Possible future tournament ideas

[aww1979]

I suddenly had what I thought might be a really good tournament idea. It's largely based off of the February points model by Salbei, but with a few new ideas.

I thought the idea of having the shop to buy cards in was really good, so my idea uses that exactly as salbei did it. (though a future tournament would have a new card list, but it would be the same concept) Then all participants would make TWO decks. One would be a deck for ONLY the human to play, and use 100 points. The other deck would be for ONLY the AI to play, and use more points, maybe 130 or something; whatever we figure is right. That way, the AI decks get a huge card quality boost because they can use more rares, get more life, etc.

Then we would have, for example the three human decks in one particular group, awwhuman, salbeihuman, jatillhuman, and the 3 AI decks, awwAI, salbeiAI, jatillAI. Each participant would play awwhuman against the other AI decks and then get scored just like in the february tournament. This would encourage people to submit quality decks for both humans and AI, because a good human deck will win more points for you, and a good AI deck will beat more human decks. (we wouldn't pit one player's AI deck against their human deck, but they'd play everyone else in their group) We could either add the human+AI scores together, and have them advance or fall together as a team, or put the human and AI decks in different groups and advance or fall separately, i.e. awwhuman in group A and awwAI in group C; whichever people think is best.

I believe this would make tournaments more fun (not that they aren't now, but you get the idea :p) because then by submitting the decks solely for human and AI, we can focus on using the AIs strengths (or more correctly, avoiding the AIs weaknesses) and also build human-only decks like Keeper or Tendrils that we wouldn't dare submit in these tournaments otherwise because the AI would suck balls with them.

Thoughts? Comments? Improvements? Personally, I think the idea is great, but you guys might spot holes in the idea, or find even better ways of doing it.

[jatill]

Interesting idea.

On a compeltely unrelated note, another interesting idea for a future tournament could be Rainbow Stairwell, where everyone's deck has 1 card of each color (and artifact) with each casting cost from 1 to 6.

[juzamjedi]

I like the idea of a "human player" deck. We all know the AI sucks with combo decks and counterspells. My main request is I would like the possibility for my AI deck and my human deck to both do well (i.e. always pair my human deck against someone else's AI deck if possible)

The Rainbow Stairwell idea seems fine assuming we get to use whatever manabase we want. Stronger manabases will make it possible to be more aggressive instead of everyone building a 5 color control list.

[aww1979]

Yeah, that was my intent with my idea, to always have a human deck facing an AI deck.

I do like the rainbow stairwell idea as well, as long as we get dual lands, but maybe lands should all be 'restricted' so that you could only have one of each nonbasic land.

[jatill]

Yeah, that was my intent with my idea, to always have a human deck facing an AI deck.

I do like the rainbow stairwell idea as well, as long as we get dual lands, but maybe lands should all be 'restricted' so that you could only have one of each nonbasic land.

The typical Rainbow Stairwell mana base is 2 of each alpha dual land, plus 4 more duals of your choice.

[Salbei]

I had a similar idea (with the AI and Human decks).
Also be warned that it isn´t as easy as it looks to create a "good" c/u/r list.You really need to spend a lot of time for that shop list.

Anyway,my attempt for the 2-deck idea was close to Phyrexia vs Coalition.So the AI always ends up playing one "side".
Those "sides" could be everything from a deck strategies to color restrictions (like Blue vs Red for example).

I like the idea of increasing the AI decks points.The current February Tournament is using 100 points (mainly because of the buyable start hp).
In hindsight it was too many points available while the "hp" is too expensive, but i couldn´t really playtest everything in time.The buyable HP thing added a way to reward players to use the "recommended" common cards, players didn´t utilize this mainly because the cost per hp was too high.
Also the Planeswalker "thing" didn´t work out at all.They cost to much for the impact they have on the game (plus the AI can´t use them correctly), i should have just sticked with 1 PW per deck and thats it.

I´ve mentioned a different idea at the Feb. Tournament topic roughly based off Jatills Auction system.Instead of sets you can choose color combinations to bid for.
Not really a friend of auctioning via the forum though.

I also really liked the idea of a different randomized color combination for each player.And each player may only use those colors to build a deck with (must use every color).
So you pre-generate a couple color combinations and write them down (without the players knowing what is what) and then just assign those combinations to the order of sign ups ( first player gets the first combination on the list etc).Would require some additional restrictions like the c/u/r shop list to maintain the balance though.

Could also combine the 2-deck and pre-generated color thing.

[juzamjedi]

Salbei, I actually think your HP vs. rares trade off was pretty close. Most of your rares are high casting cost so those decks need some extra HP to survive to the late game. The problem is we all knew Zoo existed, but no one actually played it! Just for giggles I playtested my Zoo list against all of the submitted decks and beat all of them 2-0 as human Zoo player, and the AI won a lot of games too. There were a lot of strong burn spells.

I do agree the PW's cost too much. The AI isn't very good with them; I don't think AI has ever used Overrun with Garruk for example.

[aww1979]

As far as I can remember, the AI only ever uses the 2nd ability on planeswalkers. It probably sees them as better in the short term (which they generally are) and doesn't consider that the first one might be situationally better or that it might want to save up for the uber 3rd one.

[Salbei]

Salbei, I actually think your HP vs. rares trade off was pretty close. Most of your rares are high casting cost so those decks need some extra HP to survive to the late game. The problem is we all knew Zoo existed, but no one actually played it! Just for giggles I playtested my Zoo list against all of the submitted decks and beat all of them 2-0 as human Zoo player, and the AI won a lot of games too. There were a lot of strong burn spells.

I do agree the PW's cost too much. The AI isn't very good with them; I don't think AI has ever used Overrun with Garruk for example.

That was a pure coincidence to be honest.My general idea was to make very dominant / gamebreaking cards rare.Not true for some of them, but i just couldn´t come up with some cards that are "worth" the slot.Prolly should have added Planeswalkers in there.
Even some of the "rare" cards in the list aren´t really worth it, but i think that was ment to be "discovered" by the players.Same thing for too "cheap" commons i´ve placed there on purpose.

[juzamjedi]

Yes - Path to Exile at common was ridiculous!!!

I also thought Solemn Simulacrum was great value if you were playing Titans in your deck. Not an auto-include, but very good. I like reading reports with "turn 5 Grave Titan"

[Salbei]

Well Path to Exile was fine at the common slot in my oppinion.
The drawback is very significant especially in this format.
I actually got surprised so many people have used it.

Happened quite often that i could play a 6 mana creature on turn 4 only because of 2 Path to Exile.

Was a good choice to offer Path to Exile instead of Swords to Plowshares.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEmsa6KDkbw

Massive Grave Titan action

[Salbei]

We haven´t "used" those Vanguard Cards for tournaments yet ... and they have been out forever.

How about a Vanguard Tournament with Legacy restrictions and see what happens ? Could combine that with the "2 deck" idea.

Lets say we allow "Royal Assassin" for player decks and Serra Angel for AI decks.

So every player submits a Player(including Vanguard: Royal Assassin) AND a AI (including Vanguard: Serra Angel) deck.

Just an example.

[jatill]

I'm not a big fan of the AI deck idea, if I understand it right. If we all make super-powered human capable decks, no AI deck really stands a chance, I think. I like the trade-off of having to make some deck concessions so that the AI will play it better.

I do like the idea of a vanguard tournament.

[Shantak]

How balanced the Vanguard cards are? If we have a Legacy tournament where each player can pick any Vanguard card, does it end up with half the players with the same avatar?

I'm not sure how I feel about different deck for AI and player. On one hand, I would like to build a tournament deck with some cool cards AI doesn't really use like Sneak Attack. On the other hand, I fear the human decks would be filled with first turn kill combos (well maybe in Vintage but not so much in Legacy). How about having AI and human play almost the same deck, allowing maybe 10 different cards in the AI deck?

[Salbei]

Sounds good to me (the 10 card changes).
I am aware that the Vanguard Avatars are not balanced at all - to say the least.
Reaper King for example is just bonkers. 1 mana for a 4/3 or 2 mana 5/5 Watchwolf is just nuts. Compared to the 2 lifegain/spell from "Serra Angel" you would need to start with around 60 hp to make up for that, even then it would just take 2 turns longer.

We would have to agree to use "normal" Avatars and not the "gamebreaking" ones.
My example was Royal Assassin and Serra Angel , both are "fun" effects but most likely nobody would end up playing the Serra Angel (unless i miss a obvious infinite life loop the AI wouldn´t be able to do anyway.).

I think "offering" 3-4 different Avatars should work, since nobody is forcing you to pick a specific one. All of them should roughly be at the same powerlevel though.