Alternative Magazine Online

By Matt Armstrong

Last month I briefly reviewed the PC version of the original and most popular Collectable Card Game (CCG) of all time, Magic: The Gathering (MTG). If you missed that and you haven’t actually played the card game or any of the many different MTG computer games that have been released over the years then you should probably click here; it’s only a short review and contains an introduction to give you an idea of what the game is all about.

This month I’m taking a further look into the game with regards to the MTG format called ‘Booster Draft’ that I mentioned  briefly last month. Enjoy!

Booster Drafts are the most popular form of the game, costing US$13.97 each time you partake (and taking between 1 – 3 hours depending on how well you perform). They are also probably the most fun form of the game, which makes sense really when you think about it. I’m going to draft Zendikar which is the latest set and one of the best sets that I have ever played.

Entering a Tournament…

The first step is to purchase the stock I need in order to enter one of the tournaments, which I have done (costing $13.97 as reported above) and then waltz on over to the Booster Draft room. Once there I have three options. The options vary in the way of prizes. I can play an event called 8-4 which only awards prizes to the top two players, in that order (8 boosters for the winner and 4 boosters for the runner up).

This form of the booster draft is the one that offers the most prizes but since these tournaments are 8 player single-elimination events I am a little frightened to enter this one in case I come up against someone who really knows their stuff and get eliminated in the first round, winning nothing! So I bypass this particular form of the draft and move onward.

The next on offer is a Swiss style event. This costs the same to enter and has the same amount of players however the prizes are much different, as is the way the tournament is run. This event offers you the chance to play all 3 matches of the tournament. Swiss style means that after an initial round in which players are paired against each other randomly, the following rounds see winners paired against winners and losers paired against other, however unfortunately entitled, losers.

This seems inviting since I can’t actually get knocked out and I’m guaranteed to get about 3 hours play for my money. However… I will only be winning 1 booster per match won, to a total of three (since all booster drafts are 3 round events).

However inviting it seems to be playing Swiss instead of Single-Elimination I decide that winning only 1 booster per round (as opposed to >2 per round if i’d played in that first event) isn’t very good value since I am pretty confident of winning the first round at least, so again I move onward…

The third and final type of draft is called 4-3-2-2 which means (once again being self explanatory) that the winner gets 4 boosters, runners up gets 3 and the two people placing 3rd and 4th get 2 boosters. This of course means that if I win the first round I am guaranteed a minimum of two boosters. Pretty good value since these boosters are worth US$3.97 each online. So I enter the queue for this style of tournament and within about 45 seconds there are 8 participants and the tournament kicks off!

What the heck is a Booster Draft anyway?

Booster drafts consist of eight players who start the game sitting around a table (you don’t see the table online obviously, just use your imagination) with three (count ‘em, 3!) unopened boosters each (in this case we’re using Zendikar boosters, the latest set).

Each booster contains 15 cards (1 rare or mythic rare, 3 uncommon and 10 common). Each player opens only 1 booster first up, picks a card (leaving 14) and passes the rest to his or her left. They then take another card (leaving 13, duh!) and pass once again to the left. The same action is repeated, with the aim of drafting 15 playable cards for a deck which will be constructed during a ten minute period after drafting is completed.

In reality you’ll be lucky if you get about 8 cards that you might use because you’ll end up using between 22 – 23 cards out of the 45 that you draft. Usually you’ll find yourself drafting two colours. In this instance I draft black and white cards, based on the first 10 or so picks that I took.

Drafting removal: I put emphasis on choosing removal spells. In magic circles, removal spells are those which can kill another person’s creature, making them valuable spells as one enemy creature may sometimes attack you time and time again and you might not always be able to block it with one of your own creatures. Thus…you should draft removal first and foremost! Even over-expensive rares that are worth lots of money!

After you have drafted the first 15 cards, each player opens their 2nd booster and repeats the same process but this time everyone is passing to the right. Once that’s done, they open the 3rd and final booster and pass left until each player has drafted 45 cards. There are time limits, which get shorter when there are less cards to pick from, but you get plenty of time to read all the cards. As I said earlier, once you have drafted a deck, you then build it. You get 10 minutes and the game provides you with the basic lands to use for your deck. Here’s the deck I built!

That’s obviously not all the cards I drafted, it is simply my selection out of the white and black spells that I picked, with a few artefacts spells thrown in. If you’d like to have a look at any of the individual cards there that you can’t see, open another window with this nifty little program and courtesy of Wizards of the Coast you can see any of the cards if you just type the name of the card into the search window. Throughout the review I’ll link the names of cards as I list them and you can click on the link to open up a new window with a picture of the card so that you can read it.

Is my white and black deck any good?

Well, put simply, it’s average. It’s got a good amount of creatures. As a default I like to ensure my decks have a minimum 15 creatures, which this does. It’s also got a good mixture of land and spells (22 spells and 18 lands). As a rule I only put 18 lands into a deck if i want some extra Landfall (Landfall = one of the abilities that some of my spells have, see Steppe Lynx to see what I mean).

My deck also has 4 Removal spells, including the Blazing Torch. It’s looking good with those duel Kor Skyfishers but sadly it’s lacking removal (I like to have about 6 removal spells in a deck as a minimum) but you can’t always get removal because they get taken in the first few picks (usually).

When you can’t get all the removal you want you can usually make up for it with great creatures. But apart from those Kor Skyfishers (which are awesome because they’re so cheap to cast and they fly), the Vampire Hexmage and the Steppe Linx, the rest of my creatures are quite sad to tell the truth. Not sad individually, but as a group of creatures that I’m going to expect to take on my opponents with in a sudden death match, they’re quite sad regardless.

I go into game one feeling quietly confident but knowing that if I don’t kill my opponent quickly (probably using combinations such as my Adventuring Gear on the Steppe Linx which is pretty damn deadly) then I’ll probably come up against bigger creatures and get beaten fast.

Match one….

I come up against a guy playing mono-red and within a few turns I’ve killed him. I managed to get out some of my little vampires early and equip one with an Adventuring Gear and no matter how much removal the guy peeled off the top of his deck (which was, quite scarily a fair bit!) he couldn’t kill or block all of my little nasty creatures and he died.

Game two went much differently. On turn four he cast a creature that was bigger than all of mine combined. And then another one… and then on his 6th turn another one. Soon i found myself overpowered and with my sad lack of removal I was beaten into submission.

Game 3 saw the same thing happen and I had to face the fact that I’d been knocked out of the tournament after the first round and pretty much lost my $US13.97 because I neither drafted any rares worth money nor won any boosters! Such is the sad lot of a magic player but I decide that if I’m writing a damned article about this format of the game then I’m going to play again!

This time I’ll be hoping to get lucky and see a bit more removal and a better array of creatures! After starting off drafting White and Red I decide (about 4 cards into booster #2) to change from red to blue for my second colour due to the good picks being passed from the guy on my left who clearly isn’t going blue and neither is the guy two places to my left either if I’m any kind of judge.

You can usually tell this if you’re still getting good blue cards coming through and you’re up to pick 4 already. This change really pays off, it seems that no one else is interested in the good blue cards and I draft handsomely. Things get better for me when I open the third booster. I’m rewarded with Day of Judgement which is not only a valuable rare but an awesome removal spell that can clear the entire board of creatures if you get into a sticky situation! It also appears that the guy on my right isn’t going white either as he’s passing some really fine cards! Here’s what I drafted:

I already know this deck will work well. It’s got 16 creatures (1 more than my personal minimum!) as well as 5 removal spells (one of which wipes the entire board!). Also, the creatures are a lovely mix.

For starters, there’s 8 creatures that have flying which is enough to instil confidence into even the biggest noob ™! Then there are 5 Allies which is a creature type from Zendikar that complement other Allies on the board. So if I’ve got 5 in my deck there’s a decent chance that I might get more than one out at once and that way they’ll start helping each other with their special abilities.

Check them out on the Wizards of the Coast search engine again to see what I mean. Also in my deck I have 5 Kor creatures. This is another type of creature in Zendikar and although these guys don’t necessarily all help each other I have the Armament Master which is another rare.

I got him as a pretty late pick in the 3rd booster as he’s not a good card by himself. Since no one else probably thought they had enough Kor creatures to be able to play it, they’d all overlooked it. Luckily he fell into my greedy hands and made a nice addition to my fairly good deck. I’ve whipped it together and submitted the deck. Now let’s enter match number one… again!

I draw this pretty awesome opening hand!

Having started with three land already, two removal spells, a creature and the Explorer’s Scope I already have a 2/2 flying creature and I’m attacking with it come turn 3. By about turn 6 I have beaten my opponent down a fair bit but now he’s got 3 big nasty creatures out and my small selection of creatures won’t be able to block them if he decides to do a full out attack.

He does decide to and I take 7 damage. Then he drops a 4th big creature and calls turn. I untap my stuff and fly over for two once again and then cast my Day of Judgement. I then drop another creature and call turn. Several turns later I’m the winner, thanks to the mass mop (the Day of Judgement).

Game two sees a pretty similar start by me, I have some early spells and start hitting him with my little flyers while he plays some creatures of his own (but not much for me to worry about). I keep on attacking over the top with my flyers, ignoring the threats he’s putting down.

He starts hitting me in return while my creatures are tapped out and then on the turn before he’s about to die he drops a nasty 5/5 dragon with haste and flying and attacks me for what should be enough to win! Luckily I’m prepared for just this type of play by him. My Lethargy trap and my Blazing Torch see me reduce that damage to 4 and attack him again next turn for the win!

Match two…

Now having won Match one 2 – 0 against a guy with a pretty weak deck I move on glad to have assured that I’ll win a minimum 2 boosters once the tournament ends, but wary of what I might come up against next (due to the fact that I’m going to be playing one of the 3 other winners next round). I pull this for a starting hand:

My hand is pretty slow, except for the Kor Duelist, but on the 4th turn i drop my Windrider Eel and I change to being the one with the threat. The tide changes several times and eventually I’m overcome in a game that got way too drawn out.

I go to sideboarding and sideboard in a Cliff Threader because he’s got mountainwalk and I’m playing against another guy with red in his deck (red/green this time).

Game two and I’m on the ropes straight away, the guy has some early creatures out and I’m defending. Soon enough the game swings my way when I use my Pitfall Trap, followed closely by a Journey to Nowhere a turn later. Then I pick up a couple of little creatures with flying and keep swinging all the way home!

Game three sees a nice ending where I pick off his only creature that can block flying and just keep on flying over for the win:

Match 3

Going in to round 3 having won the last round 2 – 1, I’m confident but still nervous. I’m now up against someone else who’s got a really good deck. However, i am guaranteed 3 boosters even if I loose and I’ve drafted a Day of Judgement so I’ve easily made enough money to play another tournament for free (which is basically what you can keep doing if you’re good enough… unfortunately I’m not quite at that stage yet so I still pay for a few drafts).

First game here I have to mulligan three times before I get a playable hand, leaving me with only 4 cards (albeit playable ones). Basically, if you get a hand that is so bad you really shouldn’t keep it, you can mulligan but if you mulligan you get one less card each time.

So my 4 cards, although decent, don’t allow me enough of a start to get over the top of my opponent (who has also already defeated 2 other players) and I loose game 1. Game two sees me have to mulligan again and I start to fear that the shuffler is going to win this game for my opponent. However, the 6 cards I draw are pretty good:

I’ve only drawn two lands (and I usually like to start with minimum 3 as a personal rule) and I am going first too (which means I don’t get to draw a card for the first turn) so it’s quite a risky hand to keep. However it does have my best two spot removal spells in Journey to Nowhere and fortunately I have the mana to cast them.

I also happen to have Pitfall Trap which I can cast for one white mana if the opponent just attacks me with one creature (the trap ability kicking in), so with these three nice removal spells I press OK and keep the hand. I draw two lands in quick succession, play the Windrider Eel and topdeck one of my two Explorer’s Scopes which I equip to the Windrider Eel and I soon have a win on the board!

I decide to once again sideboard in my Cliff Threader and this time I also sideboard in my Into the Roil for the first time. I take out one of my Welkin Tern (which is a good swap for the Cliff Threader) and I also decide (with reluctance) to drop my Blazing Torch from the deck.

This guy is playing a lot of enchantments that make his creatures bigger and even in game two (where I won) I had difficulty stopping him because his creatures just got too big.

The Blazing Torch may not be enough to kill one and may also be a bit slow and clumsy. The Into the Roil will bounce one of his creatures to his hand which would cause his nasty enchantments to fall off it and into his Graveyard at the same time! As a bonus it also allows me to draw a card, speeding up my deck 1%!

Which sometimes can make all the difference in a tight game. As it is, I start quite well and the game remains in my favour for the entire time. I have all the answers and his threats aren’t scary enough to stop me attacking every turn past his blockers. I win the final round of the tournament 2 – 1… meaning I win the tournament! This nets me 4 lovely boosters (valued at US$3.97 each) and I’ve still got that Day of Judgement to sell on the marketplace for a few more tickets! (1 ticket is worth 1 U.S dollar)

Conclusion

Well, I hope you enjoyed part two of my Magic: The Gathering Online review. This chapter, Booster Drafts, may help you a little should you ever decide to give it a go. Feel free to message me using the comments section below if you have any questions about this tournament review or Magic in general and I’ll do my best to answer them.

As they say on MTG Online… Good luck and have fun!