From Richard Garfield: Contract Magic
Tom Wylie
<forwarded from Richard Garfield. This should maybe be called
"Duplicate Magic" rather than "Contract Magic" since there is no
contract involved, but that's the term he used.>
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This weekend I ran a 30 person contract magic tourney. The way it worked was:
a) obtained 30 cold decks.
b) sorted them and assembled 30 thematic decks with names:
EX - # 12 hot & bothered
- # 23 waste of Cardstock
- # 5 Frightened Elephants
Now we put them on three different tables, in random pairs:
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Deck 1 Deck 12 Deck 3 Deck 24 Deck 16
TABLE 1
Deck 9 Deck 23 Deck 6 Deck 15 Deck 26
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Players sat at tables, seated randomly. They had half an hour to play up to
3 games with the person opposite of them. After results were noted they stood
and the northern table sides would step east (with wrap around), and the
southern table sides would step west (with wrap around).
EX -
1 2 3 4 5 ______\ 5 1 2 3 4
6 7 8 9 0 / 7 8 9 0 6
This was repeated till each player had played all the decks at their table.
Having an odd number of duels at each table insured that each player played
5 different people as well.
The players competed against those on the same side of the table as themselves.
So in essence this was 6 different tournaments.
The scoring was:
If a deck won:
1 - 3 games victory was worth 5
4 - 7 games victory was worth 4
8 - 11 games victory was worth 3
12 - 15 games victory was worth 2
So winning twice with a deck which only won 5 times in the evening was
worth 8 points to you. Winning twice with one that won 13 times was worth
4 points.
The highest score at each table took the 5 decks they had competed with as a
prize.
The tournament was very well received, easy to run, and refreshing overall.
The half hour a round brought the total tournament to 3 hours or so.
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Changes and Notes:
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The scoring was an ok first attempt. Finer tuning will be called for in the
future, the reason the scores start with 2 rather than 1 is because a deck
which wins only once shouldn't be worth a gross percent more than a deck which
wins 12 times. The deck which wins once was likely against a land poor draw on
that single game, so we shouldn't award 1000 points for it.
The use of premade decks was much better than just using cold decks. Cold decks
are ok if you are going to use the deck all evening. If you are only playing a
deck a couple times they should have some theme so that you can compare notes
with people afterwards. With all cold decks people would have remembered a
muddle, as it is, they were able to say "How did you win with that damn
Invisible Fish (merfolk) deck?"
People should be able to examine their decks before playing them.
It is important players don't get access to current deck records. They could do
some wierd score stuff if they did, on the last game.
Each place should have a stack of 3x5 cards, so players can write the results
to hand in. This would save time in between games.
Players were able to play 15 games without being knocked out. This was nice -
and EVERYONE got to win some games. Also, people were usually not in a hopeless
position. After all, winning only once with a deck MAY be an excellent result!
There is NO motivation to stall. Since you are not competing with the person
you are playing against, you don't care if they get a victory. This encouraged
fast play, because if you want to get a chance to win the more games you play
the better.
It was a great way to finish: The following people get to clean up:
Winner 1, Winner 2, ..., we are out of here!
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Other ways to play
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Some other ways to finish:
The 6 winners collect their 5 decks and have 15 minutes to assemble a deck and
sideboard for a round robin. There are no deck restrictions natch.
Arrange it so there are 8 winners, and they get to play an elimination
tournament with their decks. The winner of each match keeps ALL their opponents
cards, and has 15 minutes to assemble a deck for the next round. This way the
final match is 2 people with the resources of 20 decks each.
We >could< spend a weekend at WotC assembling the decks for a fixed tournament.
Then to run a contract tournament we can just bring the tournament bag and put
out the decks randomly. Players playing the same tournament twice will get to
know certain decks and combinations. After 6 months we can retire the decks,
listing their contents and statistics over the previous 6 months in the
duelist.
R^G
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I played in this tournament, and I gotta say it was a lot of fun,
even if there were a couple of slip-ups, like the Mox Ruby that was
supposed to save an all-red deck from Conversion showing up in the
blue deck to its left :-\ Anyway, it was a hoot; I'd recommend this
format for anyone looking for tourney ideas.
I kind of liked not being able to examine the decks beforehand... it's
interesting to not know what you have available, and you could guess what
you'd find in most of the decks after 12 turns or so, anyway. But I guess
it does make a difference in that you can see the decks to your left and
right being played, so sometimes you'll know what you're getting and sometimes
you won't... unless you get to look at the deck beforehand. Oh, and looking
at the decks means one can sort the mana... one of the decks I used got
most of its mana clumped in one area, for some reason. So actually it
probably is a good idea to let them look at the decks first. Whatever.
Tom Wylie rec.games.deckmaster Network Representative for
aa...@hal.com Wizards of the Coast, Inc.