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Yorke on Games #3 – The Once and Future League

While league play has been seemingly absent from the Montreal Magic: The Gathering scene for quite some time, in other regions of the world it has been thriving. For my own part, I’ve organized league play for the Battlezone shop in Dubai for each expansion of the game from Journey into Nyx to Fate Reforged, and once upon a time ran a casual Future Sight league in various Tokyo cafes. Today, I’m going to explain the central mechanic which made my previous leagues different than the usual fare, discuss how league play strategically differs from other forms of tournament play, and make an announcement about new upcoming league play possibilities at Face to Face Games right here in Montreal. So, if you’re interested in the competitive side of casual play, read on…

Announcement: Battle for Zendikar League Starts 2pm, Sunday, October 18th, at Face to Face Games Montreal

 
The full ruleset for the upcoming league is as follows:

1) The start date for the Battle for Zendikar league is October 18th, 2015 [2pm]. No matches played before that date will count towards the final results. New players may join the league up to two weeks after the start date (Sunday, November 1st, 2015 being the last possible date of entry), so long as they make up all their missing matches by the end of the following week.

2) Upon joining the league, players will open 6 boosters of Battle for Zendikar to make their league card pool. Only cards in this pool, and basic lands, are legal for league play. There is no trading of league cards allowed for the duration of the league. Players will construct a 60-card deck from their league pool. The maximum number of copies of any card in a league deck is 4 (not including basic lands). Card pools will be registered on a checklist, which will then need to be double-checked and signed off on by another league player before being deposited at the drop-off box at the counter of Face to Face Games. If a player is discovered to be using cards from outside their league pools in their league matches, they will be considered eliminated from the league and forfeit any prizes they would have earned.

3) Players may then start to play matches against any other player in the league. Players must play at least 3 minimum matches per week (no maximum) for the duration of the league to be in good standing. No two players can only play each other more than once per week. Players who fail to reach their minimum number of matches per week will be eliminated for inactivity. Weekly records of league play will be published, along with a list of remaining players, and those players’ win percentiles to date.

4) The loser of each match must take a PUNISHMENT PACK (that is, the loser must open an unopened Standard-legal booster pack in the presence of the winner, and add the contents to his league card pool). Before the next match, the loser may use these new cards to improve his deck. The winner must complete a match report slip (available at the Face to Face store counter), indicating the match result and the cards opened by the loser, and submit it to the league drop-off box at the store. The maximum number of PUNISHMENT packs that can be added to any league pool is 10. When a player loses their 11th match, they are eliminated from the tournament (a match report slip must still be filled out, indicating the player’s elimination).

5) Winners: League winners are determined by elimination. The last player standing wins the league, the second last takes second place, and so on. When only four players remain in the league, we will move to the finals. In the finals, the player who has played the fewest matches to date must play the player with the second fewest matches until one of them is eliminated, and so on until the surviving player faces the player who has played the most matches, for 1st place.

6) Prizes: The Battle for Zendikar punishment league sponsor, Face to Face Games, has offered a minimum prize pool of one BFZ booster for each participating player, from which participation prizes for each player who completes the league will be drawn. Given a pool of 16 players, the prize structure would be as follows (booster prizes will be adjusted proportionately from this schema if a larger number of players take part):

1st place: 8 packs
2nd place: 4 packs
3rd & 4th place: 2 packs each

A Novel League Mechanic: ‘Punishment’ Packs

 
Your usual, garden-variety league allows its players to open one new pack a week and add it to their league pool, regardless of performance. It’s as predictable as the feed of an intravenous drip, and about as dull. When I decided that I wanted to organize a new league, the first question I asked myself was: how could we make opening new product a more exciting and dynamic process for the players?

Thus was born the ‘punishment’ pack mechanic. In case you didn’t really get the idea from the dry ruleset above, it works as follows: players who lose their matches must add one additional Standard-legal booster pack of cards to their league pool, until they reach a maximum number (10, in this case). The next loss after that number results in the player’s elimination from the tournament. This simple mechanic makes each match matter, because the loser is going to have to pony up some money to buy a pack for their deck and move one step closer to elimination. The winner gets to enjoy winning, and the loser gets the excitement of cracking a pack and improving his deck. Everyone enjoys the tension of these matches, and they often draw spectators.

The fact that this league is an elimination tournament has implications for how it plays out, as well. If your win percentile is good, there is strong motivation to play as many matches as you can, because if you make it to the finals with the most matches under your belt, then you’re guaranteed to at least get 2nd place. However, if your win percentile is bad, there is strong motivation to play the minimum number of matches required of you in order to just survive and squeak into the finals. In fact, this new league structure opens up a whole host of interesting player behaviors you don’t get to see in regular tournaments. Let’s look at some of these in closer detail.

A Punishment League Survival Guide

 
The punishment league is a tournament structure that is designed to generate and maintain interesting conflicts throughout a month-long play experience. The balancing mechanism of having match losers add boosters to their card pools means that, at any given time, most active players should have decks of roughly equivalent power, subject of course to the dictates of luck. What a lot of new players don’t immediately appreciate is the depth of strategic options available to them in this play format. Here we’re going to discuss five major areas where player choices have opportunities to affect match outcomes, and therefore who eventually wins the league:

1. HuntTheWeakChoice of league opponent. Every player needs to play at least three games a week, against different players. However, you do have your choice of who you play in the pool of league players. As win percentiles are published on a weekly basis, you can use this as a rough guide of what your odds are when you go to face off against a prospective opponent. Picking players with equivalent or lower win percentiles than yourself gives you a better chance to avoid punishments, and thus help prevent you from getting knocked out of the tournament.

2. SignInBloodChoice of punishment pack. Let’s say you do lose a match, and are obliged to buy a punishment pack to add to your pool. Since all Standard-legal sets are open for you to purchase, you have the power to strategically plan out what the next booster you’re going to add will be. If you have a sweet BG deck, for example, maybe you should take a trip to Lorwyn via Origins. If you find yourself running a lot of multicolor cards, you might want to planeswalk to Tarkir. Be sure to check out the bomb commons and uncommons in each set that are relevant to your colors. The multiverse is your oyster!

3. CongregateChoice of how many games to play. There are all sorts of league players out there. Some players lose a match, crack a pack, add a few cards, and are ready to play again in 15 minutes. Other players lose a match, slink off with their new cards, and aren’t heard from again for a week while they repair their decks and regain their confidence. The point is, after you’ve played your minimum three rounds a week, it’s up to you how much you want to play. If your deck is doing great, and you don’t see any reason to slow down, it’s probably a good time to rack up some easy wins. On the other hand, if you find yourself being dragged into games you really would rather not play, it’s fine to assert yourself and politely refuse.

4. TunToFrogChoice of deck composition. Here’s a trap caused mostly by laziness. You start strong in two colors, and you fall under the delusion of thinking that your deck has to remain those colors for the rest of your league experience. This is absolutely not true. All the cards in your league pool not currently in your deck constitute your sideboard, and can be brought in at any time. Maybe you opened three packs with rares in different colors than your previous choices, which might drag you in a new direction. You could make a transformational sideboard which constitutes an entirely different deck, or a modular sideboard which fully substitutes one color for another. Conventional wisdom dictates that you ought to pull apart your deck after every loss and build it again as if it’s the first time you’ve seen your pool. Remember that you’re not married to any particular guild / shard / wedge!

5. ActOnImpulseChoice of league metagame adjustments. League is not Sealed. League decks start out as Sealed pools, but they are not static because new packs are routinely added to them. Over time, it’s less about what bombs you open and more about how you apply your deck-building skills to new opportunities. You’re going to be surprised by players whose strategy you think you have figured out, because their decks will have evolved between games, just like yours will have. As a rule, big, clunky BG-style decks usually dominate the first half of the league, but eventually those dinosaurs go extinct when lean, aggressive RW blitz decks evolve and take them down. Late in the league, some players still cling to the late-game grindy archetypes, but those who succeed do their best to smooth out their mana curves and optimize their removal suites. Listen to the buzz between other league players, and think about answers you might have for the main threats which become dominant in the format.

In conclusion, doing well in the Punishment League requires much more of you than just doing your best to make the right plays in any specific game or match. Your choice of deck archetype, how you tweak it to face the decks of others, your choice of supplemental booster expansions, your choice of opponents, and how often you play them, are all important strategic considerations to your overall league performance. In a typical tournament, you are merely a player, but in this league you also play the part of a manager, trying your best to bring together all the resources at your disposal to give you the edge you need to make it to the finals… and bring home those prize boosters.

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