That may be the longest post title I will ever have on the site. Last weekend, I joined about 45 other people of various ages for a pre-release tournament for the latest expansion set for the popular deck building card game, Magic: the Gathering: Dragon's Maze. For those who don't know, Magic has been around for over 20 years and is played all over the world (there is even a Pro Tour with cash prizes).
The game pits two players against eachother with a deck of cards they have built consisting of lands and spells. The lands provide the resources to cast the spells, which allow you to attack your opponent or defend yourself. The cards are mainly sold in packs of 15-cards each (common, uncommon and rare or ultra-rare varieties) or in most stores you can buy individual cards to construct the best deck possible. Magic is played for fun or competitively for prizes. The pre-release tournament is a way to get familiar with a new set of cards when they are released and play others for prizes (free promotional cards and packs of cards).
At the tournament, I plopped down my $30 (it isn't a cheap game) for a tournament pack:
Inside the pack were two packs of cards from earlier Magic sets and four booster packs of 15 cards each from the new Dragon's Maze set. With these cards (and lands from the store), I constructed a 40-card deck to compete in the tournament. Here is one of the rare cards in my deck:
Nice card, but suffice it to say I didn't do all that well in the tournament. I was 2 - 3 overall and well out of the running for any prizes. That being said, I will give some thoughts on the latest set for Magic. I have been playing Magic off and on for 20 years and it is amazing that they have continued to evolve and refresh the game (and make loads of money off of players, Magic is made by a subsidiary of Hasbro) over that time. Playing in the Dragon's Maze tournament did make me nostalgic for the days when I opened my first beta game pack and pulled my Mox Sapphire and Serra Angel. Back then we didn't make very functional decks to play and just enjoyed playing with the cards we had. That is one of the appeals of pre-release tournaments, you get a pack of cards and build from what you get. Yet some of those simpler times have been lost. Over the years, the game has become more and more complicated with wild effects incorporated in the game to keep it fresh (like Extort above). Some are very novel and interesting while others can almost make your head spin with how complicated they can become in play.
I found that Dragon's Maze, being a small set, did not yield a lot of variety in the type of decks that were successful in the tournament. To add another level of fun to the tournament, players were asked to select guilds (certain deck colors) at the start and as players won for their guild they progressed through a "maze" to get a special prize for the guild that was the first to rack up 10 wins (a promo card). At our tournament, the Selesnya guild (Green/White) with help from Gruul (Green/Red) won after the first round (maybe they knew something I didn't about choosing the best guild). Most of the games I played were won by use of only a few effects like bloodrush and evasion (allowing you to attack without being blocked) and due to the limited card set it was difficult to deal with those effects.
If you like Magic, I won't convince you that Dragon's Maze is great or not. I think it is definitely the weaker of the sets released in the past year (Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash being the other two). I would recommend that Wizards of the Coast (Magic's publisher) stick to two larger sets a year if having a smaller is going to yield Dragon's Maze. A further indication of the weakness of the set is how little value the store I played at is giving to the cards. You see, I have sold all my Magic cards a couple of times over the years and so to off-set the $30 cost (and cut down on card clutter at home), I sell my rares back to the store. This time I was able to get $15 back from the cards I got in my tournament pack. All in all I got my money's worth from the tournament - 6 hours of play for $15 (plus gas to get there, of course) - Magic tournaments can last a long time. Yet I don't see me running out to play in another Dragon's Maze tournament. Maybe I will do one online when it is released on Magic: the Gathering Online on May 13, but it's hard to say so right now. I give the Dragon's Maze pre-release tournament 2 Mick Happies. The card selection just wasn't varied enough and the effects are getting a little too complicated for my taste.
My pre-release promo prize
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