New York, the Local Scene: An Introduction

Until about a year ago Neutral Ground was the leading gaming store in the New York area and the hub for all Magic players in Manhattan and arguably all of New York. However, after Neutral (as it was colloquially known) shut its doors in December of last year, the Magic community has become somewhat decentralized. Several stores in the boroughs have risen to prominence, like Kings Games in Brooklyn, but for us Manhattanites the new spot is Jim Hanley's Universe.

JHU or Hanley's is a comic book store located on 33rd between 5th and 6th that happens to have some space for hobby gamers to do their thing. The people who run the place are extremely nice, and the community there is great too. Not to speak ill of the dead, but these were areas at Neutral that weren't always particularly strong. However, the one great thing Neutral did provide that Hanley's can't was a massive gaming area where major events could be held. Hanley's doesn't have that kind of space, so now major events are held at a variety of locations like in the boroughs, or worse, New Jersey.

Hanley's holds Magic events three times a week: Standard and Drafting on Thursday, Drafting on Friday, and a sort of free play on Monday (which I've never attended). Our crew goes to the Thursday Standard events almost every week, and occasionally to the Friday Night Magic (FNM) Drafting. Local events for constructed are strange beasts in two regards:

1.)Most of the people playing in them aren't highly ranked and range from beginners and more casual players to avid competitors, which means that at a local event you can go 2-2 (or sometimes even 3-1), and if you're ranked highly, still lose points because your opponents are so badly ranked. For those of you who don't understand, ranking in Magic is based off your opposition. When you beat someone who's better than you, you get a lot of points. When you lose to someone worse than you, you lose a lot of points. So when everyone is lower ranked than you are, you can only gain points by going undefeated or maybe 3-1. As such very highly ranked players tend to shun local events in order to protect their ratings, which isn't as pretentious as it sounds, since high enough ratings can get you invites to and bye-rounds at major events.

2.)Local events tend to generate their own meta-games that don't necessarily reflect the meta-game you would find at a major event. People are much more likely to bring homemade decks instead of net-decks (lists taken off the internet) or try new things. I remember a couple of weeks ago everyone brought control decks that “should beat Jund and Boros” two of the major decks in the overall meta-game. However, at the local not many people were playing them, so all of these control decks just ended up playing each other.

I myself tend to be much stronger at major events than local events. I rarely managed a 3-1 or better at Neutral, and I think the highest I've managed at Hanley's is a 2-1, but most of the time I just end up 2-2.

Our teammate Raja, on the other hand, recently went 4-0 and is consistently good at the local events. His secret: masterful meta-gaming of the local. When I asked him once about some strange choices he was making with his Bella Swan deck, he told me, “Your choices would be right at a major event, but I'm trying to make a deck that wins here.”

So that's a brief introduction and rundown of the local events in New York. Luckily for me, there is a major event on Saturday out in Jersey, and States is shortly after that on December 5th. The prize payout for the upcoming event is not cash but rather foil sets (shiny cards that are worth roughly twice as much as normal cards) of some of the major rares in Standard right now, like Baneslayer Angel (worth $50 a piece non-foil), Lotus Cobra ($20ish), and fetch lands ($15ish). Unfortunately I don't really have a deck yet. Right now it's between Eldrazi Green, which busted out of Nashville at the last Star City 5K like the Alien through Kane's chest, or [gasp] Jund. Yeah I know I said I would never play it, but it is the best deck and format, and it takes virtually no skill to play, so lack of playtesting won't be an issue. But we'll see...

Finally, I'd like to take this time to give a shout out to our teammate Conta who placed 13th at a Legacy event with 170 contenders. He claims that he's going to write a tournament report on it, so hopefully I'll have that posted here for you soon.


Upcoming: Hopefully some news involving shiny Baneslayers...


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