"Little League"

[turgy22]

I had an idea and wanted to see if anyone was interested. It's sort of like the sports league, except with a lot less structure.

It starts out like a sealed environment. Every player starts out with maybe 6 to 8 boosters worth of cards to begin their pool. Then anyone can play anyone else in the league using any deck made out of their card pool (plus basic lands, of course). Also, anyone can trade with anyone else at any time. Every time a new set comes out, there will be a single-elimination tournament, after which everyone gets a pack from the new set to add to their pools.

Basically, I'm trying to get back to beginner Magic for budget-minded players: very small collections for a constructed environment with a limited feel. Since you're never forced into binding yourself to just a few colors, as happens in any draft format, there should be a lot more flexibility in deck construction than we see in the sports league.

For the starting pools, I was thinking about doing the 6 or 8 most recently released sets. Either Theros, Born of the Gods, Journey into Nyx, Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir or those 6 plus the 2014 and 2015 core sets. Or maybe even 9 packs, going back to Return to Ravnica and skipping the core sets.

Any takers? Any preferences?

 

[Spiderman]

You know I'll do it. I just might take a little longer in constructing a deck

I vote for the smaller pack number(s) so I have less cards to think about

Are packs/sets/cards going to be retired as well? Otherwise, it seems kinda like how Wizards sets up a new tourney environment: starts small but gets larger and larger as sets are added until they have to repeat the process again to make the environment "accessible" to newer players 4-5 years down the pike.

 

[Mooseman]

Sounds good. Maybe rotate out the oldest set when the new set comes out (after the single-elim tourney).
Keep the card pools the same size.

 

[turgy22]

My thought was to not retire cards, so that as the environment grows, everyone can build up a larger pool to build new decks and eventually have a diverse collection of decks to play around with as time goes on. Also, it would require more work for someone (probably me) to keep track of which cards were introduced with which sets. Also, for deck construction purposes, it might be less time-consuming for a player such as Spiderman, since if he doesn't have to create a new deck as his cards get retired, he can just pull up his old one when the tournament rolls around.

Having said that, if everyone favors getting rid of old cards, I don't mind following along. I would like to play out a year without retirements first, though, just to see how it goes.

Proposal
The league starts with each player receiving 6 packs of cards from Theros, Born of the Gods, Journey into Nyx, Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir
Everyone involved gets to make 40-card decks from their pools and can trade and play with those cards as much as they please
Every time a new "block" set is introduced, I'll randomly seed a tournament with all the participants (this means we'll skip over core sets and special sets, such as the upcoming Magic Origins)
Once the tournament concludes, we all get to open a new pack of cards from the new set
After a year, we can decide if we want to retire the cards from the oldest sets, giving a rotating card pool of 9 packs worth of cards

I'll wait another week for additional sign-ups and suggestions and then either offer another proposal or send out the card pools. Another nice thing about this is that anyone can join at any time. And, as always, there will be a spreadsheet.

 

[Spiderman]

Well, I guess we can see how no retirement goes. I think that at first, people are going to have one deck and stick with it and any new cards will be looking to be added to improve it, rather than totally building new decks and having a bunch to play - if it's a year between adding cards, I'm thinking it will be at least the 3rd or 4th year before there are enough cards to build two viable decks. If there are any "bomb" cards, I can't see people changing decks so they won't be playing with them, so we'll keep seeing Cursed Scroll- or Volrath Stronghold-like cards over and over. But again, we can always try it out.

Also, for deck construction purposes, it might be less time-consuming for a player such as Spiderman, since if he doesn't have to create a new deck as his cards get retired, he can just pull up his old one when the tournament rolls around

And that's what I do anyways, for the Sports League

 

[Melkor]

I'll try it out.

 

[rokapoke]

I'm willing to try it. That way we'll at least get the whole Sports League crew involved...

 

[turgy22]

Well, I guess we can see how no retirement goes. I think that at first, people are going to have one deck and stick with it and any new cards will be looking to be added to improve it, rather than totally building new decks and having a bunch to play - if it's a year between adding cards, I'm thinking it will be at least the 3rd or 4th year before there are enough cards to build two viable decks. If there are any "bomb" cards, I can't see people changing decks so they won't be playing with them, so we'll keep seeing Cursed Scroll- or Volrath Stronghold-like cards over and over. But again, we can always try it out.

Bomb cards do have the effect of driving players in a certain direction, but again, playing in a sealed environment versus a draft environment changes deck-making dynamics significantly. I also certainly don't think it's going to take 3 to 4 years for me to want to build up multiple decks. I've done sealed events where I start with 75 cards and have 3 or 4 cards in all different colors that I want to play. You end up picking favorites, but, for me, there's usually the niggling feeling that I want to see how I could do if I went in the other direction. Now, there's no reason to choose.

 

[Spiderman]

I've done sealed events where I start with 75 cards and have 3 or 4 cards in all different colors that I want to play. You end up picking favorites, but, for me, there's usually the niggling feeling that I want to see how I could do if I went in the other direction. Now, there's no reason to choose.

Well yeah, you may see 3 or 4 cards but if you don't have enough cards to make it doable, they don't do any good. I think for the first year, maybe second, there will be some "wild" multicolor decks, depending on how many or few mana fixers we get in our sealed, but depending on how trading goes, some of my interesting cards in colors that I can't support may go to someone else who can give me good cards in my colors; i.e. trade bait. So I think people are going to end up more or less with a single deck for some time.

 

[Mooseman]

So I think people are going to end up more or less with a single deck for some time.

Although, I will most likely have two or three very mediocre deck builds, but one decent one that I won't play very often.....

Let the beatdown begin.....

 

[Melkor]

Well, given the sealed environment that we're starting in, you'd have to imagine we'll definitely see some 3 color decks, what with Khans being all about that.

 

[turgy22]

Well, it looks like we have the sports league crew signed up. If anyone else wants to join at any time, just let me know. It's a lot easier to get into this than the sports league.

Participants
Spiderman
Mooseman
Melkor
Rokapoke
Turgy22

I've generated card pools for everyone and assigned each a random number. All participants should pick a number between 1 and 5 and then I'll send you a PM with a link to the spreadsheet that contains the pools (they're numbered 1 to 5).I'll take whatever pool is left after everyone else chooses. Once everyone has their choices made, I'll post the link publicly in this thread.

Right now, I just have the cards divided up by set, so if we decide to retire at regular intervals, it's easy for me to track the oldest ones. (Also, I didn't really want to look at the cards before everyone else.) Once the spreadsheet is public, I'll probably add worksheets for everyone divided by color and assign names to each pool.

 

[Spiderman]

2!

 

[Mooseman]

5

 

[rokapoke]

Four.

 

[turgy22]

So what's it going to be Melkor? 1 or 3?

 

[Melkor]

3

 

[turgy22]

All pools have been claimed.
Here is the link to the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LUcP1fBdx7zkqZXoWRPHhuAcsABXse5x9HfrsPupDnk/edit?usp=sharing
If anyone has trouble accessing it, please let me know.

So that's the start of the little league. Everyone is free to make decks, trade and play as much as they please. As per our usual etiquette, it's probably a good idea to put "Little League" in the title of each game thread for this format (unless someone else has a better idea for a name, of course). I recommend using this thread for finding opponents, announcing trades and general league discussion. Once the next block set is announced, I'll post about the tournament. Seeing as we have 5 players, maybe the single elimination style isn't the best. Maybe a double-elimination or round-robin with the top two. I'm open to suggestions, though it needs to be able to run fairly quickly so we can keep up with new set releases.

Have fun!

 

[turgy22]

Attaching the spreadsheet for those who can't access the Google Doc.

 

[Spiderman]

Thanks turgy22!