Magic: the Gathering - T: Add Three Mana Of Any One Colour To Your Mana Pool

[mAc Chaos]

What kind of guy am I aldea.

[aldeayeah]

A traditional kind of guy who likes to play on his own terms, which tend to involve killing everything on the table and using large spells with X and/or skulls in their costs.

[Lycodrake]

Well I have you as a guy that likes beating face, the colors white and green, justice, and the American Way. Am I wrong?

Not at all. [insert screeching Wingmate Rocs]

[Seika]

So now everyone is waiting to play mac, and everyone besides siriel is 2-1, lol

Certainly makes some of my table calculations easier.

And aldeayeah and I are now leading Nihilim by the barest margin, devolving to the fourth tournament tiebreaker metric (points, opponent match win, own match win, opponent game win), while we are completely tied against each other. I think in this situation he'd be favoured for the hypothetical T8 spot because he owns the head-to-head?

E: Actually looking up the tiebreaker rules (albeit the only document I could get out of Wizards was from 1998, so ...), apparently your own game win counts ahead of the opponent's. So Nihilim's leading us.

I almost played Stompy for the record.

It was one of the decks on my list. What flavour: Dragon, Soldiers ... ?

[aldeayeah]

The '98 document is still in vigor if you mean this one.

Gotta make room for Lyco in that table...

- - - Updated - - -

It was one of the decks on my list. What flavour: Dragon, Soldiers ... ?

I'd looked into Dragon and Eldrazi but didn't find either hateful enough.

Other forerunners were BUG, either Shardless or Team America. Abrupt Decay+countermagic do wonders to keep people honest.

I thought about Miracles too, but I didn't want to spend half an hour per game spinning Tops and durdling.

[Nihilm]

E: Actually looking up the tiebreaker rules (albeit the only document I could get out of Wizards was from 1998, so ...), apparently your own game win counts ahead of the opponent's. So Nihilim's leading us.

That makes sense, because otherwise in the hypothetical three way tie where everybody played everybody else, the one who did best would be last, because everyone's opponent's rating would be higher because he did the best and he can't play against himself, so it start creating this silly world where you want to go 2-1 so your own percentages aren't that high.

- - - Updated - - -

my prior assessment of the most likely BL meta:

Siriel: 80% combo/20% fair deck
Seika: 33% combo/66% fair deck
Lycodrake: 5% combo/95% fair deck
Nihilm: lol dunno
Mac: 100% black deck

Well I am the guy who mostly plays limited, so I guess describing as wild card would be correct.

[aldeayeah]

Actually, in a round robin tournament without draws, tiebreaker #1 (opponent match win %) is pretty much useless because at the end of the tournament, two players with the same points will always have the same opponent match win %. So you can skip right to tiebreaker #2, percentage of games won.

Tiebreaker #1 works much better in Swiss rounds because by keeping on winning you naturally end up paired agaisnt people who will improve your breakers.

It starts getting really complicated when byes, draws and people dropping happen.

[aldeayeah]

League game durations:

vs Seika
Game 1 (my win): 11 minutes
Game 2 (Seika's win): 13 minutes
Game 3 (my win): 24 minutes

vs Siriel
Game 1 (Siriel's win): 10 minutes
Game 2 (my win): 16 minutes
Game 3 (my win): 10 minutes

vs Nihilm
Game 1 (my win): 49 minutes
Game 2 (Nihilm's win): 22 minutes
Game 3 (Nihilm's win): 27 minutes

[Nihilm]

League game durations:

vs Seika
Game 1 (my win): 11 minutes
Game 2 (Seika's win): 13 minutes
Game 3 (my win): 24 minutes

vs Siriel
Game 1 (Siriel's win): 10 minutes
Game 2 (my win): 16 minutes
Game 3 (my win): 10 minutes

vs Nihilm
Game 1 (my win): 49 minutes
Game 2 (Nihilm's win): 22 minutes
Game 3 (Nihilm's win): 27 minutes

vs Siriel
Game 1 (my win): 14 min
Game 2 (my win): 15 min

vs Seika
Game 1 (Seika's win): 52 min
Game 2 (my win): 14 min
Game 3 (Seika's win): 30 min

vs Aldeyeah
Game 1 (Aldeyeah's win): 49 minutes
Game 2 (my win): 22 minutes
Game 3 (my win): 27 minutes

[Lycodrake]

I think I'm ready, if/whenever someone wants to set up a match on cockatrice - same username as I have here.
hash: ope3soc8
[edit]
Good game, Seika. 2-0 her win. Had fun, given that it was my first Legacy experience. Odd to think I can now say I, technically, have "had a 'first Legacy deck'". =p

[Seika]

Games vs. Siriel:

G1 (his win): 12 minutes
G2 (my win): 22 minutes
G3 (my win): 23 minutes

Games vs. Lycodrake
G1 (my win): 43 minutes
G2 (my win): 52 minutes

I GRIND YOU TO DUST.

[Seika]

New tables for a new player.

	aldeayeah	Lycodrake	Nihilim	mAc	Seika	Siriel
aldeayeah	XXXXXX	2-1	1-2		2-1	2-1
Lycodrake	1-2	XXXXXX	0-2		0-2	2-0
Nihilim	2-1	2-0	XXXXXX		1-2	2-0
mAc				XXXXXX
Seika	1-2	2-0	2-1		XXXXXX	2-1
Siriel	1-2	0-2	0-2		1-2	XXXXXX

	P	W	L	Own Match Win	Opponent Match Win	Own Game Win	Opponent Game Win	Points
aldeayeah	4	3	1	75%	43.75%	58.33%	47.5%	9
Lycodrake	4	1	3	25%	56.25%	33%	53.49%	3
mAc	0	0	0	-	-	-	-	0
Nihilim	4	3	1	75%	43.75%	70%	45.24%	9
Seika	4	3	1	75%	43.75%	63.64%	46.34%	9
Siriel	4	0	4	0%	62.5%	20%	57.14%	0

Updated according to the WotC ordering (with own match win % kept for no very good reason). Not totally along WotC rules, because you're meant to bound each individual performance at no lower than 33% for calculations, but that just makes my table look wrong.

[Lycodrake]

I'm not sure it's a good or a bad thing that our match was such a grindfest.

[Seika]

I'm not sure it's a good or a bad thing that our match was such a grindfest.

I think it's pretty much what our decks were designed to do, so *shrug*


More statistics! Approximate average game lengths:

aldeayeah
20 minutes, 13 seconds.

Lycodrake
47 minutes, 30 seconds.

Nil
27 minutes, 53 seconds.

Seika
26 minutes, 55 seconds

Siriel
15 minutes, 15 seconds

[Siriel]

Lyco do you want to play?

- - - Updated - - -

Siriel
15 minutes, 15 seconds

The great hero.

[Lycodrake]

Sure, I have time before I need to get sleep.

[Siriel]

Created the game.

Legacy section, THE GREAT BL SHOWDOWN, Password: Siriel.

My ID is Holokleros.

[Siriel]

I can't believe an Ad Nauseam at 20 life didn't win game 1.

Though forgetting about the possibility of Teeg and discarding Brain Freeze in favor of Tendrils was entirely my fault.

[Lycodrake]

So...2-0 win against Sir Siriel of the Ad Nauseam. Apparently it doesn't work on me as a win-con? Or a way to get to the win con?
Also Gaddock Teeg is my friend.

[Seika]

Table updated.

Deck discussion: mAc, keep out

You'd think that in a tournament with such a low countermagic (and even discard) count, Storm would be able to dominate. Alas, instead of the traditional measures, we have Gaddock Teeg.


Advice this turned into more of an essay, sorry for Lyco on that key G2 turn:

You should be identifying key parts to the match: your threats, their threats; your answers, his answers; your weaknesses, and his weaknesses. Particularly prominent here were your diverse array of threats, and his shallow pool of answers - you had Teeg forcing him off Ad Nauseam, Past in Flames, and Tendrils, and a Marit Lage combo about to go off. Deathrite was policing the graveyard and adding to your otherwise slow clock, and Scooze was ready to duplicate that role. You'd Thoughtseized him, and knew that he had a Chain of Vapor as an available answer.

Your two biggest angles of attack here are clearly Teeg and Marit Lage. Scooze and Deathrite are very good, but they don't put anything like the same pressure on him - especially as he looks to be more of an Ad Nauseam storm variant (which we used to call TES), instead of focusing on Past In Flames and the graveyard (ANT). You've caught him in a pincer: either he subjects himself to Gaddock Teeg and has to win with several key cards off the table, or he has no way to stop your angry 20/20 killing him in two turns.

You should therefore concentrate on this pincer and making each side of it as painful for him as you can. Teeg's side is the controlling one, so you should home in on enabling that as best as possible. Like most control situations, the life total doesn't matter as long as they're not capable of doing anything. You can peck away at them as slow as you like (though Deathrite, Scooze, and Teeg all together would have been a decently fast clock). Marit Lage was your damage side, and that involves hitting him for 20 outright, so the life total still doesn't matter.


The point of all this is that I would have changed that turn from this:
Dark Depths
Scrubland, Deathrite: Exile Thoughtseize for two
Forest, Wasteland: cast Scooze
Attack with Dryad Arbor + Teeg

to this:
Dark Depths
Dryad Arbor, Forest: cast Scooze
Attack with Teeg.


This means that:
Deathrite is still available, with black mana, to take spell cards out of his yard (and you should always be exiling stuff from theirs, not yours, except under particular cirumstances which mostly involve removing Tarmogoyf card types as you were doing against me. This is especially true when you're playing Storm).

Wasteland is still up to harass his poor mana, one of the weaknesses he's clearly suffering under. Yes, if he goes off this coming turn, he'll still get mana out of a non-basic drop, but he'll have to choose immediately when you get priority. There's value in him having to decide on U or R out of a Volcanic, say, without knowing all the cards he's going to draw. Even if he's setting up this turn to go off on the next, when Thespian's Stage demonstrates he's about to die, then you can still restrict his options with the Wasteland threat.

To keep up the Wasteland and the Scrubland, we've had to use a Forest and the Dryad Arbor. This, however, isn't likely to be very relevant. That single point of Dryad Arbor means very little, when you think back to your pincers - on the one hand, you can go as slow as you like if you're controlling him; on the other, you're killing him with Marit Lage so him being at 11 instead of 12 is of no value. We've lost the use of green mana, but what's Deathrite going to do with it? He doesn't play creatures, and yours aren't likely to die against a storm deck - and if they do, somehow, how likely is two life extra to win you the game anyway?
(Alternative option, focusing more on yard control than mana denial: use the Wasteland and Forest to cast Scooze, then hold up the Arbor for a source of G for Scooze so you can exile two things. Either way, you want to use the Arbor for mana, not damage).


I mean ... you won anyway, so this might all be of limited relevance, but it was an interesting scenario with some varied options, which I think illustrates some vital Magic-playing principles.