MS MtG Modern Super League

[hasdgfas]

This thread is for initial organization of the MS Modern Super League.

This will be a 10-player, round-robin tournament with 3 trimesters. In each trimester, players will be able to choose a separate deck, and they will have 3 opponents, who can be played in any order. However, players can play the same deck each trimester if they wish. Once all 9 rounds are finished, we will cut to a top 4 by seed. In the top 4 playoffs, players will select 3 decks and play best 3 out of 5 matches in each round, with the ability to change decks between the semifinals and the finals. Those decks will be labeled A, B, and C, and two or even all three of them could be the same if the player wishes. A, B, and C must be played in order for the first 3 matches. For matches 4 and 5, players may choose any of their 3 decks, and may even select the same deck for match 4 and match 5.

We will be using OCTGN as a platform for this tournament. Instructions for installing MTG and images are located here.

OCTGN was selected after investigation into all the platform options. Xmage and Cockatrice were downloaded, and other research was done into videos displaying those programs. The other options had some issues that prevented them from being the cleanest platform to use. Rules enforcement, while it can be nice, can also lead to clunkier gameplay and the inability to fix things. Additionally, the chance of something being programmed incorrectly means that we're not comfortable with a platform with rules enforcement. OCTGN's play space does everything it needs to, and in our extensive use, we haven't found issues that can't be solved pretty cleanly.

We have the option to make the tournament more of a "show" if we like, due to spectator capability. I can set up a Discord server, which we can use for real-time communication/commentary on matches by those not playing. There are some implications that this would have for the tournament. One is that decklists per trimester would have to be open, so that people who watch matches don't have an advantage over those who don't/can't. To go into a bit more detail of how this would work, once trimester schedules are posted, all decklists would be submitted to a neutral party, and then all be posted in thread at the same time.

When signing up, please indicate if you would like to use Discord.

If there are any questions, please ask them in-thread:

/in (8/8)

hasdgfas
Yaw
klazam
Kdowns
Panzerjager (replacing Lady Lambdadelta)
Sudo_Nym
Khelvaster
SensFan

----------

First Trimester:

kdowns

: SensFan(W), Sudo_Nym(W)

, thestatusquo(W)

Panzerjager

: Khelvaster(W), SensFan(L), Sudo_Nym(L)

DeathNote

: hasdgfas(L), thestatusquo(W), Yaw(L)

Sudo_Nym

:

thestatusquo(L),

kdowns(L), Panzerjager(W)

Klazam

: Yaw(L), Khelvaster(W), SensFan(W)

Khelvaster

: Panzerjager(L), Klazam(L), hasdgfas(W)

Yaw

: Klazam(W), hasdgfas(L)

, DeathNote(W)

thestatusquo

: Sudo_Nym(W), DeathNote(L), kdowns(L)

hasdgfas

:

DeathNote(W),

Yaw(W), Khelvaster(L)

SensFan

: kdowns(L), Panzerjager(W), Klazam(L)

Decklists For First Trimester Due to McMenno

: By end of day Tuesday 1/31


-----

Second Trimester:

kdowns

: Panzerjager(L), Klazam(W), hasdgfas(L)

Panzerjager

: kdowns(W),

thestatusquo,

Klazam(L)

DeathNote

: Khelvaster, SensFan, Sudo_Nym

Sudo_Nym

: Klazam(L), hasdgfas(L)

, DeathNote

Klazam

: Sudo_Nym(W), kdowns(L), Panzerjager(W)

Khelvaster

:

DeathNote,

Yaw(L),

thestatusquo

Yaw

:

thestatusquo,

Khelvaster(W), SensFan(W)

thestatusquo

: Yaw, Panzerjager, Khelvaster

hasdgfas

: SensFan(W), Sudo_Nym(W), kdowns(W)

SensFan

: hasdgfas(L),

DeathNote,

Yaw(L)

Decklists For Second Trimester Due to McMenno

: By end of day Tuesday 3/28

-----

Trimester 3 pairings

kdowns:

Yaw(W), Khelvaster

Panzerjager:

hasdgfas(L), Yaw

Sudo_Nym:

Yaw(L), Khelvaster(W), SensFan

Klazam:

hasdgfas

Khelvaster:

SensFan, Sudo_Nym(L), kdowns

Yaw:

Sudo_Nym(W), kdowns(L), Panzerjager

hasdgfas:

Panzerjager(W), Klazam

SensFan:

Khelvaster, Sudo_Nym

Decklists For Third Trimester Due to McMenno

: Thursday, July 27.

--------

Player	Record
hasdgfas	5-1
Yaw	4-2
Klazam	4-2
kdowns	4-2
Panzerjager	2-4
Sudo_Nym	2-4
Khelvaster	1-4
SensFan	1-4

-----

Coverage:

Wednesdays at 7:30 PM US Central Time
Sundays at 1:00 PM Central Time
http://www.twitch.tv/hascow

-----

Discord Download Link:

https://discordapp.com/download

Discord Link:

https://discord.gg/tPUseV8

[hasdgfas]

/in

no discord for me

so all decks for the full tourney are locked BEFORE decklists are made public?

Decks per trimester are locked before decklists for that trimester are made public. Not for the full tourney.

[hasdgfas]

If anything illustrates the difference between Panzer and I when it comes to Magic or Hearthstone, it's the fact that his first thought was "Lightning Bolt to the dome" and mine was "I hope Ensnaring Bridge is still good."

Ensnaring Bridge is still played on occasion.

[hasdgfas]

Bump

[hasdgfas]

I'm still interested if that helps.

You're already on this list!

[hasdgfas]

I assume that we'll be playing with the new bans and Aether Revolt?

Ah, you've stumbled upon the reason for the timing of getting this started

[hasdgfas]

don't forget to send in your decklists

No need for that just yet, we haven't quite scheduled the first day, we want to give people some time

[hasdgfas]

In general, how long will players have to finish their three matches?
Are the people I'm playing against linked as well necessarily? Like as an example, if my first set of matches is Cow/Yaw/Sudo does that mean that Cow/Sudo will also be paired up?

We'll be giving 3 weeks for a trimester, as we expect about a match a week. If everyone finishes earlier, however, we can start the next trimester early.
As far as pairing, there's no linking. Your 3 opponents don't necessarily have the same set of opponents as you. We're just generating a round robin tournament schedule.



Now, I've gotten the basics of a Discord channel set up. You should be able to use this link to get in: https://discord.gg/tPUseV8
We can use this for casting, discussion about games we're watching, discussions after you play someone, etc.
You can use this whether or not you're playing, so if you're interested in watching, feel free to join as well. I'll have to give different permissions to players, spectators, and the deckkeeper, so if your Discord name is different than your MS name, let me know so I can set that correctly.

[hasdgfas]

All right, as far as dates and times go:

Decklists Due to McMenno

: By end of day next Tuesday 1/31

Trimester Deadline:

2/22(however, if everyone finishes the trimester early, we'll just start the next one early)

Current plans are to:

• Allow people to start playing as soon as Wednesday 2/1
  
• Have a mini coverage test Wednesday night, 2/1, starting at about 7:30 PM Central US Time. People can still play their real matches at this point, but it's partially a tech/coverage test.
  
• Have a larger "kickoff" event Saturday 2/4 starting at 1 PM Central US time where we try to get as many people working on coverage/playing as possible
  
• Continue with Wednesdays at 7:30 PM Central and Saturdays at 1 PM Central for coverage times.

If you have streamed before, it would be helpful if you could let us know, as I will not be able to host the stream while I'm playing(and am not guaranteed to be at every single Wed/Sat), since the host needs to have visibility of both players' hands, so we need a few different hosts.

[hasdgfas]

Again, how many decks do I play? 1 per opponent? Or do I get to choose how many I want to play? (EX- 1 per 2 opponents and a 3rd for the 3rd opponent?)

You get 1 deck for those 3 opponents. Once everyone has played these first three matches, you can switch to a second deck for your next three opponents if you like. And you can switch to a third deck for your last 3 opponents if you like.

[hasdgfas]

OH! Lol, Ok then.

Never used that one before.

I'm planning to post some specific tips and tricks for the gameplay in the next couple days. Some basic setup instructions are on the front page.

[hasdgfas]

Related, remember to sign up for Discord. One of the text channels in there is set up for scheduling, and it does preserve posts. You'll find that a lot more convenient than trying to track people down by PM or another platform. (Although I expect most games will be able to happen just by showing up at the scheduled streaming times.)

I've put the link the first post as well.

[hasdgfas]

Here are a few OCTGN tips:

• In general, learn to use the keyboard shortcuts. They’re great. You can find out what they are by right-clicking relevant places(your deck, a card, the table). If there's not a keyboard shortcut for something, you should be able to find what you're trying to do by searching the right-click menus
  
  
• Make sure that you click on the play button next to your opponent when you’re done with your turn.
  
  
• Number one in-game tip: Shift-drag from a card to another card to make an arrow. Great for targeting, as you don’t have to use chat. Also great for blocking. Also, if you just shift-click a card without dragging, it adds a target symbol to it.
  
  
• Shift-drag a card from your hand to the table to keep it face down.
  
  
• F1 moves to your upkeep and untaps everything you control. Good for making it clear you’re done doing things on your opponent’s end step.
  
  
• If you drag a card to the bottom of your deck image, it will put it on the bottom of your deck. If you put it near the top of the deck image, it will put it on the top of your deck.
  
  
• You can use auto-counter and auto-token to save some time when creating tokens from a card or putting counters on something.
  
  
• If you don’t use auto-token and you use the menu, if you make multiple tokens, they’ll be stacked on top of each other. Drag them off of the stack so it's clear how many there are.
  
  
• The edges of the table will stretch if cards are played too near them, and it starts to get hard to tell what’s going on quickly, which is a problem for coverage.

[hasdgfas]

Reminder that decks are due tonight.

[hasdgfas]

Reminder: at 7:30 Central tonight(about 3 hours and 10 minutes from this post) we will be doing a tech/casting test stream to make sure all of the streaming setup works, as well as getting some of the first games in. If you'll be around, please hop into Discord a bit before then so we can plan out the night.

[hasdgfas]

I'd like to make sure I know who is going to be around on Saturday so that we can put together a schedule of games/casters. If you intend to be here for the kickoff show on Saturday, please let me know.

[hasdgfas]

Thought I'd replied to this. I have a busy Saturday, between Blood Bowl in the afternoon and Shadowrun in the evening, but I'll be there in-between, watching the stream if nothing else.

Do you have approximate times?

[hasdgfas]

Blood Bowl starts at 1, probably ends around 2. Shadowrun starts at 5ish.

Those are Pacific Time?

[hasdgfas]

Are Sundays better than Saturdays for people in general? It seems like several people have a bunch of things to do on Saturdays, and if we move to Sundays instead of Saturdays, we may get more consistent groups.

[hasdgfas]

It would also be nice if you can let me know if you're going to be around tonight, because I can get a schedule together for tonight's stream as well.

[hasdgfas]

To have it on record:
Kdowns beat Sudo_Nym 2-0

[hasdgfas]

Here's an unedited version of the entire Wednesday night stream.



There'll likely be a long break in between the two actual matches, since I wanted to check on a few things and try to fix some overlay stuff, but apparently it didn't stop recording, but did stop streaming. I'm planning to do some editing tomorrow to clean up some things. If you watch and have any suggestions/comments, let me know.

I want to do more work on the overlays, but they do their jobs for now.

[hasdgfas]

Since it wasn't officially announced anywhere(although most people seem to have figured it out), we're moving from Saturdays to Sundays as the weekend slot.

[hasdgfas]

Two separate streams this time for the two matches.

First, Yaw v DeathNote:



Second, Khelvaster v Klazam

[hasdgfas]

Hey all,

To expedite the stream for this week, please let me know(either here or in Discord) whether or not you will be here for the stream time this Wednesday/Sunday. As a reminder, Wednesdays are 7:30 Central, and Sundays are 1PM Central. This lets me set up a schedule and lets us get more games in more quickly.

[hasdgfas]

Yaw v Klazam:

[hasdgfas]

I've got the videos up for Sunday as well:

[hasdgfas]

Whoa, Infect lost to tron? crazy

Eldrazi Tron is a worse matchup than "regular" Tron.

[hasdgfas]

The big problem is that Infect got a lot slower when Probe was banned; it's a lot harder to get a consistent t3 kill without it. It also means that new Infect lists are still up in the air, as people try to figure out if it's better to try and maintain the speed without Probe, or if you should go to something more resilient, instead. Death's Shadow seems to have done the latter, but Infect's seen less testing, it seems. I mean, I'd have been tempted to just put Street Wraith in that slot, since it's basically Probe Minus Peek, but I'm guessing other people already thought of that.

Yeah, I ended up going for something more in-between, and I think it makes it significantly weaker. If I want the speed I should have had Groundswells, if I wanted protection I should have added more Spell Pierces. Instead I went in neither direction.

[hasdgfas]

Cow over DeathNote 2-1

[hasdgfas]

Sens v kdowns:

[hasdgfas]

and me v DeathNote:

[hasdgfas]

DeathNote over Shea 2-0
Shea over Sudo 2-0

[hasdgfas]

Shea v Sudo


Shea v DeathNote

[hasdgfas]

LLD v Sudo

[hasdgfas]

As mentioned, we want to try to keep this a bit efficient. We should be able to finish Trimester 1 matches by next Sunday, and we want to try to keep this going without huge breaks for everyone.

Because of that, we are going to have a deadline of next Tuesday night the 28th of March. Please get your decklists in by the end of next Tuesday.

[hasdgfas]

As mentioned, we want to try to keep this a bit efficient. We should be able to finish Trimester 1 matches by next Sunday, and we want to try to keep this going without huge breaks for everyone.

Because of that, we are going to have a deadline of next Tuesday night the 28th of March. Please get your decklists in by the end of next Tuesday.

Follow-up point:

Since you're going to have to enter your decklist into the deck editor at some point anyway, you can export it from the deck editor afterwards and not have to type anything up to send into McMenno. We're not going to require standardized decklists, but it would likely be easiest for everyone.

[hasdgfas]

Panzerjager is replacing LLD, who had to drop for time commitment reasons

[hasdgfas]

With Panzer replacing in for LLD, we're going to extend the deadline for Trimester 2 decklists until this coming Tuesday April 4th. If anyone wants to change their decks before then, you are free to do so.

[hasdgfas]

Sens beat Panzer 2-0

[hasdgfas]

Here's the video from it. It sure was a match that happened.

[hasdgfas]

This is a hilarious collection of decks.

[hasdgfas]

make sure to calibrate your pithing needles correctly everyone

Remember, Borborygmos is a Modern-legal Magic: The Gathering card.

[hasdgfas]

Panzer 2-0 over Khelvaster

[hasdgfas]

Khelvaster v Yaw(Trimester 2)


Hascow v Sudo(Trimester 2)


Panzer v Khelvaster(Trimester 1)

[hasdgfas]

Klazam over Sudo 2-0

[hasdgfas]

and Panzer over Kdowns 2-0

[hasdgfas]

Klazam 2-0 over Panzer

[hasdgfas]

Klazam v Sudo

[hasdgfas]

Panzerjager v Kdowns


Panzerjager v Klazam

[hasdgfas]

Cow 2-1 over Sens.

[hasdgfas]

No stream this Sunday because it's Amonkhet Prerelease weekend.

[hasdgfas]

So what Sens and I did was each stream our perspective with us talking through our thoughts as best as we could.

Here's my perspective:



Of note: We learned tonight that streaming doesn't pick up the Scry Window in OCTGN, which generally isn't a problem for our normal streams, but is a problem when we're showing our perspective, so apologies on that.

[hasdgfas]

This is SensFan's perspective:

[hasdgfas]

So we have a little bit of a hiccup. As those of you who were around on Wednesday know, OCTGN died on us then. It seems to be a very large-scale issue with their server, affecting both their hardware and their software. They have been posting updates over the past few days, but don't have a current ETA for a fix. We don't want to keep everyone tied down to a stream tomorrow on the off chance there's an update and everything's fixed, so we're cancelling tomorrow's(4/30) stream pre-emptively. Hopefully we'll have more info and an ETA before the Wednesday stream.

[hasdgfas]

Kdowns over Klazam 2-1

[hasdgfas]

Here's the video of Klazam v Kdowns.

[hasdgfas]

Yaw 2-1 over Sens

[hasdgfas]

Yaw v SensFan

[hasdgfas]

Hascow wins the mirror over kdowns 2-0.

[hasdgfas]

Hascow wins the mirror over kdowns 2-0.

Replay is up

[hasdgfas]

Also for ego purposes. Shouldn't my record be 4-2 instead of 3-2?

Nope. All matches against Shea and DeathNote have been purged from records(wins and losses) since we had to just drop them.

[hasdgfas]

[hasdgfas]

Sudo v Khelv

[hasdgfas]

Cow over Panzer 2-0

[hasdgfas]

Cow v Panzer

[hasdgfas]

Kdowns over Yaw 2-1

[hasdgfas]

Kdowns v Yaw