==ISLANDHOME #7==
April 16th 2008 ---- $ 4/8
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Tournament Report
Shadowmoor Prerelease: How to survive the prerelease and win packs of the new set!
Rules Corner: Shadowmoor rules!
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Saturday: Shadowmoor Prerelease
==TOURNAMENT REPORT==
==SHADOWMOOR PRERELEASE==
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Tournament Report
Shadowmoor Prerelease: How to survive the prerelease and win packs of the new set!
Rules Corner: Shadowmoor rules!
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Saturday: Shadowmoor Prerelease
==TOURNAMENT REPORT==
Congradulations to Matt Brocking and Michael Bauer, FNC veterans who qualified for the City Champs Finals, both of whom made top 8 in the four-round, 11-player event in Valley Stream last Saturday. Though neither of them won, they gave their best and made us all proud!
Michael Innace and Ralph Navarra split in the finals of FNC's Saturday tournament.
Sadly there was no tournament last week at Grim; from what I understand lots of people were either on vacation or going back to school after Spring Break.
Michael Innace and Ralph Navarra split in the finals of FNC's Saturday tournament.
Sadly there was no tournament last week at Grim; from what I understand lots of people were either on vacation or going back to school after Spring Break.
==SHADOWMOOR PRERELEASE==
Well the Shadowmoor prerelease is this Saturday at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview (333 South Service Road off the LIE). The event kicks off at 8-9 AM with the first main flight and lasts all day. Here's the rundown:
8 AM - 9 AM: Main flights start. Entry fee is $30, and you'll get a Shadowmoor tournament pack and two boosters to construct a 40-card deck. You get a prize pack just for playing!
Noon - 2 PM: Bonus flights start. Entry fee is $25 if you've played in another flight, or $30 if it's your first that day. You get the same product as the main flights, and another prize pack just for playing, but the prizes are slightly reduced.
2 PM: Booster drafts start. Entry fee is $15 if you've played in a flight, or $18 if you haven't. The draft format is Shadowmoor-Shadowmoor-Shadowmoor.
2 PM: Team sealed event starts. Entry fee is $20 per player. Each 3-player team gets two tournament packs and six boosters to build three 40-card decks.
You get a prerelease promo card for each non-booster draft event you play in, including team sealed! The prerelease promo is Demigod of Revenge, a 5/4 creature with flying and haste for five black/red hybrid mana that brings back creatures with the same name as itself when you play it.
By now most of the people who get this newsletter have played in at least one limited event in their Magic career, but just in case your limited skills are a little rusty, here's how limited events work.
When the event starts, a judge will seat you and hand out your product. Then when the judge says to, you'll open your tournament pack and boosters and sort the cards out by color. Shadowmoor's an odd set, because half the cards in it are "hybrid" - two colors at once. But unlike regular "gold" cards, hybrid cards can be played using either color of mana. So a blue-black hybrid card could be easily played in a mono-blue or mono-black deck. One thing to watch out for though are cards with multiple hybrid mana symbols. In a white/green deck, a card that costs 1(W/G)(W/G)(W/G) basically costs 4 since you'll always have the mana to play it if you have four lands up. But in a white/blue deck, that same spell now costs 1WWW, and you won't be able to consistently play it turn 4 unless you've dropped three or more Plains.
In limited formats such as sealed deck or draft, the minimum deck size is 40 cards. Unlike constructed where the 60-card minimum is a hard-and-fast rule of deck construction for competitive decks, even some professional players play up to 41 cards if they feel their deck can support it. Staying in two or three colors is important, and your third color should be a "splash" - one to three cards with mana-fixers to allow you to easily play it whenever you need to. Efficient creatures and removal spells are king in limited, and your deck should have at least 16 creatures in it.
8 AM - 9 AM: Main flights start. Entry fee is $30, and you'll get a Shadowmoor tournament pack and two boosters to construct a 40-card deck. You get a prize pack just for playing!
Noon - 2 PM: Bonus flights start. Entry fee is $25 if you've played in another flight, or $30 if it's your first that day. You get the same product as the main flights, and another prize pack just for playing, but the prizes are slightly reduced.
2 PM: Booster drafts start. Entry fee is $15 if you've played in a flight, or $18 if you haven't. The draft format is Shadowmoor-Shadowmoor-Shadowmoo
2 PM: Team sealed event starts. Entry fee is $20 per player. Each 3-player team gets two tournament packs and six boosters to build three 40-card decks.
You get a prerelease promo card for each non-booster draft event you play in, including team sealed! The prerelease promo is Demigod of Revenge, a 5/4 creature with flying and haste for five black/red hybrid mana that brings back creatures with the same name as itself when you play it.
By now most of the people who get this newsletter have played in at least one limited event in their Magic career, but just in case your limited skills are a little rusty, here's how limited events work.
When the event starts, a judge will seat you and hand out your product. Then when the judge says to, you'll open your tournament pack and boosters and sort the cards out by color. Shadowmoor's an odd set, because half the cards in it are "hybrid" - two colors at once. But unlike regular "gold" cards, hybrid cards can be played using either color of mana. So a blue-black hybrid card could be easily played in a mono-blue or mono-black deck. One thing to watch out for though are cards with multiple hybrid mana symbols. In a white/green deck, a card that costs 1(W/G)(W/G)(W/G) basically costs 4 since you'll always have the mana to play it if you have four lands up. But in a white/blue deck, that same spell now costs 1WWW, and you won't be able to consistently play it turn 4 unless you've dropped three or more Plains.
In limited formats such as sealed deck or draft, the minimum deck size is 40 cards. Unlike constructed where the 60-card minimum is a hard-and-fast rule of deck construction for competitive decks, even some professional players play up to 41 cards if they feel their deck can support it. Staying in two or three colors is important, and your third color should be a "splash" - one to three cards with mana-fixers to allow you to easily play it whenever you need to. Efficient creatures and removal spells are king in limited, and your deck should have at least 16 creatures in it.
==RULES CORNER==
Well the rules primer for Shadowmoor is out, and we finally know how all of Shadowmoor's mechanics work. The rules primer document can get a little wordy at times since they're mostly for judges to get a handle on the new mechanics so they can give accurate rulings at a prerelease, so I'm going to go over the important ones here. Not a lot of rules questions this week, but next week I'll have a whole bunch from the prerelease!
-1/-1 counters are returning again. Although there are supposedly no cards in Shadowmoor that give +1/+1 counters, an important rule to remember when Shadowmoor becomes legal is that if a creature has a -1/-1 counter and a +1/+1 counter on it, both of these counters are removed at the same time as a state-based effect, which means it happens immediately with no chance to respond.
Q is the untap symbol. The rules work just like the tap symbol, except the creature must be tapped to use an ability with Q in its cost. Q follows the "summoning sickness" rule, which means it can't use Q-abilities unless it's been under your control since the beginning of your turn. Also, since untapping the creature is a cost, it can't be responded to, though the effect of the ability still can.
Conspire is an ability on spells that lets you copy the spell it's on by tapping two creatures that share a color with the spell as an additional cost to play it. If you tap your two creatures, a copy of the spell is put onto the stack. The copy has conspire too, but since it's put onto the stack and not played, you can't pay its conspire cost. And since paying for conspire is part of paying for the spell, you can't wait and see if your opponent has a counterspell for you before you tap your creatures.
Persist lets creatures come back from the dead, though a little weaker. When a creature with persist is put into a graveyard from play, the game checks if it had a -1/-1 counter on it. If it didn't, the persist trigger is put onto the stack, and when it resolves, the creature comes back into play with a -1/-1 counter on it. So unless you find a way to remove that -1/-1 counter from it, a persist-ing creature won't infinitely return from the dead.
Wither is one of the strangest abilities I've seen, but it's pretty simple to understand. When I first heard of it I thought it was a replacement effect, but it's not. Instead, wither does something different with damage. While ordinary damage dealt to a creature stays on it until the turn ends and destroys the creature if the accumulated damage is greater than or equal to its toughness, damage dealt by a source with wither is dealt to creatures as -1/-1 counters. It's still damage, so it can be prevented, redirected, triggers lifelink, and so on, and doesn't change how a source with wither would deal damage to a player or Planeswalker.
Q. If I have a 3/3 creature with Wither, Double Strike, and Trample, what happens if it's blocked by a 5/5 with no abilities?
A. Because one or more creatures have double strike (or first strike), another combat step is generated for those creatures to deal combat damage first. Your creature will deal three damage to the 5/5 blocker, and the damage is dealt as -1/-1 counters. Now in the regular combat damage step, the now 2/2 blocker assigns its combat damage, and your withering creature gets to deal another three damage. If you assign two of its damage to the blocker and one to your opponent, when damage resolves your opponent will take one and two more -1/-1 counters will be put on the blocker, killing it.
-1/-1 counters are returning again. Although there are supposedly no cards in Shadowmoor that give +1/+1 counters, an important rule to remember when Shadowmoor becomes legal is that if a creature has a -1/-1 counter and a +1/+1 counter on it, both of these counters are removed at the same time as a state-based effect, which means it happens immediately with no chance to respond.
Q is the untap symbol. The rules work just like the tap symbol, except the creature must be tapped to use an ability with Q in its cost. Q follows the "summoning sickness" rule, which means it can't use Q-abilities unless it's been under your control since the beginning of your turn. Also, since untapping the creature is a cost, it can't be responded to, though the effect of the ability still can.
Conspire is an ability on spells that lets you copy the spell it's on by tapping two creatures that share a color with the spell as an additional cost to play it. If you tap your two creatures, a copy of the spell is put onto the stack. The copy has conspire too, but since it's put onto the stack and not played, you can't pay its conspire cost. And since paying for conspire is part of paying for the spell, you can't wait and see if your opponent has a counterspell for you before you tap your creatures.
Persist lets creatures come back from the dead, though a little weaker. When a creature with persist is put into a graveyard from play, the game checks if it had a -1/-1 counter on it. If it didn't, the persist trigger is put onto the stack, and when it resolves, the creature comes back into play with a -1/-1 counter on it. So unless you find a way to remove that -1/-1 counter from it, a persist-ing creature won't infinitely return from the dead.
Wither is one of the strangest abilities I've seen, but it's pretty simple to understand. When I first heard of it I thought it was a replacement effect, but it's not. Instead, wither does something different with damage. While ordinary damage dealt to a creature stays on it until the turn ends and destroys the creature if the accumulated damage is greater than or equal to its toughness, damage dealt by a source with wither is dealt to creatures as -1/-1 counters. It's still damage, so it can be prevented, redirected, triggers lifelink, and so on, and doesn't change how a source with wither would deal damage to a player or Planeswalker.
Q. If I have a 3/3 creature with Wither, Double Strike, and Trample, what happens if it's blocked by a 5/5 with no abilities?
A. Because one or more creatures have double strike (or first strike), another combat step is generated for those creatures to deal combat damage first. Your creature will deal three damage to the 5/5 blocker, and the damage is dealt as -1/-1 counters. Now in the regular combat damage step, the now 2/2 blocker assigns its combat damage, and your withering creature gets to deal another three damage. If you assign two of its damage to the blocker and one to your opponent, when damage resolves your opponent will take one and two more -1/-1 counters will be put on the blocker, killing it.
Q. It's my untap step and my Hollowsage (When Hollowsage becomes untapped, you may have target player discard a card.) untaps. My opponent and I have an equal number of cards in our hands. Will he discard the card so my Akuta, Born of Ash can trigger at the beginning of my upkeep?
A. While Hollowsage's triggered ability triggers during your upkeep, triggered abilities don't actually go onto the stack until a player would gain priority, and no one gets priority during the untap step. The first time in a turn anyone does get priority is at the beginning of your upkeep, and by that time it's too late for Akuta's ability to trigger.
==WRAP-UP==
Well that's all for this week. I hope to see everyone at the prerelease!
-Brian Paskoff
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