Manalink Vintage Competition (winners posted)

[aww1979]

Most video players usually have some sort of option to play back at slower speeds, so I'd try that, if possible. The issue might also be on my end; I made the quality and frame rate of the recordings fairly low so that they could be uploaded/downloaded easier. I didn't think people would want to download a 100Mb file or something :p

[Cognis]

I use Gom player and it works fine so you could try that. Also Helm of obedience finally works right so I'll stop bitching and moaning about it. I'm playing Schrebens deck right now and I'm currently in round 9.

[Nyktorion]

I have continued my playing a little.

With my own deck, I got 10 victories, and all matches went 2-0. The opponents were karodilo Juzam, Warrior Stompy, mirror match, Green Force, another mirror match, Imperial Zoo, haterator, Salbei, Salbei again, and Green Force.
The most interesting game here was the first game of the first mirror match. In the first mirror game, I received heavy pressure from an AI's early big Tarmgoyf. I could play a Goyf myself only at the very turn the AI would have killed me, and won with a single life point left.

scherbchen's deck went 7-1. It won against karodrilo Juzam (2-0), Stax (2-0), Aggro BG (2-0), Green Force (2-0), Salbei (2-1), Warrior Stompy (2-0), awwfinity (2-0), and then lost the rematch against awwfinity (1-2).
In most of the won games, I had an early Lodestone Golem or Platinum Angel on the board. My loss against Salbei's deck was against two early big Tarmogoyfs, and then a Goblin Charbelcher added on top of that. In both of the games I lost against awwfinity, the AI played out many big artifact creatures quickly. In the first loss, the ground became stalled, and a Broodstar finished me, and in the second game, I could not even build up a defense on the ground (this was a Black Lotus start for the AI, where it got a Su-Chi, an Arcbound Worker, and a Frogmite on its first turn).

thedrigo: sorry, I already lost the first match 0-2 with your deck. The opponent was the Imperial Zoo deck. In the first game, I had to mulligan to 5, and then simply got overwhelmed quickly. In the second game, I was actually in a very nice board position at the beginning. However, a big Tarmogoyf of the AI stalled my attack. When I exiled the Goyf, the next one was put down. After that, the AI put down another big guy (Knight of the Reliquary) and started building huge card advantage with a Dark Confidant, for which I had no removal left. Finally, he got some flyers which killed me.

Yggdrasil's Aggro BG deck went 10-0. The opponents were Quirion (2-0), blue4u (2-0), Green Force (2-0), Haterator (2-0), Salbei (2-0), my Zoo deck (2-1), karodrilo Juzam (2-0), juzamjedi Zoo (2-0), my own deck again (2-0), and Quirion (2-1).
In the first game against my deck, I lost too much liufe to two early Wild Nacatls. When I finally stalled out the board, my life was too low, and I got burned down by a Grim Lavamancer. The last game of the same match was also very close, again two Wild Nacatl hit me hard in the beginning. However, this time, I could stop them with more life left.
The game I lost against Quirion, I had to mulligan once. Then an early Quirion Dryad, which quickly grew, applied pressure to me. When I removed it, the next Dryad was played, together with a Coatl, and Daze countered my immediate effort to deal with them. Finally, these two creatures won the game for the AI.
In this gauntlet, I saw some scoop-ups by the AI: in the second match against my deck, the AI liked to mindlessly throw burn spells at my head, when my life was still high and the board was empty (should have better saved them for the creatures I soon played). In the game I lost against Quirion, the AI could have done its final attack already one turn earlier, forcing me to chump block with all my defenders, then my loss would have been more certain in the turn after.

[Cognis]

Thedrigo Zoo went 1-1

Round 1: Disco Imperial Zoo 2-0. Match 1 Dark confidant ruled the board. 5-6 turns in a row AI revealed land or 0 CC artifact, had more creatures and would have killed me if it went aggro. Instead it played second Dark confidant and got killed by it since it didn't played Kor skyfisher to bounce it. I finished at 4 life. In all fairness this was a gifted win by the AI. Match 2 Jotun grunt held Tarmogoyf at bay, shrinked it and I was able to go aggro.

Round 2: Juzam jedi Zoo 1-2. To keep it short, it just had more creatures. Basically two mirror matches and it was quickly over.

Schreben Blue4U went 9-1. This is a great deck but really above the AI. Until I started to play with it I didn't realise how good this deck is.

Round 1: Juzam Jedi Zoo 2-1. Match 1 horrible draw and mana screw. Match 2 got Helm of obedience working, Platinum angel with Cranial plating and Time vault + Voltaic key. Match 3 ran over with black Minion with Sword of fire and ice.

Round 2: Salbei Monty muck 2-0. Match 1 Memory jar and Sundering titan won the game. Match 2 had Lodestone golem with Cranial plating but AI stalled with 3 Nimble mongoose and Tarmogoyf. I played Timetwister and drew Tolarian academy, Time vault and Voltaic key but before I played them AI responded with Wheel of fortune and burred my sweet hand, but I won with Lodestone golem and Sundering titan.

Round 3: Jatill Haterator 2-0. Match 1 turn 2 Time vault and Voltaic key. Match 2 turn 1 Time vault and Voltaic key. Need I say more?

Round 4: Juzam Jedi Zoo 2-1. Again a close game against Juzam Jedi Zoo. Match 1 I was overrun but a turned Timetwister into Time vault and Voltaic key. Match 2 I was completely overrun. Match 3 was quickly over.

Round 5: Brandon Green Force 2-0. Two quick wins.

Round 6: Karodrilo Zoo 2-1.

Round 7: Evil Clone Warrior stompy 2-0. Match 1 I was overrun managed Time vault and Voltaic key.

Round 8: Nyktorian Zoo 2-1. Time vault and Voltaic key were decisive in the last match.

Round 9: Salbei Monty muck 2-0. Match 1 mana screwed in the beginning but Tolarian academy and Cunning wish were turned into Cosis trickster with two Cranial plating and Umezawas Jitte. Match 2 had to mulligan and it was looking bad with a poor hand but AI's Wheel of fortune turned fortune back my way. I built up mana and used Scroll rack to get Tinker and Fabricate. Guess for what two artifacts I went. Needles to say it was game over.

Round 10: Juzam Jedi Zoo 1-2. In the third match against Juzam Jedi AI finally clinched a victory. Match 1 I got a bad start and my Mana vault ended hurting me pretty bad so the AI just had to finish me off. Match 2 Umezawas jitte held me in the beginning until I drew Voltaic key followed with Time vault. Top deck yay. Match 3 was over quickly. The AI had a ton of removal. I got Platinum angel but then got hit in the head with 2 Lightning bolt and Path to exile. Two Wild nacatl beat me down and it was over.

[Cognis]

I finished the gauntlet with all decks but Jatills since, if I remember correctly, he said we didn't need to test, if we need to I'll do it tomorrow.

Nyktorian Zoo went 1-1.

Round 1: Evil Clone Warrior Stompy 2-0.

Round 2: Juzam Jedi Zoo 1-2. Match 1 had to mulligan into a Wild nacatl and a 5 land hand and then proceeded to draw 3 lands in a row. After two Path to exile I had 9 lands and nothing to play. I lost. Match 3 had to play 7 fetch lands and again had a ton of mana and nothing to play. I stalled it as much as I could but there was no sollution for a late massive Tarmogoyf and Dark confidant.

Karodrilo Juzam went 1-1.

Round 1: Mirror match 2-0. AI just isn't good enough in a mirror match.

Round 2: Awwfinity 1-2. Match 2 I was able to decimate AI's hand with turn 1 Hypnotic specter and turn 2 Hymn to tourach. Other matches I was simply overrun.

The final scores are as follows. I gave 1 point for winning and 5 for AI beating a deck as per rules. Make note I didn't test Jatill's decks.

1st: Aww1979 - Affinity - 20 points (25 if you count losing in a mirror match), 5-1 and AI won 3/4 times
2nd: Juzam Jedi - Zoo - 19 points, 4-1 and AI won 3 times
3rd: Disco - Imperial Zoo - 10 points, went 10-0 and was rarely seen played by the AI, it's a shame because this is the only deck I went 10-0 with
4th: Schreben - Blue4U - 9 points, 9-1 and badly played by the AI
5th: Nyktorian and Yggdrasil - Zoo and Aggro BG - 6 points, 1-1 and AI won 1 time, 6-1
7th: Salbei, Karodrilo and Jatill - Monty Muck, Zoo and Slivers - 5 points, 5-1, 1-1 and AI won 1 time, didn't test the deck but the AI won 1 time
10th: Evil Clone - Warrior Stompy - 4 points, 4-1
11th: Brandon - Green Force - 3 points, 3-1
12th: Thedrigo - Zoo - 1 point, 1-1
14th: My very own deck with which I was stopped in the first round

[juzamjedi]

I have finished the rest of the gauntlet and results are below. Overall the Zoo decks did well in my testing. I went undefeated with 5 decks.

Deck: Player # Rounds Won: Lost To: Total Points:
Zoo Nyktorian 10 #N/A 20
Affinity Aww1979 10 #N/A 15
Imperial Zoo Disco 10 #N/A 15
Aggro BG Yggdrasil 10 #N/A 10
Zoo Thedrigo 10 #N/A 10
jatill slivers 5 Salbei 10
Quirion Cognis 4 Disco 9
Green Force Brandon 2 Brandon 7
Juzam Karodrilo 2 Karodrilo 7
Monty Muck Salbei 2 Aww1979 7
Zoo JuzamJedi 2 JuzamJedi 7
jatill haterator 5 Nyktorian 5
jatill stax 3 Nyktorian 3
Blue4u scherbchen 1 Jatill Slivers 1
Warrior Stompy Evil Clone 1 Cognis 1

[Yggdrasil]

More results of my 1-match tournament.

Cognis - 1 win
1 EvilClone (wonderful hand, two giant lorescale coatls did the job)
2 Disco – LOSE (draw only lands, I had 2 dryads and 2 werebears useless on the battleground)

Disco - 3 wins
1 Disco (got an early tempo advantage, never lost it)
2 Aww1979 (imperial recruiter -> tarmo. Easy win)
3 Kakodrilo (AI wasted a dark ritual)
4 greenforce – LOSE (killed by a ifh-biff ifreet buffed by a blanchwood armor + might of the oak on turn 4)

Evil Clone - 0 win
1 Disco – LOSE (the absence of removal in the deck was fatal against early double tarmo)

Kakodrilo - 0 win
1 yggdrasil – LOSE (turned into a trench warfare, draw phase was the key. I draw 3 useless bad moon while AI draw 2 harmonize and got a great card advantage)

Nyktorian - 3 wins
1 stax
2 greenforce
3 haterator
4 stax – LOSE (turn 1 AI played mox + mishra factory + trinisphere, turn 2 tolarian academy + juggernaut + thorn of amethyst, turn 3 another juggernaut + wasteland, turn 4 inkwell leviathan... it was a perfect play !)

Yggdrasil - 4 wins
1 Aww1979 (lodestone golem ability slowed me a lot)
2 Cognis (AI exchanged 2 Quirion dryad + 1 mangoose against a ravenous baloth and lose the game)
3 Greenforce (AI played giant growth and berserk badly)
4 Cognis (gatekeepers swept the board, scute mob striked)
5 Thedrigo – LOST (AI started very aggressively, had no removal against three 5/6 tarmo)

scherbchen - 2 wins
1 Cognis (synergy between voltaic key and mana vault gave me a decisive advantage)
2 Nyktorian (overwhelmed by creatures, but a tinkered platinum angel saved my life. Was hot)
3 haterator – LOSE (double energy flux killed me)

If I have enough time this evening, I will play with the 3 Jatill decks. So far, the results are :
total points (gauntlet score + number of AI wins with the deck x 5)
1) Disco Imperial Zoo 13 points (3 + 2x5)
2) JuzamJedi zoo 10 points (10 + 0x5) and TheDrigo zoo 10 points (5 + 1x5) ex aequo
4) Brandon greenforce 9 points (4 + 1x5) and Yggdrasil Aggro BG 9 points (4 + 1x5) ex aequo
6) Nyktorian zoo 8 points (3 + 1x5)
7) Kakodrilo Juzam 5 points (0 + 1x5) and Aww1979 Affinity 5 points (5 + 0x5)
9) Salbei MontyMuck 2 points (2 + 0x5) and Scherbchen Blue4you 2 points (2 + 0x5) ex aequo
11) Cognis Quirion 1 point (1 + 0x5)
12) EvilClone 0 point (0 + 0x5)

For information, here's the number of times each deck was played by the AI during the tournament :
Aww1979 - 4
Salbei - 2
Brandon - 5
Cognis - 6
Disco - 4
Evil Clone - 3
JuzamJedi - 3
Kakodrilo - 2
Nyktorian - 2
Thedrigo - 3
Yggdrasil - 4
scherbchen - 0
slivers - 2
stax - 5
haterator - 5

Clearly Salbei, Kakodrilo, Nyktorian and especially Scherbchen were disadvantaged. They could expect a better score if AI had played with their decks more often.

[Nyktorion]

I also just finished my remaining gauntlets.

The sliver deck went 10-0. The opponents were awwfinity (2-0), blue4u (2-1), awwfinity again (2-1), my Zoo deck (2-0), Quirion (2-1), Green Force (2-1), karodrilo Juzam (2-0), juzamjedi Zoo (2-0), Green Force again (2-1), and karodrilo again (2-0).
Many wins were done in the usual way (pumping the slivers up with lords enough to overrun the enemy), in I also won some games by getting out Virulent Sliver twice very quickly (giving every sliver Poisonous 2). When I lost, it was mostly due to big early creatures, like big Broodstars, or 10/10 minions from a Phyrexian Processor, or a Lorescale Coatl growing out of control, or an Elf with Blanchwood Armor.

Stax went 8-1. It won against blue4u (2-0), Quirion (2-0), Warrior Stompy (2-1), slivers (2-0), my Zoo deck, Aggro BG (2-0), karodrilo Juzam (2-0) and haterator (2-0).
I finally lost to Imperial Zoo (1-2). I mostly achieved wins by putting some lockpieces into place and simultaneously applying pressure with big artifact creatures. There were a few games though, where I only focused on one of these two aspects.
All of the lost games were essentially due to unwise mulliganing decisions: I kept risky hands, and in turn got manscrewed, or flooded.

Finally, haterator went 2-1. It won against my Zoo deck (2-0) and awwfinity (2-0), and lost in the rematch against my Zoo deck (0-2). In both losses, the AI pumped out many strong attackers, and burned down enough defending Merfolk to break through. In the second game, I actually managed to stall out the board, but my life points were so low that burn could finish me off.

My final results are the following:

Deck: Player # Rounds Won: Lost To: Total Points:
Zoo Nyktorian 10 N/A 20
Imperial Zoo Disco 6 Warrior Stompy 16
Affinity Aww1979 10 N/A 15
Warrior Stompy Evil Clone 10 N/A 15
Zoo JuzamJedi 10 N/A 15
jatill slivers 10 N/A 15
Aggro BG Yggdrasil 10 N/A 10
Quirion Cognis 10 N/A 10
jatill stax 8 Imperial Zoo 8
Blue4u scherbchen 7 Affinity 7
Juzam Karodrilo 6 JuzamJedi Zoo 6
Monty Muck Salbei 2 slivers 2
jatill haterator 2 Nyktorion Zoo 2
Green Force Brandon 1 Nyktorion Zoo 1
Zoo Thedrigo 0 Imperial Zoo 0

Keeping up with the general trend, the Zoo decks have done best, with the exception of thedrigo's deck. However, I think that this was not thedrigo's fault, but that the deck simply got unlucky: it was picked to be played by the AI exactly once (which explains why the AI never won with it), and it was paired against another Zoo deck in its first human game, which it lost.
As expected, affinity did very well, too. With slivers and Warrior Stompy, we also have two "not so common" archetypes which did very nicely in my tests.

[Yggdrasil]

I have not had time to test the 3 Jatil's decks, so this is my final scores.
Nice tournament, really.

My 2 cents :
- Metagame was zoo (I believe most of us had guessed it when creating our decks).
- Creatures based decks without removals had a hard time dealing the threats.
- Using dark confidant into Disco's and JuzamJedi's decks was an ingenious idea (OK, once the dark confidant draw a reveillark which nearly cost my life, but that was fun ).
- blood moon was a pain in the *ss for almost every deck.
- I didn't expect such elaborated decks like Salbei's, Scherbchen's or Jatil_Stax. It was a risky choice given the AI but it played them not so bad.
- That was the first time I played a charbelcher oriented deck. Instructive.
- for me, the most pleasant deck to play with was Aww1979_Affinity. Very fast and intuitive, I liked it a lot.

I hope there will be a next time. I guess the meta would be slighty different.

[jatill]

I have final scores submitted from Aww1979, Cognis, juzamjedi, Nytotorion, and Yggdrasil. I see that a couple other people were testing, so if you wanted to have your scores included, and earn the testing bonus, please submit your scores today.
Thanks.

[Yggdrasil]

yggdrasil: I didn't think this one was going to work very well, but it surprised me, and I won ten games with it. It was also quite easy for the AI to play. The AI doesn't know that the nighthawk has deathtouch, and when playing the deck, I got to kill some big flyers a couple times with it (broodstar and covetous dragon) I had actually made a fairly similar deck to this in my testing, with the main differences being tarmogoyf, dark ritual, and lord of extinction, but I didn't use it.

Yes, tarmo + lord of extinction with discard spell like hymn to tourach or mind twist would be great.
I put more lands and no dark ritual because AI tend to waste them for nothing (and most of times it wasted also the gatekeepers or the shriekmaw).
Building a deck decently played by the AI was the toughest part of the creation phase.

@Jatill : is there another tournament scheduled ?

[jatill]

@Jatill : is there another tournament scheduled ?

Not currently, but if someone else wants to schedule and run one, I'll still provide the prize. I'm thinking an EDH tournament might be especially interesting.

[scherbchen]

final results in

nyktorian zoo went 10-0. don't have the notes anymore but since it didn't lose there are no 5 points to dish out)

green force went 1-1 win versus blue4u and loss versus juzamjedi
juzamjedi in turn went 2-1 with wins versus affinity and kakodrilo while losing to thedrigo after a double mulligan
kakodrilo went 5-1 losing to slivers after taking down haterator, green force, blue4u, imperial zoo and warrior stompy

scoring!

nyktorian zoo 10 (undefeated) + 5 (win versus quirion cognis) -> 15
juzam kakodrilo 5 (5-1) + 5 (win versus blue4u) + 5 (win versus monty muck) -> 15
thedrigo zoo 10 (undefeated) -> 10 EDIT: +5 (win versus juzamjedi) coming to a corrected -> 15
imperial zoo 10 (undefeated) -> 10
warrior stompy 4 (4-1) + 5 (win versus Yggdra) -> 9
Yggdra 4 (4-1) + 5 (win versus affinity) -> 9
blue4u scores 6 (6-1) ->6
affinity 6 (6-1) -> 6
juzamjedi 5 (5-1) -> 5 EDIT: +5 (win versus green force) coming to a corrected -> 10
quirion cognis 4 (4-1) -> 4
monty muck 1 (1-1) -> 1
green force 1 (1-1) 1 (bit confused here. I remember losing to this deck once while testing. maybe it was before I did the proper testing according to jatill's rules)

did not include the +5 points for wins to jatill's decks since I did not test them (except for stax). do you want me to?

[Cognis]

Why is everyone asking for a new tournament, this one hadn't even begun This was the testing phase and although I have no real chance of winning I can't wait for the results. If somebody holds another tournament I imagine there will be even more submissions.

[discoransom]

Last 3 results in:

thedrigo zoo

8-1

Wins over juzamjedi zoo, kakodrilo juzam, STAX, mirror match, juzamjedi zoo (2), haterator, montymuck, slivers.

Loss to imperial zoo


yggdrasil aggro

7-1

Wins over warrior stompy, STAX, quirion, warrior stompy (2), mirror match, warrior stompy (3), awwfinity

Loss to awwfinity (2)


blue4u

5-1

Wins over nyktorion zoo, quirion, yggdrasil aggro, juzamjedi zoo, quirion (2)

Loss to haterator