Jan Tournament - Single Set Audtion

[Salbei]

Been building m11 decks with pretty much every combination of colors. Each color got some very strong cards and it was a really tough choice to submit the deck i felt the AI plays best.

The 5 card handicap ain´t that bad - i just added a couple more Lands than i would usually play and adjusted the Manacurve to it (more high cost spells) and it works out pretty well.
Each color got a high number of very playable cards so it was really a tough choice to find the "strongest" combination the AI could handle well.

Don´t wanna give away too much but i found a card to "exploit" the auction outcome and hopefully the chosen deck works as good as during my long tests.
Afterall it will all come down to the pairings.

[aww1979]

Yeah I did find one card that will exploit the auction outcome as well Well, several, but one in particular that might not be immediately obvious, as I think people won't be surprised at Balance or Timetwister helping my three card hand

[jatill]

Don´t wanna give away too much but i found a card to "exploit" the auction outcome and hopefully the chosen deck works as good as during my long tests.
Afterall it will all come down to the pairings.

Wow, nice find! When we did this live, the M11 guy had the same starting conditions as you, but missed that one.

[juzamjedi]

I would guess one card costs "W" and the other costs "1".

For what it's worth mine is a 3 color card. I will be naming my deck after the card just to make it obvious.

[aww1979]

(note: this is NOT my final submission, though it will probably look very similar or even identical to this) I know there are strategic reasons I might not want to do this, but I'm going to post my decklist so far and see what people think.

.1 1 Ancestral Recall
.194 1 Psionic Blast
.249 1 Time Walk
.250 1 Timetwister
.65 1 Disintegrate
.84 1 Fireball
.145 1 Lightning Bolt
.282 1 Wheel of Fortune
.30 1 Channel
.202 1 Regrowth
.17 1 Black Lotus
.18 1 Black Vise
.114 1 Howling Mine
.165 1 Mox Emerald
.166 1 Mox Jet
.167 1 Mox Pearl
.168 1 Mox Ruby
.169 1 Mox Sapphire
.230 1 Sol Ring
.241 1 Taiga
.252 1 Tropical Island
.266 1 Volcanic Island
.10 1 Balance
.240 1 Swords to Plowshares
.189 1 Plateau
.212 1 Savannah
.254 1 Tundra
.258 1 Underground Sea
.9 1 Badlands
.12 1 Bayou
.62 1 Demonic Tutor
.216 1 Scrubland
.132 1 Juggernaut
.290 1 Wrath of God
.224 1 Shivan Dragon
.242 1 Terror
.221 1 Serra Angel
.209 1 Royal Assassin
.64 1 Disenchant
.44 1 Control Magic

My original attempt had Fastbond, Time Vault, Twiddle, Copy Artifact, Braingeyser, Meekstone, and some other card that I've now forgotten, instead of the creatures, Control Magic, Wrath of God, and Terror, which were later additions, mostly to improve the AI friendliness. I removed Fastbond after realizing it's pretty much useless in this deck; by the time it's doing anything, you've already won. The AI bombed with Time Vault/Twiddle, so that got cut, too. Copy Artifact is good, but I ended up cutting that, too. Braingeyser is too slow, and Meekstone didn't really do much for me, either; it's the small, quick creatures that scare me, not the big fat ones. I'd considered some other mass removal cards like Nevinyrral's Disk or Earthquake, but I worried the AI would not play them well. (The AI disking away five moxes to destroy a single 1/1 creature is just not cool :p) I'd also tried using Stone Rain and Icestorm to slow the opponent down, but it just wasn't very effective. I'd also considered Icy Manipulator, Winter Orb, Smoke, and Mana Short as possible additions, but again, the AI sucks with those. Since I wanted to use Black Vise and Howling Mine, (Howling Mine is awesome in the opening hand!) I felt Hypnotic Specter and Mind Twist would be poor choices in combination with those, in case anyone wonders why those aren't in the list.

Channel is the secret weapon; with 30 life to start, it is easier to do the classic 'channelball' combo. Because the deck is so small, it is often possible to recur the Time Walk multiple times with Timetwister/Regrowth. (it was even easier to get multiple turns with the Time Vault/Twiddle combo in addition to Time Walk, but sadly the AI couldn't figure that one out) When playtesting, I kept EVERY three card hand, no matter what was in it, since you cannot afford to go to less, even if those three have no land. Since there are 17 mana sources (out of 40 cards) it's not that big a deal if there is no land in the first three. On the human side, it's surprising how often the deck can win (I actually had a streak of 15 wins at one point in my gauntlet, playing with 3 cards/30 life on my side) but the AI needs a lucky draw to win.

[juzamjedi]

I probably won't be able to play this deck tonight to give you feedback from actual games. Here are my thoughts though:

17 mana sources seems right.

Mind Twist seems bad since you won't have enough mana in a 3-card hand to abuse it properly. Best case is post-Wheel of Fortune or Timetwister, but if you cast Wheel of Fortune you're probably going to win without Mind Twist anyway. Hypnotic Specter seems OK (it's still a flyer) but there are better choices. So yes these seem fine to cut.

The main thing that sticks out to me is no Counterspell or Power Sink. This deck intends to give a lot of cards to both players so you probably want at least the Counterspell to stop opponent bombs / removal for your bombs. The spells I think are "most cuttable" to put in countermagic: Psionic Blast, Juggernaut, Channel, in roughly that order. I realize Channel can produce some filthy starts, however, from looking at the decklist there are really only 2 spells that abuse Channel.

Another good reason to cut Channel: double green. If you cut Channel you could remove 1-2 green lands (i.e. Bayou and/or Taiga) for 2 basics (based on this list either Plains and/or Island) so you can actually cast the spells that matter more.

Also, no Sengir Vampire? You didn't mention him although you should certainly try him. Air Elemental is a good creature in limited and Sengir Vampire is better than Air Elemental (being a black creature is a huge plus, the random ability won't matter too often I suspect). I feel pretty confident he will be better than Juggernaut.

That decklist is sweet. One of your "worst cards" (Psionic Blast) is better than like 95% of the cards in my set. Yes I'm jealous.

[aww1979]

I'd thought about Sengir Vampire, but my first two creatures were Serra Angel and Mahamoti Djinn, both of which I felt were better. Then I swapped the djinn for Shivan Dragon, and never went back to the djinn, as I was trying to keep the five colours as balanced as possible.

I liked the Juggernaut since the AI attacks with it, and it has the added bonus that if the human casts it, the AI will not see it as a defender in its strategy and attack into it with a 2/2 or whatever, plus as an artifact creature it doesn't matter which lands I get for it. (it also worked well with Copy Artifact until I cut that)

I'd briefly considered Counterspell, but I was thinking I'd probably be tapped out for it most of the time, except at the beginning. (I hadn't even thought about Power Sink) I'm not exactly sure why I thought that, but countermagic does seem a reasonable choice here.

I'll look at cutting Psionic Blast and Juggernaut for either counters or a sengir or mahamoti, but I'll never cut Channel. Even at an awkward GG cost, it won most of the games for me when I was testing.

[aww1979]

Submitted my deck. I ended up changing Shivan Dragon into Mahamoti Djinn (because debug mode showed AI would always Demonic Tutor for the dragon) and Psionic Blast I swapped for Counterspell. I'd tried Power Sink in place of Juggernaut, but having enough mana to make effective use of Power Sink made me decide against it. The AI seems to like tutoring for Juggernaut now, which isn't nearly as bad as Shivan Dragon. The AI plays absolutely horribly with it, but humans should do alright as long as they have a bit of luck with the initial draws.

[jatill]

Still waiting for 4 more decks, due tomorrow.

[240sxforever]

You have mine right?

[Shantak]

Just submitted my deck. I would have wanted to do an Ally deck but with singleton cards this would have probably required three colors and I wasn't comfortable with the idea with just Zendikar mana fixing.

Vampires was a strong contender and can have really aggressive early game, but I felt that GB Landfall was better in the late game and went with that.

[juzamjedi]

OK, so time to unveil my secret weapon. The most broken card in my pool is named Umezawa - Tetsuo Umezawa. If only he could have his Jitte too. Oh well.

[monopoman]

Here is my deck...

[240sxforever]

no response from jatill, so here it is again.

[jatill]

I have all the decks now. Just 1 hitch. I keep my installation of manalink on a thumb drive, and that drive is sitting on a shelf at home. So we'll have to wait until I remember to bring that with me to start the tournament. Hopefully tomorrow! (I need manalink so I can submit my own deck, as well as fix a couple errors with submitted decks - specifically, the handicap cards)