Serious Vintage, Ep. 11 - Vintage Goes to Vegas

[GrandpaBelcher]

http://www.eternalcentral.com/?p=3834

Episode 11 of Serious Vintage puts together our normal crew of myself (@GrandpaBelcher at Twitter), Geoff Moes (@ThallidTosser), and Josh Chapple (@joshchapple) with two people helping build a Vintage scene in Las Vegas, Joe McKellar (@JoeyMac399) and Heather Meek (@Revisedangel). We talk about this process as well as hitting on the You Make the Card results, some previews from Dragon’s Maze, and the all-important food and drink reviews from Las Vegas in preparation for the Modern Masters Grand Prix in June.

Here’s the timestamped table of contents for your listening ease and enjoyment:

00:30 – Wizards Actually Makes the Card
04:21 – Meandering through the Dragon’s Maze
22:52 – Las Vegans Know How to Make a Scene
1:13:31 – Eating and Drinking in Las Vegas
1:27:22 – Upcoming Events Announcement
Total runtime: 1:28:59

[John Cox]

Thanks again, this is my most looked forward to podcast on my listen list, mainly because of your reactions. I can tell you guys are having a blast when you do these and it sucks me in too.

[MaximumCDawg]

It's fun and all, but there's still so little in-depth discussion of strategy, history, or deck tech concerning Vintage.  When you started talking about community building (which is a great topic on its own, don't get me wrong) I was sad to see how little of the podcast was done, and so how little was dedicated to technical Vintage topics.

I will, however, now always see Ral Zerek as gently massaging his own man-nipples when I see that card.  So, thanks for that. 

[GrandpaBelcher]

Vintage strategy is probably the least important topic to us. Sorry, dude. We're just here to have fun playing Vintage with people. As a result, we're probably going to have more community oriented topics than any other. If there's not enough people to play against, it really doesn't matter when you try to resolve Ancestral.

[shrewarmies]

 There are a couple of points I want to address in this podcast which has been one of your best.

I just have to chime in about having proxy decks that can stay at a store.

This time last year (give or take a couple of months) I started running the eternal events at my local store and things were not good. Our events were gathering 3-6 players each month (with a core group of 3 players), only enough to run a testing session really and we certainly never fired. The other "local" store by November was no longer running Vintage events because of this lack of numbers where they were even worse with usually 1-2 players. I decided that I needed to do something.

In November (around there) I printed out 5 decks fully proxied and left them in the store with a small "how-to" guide for each of them. Bear in mind that our tournaments are generally 10 proxy affairs so most people have in the past had to ask in advance for someone to pre build them a deck before the tournament if they wanted to play which could be daunting. Then for the December tournament I offered that people can use these decks for their fist event at the store free of charge (still paying for entry that is). I heard a few months afterwards that they were being used between rounds at a modern event. Since this has happened we had tournaments with 12, 10, 10, 8 and 12 players with our only tournament under 10 players was on the same day as a PTQ with a Star City Qualifier on the Sunday. This is not solely due to these decks but they certainly drew interest in playing Vintage and at least one has been used every month.

Another thing that was indirectly mentioned was that players beget players. One of our first players to try the test decks was James Dowling (ecky on here) who was hooked and has been invaluable as a resource for newer players both in explaining vintage and just being a good voice for the format. He has helped draw in quite few of the other modern players at lease for one tournament and got their feet wet. 

[President Skroob]

Another thing that was indirectly mentioned was that players beget players. One of our first players to try the test decks was James Dowling (ecky on here) who was hooked and has been invaluable as a resource for newer players both in explaining vintage and just being a good voice for the format. He has helped draw in quite few of the other modern players at lease for one tournament and got their feet wet.

This is something that I've stressed before in talking about the differences between the United States and Europe. It's a silly statement, but one of the reasons Europe has more players is because... Europe has more players. I liken it to a starting capital for a business venture: if you don't have the capital necessary in the first place, you can't bring about the situation to grow that capital. It makes the efforts in starting a scene that much more difficult, but once a foothold is established it becomes easier to attract new interest. It's also fortunate to get the vocal proponents of the format, as you mentioned and as Joe mentioned Heather has been in Vegas.

Thanks for listening, and great to hear that things are working out in creating your local scene!

[John Cox]

In November (around there) I printed out 5 decks fully proxied and left them in the store with a small "how-to" guide for each of them.

That's a great Idea. Great way to get people into the format.

[KIP_NZ]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the tips about getting a scene going, I'm trying to get something going here in Auckland NZ and we just had our first event with 24 players! I've written it up in the Tournament reports section. We actually had online coverage on the day which judging by the feedback in the FB group was very well received.

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=45302.0

Things I'm going to do differently next time:

• Start earlier, 5 rounds + Top 8 meant we didn't get home till after 8pm
• Have an organised judge, to be honest we didn't think this one through as there was 5 judges in the room but all were playing in the event but with 24 players in a new format there was quite a few judge calls
• Asking the players earlier what they'd like to play for as a first price - Poll is running right now on FB for the next event on the 3rd Aug
• I made it so you could take the Mox or the $$ from the pool I was getting paid for the mox, in the future I'll make the cash a little less so that I make a profit as well if they take that and leave me with the card(s)

Cheers
KIP_NZ

[LennoxLewis86]

Vintage strategy is probably the least important topic to us. Sorry, dude. We're just here to have fun playing Vintage with people. As a result, we're probably going to have more community oriented topics than any other. If there's not enough people to play against, it really doesn't matter when you try to resolve Ancestral.

I think it's pretty funny that someone with Grand Moff Tarkin as an avatar says that strategy is the least of his concerns, since Tarkin is like the strategical mastermind behind the Empire.

I get your point though, just wanted to share my laugh.

[GrandpaBelcher]

Vintage strategy is probably the least important topic to us. Sorry, dude. We're just here to have fun playing Vintage with people. As a result, we're probably going to have more community oriented topics than any other. If there's not enough people to play against, it really doesn't matter when you try to resolve Ancestral.

I think it's pretty funny that someone with Grand Moff Tarkin as an avatar says that strategy is the least of his concerns, since Tarkin is like the strategical mastermind behind the Empire.

I get your point though, just wanted to share my laugh.

For all Tarkin's strategy, he still got blowed up.