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By: Tribal Apocalypse, Tribal Apocalypse
Aug 07 2015 12:00pm
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 Welcome back to Tribal Apocalypse!

   Table of Contents 

  1. Last Week on Tribal Apocalypse...
  2. The High Price of Winning
  3. Show and Tell
  4. Announcement Time!
  5. What's Next

Check the full archive for the "Diaries of the Apocalypse" series


THOUGHTS OF A TRIBAL HOST
by Kumagoro

 Summertime, hot and lazy, got me wondering: is it really necessary for the host of a PRE to announce the pairings in the chat room one by one? I mean, you have to check Gatherling anyway, in order to report the results, and your pairing appears in the very same place where you later report the result of it. It's not just about avoiding that little bit of copying and pasting work to the host – I always felt like it's boring to wait for the pairing to show up in the room, when you happen to be on the last table of ten and eager to start playing. And if you happened to be away from keyboard when the pairings are written down, and then a little bit of discussion ensued in the room, the client doesn't make you easy to go back and search the chat. Plus, I think we may be naturally more inclined to immediately go and report after the match (which, I want to stress, is a very important thing to do for the match losers, too, as it ensures the report is correct), if we started the whole process by retrieving the initial information looking in the same place where we find the report button.

 The only issue I can see in this is that Gatherling doesn't tell you who's listed first – which is especially relevant only in the (rare) case of duel events where the player listed first and the player listed second are going to play one of two different lists they registered, but it's also useful to establish who has to create the table at all. Without that information, we may have opponents both creating the table for the same match, but I don't think checking the playing lobby before creating the table is going to be that much of a hassle, as it's something we already do/are better off doing, just to be safe.

 All in all, I think tomorrow I'm gonna try to just announce that the pairings are officially active on Gatherling, see if that speed up the proceedings. I think at the end of the day, once we've become fully accustomed to it, it might cut down up to 15 minutes from the total duration of the tournament, time previously spent just staring at the monitor and waiting.


LAST WEEK ON TRIBAL APOCALYPSE...

  • Event Number: 5.30, Week 239 BE
  • Date: August 1
  • Attendance: 19
  • Rounds: 4
  • Subformat: Underdog
  • Winner: ScionOfJustice (Vedalken)
  • Other undefeated: AJ_Impy (God)
  • 1 Loss: gumgod (Myr), Gq1rf7 (Myr), ML_Berlin (Specter), Lordpipas (Kor)
  • Up-and-Coming Prize: ScionOfJustice (Vedalken)
  • True Underdog Prize: AJ_Impy (God)
  • Tribes: Barbarian, Bat, Berserker, Boar, Drone, God, Horror, Kor, Minotaur, Mutant, Myr (x2), Plant, Rat, Soltari, Specter, Sphinx (x2), Vedalken
  • Event link (with all players, pairings, standings, decks, and results): here it is

 So, this might just be ScionOfJustice's year. Out of the 10 first places in his career, 6 have come this year so far, and we can bet more are coming before the end of the year, if the recent winning strike, firmly placing him at the top of the leaderboard, is of any indication. Last week, he played once again the same combo he had experimented with from the past 3 weeks, this time with Vedalken, procuring the very first event win for the tribe (he will be prevented from play that combo again for 5 weeks now). It's a very strong combo deck, or two, and Scion himself talks about it below in this week's Show and Tell (which I guess is only a Tell this time around, since we unfortunately have no videos to show at all).

 

 In the finals, Scion beat AJ_Impy, who was running a new Human God list, an all-enchantment deck that makes good use of Energy Field and Web of Inertia, both in combo with Rest in Peace. Bit of unlucky then for AJ to face in the playoff round a deck, like Scion's, who doesn't win through damage.

 

 He didn't get mentioned as often on these pages, because he often plays straightforward decks, but ML_Berlin is doing great this year, too, currently holding the second place in the leaderboard. His favorite tribes are mostly not Underdog legal, but last week he tried Specter and still landed in the top zone.

 

 Finally, a shout out to the Thrumming Stone/Relentless Rats brew, a minor classic that however only a few players ever bother to play. One of its fans, as well as a fan of the Rat tribe in general, is definitely m4vis.

 

 By the way, notice how 3 out of these 4 decks have 62 cards. Is 62 the new 60 in Tribal?


THE HIGH PRICE OF WINNING

  

 Here's the prices of all the featured decks, courtesy of the amazing Deck Pricer from mtgGoldfish (MTGO Traders prices as of August 6, 2015):

 The Top 10 Cheapest Decks that Went Undefeated

  1. mihahitlor's Warriors, $1.95, 1st place on Event 233
  2. morpphling's Goblins, $2.35, 2nd place on Event 102
  3. Gq1rf7's Goblins, $3.32, 1st place on Event 154
  4. MisterMojoRising's Insects, $3.55, 2nd place on Event 201
  5. Gq1rf7's Goblins, $3.58, 1st place on Event 169
  6. Gq1rf7's Goblins, $3.70, 1st place on Event 145
  7. Gq1rf7's Goblins, $4.12, 2nd place on Event 141
  8. Gq1rf7's Assassins, $4.18, 1st place on Event 147
  9. Trickerie's Golems, $4.31, 1st place on Event 138
  10. Gq1rf7's Vampires, $4.38, 2nd place on Event 188

 NOTE: not adjusted to current prices; data collected since Event 85. 


SHOW AND TELL
by ScionOfJustice

 

 I was thinking about putting together the combo of Recurring Nightmare, 2 Priest of Gix and Tendrils of Agony, but then while contemplating other combos I could use/abuse in Tribal Wars, I started to think about Helm of Awakening with Sensei's Divining Top, and also with Future Sight and Brain Freeze; then Altar of the Brood came out and that made even more sense.

  

 It took me a few months to bunker down and buy the Tops as they were at 5 tickets each and I only had one, but I eventually did. I think since two of the combo pieces cost zero once you have a Helm in play, that makes the combo extra strong; also, two of the combo pieces can be searched up with Trinket Mage, which makes the whole thing even stronger, and the fact that all of the combo pieces can be searched up with Fabricate makes for a really consistent deck. And then on top of that (pun intended), the Top, which is part of the combo, also helps find any missing piece and gets even stronger with search effects, thus effectively giving you three new cards. When running the package with Vedalken over Wizard, you don't have the Trinket Mage, but you get Etherium Sculptor which acts as a replacement Helm.

 

 The earliest I comboed off was on turn two, but now I put Ancient Tomb in the deck so theoretically the deck can go off turn one, via Tomb into Helm into Altar + double Top. If you check the history of the events I've played this, you see I almost won every game, maybe lost one game out of four rounds (just one against mihahitlor's Soltari indeed – Kuma's note). A couple weeks ago, when I played this deck and didn't make first was because I slept in late due to being hung over and missed round 1. The decks name, "Just Deserts", comes from Justice being part of my name, and playing the deck is like eating desert.


ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!

 Just to remind you of a few things:

 

 Cockatrice Wants You! And Badger, too! Be the first to win a match with these new eligible tribes and you'll win a 1-tix certificate from MTGO Traders. Remember: only tribes with at least 3 members are effectively considered tribes in Tribal Apocalypse (since tribes that field an equal or greater number of Changelings than actual members count as Shapeshifter decks). Tribes with exactly 3 members are allowed to play in Underdog events with 8 slots filled by Changelings, whereas nobody else (but, of course, Shapeshifter decks) can play with more than 4 Changelings in those events. And of course this will happen only as soon as the Changelings will work on V4 as promised.

 The Underdog Prize: During any event of the regular rotation (but not during the one-time special events), all players who are running an Underdog Tribe are eligible for a 1-tix credit on Pennybot. The tie-breakers are first the number of Underdog categories (for instance, a tribe that's simultaneously Endangered and Unhallowed will take the prize over one that's only Endangered), then the points achieved in the final standings. During Underdog events, only the True Underdog tribes are rewarded (those are the tribes belonging to all three categories of Underdog at once).

 The Up-and-Coming Prize: When a tribe wins an event for the first time ever (losing Unhallowed status), its pilot will get a 3-tix certificate from MTGO Traders.

 The Hamtastic Award: The Biodiversity Prize dedicated to the memory of Erik Friborg has started the third quarter of 2015. The quarter will end September 26. By that date, the player or players who registered the greatest number of different tribes will get a 5-tix certificate from MTGO Traders. Congratulations to last quarter's winner, Generalissimo!

 The Achievements (sponsored by AJ_Impy and vantar6697): Unlock the greatest number of Achievements from this list and AJ and vantar will grant you 10 tix per quarter! The current quarter will end September 26. Players with the same number of achievements will split the prize. 10 more tix will be given at the end of the year to that whole season's Achievement Master. Good luck and congratulations to last quarter's Achievement Master, ScionOfJustice!

 The Top Players Lockout: Every time a Top Player (either a Google Era Top 8, an Ultimate Champion/Tribal Player of the Year, or a seasonal Top 8) will end undefeated, they will not be allowed to register the same tribe and deck again for 5 events (i.e. they'll have to register a different deck or decks 5 times before coming back to the undefeated one). With "deck" is meant a specific, recognizable archetype (e.g. Wall-Drazi), which in some case will be linked to a specific combo card (e.g. Helm of Obedience). A list of the current lockouts is maintained here.

 Videos: Send us replays of your games and we'll feature them in these articles! Don't know how? Read this quick guide in 5 easy steps and start saving your tribal feats for posterity!


 WHAT'S NEXT

 The upcoming Tribal Apocalypse events of the Blippian Era (every Saturday at 17:00 GMT):

  • 5.31 (Week 240 BE), on August 8: Regular
  • 5.32 (Week 241 BE), on August 15: Singleton
  • 5.33 (Week 242 BE), on August 22: Regular
  • 5.34 (Week 243 BE), on August 29: Pure

Check out all the rules for the sub-formats!

Check out the full Tribal Calendar for 2015!

Vote for your favorite ETB Creature on the Topdeck Awards!

SEE YOU ALL IN THE TRIBAL ROOM!

1 Comments

ML_Berlin by Sensei at Fri, 08/07/2015 - 13:20
Sensei's picture

Doesn't announce pairings and I think it works fine. I will look to see if my opponent made a table before making my own. Duplicate tables have happened but it's not big deal.