new magic idea

[SnowFire]

JM: Sure. Say that everybody drafts a sealed deck composing of 10 boosters of their choice, from whatever expansion they'd like. Add as many basic lands as you'd like. Then make some decks!

There's nothing stopping us from doing lots of different things, too. We can use your idea AND play our own constructed decks too, for instance.

The main stopping point seems to be Apprentice's curious failure to work for some people here... so it only makes Alpha sealed decks?! That makes no sense... you'd think if it could do one, it could do 'em all...

[Jon Miller]

you can't pull down the drop menu to change the type of deck

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

yah

we will need a lot

I just tried to see how many cards I would have after 1 and 2 (1 main and 2 not mains) and I didn't even get enough cards to make a two color deck

I did get a chaos orb though

we would probably want to limit how many times you could draw from the earliest sets

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

its working now (weird)

warning, it only has older cards

Jon Miller

[SnowFire]

JM: Actually, 1 starter and 2 boosters (note that a starter = 3 boosters + land, generally) is the traditional amount for sealed deck play, although occasionally 3 boosters are used. You'd be surprised; you often can throw together 2 color decks without too much trouble. That said, I don't mind having a bigger card pool.

As for restrictions, the fewer restrictions the better, in my mind. I don't think earlier sets need to be restricted; sure, there are a few more brokenly powerful cards, but on the whole, the commons are a lot worse, which is actually more important for sealed play. Compare Pearled Unicorn (2W for a vanilla 2/2) in Alpha/Beta to Patrol Hound, a common in Odyssey (1W for a 2/2 with "discard a card: gains first strike until end of turn"). If there's one set that needs to be restricted, it'd be Tempest/Stronghold/Exodus. One of the mechanics in that series of expansions was "Shadow:" creatures with Shadow can only block or be blocked by other creatures with Shadow." Kind of like super-flying, except you can't block non-flyers (in this case, non-Shadow creatures). Being that none of the other expansions have Shadow creatures in them, somebody drafting Tempest could easily create an unstoppable, unblockable army that wins by about turn 6 with maybe a few wallish normal creatures to hold off your rush.

[Jon Miller]

yah I get you

but I have usually found shadow controlable

what about the fact that none of the newest sets is in the sealed deck drafter

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

actually what would be best is to have some sort of sealed generator

do that for 4 starters + 8 boosters, and than print the list of cards (it is somewhat ennoying to handle inside the utility given)

Jon Miller

[Immortal Wombat]

What you really need is an unofficial, unsanctioned version of Magic: Online. But with all the cards, not just the last three expansions. I guess you'd have to do the effects manually, because coding them all would be hell.

[Jon Miller]

I still don't see how it works (2 colored with 1 starter and 2 boosters)

I get only 40 cards, at most, in two colors from that

I only have 90 cards period

no way you can make a 2 color 60 card deck from that (on average)

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

and now the sealed deck generator for aprentice won't work again

this is weird

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
actually what would be best is to have some sort of sealed generator

do that for 4 starters + 8 boosters, and than print the list of cards (it is somewhat ennoying to handle inside the utility given)

Jon Miller

wait

even that is not enough to make a 60 card monocolor deck and have choice doing so

probably we need something like 8 starters and 16 boosters

JOn Mliler

[SnowFire]

Forgot to mention the obvious. Sealed deck games are generally played with 40 card decks. That's why there's enough stuff to support 2-color decks.

[Jon Miller]

ah

I like playing with 60 card decks a bit more

but maybe it is what I am use to

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

a 40 card two color deck from 1 starter and 2 boosters would still give ouy no choice (other than colors) though

I like choice (even 8 starters and 16 boosters seems a little slim)

Jon Miller

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by SnowFire
I don't have WinME though, so I'm not sure. Can ME emulate 98?

ME is just a newer version of 98, just like 98 is a newer version of 95.

Originally posted by SnowFire
As for index out of bounds error... um, this always happen?

Originally posted by SnowFire
Sometimes it gets screwy when adding in extra basic lands, but the generation has always worked for me. You aren't trying to make it generate 100 starter packs or something else ridiculous, are you?

Nope. I used 7th edition as the starter pack and 5 Invasion packs as boosters (this is probably where I went wrong). I told it to generate a deck with 40 minimum cards. Got the "out of bound error," and it gave me a bunch of lands. Nothing else.

Tried it again just now. Still doesn't work. This time, I specified using the 7th edition as the starter, with 2 Visions and 2 Planeshifts as boosters. I got a total of 22 basic lands before it bombed out.

If I removed the starter deck, I got 30 cards from the 2 Visions pack before it went poof. If I specified no minium deck size, it gave me 30 cards from Visions before going belly up.

I also got this message at the bottom "Drafting [Planeshift]..."

More upate: it works if I specify only one type of pack. It worked perfectly when I entered 4x Visions. Got 60 cards with no errors.

Even more updates: Unfortunately, only booster packs work that way. No starter decks.

Originally posted by SnowFire
Alternatively, in order to insure fair pricing, we can just crack open some booster packs and have people bid on the cards within. Everybody gets a $100, the GM cracks a booster pack and announces the cards in it to everyone, silent bids are submitted to a GM, whoever bid the highest on each card gets it (and if a card had no one bid on it, for some odd reason, it carries over to the next pack opened to be bid on again there). As a warning, this could be rather time-consuming: say with 6 players, we'd want to bid on 18 packs, so fast response would be helpful. Or we could just crack 2-3 packs at a time.

That's only workable with some sort of instant messager, such as ICQ or MSN.