Jan Tournament - Single Set Audtion

[juzamjedi]

Beta............ 4 cards 11 life (juzamjedi)
Arabian Nights.. no bid
Antiquities..... 8 cards 30 life (240sxforever)
Fallen Empires.. no bid
Legends......... no bid
8th Edition..... 7 cards, 20 life (Monopoman)
Zendikar........ 6 cards, 20 life (shantak)
M11............. 5 cards, 30 life (Salbei)

[aww1979]

Beta............ 3 cards 30 life (aww1979)
Arabian Nights.. no bid
Antiquities..... 8 cards 30 life (240sxforever)
Fallen Empires.. no bid
Legends......... no bid
8th Edition..... 7 cards, 20 life (Monopoman)
Zendikar........ 6 cards, 20 life (shantak)
M11............. 5 cards, 30 life (Salbei)

Here goes nothing...

[monopoman]

What a surprise Beta is getting a ton of action lol.

[240sxforever]

In addition to the power level, it seems to be the set that the A I playes most effictively.

[jatill]

3 cards? You are insane. I don't think I'd go down to 3 if I had every card in the game available.

[aww1979]

I like Beta.

[jatill]

I like Beta.

You know you don't get to keep the cards, right?

[Salbei]

Actually 4 cards 11 life was a lot more dangerous than 3 cards 30 life. A turn 1 Savannah Lion etc. would have turned out to be a real threat with that low hp. The extra card wouldn´t do that much about it while the extra hp buys you enough time to setup and draw into that broken stuff Beta offers.

Ancestral Recall , Balance , Timetwister , Wheel of Fortune , Braingeysir , Mind Twist , Demonic Tutor (in combination) and the list goes on.
Beta offers like 10 cards out of a 40 card deck that would get you "even" again. Won´t take that long till you get one or the other and then your "even" or even ahead. Gonna be a lot harder with a low hp-pool to recover from that "disadvantage".

There is a good reason those cards where restricted in Vintage - and Vintage uses 60 cards.. the odds of going nuts with a 40 card deck is even higher.

Betas weakspot are the creatures. M11 and Zendikar are very efficient there and will plain overpower you, especially when the game goes on longer.
Most of the times you get a bigger bang for your mana investment compared to other sets.

8th is a fairly balanced set with no overly powerfull cards, but lots of good synergies and some reprints of very potent cards. Depending on the bids it is also very capable of winning this.

FE,Legends,Arabian Nights are just meh. They play in a completly different league and i would really ponder why someone would bid too much in there.

[aww1979]

I can use a 40 card deck? rofl that's even better

[Salbei]

Don´t forget the Duals ^^
Pretty much only Antiquities (4x Strip Mine - well they will annoy anyone^^) and 8th (1x Blood Moon)can hose you with those and i doubt Blood Moon is going to see play.If you don´t play 4+ colours with Beta your doing it wrong


beta
like half of the restricted cards are there ...
strong removal, very strong carddraw and Mana Acceleration

m11
very strong mid-sized creatures (Titans, BSA)
good spotremoval
pretty much brute force. ramp up to 5-6 and overpower the opponent with the best 5-6 mana cost creatures.

zendikar
prolly the best "weenie" set (vampires)
good manafixing, landfall mechanics+synergies
can be a very flexible set, most of the time a mono-black vampire deck gave me the best results.

8th
very "controlish"
lots of decent burn
annoying permanents (worship, bridge)
the decks i´ve made with this where all able to beat the competition, unfortunatly the AI won´t ^^

FE
cards the world doesn´t need ... seriously
creatures cost way too much for their effects, removal is next to non-existant and to top things off the AI won´t use the effects.
whenever we have to cut cards to make room for new quality cards - THIS set is where you should look for things to throw out and make room

Legends
Annoying permanents (Moat, Abyss, Mirror Universe)
Weak Creatures (to expensive)
huge set, lots and lots of unplayable cards
Had quite a hard time to build a decent deck with this.

Arabian Nights
Fairly strong creatures, but with drawbacks
very small set
fun to play, but way out of date

Antiquities
Decent Creatures
"Good" Lands (Strip Mine, Factories, Tron, Shop)
can potentially overpower you early, but its getting weaker with each turn

[aww1979]

I was actually thinking of doing allies if I ended up with Zendikar, but vampires is pretty good, too. I wasn't too sure which set I wanted to try and get, except that since I did Arabian Nights in the last single set one, I knew I wanted something else for a change. Obviously, Beta is the strongest set, so I had to either bid a lot to get it or make somebody else pay a lot to get it.

The biggest issues some of the early expansions had was the lack of removal. For instance, look at fallen empires; if someone drops a Baneslayer, what are you going to do? Goblin Grenade? Hand of Justice? Merseine? It's going to be really tough to handle something like that. Antiquities is in a similar boat; everything is either an artifact, synergizes with an artifact, or hoses an artifact.

And yeah, assuming I win the beta bid, my deck will probably have something like 10x duals + jewelry for mana :p

[Salbei]

Terror , Swords to Plowshares , Lightning Bolt , Disintegrate , Fireball , Wrath of God , Balance

Overall very strong removal i would say, especially since you can mindlessly put all of them in because color screw isn´t much of an issue.

Personally i headed for Beta>M11>Zendikar>8th>Antiquities pretty much in that order.M11 is my favorite when the AI plays the decks.

Well the auction is obviously very important when in comes down to the final decision.

[monopoman]

3 card hands are abysmall seriously I mean people are acting like lolz Recall can fix that..

You just gave your opponent a huge advantage if hes playing with a starting hand of 7.

Now if all the half way decent sets get bid to nothing then it won't matter.

Thats my only problem with this thing Fallen Empires and Legends look like joke sets and really should be excluded.

[Shantak]

I think Fallen Empires might have upper hand over some of the better sets with small hands. Though it's mainly crap, with the one copy per artwork rule you'd get at least 4 x Hymn to Tourach and 3 x Order of the Ebon Hand in your deck. The lack of removal and mana fixing probably hurts more though.

[Aswan jaguar]

Beta............ 3 cards 30 life (aww1979)
Arabian Nights.. no bid
Antiquities..... 8 cards 30 life (240sxforever)
Fallen Empires.. no bid
Legends......... no bid
8th Edition..... 7 cards, 20 life (Monopoman)
Zendikar........ 6 cards, 18 life (Aswan jaguar)
M11............. 5 cards, 30 life (Salbei)