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I basically did this project for fun. It was basically a
grand sealed deck tournament that I commissioned during my free time.
FACE OFF: THE QUEST
In the middle of March in the year 2000, I started a project called FACE OFF. The purpose and the reason I created this project were because I wanted to know which Magic: the Gathering cards ranked with others. It is a test of strength to see which cards could beat others in a limited format. The idea first came to me in December of 1999. During that time, I bought two boxes of Mercadian Masques Tournament Packs at a reasonably good price. (Surprisingly, that was the lowest priced box at Treasure Island) I decided that one box would be for me, and the other box would be for investment purposes. After I opened all 12 tournament packs from the first box (which gave me two Briberies, two Rishidan Ports, and ten other twin rares), I began to invest the second box by selling the remaining tournament packs and doing a few sealed deck matches. After 11 openings, there was one tournament pack left. I pondered about how I would deal with this last until I came to the idea of using that in a unique sealed deck match against other sets. This is how FACE OFF: GENESIS began.
In order to begin GENESIS, I had to decide which sets to use. At first I thought of using all the Magic sets, then I figured how much all the Magic sets would cost me. Since I was no Jonathan Yeh, I knew I had to budget myself. Then I thought about the five-standalone expansions. The problem with doing that was that I needed five people, and I only had four people in mind that could do this. After a while, I decided to cut Ice Age out of the project. (Later, I was glad to cut Ice Age) This left me with four standalone expansions: Mirage, Tempest, Urza’s Saga, and Mercadian Masques. Once that was established, I had to figure how I wanted to base the sealed deck tournament on. I could have done this by having a full block; one standalone expansion deck with its two corresponding parts of the cycle. That is, the winter release, the early spring release, and the summer release from October to August of a certain block of cards. The first three expansions could do it, but Mercadian Masques did not have a complete cycle (because Prophecy was not released yet). Also, I knew Visions, Stronghold, Exodus, and Urza’s Legacy carried hefty price tags now, so it was still expensive to do that. Therefore, to save money and to keep it simple, I decided to buy a starter deck and two booster packs from each standalone expansion. I did so, buying all the project’s cards from three different stores, organized it, and gave it to each of the test subjects with a set of instructions. The instructions for Project: FACE OFF (I did not think until later that the project would have three phases, this is why the first part was just called FACE OFF. As I added parts to the project, I gave each of them surnames to identify them. This is why the first part is called GENESIS, meaning “beginning.”) were simple: open the three packages, make a deck out of just with the cards given, and play the other participants. The players recorded their life totals about each match on the back of the instructions and wrote down any comments about their observations during the first part.
FACE OFF: CONFRONTATION was the next step in Magic testing. If you are at least a two-year veteran, you know that you must fall at the wrath of the DCI every year. Those inconsiderate folks continuously update the Type II sets you can play with. They conspire with Wizards of the Coast so those Magic players have to keep buying the latest card sets to follow the Type II Standard. Like some other people, I hate to see this kind of swindle, especially with my favorite hobby. Unfortunately, I have no power to change this situation; it is in the hands of those corporate con artists in Seattle and Renton that control the gaming market. All I can do is boycott, but even that is hard to do. Now to get to the point, does cycling sets in the Standard environment improve decks and deck capabilities? I took this question to the test to see if the Type II cards are better than the sets released before it. Using the same cards as before, I wanted to combine Type II sets to one part and the Extended sets to another part. I decided to make this a team match up, since card sets had to integrate. It came up to this: two teams formed, consisting of two members each. The first team played the Extended cards of the Mirage and Tempest sets, named Team MT. The second team played the Standard sets of Urza’s Saga and Mercadian Masques, named Team USMM. Each team worked together to each make a deck using cards from both of their complementary sets. There was two ways to play this, the point system and chaos play. In the point system, players would face their opponents individually, then tally the number of victories and add them up. In the Chaos system, all four players would play at the same time in a two-on-two match. As always, winners won by best of three rounds. I sent out an instruction sheet/ survey to each of the participants so they could decide which way they wanted to play.
After this part of the project, I wanted to do another thing with the cards. I wanted to get my money’s worth to use the test cards as much as possible. However, I truly I wanted to do something else; to test which color worked the best in limited format. Okay, I admit this was the contest between the best color of all aspects, but when I started losing, I had to rethink this. Thus began FACE OFF: MANA CLASH. In this test, it did not matter what set the cards of the certain color came from, because each deck had cards from all of the four test sets. The third part of the project needed five participants, because there were five colors in Magic. The first two tests had only four players. Therefore, I had to find a fifth person to be a part. After giving the suggestion to the participants of the part three, I attracted a curious passerby who wondered what we were doing. Once this passerby learned what we accomplished, I offered him to be the fifth player in the next part of the project. Earlier in the stages of development, I prepared MANA CLASH while CONFRONTATION was still taking place. What I did was ask each of the players which color they liked to play with. Their responses laid the basis of my distribution plans. Some people did not care what color they played with, whereas others wanted to use a certain color. I did this to try to satisfy all the participants. After that, I carefully organized each of the cards into colors and land types. I separated each color and joined it with its corresponding basic land. I took out the non-basic lands, artifacts, and gold cards. Each of the players had to make a deck with just the chosen color and its corresponding basic lands. Supporting each deck was a 15-card sideboard. Once the five players formed their decks, they were ready to play. Because a free-for-all chaos match would not be fair, I decided to have each player duel the other players. I decided in using the point system to establish a winner. After each round, each player who played got a participation point. If the player won the round, they got two points instead of one. As MANA CLASH progressed, one of the players noted to me that if you played three rounds, you would get one more point than if you played only two rounds. At first, I ignored it, thinking that the winner should have more points anyway. However, I later came to understand that third round players had a big advantage over two round players. To compensate for my mistake, I decided that all players who only played two rounds in a match should gain one point for each two round match. This should make it fair enough to determine the winner, who would still gain the most points.