This article is intended as a primer for one of the best formats that you're not playing: 100 Card Singleton. If you've been playing Magic: The Gathering Online for more than a few years, knowledge of this format is likely not foreign to you; however, if you've come to the game later, then the only format you're likely to know that runs one hundred distinct cards is EDH/Commander/1v1. Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast removed the 100 Card Singleton filter from MTGO, likely because the format did not make enough money and was underplayed, which is fair because, at the end of the day, they are a business, and as much as I personally love this format, the show must go on. The format is still currently played by a small community, likely 15 people at its core, and about 30-40 as a part of its periphery player base.
I host a weekly free event on Gatherling.com called the Chainsaw Massacre. As we head into our 4th season the format has seen significant shakeups in its ban listing, to which I think we've gained the possibility of many more viable and competitive decks. I think old players of the format and new players will find that all archetypes are viable and strong. Do you want to play a singleton storm or reanimator deck? Well you can, and they're actually pretty good. Is playing aggressive low to the ground decks your style or your budget limit? This is a great strategy too and wins a lot of games. Do you want to play a deck with the flexibility to punish aggro deck's poor card economy, but also play quick beat down itself against more controlling builds? Midrange is the heart of the format (almost all formats frankly). And lastly, if your playstyle or whim calls for it, you can play crushing control decks that reward long term decision making and early investment to grind out your opponents with card advantage. The format has a lot to offer in regards to what archetypes can be competitively played with reasonable chances of winning. The downside is, you can't just sleeve up a "best" deck and run it one day and expect to win--all decks and deck archetypes have soft matchups, even the best builds of them.
So how does this format play out, and what do the decks look like?
I find it generally interesting that most attempts to describe 100 card singleton tend to begin with analogies to EDH; I'd be the first to tell you that the only similarity is that both decks in each format consist of 100 cards. The biggest difference is not that you start the game at 20 instead of 30 life either; although this should foretell that aggro strategies can and commonly do work--The single biggest difference is that you do not have a perpetual 8th card, or commander, in 100 card singleton, which outside of being rendered uncastable by a few select cards (exclusion ritual or meddling mage, for instance), is in perpetuity available to you. Why is this difference so crucial: I think the tale of the tape is best told be referencing what WoTC has had to ban over time to reduce the power of control and combo/control decks in the EDH/1v1 meta. How much better for instance does my control deck get when I can only draw answers to my opponent's spells and always have a threat available to me--it gets immensely better--how playable would Baral, Chief of Compliance
or Tasigur EDH decks be if I shuffled my commander into my deck--for Baral horrendous, Tasigur, would be build dependent, but pretty horrible as well. Eventually, every deck will dead draw, so having a perpetual threat (or in Baral's case combo piece that filters--but really threat is analogous), is and was highly relevant to making control, combo/control decks work and be on top in this format. Matter of fact, these decks are so great that many non-Blue decks would and will "hot-tech" in Pyroblast and Red Elemental Blast
, cards that literally do nothing in some matchups. If you played enough EDH before 1v1 was a thing on MTGO, then you likely came to the same conclusion (especially when you started the game with 40 life): in a format with a perpetually available (and generally highly synergistic) threat, the best route to winning is control or combo/control. There are certainly other ways to win in this format, but in the beginning days of the 1v1 format, control, or Blue-based permission, deck's numbers were through the roof.
Another chief difference is that 100 card singleton is a boarded format, meaning you have 15 slots to shore up bad matchups or consider cards to bolster your given strategy against other decks that you expect will be presented by your opposition. This is a massive difference as well, and allows one to put thought into how they expect their deck to play out commonly and also that which ones build is soft to.
Common Board Cards in 100 Card Singleton:
Below I've offered up some deck lists for some archetypes that are completely viable and I believe competetive enough to win the weekly Chainsaw Massacre event, additionally each links to a YouTube video of how the deck can play out:
Red Deck Wins:
This build of the deck is simple and has a simple strategy, stay as low to the ground as possible, board into mana disruption for your nemesis (midrange 2-4 color decks) and out tempo your control opponent. Card advantage is limited, but mana efficiency is this deck's mantra. Outside of a few outliers this deck is a great choice for entry level players, because you do not need to spend immense amounts of money to build this list. Excepting the Wasteland and fetchlands in this build, the core of the deck can be built for approximately 10 tix. Your worst matchups with this deck are White Aggro decks and Green/x midrange decks. The sideboard has been setup in this build to capitalize/exploit the weaknesses of White Aggro and Green/x midrange decks. This deck tends to be very strong against control decks or any deck that requires a decent bit of luck to go right for its mana base; this specific version is also very good in the mirror, because it does not "hot tech" any of the non-basic land hate (Blood Moon
, Price of Progress
, etc). Here's some video content of a post boarded game 2 and 3, plus if you watch it all the way through you can also see a White Aggro Deck play out: RDW vs. BUG Loam.
The Moderate Storm:
This deck is quite a radical combo deck with a lot going on. If you're playing this deck you 1. want to practice with it a lot before playing it at an event, and 2. Should thoroughly enjoy mind map puzzles, because this storm/doomsday deck is quite different than the variants in modern, legacy, or vintage storm. This deck has the possibility to win by turn 3, but typically its going to win by turn 4 or 5. These are, however, fishing specifications. Once your opponent starts casting Hymn to Tourach
on you or casting Force of Will
against your cards, then you're going to truly have the thrill of understanding when and where to pick your fights to go for the win with the deck. This deck will be soft against most decks that present a fast clock (reference the deck above) or decks that run high permission capability. This deck tends to be very strong vs. midrange strategies. The board has been developed to transform against Red Deck Wins, control vs. White Aggro decks, and has several key answers that tend to halt permission battles. Here is a video of gameplay of an older version of this storm list (under an old set of more limiting ban restrictions) against three aggro decks: Storm/DDay vs Random Aggro Decks.
4 Color Blood (Midrange):
This deck is the quintessential midrange deck of the format. I once heard a player call midrange decks: switch decks, which stuck with me and is a far more apt way of describing these style of decks. You generally will always have the flexibility with this deck to change course from playing beat down to control (or back and forth), matchup dependent, this flexibility and the overall card quality that can be had in a 4 color deck tends to out value aggro decks and overpower slower control decks. What this deck loses to is disruption of its weakest point: its manabase. An early Blood Moon, Back to Basics, or even Dwarven Miner
, can just stop this deck before it starts. However, if you enjoy "good-stuff" strategies with outs to playing against numerous other archetypes and generally a close to a 50/50 matchup against most decks (as long as you play tight), then this is a deck to try out. The downside of this deck is its high monetary expense; it's full of some of the best cards ranging from standard back to vintage, and its mana base is a pool of riches unto itself. This deck's soft matchups include Izzet (UR Moon) Control and Sultai (BUG Loam) Control. The board is built to punish blue-based control and shore up this deck's ability to play control against the two premier aggro decks of the format: Red Deck Wins and White Aggro. Here is a video of how this deck plays: 4CB vs Azorious Control.
BUG Loam (Control):
This deck is likely the premier control deck of the format, although UW/b or Esper miracles is still a very strong option. What I think gives BUG Loam an advantage is that it has the ability to disrupt mana bases and recur lands that become threats, which makes it a better choice vs. the more ambitious manabases of the midrange decks of the format, and Life from the Loam
can allow continued card advantage in the control mirror, to eventually out card the opposing control player. Where this deck will struggle to gain traction is against the aggressive strategies of the format, or tempo control style decks that can land early threats and back them up with 2-3 turns worth of disruption. The board of this deck is designed to combat the mirror, shore up aggressive White Aggro Mirrors, and the deck itself has been hot teched with the best life gaining threats in the format to shore up the Red Deck Wins matchup. This deck seeks to win through beat down with it's midrange creatures, but ideally makes recursive Marit Lage tokens with Life from the Loam, or repeatedly demolishes the opponent's most essential mana sources with Wasteland
or depletes their hand with Raven's Crime
each turn to grind them out. This deck is not quick to win, but if played well and given time by your opponent can generate crushing and inescapable advantage. Here is a video of gameplay of this deck vs Midrange: BUG Loam vs 4CB.
I hope these decklists help to provide some context for what strategies can win. However, I would say that if this is a format you want to play, you'd do yourself a disservice by assembling one of them and just running it one Saturday in the Chainsaw Massacre event. 90% of the fun of this format is in building these seemingly unwieldly decks and tuning them to perfection, one can easily get lost in studying cards and specific effects on cards throughout the history of Magic The Gathering to best hone their build--and, at least for me, that's what's most fun. It's difficult to find many players of this great format, so one of the ways I tend to test these decks is just jamming them against legacy decks (where applicable) and or vintage decks to see how they fair--and frankly, with the lists above I've manage to go well above .50 against a whole retinue of stock 60 card legacy and vintage decks. Part of that is likey rouge factor, opponents have no clue what you're doing when you've got a pile of 100 staring at them and often misplay--but the other piece of it, these decks tend to be very good. Games will more often than not, play out at legacy pace. Okay, you're not going to get turn 1 kills, but you're also not going to look at the other player for 30 turns, unless you build your deck to do that.
Generally games go beyond ten turns, which means there is a lot of room to play some great games of magic; however, in many ways it favors experience and play skill as well, because with the variance, intrinsic to playing a 100 card singleton deck, you have to generally have a very keen sense of what your opponent is up to and their possible holdings. Mistakes, like in legacy or vintage, can be costly and game ending in this format. By nature I tend to be a vintage player if I want to grind, but often that loses the excitement, the magic if you will, for me relatively quickly. 100 card singleton games rarely play out the same each time, every gamestate feels relatively brand new and even on an extremely consistent deck, like the Red Deck Wins build listed above, you will have to consider different actions from your opponent each time and sequence cards differently based upon what you expect out of them. If I had to compare this format to another, I would say that it's most akin to giving each player an unpowered cube and telling them to build a deck--not drafting it, but just building from its entire card pool. So if you enjoy cubing and the excitement of variance and deeply thoughtful games, then this is a format that you should try.
I will be the first to acknowledge that it is not the easiest format to get started in, some of the decks and card pools required to build them are vastly expensive, but overtime it's a great investment in yourself as a player too; you will grow to understand the history of the game and the cards and effects in it, high synergy between often unseen card combinations, which in turn will increase your capability to evaluate cards, build competitive decks in almost any format at a high rate of speed (when you're going for 60 with up to 4 of each card, it tends to get a lot easier if you've build over one hundred 100 card singleton decks or even tuned one to the best of your ability). The format will also evolve your understanding of hidden information through extended play, because the realm of what is castable by your opponent is extremely wide and you need to ideally understand what it is they are up to and how they are trying to win; in turn you either figure out how to beat what they're trying to do faster, or determine how to stop them.
If that's not enough to rope you in, the community of players plays in an event called the Chainsaw Massacre, a player run event, as MTGO sadly no longer has a filter for 100 card singleton. Entry into this event is free as long as you register a legal deck on Gatherling.com, which is also a free service. The winner of the event gets 8 tickets, the total prize pool is 16 tickets, with all X-1 players splitting the remaining 8, unless there are finals, where the second place player takes 4 tickets and the remainder are split between all other X-1 players. Acknowledging that this is relatively low eV, for more competitive players, I'm prone to random bouts of personal support to the format and have given away a True-Name Nemesis
to a winning player in a separate event, a Torrential Gearhulk
, and likely before publication I'll be providing 32 Treasure Chests for the winners circle of the event.
What's funny to me as generally an eternal player, and also a Johnny/Spike at heart, is that I've jammed a lot of games of vintage and legacy, but I've never gotten the depth of knowledge or play out of any of those more spikey formats than I have out of playing this seemingly casual format. If you're interested in thought provoking, interactive, and generally deep sets of games, then I hope to see you one Saturday in the 100 Card Singleton event, the Chainsaw Massacre. The event starts at 4pm/1600 EST--so what are you waiting for start building now!
P.S. if you're interested in any games or want to test a brew you're concocting under the current ban list linked in this article please feel free to add me as a buddy on MTGO, my user name is the same as my author name (no, not Kyle, but lowman02); if I don't get back to you I'm likely afk, but I'm always down if I'm around to play out some games. To reach out to the community, the MTGS link provided above is the historical forum, but we've also expanded to reddit. If you want to register for the event here's a video to get registered for an event: Getting Started on Gatherling. If you're interested in other decks I've built or run historically here is a link to my youtube channel, which has accrued over 100 random videos, but most are of the 100 card format: lowman02 YouTube Channel.
Take it easy y'all
3 Comments
I really miss the old days. Hope more can join us!
http://puremtgo.com/articles/recent?uid=Tarmotog
http://puremtgo.com/articles/snapshot-bannings-100-classic-singleton
Sensei,
Thanks for these great links to the format from many years back. I actually read through quite a few and it's funny to see how much the game in general, outside of 100c, has changed based on card evaluations at that point vice today's game. Although, I strongly agree with some of the cards that had folks in a tizzy back then(Survival of the Fittest--I'm looking at you). One of the things that cracked me up (and I can't remember the article :/) was a player talking about using survival to generate graveyard recursion with Genesis. Don't get me wrong, this is a very powerful interaction given enough time to thrive, and likely crushes one for one permission style control decks, but this really made me think of how much the pace of the game has increased--I don't think this is likely even good enough in an open meta anymore. The other one was Natural Order for Progenitus--this is still a fine play, but I think a far more (and actually) castable 6 drop (Prime Time) with the printing of Thespian's Stage (and--well--Dark Depths-- but that's older than most formats themselves) relegated the Hydra Avatar to moot. The game's picked up a lot of pace over the years and it's cool to see how some of the cards that at one point were too overpowering to enable good games of magic to be played are actually needed now to enable the "unfair" decks to keep pace with the "fair" ones. Thanks again for the links man :)
Thanks for this nice article.
This format is a gemstone barely untouched.