The Magic Online Community Challenge Cup - Crunch Time
Several of us writers for PureMTGO, and a couple of other writers and community leaders, are headed to Renton later this week to play a four-format tournament against the Wizards of the Coast themselves. The details are here.
This week we found out who we would be playing against. Before I give you that list, let me create the list of WotC employees I never want to face. These are all former pros, etc.
Mike Turian – that’s Hall of Fame member Mike Turian
Aaron Forsythe – former pro. He crushed me at GP Detriot,
Worth Wolpert – was a top pro back when I started writing for The Dojo.
Eric Lauer - Team CMU, the LauerPotence deck, etc.
Tom Lapille – former SCG writer, placed 8th and 12th at GP, etc.
Actually, the list goes on and on. Wizards has a lot of good former players in its ranks. I also assumed that Mark Rosewater would be playing. He loves the game, and loves to play. He is also, I’m quite sure, better than me.
Well, late last week, Wizards announced their actual team. So who will we face in Renton?
Mark Rosewater
Mike Turain
Aaron Forsythe
Worth Wolpert
Eric Lauer
Tom Lapille
We are so doomed.
Actually, the Wizards team is even bigger than that. It looks like no one from Wizards will be playing in more than one or two of the formats. Could be because this is because the tournament occurs during work hours, and the Wizards folks actually have work to do. Could be that they want to share the opportunity widely within the company.
Could be that they are in fear of us, and no one is could be forced to face us more than twice.
The bios include their answers to the question “do you think the community team can win?” Some selected answers:
Lee Sharpe: Of course they can. I mean it’s *possible* we all get mana screwed every game, right?
Matt Tabak: Sure, but most of the scenarios where this happens involve swine flu, rampant flooding at our offices, or the Mayan apocalypse.
Well, Bubba0077 is recovering from some version of the flu, but that’s probably not one of Mark's we-win scenarios.
The biggest problem – well, aside from the fact that the community team is made of writers and community leaders, not professional players – is that we are all busy with our real lives. Only one of us has a Magic-related job (it’s Tweaker), and he’s swamped with card orders. We are all trying to find time to play and draft and practice, but that’s hard.
Really hard. Wizards has set up some free Invasion drafts, and we couldn’t get four people free at the same time for more than half of them.
So sad.
I should talk about 100 Card Singleton, which I am supposed to be coordinating, but I just dread posting the decklists. 115 card decklists (with sideboard) are a pain to copy and format, and a lot of the card links will need to be created manually.
100 Care Unified Singleton is a cool format, though. Eight decks, 115 cards each and no more than one copy of any given card in all eight decks. It's tricky.
By the way - if anyone from the Wizards team is reading this, please stop here until after the tournament. Thanks.
Before that – a quick recap of the Invasion drafts. I have been in two so far. Alex kicked my butt in the finals of the first draft. Then I kicked his butt in the second finals, and conceded in the third finals. The tournament was set up as 3 round Swiss, but with 4 players, it ran as single elimination - sort of. We had four players, and after round one, only Alex and I were left. Alex won round two, but then the dialog box popped up the “Rd 2 done – Rd 3 in 5 min.” thing. Round three was Alex and me, again. This time I won – and then we got the “R4 in 5 minutes” dialogue. At that point, desire for dinner won out over desire to play this match one more time, and I dropped. That did end the tournament.
As Matt Tabak of Wizards said, when I messaged him “4 player Swiss drafts can get a little weird.” It’s probably a bug, but not one I want Wizards to spend any time fixing. It’s not likely to come up very often.
The second draft I played in was a single elimination draft – and since none of the other Community Team members were available, WotC folks filled the slots. Hey – they are playing, too, so I don’t begrudge them the practice. The only downside was that we ended up with five players – meaning that round one had one single elimination match and three byes. I got to play, against Ryan Dhuse. He was RB Kavu – and my Hunting Drake put one of his Kavu on top of his library several times, via Silver Drake and Repulse after blocking.
Round two I played Vincent Price (who so should be playing Zombies or Reanimator in constructed – Google “Vincent Price actor” if that makes no sense.) His mana did not cooperate, and I rolled him.
I ended up losing to Matt Tabak in the finals. He had Vindicate for my Treva, the Renewer and a ton more removal besides. Bouncing Shivan Emissary with the gating Kavu was the last straw.
ON to Singleton.
Er, no – I’ll cover Standard first.
Last article, I posted the Enchantress / Warp World deck that I had managed to cobble together out of the cards that other decks were not using. Well – that build is probably dead. The Oblivion Rings are needed in other decks - which means I can't play them. (It's unified standard - no more than four across all eight decks.) The loss of the O Rings means that the number of playable enchantments has dropped below critical mass. With that minimum, Mesa Enchantress has dropped from mediocre to The Suck, and she is gone.
The deck has now morphed to something closer to the version BDM posted on the flagship website – but not completely. BDM’s version relied on fetchlands and other cards that are reserved for Jund. My version still splashes white, for Martial Coup and Wall of Reverence. The white splash is easier, because I have to count on Khalni Heart Expedition and Borderland Rangers for mana fixing and acceleration, instead of fetchlands. Not ideal, but not bad. I have also tried not only Siege-Gang Commander for token generation, but Master of the Wild Hunt and Rampaging Baloths as well. I’m not sure which I like better. For a while, I was also playing Caldera Hellion, as a sweeper against vampires, soldiers and the like, and that made the Baloths pretty attractive, but I like MotH better and better.
As a sweeper, Lavalanche is better. As a sorcery, it doesn’t come into play with Warp World, but Warp World and Crater Hellion don’t play well together, either. Hellion wants to eat creatures already in play before it arrives, which can’t happen with Warp World, so the Hellion just kills itself and most of the rest of the board.
Well, time to bite the bullet. Here's my 100 Card Unified Singleton deck. It's UW Control, and I sort of like it.
Just one minute while I muck with formatting, etc.
Hmm - that wasn't too bad. Only a couple cards failed to link, and that was mainly because of bad spelling.
The deck is part UW control deck, with a fair amount of trickiness. It has card draw, Wrath of God effects and counters. It also has Baneslayer Angel, which is an answer to most problems. In a really bad case, it can beat down with tokens produced by Decree of Justice, or with Faerie Conclave. However, the deck also has a couple combos.
+
This is a "classic" combo that is played in Vintage, Legacy and Classic. Painter’s Servant makes every card one color, so a single Grindstone activation means decks the opponent. An interesting mix of tutors can find the pieces, including Transmute cards like Dizzy Spell. Of course, Dizzy Spell has actual text, and I have cast it as a Healing Salve, to prevent three damage and survive one more turn in hopes of drawing a Wrath. (It didn’t work out.)
Here’s another combo. This one is a little more subtle.
+
When I first started scanning the list, I thought Guilty Conscience was just a bad removal spell – a variant on when the creature deals damage, destroy it. However, with Stuffy Doll, it becomes an infinite damage engine.
The deck has been rather amusing to play – even my mistakes are fun. In one game against White Weenie, I somehow sided in Circle of Protection: Red . I think it was a misclick – I had intended to side in Seal of Cleansing. However, I drew the CoP: Red, cursed myself, but then topdecked a tutor that could get me Painter’s Servant. My opponent laughed when I played CoP Red – but stopped laughing when I played out Painter’s Servant on red. Then the CoP shut him down long enough for me to get the Grindstone & win.
Some of these card choices may look a bit strange – but remember the format. This is eight player unified singleton. We can only have one copy of any card (aside from basic lands) in any of the eight decks. My deck does not have Flooded Strand, for example, because it is in another deck.
I can’t quite bring myself to list all the decks. They are available here, in spreadsheet form.
I’m not sure how soon this article will go up – and whether we will be playing by the time that happens. The tournament starts on Thursday, November 5th, and will be held on MTGO. Come cheer us on.
And – on the off-hand chance we pull a miracle and win - make sure you include your MTGO user name in the forum thread on this event. Every account named will get a Gleemox (if we lose) and a Momir Vig Avatar and free entry into a community Momir Vig tournament (if we win.)
Well, I have to get back to work, then back to playtesting.
Hey Pete, first of all nice article and good luck on Thursday+. I think your problem with the formating the 100s deck is not hard to solve if you use mymtgo to upload the txt file you download from mtgo via the client. 1) load the deck in the deck editor, 2) next save as local text deck, 3) get on mymtgo.com (you've got an account there right? If not make one) 4) go to applications >>my decks and click upload a deck. Then browse your computer for the file (should be fairly easy to find if you set up your deck folder somewhere you know the location of (like off the desktop).) 5) just click submit after changing the appropriate form fields. Really easy and as long as you set it to public you can link to it from anywhere (including your articles). As far as WotC members seeing them well mark them as WoTC - No PEEKING or some such in the title.
Actually, my worries were more about loading the decklist into the PureMTGO article editor. It sometimes hiccups when fed card names with apostrophes and the like.
It's getting better, and I only had to manually link a few cards - and I had to go through some contortions to get the Painter's Servant in as a picture.
Which is why I suggested mymtgo. At least until Jamuraa fixes some of the more glaring errors. In my own article I just referenced gatherer for my pic links, because I found it easier to do that while testing the html outside of the editor.
I'm seeing Aaron Forsythe almost everyday these days testing 100CS decks. And just yesterday I played against Mike Turian and he was testing a mono green Nissa/Garruk Elves deck.
Anyway, I wish you guys the very best of luck. Just get me my Momir, will ya!
dont listen to the haters...its not worth it i know far too many people that come here and actually take away information from this site to worry about people like punmpkin-punk...
well im sure people were consulted, and i watched the first round of 100cs today online, the community time i think won 6 out of the 8 matches if i remember correctly...seems we are doing fairly well. Its a whole different beast when there are only 10 duals to split between 8 decks and 10 shocklands between 8 decks. Yes in this sort of format it results in some subpar choices. You do have to remember its 8 100cs decks which means except for basic lands a card can only be used once in all 8 of those decks
Again, I get this. Well congrats, if hat's the case. I've seen some brutal lists from the PEs, and, sure, with the extra limitations, it's an extra feat, but still...
Seen a list like the Reanimator deck when i was cruisin through WOTC mainpage from like two months ago. This is kindaw hat I mean. There was def a few new slants, but if this is news to SharpFedex and he's a contributor on here then it's a bit strange to me, yet I was more confused by the CC's choice to not put the Valuket in monoRed. Weirdos!
first please get my name right, if you cant get all ten letters maybe you can manage shard. And while i do contribute to this site i can honestly say i have never played a single round of 100cs. so that i missed something about the format from months back does not surprise me in the least.
You're a troll, until you stop being a troll, I am going to continue removing all posts that you make. When you prove that you can add intelligent discussion to the thread, I'll stop removing your posts.
17 Comments
Hey Pete, first of all nice article and good luck on Thursday+. I think your problem with the formating the 100s deck is not hard to solve if you use mymtgo to upload the txt file you download from mtgo via the client. 1) load the deck in the deck editor, 2) next save as local text deck, 3) get on mymtgo.com (you've got an account there right? If not make one) 4) go to applications >>my decks and click upload a deck. Then browse your computer for the file (should be fairly easy to find if you set up your deck folder somewhere you know the location of (like off the desktop).) 5) just click submit after changing the appropriate form fields. Really easy and as long as you set it to public you can link to it from anywhere (including your articles). As far as WotC members seeing them well mark them as WoTC - No PEEKING or some such in the title.
Actually, my worries were more about loading the decklist into the PureMTGO article editor. It sometimes hiccups when fed card names with apostrophes and the like.
It's getting better, and I only had to manually link a few cards - and I had to go through some contortions to get the Painter's Servant in as a picture.
Which is why I suggested mymtgo. At least until Jamuraa fixes some of the more glaring errors. In my own article I just referenced gatherer for my pic links, because I found it easier to do that while testing the html outside of the editor.
I'm seeing Aaron Forsythe almost everyday these days testing 100CS decks. And just yesterday I played against Mike Turian and he was testing a mono green Nissa/Garruk Elves deck.
Anyway, I wish you guys the very best of luck. Just get me my Momir, will ya!
LE
Thanks for the scouting report. I'll pass it on.
I have been refusing to play the wizards guys in 100cs. They can practice against themselves. Go team CC!
dont listen to the haters...its not worth it i know far too many people that come here and actually take away information from this site to worry about people like punmpkin-punk...
well im sure people were consulted, and i watched the first round of 100cs today online, the community time i think won 6 out of the 8 matches if i remember correctly...seems we are doing fairly well. Its a whole different beast when there are only 10 duals to split between 8 decks and 10 shocklands between 8 decks. Yes in this sort of format it results in some subpar choices. You do have to remember its 8 100cs decks which means except for basic lands a card can only be used once in all 8 of those decks
Again, I get this. Well congrats, if hat's the case. I've seen some brutal lists from the PEs, and, sure, with the extra limitations, it's an extra feat, but still...
the unearth/reanimator deck that dangerlinto is playing is great and tweakers r/g aggro is also amazing
Seen a list like the Reanimator deck when i was cruisin through WOTC mainpage from like two months ago. This is kindaw hat I mean. There was def a few new slants, but if this is news to SharpFedex and he's a contributor on here then it's a bit strange to me, yet I was more confused by the CC's choice to not put the Valuket in monoRed. Weirdos!
first please get my name right, if you cant get all ten letters maybe you can manage shard. And while i do contribute to this site i can honestly say i have never played a single round of 100cs. so that i missed something about the format from months back does not surprise me in the least.
I love reanimator!
You're a troll, until you stop being a troll, I am going to continue removing all posts that you make. When you prove that you can add intelligent discussion to the thread, I'll stop removing your posts.
yeah and good job gettin rid of that dickish guy!
What does troll mean?
Who actually helped to make the CCC dex? Did players from the community beyond those asked contribute?