Private Magic: the Gathering tournament.
Players were Chip, Sara, Sean, Laurie, Venessa, Jeneane and myself. Chip, Sara and I played before. Laurie needed a refresher.
Well, I just intend to log my game without going into too much detail.
Chip was gracious enough to host a drafting tournament with the new Onslaught expansion. (It came fresh via Fed Ex that morning!) We had seven players, mostly new. Chip did an exceptional job explaining the game to the newcomers. I attempted an abbreviated explaination to a late-comer. She said I did a good job helping her draft her deck, after she played the game (and lost. I wish I knew better.)
A new ability in Onslaught is Morphing. With morphing, a player can play 3 mana to bring a creature out face-down as a 2/2 creature. Then the player can pay the morphing cost to flip it over and play it normally. There is a mix of strong and weak creatures, so an opponent will have a hard time figuring out whether it's a relief or a bigger threat to have the creature face-down.
We played best two out of three. And each player played until he or she lost against two players.
One thing I noticed about my deck-building technique, which works well for 60-card decks, but doesn't work with 40-card decks, is that mana comes out faster and I could afford to put more expensive (mana cost) cards into the deck. That was my downfall -- during the first game with Sean he got out some big monsters and I couldn't hold off against them for long. The game with Laurie, I was doing poorly initially but eventually caught up and defeated her deck. The game with Chip, We were both down to one life point. I had three creatures and he had one tapped creature. I felt cocky and attacked with all my creatures -- and he played a card that reduced all damage to zero. He then finished me off with his creature. That was a memorable play.
We were supposed to get to board gaming after the tournament, but the tournament turned out to be an all day event with the tutorials and the intense games of Magic.
Here's Chip's take on the event:
