Standard this Saturday

First of all, if you haven't already, go and like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/FITSSFFMagic.  There will be Facebook events for all our tournaments and links to this blog whenever there's a new post.

This Saturday will be our first constructed tournament of the semester, using the Standard format.  It will be on the 2nd floor of the SUB at 1pm again.  Cost will be $3 for entry or $5 for entry and a pack.

For those who aren't familiar with it, Standard uses cards which were printed in approximately the last two years of Magic.  Right now, this means that for a card to be allowed it has to have been printed in one of these sets:

Scars of Mirrodin
Mirrodin Besieged
New Phyrexia
Magic 2012
Innistrad
Dark Ascension
Avacyn Reborn
Magic 2013

The minimum deck size is 60 cards.  You can bring a sideboard of exactly 15 cards to swap into your deck after the first game of a match.  (You'll need to swap them back out before the next match.)

We're planning on running a Standard tournament every month this semester, so you can update your deck from month to month and make it the best it can be. Or bring something new and surprise everyone!

Remember that you get League Points just for showing up and more for winning games! The more people at the event, the more league points will be awarded, so bring your friends!

M13 Draft Recap

35 of you came out to draft this weekend, making this one of the biggest events in FITSSFF Magic history!  Everyone who played has earned League Points for the semester, meaning that you're on your way to qualifying for the Top 8 invitational tournament at the end of the semester.  (See this old post by Dom for an overview of how League Points work.)  Keep coming back to earn more points. You get points just for playing, and you get more for doing well.  And in the meantime, you get to meet people and play Magic -- sounds like a winning combination to me.

We took the somewhat unusual step of splitting the tournament into five pods of seven people so we weren't there all night.  The top three of each pod were:

1. Sam Blitch
2. Miles Davis
3. Andrew Hunter

1. David Wyland
2. Dan Gorelik
3. Kyle Coleman

1. Tyler Deforge
2. Joe Hammond
3. Hunter Garrett

1. John Kreinbring
2. Jonah Molegrito
3. Skye Kutner

1. Hydeckel Ling
2. Veronica Giguere
3. Joseph Martin

(Apologies if I misspelled your name.)

Thanks to everyone who came out and congrats to the lucky winners!  Our next event will be Standard constructed on Saturday, September 1st.  I'll put up a post in a while with the details.

Back to School 2012

Welcome to Fall 2012! I'm Hunter Garrett, and with Chris Pear and John Kreinbring we are the current Magic Committee.  We've got some more great Magic events planned for this semester.  Starting things off is a Magic 2013 Draft this Saturday the 25th, at 1pm in the second floor of the SUB.  Cost is $12 for three packs.  There will be prizes!

For those who don't know, a draft involves opening sealed Magic packs and passing them around the table, taking one card at a time, until you've built a deck.  Then you play your new deck against other people's.  It's great because you don't need to have any cards beforehand, and you keep everything you draft.

Have you never played the game before, or know someone who hasn't?  Come to our free new player workshop at 12pm in the same place!  We'll show you the basics of the fun and deep trading card game that is Magic: the Gathering, and then you can stick around to play in the draft and get some cards.  Come have some fun and make some friends.

Below is the tentative schedule for the semester.  I want to emphasize that these events are for you, so if you don't see something you want, let us know!

In general, the schedule right now is:

1st week of the month: Standard
2nd: limited (draft, sealed, etc.)
3rd: Commander
4th/5th: random

Expanded out, this looks like:

8/20 First day of classes

8/25 M13 draft and new players' workshop

9/1 Standard (Labor Day weekend)

9/8 Magic Celebration at local game shops

9/15 Commander

9/22 Modern Pauper

9/29 Return to Ravnica prerelease

10/6 Standard (Fall Break weekend)

10/13 Return to Ravnica Two-Headed Giant Sealed

10/20 Commander

10/27 Block Wars (with proxies)

11/3 Standard

11/10 Return to Ravnica draft (Veteran’s Day weekend)

11/17 Commander

11/24 NO EVENT (Thanksgiving weekend)

12/1 Standard

12/5 Last day of classes

12/7 Top 8 Invitational and open players’ choice event (study day)

 Again, if you think this could be better, talk to us.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and see you on Saturday!