Where have you been all summer?

Hello. I hope the summer has been filled with Magic.

This is just a brief introductory into what this group is currently and what it has been. We are a group of Magic: the Gathering players (just without official cosplay costumes) who meet about once a week and play casual games in a variety of formats, including drafting.

The group formed in June of 2010 and has been picking up members ever since. We've seen a lot over the last year as a group. People who have come and gone, sets that have come and gone, and decks that have been good and bad.

Currently we have been having our primary play day on Saturday in the evenings, and this seems to be the best day to gather the most people at once, so we will remain on this course for scheduling, unless anything else necessitates a change.

Statistics are an important part of most games that involves winning and losing, and in our group we have, in the past, kept up on this information for everyone's individual decks. We have gotten away from it over the summer months, and we are planning on getting it integrated back into the group. In order to facilitate this happening, we will need every member to submit each of their decks that they want to have stats tracked for. The stats include wins and losses for categories of play such as: Head's Up play, Free For All play, Archenemy games, EDH games, and tournaments and drafting. Each deck will have overall win/loss percentages tracked as well as overall wins and losses in each of the aforementioned categories. It is not required that decks be submitted for the spreadsheet, but only decks tracked on the spreadsheet for rankings will be able to have information tracked, as well as participate in Magic Mondays Group sanctioned tournaments.

I will reply to this post to give an idea of what information about your decks I will need, with regard to the spreadsheet.

Also, I am opening up this blog for other members to write about our get-togethers, or whatever else they have on their mind Magic related. Surely sometimes it might be neat to hear thoughts from other group members about decks they are conjuring up, or thoughts on specific cards or game-types.

If you would like to be involved let me know and I can email you the specifics on the blog to become an active scribe.

In addition, each get together needs to have someone assigned who is responsible for keeping track of the wins and losses of the games, as well as notes, and photos of the games and people involved to keep this blog's heart beating with a healthy pulse. I used to be able to do this seamlessly while still being able to play plenty of games each week, but I just can't foresee being able to do it consistently each week. Besides it may be nice to have different voices from week to week sharing their thoughts about our games.

I don't want this blog to get in the way of playing, however, as that is the main goal of getting together, which is partially why I let it sit on the back-burner all these months. I just wanted to play. If we pass the torch around, we can surely make this a much more lively blog to participate in.

Please let me know who is interested.

Additionally, I am thinking about group tournaments every month or so, that actually produces prizes and swag that you have a chance to win by destroying the competition with your deck. Or we could concoct some sort of light-hearted "league" or sorts where each week we play a number of "league" games against assigned opponents and the wins and losses of the league determine who makes the "play-offs" and the "championships".

I was thinking that we could fund something like this if members of the group were willing to shell out $5 each months towards getting prize cards, or prize swag for the winners. I want something to feel competitive but not so much that there is pressure. A prize could be something like: sweet high-quality deck sleeves, or a playmat, or a couple of single high-value cards that are mythic-rare etc.

I hope this lights a bit of a fire under the group to get creating on decks and ideas and to get playing some serious magic. Screw FNM! This is where the real Magic happens.