==ISLANDHOME #48==
January 28th 2009
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Peppersmoke
==IN THIS ISSUE...==
Peppersmoke
Conflux Prerelease
Conflux Prerelease Tips
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Saturday: Conflux Prerelease (See below for details.)
I won't be at Grim or FNC this weekend, but chances are some kind of event will take place at both locations.
==PEPPERSMOKE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff
==CONFLUX PRERELEASE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff
After a short break, Islandhome is once again accepting guest articles from our readers!
If you've got an article you'd like to submit, send it to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com. Try to keep it a reasonable length - there's no word limit, but look at previous Islandhome articles for guidance - and avoid bad language and personal insults. Also try to maintain good grammar and spelling; doesn't have to be perfect, but you should see how long it takes me to spellcheck the Madonia Minute every week!
I can't promise every submission will make it into the next week's Islandhome, but I'll try to get as many in as I can, especially ones that are relevant to a previous/upcoming event.
==THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE==
Saturday: Conflux Prerelease (See below for details.)
I won't be at Grim or FNC this weekend, but chances are some kind of event will take place at both locations.
==PEPPERSMOKE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff
So I had a minor health scare last week at FNC, but don't worry! It was a mere -1/-1 effect, so I'm okay. Thanks for everyone who lent their sympathy when I got back, and thanks to John Madonia and Ed Palm for helping to keep the event running in my absence. It was comforting knowing I wouldn't come back to the event and see the tournament had descended into anarchy and cannibalism.
==CONFLUX PRERELEASE==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff
A prerelease is once again upon us! In only three days, you'll be ripping open fresh new packs of Conflux! The prerelease program has changed a lot since you last remember it, the most important being that there is only one, big flight instead of the usual multiple flights throughout the day. The "one big flight" thing is something I always felt should have been tried, as it lets you play against a wider variety of players than just the thirty-two or so that signed up for your flight. I do wish there were more than four rounds for such a large event, but that's what side events are for!
Registration for the sealed deck event will open at 9, and hopefully start at 9:30. The entry fee is $30, and with that, you get three packs of Shards of Alara and three packs of Conflux. Wait, isn't that a lot of packs? Well yes! Wizards has done away with tournament packs, so now you get three packs of Shards of Alara instead of a tournament pack of it. It's the same number of cards as were in a tournament pack, just with one less uncommon and one more common. Of course you also don't get the basic lands, so we'll be providing them for you free of charge.
There'll be four rounds in the main flight, and prizes will be given out based on your record. 3-1 gets six packs, 3-0-1 gets nine packs, and 4-0 gets twelve packs. Waaaay better than the piss-poor prize support Wizards forced on us for the Shards of Alara prerelease.
Three-player team events are gone as well, replaced with the ever-popular Two-Headed Giant format. Registration for this event starts at 1 PM, and costs $22 per player. Each team will get four packs of Shards and four packs of Conflux with which to build two 40-card minimum decks. Then they'll play three rounds of 2HG, with 2-1 getting six packs, 2-0-1 getting ten packs, and 3-0 getting fourteen packs.
Side events will be held based on product availability and player interest, starting at 11 AM. These will be sort of mini-flights, three round eight-man sealed deck tournaments for $30, where the prize payout is 7-5-3 instead of the main flight's 12-9-6.
The Long Island prerelease will be held at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview, NY, 333 South Service Road off the LIE. I'll be head judging it once again, so come down and get your first taste of Conflux!
Registration for the sealed deck event will open at 9, and hopefully start at 9:30. The entry fee is $30, and with that, you get three packs of Shards of Alara and three packs of Conflux. Wait, isn't that a lot of packs? Well yes! Wizards has done away with tournament packs, so now you get three packs of Shards of Alara instead of a tournament pack of it. It's the same number of cards as were in a tournament pack, just with one less uncommon and one more common. Of course you also don't get the basic lands, so we'll be providing them for you free of charge.
There'll be four rounds in the main flight, and prizes will be given out based on your record. 3-1 gets six packs, 3-0-1 gets nine packs, and 4-0 gets twelve packs. Waaaay better than the piss-poor prize support Wizards forced on us for the Shards of Alara prerelease.
Three-player team events are gone as well, replaced with the ever-popular Two-Headed Giant format. Registration for this event starts at 1 PM, and costs $22 per player. Each team will get four packs of Shards and four packs of Conflux with which to build two 40-card minimum decks. Then they'll play three rounds of 2HG, with 2-1 getting six packs, 2-0-1 getting ten packs, and 3-0 getting fourteen packs.
Side events will be held based on product availability and player interest, starting at 11 AM. These will be sort of mini-flights, three round eight-man sealed deck tournaments for $30, where the prize payout is 7-5-3 instead of the main flight's 12-9-6.
The Long Island prerelease will be held at the Four Points Sheraton in Plainview, NY, 333 South Service Road off the LIE. I'll be head judging it once again, so come down and get your first taste of Conflux!
==CONFLUX PRERELEASE TIPS==
Author: Brian J. Paskoff
The full spoiler for Conflux is out on MTGSalvation , and now that we more or less know what every card does, it's time to get metagaming! (I say "more or less" because it's a well-established fact that as complete as a spoiler seems, there are always some key differences in cards between the rumored versions and the printed versions.) Your first order of business, of course, is limited, as it'll be the very first thing you do with the set. Like most second (and third) sets in a block, Conflux is very strong for limited play. With less variety of cards in a pack, Wizards has to make sure not to print too many "useless" cards, or the set will be no fun to draft. Also, while the big set contains the "staple" cards - things like your basic counterspells, spot removal, etc., smaller sets tend to have cards that are more specialized, and Conflux is no exception.
You may find yourself straying from the comfort of a shard's three colors more often in Conflux. There's still a lot of support for Bant, Esper, Grixis, Jund, and Naya, but the mana fixing and five-color effects present in Conflux will make you want to find ways to produce all five colors of mana. Strangely, there isn't much acceleration in Conflux; most of the mana fixers either filter mana (such as the reprinted Mana Cylix) or get lands from your library into your hand. Each color has access to a spell that has "basic landcycling", an ability that lets you pay a cost, discard the card from your hand, and search your library for a basic land card. While the spells themselves aren't very powerful, you may want to include them in your limited decks. Early game, they might give you a land you need. Late game, they'll either grab you a splash color or let you play them if you don't need a land anymore. The white one pumps and untaps your creatures, the blue one is a five-mana counterspell, the black one absorbs four life from your opponent, the red one deals five damage to a creature for six mana, and the green one gives you eight life - none of them are terribly useless, but nothing you'd want to include in your deck if they didn't also Sylvan Scrying for two mana.
A while ago on the official site, Wizards promised to explore things more thoroughly rather than leave behind old abilities and bring tons of new ones in with every set, and that's definitely true here. Only basic landcycling, domain, and five-color spells and abilities are new here, while the abilities and mechanics from Shards of Alara are more fleshed out. In Bant, there's more creatures with exalted, but none that give an extra push to lone attackers like Rafiq or Battlegrace Angel. It seems Wizards is being cautious about making exalted too powerful. Esper has lots more artifact creatures, including its own Goldmeadow Stalwart, and Esper Aggro looks to be an amazingly fast strategy in ALA-CON limited. Grixis of course gets more unearth creatures, this time with more abusable comes into/leaves play effects. There's more devouring in Jund, my favorites being a new Nantuko Husk-like creature that can "devour" creatures while it's in play, and a creature with both flash and devour that will make for some devastating "damage on the stack" tricks. And Naya has more "5+ matters" effects, only this time they're on spells as well as creatures.
I'll have more Conflux limited strategies after the prerelease, because it's hard to know too much about it without seeing it in action! In the meantime, here's some general advice to help you succeed at the prerelease:
- Read your cards! Especially the new ones. You're playing with new cards for the first time, and while you might know everything a Shards of Alara card does from the picture alone, you won't have the same instinct with Conflux cards yet. Many times a player will mistake a sorcery for an instant, or vice-versa. "Invisible" triggers like exalted might screw up your combat if you don't realize one of your opponent's creatures has it, and you could potentially leave yourself tapped out while not realizing your opponent has a game-winning unearth creature in their yard.
- 40 card decks are the bare minimum, and you should stay at 40 whenever possible. The only time I recommend going as high as 41 cards is when your mana curve is high and you need the extra land; don't try to squeeze in an extra spell. The tried-and-true spell-to-land ratio is 23 spells, 17 lands. Of those 23 spells, between 15 and 18 should be creatures, since nearly every game will be won in combat.
- Use your mana fixers. Mana fixing in Shards/Conflux is really good, with Obelisks, Panoramas, tri-lands, Mana Cylix, and others. Staying within a shard and splashing a bit for the other two colors is probably a good idea.
- Sideboard between games AND rounds. Since prereleases are limited tournaments that don't use decklists, you're allowed to change your deck between rounds. Use your experiences with the new cards each round to fix your deck for the next one using your sideboard (any cards in your sealed pool that aren't in your deck).
==GUEST ARTICLES==
Author: Brian Paskoff
Author: Brian Paskoff
After a short break, Islandhome is once again accepting guest articles from our readers!
If you've got an article you'd like to submit, send it to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com. Try to keep it a reasonable length - there's no word limit, but look at previous Islandhome articles for guidance - and avoid bad language and personal insults. Also try to maintain good grammar and spelling; doesn't have to be perfect, but you should see how long it takes me to spellcheck the Madonia Minute every week!
I can't promise every submission will make it into the next week's Islandhome, but I'll try to get as many in as I can, especially ones that are relevant to a previous/upcoming event.
==THE ISLANDHOME BLOG==
One of the things I wanted to do was have an archive of past issues online so I could refer people back to them as well as let new readers peruse old issues to see what all the fuss is about. So I've archived all the old issues on the blogosphere at islandhomemtg.blogspot.com. Go and relive all the past moments of glory!
==UPCOMING EVENTS==
January 3rd - April 19th: PTQ Season for PT Honolulu
The next PTQ season kicks off January 3rd, and the format is Extended!
Magic events will once again be held at I-Con, which is at Suffolk Community College's Brentwood campus this year. I'll have news about what tournaments are going to be run as we get closer to April, but just like last time there'll be cheap drafts and constructed events all weekend long!
PTQs in our area this season:
February 21st - Edison, NJ
March 14th - Philadelphia, PA
No details for New York PTQs are available yet.
April 3rd - April 5th: I-Con 28February 21st - Edison, NJ
March 14th - Philadelphia, PA
No details for New York PTQs are available yet.
Magic events will once again be held at I-Con, which is at Suffolk Community College's Brentwood campus this year. I'll have news about what tournaments are going to be run as we get closer to April, but just like last time there'll be cheap drafts and constructed events all weekend long!
==STORE LOCATIONS & CONTACT INFO==
Brothers Grim
1244 Middle Country Rd.
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 631-698-2805
Website: www.brgim.com
Friendly Neighborhood Comics
19 Udall Rd.
West Islip, NY 11795
Phone: 631-470-7984
Brothers Grim
1244 Middle Country Rd.
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 631-698-2805
Website: www.brgim.com
Friendly Neighborhood Comics
19 Udall Rd.
West Islip, NY 11795
Phone: 631-470-7984
==FIN==
See everyone this weekend!
Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!
Got forwarded Islandhome and want to sign up? Send an email to IslandhomeMTG@gmail.com!
-Brian Paskoff
L1 NY
L1 NY
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