A free Gauntlet in the s100 Singleton format will commence starting from the week of Saturday, 22 October 2016 on Magic Online.
This is the first time that s100 Singleton format has been offered as a Gauntlet. What this means is that we do not need to all meet on a specific time and day, but instead you can challenge your opponent at any time during the week at a mutually convenient time.
How to Register
To join this gauntlet, go HERE and register. For the first gauntlet, there will be a minimum of 16 players, so please encourage your friends to join to help reach the required minimum.
To kickstart this event whilst waiting for a regular sponsor, I will personally contribute the prize pool for this first gauntlet, being:
1st Prize: 6 Booster packs of Kaladesh
2nd Prize: 3 Booster packs from Urza Block (one per set).
3rd Prize: 1 Booster pack (Your choice of either 1 Shadows over Innistrad Booster or 1 Battle for Zendikar Booster).
Rules and Banlist
1. Purpose of Gauntlet: This event is about building community, meeting new people and promoting this format. Please be kind to each other, respectful and most of all have fun. If this event is a success, it can lead to more gauntlets.
2. Saving your Deck on Magic Online: Your deck must be saved as a "Vintage" deck on Magic Online. The banlist will follow the same banlist from the existing Chainsaw Massacre tournament sponsored generously by MTGCardMarket (all banlist information available on Page 1 of this thread). This will avoid the need for players of the chainsaw tournament to adjust their existing decks.
3. Saving your decklist on MTGGoldfish: Your decklist must ALSO be saved on MTG Goldfish. Go to "Decks" menu, then "Submit a Deck". You must then email me (michelle.wong@mail.com) the link to your deck list on MTGGoldfish, which I will make available on this thread before the Gauntlet commences. Yes, this means that you will have the chance to see the full deck lists of your opponent before you play them, which is the way it works in the Pro Tour Top 8 events.
4. List Locked in: Your list will be locked in on Saturday 22 October at 6pm EST for the duration of the Gauntlet. (At 6pm EST on that date, I will save each of your decklists posted on MTGGoldfish to prevent players from editing their deck mid-tournament).
5. Matches will be played on Magic Online, as a best of 3 games with a 40-minute match timer.
6. Arranging the time of your match: YOU (not me!) will need to arrange the time of your matches with your opponent! You can contact your opponent either on Magic Online or by email. Email addresses will be distributed within the group (not on a public site), so please only enter this event if you are happy for the other players in the tournament to see your email address. After your match is completed, it is the winner's responsibility to go to the site "Challonge" and report the score.
7. Pace of Gauntlet: The rule is to play at least one match per week (the full week is a maximum, not a minimum, so you are welcome to play your next rounds as soon as your opponent is ready). Do your best and let me know if you are having scheduling or communication issues that are causing delays. Hopefully we can all be reasonable and flexible. If it becomes clear towards the end of each week that your schedules are incompatible, I will reserve the right to specify a time for your match (doing my best to take into account your recommended preferences). At the end of the day, I will not allow a small minority to stall this gauntlet because of an inability to be flexible or to make an effort.
8. When will this Gauntlet end? The pace is determined by you, not me. Each round is a maximum of 1 week, and the Gauntlet will last for 5 rounds (assuming a pool of 16 players in the event). I am guessing that the first round will take a full 1 week, then the second round will take 80% of that duration, and after that the rounds will become exponentially faster (lasting only 1 or 2 days for each of the last three rounds). But these are only guesses - ultimately the pace is up to you as a community, with a maximum of 5 weeks for the Gauntlet to reach its end.
9. How does the bracket system work? This is a double-elimination tournament, with two brackets. The first bracket is for the starting/undefeated players, and the second bracket is for the players who have lost one match. The finals is between the winner of the first bracket (winner's bracket) and the winner of the second bracket (losers' bracket). In summary, you will be knocked out of the gauntlet when you have lost your second match. So my advice is simple: just avoid losing more than 1 match in the Gauntlet. If you stick to this advice throughout the whole gauntlet, you will win the tournament!!
In the Grand Final (which is the battle between the leader of the winner's bracket and the leader of the loser's bracket), the latter must defeat the winner of the winner's bracket twice (two best of 3 matches) in order to win the Gauntlet. This is the protection which double elimination offers, namely that it is impossible to lose this tournament if you avoid losing 2 matches.
If this sounds confusing, don't worry because the brackets graph will be available here when the tournament commences, which will clearly show your path to victory from beginning to the end of the tournament (Try to avoid viewing the pairings in the brackets graph before the Gauntlet has started, because you will see only temporary pairings. Please ignore those temporary pairings. They are quite meaningless because the pairings will be generated when the tournament starts).
If you have any questions or comments, let me know.
Michelle
The biggest advantage of this format imho is that players can meet whenever it's comfortable and they play only one match , a maximum of 3 games. So, I see no reason, why the timer MUST be 25 min, at least when both players agree, a 40 min timer should be no problem.
I am curious about the fact that all decks are open, I could imagine that will change the sideboard choices after the first game.
Hi ML_Berlin, I think your point is good about the 40 minute timer. One big advantage of the 40 minute timer is that if you disconnect, you can restart the program and come back. I have lost many games in the past because a lag + disconnection can drain almost 10 minutes of the clock, making it very difficult for any slow deck to recover.
The disadvantage with a 40 minute clock is that it might be quite painful to sit through a match if your opponent is playing very slowly (for example taking a few minutes each turn). For example, someone going and making a cup of coffee for 5 minutes whilst the opponent is staring at a screen. Conceding will only solve the problem if the game is unwinnable, not if the opponent is chronically slow. However I think this is a small problem and probably a rare one.
I will give it some thought. Anyone else have any strong views on this?
Here is my deck for Gauntlet No.1 (Azorius Control). I'm posting this now, because as the host I will be able to see the deck lists before the rest of you, so I will lock in my list now before I see your decklists).
I have reflected about the timer issue (25 minutes vs 40 minutes).
I think that the benefits of a 40 minute clock outweigh the negatives. The main benefits are:
1. Players will not feel rushed. I play many formats online, and this is the only format where I feel under a lot of pressure to avoid dying from the clock. This decreases the enjoyment of a match. One cannot sit back, relax and enjoy the match to the maximum. Instead I am usually on the edge of my seat to keep ahead of the clock (and I make many errors due to rushing). This problem is not limited to control decks, as I have timed out many times when playing midrange as well.
2. The 40 minute clock gives players a buffer in case of disconnections or lags (and since lag is a known problem with the client itself rather than exclusively the user's device, I think this should be taken into account).
3. No one except the two players in the game are affected by the additional time. This tournament is unusual in that it is a league rather than a scheduled event. One of the main problems of a long clock in a scheduled event is that players who finish their matches early must wait unreasonable amounts of time for their next match to start. Therefore I don't think it is fair to compare the 40 minute clock to what is "normal" in scheduled events.
4. Wizards of the Coast have given us very few choices with the clock duration. If there was a 30 minute option, that would be perfect. However, since Wizards force us to choose between 25 minutes and 40 minutes, I think it's best to err on the side of allowing people to finish their matches rather than be killed by the clock.
5. If players who have aggressive decks feel that it is painful to sit through a long match against a control player, then such players have the option to concede when it is clear that the game is unwinnable. In many aggro vs control matches which go long, there reaches a point in the game where there is inevitability. If the wait really bothers you, just accept this and move on, rather than frustrate yourself by watching yourself die a slow death.
6. Arranging a match with another person at a mutually convenient time sometimes takes effort. It would be a pity if players go to this effort, then die to the clock (when there was no pressing need to have a 25 minute clock in the first place).
7. If a player can say such a thing as "I can't practically finish a match in time lately. I will send WotC an email about this because it seems I'm not the only one", then clearly a 25 minute clock is a genuine problem for some people, and this problem is avoidable with a 40 minute clock.
I have reflected about the timer issue (25 minutes vs 40 minutes).
I think that the benefits of a 40 minute clock outweigh the negatives. The main benefits are:
1. Players will not feel rushed. I play many formats online, and this is the only format where I feel under a lot of pressure to avoid dying from the clock. This decreases the enjoyment of a match. One cannot sit back, relax and enjoy the match to the maximum. Instead players can be on edge to keep ahead of the clock. This problem is not limited to control decks, as I have timed out many times when playing midrange as well.
2. The 40 minute clock gives players a buffer in case of disconnections or lags (and since lag is a known problem with the client itself rather than exclusively the user's device, I think this should be taken into account).
3. No one except the two players in the game are affected by the additional time. This tournament is unusual in that it is a league rather than a scheduled event. One of the main problems of a long clock in a scheduled event is that players who finish their matches early must wait unreasonably amounts of time for their next match to start. Therefore I don't think it is fair to compare the 40 minute clock to what is "normal" in scheduled events.
4. Wizards of the Coast have given us very few choices with the clock duration. If there was a 30 minute option, that would be perfect. However, since Wizards force us to choose between 25 minutes and 40 minutes, I think it's best to err on the side of allowing people to finish their matches rather than be killed by the clock.
5. If players who have aggressive decks feel that it is painful to sit through a long match against a control player, then such players have the option to concede when it is clear that the game is unwinnable. In many aggro vs control matches which go long, there reaches a point in the game where there is inevitability. If the wait really bothers you, just accept this and move on, rather than frustrate yourself by watching yourself die a slow death.
6. Arranging a match with another person at a mutually convenient time sometimes takes effort. It would be a pity if players go to this effort, then die to the clock (when there was no pressing need to have a 25 minute clock in the first place).
7. If a player can say such a thing as "I can't practically finish a match in time lately. I will send WotC an email about this because it seems I'm not the only one", then clearly a 25 minute clock is a genuine problem for some people, and this problem is avoidable with a 40 minute clock.
Agree with these points by Michelle. And if I may add:
- It's a known fact that most of aggro, especially the ultra fast aggro, will lose if the control player manage to drag the game. I have concede a game several times to a control player when I know the control player already ahead of me. Why bother dragging the match, unless we are trying to win by clocking down our opponent (usually we can do this to those combo decks)
- Disconnected during a game is a common issue. Usually, it will take 1-3 mins from the clock before the client show the Restart or Close option to me. Then depend on our computer, it will take another 1-3 mins to re-login (and wait for Mtgo to finish loading up data). So total of 2-6 mins generally will be lost during disconnection issue.
I'm astonished, first of all, I argued for the option to play 40 min if both agree, I saw no reason why the timer MUST be 25. However, I'm fine with 40 min as standard. But what really surprised me was, that a (one single!) match with 80min per week would be too much or too long.
I don't want to bore you with old war stories when I was young, but in the beginning of the Chainsaw Massacre S100 event, we played double elimination with 40 min timer, which usally meant 6 or 7 rounds after another! 6h tournament usally...
And indeed the most painful part was waiting 30 min or more for other players to finish their match, especially at 4 am. So we cut it down to a 25 min timer. And finally changed structure to 3 or 4 rounds of swiss + finals if there are 2 players undefeated after rounds.
But here, with only one match per week at a convenient time for both - completely independent from other matches- 40 min should be no problem at all. I guess most matches will be finished earlier anyway.
I would play, but how should I find you in MTGO without your username? I tried stash and stash86. Come to the Chainsaw Massacre Event at Saturday 4 PM EST, there you will find a dozen of players or more, which names you can add as buddies, and you can see if someone of those is online afterwards and ask if they want to play S100 for testing purposes or just fun, which most do. http://tinyurl.com/Chainsaw-S100
The gauntlet will start soon. I am still waiting on three decklists (The Sensei and stsung and ulises87g). Can you all please post your decklists to MTG Goldfish and then send me the link by email. The tournament cannot begin until this is received.
I suggest we start now, it's now 20h after the deadline! Those 2 should submit their decks today. But instead of revealing all decks, you could only allow the opponents of each match to see their opposing decklists. So we could start, and as soon as the last 2 submitted their decks, you reveal their opponent decks and all other decks for all.
Not sure, if I was clear:
You start now, pairings will be shown.
Player A vs. B
C vs D etc.
Only player B get a link for player A's deck list and vice versa. They are good to go.
If player C is Sensei, he gets no link from D until he submitted the deck.
As soon as all submitted, all decks will be revealed. It is absolutely not necessary as player A to know NOW the deck of player D or Z.
Oh, if you need the email adress of a player, who played in Chainsaw Massacre, just ask me! I can search them in gatherling.
Did you mail stsung ? The 3rd guy definitely did not play in our event, at least not with that user name, so I have no email adress from him.
Another option would be to send a PM via mtgsalvation.
The Sensei and stsung have now sent their deck lists and they can now arrange their match. I will distribute the lists to the group in my next email.
I am giving Ulises 24 hours to send me his decklist (as a special kindness because this is the first gauntlet and the websites and procedures are unfamiliar), otherwise he forfeits his match 0-2.
Hello to Australia!
Indeed we had just one player from Australia, yet: SBM77. Maybe you have better chances to meet and play with him, because of the same time zone. However, I hope you proceed far in this gauntlet, and get infected with the S100 virus!
After that, you will stay up or get to bed early and set up an alarm, I'm sure
And even if I'm in danger being called a smartass, but this is no league, Michelle!
It's the opposite! Because in a league you won't( can't!) stop playing until the season is over, which means you can not be out. No matter if you lost the first 10 matches, you will play the 11th and so forth. In sport leagues all teams play vs each other at least once in a league, usually twice( so that each team plays at home once). Which would mean at least 24 matches for everybody here. And another obvious difference here is that there are no points for vicories and ties. There are no leagues without points and scoring tables, which also means that not necessarily the team with the most victories will win the league in the end.
MTGO 'leagues' are somethig completely different, because you don't play for being the best of those 2000 players, you play for winning 5 times. There is no champion in the end or real competition, you don't care if player 1390 lost vs player 202. Or if player 1047 lost his 5th match and has now 4-1, because it has absolutely no impact on you.
A free Gauntlet in the s100 Singleton format will commence starting from the week of Saturday, 22 October 2016 on Magic Online.
This is the first time that s100 Singleton format has been offered as a Gauntlet. What this means is that we do not need to all meet on a specific time and day, but instead you can challenge your opponent at any time during the week at a mutually convenient time.
How to Register
To join this gauntlet, go HERE and register. For the first gauntlet, there will be a minimum of 16 players, so please encourage your friends to join to help reach the required minimum.
To kickstart this event whilst waiting for a regular sponsor, I will personally contribute the prize pool for this first gauntlet, being:
1st Prize: 6 Booster packs of Kaladesh
2nd Prize: 3 Booster packs from Urza Block (one per set).
3rd Prize: 1 Booster pack (Your choice of either 1 Shadows over Innistrad Booster or 1 Battle for Zendikar Booster).
Rules and Banlist
1. Purpose of Gauntlet: This event is about building community, meeting new people and promoting this format. Please be kind to each other, respectful and most of all have fun. If this event is a success, it can lead to more gauntlets.
2. Saving your Deck on Magic Online: Your deck must be saved as a "Vintage" deck on Magic Online. The banlist will follow the same banlist from the existing Chainsaw Massacre tournament sponsored generously by MTGCardMarket (all banlist information available on Page 1 of this thread). This will avoid the need for players of the chainsaw tournament to adjust their existing decks.
3. Saving your decklist on MTGGoldfish: Your decklist must ALSO be saved on MTG Goldfish. Go to "Decks" menu, then "Submit a Deck". You must then email me (michelle.wong@mail.com) the link to your deck list on MTGGoldfish, which I will make available on this thread before the Gauntlet commences. Yes, this means that you will have the chance to see the full deck lists of your opponent before you play them, which is the way it works in the Pro Tour Top 8 events.
4. List Locked in: Your list will be locked in on Saturday 22 October at 6pm EST for the duration of the Gauntlet. (At 6pm EST on that date, I will save each of your decklists posted on MTGGoldfish to prevent players from editing their deck mid-tournament).
5. Matches will be played on Magic Online, as a best of 3 games with a 40-minute match timer.
6. Arranging the time of your match: YOU (not me!) will need to arrange the time of your matches with your opponent! You can contact your opponent either on Magic Online or by email. Email addresses will be distributed within the group (not on a public site), so please only enter this event if you are happy for the other players in the tournament to see your email address. After your match is completed, it is the winner's responsibility to go to the site "Challonge" and report the score.
7. Pace of Gauntlet: The rule is to play at least one match per week (the full week is a maximum, not a minimum, so you are welcome to play your next rounds as soon as your opponent is ready). Do your best and let me know if you are having scheduling or communication issues that are causing delays. Hopefully we can all be reasonable and flexible. If it becomes clear towards the end of each week that your schedules are incompatible, I will reserve the right to specify a time for your match (doing my best to take into account your recommended preferences). At the end of the day, I will not allow a small minority to stall this gauntlet because of an inability to be flexible or to make an effort.
8. When will this Gauntlet end? The pace is determined by you, not me. Each round is a maximum of 1 week, and the Gauntlet will last for 5 rounds (assuming a pool of 16 players in the event). I am guessing that the first round will take a full 1 week, then the second round will take 80% of that duration, and after that the rounds will become exponentially faster (lasting only 1 or 2 days for each of the last three rounds). But these are only guesses - ultimately the pace is up to you as a community, with a maximum of 5 weeks for the Gauntlet to reach its end.
9. How does the bracket system work? This is a double-elimination tournament, with two brackets. The first bracket is for the starting/undefeated players, and the second bracket is for the players who have lost one match. The finals is between the winner of the first bracket (winner's bracket) and the winner of the second bracket (losers' bracket). In summary, you will be knocked out of the gauntlet when you have lost your second match. So my advice is simple: just avoid losing more than 1 match in the Gauntlet. If you stick to this advice throughout the whole gauntlet, you will win the tournament!!
In the Grand Final (which is the battle between the leader of the winner's bracket and the leader of the loser's bracket), the latter must defeat the winner of the winner's bracket twice (two best of 3 matches) in order to win the Gauntlet. This is the protection which double elimination offers, namely that it is impossible to lose this tournament if you avoid losing 2 matches.
If this sounds confusing, don't worry because the brackets graph will be available here when the tournament commences, which will clearly show your path to victory from beginning to the end of the tournament (Try to avoid viewing the pairings in the brackets graph before the Gauntlet has started, because you will see only temporary pairings. Please ignore those temporary pairings. They are quite meaningless because the pairings will be generated when the tournament starts).
If you have any questions or comments, let me know.
Michelle
Is Kaladesh not legal for this league until it is legal in CMS?
Happy inventing!
I am curious about the fact that all decks are open, I could imagine that will change the sideboard choices after the first game.
The disadvantage with a 40 minute clock is that it might be quite painful to sit through a match if your opponent is playing very slowly (for example taking a few minutes each turn). For example, someone going and making a cup of coffee for 5 minutes whilst the opponent is staring at a screen. Conceding will only solve the problem if the game is unwinnable, not if the opponent is chronically slow. However I think this is a small problem and probably a rare one.
I will give it some thought. Anyone else have any strong views on this?
Here is my deck for Gauntlet No.1 (Azorius Control). I'm posting this now, because as the host I will be able to see the deck lists before the rest of you, so I will lock in my list now before I see your decklists).
But like michelle said, 80 mins total of match is quite long and maybe uncomfortable to some people. For me personally, I am ok with 40 mins
I think that the benefits of a 40 minute clock outweigh the negatives. The main benefits are:
1. Players will not feel rushed. I play many formats online, and this is the only format where I feel under a lot of pressure to avoid dying from the clock. This decreases the enjoyment of a match. One cannot sit back, relax and enjoy the match to the maximum. Instead I am usually on the edge of my seat to keep ahead of the clock (and I make many errors due to rushing). This problem is not limited to control decks, as I have timed out many times when playing midrange as well.
2. The 40 minute clock gives players a buffer in case of disconnections or lags (and since lag is a known problem with the client itself rather than exclusively the user's device, I think this should be taken into account).
3. No one except the two players in the game are affected by the additional time. This tournament is unusual in that it is a league rather than a scheduled event. One of the main problems of a long clock in a scheduled event is that players who finish their matches early must wait unreasonable amounts of time for their next match to start. Therefore I don't think it is fair to compare the 40 minute clock to what is "normal" in scheduled events.
4. Wizards of the Coast have given us very few choices with the clock duration. If there was a 30 minute option, that would be perfect. However, since Wizards force us to choose between 25 minutes and 40 minutes, I think it's best to err on the side of allowing people to finish their matches rather than be killed by the clock.
5. If players who have aggressive decks feel that it is painful to sit through a long match against a control player, then such players have the option to concede when it is clear that the game is unwinnable. In many aggro vs control matches which go long, there reaches a point in the game where there is inevitability. If the wait really bothers you, just accept this and move on, rather than frustrate yourself by watching yourself die a slow death.
6. Arranging a match with another person at a mutually convenient time sometimes takes effort. It would be a pity if players go to this effort, then die to the clock (when there was no pressing need to have a 25 minute clock in the first place).
7. If a player can say such a thing as "I can't practically finish a match in time lately. I will send WotC an email about this because it seems I'm not the only one", then clearly a 25 minute clock is a genuine problem for some people, and this problem is avoidable with a 40 minute clock.
Agree with these points by Michelle. And if I may add:
- It's a known fact that most of aggro, especially the ultra fast aggro, will lose if the control player manage to drag the game. I have concede a game several times to a control player when I know the control player already ahead of me. Why bother dragging the match, unless we are trying to win by clocking down our opponent (usually we can do this to those combo decks)
- Disconnected during a game is a common issue. Usually, it will take 1-3 mins from the clock before the client show the Restart or Close option to me. Then depend on our computer, it will take another 1-3 mins to re-login (and wait for Mtgo to finish loading up data). So total of 2-6 mins generally will be lost during disconnection issue.
I don't want to bore you with old war stories when I was young, but in the beginning of the Chainsaw Massacre S100 event, we played double elimination with 40 min timer, which usally meant 6 or 7 rounds after another! 6h tournament usally...
And indeed the most painful part was waiting 30 min or more for other players to finish their match, especially at 4 am. So we cut it down to a 25 min timer. And finally changed structure to 3 or 4 rounds of swiss + finals if there are 2 players undefeated after rounds.
But here, with only one match per week at a convenient time for both - completely independent from other matches- 40 min should be no problem at all. I guess most matches will be finished earlier anyway.
Maybe around Modern Inq event tomorrow?
http://tinyurl.com/Chainsaw-S100
You start now, pairings will be shown.
Player A vs. B
C vs D etc.
Only player B get a link for player A's deck list and vice versa. They are good to go.
If player C is Sensei, he gets no link from D until he submitted the deck.
As soon as all submitted, all decks will be revealed. It is absolutely not necessary as player A to know NOW the deck of player D or Z.
Given that we have 25 players in the gauntlet, this means that 7 players receive a bye for Round 1.
To the 3 players who have not sent me their decklists, please do so quickly.
I didn't receive your email, I will be more diligent about checking my spam folder.
(Note to Sensei: I haven't sent you an email because I don't have your email address).
Did you mail stsung ? The 3rd guy definitely did not play in our event, at least not with that user name, so I have no email adress from him.
Another option would be to send a PM via mtgsalvation.
I am giving Ulises 24 hours to send me his decklist (as a special kindness because this is the first gauntlet and the websites and procedures are unfamiliar), otherwise he forfeits his match 0-2.
I want to join your event, but sadly the time is the constraint. In my place, your event start on Sunday 5am.
Indeed we had just one player from Australia, yet: SBM77. Maybe you have better chances to meet and play with him, because of the same time zone. However, I hope you proceed far in this gauntlet, and get infected with the S100 virus!
After that, you will stay up or get to bed early and set up an alarm, I'm sure
It's the opposite! Because in a league you won't( can't!) stop playing until the season is over, which means you can not be out. No matter if you lost the first 10 matches, you will play the 11th and so forth. In sport leagues all teams play vs each other at least once in a league, usually twice( so that each team plays at home once). Which would mean at least 24 matches for everybody here. And another obvious difference here is that there are no points for vicories and ties. There are no leagues without points and scoring tables, which also means that not necessarily the team with the most victories will win the league in the end.
MTGO 'leagues' are somethig completely different, because you don't play for being the best of those 2000 players, you play for winning 5 times. There is no champion in the end or real competition, you don't care if player 1390 lost vs player 202. Or if player 1047 lost his 5th match and has now 4-1, because it has absolutely no impact on you.