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 Welcome back to Tribal Apocalypse, the PRE where even a single(ton) dude isn't alone. It's the power of tribal love!

• Event Number: 2.35, Week 87 BE
• Date: September 1
• Attendance: 16
• Rounds: 3
• Special Rules: Singleton, no additional banned list
• Top 4: mihahitlor (Vampire, undefeated); slug360 (Construct, undefeated); Ranth (Human, 1 loss); Winter.Wolf (Angel, 1 loss)
• Special Prizes: Topical Prize to Winter.Wolf (Angel)
• Tribes: Angel, Artificer, Construct, Elf, Goblin, Horror, Human (x3), Shapeshifter, Sliver, Vampire (x3), Zombie (x2)
• Virgin Tribe: none
• Event link (with all players, pairings, standings, decks, and results): here it is

 So, the second Singleton event after Week 74 went down. This time, I couldn't participate because I was hosting, and it's too bad because I had a lot of fun last time, and I saw people having a lot of fun this time. The decklists are especially pretty to look at: you can see themes and sub-combos, but also a wide array of tribal members and support cards that you would never usually see in regular games. Suddenly, every tribesman can be the star of the deck, everyone has the same 1/20th of merit for the success.

 On top we find one of the three Vampire decks, the Assassin-based one by mihahitlor:

 

 Equally undefeated: slug60's Constructs.

 

 I like how the manabases of the two top decks couldn't be more different, almost at the very two ends of the spectrum: from 2 different lands to 19.

 Ranth's 3rd-ranked Human deck had several secondary combos in there (mostly related to infinite creatures via Kiki-Jiki on Village Bell-Ringer or Presence of Gond on Midnight Guard), and a variety of tutors to seek them out, which is some of a basic element for an effective Singleton deck.

 

 At 4th place, we salute the comeback of Winter.Wolf, a veritable Great Old One of Tribal Apocalypse (his appearances date back to the pre-Blippian Era, to the very origins of the tournament). His 5-colored Angel deck features the full collection of the Swords, which I'm sure the Angels greatly enjoy.

 

 Now let's see some sweet game action, courtesy of slug360. I remind everyone that I strongly encourage to save and send me video replays of their games, so people reading these articles will have more fun than just with the stuff I come up with as a comment. Here's for instance slug's Constructs winning versus SBena's Humans in Round 2:

 Then against the Vampire deck by romellos, in Round 3:

 And here's the final showdown for the 1st place against mihahitlor's Vampires, which slug360 was given the chance to challenge in virtue of having the same Tie 2 final ratio (same number of games won). Game 1...

 ...and Game 2, confirming mihahitlor's placement at the top. And you might want to take a look at the prices of the Top 4 decks to fully appreciate the quality of miha's build and his piloting skills.

 Finally, an amazing-looking list: AJ_Impy's Human deck built to unlock the "There Can Be Only One" achievement: Playing and winning at least one match with a deck with only legendary cards and basic lands.

 

 AJ_Impy's comments on using the deck: "The problem with all legendary as a deck requirement is it locks out all instants and sorceries. This is most keenly felt in the area of removal. To mitigate this, I included several 'utility legends' to help kill things: Major Teroh, Lieutenant Kirtar, Brigid, Hero of Kinsbaile, Myojin of Cleansing Fire, and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite. To sub in for my usual long term recursion land of Emeria, I included a Reya Dawnbringer: to flesh out my early curve and help survivability, Eight-and-a-Half-Tails. In addition, the support artifacts and enchantment were vital: two 'shotguns' in Helvault and Predator, Flagship; one plan-destroyer in Mindslaver, and several boosts such as Sword of the Chosen, Day of Destiny, Konda's Banner, and Tenza, Godo's Maul to help with the beatdown plan."

 A note on the suspension of the additional banned list for the Singleton events. It was decided as an experiment during the first event of this kind, Tribal Apocalypse 2.22 on June 2. Back then, we had four "forbidden cards" showing up: 2 Goblin Lackeys, 1 Thopter Foundry, 1 Progenitus (the latter by me: too bad I never saw my singleton Natural Order during the tournament, but I once managed to summon Proggie to the battlefield via an 11-mana Green Sun's Zenith). This time around, we had only 1 Thopter Foundry (in DirtyDuck's Artificer deck). It looks like the trend isn't showing any degeneration so far.

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THE HIGH PRICE OF WINNING

 Also known as: how much do the Top 4 decks cost? As of September 7, 2012, here's the answer (MTGO Traders prices; the cheapest version of each card is always used; basic lands count zero):

• 1st place, mihahitlor's Vampires: $17.50 (without the manabase: $17.43)
• 2nd place, slug360's Constructs: $311.89 (without the manabase: $106.53)
• 3rd place, Ranth's Humans: $284.13 (without the manabase: $73.19)
• 4th place, Winter.Wolf's Angels: $207.83 (without the manabase: $99.92)

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ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!

Just to remind you of:

 Bring the (Bad) Boys Back Home: in a recent comment, AJ_Impy proposed the idea of unbanning Progenitus by restricting him to his tribes only (Hydra and Avatar), like we already did to Stoneforge Mystic. I upped the ante by adding to this envisioned moratorium the other two members of the Trifecta of Doom, Emrakul (in Eldrazi decks) and Iona (in Angel decks). Blippy is thinking about that, but any eventual changes will be concurrent with the official DCI B&R announcement on September 20. I also proposed to have all of them restricted to 1 copy per eligible deck. This further limits their impact, adds to their legendary feeling, and might have the side effect of encouraging the use of "search & exile" spells, such as Cranial Extraction or Sadistic Sacrament, which might be a good measure to keep the fast, degenerate combos in check (first turn Dark Ritual into Sadistic Sacrament is auto-win against most of them: bye-bye, win-condition!), while still be useful overall.

 The Rules: we now have a page with all the rules listed, so we won't have to repeat all of them before any tournament. Yay for time saving!

 The Watch List: some particular, archetype-defining cards have been put in a specific Watch List, giving them Annoyance Levels based on how frequently they show up and their degree of success. Once a card gets to Level 3 or more, I'll recommend it to Blippy for banning until the following year. So far, with 9 cards on watch, the situation is as follows:

• Cephalid Illusionist: Annoyance Level 2 — Appearance below 2.5, Success over 50%
• Goblin Charbelcher: Annoyance Level 1 — Success over 50% 

 The Tribal Achievements: Clan Leys, which is in charge of any Special Prize, has launched and is handling the Tribal Achievements: a way to have fun within Tribal Apocalypse, challenge yourself to do all kinds of strange MTG feats, and make some tix in the process. You can find the complete list of achievements here on the Hall of Fame. 15 unlocked, 35 to go. Remember to call in a witness from Clan Leys (me, SBena, or Leys7) before moving on when an In-Game or Endgame achievement is involved, or we'll have to resort to replays and such, and that's easily a pain in the ass.

 The Virgin Prize is ending its first run: only 4 tribes are still standing (Harpy, Mongoose, Squid, and Unicorn). Hurry up and make these dorks go away, so we can start over with the Almost Virgin Prize.

 The Hamtastic Award: after its first edition ended with Leys7 taking the 5 tix for running 10 different tribes in a row, the Biodiversity Prize dedicated to the memory of Erik Friborg has started again. Currently we have slug360 leading the group with 6 tribes played. Remember that you have to play all the rounds of an event in order for the tribe to be added to your sequence. If you repeat a previous tribe, your whole sequence resets.

 The Kirin Challenge is still unclaimed: I'll give 1 tix out of my pocket to the first player who'll win a proper match (no bye, no opponent forfaiting) with a Kirin deck featuring 4 copies of each of them. Clear this and we'll pass to Nephilim.

 Videos: Send me replays of your games, please! It's unbelievably easy: just download a free software like CamStudio and upload the resulting video file on YouTube, or send it to me via WeTransfer (my address is aicardigianluca at gmail.com); I'll embed it here. IMPORTANT NOTE: use a MPEG-4 codec or other codecs able to compress the videos (you can choose which one to use in Options/Video Options of CamStudio, but you have to have the codec installed in your system; you can find a MPEG-4 codec installer for free just by Googling it, I suggest the open-source Xvid project), or you'll end up with gigantic files you can't upload on YouTube and spend hours to send me. An average game replay is around 20-30 MB. If yours is 500 MB or even 2 GB, something is clearly wrong.

 What's Next: the upcoming Tribal Apocalypse events of the Blippian Era are:

• 2.36 (Week 88 BE), on September 8: regular tribal.
• 2.37 (Week 89 BE), on September 15: Vantar Tribute! To properly celebrate Mr. Matthew Taber, aka the unsung tribal hero who's doing more for Tribal Apocalypse than everyone imagines (like the brand new registration system we've started using; you can easily access it by typing TRIBALREG as a tinyurl.com address), and who's also freaking getting married (congrats, Matt!), we'll have a special event where only the Vantar Tribes will be allowed. And what the hell are the Vantar Tribes? Well, they are all the tribes our man ever played within Tribal Apocalypse. Get ready to tame wild stuff like Antelope, Ape, Atog, Aurochs, Bat, Crocodile, Cyclops, Djinn, Dryad, Elk, Gargoyle, Homarid, Horse, Imp, Jellyfish, Mercenary, Monk, Orc, Ox, Pegasus, Rhino, Salamander, Scorpion, Serpent, Shade, Shapeshifter, Slug, Surrakar, Thalakos, Thrull, Whale, Wolverine, Wraith, and Yeti! Endangered and Virgin Prizes will be reworked accordingly (respectively going to the highest-ranked smallest tribe in the pool, and the one with the fewest appearances), Topical Prize will be replaced with Highest-Ranked Animal Tribe.
• 2.38 (Week 90 BE), on September 22: Rites of Autumn: Fattie Week. A very special, one-of-a-kind event where only creatures with both power and toughness greater than 5 can be included in the decks. Entomb, Show and Tell, Eureka, Crackdown, and Retribution of the Meek will be banned for the event. More rulings might be added later.
• 2.39 (Week 91 BE), on September 29: regular tribal.

 I'll still be hosting the events 2.36 and 2.37. Keep enjoying your vacation, Blippy! And see you all on the Tribal room!