Manalink Vintage Competition (winners posted)

[aww1979]

affcrashinggame3.zip has my first attempt (*not scored* due to crash)
affinity.zip has my second attempt. I lost in game 9 to jatill's haterator deck. Lord of Atlantis and attacked with three 5/5 islandwalkers wrecked my day just when I thought I'd stabilized :p

Decks played against:
1 discos deck...
2 evilwarriors deck...
3 jatill stax deck...
4 jatill slivers deck...
5 nyktorians deck...
6 yggdrasils deck...
7 juzamjedis deck...
8 jatill stax again...
9 jatill haterator...(LOST)

edit: Salbei's montymuck performed as follows:
1) jatill haterator
2) nyktorian
3) jatill slivers
4) cognis
5) scherbchen
6) jatill slivers
7) yggdrasil (LOST)

Salbei's deck is better than it looks, and lost mostly due to having to mulligan to 5 on the 7th round.

[aww1979]

Brandon's Greenforce performed as follows:
1) jatill haterator
2) jatill haterator (again)
3) salbei
4) nyktorian (LOST)

Nyktorian got a nice hand game 4

Cognis's Quirion performed as follows:
1) juzamjedi (LOST)

Sorry... I tried my best. I don't think I made any mistakes, and I stand by the decision to shuffle with Ponder, though it didn't work out, but keeping those wouldn't have, either; at best, it would have thinned a sleight of hand and a fetchland from the deck to keep them.

Disco's Imperial Zoo performed as follows:
1) salbei
2) evil warrior
3) evil warrior (again)
4) cognis
5) salbei
6) aww1979
7) brandon
brandon (again)
9) disco (LOST)

I made two incredibly stupid misplays in game 9. One was saccing a lotus during combat for lightning helix to kill one of two blockers, forgetting that it pumped the other blocker (tarmogoyf) and losing my Knight of the Reliquary. The second stupid mistake was forgetting to sac my Qasali Pridemage when the AI destroyed my Oblivion Ring (which was targeted on an AI Oblivion Ring) and so when his ring returned, he exiled my pridemage. Fortunately for Disco, my stupidity means he gets 8+5=13 points instead of 10 points (for a complete gauntlet) since his own deck defeated himself! (he owes me a cookie for that...)

[aww1979]

EvilClone's Warrior Stompy deck performed as follows:

1) salbei
2) evil warrior
3) kakodrito juzam
4) jatill stax
5) jatill stax (again) (LOST)

Jatill's haterator performed as follows:
1) juzamjedi
2) aww1979
3) jatill stax
4) disco
5) kakodrilo juzam
6) the drigo (LOST)

(note: i misnamed this zip file juzamjedi by accident)

More will be done tomorrow.

[discoransom]

Fortunately for Disco, my stupidity means he gets 8+5=13 points instead of 10 points (for a complete gauntlet) since his own deck defeated himself! (he owes me a cookie for that...)

LMAO at this. I will gladly accept. I'll send the Girl Scouts to your home with a whole box of cookies.

[Salbei]

Phew i highly disagree with a lot of choices made during your video.

1)The Chrome Mox is there to be used - preferably with a Green Card.Saw it like 3 times where you kept it in your hand while you could use it to play stuff untill you don´t need the Mox anymore and imprinted a buisness Spell.Even the AI is using the Card as it is supposed to be played in the Deck.

2)If you have the choice to play Goblin Charbelcher or a random Creature while the board is empty,then DON`T choose the creature ^^ It is very unlickly you will ever hit 7 Mana to play and activate the Belcher in the same turn - so play it asap and activate it once or twice and most likly you will be lucky (just 8 lands in there with 4 Land Grant (to fetch Taiga) and 4 Crop Rotation (to fetch Volcanic Island).

3)Goyf is in there to stall the ground mostly.Should be used more defensivly.This is not a pure beatdown deck that is supposed to trade damage to race. Time is on your side , eventually you will draw into a Belcher and just end it in one turn - really no need to take more damage than needed.

4)If the opponent just got nonbasics out,then just play the Blood Moon.Just make sure you Imprinted something Green (Mongoose,Manamorphosis,Tattermunge Maniac,or have a Mox Emerald) to not hurt yourself more than the opponent.

5)Early Mongoose are pretty crappy and need to be fed to Chrome Mox or Chump Block something like Juggernaut.

6)Sometimes Tinker for Memory Jar is the better play than going directly for the Belcher.

7)You can play with Tattermunge Maniac even if the opponent got blockers. That one game there where 2 2/2 + 1 Nighthawk on the AI´s side and you kept the Tattermunge Maniac on your Hand. Playing it would have prevented 4 damage (ai not attacking with the 2/2´s) and attacking with it would have gone rid of one during your next turn.

The creatures in there are not meant to beat down the opponent, like i´ve said its not a creature based deck.They serve 2 purposes - stall the ground, making sure you get that 1-2 Belcher activations off or to be pitched into Chrome Mox.

9)Black Lotus - thought it is common knowledge that you keep it on the table untill you can do something relevant with it. (play/activate the Belcher,play a draw 7/Memory Jar etc) You never ever want it to be wasted for creatures.Unless its a fatty that might end the game.

10)I will slap anybody in the face for Timetwisting away a Tarmogoyf+Belcher. Wait with the Twister untill you ran out of Gas please.Otherwise you just fill up the opponents hand and have to face the consequences.
You still had 28 very good "outs" to draw into if you would have just played the Goyf (was close to a 50% chance to draw into buisness (Land Grant,Mox,Chrome Mox,Goyf,Lotus,Ancestral,Timewalk,a Land....). Worst case you draw into Mongoose/Tattermunge and can still go for the Twister by then WITH a Goyf on the Table.

Thats about it.It´s almost an autopilot deck with these things in mind.

[jatill]

2 decks down (aww, salbei), 10 to go. I'm having fun so far. Here are some hilights:

Hilights:
Play turn 1 Goblin Charbelchers, and activate it turn 2 for 58 damage.
Attack for 12 on turn 2 with the Affinity deck
Smugly play a turn 1 Blood Moon against a zoo deck only to lose to Figure of Destiny
AI played Platinum Angel + Blanchwood against a deck with no removal (affinity). And lost.

I had 1 crash for far, and I just resumed the gauntlet from where the crash happened.

[jatill]

just clocked my first 10 matches and this sure is fun

I was going to go for an even spread of matches done per deck to get a more accurate sampling, does that sound right or is it just as well if I test my deck only and some others for fun? bit confused about how either is going to affect scores.

If you are trying to earn the testing bonus, you need to run all 12 decks through the 10-round gauntlet and record how far you got, and what you lost to with each.

[scherbchen]

first three results

Affinity

6 wins versus: vintagedisco, kakodrilo juzam, jatill stax, monty muck, cognis quirion, cognis quirion rematch

loss versus Yggdra aggro BG

Monty Muck

1 win versus my deck (Sundering Titan hits only AI with targets on players side of the board lands but that didn't really matter)

loss versus kakodrilo Juzam

Quirion Cognis

4 wins versus
yggdra aggro BG (Force of Will being the key early on)
green force (Jace rocking the game)
nyktorian zoo (manascrewed AI plus early pressure)
disco imperial zoo (double daze makes werebear big)

loss versus niktorian zoo rematch (early big goyfs and removal, had to mulligan a 6-land hand with lorescoatl into something with a bit more beef and had no counters in the following 6)

[juzamjedi]

It seems that I have been testing wrong. I didn't save the gauntlets I ran. It's a shame too because my default is 50 rounds best of 3 and Aww1979's deck crushed everything for 30+ rounds (it even managed 2! wins against Haterator's Energy Flux).

Time to start over with my testing I suppose

[juzamjedi]

Also I would like to say it's hard to play these correctly when I don't have a lot of the cards unlocked. For example I know what Jitte does, but is it fair for me to blow out the opponent's Tarmogoyf with Jitte counters it didn't know about? Also I noticed that when I bury cards drawn off the top for Charbelcher activations they do not go to the graveyard?

Edit: Salbei I just read your post above. Your deck is the hardest one to play correctly in this gauntlet and I understood it was meant to be a belcher deck. Us players need to mulligan correctly (i.e. more than average) to make sure we have enough mana sources and/or Tinker / card draw.

[jatill]

If you're using debug mode, don't feel bad for the AI. It already doesn't know how to play around Jitte.

[scherbchen]

my first 10-0 (kind of)

Imperial Zoo

10 wins versus
jatill slivers (AI is really bad at racing, Winged Sliver loses the game for the AI. unnecessary chump block with a Virulent is runner up)
kakodrilo juzam (Jitte and bob go mad)
disco imperial zoo (combat tricks > AI)
evil warrior stompy (AI only musters 3 Maniacs and one Savannah in the first turns, hard to come back from that)
disco imperial zoo (I don't cast Reveillark so that his Skyfishers continue to race my bigger goyfs)
disco imperial zoo rematch (my confidant lives, his two get zapped)
scherbchen (badly timed timetwister, hilarity ensues with lotus, impulse and a mana vault)
scherbchen rematch (early Sundering Titan clears my three lands away, then a fourth when I have to play a Plains in order to get rid of him, 2 turns later Knight of the Reliquary comes down and it is payback time)
jatill stax (looong game, gorilla shaman owns)
kokodrilo juzam rematch (opponent is stuck on 1 Swamp for the first rounds and only manages to get some wisps and knights out due to 2 rituals and one lotus. bob and jitte provide an encore performance)

couldn't complete games 8 and 10: thedrigo zoo (Jotun grunt freezes the game)

[Cognis]

Blood moon is a killer, I tested two gauntlets so far, affinity and blood moon deck (adding it was a great move, wish I thought of that), Won 5 rounds on best of 3 with both. Affinity was stopped in a mirror match 1-2 with a horrible draw (had to mulligan twice) and blood moon deck was going strong until it hit the djinn deck. On my first round I put blood moon into play, an automatic win or so i thought. The opponent put black lotus and a mountain (go figure:) and played his only spell the entire match - Djuzam djinn. It was over quickly - so was the second round.

When I saw my deck list I realized I submitted the wrong deck. I thought I sent a milling deck but instead I sent the Quirion dryad one, well if nothing else the AI knows how to play it, more or less, I like many deck ideas and can't wait for the results although I think I'm one of the prime candidates to be first from the bottom

[jatill]

Attention Testers:
I have a new version of manalink for you to test with. it has the 4 locked cards unlocked, and fixes the crash bug with Joten Grunts.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/emtiijk1mlq/20100427.zip

[Nyktorion]

I've completed the first round of testing yesterday in the evening, using aww's affinity deck. I played best out of 3 matches, and the result was a 10-0 for affinity:

Yggdrasil Aggro BG (had two rather nice starts, which overwhelmed the AI): 2-0
Karodrilo Juzam (fast workshop + fattie starts gave easy wins): 2-0
juzamjedi Zoo (fast artfact creature start in the first game, second game became stalled, but Broodstar flew to victory): 2-0
Evil Clone Stompy (lost first game: got surprised by a combo of giant growth + fetchland boosting a wild nacatl, which lost me a Master of Etherium. Two Armadillo Cloaks on the Nacatl, plus a Bramblewood Paragon + Imperious Perfect + Warrior tokens finished me. In games 2 and 3, my early 4-mana artifact creatures met little resistance, though): 2-1
juzamjedi Zoo (overwhelmed him again with many big and fast artifact creatures): 2-0
jatill slivers (first game was a typical fast win, second game looked good for the AI, however its badness at calculating the implications of losing "lords" when blocking lost it 6 slivers against 3 artifact creatures in a big attack of me, which was fatal): 2-0
jatill stax (two quick wins): 2-0
Salbei Monty Muck (first game, I got a slow start, and AI took control with a Charbelcher at round four. A badly timed wheel of fortune brought me back into the game, but his belcher still killed me one turn before I could have killed him. However, games 2 and 3 were quick wins with fast 4-mana creatures): 2-1
mirror match (first game was a quick win for me, second game became stalled until a Broodstar decided it for the AI, third game was an exchange of Masters of Etherium and Broodstars until the game got stalled on the ground, overwhelming brute force on the ground finally won the game for me): 2-1
Brandon Green Force (two quick wins): 2-0