As I recall, the draft supported principally 3-color decks during 3x Shards, then allowed 5-color decks during Conflux, and finally shifted to encouraging 2-color decks during Alara Reborn. You can see this if you look at the common color fixing available in each set - Shards fixing fixed 3 colors, Conflux fixed 5, Reborn fixed (mostly) 2.
Although lots of people liked any opportunity to go five color, the set really didn't support more than 1 or 2 people doing so even during Conflux draft. More likely would be that you put all five basics into the deck to enable domain. The aggressive decks were typically good enough that going 5 color wasn't a great choice.
I've played UWR control quite a bit. Here's the cards I hate to see across from me. You can probably put them into the sideboard of many decks.
Blood Moon: Probably responsible for half or more of my match losses with UWR. Make sure you know how to bait out counters so you can land it. Suppression Field: Shuts off fetch lands, Colonnade, Planeswalkers. Not as good against Restoration Angel builds. Defense Grid: Good if you have powerful sorcery speed stuff and don't care as much about doing stuff on their turn. Lingering Souls: A good threat against everything except Electrolyze, and still needs 2 Electrolyze to deal with 1 Lingering Souls. Fulminator Mage: Beats down OK, kills a land if they try to kill it.
OP: I've experienced this before at basically every shop I've gone to in the greater Chicagoland area since about the Gatecrash prerelease. It's a huge pain.
I've experienced situations like this for prereleases, I don't see what the big deal is, just wait an extra week. Are people honestly getting this greedy?
There's lots of reasons you might not want to come back for your packs: If you're going to a shop that isn't your normal LGS, if you'll be busy the following weekend, if you want to do a draft with your friends between the prerelease and the release. If I was out of town at a store I'm never visiting again and this happened I'd be pretty upset.
I took a pretty standard Treasure Mage list to modern night last night. Deck was super fun to play. I beat Cruel Control, RWU midrange and affinity, lost to splinter twin in round 4 (probably would have lost to affinity if my opponent was more familiar with the deck). Does anyone have advice against Splinter Twin? Twin deck beat me by playing out Snapcaster Mage and Pestermite while keeping counters up and threatening to combo me out if I did anything on my turn. It seemed like a bunch of my sideboard could be good against it, but only if he's careless enough to go for the combo with no protection. Also felt like I had a lot of trouble against Inkmoth Nexus vs. affinity since Repeal et al is "nonland permanent".
Squelch was amazing. Felt like I couldn't lose if I squelched a fetchland.
You say you do much worse at Sealed than at Standard, not much worse than you do at Draft. If you don't play much limited, it might be useful for you to familiarize yourself with the kind of cards that are good in Limited. Serra Angel for example doesn't see much Standard play but is awesome in Limited, while cards like Judge's Familiar might be good enough in Standard but are below average in Limited. I'd suggest looking up limited reviews from a high-profile source, like LSV's at ChannelFireball.
A lot of people playing limited stick terrible limited cards in their decks. When I first began eliminating bad cards from my deck, it was amazing how much easier limited became. Sometimes you might see a player piloting a winning deck with a bad card in it, but that's either an advanced maneuver or a case of that player getting lucky.
I've seen a bunch of these cards played at modern night at my LGS.
-One guy running what I would call a mono-W prison deck ran Suppression Field, Ghostly Prison, Defense Grid, as well as Squadron Hawk and Mistveil Plains. As you might be able to imagine, this deck was highly annoying to play against, especially with fetch lands being affected by Suppression Field.
-I've seen Spell Pierce run in a UR Delver list
-One of my friends put together a grixis control deck running Anger of the Gods to kill Nacatl and Kird Ape.
-Infect decks play Rancor.
-I've seen a scapeshift deck play Telling Time. Don't know if it was any good or not.
You don't have to first pick whims of the fates. Unless your table is nothing but savages who rare-draft all of the time, it'll probably wheel. Even if you are drafting with goldbugs who infrequently pass rares, they'll likely take a pass on this one.
I P1P1'd this from a fairly weak pack at a store draft on Monday and it was pretty great. Comparisons to Two Headed Cerberus don't do it justice because bestow is such an awesome ability, and 6 mana is very affordable. In one memorable turn I strapped this onto my Elite Skirmisher, tapped down my opponent's blocker and swung for 8 out of nowhere, completely turning the race around. Bestowing on to basically any bear was great, and suiting him up with a Nyxborn Shieldmate on turn 4 was also awesome.
With the second deck, what are you playing so many forests (and so few swamps) for? Other than Reaper of the Wilds and Pharika's Mender (which you aren't even playing) your green isn't very good.
Your blue and black cards are very good, so making a deck out of those would be best. Unfortunately you only have Asphyxiate and Hero's Downfall as early ways to interact with your opponent's creatures, but Downfall is good enough to make up for that. Keepsake Gorgon is powerful but slow.
Some cards, like Aqueous Form, should really only be played as a one-of in most decks. Your deck in particular might be slow enough that it doesn't want that card at all.
Siren Song Lyre is a strong enough effect in this format that it might be worth playing even if you don't play that many creatures.
Overall, you mostly need to evaluate the cards a little better and try hard to build a 2-color deck. I'm going to guess you frequently had mana problems and that led to your losses. 3 swamps + karametra's favor isn't enough to cast hero's downfall.
"I was into X before it was cool"
"Oh me? I like X, you probably haven't heard of it"
Serious question: Has anyone actually heard these words come out of someone's mouth? I spend a bunch of time around hipsters (Magic tournaments in Chicago anymore are about 1/3 hipsters) and haven't heard this sentiment. Maybe midwest hipsters are just more mellow than coastal ones.
For the most part, I've found that if you actually engage with people who are really into fashion or music or whatever they tend to be very earnestly excited about it. I was at this hipster coffee shop, heard some music I'd never heard before on the speakers so I asked the guy working there about it. He was very happy to tell me who it was and talk about it for a bit. If you ask a bearded bartender for beer recommendations you'll probably get some discourse about his favorite ones.
If you're a jerk about your bad taste - if you demand a Miller Lite at a fancy beer bar that doesn't stock that stuff, or if you ask the guy at the hipster coffee shop to put on Mumford and Sons - then you might get a bad attitude. But if you put some effort into being interested in what other people are into instead of dismissing them because they wear skinny jeans and have thick-rimmed glasses, most hipsters are very nice.
Also, is there a particular reason you want to live in the loop? I know some people that lived actually in the loop and didn't enjoy it, and I lived in the Near North area for a while and didn't particularly enjoy that either. The loop is mostly businesses, and doesn't have much in the way of neighborhood amenities for "normal" (IE, not super-rich) people. Even near-Loop places tend to be high rises and lack a neighborhood feel.
Downtown is easily accessible by the L, and depending upon where you work it should be easy to get a place that's a sub-20 minute commute in your price range. Areas I'd look at if I were moving today would be Lakeview/Lincoln park (lots of recent college grads, fairly bro-heavy, good access to the lakefront), Lincoln Square/Northcenter (more kids and young families than Lakeview, fewer sports bars, still a nice area) or Logan Square (Lots of hipsters, better Mexican food than on the north side, good access to some of my favorite places).
I have a question for people that dislike Theros draft: How much of your opinion of the format is tied up in Wingsteed Rider and/or the Ordeal cycle? I find that if someone puts pants on a T3 rider (even if it's just Chosen by Heliod) I pretty much want to concede on the spot if I don't have an answer in hand - even if I eventually deal with it, they'll have gotten such a huge advantage and I'll have spent so much effort dealing with it that I'm going to have trouble dealing with the next threat. Similar with a T2/T3 Ordeal, particularly if I can't answer it before it goes off. I guess in some sense that's the point of the format, but in another sense it makes the format seem random and not fun.
On the other hand, games that don't involve Rider or an Ordeal are pretty fun and interactive. Even uncommon heroic creatures like Favored Hoplite and Phalanx Leader are more OK because they show up less frequently.
Get six or eight people together to go in on a box. That'll be about $15-18 each, maybe less if you're getting a low-value set like M14. Draft the box or make sealed decks or whatever you're interested in - don't just crack open the packs, try to do something fun. Get the other people to agree that they can keep the rares and a few commons/uncommons but they'll donate most of the commons and uncommons to the club. Use those to build intro decks.
OR
Go to a local game store on draft night (I understand that it's a ways away, but you can probably do this once or twice and get a lot of cards, depending upon the size of the event). Introduce yourself to the owner and judge, explain what you're up to. Participate in the event yourself if you can. At the end of the draft, ask if anyone would like to donate unwanted cards from the draft to your club - you can maybe ask the judge to make this announcement for you if you're feeling apprehensive. There's probably several degenerate drafters who will know that they don't need a 10th Nimbus Naiad or a 15th Vulpine Goliath and will be happy to donate them to you, particularly now as Theros has been drafted a lot.
Most of the experienced players at the shops I go to are happy to give cards to less experienced players, I'm sure there's a similar dynamic near you.
Here's another Tom Lapille quote from Innistrad previewsthat had always driven me crazy. It's really 100% the opposite of what I personally want Magic to be:
Wasn't this quote about Silent Departure? Instant-speed silent departure would have wrecked the ISD limited format. And there were instant-speed flashback spells that affected the board, like Geistflame and, depending upon your definition of affected the board, Feeling of Dread. They were less powerful than silent departure, though. There were almost certainly perfectly reasonable power-level reasons for making it a sorcery even if you disagree with Tom's gameplay logic.
Also I completely agree with Tom on this one: getting blown out by an instant-speed flashedback Silent Departure that you forgot would be a feel-bad moment. So would getting Silent Departure-locked if you remembered it, where you can't cast a pump spell or make a block because you know your opponent will blow you out. In fact, I'd say the second one would be more feel-bad than the first.
I'm part of a couple of things sorta similar to this, though I don't organize them. In addition to what other people have said:
Organize over facebook or meetup.com or something similar. This lets people who go to one or two of these add their friends easily and might let people who are interested find you even if they don't know anyone. If you're doing it on facebook, make a group and add people to it.
Do drafts primarily at least at first. With constructed tournaments its hard for you to add much of a value over four guys at a kitchen table. With drafts, you're providing the value by getting 8 people together and by having the product.
Some guys in San Francisco made a google app to do swiss pairings. It's a little rough to use at first, but I'm sure you can figure it out if you don't have access to Event Reporter. You can find it here: http://mtgarena.appspot.com/
The guys who made the app apparently do something similar to what you want to do, you can read about it here: http://sfmagic.org/wp/
I've only ever used the app, I am not affiliated with this group.
Try to have it the same time each week. If you want to run a tournament on, say, Wednesday, put up a post trying to gauge interest on a Monday so that people have time to see it, check their schedules and respond.
Although lots of people liked any opportunity to go five color, the set really didn't support more than 1 or 2 people doing so even during Conflux draft. More likely would be that you put all five basics into the deck to enable domain. The aggressive decks were typically good enough that going 5 color wasn't a great choice.
Blood Moon: Probably responsible for half or more of my match losses with UWR. Make sure you know how to bait out counters so you can land it.
Suppression Field: Shuts off fetch lands, Colonnade, Planeswalkers. Not as good against Restoration Angel builds.
Defense Grid: Good if you have powerful sorcery speed stuff and don't care as much about doing stuff on their turn.
Lingering Souls: A good threat against everything except Electrolyze, and still needs 2 Electrolyze to deal with 1 Lingering Souls.
Fulminator Mage: Beats down OK, kills a land if they try to kill it.
There's lots of reasons you might not want to come back for your packs: If you're going to a shop that isn't your normal LGS, if you'll be busy the following weekend, if you want to do a draft with your friends between the prerelease and the release. If I was out of town at a store I'm never visiting again and this happened I'd be pretty upset.
Squelch was amazing. Felt like I couldn't lose if I squelched a fetchland.
A lot of people playing limited stick terrible limited cards in their decks. When I first began eliminating bad cards from my deck, it was amazing how much easier limited became. Sometimes you might see a player piloting a winning deck with a bad card in it, but that's either an advanced maneuver or a case of that player getting lucky.
-One guy running what I would call a mono-W prison deck ran Suppression Field, Ghostly Prison, Defense Grid, as well as Squadron Hawk and Mistveil Plains. As you might be able to imagine, this deck was highly annoying to play against, especially with fetch lands being affected by Suppression Field.
-I've seen Spell Pierce run in a UR Delver list
-One of my friends put together a grixis control deck running Anger of the Gods to kill Nacatl and Kird Ape.
-Infect decks play Rancor.
-I've seen a scapeshift deck play Telling Time. Don't know if it was any good or not.
Your blue and black cards are very good, so making a deck out of those would be best. Unfortunately you only have Asphyxiate and Hero's Downfall as early ways to interact with your opponent's creatures, but Downfall is good enough to make up for that. Keepsake Gorgon is powerful but slow.
Some cards, like Aqueous Form, should really only be played as a one-of in most decks. Your deck in particular might be slow enough that it doesn't want that card at all.
Siren Song Lyre is a strong enough effect in this format that it might be worth playing even if you don't play that many creatures.
Overall, you mostly need to evaluate the cards a little better and try hard to build a 2-color deck. I'm going to guess you frequently had mana problems and that led to your losses. 3 swamps + karametra's favor isn't enough to cast hero's downfall.
Serious question: Has anyone actually heard these words come out of someone's mouth? I spend a bunch of time around hipsters (Magic tournaments in Chicago anymore are about 1/3 hipsters) and haven't heard this sentiment. Maybe midwest hipsters are just more mellow than coastal ones.
For the most part, I've found that if you actually engage with people who are really into fashion or music or whatever they tend to be very earnestly excited about it. I was at this hipster coffee shop, heard some music I'd never heard before on the speakers so I asked the guy working there about it. He was very happy to tell me who it was and talk about it for a bit. If you ask a bearded bartender for beer recommendations you'll probably get some discourse about his favorite ones.
If you're a jerk about your bad taste - if you demand a Miller Lite at a fancy beer bar that doesn't stock that stuff, or if you ask the guy at the hipster coffee shop to put on Mumford and Sons - then you might get a bad attitude. But if you put some effort into being interested in what other people are into instead of dismissing them because they wear skinny jeans and have thick-rimmed glasses, most hipsters are very nice.
http://apartmentpeople.com/ (I used this one the last time I was looking)
http://www.chicagoapartmentfinders.com/
http://www.domu.com/
Also, is there a particular reason you want to live in the loop? I know some people that lived actually in the loop and didn't enjoy it, and I lived in the Near North area for a while and didn't particularly enjoy that either. The loop is mostly businesses, and doesn't have much in the way of neighborhood amenities for "normal" (IE, not super-rich) people. Even near-Loop places tend to be high rises and lack a neighborhood feel.
Downtown is easily accessible by the L, and depending upon where you work it should be easy to get a place that's a sub-20 minute commute in your price range. Areas I'd look at if I were moving today would be Lakeview/Lincoln park (lots of recent college grads, fairly bro-heavy, good access to the lakefront), Lincoln Square/Northcenter (more kids and young families than Lakeview, fewer sports bars, still a nice area) or Logan Square (Lots of hipsters, better Mexican food than on the north side, good access to some of my favorite places).
On the other hand, games that don't involve Rider or an Ordeal are pretty fun and interactive. Even uncommon heroic creatures like Favored Hoplite and Phalanx Leader are more OK because they show up less frequently.
Get six or eight people together to go in on a box. That'll be about $15-18 each, maybe less if you're getting a low-value set like M14. Draft the box or make sealed decks or whatever you're interested in - don't just crack open the packs, try to do something fun. Get the other people to agree that they can keep the rares and a few commons/uncommons but they'll donate most of the commons and uncommons to the club. Use those to build intro decks.
OR
Go to a local game store on draft night (I understand that it's a ways away, but you can probably do this once or twice and get a lot of cards, depending upon the size of the event). Introduce yourself to the owner and judge, explain what you're up to. Participate in the event yourself if you can. At the end of the draft, ask if anyone would like to donate unwanted cards from the draft to your club - you can maybe ask the judge to make this announcement for you if you're feeling apprehensive. There's probably several degenerate drafters who will know that they don't need a 10th Nimbus Naiad or a 15th Vulpine Goliath and will be happy to donate them to you, particularly now as Theros has been drafted a lot.
Most of the experienced players at the shops I go to are happy to give cards to less experienced players, I'm sure there's a similar dynamic near you.
Wasn't this quote about Silent Departure? Instant-speed silent departure would have wrecked the ISD limited format. And there were instant-speed flashback spells that affected the board, like Geistflame and, depending upon your definition of affected the board, Feeling of Dread. They were less powerful than silent departure, though. There were almost certainly perfectly reasonable power-level reasons for making it a sorcery even if you disagree with Tom's gameplay logic.
Also I completely agree with Tom on this one: getting blown out by an instant-speed flashedback Silent Departure that you forgot would be a feel-bad moment. So would getting Silent Departure-locked if you remembered it, where you can't cast a pump spell or make a block because you know your opponent will blow you out. In fact, I'd say the second one would be more feel-bad than the first.
Organize over facebook or meetup.com or something similar. This lets people who go to one or two of these add their friends easily and might let people who are interested find you even if they don't know anyone. If you're doing it on facebook, make a group and add people to it.
Do drafts primarily at least at first. With constructed tournaments its hard for you to add much of a value over four guys at a kitchen table. With drafts, you're providing the value by getting 8 people together and by having the product.
Some guys in San Francisco made a google app to do swiss pairings. It's a little rough to use at first, but I'm sure you can figure it out if you don't have access to Event Reporter. You can find it here: http://mtgarena.appspot.com/
The guys who made the app apparently do something similar to what you want to do, you can read about it here: http://sfmagic.org/wp/
I've only ever used the app, I am not affiliated with this group.
Try to have it the same time each week. If you want to run a tournament on, say, Wednesday, put up a post trying to gauge interest on a Monday so that people have time to see it, check their schedules and respond.