Coldsnap Prerelease
Jul. 11th, 2006 03:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwangoOn Saturday I went to my second Magic prerelease tournament (the first being the one for Ravnica almost a year ago). I would have gone to the ones for Guildpact and Dissension, but they were in Boston, and it wasn't worth the trouble of driving all the way in there, even though I really enjoyed the one for Ravnica. Coldsnap, however, was back in the hotel in Boxborough, which is only about 20 minutes away. Rock on!
I had some trouble sleeping the night before, and ended up trying to take an extra nap before going. That didn't actually get me any more sleep, and got me there late, so I had to wait around until enough people showed up to start tournament #7. Bleh.
I opened my packs, gazed at some of the crazy crap in the set, and made a (supposedly) fiendish deck of small, quick white and blue things, most of which had flying. I thought this would work pretty well. Unfortunately, in the first game I couldn't draw past 3 land, and really needed the 4th to be able to deal with some of the stuff coming at me. The second game, I drew too much land. Not a great start. I went to the third game in round 2, but still lost, so I was out of the running for a prize (you need to win at least 3 of your 4 matches to get a prize). I was going to play one more round to see if I could get my deck to work properly and then drop out, but an odd number of people were in the tournament for round 3 (probably due to everyone else with 2 losses dropping out) and I got the Bye, or default win for not having an opponent. Ordinarily an automatic win is wonderful, but not if you're already out of the running for a prize and just want to play. Grr.
I dropped out and entered the next tournament, #14. I opened much better stompy critters in that set of packs, including 2 of the most powerful cards in the set - Ardarkar Valkyrie and Ohran Viper. Sets of 4 Ohran Vipers are already pre-sellng on ebay for about $45. It's an awesome card. The Valkyrie, on the other hand, probably has too high a casting cost to be a serious tournament card in the future, but is ridiculous for Limited play like a prerelease tournament. I certainly won all 3 games that I put it into play. Alas, I had one fluky matchup that I lost in round 3, so I only made a 3-1 record. Still, that's 4 packs as a prize, so I sort of broke even for the day. Plus I had fun, which is the whole point of going to these things.
I'll probably try to play in the release tournament if TE has one. I might do better there, since I have an idea of which cards actually work in a game now, and what I can expect to face from my opponents.
I had some trouble sleeping the night before, and ended up trying to take an extra nap before going. That didn't actually get me any more sleep, and got me there late, so I had to wait around until enough people showed up to start tournament #7. Bleh.
I opened my packs, gazed at some of the crazy crap in the set, and made a (supposedly) fiendish deck of small, quick white and blue things, most of which had flying. I thought this would work pretty well. Unfortunately, in the first game I couldn't draw past 3 land, and really needed the 4th to be able to deal with some of the stuff coming at me. The second game, I drew too much land. Not a great start. I went to the third game in round 2, but still lost, so I was out of the running for a prize (you need to win at least 3 of your 4 matches to get a prize). I was going to play one more round to see if I could get my deck to work properly and then drop out, but an odd number of people were in the tournament for round 3 (probably due to everyone else with 2 losses dropping out) and I got the Bye, or default win for not having an opponent. Ordinarily an automatic win is wonderful, but not if you're already out of the running for a prize and just want to play. Grr.
I dropped out and entered the next tournament, #14. I opened much better stompy critters in that set of packs, including 2 of the most powerful cards in the set - Ardarkar Valkyrie and Ohran Viper. Sets of 4 Ohran Vipers are already pre-sellng on ebay for about $45. It's an awesome card. The Valkyrie, on the other hand, probably has too high a casting cost to be a serious tournament card in the future, but is ridiculous for Limited play like a prerelease tournament. I certainly won all 3 games that I put it into play. Alas, I had one fluky matchup that I lost in round 3, so I only made a 3-1 record. Still, that's 4 packs as a prize, so I sort of broke even for the day. Plus I had fun, which is the whole point of going to these things.
I'll probably try to play in the release tournament if TE has one. I might do better there, since I have an idea of which cards actually work in a game now, and what I can expect to face from my opponents.
