Jan Tournament - Single Set Audtion

[jatill]

I was surprised that you didn't have Green in the deck for Primeval Titan, Garruk, Birds, and Cultivate. I would have gone that route and cut down or removed the red cards. It's a little easier on the mana.

[Salbei]

Well i´ve tried a few different versions. Personally i loved the version with Fauna Shaman and Black instead of Red, but the AI was just horrible with it.
The AI is just bad with Garruk , especially when you lack early drops to protect him - Garruk is just a 4mana 3/3 vanilla in the hands of the AI most of the time.Don´t care too much what a player could do with the card when it is a wasted slot for the AI.

Birds and Cultivate are both things you never want to draw into unless they are in your opening hand.Pretty horrible topdecks, especially with that many lands in the deck.
I thought running 50% lands would be enough "manafixing" and with 30 hp you can really afford to wait a turn and skip the acceleration.I tried to make every card "worth" drawing.

Archon was just overkill i have to admit - its just sitting in your hand forever and could potentially screw you over (Bribery , Control Magic etc).
The Cyclops tripple red was also pushing it too far.I´ve also decided against Lightning Bolt because the AI tends to just waste it.Another great card i had to cut because of the poor AI performance with it.

For the sake of consistency i´ve decided against a third color.
Playing a third color when you know mass Strip Mines are going to be played was just too scary.It was also easier to get that broken turn1 Serra Ascendant more likely to happen.

Cudgel Troll was very tempting as well. Blue and Black both got very strong cards in M11 too. After all red/white was a solid choice. The AI was playing it very well and that was the main factor.

[Aswan jaguar]

I know sometimes it may seem deliberate when someone looses with your deck 0-2 but so far no one complained about this.Maybe I am too naive,but I don't think we have cheaters but even if we do they can screw their rivals if they want by fixing or getting the outcomes they want or simply by lying about the results.This is why you should play the games,no matter if the outcome is 0-2 for your deck.In the end of the day you should be ok with your self,that you did the best,or better tried your best.

[Salbei]

I didn´t want to say that anyone is cheating. It just looks akward and since you are able to manipulate your own standings (quite drasticly like in this case) i just prefer to not play my own games to avoid situations like this.Just got a bitter taste to it.
That is also why i prefer the 3 points per game score system that i will use in the February tournament - you just can´t get screwed over by a single match that way.Currently a 0-2 loss equals a 2-0 and 2 2-1 wins as a player. A single report can create 3 others out of nowhere just like that.

I´m already 2 points behind without that report so there is no reason to "forge" that 0-2. Don´t get me wrong, i´m not trying to say that he manipulated it, just that it could theoretically be done that way.
I already won two tournaments and a 2nd place is also an accomplishment.Its just for fun after all.

[juzamjedi]

Hey guys sorry I have not been able to get to the forum much recently. Work has been getting in the way. I see that my little deck didn't do too bad! 4th place with that pile seems respectable, heh.

The set had Force Spike, Remove Soul, Mana Drain, and Time Elemental. I knew 100% sure I was going to play blue.

Originally I planned to play white in my deck. Legends has Moat, Land Tax, and Divine Offering and I was planning to ride those to victory. The problem was, as good as the spells were the white creatures were pretty awful and there weren't a lot of good flying options.

I looked at the legends and decided that SolKanar the Swamp King and Nicol Bolas looked pretty good. Tetsuo Umezawa looked reasonable as a "bad Royal Assassin". But then I played the games and... Tetsuo was untargetable! At this point I knew for sure I would be playing these colors and I'm happy to see he worked out as well as I had hoped.

UMEZAWA HAS HIS REVENGE!

[240sxforever]

As far as the results, I tried. The result bugged me enough that I went back and reran the matches later, twice (though without reporting them.) I went 2-1 and 1-2 on those rounds respectively. So it may just be my play.

If you would like, I will withdraw my results.

[Aswan jaguar]

Juzamjedi wrote:

Hey guys sorry I have not been able to get to the forum much recently. Work has been getting in the way. I see that my little deck didn't do too bad! 4th place with that pile seems respectable, heh.

and imagine that you didn't make it to the final to a tiebreaker.
240sxforever wrote:

As far as the results, I tried. The result bugged me enough that I went back and reran the matches later, twice (though without reporting them.) I went 2-1 and 1-2 on those rounds respectively. So it may just be my play.

Don't worry man,from the other results and mine,it is apparent that strip mines,also the fast 3urzas is a killer and hurt Salbei's deck a lot since it needs a lot of mana so AI's has a lot of chances to win,I lost too, 1-2 didn't post my results yet.

Also Salbei had this policy,not to play his matches,from the beginning of the tournament.

[240sxforever]

Salbei's policy is a good one. I thought we were supposed to play all matches in each set as a condition of the tournament.

[aww1979]

I looked at the legends and decided that SolKanar the Swamp King and Nicol Bolas looked pretty good.

Funny though that Solkanar wasn't actually in your deck :p

[juzamjedi]

I looked at the legends and decided that SolKanar the Swamp King and Nicol Bolas looked pretty good.

Funny though that Solkanar wasn't actually in your deck :p

That's even funnier! Apparently the "Grim Discovery" is that my missing card was Sol'Kanar the Swamp King. I can't believe my deck almost made the finals and it was missing one of the best cards in my colors!

[240sxforever]

If the deck had him it might have made the finals. He is what the deck needed most.

[aww1979]

We thought Grim Discovery was supposed to be Greed since it was right beside it alphabetically and it's also a quality card.

[Salbei]

Looks like it is over.

Thanks to Jatill for the fresh tournament idea.
The custom restrictions and auction system was a very interesting, and surprisingly balanced idea.I´m glad we didn´t play with 60 cards since some decks would have severely suffered from that.

One thing i didn´t like about the tournament was that it was very predictable how the decks for each individual set would look like and there was roughly no way to use that knowledge when it came down to deckbuilding.

The auction played a major role in deciding who would come out ahead and players should have bid a little more aggressive - but that was in the players hands. The delay to do this via the forum gave people some additional time to think about their bids and i was quite surprised it was over so "fast".
My predictions of the sets individual strength where later reflected in the auction - which surprisingly lead to Aww1979 "overbidding" Beta which cost him big time.
The outcome greatly influenced my personal choices (got waaaay to much life) with M11 and tried to exploit that.A few more bids there would have been healthier for the tournament in hindsight.
Antiquities and Fallen Empires both got and edge due to the Artwork restrictions which turned out to be very important.
The remaining Sets suffered from "mediocore" and overpriced cards too much, the auction didn´t make up for that (enough).

Personally i dislike the "huge" 4 people groups forcing you to play 24 matches.Mostly because of the (needed) deadline and a tight schedule.I skipped my own games (roughly 50% of each round) so i got no right to complain there .
The February tournament is going to use smaller groups (3 groups with 3 people). This leads to less matches to be played (18 instead of 24) and hopefully reduces the pressure a bit.Round2 is going to take slightly longer, overall it should be the same amount of matches, just with a player more and at a "light" schedule.

Also the used point system showed its flaws.
Jatill won the most games and finished 2nd in GroupA.
After 3 reports i had the same ammount of points in Group B than most people in Group A after ALL reports due to the "bonus" points.Was just impossible to catch up.
I´m trying a slightly different system for the next tournament and hopefully fix both issues.

Most games where exciting to play and it was an enjoyable tournament overall.The few "boring" games where mainly their individual sets fault - nothing the deckbuilders could do about that.
Who would have thought that Antiquities would come out ahead ?


Congratulations 240sxforever!

[240sxforever]

Was there a prize for this tournament? I did not see one in the opening threads.

[Salbei]

Prize is winner take all, 5 cards.

Was in the Report topic.