The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

We drafted Magic 2011, the 12th edition that comes out in 2010 today. In a surprising upset, Jonathan was the complete loser, and everyone else tied for first. (This is the problem with a four-person Round Robin tournament, though it’s not like we particularly care.) Everyone actually had a really well-done deck this time, even if we teased Spants on kind of falling into his. (He opened like 3 huge White bombs.) Once again, this is kind of strange, as normally one person has one deck that is just far and away the best. Everyone was rocking different strategies, but everyone had a pretty functional deck that held it’s own.

The draft itself was fun, but it really made me think more about how much I like what they’ve done to the core set. I have made many a joke about the horrible naming of the new core sets, but I think they’ve done a fantastic job. No longer is the core set just the place where you get the expensive dual lands you need. They’ve stepped up the kind of cards they put in there, and started creating new ones for it. They’re still less complicated than the other sets, but they are much, much more dynamic than playing with the old core sets.

In fact, what you end up with is a strangely “pure” Magic experience. When playing in block, the game is normally about trying to exploit the various specific mechanics that only exist in that block to your advantage. When you do that, you lose a little something. You lose a bit of what made Magic cool in the first place. These new core sets feel more like playing Magic back when I started. The game becomes less about getting the most of certain toolsets and keyworded cards, and more about monsters banging into each other, and making sure you have everything in the proper ratios to make that work. There’s enough variation and strategy to keep it interesting, but it’s much more “Magic how you remember it” and less “Super-boring simple Magic.”

In a world when I don’t play Magic much, and don’t have a lot of time to devote to deck building, I find that really cool. There’s still plenty of other cool Magic things out there, of course. But that’s pretty neat.

Even if I poke fun, I approve.