Planeswalker Tournament

A couple of weeks ago, a group of my friends took off to the beach for a gamer weekend extravaganza. They were kind enough to bring me along for the trip. There were games galore, board games, card games, and of course Magic.

My contribution to the gaming weekend was to bring a box full of planeswalker decks. Most were from the duel deck proconstructs, but I did bring a custom version of Sorin Markov. Chris supplied custom decks for Venser and Nissa. All told, seven of us squared off for a "tournament" of planeswalkers.



The rules of the tournament were thus:

1) Partial Paris mulligan, except the first one is "free" in that you don't draw one less card the first time
2) One game vs. each other planeswalker
3) Use of the "planeswalker" zone <- Check out the planeswalker rules if you want to try this format

Most of us are long-time players. A few are new to the game, or new to the "tournament" format. Everyone was new to playing planeswalkers with these special format rules. The results are in, and here they are:

	Venser	Nissa	Jace, Arch	Vraska	Sorin Markov	Chandra Nalaar	Tibalt
	Ben	Chris	Eric	Luke	Mark	Darren	Will
Ben		Ben	Eric	Ben	Ben	Ben	Ben
Chris			Eric	Chris	Chris	Chris	Chris
Eric				Eric	Mark	Darren	Eric
Luke					Luke	Darren	Will
Mark						Darren	Mark
Darren							Will
Will

Ben came in first with the customized Venser deck. Due to the nature of the way the planeswalker decks were constructed for the tournament, no one had a deck that generated massive advantage... expect Venser. In the hands of a capable player, gaining incremental advantage was enough the seal the deal in most games. I beat Ben (Venser) with my (Jace, Architect of Thought) preconstruct, but otherwise he swept the field.



In a couple of games, including the one against Venser if I remember right, I used the Jace deck to drop a couple of small flyers for a fast clock. The partial paris mulligan rule helped a ton here. Knowing that you won't have to pitch your entire hand only to draw no land on the next try makes all the difference in the world.



Chris did well piloting a custom green Nissa deck. Elf, elf, elf, Nissa, gain 6 life, is a beating. Next turn, gain more life. She can come out quickly and is difficult to deal with in a field without sweepers and limited spot removal. He even beat both burn decks with it. Lifegain for the win!

All told, it was a memorable Magic experience. The unique format worked well for the gaming getaway weekend. Plus, it was quick. It felt like limited, except with guaranteed access to your format-warping planeswalker. In. Every. Game.

I'm tempted to build a planeswalker cube next time. Shuffle up all the planeswalkers and deal them out randomly, one to each player. Keep the planeswalker assignments secret. Now, draft the cube around them. Do you take the bomb that's not in your color so that someone else can't? Can you guess which planeswalker everyone got before the draft is over? Tremors of excitement.