(New York area tournament goers should be well familiar with our local Level 3 judge Eric Smith who has been Head Judging Gray Matter Conventions events in this neck of the non-woods for the last decade and a half. With no large-scale prerelease to judge this weekend — due to the recent Organized Play changes that put such events in the hands of Local Game Stores and not Regional Tournament Organizers like Gray Matter Conventions — Eric found himself in a reflective mood and fired off this ode to big events.)

This past Saturday was the prerelease for Magic 2012. Prereleases are always fun events. Seeing the new cards and wondering how they are going to effect the various formats makes for an excellent opportunity to dream about the decks you want to build and getting a chance to play with the new cards themselves makes for a great way to spend a morning (and afternoon and evening…). Or so I have been told, at least. You see, for the last 14 or so years I haven’t been playing in prerelease events. Rather I have been helping to run them in and around the New York area. So last Saturday’s prerelease represents the end of an era for me and I have found myself waxing a bit nostalgic. And it got me to thinking about the first few prerelease events I worked and where they have taken me…. <Cue: Wayback machine>

I first moved to New York from North Carolina in August of 1997. In those days the name of the Magic game in New York was Neutral Ground, the store founded by Brian David-Marshall and associates. That same group of folks also founded Gray Matter Conventions, which is still around as a tournament organizer in the New York area. At the time I was not a certified judge, the letters in the DCI still meant something, and the prerelease events in New York were held at the New Yorker Hotel. Being new to the city the first big event that I attended was the Tempest prerelease that fall. It was a pretty big change from the events I had attended in North Carolina and I was excited to get a chance to meet the local New York community. I have to admit that I can’t remember how I did at the event, though I do remember getting passed a Cursed Scroll late in a draft and thinking that the card might turn out to be pretty good. Though I didn’t know it at the time I also made one of the most life changing decisions I have ever made at that prerelease. Namely I asked if I could help out as a volunteer. From my point of view I thought that it might be a good way to get to know the local players a bit better. And since I had been one of the go-to people for rules questions back in North Carolina I had been thinking for some time about becoming a certified judge, and this seemed like a good way to start that process. Plus I knew how may Scryb Sprites it took to block and kill a first striking Sengir Vampire (a question that remains as relevant today as it did back then….) so perhaps my fate was already decided. I am still not sure why they agreed to take me on that first weekend but the folks at Gray Matter have been paying for that mistake ever since…. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been awhile since I featured a guest piece on the blog — or anything for that matter, sorry — but Mitch Okun’s Facebook note about synchronicity and nostalgia at the recent Star City Games Standard Open in Edison, NJ brought a smile to my face and was something I wanted to share. Mitch was among those players who came to the very first tournaments run by what would eventually become Gray Matter Conventions — he even met his eventual wife through those events — and was a Neutral Ground regular from the day we opened the doors at the old location at 291 7th Avenue. — Brian David-Marshall

For the 1% of the human population out there who isn’t aware, I consider myself an extremely unlucky person.  It’s magnified by the fact that I play two card based games that are definitely more skill based than luck based (Magic and Poker), but for some reason the proportion of games played in the online settings of both just inevitably causes me to fall into the statistical black hole time and time again.  I stopped playing Magic for a while over it, I essentially gave up on poker to the financial swings, and I’ve stopped Magic Online for long stretches of time because of it.  However, inevitably I go back.  I *LIKE* the games.  I consider myself decently good.  And yet, as I sit here tonight, frustrated by a seemingly inhuman proportion of little bad luck swings that affect my Magic Online matches over and over and over again, I waited between rounds by reading online articles.  I went over the Wizards of the Coast’s site and found an article by Brian David-Marshall, an old friend, about the large Magic event that happened this weekend in Edison NJ.

I don’t play major events any more, but knew this thing was happening and took the opportunity to trek down with a pile of cards I wanted to consider selling.  I made pretty good money selling a lot of stuff to the online store who ran the event, but I can’t be in a room of 700+ players and not want to get involved a little, or at least watch .. and I quickly found Brian (or BDM, as he’s famously known to the Magic community) playing his 2nd round opponent.  I watched quietly and waited until between games to comment. Read the rest of this entry »

The Great Designer Search, Part 2 (#gds2). What a great time to be unemployed! If I hadn’t won the lesser-advertised Mini-Designer Search ~1 year ago, I would probably have applied. The award for the contest? My job as a game designer slash project manager at WizKids. So even though I have not officially thrown my hat into the ring, I still find it interesting to participate from the sideline.

I would have taken a crack at the part 1 essay questions, but given my general lack of fire on the subject, I couldn’t muster the energy and hours that would have been necessary to pour through gatherer, the rulebook, and formats past to try and find strong answers for some of the questions. I do have answers to two questions, quoted incorrectly here, “what can design do to make the game more attractive to new players?” and “what can design do to make the game more attractive to experienced players?” My answer to both would have been to get rid of Mythic Rares, which I assume would have eliminated me immediately from the competition.

The multiple choice questions could at least be attempted with minimal research, and some of them are pretty interesting. Overall the test is solid, although I do think it is ambiguous and misleading at times (maybe that is part of being an intern at WOTC? trying to decipher MaRo doubletalk). After discussing the test with a few others, round 3 achievers and non, I picked a few questions that I wanted to write about.

Disclaimer: most, if not all, of my reasoning, lacks thorough research.

Fast Guy
Creature - Human
3/1
Lifelink, Haste

1) Which color is most appropriate for this card? (white, black, blue, green, red. No tricks here) Read the rest of this entry »

Seth Burn is a long-time Magic columnist — you may remember him as the resident Used Deck Salesman when TCGPlayer.com was known as Brainburst — a fixture of the NY Magic community, and known for his annual NFL previews on various Magic sites throughout the years. He felt the siren’s call of the set review for the soon to be released Scars of Mirrodon and we are happy to present it here at Top8Magic.

Black:

Carnifex Demon

Being able to kill a bunch of weenies and tokens with your 6/6 flyer is a nice trick, but Grave Titan is already so good in the 6 drop slot that it would require a pretty specialized metagame to make Demon a better choice.

Corrupted Harvester

Twisted Abomination is laughing at you. Yeah, you have 1 more power, whatever.

Exsanguinate

The problem with cards that excel in multiplayer is that they suck in multiplayer. When you play cards like Exsanguinate you find yourself against all flags. Enjoy your life gain, now you die. Read the rest of this entry »