Magic in Ireland - FAQ

squidgey

WHERE TO PLAY +
WHO TO CONTACT [more details to follow for other parts of country]

DUBLIN - GAMERS WORLD
JERVIS ST, D1
[BEHIND JERVIS CENTRE]
MARTIN: 0879299392

BELFAST - SERENITY GAMES
46 BOTANIC AVENUE, BELFAST
SEAN : 07926233906

GALWAY - every friday at 6:30 at modelworld in the lisbaun industrial estate in galway
www.modelworld.tv/




WAYS TO PLAY

Limited:

1) Sealed deck:
Sealed deck in my opinion is one of the best ways for a new player to start playing magic. The way it works that each player is given 6 booster packs at the start of the tournament. They open them and then build a deck using only the cards contained within those boosters [except you can add as much basic land as required]. Decks must contain a minimum of 40 cards including your land. Your deck will usually consist roughly of about 23 cards and 17 land. It is usually best to make a deck with 2 colours maybe splashing a 3rd. A splash means you might be playing maybe 1 or 2 cards in that colour.
Sealed deck is great because there is no preperation involved and everybody is on a level playing field because they all only have 6 boosters. Also it helps you to build up a collection to help towards actually constructing a deck to play with.
2) Draft:
Sometimes in a sealed deck tournament after 6 rounds or so the main tournament is over and the top 8 players go on to play quater finals, semi finals, finals. This would usually be a draft.
The 8 players sit around, each of them with 3 booster packs in front of them. When they're ready to go they each pick up and open 1 booster. They look through the cards and pick 1 of them to keep. They put that facedown in front of them and pass the remaining 14 cards to the player on their left. You then pick a card to keep from the 14 you were just handed, pass on 13 and repeat until the whole pack is gone. This is repeated for the other 2 boosters as well [except the 2nd booster gets passed to the right instead of the left]. Players will usually settle into 2 colours and will then build their deck at the end using the cards they have drafted. It must be a minimum of 40 cards including basic land.
Draft takes a bit more practice and skill then sealed, deck but is great fun once you get used to it.

Constructed:

Constructed is a way of playing magic when you build or "construct" your deck before the tournament itself. You could spend days, weeks or even months perfecting your deck the way you want to. When playing constructed it is important to make sure what type of constructed you are actually playing
1) CASUAL: Most people reading this thread will be casual players. You probably already have a deck you play with and it's quite likely you built it selecting cards from all of the cards you own. Most people start to learn how to play magic this way but to be honest casual play isn't really that great a thing. It's hard to control the power level of the decks. Sometimes people use very old cards and there's so much rules and card interactions to try and come to terms with. With so many cards to chose from the decks become very unfocused, and tend to keep growing and growing in size. Casual is an ok starting point, but personally I always recommend people to start playing constructed magic by building a standard deck as described below.
2) STANDARD: Standard is a format which allows cards from the latest two blocks as well as the latest core set. At the moment that means you can use cards from lorwyn,morningtide,shadowmoor,eventide,M10,Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn. In October when the new block Zenkidar is released then lorwyn block rotates out and you can only use cards from Shards,Conflux,Alara Reborn, M10 and Zendikar. The format is constantly changing and is probably the most popular constructed format. It's great for new players too as you don't need older expensive cards which aren't being printed any more to build your deck.

3) EXTENDED: Extended, formerly known as Type 1.x, consists of the last seven years of block rotations and core sets. With each fall set release, one year's worth of sets rotate out of the format. Any additional sets released between rotations are automatically added to this format's card pool. This system was implemented in March 2008 to balance the format's card pool, synchronize the rotation with Standard, and make the policy easier for players to remember. The current Extended rotation consists of the Onslaught, Mirrodin, Kamigawa, Ravnica, Time Spiral, Lorwyn, Shadowmoor, and Alara blocks and the Ninth, Tenth edition and M10 core sets
4) BLOCK: Only cards from the current block are allowed. At the moment it's Shards block, but in October it becomes Zendikar.
There are many other types such as vintage, legacy, 2 headed giant. But those listed above are the primary formats people play.The format people are generally playing relates to the next PTQ - "Pro Tour Qualifier". At the moment it is m10 sealed deck, and in October it will become Zendikar sealed. After Christmas it will switch into Extended season, and next Feb/March it rotates back around to standard right up until Nationals in August.

TYPES OF TOURNAMENTS:

1) FNM = Friday Night Magic. Very Casual tournament which happens strangely enough on Friday nights every week. Not much of a tournament at all, just people meeting up and playing cards. With prizes and cool promo cards which can only be won at these events [ Youd don't even have to ein the tournament to win the promo card]
2) Pre-release. Probably the most fun of all magic tournaments. This is where you get to play with the new cards from a set before the cards even go on sale. Turn up, pay your money and be rewarded with new boosters from the latest set as well as a promo foil prerelease card just for taking part. Highly recommended. These tournaments are only on 4 times a year when new sets come out.
3) PTQ's - PRO TOUR QUALIFIER. Probably as serious as tournaments come in Ireland. The winner of these tournaments wins an invite to go and play at the next Magic Pro Tour as well as flights to whereever in the world that might be - next one is Austin, USA. The standard is pretty high and people take these type of tournaments seriously, but it's good practice to paly in these type of events.
4) Nationals + National Qualifiers. Every year in the Summer we have our National Championships - where players all over the country compete to win $1000 and an invitation to represent Ireland at the World Championships. Only those who are qualified may play, and to qualify you must play in one of the many national qualifiers around the country and finish in the top 8. My first tournament ever was a national qualifer and I came 5th, my second ever tournament was Nationals themselves and was a great way to meet the entire Irish magic community.
Any more questions, comments, queries feel free to pm me and I'll be happy to help.
Squidgey