MRD Tournament - Game commentary/Discussion

[juzamjedi]

I have been anxiously waiting.

Cold-Eyed Selkie
Forbid
Polluted Delta

[aww1979]

Thanks to juzamjedi for taking 3 cards I don't want (I'd been eyeing All is Dust, and Primeval Titan was down fairly low on my fattie list, but I have better ones I can use...)

My 3 picks this round are Eureka, Darksteel Colossus, Sundering Titan.

[jatill]

Sphinx of Jwar Isle
Connundum Sphinx
Keiga

Air force assemble!

[Shantak]

Thanks for doing my turn, jatill. My choices went pretty much like I figured they would.

How is it that we have suddenly four decks trying to cheat fatties into play? Maybe because that's one tactic AI doesn't suck that much with (however, I'm not sure if AI will even cast Sneak Attack - I was testing it for one Legacy tournament and it looked like AI didn't cast it even if it was the only card in hand and there was enough mana). I really should have picked Show and Tell and Eureka last round.

Let's see then...

Tooth and Nail
Elvish Piper
Woodfall Primus
Simic Sky Swallower
Confiscate
Fastbond

Edit: Switched Summoning Trap (not in Constructed) to Fastbond

[aww1979]

I don't know, but I took oath of druids on round 2, so I was the original! And hands off my primus... <sigh>

[jatill]

Elspeth
Worship
Coalition Relic

[Cognis]

I was thinking whether to take Coalition Relic or no, well guess that saves me the trouble.

[jatill]

I was thinking whether to take Coalition Relic or no, well guess that saves me the trouble.

At this point I have my entire planned decklist laid out, and I'm just taking the cards most likely to be snagged by someone else first. I figure anyone might want Relic. Going from 3 mana to 6 is huge sometimes.

Edit-
Shantak, Summoning Trap is not in the Constructed version.

[juzamjedi]

Funny you say that because I have already been playtesting my planned decklist. At least the long pauses in between rounds are good for something. I found 2 hidden gems that I had forgotten about and I will be taking this round.

So I guess we all wait for Shantak to revise his choice?

[Nicdanger]

So I guess we all wait for Shantak to revise his choice?

Yeah. If anyone up before me wants to PM me picks I'll be around most of the day.

[jatill]

I say wait the 12 hour window for Shantak, but in the future, if you miss a pick, you just get 1 extra pick next time your turn comes around.

How will the scoring work when we play out the rounds? This will influence my picks next round

I propose:
Everyone play everyone twice in best 2/3 matches. (that's a lot of matches!!)
Same scoring as normal tournaments, except +1 point for when the AI loses 2-1 with your deck. (i.e. 1 point for your 1 win).
Top 4 advance for single elimination, 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3.
I've already got the prize distribution settled, but that will have to wait until the draft is finished.

[Nicdanger]

I say wait the 12 hour window for Shantak, but in the future, if you miss a pick, you just get 1 extra pick next time your turn comes around.

How will the scoring work when we play out the rounds? This will influence my picks next round

I propose:
Everyone play everyone twice in best 2/3 matches. (that's a lot of matches!!)
Same scoring as normal tournaments, except +1 point for when the AI loses 2-1 with your deck. (i.e. 1 point for your 1 win).
Top 4 advance for single elimination, 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3.
I've already got the prize distribution settled, but that will have to wait until the draft is finished.

All that sounds good, but just to clarify you want to have everyone play AS each deck AGAINST each other deck twice?

[jatill]

Yeah, so that would be 28 different pairings, played both ways, twice. Maybe that is insane. Once would be sufficient, for a total of 56 matches over the course of a month or so.

[Shantak]

Didn't figure that Summoning Trap wasn't in (it should be, if only for Emrakul ). Well, I thought about some choices already during my trip home from work, but now I have problem choosing just one...

I'll pick...

Fastbond

No one saw that coming, I'm sure.

[Shantak]

How will the scoring work when we play out the rounds? This will influence my picks next round

I propose:
Everyone play everyone twice in best 2/3 matches. (that's a lot of matches!!)
Same scoring as normal tournaments, except +1 point for when the AI loses 2-1 with your deck. (i.e. 1 point for your 1 win).
Top 4 advance for single elimination, 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3.
I've already got the prize distribution settled, but that will have to wait until the draft is finished.

I have quite a different idea in my head, so I'll run it through to see what you guys think of it.

Players are named A through H. One week is one round. Each round one deck will play against one other deck (best of three and AI plays both decks once like we have done so far) so that every deck will get playtime every week. That would go like:
Round 1: A vs B, C vs D, E vs F, G vs H
Round 2: A vs C, B vs D, E vs G, F vs H
...
Round 8: A vs H, B vs G, C vs F, D vs E

Then, I would suggest that every deck gets +1 point for human win and +2 points for AI win. This would mean the following for our usual results:
Human vs AI 2-0 - Human +2 points
Human vs AI 2-1 - Human +2 points, AI +2 points
Human vs AI 1-2 - Human +1 points, AI +4 points
Human vs AI 0-2 - AI +4 points.
Okay, this doesn't give a deck more points from a 2-0 win than 2-1 win, but since the other deck doesn't get as many points, I would think the effect is similar enough.

Each round we count the points and mark in a table how each deck is doing. Then, after eight rounds, I would grant the deck that has most points some prize (1 card maybe?) but then have semifinals with the four top decks (1st playing 4th, 2nd playing 3rd) and then get the pairings for finals and bronze match.

I haven't really thought the statistics of this too much, but I figured this would make it interesting to play and would have it last longer than a month. If 1 week feels too long time for a round of four matches, we could shorten it to x (maybe 5) days. Also, if we want the decks to play against each other one more time, we could run eight more rounds before semifinals.

Opinions? I we go with this style, I could take the responsibility of keeping score (though will give it to Nicdanger or someone else if he wants it).