Subject: Solution to Sealed Deck woes Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 10:13:33 -0400 From: "R. Kinyon" To: fred_s@netcom.com, howlan19@ecity.net CC: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Fred, Mike - Friends and I have agreed that there are really three parts to the play of Magic that are important, and all three are very important. - You have the Innovator - someone like Zvi Moshovitz or Alan Comer, who creates a new deck concept. - You have the Tuner - the person who takes a deck concept and tweaks 5 cards and, all of a sudden, it's so much better. - You have the Player - the person who picks a deck up, flips through it, then takes it without having played it to a PTQ and wins. All three jobs, so to speak, are very important. This is why teams exist - to bring together an Innovator, a Tuner, and a bunch of Players. A given person can have more than one skill. But, they are different skills. Constructed environments test one person's playing skills and (usually) a second person's innovation and third person's tuning. This is expected and desirable. Limited environments test one person's playing, building, and tuning skills. All in one. This is why Limited environments are considered more skillful. The luck factor is a problem, though. So, I would propose the following - all sealed decks, at least for ProTour and Grand Prix events, be duplicate. Each person gets the same cards. This would truly be skillful. And, I can't imagine that it would be that difficult in terms of organization. WotC could have the printing company create 1000 different variations and pump them out, pre-packaged as the "Tournament Sealed Package," containing 90 cards, 22 of which are basic land in a 5-5-4-4-4 distribution. 5 rares, 13 uncommons, etc. You know the drill. Or, the TD could open a starter and two boosters, then (from their stock), give out copies of that to each player, but the players don't get to keep the cards. (This is a little iffier than WotC doing it.) As for precedent, Bridge has been doing this for years. Tournament Bridge is _ALL_ duplicate. Rob Kinyon