it would be too little, it was plenty of time and everyone finished all their games on time. I’m sure that if they had filled the venue (there was a max limit of 40 players) then we would have had less time. As this was the second day I think the more serious players would have been playing in the first session on the first day and Patriot would have had a full house.

Come eleven o’clock my excitement and nerves where building. I’ve only ever really played the game with friends and so was both looking forward to and nervous about playing in a group of other experienced players. The guy who ran the day whistled loudly to get our attention, he then handed out the promo packs. As you would expect, if you are a Magic player, the artwork on the box was fantastic. Nothing like a full moon, the dead rising, and a blank eyed sorceress all set in a deep nightly purple, to get the Magic juices flowing. We all had to wait until everyone had a box and then we could open them. If you know anything about MTG you’ll know that you get booster packs, which contain 15 cards. The promo box came with four of the new unseen ‘Eldritch Moon’ boosters, two of the ‘Shadows Over Innistrad’ boosters and one special card. It also contained a twenty sided dice, which is used as a life counter, and instructions as to how to make a good competition deck. The idea was then to make up a 40 card deck –as opposed to the standard 60 card deck - with any land cards (your unit of currency) being given free in house to use on the day. So a basic deck, according to the help sheet, would be made up of around 17-18 lands, 15-18 creatures, and 5-8 non creatures (instant, sorcery, enchantment, or artifacts). We then had approximately 30-45 minutes to build our decks.

On this particular day I wasn’t very lucky and I ended up with no red legendary cards. These, if combined well can win games against most opponents. Nor did I get a Planeswalker. So far so rubbish. The special card I got ‘Hanweir Battlements’ is a great card and one which you can combine with another to create a mega card, unfortunately I never got its mate (and I saw this played at the end of the day to great effect). And so to deck building. After a general perusal I decided to go with a red/white deck. It turned out that counting all my creatures up I had pretty much the right amount and so only had to decide out of the 12 or so non creature cards which 6 to take into battle. Without boring you too much I’ll just give you a few cards that I liked. My favourite card was my ‘Thermo-Alchemist’ who is cheap (costs only 2 mana), but can tap and decrease the opponent’s life (twice if an Instant or Sorcery card is played), and which I may try to build a deck around. ‘Angelic Purge’ is also a great card, fairly expensive to cast but will exile a creature that your opponent is playing. This helped me out a few times when large creatures could have finished me off.

The pairing up of players was done and everyone is assigned a table number, then you sit and play. On my first game I think I was a little too nervous. I was playing a really nice friendly guy named Seb, but I was playing too fast and not concentrating on my cards. After demolishing me 2-0 he gave me some good advice on my deck, this settled me down and allowed me to change some of my hand before the next game. The next guy was just as nice and again after a 2-0 defeat he gave me some more advice. This was, apart from the playing, one of the best parts of the day. As I said earlier I was expecting the super competitive but the first two people I played took time to teach me how the hands worked and how to create a better hand with the cards I had. My third game was a bye (as there were an odd number of people playing at least one person had to sit out and was given a free win, for me that was my only win of the day, hollow victory, but I took it). The third guy I played was again very friendly and thanks to the good advice, and unlucky drawing of land on his part, I only lost 2-1. My first game on the board, Yay! As I had nothing to lose and the fact that my bye had let me sit and look through my cards again I decided to change my deck. I went for blue/black this time. I was paired against the 12 year old. At least I may be able to save some face and beat a kid. Well he dispatched me 2-0 in about 7 minutes, by far the quickest victory, by the looks of it, in all games all day. And I was happy to have been beaten so easily. This means that he was given lots of advice by other players to allow this to happen, which for me is a big part of the inclusion that games bring, that others will help you to get to a level that they are at, to make playing that much more fun and challenging.

Overall for the day, as we had booked early, the cost was £20 (£22.50 on the day), for this we got a great intro box with more cards than if we had just bought the boosters, with a free die. The prizes were boosters, the top getting at least 7 packs (£25 worth) with a diminishing prize size until even I, coming second to last thanks to my free win, got 1 pack. This made the entry fee well worth it as the overall cost of the packs and the fact that it was hosted and run, in MTG terms relatively good value for money. Would I go again? Well the day after Andy looked online to see when the next pre-release is, I checked my calendar and said yes. We are even thinking about going to some of the other events that they hold. The Magic bug has certainly gone to a new level with me. Now where’s my collection...