On Saturday our local club, the Northern Knights, hosted a Commander precon event for our members and other interested peeps. Despite our location and the fact that, as a club, we really weren’t engaging with MTG this time last year, the turnout was pretty damn good. We got more than 20 folks in the room at our peak time. Commander has seen a big uptake at club this year, after all.
The event, which was held on the 1st of February, was all about precons. Some of our players are still getting their heads around the rules, and people’s collections are at very different levels. This means that precons gave a more even playing field for learning. I know some of our players would like to move to more open events in the future, but I don’t think we’d have got the same numbers, or have had as satisfying games for the majority of participants if we hadn’t limited the format. Having one or two very competitive folks bringing expensive meta-focused decks would have sucked the air out of several of the games. That goes for some of my own decks which, whilst far from perfect, would generally do very well against most precons.
That’s why I’m not against the idea of running a future event with similar restrictions. I really think that club nights are great for bringing custom decks, but these events, which are held with the intent of growing our regular visitor numbers, should be as light and accessible as possible. One of our most successful events before now was a Ticket to Ride day, after all.
I was particularly delighted that my wife enjoyed the day. She was keen to play, but was nervous because she’d never played Magic with anyone but me, and had not played anything larger than a 2-player game. I stuck with her for the first game, which saw me score a win with my Mothman deck. This would be my only win of the day, by the way. She enjoyed all her games and liked seeing new decks that she hadn’t seen before, enjoyed seeing how multiplayer interaction works, and just spending time with nice people.
I think that having such an endorsement from a new player who came in with quite low confidence is a big plus. It’s clear that we took the right approach, and I hope that it’s reflected in maybe seeing more of the participants attending club nights. I’d especially love it if they started coming along on Tuesdays. We’re struggling for attendance on Tuesdays.
Fingers crossed?
next up, we’ve got another card game event. This one will be for Lorcana.
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