Patriot Games

Monday 27 October 2014

Written Invitation

I feel very lucky; I have got to play a lot of cards and clix in the last week.  I did my first Conspiracy draft – I loved the format and the interaction of the Conspiracies but felt that the cards in the set were a little lacklustre and I felt this was an opportunity to reprint a lot of good legacy and modern cards which has been missed.  The dethrone mechanic is great and causes some interesting decisions.

This guy did a lot of work for me in Conspiracy...


I've also had the chance to draft Modern Masters again and I have to admit for the first time not draft it for “value” as none of the cards were mine.  It is a great draft set and you wish that conspiracy was as good.  I drafted a Fairy/Dinosaur deck and ruled the skies with my abundance of fliers and ground based fatties.

...and this guy was great in Modern Masters.


But I am guessing you did not come here to hear about what I drafted in the last week right?  You want to know about the invitational don’t you?  Ok then let’s get this done then.  I can now confirm that the price will be £25 and this will be the only cost to you regardless of where you get to in the competition.  AT the end of day one anyone who has not made the top 16 will get 2 boosters in prize support and a promo of some description subject to availability.  The person who comes 17th will receive 3 boosters in prize support as well as a promo as they came “so close”.

The top 16 will come back for day 2 which will include 4 rounds of Modern followed by a Khans of Tarkir booster draft in 2 pods of 8.  The pods will be based on the standings at that point.  Players who come between 16 – 9 will receive an additional 3 boosters in prize support.  Players who come in the top 8 will receive a number of boosters which will scale dependent on the number of players who participate.

KHAN!!!!! Sorry had to do that.

The top 6 players will become the Steel City Patriots team for 2014 – 2015.  In the past the team’s entry to Pro Tour Qualifiers and Grand Prix has been covered by a sponsorship deal for the top 6.  However, as I am sure you are aware; from February 2015 there is a dramatic change to the PTQ system with shops being able to run 1 PPTQ each season with the winner in each case qualifying to play in a Regional PTQ (which will be free to enter).  I don’t think there is a Magic player in the country that has not crunched the numbers and knows that there could possibly be 5 PPTQs every Saturday and Sunday with a massive variance at the moment with regards to price.  It is not possible for Patriot Games to cover PPTQs in the same way as it did PTQs as the cost would be excessive (in the region of £6,000)!  We are looking at other alternatives for the team prize and will let you know what we have decided in this handy dandy blog thingy next week.

The regional PTQ promo.


There is one more piece of information I need to let you know before I go.  I had a number of messages through Face Book from people wanting to be a part of the invitational who had not got invites.  As we have not been able to run any qualifiers this year, as I mentioned this week, the players who have got invites have done so due to regularly turning up or because they have done something significant with regards to Magic in Sheffield; Mike Radford once gave us 2 funky boosters to use in a chaos draft and that pretty much got him invites for life.  This year 3 members of the auto invite top 16 from last year are unable to attend for various reasons and have graciously offered their spots up to others (thanks Lee Parker, James Brook and Quinton Lip).  As a result I am very pleased to announce the following players are now invited;

  • Lino Lurgold
  • James Platten
  • Michael Kelly



These are the only changes to the list published last week.  There may well be other deserving players out there but a line has to be drawn and this is where we draw it for this year.  I look forward to seeing you all in less than 2 weeks.  Final details with regards times etc. will be in next week’s blog.

Monday 20 October 2014

You are cordially invited...

I haven’t been here for a while.  I shut up shop on this blog on July 5th 2013 with no intention of returning.  I am glad to see that despite my absence we have had another 5,000 hits since I stopped working on it last year.

This guy was in standard last time I did this...

I am also very aware that a lot of you will be going “who is this guy?” as you have started to play in the last 18 months and have quite possibly never met me.  In answer to that question let me just say I am a guy who has a lot of awesome friends who play magic, some of them are even quite good at it.  At one point I had a lot to do with running MTG in Sheffield and that seemed to go quite well.

The other question which I need to answer as it was asked several times over the past weekend – “So is this you back playing Magic?”  Well not exactly.  I have played games day over the last weekend and enjoyed it managing to come 8th both days with my slightly powered up event deck and enjoyed the games despite my numerous play mistakes and that I ended up with only 22 lands in my deck on Sunday (DOH)!  You won’t be seeing me at PTQs, PPTQs or FNM each Friday (although if Mark Smith will have me it would be good to get the 2HG team back together again).  However, I may drop in for an hour or 2 to play some EDH when I have the time.

Apparently this guy is still not banned in legacy...


So why resurrect a sleeping blog?  Well it seemed the best way to talk about something I hope you are going to be excited about; the Patriot Sheffield Magic Invitational!  Two years ago we held the inaugural one of these and it was a great success.  Last year we had another and that went pretty well too. 

For the uninitiated the Invitational is a special tournament over a weekend, in this case the weekend of 8th – 9th November 2014, where a selection of Magic players in Sheffield are invited to compete to win one of the places on the official Steel City Patriots Magic Team.  On the Saturday there will be 4 rounds of sealed deck play using Khan’s of Tarkir products, followed by 4 rounds of Standard constructed play.  When the scores have been tallied the top 16 will be invited back to play day 2 with 4 rounds of modern followed by 3 rounds of draft and the crowning of the winners.

And Rosewater thought this was a good idea to put back in Standard!

So here is the list of players for the 2014 Patriot Games Sheffield invitational:


Joe
Alexander
Wale
Awelenise
Edward
Barker
Patrick
Bateman
Greg
Blackburn
Mike
Boon
Dave
Bradburn
James
Brook
John
Butler
Andy
Callander
Ailiah
Carr
Adam
Clark
Daniel
Cocking
Tom
Colier
Sean
Crowley
Theo
DeBray
Stavrina
Demosthenous
Dave
Eaveson
Laura
Fitzgerald
Grzegorz
Flis
Oliver
Frith
Richard
Fuller
Gideon
Hamlett
Henry
Hart
Tom
Hogg
Jordan
Hunter
Jaisal
Jivabhai
Stephen
Kay
John
Kay
Alistair
Kennedy
Sean
Li
Quinton
Lip
Sam
Luca-Rolf
Andrew
Mather
Steve
McAleer
Abbey
Moore
Chris
North
Lee
Parker
Ben
Pearson
Ian
Picker
Steven
Pickles
Jon
Potts
Matthew
Presley
Fabian
Quinn
Mike
Radford
Ian
Richardson
Matthew
Riggall
Jake
Scott
Mike
Shillitoe
Mark
Smith
Luke
Southworth
Ash
Thompson
Richard
Tinsley
Robert
Tinsley
Andrew
Varg
Diarmud
Verrier
Sam
Waters
Chris
White
Jimmy
Wild
Jordan
Woodward


This list has been put together by a panel and represents a cross section of the players in Sheffield.  We have a limited number of places and the top 16 from last year along with a number of others auto-qualify.  This year in the same way that the first invitational was run, people have been invited due to their services to Sheffield magic play as it has not been possible to run any qualifying events in 2014.  Hopefully next year we will have some qualifiers again.

Apologies for any dodgy spelling, names were taken from the FNM record books and may not be 100% accurate.  I will have more details for you next week, till then feel free to message me/shout at me on face book.