So, why write about 100 singleton? If you check around, there is no shortage of online articles about 100 singleton. And, when you look at the numbers, there aren't a lot of people playing 100 singleton when compared to standard or pauper. So, why should we spend so much time thinking and writing about 100 singleton? Because 100 singleton is an extremely fun format that is simply dying because classic prizes currently aren't profitable enough to sustain it. I'm writing this article to increase awareness of the format, and to propose a few ways in which Wizards should reexamine prizes/tournaments for classic era events. I like this format so much I've entered at least 1 weekend tournament just to get the minimum number of players to get it started knowing that I'd miss a round or two due to other commitments. This format is worth saving, and here are some reasons why...
What is good about 100 singleton?
1. This format captures a lot of the spirit of the game that many of us loved when we first started playing. You never know what your opponent might have. No two decks are the same. (Well, okay some people copy decks at the competitive level of play, but most of the top 8 decks have several differences.) No two games are the same. With 100 singleton, games usually are not won or lost with the same cards. You need to think on your feet and react to the board and plan your moves carefully. 100 singleton is sort of like a giant draft game in which players can recruit all of the best cards throughout magic history in order to battle each other on an epic scale.
2. You can play with your all-time favorite cards competitively. Let's face it. We all have emotional attachments to certain cards, and we get a kick out of playing them again. However, a lot of these cards may be limited bombs but they would be torn apart facing a competitive Elf-ball deck or a Counter-Top deck, or a Aether Vial Goblin deck. The point is 100 singleton is one of the few places where cards like Lightning Crafter, (Meloku), Tallowisp, Lord of the Undead, and Genesis can really shine.
3. Few games end the same way. I've played my share of competitive constructed games, and the problem I always face is that the match-ups start to blend together. If you've played a couple of Faerie mirror matches, you know what I'm talking about. With 100 singleton, you will always encounter games that are new, and not something you've seen a hundred times before. And if your deck seems to be getting stale, you can always change around 10-15 cards to get a new fresh take on a familiar deck.
4. Decision making is incredibly important. Have you ever played a tutor and had around 40 different potential targets? In this format, that situation is not just possible, but it happens all the time.
5. You can rediscover old cards. Every new card printed creates a new possible combo. For instance, after Ant Queen was released, I dusted Fertile Ground off a bit and incorporated this lovely combo into a couple of my green decks. Yes, Earthcraft and Squirrel Nest is a well known combo, but I kind of like changing it up a bit.
Here's another of my new favorite M2010 combos.
Also, after Changelings were released, I rediscovered Higure, the Still Wind.
I just love rediscovering old cards and combining them with new cards.
What is bad about 100 singleton?
1. The cost to construct a deck can be a bit steep, especially if you're building a 3+ color deck. Let's face it, duals are expensive. Force of Will is still expensive. Planeswalkers are expensive. Constructing a 100 card deck requires you to buy expensive cards. The good news is that you don't need to buy a playset (ie. 4) of anything. Buying 1 of each dual land is expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than buying 4 of each dual land. With 100 singleton you can play with all the cards without spending a fortune on a set of any one card. It's not as bad as buying a classic deck, but it can still be a bit on the expensive side of things.
2. The prizes really suck. At the moment the 100 singleton 2-man queues pay out with Tempest packs. These packs can't be drafted unless you can match them up with Stronghold packs which you can't win as prizes separate from Tempest packs and you can't buy them from the store. As a result, Tempest packs are barely worth more than the entrance fee to a 2-man queue. So, the only viable tournament option is the weekend premiere event, which pays out in draft sets of Tempest and Stronghold. There still isn't much demand for these, even when you get the Stronghold packs. In fact, I would bet that most of the Tempest-Stronghold drafts that fire have some 100 singleton players in them.
Why should I care about 100 singleton?
1. Soon Master's Edition 3 will come out, and it will be good. Mana Drain and the enemy duals will mean that those packs will be heavily drafted. If/when the 100 singleton prizes switch over to Master Edition 3, the format will be very profitable again.
How can this be improved?
1. Combine all classic packs into one generic "Classic Draft Pack"
There is not much demand for older drafts. They rotate formats and take forever to fill. You have to trade and sell packs like a fiend in order to try the classic format of the week. Then, if you're lucky enough to win, you have to sit in the queues for that particular draft format until it fires again. Of course you could try to sell off your packs to buy different packs, but the classic packs aren't worth much and no one is buying them. In the end drafting older formats is an exercise in frustration. So why not consolidate the packs into generic "Classic Draft Packs" which can't be opened but can be used as an entrance fee to enter any out of print draft queue. Use the prizes from a Kamigawa draft last week to enter this week's Invasion Draft queues. Then user your winnings from that draft to enter next week's Mirrodin draft queues. Trust me, demand for prizes will go up, and more people will draft classic sets if they know their prizes are actually useful.
2. Create a "Wager" Challenge
| Format |
100 Singleton Match |
| Wager |
 |
| Comment |
Looking for  or  or anything of similar value |
| Chat/Accept? |
accept challenge, reject challenge or negotiate buttons |
It takes forever to find someone to play against in the practice room. And once you do, they quit as soon as their next draft round starts, or you play a card they don't like. Because there is nothing on the line, there is no incentive to play seriously. It's very frustrating. If you introduce a "Wager" challenge, in which the winner gets all the wagers, then players have a reason to stick it out. Also, the more valuable the "wager" the harder the opponent you are likely to meet. If you want a casual game "wager" a foil land. If you want a cut-throat game "wager" a M2010 pack. This solves the problem of finding players of the appropriate strength and it gives players an incentive to construct and play competitive decks. Normally, the 2-man queues would be sufficient for this assignment. But since Tempest packs are worth just a bit more the price of admission, this option is not viable.
How do you make a 100 singleton deck?
First, look at the staples of the format. What are the must-have cards? If you are playing a certain combination of colors what cards do you need to have? To answer these questions I've looked at the posted results for the top 8 decks from 7-100 singleton weekend challenge premiere events. Basically, every tournament result I could find before writing up this report. It won't include the most recent results that came out this Thursday due to the fact that I'm writing this before Thursday. Anyway, I counted the number of times each card appeared in a top 8 deck from these tournaments in order to get an idea of which cards the best decks/players are using. This should give us a decent list of the must-have cards for each color or color combination.
So, how do we use this information to build a deck? We start with an idea, which can be anything from "I want to play aggro" to "Pingers and Gorgon Flail." There are literally hundreds of places to start. Elves, Goblins, Shamans, Enchantments, Artifacts, Black/White, White/Red, Armageddon, well, you get the idea. Lets start with a relatively simple idea.
I've always liked the Kamigawa Snake tribes and Opposition has always been a favorite way to win, so let's combine them.
Start with the idea:
Now let's add some of the best snakes in the game:
It's looking like this deck is going to be a green and blue deck, so to fill out the deck, we look at 3 things.
1. The top Blue cards in the list.
2. The top green cards in the list.
3. More cards that compliment our themes of tokens and snakes.
After looking over the lists I fill out the deck like so.
A couple of cards are missing from this list because I don't own the cards. Force of Will Engineered Explosives and Pithing Needle. Sometimes you just have to avoid playing with cards you don't own.
Anyway, from here we need to add lands to our deck and start testing it out in some practice games in order to see which cards work in the deck and which cards are good on paper, but bad in real life.
So, which cards here are going to be cut? Which cards are going to stay? How in the world do you add lands to a 100 singleton deck anyway. As I have already made this article far too long, join me next time for the answers to those burning questions.
-Marcus, the man with a user name that is entirely too long. "Shuyin Knight of Zanarkand" on Magic Online.
18 Comments
How many lands do these decks usually run?
In general 40% is a good average for any deck but I find I tend to go a slight be light (35-38) to fit in some fixing that otherwise wouldn't make the cut.
I talk exclusively about lands in part 2. The short answer is that the top decks typically run between 37 to 44 lands depending on mana curve.
i played yesterday 100cs, love the format and i agree with all you say about why its worth saving.
thanks for the compilation list too!
Thanks for the article, and nice job of outlining some of the things that make the format so much fun.
I don't think it's likely that Wizards would ever setup the wager feature. It smacks too much of gambling (i.e. it is obviously gambling) and would require coding work. I don't think they have a lot of flexibility in either area.
The "classic pack" idea would be nice. But I also doubt they will do that. People have been saying for years that they want a generic pack instead of specific prize packs, and Wizards has always ignored those voices. If they started letting us choose our prize packs, people would probably buy less packs from the store. My guess is that they'd come out ahead through better tournament participation if the prize packs allowed us some options, but maybe I'm just stupid.
One way or another, they definitely need to stop paying out in classic packs that hardly anybody wants. My suggestion is that they pay out in Master's Edition 2/3 forever. Dual lands will never go out of style. They would need to put up ME draft queues occasionally to make this worthwhile, of course.
Whatever they do, I hope we don't get stuck with Exodus (and more Tempest/Stronghold) prizes when that comes out. The interest in that set will be fleeting, and demand for Tempest/Stronghold will only continue to drop. Even Urza's block doesn't fill me with confidence, because while the sets will be popular initially, a lot of people will quickly accumulate the broken/restricted staples and move on. That's why ME2/3 are better prizes: dual lands are in high demand and always will be. Apart from that, having more duals out there will make both Classic and 100 Card healthier and more accessible.
One more thing: Nix Pax drafts hurt 100CS. It further reduces the demand for classic block packs.
I agree that wager set-up is not very likely to happen. I think it would be very helpful to the community in finding casual games against like-minded similar skill-level opponents.
As you said, wagering cards, even digital non-redeemable cards, might have legal implications that might kill the idea in Wizard's eyes. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know the issue well enough to say anything more than that. Still, I'd rather suggest a solution, even an unlikely solution, than stay silent about an issue that I believe deserves attention.
I think "Classic" packs has a much better chance of being implemented.
"Generic" packs are a bit different from "Classic" packs. If you can't buy the packs in the store, then your packs are not competing with the store.
If I win an Alara Block 2-man tourney and get a pack of Alara Reborn, Wizards wants me to buy a pack of Shards and Conflux so I can draft it again. That is all well and good, and if we made generic packs wizards wouldn't be able to sell us the missing pieces of our draft set. I understand this and accept it as a way Wizards wants to make money.
However....
If I win a pack of Tempest from a 100 singleton match, I CAN'T buy or WIN a pack of Stronghold to use it to draft with. My pack basically becomes a dead end, and that's not a good prize.
If I win two packs from a CBS nix tix draft I'm in even worse shape. I can't buy the third pack to draft it again because Wizards doesn't sell it, and after this week I can't draft CBS again for a couple of months until it's available again.
"Classic" packs solves both problems, and doesn't compete with packs Wizards wants to sell to us.
Thanks for the additional explanation on the classic pack idea. Agreed, that does seem like a reasonable option for both parties involved.
Moar Pauper 100cs please
First article of 100 C Singleton and I loved it. Seems like an interesting concept. I was getting bored of casual and I dont have too much money to draft constantly nor am I able to go infinite all the time.
Seems fun. I may give it a try soon.
Thanks
You can't go infinite with draft mate :) This is only urban legend! 2 or 3 bad drafts in a row and you are as far as possible from infinite (and bad drafts are common even for pro players! ). So if you want to go infinite just play constructed and win more than 50% of the time.And if you want a cheap format try Pauper - after you buy 40 or 50 "expensive" cards (1-3 tixs), most of your collection will cost a 0,01-0,03 per card :)
Funny, I don't think my collection even comes into the 150 ticket value range (not counting the .05 or less cards) even with all my cards combined. I am certain my pauper collection isn't even close. Scary thought when a format purports to be for the $0 crowd but the MUST play cards cost in total between $100 and $150 (just based on your comment, no real data.) Spending that much on a single game is not for paupers. It might before economic minded individuals but certainly not for people like me. (Assuming that you MUST have the $1-$3 cards which I am dubious about.)
Most of the pauper decks have around 4-12 "expensive cards", so if you like only one or two decks you can buy them pretty cheap :)
"You need at least 4-12" is a lot different from needing 50 or so. But even though that sounds a lot more reasonable it still makes it a tad expensive if you don't happen to have those cards to begin with. Also it seems odd to me to talk about a format that is supposedly wide open and talk about buying a deck. Shouldn't rogue builders be able to avoid buying? Maybe THAT should be the subject of your next article.
I've been interested in 100CS for a while now and this just might get me to take the plunge. Excellent article.
I love that you counted the number of times each card top 8'd, i don't think its usful when building my own decks but its handy as a sort of "snapshot" of the format.
The term staple is used too much in magical circles, 100 card Singleton doesn't have a completely defined metagame as yet and as such nothing can be deemed as a certainty in any list.
For anyone looking to get into the format,pick cards that are good for your gameplan/strategy (or extremely bad for your opponents strategy) over anything else.
While it's hard to say that any card is a certainty, I think there are a couple of cards that you really have to have a good reason not to play them if you are playing the colors of those cards.
A couple of examples of these cards would include Eternal Witness, Fact or Fiction, Shriekmaw, Lightning Bolt, Swords to Plowshares, and Wasteland.
Wasteland would be the only card I would include in every deck I build, but depending on the colors I'm playing, there are certain cards that are just too good to ignore...
Nice data..
makes me smile when i see 2x spellstutter sprite (and a bunch of other 2x cos tt's definitely from me t8ing with the same deck twice)..
or executioner's capsule being so "highly played" (mainly in crosis control which was picked up by many pple)
one could probably take the most played cards of 2-3 colors and throw them together to make a deck that works.. lol..
wager sounds difficult to police..
and yes, 100 card singleton is v fun~ =)
I was suggesting that it would be something that Wizards could implement to improve participation. Unfortunetly, I don't think it can be done without Wizards adding that feature to the game.