Subject: Worthy of a Dojo post???? Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 14:22:21 -0600 From: Michael Granaas To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com As I read posts on the Dojo and elsewhere I often see disparaging comments about WotC’s levels of play (beginner, advanced, expert) used in Magic. These comments, in my mind, come from two places: 1) players not understanding that when WotCs labels a set "Beginner", "Advanced", or "Expert", they are talking about the set as a whole, not individual cards, and 2) WotC’s insistence on confusing the whole situation by mixing "stand alone" card sets and "levels of play" in a single product. Questioning of the levels of play notion results because some cards exist at multiple play levels. For example, Thundermare, Raging Goblin, and Man-o-War exist in both beginner sets (Portal 1) and expert sets (Weatherlight, Exodus, and Visions). What the questioners are missing is that when you look at the sets as a whole, you see some striking differences. Beginner: Portal I and II have creatures and sorceries in 5 colors, basic lands, no creatures with tap abilities, and timing is vastly simplified. Advanced: 5th Ed. adds tap abilities for creatures, special lands, artifacts, and sorceries are labeled as enchantments, instants, etc. which make timing more complex. Expert: Rath Cycle adds multi-color cards, shadow, and more creature abilities. (MirViLight had phasing, and the Artifacts Cycle has echo, sleeping enchantments, and cycling.) At all levels, something is added to the complexity of the game. Hypothetically a beginning player could progress from beginner to advanced to expert levels of play as their skill level increased. If we think about this from the perspective of the game’s story line it makes perfect sense. An apprentice wizard would first learn to control basic forms of magic (summoning creatures and casting a limited number of straight forward sorceries). As the apprentice matured into a journeyman wizard, they would learn how to control even more and greater magic, adding more effective spells and creatures to their spell book and discarding the less effective. Eventually they would become master wizard able to access and control a vast array of magic. This is a really neat idea, except WotC screwed it up. For a variety of reasons, WotC continues to produce stand alone card sets that define various tournament environments rather than using complexity levels. So, instead of having a beginners tournament for the apprentice wizards (junior varsity), an advanced tournament for the journeyman wizards (varsity), and an advanced tournament for the master wizards (pros), there are Rath cycle, or other stand alone set, tournaments. While this is rational in its own right, it does not mesh at all with the notion of levels of play. The confusion that the players feel is a direct result of WotC’s trying to accomplish two incompatible goals at the same time. No matter what your level of play, you need some basic sorceries and critters (1/1 critters and CoP’s come to mind as examples) available to you in the appropriate color. So, to support stand alone sets at tournaments, these cards, or variations, have to be included in the set. But, outside of the tournament environment such cards in expert sets are largely a waste of player’s money. If you have played Magic for any length of time you will have plenty of these standard cards in your possession. You do not need to buy them again except for the fact that your 1/1 WW from 5th Ed. isn’t legal in a Rath Cycle block tournament, so you have to buy the 1/1 WW from that set. If WotC is serious about levels of play, they will come out with a Portal set that is upward compatible and would provide the player with a full range of the basic spells needed to play. The only problem with the current Portal sets is that many of the cards are not "tournament legal". Bah Humbug! Cards that debuted in Portal I and II are showing up in expert sets and magically becoming "tournament legal". Many of the cards in Portal I and II were taken from other existing sets and are also "tournament legal. The rumors that Portal cards are just too powerful for regular play is largely nonsense. There are no more than a handful of broken cards in both Portal sets combined. They could be fixed in Portal III and the whole set could be made "tournament legal" without damaging the integrity of any portion of the game. 6th ed. would then add to and supplement, not supplant, Portal III. Instead of the monster set that it is sure to be, it could be held to 300+/- cards. Stand alone sets would further supplement 6th ed. with more new cards, and would likely be limited to 3 expansions of 150 +/- cards each. (Think Stronghold and Exodus plus one-half of Tempest.) This would still provide players with plenty of opportunities to play with new cards without getting swamped with the annual monster set that kicks off the new block. The problem with this approach is that in order to conduct a stand alone block tournament players would need packs from Portal III and 6th ed. to play the game. The question is, would the tournament players accept this? I would suspect not. I’m not even sure how many casual players would accept this approach. But I do know that the levels of play approach is not compatible with the stand alone set approach that WotC is using now. So, if you are confused about the levels of play designations, don’t feel bad, WotC isn’t quite sure how they work either. So, what do you think? Michael Granaas mgranaas@usd.edu