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By: Flippers_Giraffe, Simon Smith
Oct 22 2010 2:41am
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I'd like to start off this article by thanking everyone that joined in the second season. For those of you that haven't seen the event the Coalition League is a player run event, run by myself Flippers_Giraffe and sponsored by www.mtgotraders.com. The idea is to bring back leagues to MTGO, if you're wondering what is a league it's an event that run's over four weeks. On the first week you open a number of packs to make your starting pool and then each following week you open another pack to add to that pool to hopefully make your deck stronger. At the end of the four weeks prizes are awarded depending on the position you finish, there is also a gate prize for one lucky person who falls short of getting into the points.

For the second league we played core set boosters only. The event managed to keep the same player count as the first league even though there were a lot of different players, we hit 33 players this time round.

I'd like to thank the following people for helping to advertise the event Jeketerri, Godot and MalachiConstant from Limited Resources, also Jacobsldr for donating the prize for 4th place and everyone else who has helped out.

This is the pool I went into week one with which performed very well giving me 8 out of a possible 10 points, a lot of those were due to the excellent Grave Titan. Godot was the only player that had a perfect run and went straight to the number one position with 10 points. After my first game I dropped the Dark Tutelage as I found I wasn't playing it in fear of killing myself, I replaced it with another basic land instead.

On my second week I opened the following pack 

M11 - Week Two Booster 
 
Leyline of the Void

Leyline of the Void was a big letdown as there are not many cards that use the graveyard in the core sets. Considering my colours the best cards I thought for my deck were Gargoyle Sentinel as I was really lacking in flyers and Canyon Minotaur as he is a good mid range creature.

The second week played really badly for me as my deck hadn't improved much compared to the other players so I took a bit of a kicking. I really needed something in my next pack to bring the deck back online. Let's have a look and see what was in that pack.

M11 - Week Three Booster
 
Protean Hydra

It starts off with a nice rare Protean Hydra sadly though it's not in our colours though. Another Barony Vampire you can never say no to her. Juggernaut and Liliana's Specter are worth considering. So what did I include well I spent a few days going over the options and in the end decided that Protean Hydra was too good not to pass. In the end I rebuilt my deck in three colours Red, Black and Green usually this far into a league you start looking to drop a colour to make your deck more consistent but I took a risk and went the other way.

Here's the deck I made for week three.

Well it performed very well giving me 9 points that week which I was very happy with. I didn't do as well as Godot though who pulled another 10 points keeping him in first place.   

Let's have a look at pack three and see what goodness is held within for the final week.

M11 - Week Four Booster
 
Sunpetal Grove

Yes well week fours pack wasn't very useful. There is the possibility of Giant Growth and Cudgel Troll but I couldn't see anything worth dropping to include them in my deck, in the end I didn't include any of the cards in this pack and carried on into week four which turned out to be my worst week. The shuffler really hated me this week and I had really bad mana issues in all the games I played, I ended up walking away with just four points. 

That's what happened to me now let's have a look at the big picture of the event. 

Here's the count of the number of boosters used in the second season, as you might have guessed M11 was the top set but then it had only just been released so I wasn't expecting much else.

M11 - 170
M10 - 17
10th - 6
9th - 10
8th - 4
7th - 1

 

Now for the Mythic cards that were cracked in this league, have a look at these beauties.

 Grave Titan  Grave Titan Grave Titan Grave Titan

Baneslayer Angel Baneslayer Angel Baneslayer Angel Baneslayer Angel

Liliana Vess  Liliana Vess Liliana Vess Liliana Vess

Platinum Angel Platinum Angel Primeval Titan Primeval Titan

Ajani Goldmane Ajani goldmane Inferno Titan Inferno Titan

Jace Beleren Garruk Wildspeaker Gaea's Revenge 

That's a lot of Baneslayer Angel's and Titans there waiting to cause havoc. 

Now the players who made it into the prizes this season are as follows.

1st Place Bliven731 13 credits on www.mtgotraders.com you can see Bliven731's journey through the event in his articles found here.

2nd place Godot 8 credits on www.mtgotraders.com

3rd place varcoldf 4 credits on www.mtgotraders.com 

4th place Thisismich 2 tickets donated by jacobsldr

The door prize of 4 Protean Hydra’s went to fleibana 

Where did I come in the event? Well I didn't do as bad as I thought and managed to pull in 6th place just behind lolSTG. I must say I had lots of fun this season I nearly made it into the points and then took a big drop in the last week making me fall short. Here's a peak at the totals so you can see just how close the points were. Last season's champion pulled in just behind me.

Bliven731 36
Godot 34
varcoldf 30
Thisismich 29
lolSTG 28
Flippers_Giraffe 27
spree4567 26


Season Three 

Now season three is just round the corner and I'm hoping I can bring this article to you in time to spark your interest in joining the event. This season we will be playing on the plane of Mirrodin. The legal packs for the league this time round are Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin, Darksteel and Fifth Dawn. It's going to be an interesting ride through the artifact infested wastes. Season three starts on the 1st of November and you can find more details at the bottom of the article.

As per the last article for season two I'm going to show my packs so you can see what you're up against in the first week, let's get cracking. I decided to try adding a few packs of Fifth Dawn to my pool first, I was after Cranial Plating as it's going to be a bomb in this format let's see how lucky I was.

Fifth Dawn - Pack 1
 
The first pack started out nicely with Beacon of Destruction, this card is worth its weight in gold in limited as it goes straight back into your deck after you cast it. We have a nice big green creature in the form of Tyrranax and a Wayfarer's Bauble to help out on the mana front.

Fifth Dawn - Pack 2
 
My second pack of Fifth Dawn made my eyes light up in joy as I pulled Bringer of the Green Dawn, I've always liked playing this card in casual and will now have the chance to see it in action again. We have more mana excel in the form of Dawn's Reflection so green is looking like a stable colour. For red we gained Krark-Clan Engineers which could be very useful.

So after our too packs of Fifth Dawn it's looking like we will be going into the league with a  deck. The other three packs are going to be from Scars of Mirrodin, this is the reason this article is so late in the month as I had to wait for the set to be released to purchase the boosters.

Scars of Mirrodin - Pack 3
 
The first Scars pack has a duff rare which I have no intention of using Painful Quandary and it's off colour. Now here's the but, check out the rest of the black cards in this booster we have Painsmith, Skinrender and Contagious Nim all very good and pushing the possibilities of using black. There's also a Myr Galvanizer as well. I'll show you the cards as you may not be familiar with them yet.

Scars of Mirrodin - Pack 4
 
The second Scars pack says you will now be playing black as I pulled Carnifex Demon, this guy can be very evil but that's what you expect from a demon. There are a number of other nice cards in this pack Darksteel Axe a second Skinrender, Blistergrub and Memnite. Red just went out the window and we are now looking at a  deck  

Scars of Mirrodin - Pack 5
 
The final pack has a mythic which is really nice but it's so off colour that I won't be playing it Indomitable Archangel, now she would be great but it's not going to happen so my apologies to her. So what can we use, well we have Alpha Tyrranax and Carapace Forger which could be a really good card. Also we have a second Contagious Nim so we now have a mini poison theme going on.

After a bit of playing round my final deck going into the first week will be looking like this.

Now what's up for grabs in the third season, let's take a look

1st place 13 credits on www.mtgotraders.com

2nd place 8 credits on www.mtgotraders.com

3rd place 4 credits on www.mtgotraders.com

The door prize this season is an M11 Day of Judgment donated by Flippers_Giraffe, there is a possibility that another player will be adding a second but I've yet to meet them in game to confirm this.

I look forward to seeing you for a month of fun on the plane of Mirrodin.

Season Three Rules  

The third season will start on the 1st of November 2010 and will be based on Mirrodin. You can only use boosters from the following sets Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin, Darksteel and Fifth Dawn.

League Rules

There are quite a few rules as you would expect so please make sure you read all of them before deciding to join up when the second season starts.

Basic Rules

1.Leagues will run in four week periods with a break between each league so you don’t burn out and lose interest or burn me out as the case may be.

2.There will be three posts on the wizards Player Run Events forums

3.The first will be the same as this article showing the rules of the format, this is also where the results will be displayed at the end of each week.

4.The second is for you to enter your match results The Coalition League Result Post. The league will run from Monday to Sunday, all results must be entered at the end of each week on Sunday in your time zone.

5.The third The Coalition League Card Pool is for you to enter the cards you have opened in your packs each week. You will need to edit your original post each week to save space.

Advanced Rules

1. Players can join in at any point during the league but will be at a disadvantage as they will not be allowed to play extra games to make up for any weeks that they missed.

2. The room to join to find other members of the league community in game is/join Coalition type it into a chat window to enter the room.

3. At the start of the league you get to choose any five boosters as your starting pool from the following Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin, Darksteel and Fifth Dawn. Each Monday for the following three weeks you can open an additional booster to add extra cards to your pool, this is not mandatory you could play the whole league with your five starting boosters.

4. Minimum deck size will be 40 cards as per current sealed decks, you can have your entire card pool as your sideboard.

5. You may add as many basic lands from your collection as you need to your deck, this also includes your sideboard.

6. You may not add any other cards from your collection.

7a. When you open a booster you will be required to take a screen shot and paste it into paint and save it. You will need to update The Coalition League Card Pool post with the type of pack opened and the contents, but will not be required to upload the image you have just taken. This will need to be saved and may be asked for in case of a dispute.

7b. As a request for budget players I'm also giving you the option to have randomly generated booster packs instead. If you desire generated boosters you will need to send me a message via the forum and I will generate the packs required and send the results to you so you can add them to the card pool thread.

8. You may sell any cards you wish from the packs as this will only affect your pool, but you cannot add any to take their place.

9a. If you open boosters you may not use different versions of cards as proxies you can only use the versions opened from your boosters, this rule does not apply to foil cards which may be sold and replaced with a non foil version from the same set.

9b. If you have generated boosters requested via myself Flippers_Giraffe you may use different versions of the cards as proxies.

10. The Coalition League Result Post must contain your online ID and your opponents with the score. Both players are required to submit a post.

For example W vs playera 2-1

11. The cut off for entering results is the end of Sunday night in your time zone, as I will be updating the results on Monday I will be able to capture all time zones.

12. If anyone is found cheating they will be banned for ever from every event that I run so be warned.

Playing League Games

All games are to be played in the anything goes room and must be marked “The Coalition League” games will be 2/3 30 mins and must be made watchable and in the Freeform format.

You may only play each player once a week

You can only play 5 league games a week

The Sunday Catch Up Rule

If you have not played all your games you may play players who have already played their five games for the week. You both record you scores as normal the player who has played 5 or more games must put a note on their result page to show it as a “Sunday catch up game”  they will not receive points for this game.

Also on Sundays players can use the Sunday catch up rule to play games they are missing from previous weeks as well.

Note you may still only play a player once for each week even if it’s a catch up game, this could result in you playing the same person twice in a row but the games must be recorded for different weeks on the results page.

Points and Prizes

The prize support is as follows

1st Place 13 credit on www.mtgotraders.com

2nd Place 8 credit on www.mtgotraders.com

3rd Place 4 credit on www.mtgotraders.com

Points will be awarded for each round won.

At the end of each league the top three players will be awarded credit from our sponsor MTGOTraders. There will also be a gate prize for a random player who didn’t make the top three but played in each week of the league this will be donated by myself Flippers_Giraffe, the season three gate prize is an M11 Day of Judgment.

Please remember the sponsor www.MTGOTraders.com when purchasing boosters/singles for the league without them there would be no prizes.

At the end of each week the main The Coalition League post will be updated with the rankings, at the end of the four weeks (last day 28th of November 2010) the top three players will win the prizes. In the case of a tie then I will deduct any loses from their points to work out who out of the tied players works out with the highest points. If this is still the same then a playoff will be required.


Links

 Tribal Apocalypse

The Rare Drafter - September

The Coalition League

 

8 Comments

Pretty awesome that you've by Xaoslegend at Fri, 10/22/2010 - 05:00
Xaoslegend's picture
5

Pretty awesome that you've gotten a full fledged league running like this. Necessity being the mother of invention and industry has certianly found a way to bring leagues to life.

Thanks for being someone willing to put in the time to make MTGO better, clearly longer than myself heh.

X-

Flippers, I just can applaud by Lord Erman at Fri, 10/22/2010 - 06:04
Lord Erman's picture
5

Flippers, I just can applaud you for the service you provide. Leagues were the main entertainment of many players back in the day and now thanks to you and your sponsor MTGOTraders, they can once again enjoy leagues.

I was only a part of this fun for a short period during the first league and I wished I had more spare time to be a (bigger) part of it.

Well done and keep up the good work. It is being appreciated.

LE

I really really wanted to by JustSin at Fri, 10/22/2010 - 08:10
JustSin's picture

I really really wanted to play in Season 2 after my awesome showing in season 1 with coldsnap, but I just didn't have the time to do so, one thing I think you didn't mention here was a date for season 3, is it too late to jump in or has it already started?

edit: nvm i see it, Nov 1

Thanks for running the by themonkey at Fri, 10/22/2010 - 08:48
themonkey's picture

Thanks for running the League! After a great season 1 and missing season 2, I'm looking forward to season 3.

I didn't play all of my by lumbydan at Fri, 10/22/2010 - 11:37
lumbydan's picture

I didn't play all of my matches in season 2 but still had a blast. I am looking forward to season 3.

I'd just like to confirm that by Flippers_Giraffe at Sat, 10/23/2010 - 19:09
Flippers_Giraffe's picture

I'd just like to confirm that the door prize for season three is now upto 2 Day of Judgment's. Thanks go to elliottATL for donating the second.

What is the etiquette for by mi5280 at Sun, 10/24/2010 - 16:19
mi5280's picture

What is the etiquette for opening a booster for the coalition league and forgetting to take a screenshot?

PM me via the Wizards forum, by Flippers_Giraffe at Sun, 10/24/2010 - 19:38
Flippers_Giraffe's picture

PM me via the Wizards forum, thanks