Double Trouble
Submit Your Decks by Sunday 7pm EST (send me a private message with your decklist). We run them for you against all other decks and report the results. You don't have to show up anywhere.
Format Rules
1)Your deck must have exactly 60 cards in it.
2) Pick 2 cards. Your deck can contain only copies of those cards and basic lands. The 4 card limit does not apply. If you want to make a deck of 50 Black Lotus and 10 Progenitus, you can.
3) Your deck cannot be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn against an opponent that has a deck comprised of 60 grizzly bears. Why 60 grizzly bears? The goal is to prevent the most absurd fast decks like Chancellor of the Dross. Previous versions of this rule said, “Your deck can’t be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn”, but some players cleverly abused that by killing themselves, forcing their opponents to ‘win’ early and therefore be disqualified. We’ve found this “against 60 grizzly bears” restriction solves both problems.
4) Wishes are banned.
Tournament Procedure
1) We pilot all submitted decks for the participants, then report the results of the highest finishers.
2) Decks will be played going first and second against each opponent. If your deck wins only one of the two games, the decks will be rematched until one deck wins both games or until 10 total games are played. If 10 games are played this way the match is considered a draw.
3) The games are played with hands and decklists revealed. This makes it easier to determine the optimal play for each player, so your deck won’t get sabotaged by a less skilled pilot running it for you.
EDIT - We previously said that we planned to play all decks against all other submitted decks (as we usually do in these events). However, due to overwhelming submissions on day 1 that's not going to be feasible. We plan to split the submissions into smaller randomized pods and play each deck against all the others in its pod. The best records will advance and be played against one another until the top finishers are crowned.
What Happened 64 Entrants were randomly broken into 8 pods. Each deck was played as directed against each other deck in that pod, until it claimed two victories in a row. The finisher with the best record advanced to the Pod of Champions. In the event of a tie for the best record in a pod, both decks were advanced. This happened once.
Final Results
9th - corran132
The combo of Black Lotus and Sire of Insanity was formidable turn 1 disruption, but couldn't survive in the final pod. Chancellor of the Forge acts before turn 1, while Force of Will and Surgical Extraction would disrupt and dismantle the deck. What with Bloodghast enjoying discard and Frost Titan being a more dangerous threat overall, Lotus Insanity wasn't able to rack up many wins in the pod of champions.
8th - nomorepghtrash
Cabal Therapy is powerful turn 1 disruption, and being able to use therapy on yourself to accelerate bloodghasts with landfall is a powerful option. However, this deck also fell to the Forceful Extraction and Forgeline decks. The slower clock and lack of blocking also gave the edge to other early pressure decks.
7th - LightsOutAce1
Black Lotus and Frost Titan are a potent combo, able to lock down a lot of the competition. However, while many of the games were close it ultimately lost out against the Forgeline decks in our testing and naturally couldn't handle Forceful Extraction.
6th - Amps2Eleven
Angel's Grace + Isochron Scepter actually managed to beat Forgeline in our testing, which earned it a lot of points (as Forgeline was a very common deck among the finalists). The deck wins by setting up an Isochron Scepter with Angel's Grace and waiting for your opponent to draw their whole deck (while Angel's Grace prevents you losing to mill). Unfortunately, Angel Grace's use of Split Second didn't protect it from Surgical Extraction once in the graveyard, and the deck also lost out to disruptive decks with a fast clock.
5th - DunSkivuli
Surgical Extraction + Force of Will was one of the most commonly submitted decks. The deck attacks at a wicked angle, countering whatever your opponent plays and immediately extracting it. If your opponent refuses to play a card, they just wait for you to discard to hand size. Eventually they win by milling because your deck is gone. However, Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek never gives the opponent a spell to counter. While they do discard to hand size, their clock is much faster than an opponent trying to extract their deck the slow way.
4th - Ston3notS
In Forceful Extraction mirrors, the first player to get a Surgical Extraction in their graveyard for any reason generally loses. This is because the deck has no reasonable way of stopping an opponent from extracting their extraction once it’s in the grave. You can counter the first extraction, but it’s an instant - they’ll just put another on the stack on top of it. Trading 2 for 1 with forces to extractions each time isn’t sustainable with 7 card hands. Extracting your own extraction to fizzle your opponent is a possibility, but it forces you to play defense with your extractions instead of offense. This means that players take turns discarding copies of Force of Will until one player has 8 Surgical Extractions in hand and is forced to discard one of them. Then they usually lose. This means the deck with more Surgical Extractions is actually at a disadvantage, because they consistently draw 8 copies before their opponent. Because Ston3notS had only 20 surgical extractions in comparison to DunSkivuli’s 30, he won the mirror.
3rd - sadisticmystic1
Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek was a vicious uncounterable combo with a 2 turn clock (in most cases). Because this deck does its thing before turn 1 it also proved to be immune to most disruption. Forgeline dominated the Pod of Champions, with only Angelic Scepter beating it cleanly. Frost Lotus gave it a serious fight, but was far more likely to get significantly awkward draws than Forgeline, and inevitably stumbled first in our testing.
2nd - benbuzz790
In Forgeline mirrors, the deck with more tokens generally wins (as the Leyline buffs all tokens on the board, including your opponents). benbuzz790's list ultimately blinked first in the playoff against cobaqua's own list. Cobaqua noted that he chose a slightly more Chancellor-heavy list specifically for this reason.
1st - cobaqua
Our double trouble champion. I'd like to use this space to note the sheer dominance of this archetype. Only three decks in the archetype were submitted. Each took one of the top 3 slots in the tournament.
Final Thoughts
Congratulations to the 3 creators of the Forgeline deck. I'd also like to mention some of the quirks of the meta. Surging Flame was a popular threat, but not nearly as popular as the copies of Mindbreak Trap and Leyline of Sanctity included to answer it. While uncounterable threats, counterspells, hand disruption and leyline of sanctity were all common sights, not a single copy of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Blightsteel Colossus was played (both cards I expected to perform well, as Blightsteel Colossus never actually enters the graveyard and Tabernacle seriously disrupts both swarm and lotus+threat decks). This allowed Forgeline and mill strategies to run rampant.
Additionally, while 6 distinct players mentioned how well their list was positioned against Chalice of the Void, only one player actually brought a Chalice of the Void to the tournament.
All in all, this was a lot of fun. If you'd like to see another of these events or have suggestions for the format, let me know in the comments.
Submit Your Decks by Sunday 7pm EST (send me a private message with your decklist). We run them for you against all other decks and report the results. You don't have to show up anywhere.
Format Rules
1)Your deck must have exactly 60 cards in it.
2) Pick 2 cards. Your deck can contain only copies of those cards and basic lands. The 4 card limit does not apply. If you want to make a deck of 50 Black Lotus and 10 Progenitus, you can.
3) Your deck cannot be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn against an opponent that has a deck comprised of 60 grizzly bears. Why 60 grizzly bears? The goal is to prevent the most absurd fast decks like Chancellor of the Dross. Previous versions of this rule said, “Your deck can’t be capable of winning before each player has taken a full turn”, but some players cleverly abused that by killing themselves, forcing their opponents to ‘win’ early and therefore be disqualified. We’ve found this “against 60 grizzly bears” restriction solves both problems.
4) Wishes are banned.
Tournament Procedure
1) We pilot all submitted decks for the participants, then report the results of the highest finishers.
2) Decks will be played going first and second against each opponent. If your deck wins only one of the two games, the decks will be rematched until one deck wins both games or until 10 total games are played. If 10 games are played this way the match is considered a draw.
3) The games are played with hands and decklists revealed. This makes it easier to determine the optimal play for each player, so your deck won’t get sabotaged by a less skilled pilot running it for you.
EDIT - We previously said that we planned to play all decks against all other submitted decks (as we usually do in these events). However, due to overwhelming submissions on day 1 that's not going to be feasible. We plan to split the submissions into smaller randomized pods and play each deck against all the others in its pod. The best records will advance and be played against one another until the top finishers are crowned.
Complete List of Submitted Decks and Pods
What Happened
64 Entrants were randomly broken into 8 pods. Each deck was played as directed against each other deck in that pod, until it claimed two victories in a row. The finisher with the best record advanced to the Pod of Champions. In the event of a tie for the best record in a pod, both decks were advanced. This happened once.
Pod 1 Champion
from sadisticmystic1
39 Chancellor of the Forge, 21 Leyline of the Meek
Pod 2 Champion
from corran132
20 x Sire of Insanity 40 x Black Lotus
Pod 3 Champion
from DunSkivuli
30 Force of Will, 30 Surgical Extraction
Pod 4 Champion
from Ston3notS
40 Force of Will 20 Surgical Extraction
Pod 5 Champion
from LightsOutAce1
40x Black Lotus 20x Frost Titan
Pod 6 Champion
from nomorepghtrash
12 x Cabal Therapy 25 x Bloodghast 23 x Swamp
Pod 7 Champions
from benbuzz790
42x Chancellor of the Forge 18x Leyline of the Meek
from Amps2Eleven
20x Plains 28x Angel's Grace 12x Isochron Scepter
Pod 8 Champion
from cobaqua
17x Leyline of the Meek 43x Chancellor of the Forge
Final Results
9th - corran132
The combo of Black Lotus and Sire of Insanity was formidable turn 1 disruption, but couldn't survive in the final pod. Chancellor of the Forge acts before turn 1, while Force of Will and Surgical Extraction would disrupt and dismantle the deck. What with Bloodghast enjoying discard and Frost Titan being a more dangerous threat overall, Lotus Insanity wasn't able to rack up many wins in the pod of champions.
8th - nomorepghtrash
Cabal Therapy is powerful turn 1 disruption, and being able to use therapy on yourself to accelerate bloodghasts with landfall is a powerful option. However, this deck also fell to the Forceful Extraction and Forgeline decks. The slower clock and lack of blocking also gave the edge to other early pressure decks.
7th - LightsOutAce1
Black Lotus and Frost Titan are a potent combo, able to lock down a lot of the competition. However, while many of the games were close it ultimately lost out against the Forgeline decks in our testing and naturally couldn't handle Forceful Extraction.
6th - Amps2Eleven
Angel's Grace + Isochron Scepter actually managed to beat Forgeline in our testing, which earned it a lot of points (as Forgeline was a very common deck among the finalists). The deck wins by setting up an Isochron Scepter with Angel's Grace and waiting for your opponent to draw their whole deck (while Angel's Grace prevents you losing to mill). Unfortunately, Angel Grace's use of Split Second didn't protect it from Surgical Extraction once in the graveyard, and the deck also lost out to disruptive decks with a fast clock.
5th - DunSkivuli
Surgical Extraction + Force of Will was one of the most commonly submitted decks. The deck attacks at a wicked angle, countering whatever your opponent plays and immediately extracting it. If your opponent refuses to play a card, they just wait for you to discard to hand size. Eventually they win by milling because your deck is gone. However, Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek never gives the opponent a spell to counter. While they do discard to hand size, their clock is much faster than an opponent trying to extract their deck the slow way.
4th - Ston3notS
In Forceful Extraction mirrors, the first player to get a Surgical Extraction in their graveyard for any reason generally loses. This is because the deck has no reasonable way of stopping an opponent from extracting their extraction once it’s in the grave. You can counter the first extraction, but it’s an instant - they’ll just put another on the stack on top of it. Trading 2 for 1 with forces to extractions each time isn’t sustainable with 7 card hands. Extracting your own extraction to fizzle your opponent is a possibility, but it forces you to play defense with your extractions instead of offense. This means that players take turns discarding copies of Force of Will until one player has 8 Surgical Extractions in hand and is forced to discard one of them. Then they usually lose. This means the deck with more Surgical Extractions is actually at a disadvantage, because they consistently draw 8 copies before their opponent. Because Ston3notS had only 20 surgical extractions in comparison to DunSkivuli’s 30, he won the mirror.
3rd - sadisticmystic1
Chancellor of the Forge + Leyline of the Meek was a vicious uncounterable combo with a 2 turn clock (in most cases). Because this deck does its thing before turn 1 it also proved to be immune to most disruption. Forgeline dominated the Pod of Champions, with only Angelic Scepter beating it cleanly. Frost Lotus gave it a serious fight, but was far more likely to get significantly awkward draws than Forgeline, and inevitably stumbled first in our testing.
2nd - benbuzz790
In Forgeline mirrors, the deck with more tokens generally wins (as the Leyline buffs all tokens on the board, including your opponents). benbuzz790's list ultimately blinked first in the playoff against cobaqua's own list. Cobaqua noted that he chose a slightly more Chancellor-heavy list specifically for this reason.
1st - cobaqua
Our double trouble champion. I'd like to use this space to note the sheer dominance of this archetype. Only three decks in the archetype were submitted. Each took one of the top 3 slots in the tournament.
Final Thoughts
Congratulations to the 3 creators of the Forgeline deck. I'd also like to mention some of the quirks of the meta. Surging Flame was a popular threat, but not nearly as popular as the copies of Mindbreak Trap and Leyline of Sanctity included to answer it. While uncounterable threats, counterspells, hand disruption and leyline of sanctity were all common sights, not a single copy of The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Blightsteel Colossus was played (both cards I expected to perform well, as Blightsteel Colossus never actually enters the graveyard and Tabernacle seriously disrupts both swarm and lotus+threat decks). This allowed Forgeline and mill strategies to run rampant.
Additionally, while 6 distinct players mentioned how well their list was positioned against Chalice of the Void, only one player actually brought a Chalice of the Void to the tournament.
All in all, this was a lot of fun. If you'd like to see another of these events or have suggestions for the format, let me know in the comments.
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