 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
 |
 |
|||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
 |
|
Darksteel Pre Release Tips
1.22.04
Welcome back folks. I'm glad you guys keep coming
around to read my stuff. Honestly, I'm glad you keep
coming back to read all of our stuff. The site has
had an increasing number of hits over the past couple
of weeks. We are making a lot of changes. The site
owner bought some new servers so that everything is
nice and smooth. We are trying to become one giant
comfy family around this place.
For those of you that are unaware, the Pojo site has
some of the busiest message boards on the internet.
You owe it yourself to check them out. As a matter of
fact, if I am not mistaken, this weekend, the BRAND
NEW forum boards on going up and they too will have
their own dedicated server. So go over there and chat
it up.
Also, if I can line it up...as a special treat, in the
next few weeks, I am going to try and get an interview
for my column. I won't say with who. That'll be a
surprise. I wouldn't want to get you hopes up and let
you down if the deal falls through. But let's not get
all crazy looking into the future. Let's get our mind
straight on what we have going on here.
For some reason I think I want to take some pictures
of my cats and post them on here. You'd be amazed at
how camera friendly my two cats are. They are
amazing. But that's a later deal.
First of all, what a turn of events for the Super Bowl
eh? We all were looking at the Patriots being
ridiculous going into the end of the season, but what
the hell happened to the NFC? It seems like a
foregone conclusion, but we really can't count the
Panthers out at this point. Besides, the Super Bowl
is still more than a week away.
This weekend we have the Royal Rumble for all of you
wrestling fans. The rumble itself is a huge who's who
of today's wrestling superstars, so it should
definitely be entertaining.
But there's another event, that's more important to
the majority of you guys reading this: the Darksteel
Prerelease. I'll b honest with you. I'm not a huge
fan of prereleases if they aren't near you. And by
near I mean an hour or so drive away. You spend a lot
of time and money. Now, some people just like sealed
deck and seeing new cards and that's cool too. For
those people, this is definitely your event.
Recently, I've gotten a few e-mails about what people
should expect when they go to one of these things. I
figured I would do my fellow gamer a favor by posting
up a few facts to help you all be prepared for a fun
day at your local prerelease.
First and foremost, eat some breakfast. It's going to
be a long day. If you have to get up, drive, register
for the event, wait for the event to start, play in
the five rounds of tournament, the next time you can
free yourself up to eat might seriously be near three
or four int he afternoon. It's much more fun to play
with fuel in the tank.
You might also want to bring all of your gaming
essentials. Keep a pen handy and a small notepad or
some paper close buy. It's a good way to track life,
take notes, or whatever else that you feel the need to
do. On thing that players forget, is that having an
easily visible way to keep life total is actually in
the DCI floor rules. For some reason, players feel
that they don't need to bring their own stuff
sometimes and think that it should be required for
them for some reason.
Please bring your DCI card or have your number ready.
If you don't have one yet, don't worry, they will get
you taken care of at the event and get you one free of
charge. Having your number ready will help speed up
the flow of the line. Obviously this makes everyone
happy.
If you don't want to be surprised, check out the
Darksteel spoilers and the Darksteel FAQs online.
This will give you a better understanding of what the
cards do and how some of them should be used. It's
not a huge deal, but it gives you a small leg up on
the competition. Every little bit can help. Also, if
you are paying attention, you can plan some strategies
based on some of the cards you can anticipate your
opponents having.
Fortunately, there are now site dedicated to carrying
all of this information. Way back when, I used to
have some foreign friends that would attend their PR
events and would send a copy of the spoiler to me via
e-mail. My friends and I would observe the lists on
the car ride to the event. This gave us all a way to
figure out some of the cards and strategies.
Come on, let's be honest with ourselves here. Even
looking at the spoilers won't guarantee us victory.
There's nothing that replaces good ol' raw talent.
There's still a bit of luck to opening sealed decks.
And on top of that, you just may not be able to
identify the great cards in the set.
I still remember at the Tempest prerelease picking up
SEVEN Tradewind Rider, NINE Cursed Scroll, and a ton
of Propagandas. My logic on Tradewind Rider was that
if Time elemental was good, this guy had to be
better. Cursed Scroll, I really had no real reason,
it looked cool, and the ability was fun. Propaganda
was funny, because we played it where both players had
to pay, regardless of who was being attacked. I
figured that card was so wacky that it had to be worth
something. Lucky for me, it all worked out. You
gotta love prereleases where the average player
doesn't know what half the cards do.
There's a lot to do usually at a prerelease other than
just play the main event. Of course you can play in
the other flights, but they will be the same format.
There are always booster drafts being held on the
side. There is a team sealed event. There are a even
ton of people to trade with.
Which brings me to my next point. Feel free to bring
a well stocked trade binder. People are looking for
all kinds at these events. If nothing else, you can
sell cards to the dealers on hand. For some people,
it is one of three large events they attend each year
(and the other two are likely PRs as well). Leave
yourself some options. Be willing to make some deals
to get what you want. Just make sure to keep track of
your stuff. Keep it in your backpack. Put an
identifiable marker on your stuff. There will be so
many people and so many cards, that it would be a
shame for you to pointlessly lose your cards.
Well, I hope those facts help you out on your
prerelease experience this weekend. I know they
helped me when I played in them. Now I just set up a
booth and do sales.
Everyone that hasn't check the Pro Tour schedule
really should. There is another set of team sealed
qualfier this season.
www.wizards.com/protour .
OK, I took some time to think about a good alternative
game of the week. I wanted to go with a board game
for a change of pace, so my choice was easy. This
week's game is Settlers of Catan. It's not an overly
strategic game. Every person gets to effect things
the other players do. You build villages and make
trades to try and race to ten points. Everything you
make or do has certain number of points assigned to
them. It's fast pace and had two expansions. It's a
huge fan favorite among Magic players. If you haven't
played it, I definitely recommend that you check it
out. An average game only take about 20-30 minutes to
play.
My strategy tip of the week is simple...concentrate.
People are always worried about the crowds around
them. They are worried about making one liners. They
are worried about trying to be entertaining. They are
worried about what song is playing on their
headphones. Don't worry about this other stuff. Pay
attention and play your game. If you have to,
practice with these distractions around you. This
will make them less of an issue at tournament time,
because you will be used to them all being there.
This is another thing that seems rather simple, but
people don't think about.
My card of the week this week is Tradewind Rider.
This card is so much fun. He combos well with
Armageddon and things like Intruder Alarm. This card
can swing the game. It's a decent blocker. It
flies. It's only four mana. There weren't many
things that were bad about this card. I also find it
humorous that the potential in this card was
overlooked for the first few weeks of its existence.
Let this be a lesson to you all going to the
prerelease this weekend. Think about all of a cards
uses before just writing the card off.
Well, I'm sorry this is a little shorter than usual
this week. Things are getting a little late here and
I have some stuff I have to finish. I'm in the middle
of trying to get a house. Which by the way, if any of
you have any good house buying tips, know a good laon
officer, or have someone that can hook me up with a
cheap mortgage loan, it would be great! Feel free to
drop me a line with assistance. Getting a home is a
long, interesting adventure. It is also very
exhausting.
Until next time,
DeQuan Watson
PowrDragn on IRC
PowrDragn on MODO
PowrDragn on Pojo message boards
See a pattern yet? :)
|
|||||||
