February Tournament: Limited Shop

[Salbei]

That is one of the reasons i kept the "rules" secret. But who knows - maybe that Angel gets Vindicated and you loose out of nowhere

You are also forgetting that YOU are not playing YOUR deck and another person will share your fate.

I know it is not a "fair" system - but it is just a side event supposed to be "just for fun".
It is surprisingly fun to gimp yourself and make misplays intentionally.Just try it - it is optional and if you don´t like it i will cover the games for you.

Some decks are obviously better than others for this - and some deck combinations seem to be unfair, but everybody had the same chances at this.

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Almost forgot this. Slight change at Group C for obvious reasons:

Group A(6 matches)
Shantak (plays Jatills deck for the side event)
Aww1979 (plays Cognis deck for the side event)
Stroggoii (plays 240sxforevers deck for the side event)

Group B(6 matches)
Jatill (plays Shantaks deck for the side event)
Cognis (plays Aww1979s deck for the side event)
240sxforever (plays Stroggoiis deck for the side event)

Group C (6 matches)
Aswan Jaguar (dropped)
ALEX Ryugami (plays Juzamjedis deck for the side event)
Juzamjedi (plays ALEX Ryugamis deck for the side event)

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Looks like you´ve already made it past Round1 Juzamjedi + ALEX Ryugami. Congrats !


The Tournament decks can be found at the Report Topic (check signature)

[juzamjedi]

Yes, and Worship will be good, and so is Bitterblossom, and so are decks that can burn themselves. As usual it's still most important that AI can win with your deck and hopefully do so from a high life total. It seems like burn-based aggro decks should be pretty good for this type of system.

[Salbei]

Suddenly things like that random Mirror Universe in the Mono Red deck make a lot more sense Or the odd burn spells - or Vulshock Sorcerors ... or Might of Oaks out of nowhere - or the "random" counterspells.Enjoy the gamble

Overall it should be relative even.Once again Worship screws everything over.

Hmm Alex didn´t leave you much room to "screw" yourself.You have to play his deck ^^
Just tried a game against Deck 1 and couldn´t get below 7 HP.It is surprisingly hard to misplay against the AI
Deck2 : Had to Path to Exile my own Grave Titans to force the AI to attack me below 25 HP (damn you Vampire Nighthawk!) and almost ran out of creatures to win.AIs Inferno Titan almost killed me there.Fun stuff.

[Aswan jaguar]

Sorry for the last minute but 0 configure messed my ready deck.
It's your call of course for my or not entry.

[juzamjedi]

Really interesting to see that the other people's decklists don't follow my predictions. Although half of the group seems to think that BW tokens is pretty good.

Predictions:
1. The winner of the tournament will have 3x Solemn Simulacrum, or 3x Wild Nacatl, but not both.
Unless I win the whole tournament, this one is a miss. Surprising since this was what I felt most confident about.

2. The best titan will be Grave Titan. Even if they have Path to Exile you get 2 zombies out of the deal.
Hard to decide if this one a hit. On the plus side no one is running Wrath, Damnation, or Vedalken Shackles so you get good value even if he dies. But the titans are less popular overall than what I would have guessed and only 2 decks have Grave Titans.

3. We will have at least one player with a strong land destruction component, and that deck will perform well against everything except aggressive decks like Zoo.
This is a miss. If Jatill had put Strip Mines in his deck I would have counted this as a hit (Acidic Slime + Primeval Titan + Strip Mine was what I built)

4. Over half of the decks submitted will have 20+ life, but it won't matter too much because there won't be many aggressive decks in the tournament.
This a miss. People were more aggressive with their life totals than I would have expected (especially the other Bitterblossom decks, good luck against Blightning ).

5. Most of the decks are going to be midrange (lots of 3-4 drops) or control.
This is a hit. Almost everyone is playing a midrange deck of some kind. Shantak and Stroggoii's decks are pretty aggressive with a good number of aggressive 1-2 drops, but everyone else is pretty much a midrange deck.

[juzamjedi]

With all of these BW token decks I kinda wish I had played Zoo or the UR Haterator deck now

[aww1979]

Where are the decks to download? I downloaded the playdeck.rar on page 3 but those are the side event decks; mine is not in there.

[Shantak]

The decks can be found in the results thread: viewtopic.php?f=66&t=3897

[Salbei]

Sorry for the last minute but 0 configure messed my ready deck.
It's your call of course for my or not entry.

I am afraid you are too late.
Did what i could to get your attention - posted multiple times that it is missing, adjusted my signature so you might see it that way and wrote you a pm.
Sorry for enforcing the rules this way but it just wouldn´t be fair to the others.

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I predicted that BW Tokens is going to be the deck to beat and adjusted the C/U/R list to spread enough "counters" to the deck all over the place.No real surprise that a few players chose to play the Token deck.But funny how rare "hate" for the mirrormatch is.

Soul Warden for example was ment to be a soft-counter - not an additional synergy.So the card got cheaper than it should have been. Just blew my mind when i didn´t saw a single Masticore or Disk.

I got surprised about the lack of cards i tried to make attractive.(Rhox War Monk , Wooly Thoctar , Solemn Simulacrum , the tri-lands etc.)
Especially that not a single blue card was chosen !
With Titans in the field i thought at least one would try to Bribery them into play.
I really thought Masticore and Disk are going to be all over the place.Guess that was just a personal preference.

Strip Mine was a tough call. I wanted it to see play, but at a price - turns out 6 points was a little too high for it.No Damnation or Wrath of God was also a huge surprise for me.

In hindsight i should have listened to my guts and remove Worship from the list.The card really hurts the current format too much.

[aww1979]

-Masticore is a piece of shit :p You'd have to give me extra points to make me use that

-I'd have liked to used cards like Rhox War Monk or Woolly Thoctar, but it is hard to make the AI play a three or more colour deck properly because it screws up fetchlands, plays duals in the wrong order, misses land drops, etc

-I didn't expect to see any Solemn Simulacrum, because while it's a decent card, it's a bit slow at 4 mana for a 2/2, and it only fetches basics

-trilands are good, but the AI screws up with them; having one in hand sometimes makes it miss its turn 1 land drop for some reason

-I would have probably bought 3 strip mines if I'd known that it wasn't restricted in this format; I assumed you could only have one, and so I didn't bother

-Damnation/Wrath of God/Nevinyrral's Disk: Pretty surprised none of those were played

-I wasn't too worried about the inclusion of Worship in the shop; there were a lot of cards in the list that can deal with it, so if a particular deck gets pwned by Worship, it is the deck creator's fault

-I am stunned that there aren't any white/green or green/red or white/green/red weenie decks, given the excellent creatures that were available for those. White/green/blue also had some nice stuff, and especially with Birds of Paradise (which NO ONE used!?!?) I thought one of those decks would dominate

-I didn't think many planeswalkers would be used, other than perhaps the free one, and while not a lot were used, I am surprised that people spent 10 points to get more planeswalkers

-I am also surprised there isn't any blue used. I thought a black/blue creature deck would be awesome, with stuff like Tidehollow Strix and Moroii (survives doom blade and bolts) being very useful, as with evasion the AI is more likely to attack with them

-Trusty Machete: Several people used that; not sure why. It seems crappy to me, but I guess it was only one point

-Might of Oaks: nobody picked this??? It was one of the best cards in the list, especially at only 3 points.

-Blinding Angel: I expected to see that one a lot, too, as it has 4 toughness, flying, and the AI (probably) really sucks against it

-Emeria Angel, Rampaging Baloths: good cards, but the AI likes to hoard lands after about turn 4-5, so I didn't think they would be good in the AIs hands, but several people picked them anyway; we will see how they do

-I actually didn't expect anyone else to make the bitterblossom deck, as I thought the W/R/G and W/U/G weenie would be popular, and I was worried more about those and cards like Might of Oaks, Moroii, Rhox War Monk, Woolly Thoctar, and the like. I completely guessed wrong on the metagame for this one.

-Of the opposing decks, I think shantak's will be the best one. I'd considered a deck much like his, but in the metagame that I was expecting, it would have sucked hard against quick 4-toughness creatures. However, since nobody used any of them, I think shantak has a very strong chance, though Bitterblossom might cause him some trouble

(I really wish the AI could've played properly with the white/blue control deck I built... in human hands it would have beat everything here; it certainly owned the B/W deck I ended up submitting)

Just for fun, these are the other decks I had considered, but ultimately rejected, mostly due to the AI failing with them.

aww_superman: monoblue deck that the AI sucked with, because it was too dumb to counter key spells and likes to untap and reuse Vedalken Shackles

aww_theuglyarmy: black/blue all-creature deck designed specifically for the AI to be able to play, but it almost always gave up by like turn 4 and quit playing creatures for some reason. The name came from the fact that most of the art in the deck either sucks or depicts ugly creatures like Moroiis :p

aww_squirrelpower: red/green weenie deck of the sort I expected to see a lot of. Sadly, the AI almost never casts Harmonize (the reason I had cut it down to 1) and does dumb things with Might of Oaks, like using it on Birds of Paradise to kill a faerie token, or attacking with birds while 3 lands are on the board, so that it cannot actually cast might of oaks at all. It was also a deck the AI gave up with after about turn 5

aww_raresareforpussies: 5 colour weenie deck that I designed specifically to fight what I thought would be the metagame. Cheap removal in the form of paths and doomblades, acceleration with birds, and a ton of awesome 3-drops, and might of oaks as the deadly weapon. (absolutely disgusting on Rhox War Monk :p) Eternal Witness was card advantage and would recur a removal or Might of Oaks. It was nice in the human's hands, but the AI would not play duals in the right order or just not cast anything.

aww_arewethereyet: white/blue control with nothing but removal and counterspells. It wins by sitting on its ass and saying 'no' to everything, and running the opponent out of cards by using Elixir of Immortality over and over. Unfortunately, the elixir had a bug that would duplicate your graveyard when used, so I often had games where my library was way bigger than 40 cards by the end :p The AI also seems to think elixir is the best damn spell since Black Lotus, and would often tap out to activate it instead of waiting to counter stuff.

[Cognis]

I personally don't mind if Aswan Jaguar joins the tournament, maybe it isn't fair to others who posted their decks on time, but not allowing him to participate is not fair to the participants of group A and B, since both decks from group C will go through by default.

[jatill]

I personally don't mind if Aswan Jaguar joins the tournament, maybe it isn't fair to others who posted their decks on time, but not allowing him to participate is not fair to the participants of group A and B, since both decks from group C will go through by default.

Agreed.

[240sxforever]

I had a RW deck with 5 kill creatures and the balance of the deck removal, kind of wish that is the one I had submitted now...

[Salbei]

Is everybody fine with a small 3 point penalty for him instead?

[Shantak]

I would also let Aswan Jaguar in, even without any penalty, so that's okay for me.