Frequently Asked Questions

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QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW IT WORKS

How do you keep the entry price so low?

We're able to keep our entry costs at around 10-30% of what you'd expect to pay on the open market for similar sealed card pools by building and using repacks where we can control the collation.  We start with full sets of cards (so that we GUARANTEE the premium cards will be opened by someone in the tournament) and add in duplicates into the pool to get to the requisite amount of cards (e.g. there are only 75 unique commons in Unlimited, but we need 5400 total Unlimited common cards for the pool). 

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CARD POOL

Are the cards going to be NM?  LP?  MP?  HP?  Damaged?  Signed?

There is a wide range of card conditions, which is a big part of how we're able to keep the price so affordable.  While there are some NM cards and many well-loved cards, the average card is in MP/HP condition.  For the premier cards (P9, Duals, Time Vault, Chaos Orb, Tabernacle, Workshop, Bazaar, Library, etc), you can find scans of the actual cards here.  There are also a handful of signed cards, but overall we've tried to steer clear of them as much as possible where we can.

What are my odds of pulling a Power Nine card?

There are two full sets of Power Nine (18 cards total), and 240 total Unlimited rares in the pool, so each rare has a 7.5% chance of being a Power Nine card.  Since you get 2 rares per Unlimited Starter, you can multiply that by 2 and get to a roughly 15% likelihood of pulling a Power Nine card.  

Can I open a Starter deck with two Black Lotuses (or two of the same rare)?  Or two of the same Uncommon or Common?

No.  Each repacked Starter will be made using rares from a given Unlimited set, rather than the full pool of Unlimited rare cards.  This is to emulate original collation in the Starters as much as possible (where similarly you could not get two of the same card).  The same is true for Uncommons and Commons.

What about basic lands?  Will my starter contain any of those?

No.  The original starters contained basic lands (even in the Uncommon slot) so that people could have them to build decks with.  These remastered starter decks are meant to optimize for a more enjoyable limited environment, which means having more playable cards instead of a lot of basic lands that don't improve your final deck.

What are my odds of pulling a Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale from a "Four Horsemen" booster?  Mishra's Workshop?  Bazaar of Baghdad?  The Abyss?  Moat?  Library of Alexandria?  Chains of Mephistopheles?  Juzam Djinn? 

There are 360 rares in the "Four Horsemen" pool, and exactly one copy each of Tabernacle, Workshop, Bazaar, Abyss, Moat, Library, Chains, Juzam, etc.  This means for any given one of these cards there is a 1-in-360 chance of getting it in your booster, or 0.28% per booster.  Since you get 3 boosters, your personal odds of pulling any specific one of these cards is 0.83%.  Of the 8 specific cards listed here, your odds of getting *any* one of them (e.g. not a specific one) is roughly 6-7%

Will I get any Chronicles or Italian Legends in my pool?

No.  Every card here is from the original expansion set, and all in English.

Will I get any cards from any set other than Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, or The Dark?  

No.  Every card in the pool is from one of these sets.  There is just one caveat - several thousand Unlimited common cards were purchased for this tournament, and on a few occasions I sifted out Revised cards that were mistakenly sent as Unlimiteds.  I believe I have filtered all Revised cards from the pool (and particularly for the Rares and valuable Uncommons this is 100% true)...although there is a very small chance a random low value common card may be Revised instead of Unlimited.

What about BGS Graded cards?  Are any BGS graded cards part of the pool?

Yes, rather than cracking the case for some of these high-grade BGS cards, we have included them as part of the pool via "special redemption card" which you can play in the tournament.  There is only 1 BGS graded cards (a BGS 9.0 Invoke Prejudice) in the pool.

Since you mentioned Invoke Prejudice, are the "banned for race depictions" cards still part of this pool?

Yes.  Full sets of each set were included.  While we do not condone racism, we simply want to have a tournament with all of the cards from this era of Magic, therefore Invoke Prejudice, Cleanse, Stone-Throwing Devils, Pradesh Gypsies, Imprison, Jihad, and Crusade are all part of the card pool.

Since you know what cards are in the card pool, you know what the Expected Value of the average cardpool is, right?  Can you share this information with us?

We are super transparent about this - you can find detailed information here.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TOURNAMENT & GAMEPLAY?

What are the details for the actual tournament?  When is it, where is it, and how much will it cost to enter?

Due to COVID, we're still working on the details for how and when to have a large gathering in-person tournament.  Most likely it will be Q4 2021 or 1H 2022 in Las Vegas.  Please sign up for our email (no spam, no selling your info - just info about this tournament) to receive information about the tournament when things are finalized. 

Ok, that makes sense, but you can at least say the cost, surely?

Well, yes and no.  We are using the EV of the card pool as a driver of the entry fee - so if this tournament isn't able to be run until end of 2021, and card prices tank, we want to be able to adjust entry fees downward so the entry fee isn't out of whack with what you can expect to get.  

We're targeting an entry fee that is between 10-30% of the cost to open a similar sealed card pool, and to have the EV of the average pool itself to be in the 50-70% range of the cost of entry.  With that said, we will not charge more than $4,000 for the entry fee, and it is most likely going to be less than that.

What are the rules of the Tournament?  Modern or Old School rules?

Sorry Old School fans, this tournament will be played by Modern Rules.  Just easier for everyone to understand.

Will we be playing for ante?  If not, what are the rules with the Ante cards?

No, you will not be playing for ante.  Although you can open the cards themselves (as they are part of the set), you cannot play with the ante cards (Bronze Tablet, Contract from Below, Darkpact, Demonic Attorney, Jeweled Bird, Rebirth, Tempest Efreet) as they are all banned from play in this tournament.

How will you handle oddball cards like Ring of Ma'Ruf, Chaos Orb, Falling Star?

We will use the Eternal Central errata, which you can find here (Updated Errata and Wording for Falling Star, Chaos Orb, and Ring of Ma’rûf – Eternal Central ).  Manual dexterity cards will not give undue punishment or gain for temporary card positioning.  Chaos Orb will be limited to target one permanent and can rearrange the target card after declared a target.  The player casting Falling Star can rearrange the creatures targeted with Falling Star, but they must be non-overlapping (e.g. you can't stack all the creatures into one pile).  Ring of Ma'Ruf is limited to only cards in exile or from your sideboard.

What steps are you taking to guarantee the randomness of the card pool for every player?  What steps are you taking to ensure no collusion (e.g. you give the pack with the Black Lotus to someone you know)?

Transparency and trust in the process are of utmost importance for the success of this tournament.  There are several ways I've built processes to guarantee that everyone has a equal and random chance at any given card.  

(1) Each starter and booster will be fully separated, and each person will be allowed to select their own Starter and 3 Boosters.  

(2) Each person is able to (and will be encouraged to) "mix-up" the order of starters and boosters after they have selected theirs.

(3) The order of who gets to select 1st vs. 120th will be determined through a random physical drawing (pieces of paper numbered 1-120 and put into a bag), to be selected at registration.

(4) The person in charge of developing the packs will not the same person in charge of handing packs out during the tournament.

All of these steps are taken to ensure that collusion is simply not possible.  If you have other suggestions for methods I can implement in order to guarantee that no collusion is possible, please let me know your suggestions via email.