Alright folks, as you may or may not be aware, I live in a tiny little hole called Tucson. It is very hard to find UFS players to play with down here, outside of 1 or 2 others there is no one else.

Luckily the tides are changing! I've slowly been converting a group of Magic players to the OOFS side and I figure the release of set 12 is as good a time as any to toss them into the deep end.

So here's what I'm thinking of doing, and I'd like your input and any suggestions you can possibly come up with.

I'll have 2 of each starter deck to be coming in the set. From these the players will select a starter deck to serve as a "nexus" around which they can build a deck.

Then, we shall do a 3 pack draft event. The players who chose a ShadoWar starter will receive 1 pack of ShadoWar and 2 packs of SoulCalibur4 to start, and vice versa for the SC4 starters. This will introduce those who picked ShadoWar to some of the neat stuff in SC4 and vice versa. We'll draft these cards then move onto the next round

3 pack sealed, with ShadoWar players receiving 2 packs of ShadoWar and 1 of SoulCal4. Vice Versa for SoulCal4. Players will be able to trade cards from these packs and THESE PACKS ONLY amongst themselves.

From there, players will construct a 60 card deck list (remember the nexus?) and we'll do rounds from there.

Thoughts?

Archimedes said:

I like the starter idea better since the character distribution is going to change this month . Just check out the starters before you give them out you dont want to give them a a starter like mai from set and how that went over.

Sounds like a lot of fun, but it also sounds a bit complicated to me.

My main concerns:

• It seems likely that if you draft and/or open decks before doing the sealed part, then cards from the draft or deck will get traded (either do to player confusion, or coolness of deck-construction winning out over rules in someone's mind).
• If you do the sealed part and/or open decks before the draft, then players will have to be extra careful to keep the deck cards out of draft. Drafts are easily screwed up by even competent drafters who pass too fast, and too many cards on the table can lead to extra problems.

I would honestly cut the trading out entirely, and leave it for post-tournament. The beauty of limited play is limited play.

1. Start with starters. Let players open the starters only to remove character cards, to see the symbols. (Alternatively just print out previews, if those become available.)
2. Do the draft with characters on the table, starter decks off the table.
3. Hand out the sealed packs, and treat them as straight up sealed.

Even without the trades, players should be able to build 40-card (or even full-sized 60-card) decks, with the full resource rule intact !

I'm really psyched about the new character distribution and the amount of support. Sealed should be much more manageable without any major modifications to the rules. (:

ARMed_PIrate said:

i agree completely. they are magic players, so they know how to play drafts.

hire hot go go dancers to dance for them.

but srsly, this is a great idea. maybe even give them some league foils/promos too?? more free butter is good! magic guys will appreciate all the foils prolly.

Scott Gaines said:

and the go go dancers.