Shadowmoor and the evil casual premier event ...

Well the Shadowmoor release events have come and (mostly) gone in MTGO this week, and they definitely seemed to be a love them or hate them event. Personally, I've always kind of liked them -- but I can see where some people don't care for them.

In my case, I blew the entire month's budget on one of the new 'casual' premier event tourneys. These tourneys are a new format for the game, with a longer build time, longer playing time, and a flatter payout (less to win, but more to people with lower records) than the normal PEs. The event I played in had five rounds, with every entrant receiving a Murderous Redcap avatar. Players who went 5-0 would get 20 packs, 4-1 players got 10 packs, 3-2 players got 4 packs and 2-3 players got two packs. If you managed to go 1-4 or 0-5, well, you didn't get anything.

In my case, I knew I could go at least 2-3, and maybe as good as 4-1. I've only 5-0ed a release event once, and that's because I got the flat nuts packs.

Well, as far as this specific event went -- I knew even 2-3 would be a challenge with this pool of cards. My closest things to 'bombs' were a Knacksaw Clique and a Swans of Byrn Argoll. I only got one of the common multi-color +1/+1 enchantments, a Helm of the Ghastlord, which worked for Black and Blue creatures. The biggest downfall for this deck was its lack of removal. I didn't have any direct creature removal spells, though I did have an Inquisitor's Snare (prevents all damage from a creature, plus kills black or red attacking/blocking creatures) and Curse of Chains (at the beginning of every turn, tap ~this creature).

I had absolutely no artifact or enchantment removal in my packs -- and no bounce either. So, when something hit the board, it stuck unless I could kill it in combat, or by my limited means of direct damage. In the direct damage department, I got just a touch -- all in red of course. Burn Trail is awesome if you can cast it with conspire, but with almost no red creatures of note -- that would be tough. Puncture Bolt kills almost any 2/2 creature, and also puts any x/1 regenerator to the graveyard as well -- but the MVP of my limited removal suite was a single copy of Power of Fire. That one card turned any creature into a Tim (tap to do 1 damage to target creature or player) ... and did I not say that one of my only good cards in my pool was a Mistform Clique?

Well, I wound up putting together a W/U deck with a splash of red and green. The red was for my removal, and the green was for the creatures I lacked in any of the colors to make a passable deck. Fortunately, one of the good things about Shadowmoor as a set, is that it's relatively color friendly with a couple of mana fixers, but mostly through its hybrid casting costs throughout the set. The deck itself was passable, but not a 4-1 or 5-0 deck. I was hoping for 3-2, and hoping against 1-4 and 0-5. I saw about equal chances of both --- and darn it, I better get at least two packs out of all this effort. Not to mention my entire month's budget!

In the first round I drew Tanaka_Katana_Nakata_JP, a 1760 rated player. He didn't speak much -- but I bet he was from Japan. He also wound up being the one 5-0 player in our pool, even though his deck looked awfully similar to mine. There was one big difference -- he had a couple of Shield of the Oversoul in his deck. Oh, and a couple of Safehold Elites as well. For those of you who don;t know that much about Shadowmoor, the Elite is a 2/2 G/W hybrid card with persist for two mana. The Shield of the Oversoul is an enchantment that gives a green creature +1/+1 and makes it indestructible and gives a white creature +1/+1 and flying. So in games 1 and 3 of our match (I lost the dice roll), I faced a 4/4 flying indestructible creature with haste on Turn 3. Needless to say, I lost those games. However, in game two I got my own Tommy Gun of Doom ... DOOM, I say! That was accomplished by placing my Power of Fire on my Clique. I actually won game two down from 16-4 by clearing his board with the pinging Clique and then taking him down of the course of four turns. Seeing as he only lost two games all day in the tourney, I felt pretty good about myself in the end.

Anyway, in the second round I played a deck with even more bombs. In addition to the above Elite/Shield combo, Catsg added a Firespout (combination Earthquake and Hurricane) and Twilight Shepherd (5/5 Serra with persist, plus returns your other cards sent to the graveyard that turn back into play). How he lost in the first round, I'll never know -- but he sure didn't have any problems with me -- sending me out the door in two games in about 10 minutes.

Bleh, being 0-2 sucked -- but not as much as having to wait more than an hour for my next game. That's the one bad thing I'll say for this tourney format -- 45 minutes per player makes a 90 minute match, and a lot of people dropped because of that. Heck, if not for the flat payout -- and I knew my deck wasn't THAT bad, I might have dropped too. The other bad part of that long wait is when people drop, it's hard to match up like-record decks. In my case, I eventually got to face up with another 0-2 deck, but there were a lot fewer people in the tourney past the second round -- making 2-3 look like a good possibility for me.

Anyway, I proceeded to win my next two matches. Unfortunately, I lost the last one to go 2-3 overall. Eh, it's in the money -- and the tourney was fun. The tourney as a whole lasted just over six and a half hours, and that was one long Saturday to spend in front of the monitor. Luckily for me, it was too darn hot outside to do much of anything, and I had been smart enough to schedule a late showing of The Incredible Hulk through Fandango. So it made for a good Saturday all around.

Generally, I like Shadowmoor as a set. However, for limited it's just to pack-dependant for my tastes. A lot of pools are based more on the bombs and combos that you open than just the skills in building a deck and playing it. I love the set for drafts, where there are lots of choices for drafting and color combinations that you don't normally see played in draft games. Four and five color decks are possible in both draft and limited, and possibly good if the mana works out. Two and three color decks seem to the best though, and the various hybrid cards shine in such a deck.

I do like the new casual PE, but in terms of the players playing it -- don;t expect it to bee too casual. I'm normally a solid 1700ish player myself, and I played three 1750+ players in my five matches. The other two folks were both over 1600, meaning that they've at least won more than they've lost in these sort of matches. I'm not sure if there's ever going to be a format for truly casual player to play in, but while this is an improvement -- it sure isn't casual in terms of attracting lower rated players to try PEs in my opinion.

The one last thing that I'm dying to try is to see what fun I can have with graft creatures and the Murderous Redcap avatar. I'm sure it won't be tourney quality, but I so want to see how much fun it is to cast a Vigean Hydropon and put 5 points of damage to my opponent's dome.

Anyway, take a look at this week's poll about the Shadowmoor release events. Let me know how much you enjoyed them, and that'll give me a good idea on how much time/coverage to set aside for the next set of release events.

Later,

Don!