4 Card Blind

[Tylert]

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. it's DD.

[jhhdk]

I agree my bad.

[Asthereal]

Assuming scores are correct right now, and assuming my calcs for the match that has no result yet, here's what round 10 looks like.

Preliminary standings for round 10:
1. silkster: 51 - 4,6
2. alphastryk: 45 - 4,1
3. Reeplcheep: 41 - 3,7
4. maxx!: 40 - 3,6
5. dte: 39 - 3,5
6. Wrath of Pie: 37 - 3,4
7. GoblinSmashmaster: 32 - 2,9
8. Asthereal (TO): 25 - 2,3
9. FTW: 22 - 2
10. H: 18 - 1,6
11. Tylert: 12 - 1,1
12. jhhdk: 10 - 0,9

Which would lead to these bannings:
Cast Down
Force of Will
Infiltrator il-Kor
Innocent Blood
Judge's Familiar
Mistblade Shinobi
Moan of the Unhallowed
Phantasmal Terrain
Saprazzan Skerry
Subterranean Hangar
Wingcrafter

And standings for the season look as follows:
1. silkster: 41,3
2. dte: 40,9
3. maxx!: 34,1
4. FTW: 32,3
5. Asthereal (TO): 26
6. Wrath of Pie: 25,3
7. Reeplcheep: 24,3
8. alphastryk: 23,9
9. GoblinSmashmaster: 23,4
10. Tylert: 21,6
11. H: 19,9
12. Karshtakavaar: 2,6
13. jhhdk: 1,6

So silk takes the lead again with two rounds to go, closely followed by dte. All to play for still!

[Asthereal]

Please still post your scores if you haven't already, so we can check whether the standings above are correct.
But in the mean time, as I'd like to finish the season before Christmas, let's get round 11 going.


ROUND 11 OF SEASON 8: PEASANT CONTINUED BANNATHON has started.

I have PM'ed myself my deck for round 11, so you can start sending me your decks.

DEADLINE: Wednesday the 16th of December at 11:00AM Central European Time.
(That's my time zone. Pacific Time it'll probably be something like Tuesday night a bit past midnight, so keep that in mind.)

PLEASE NOTE:
The way you send your deck to me matters. Please send it in the way described below, so it doesn't cost me an hour of editing before I can post all the decks.
Please send your deck as follows: Swamp, Swamp, Terror, Black Knight.
So with card tags around each card, and not above eachother, and with your Username and 4CB S08R11 in the topic.
Don't forget to keep an eye on the banned list. You'll find it in the second post of the thread, or in our Google Spreadsheet.

After the deadline has passed, I will post all decks on the forum here, and you can start puzzling out your scores.
If you have any questions, please read the first two posts of this thread first. If you can't find the answer there, drop a message here. We'll answer a.s.a.p.

Also, if you've been lurking on this thread and looking to join, you can step in anytime, any round. That's no problem at all. Just send me your deck before the deadline, and I'll add you to the competition.

Happy deck designing everybody!

[silkster]

I was so ready to go on Wednesday, and then not for a while after that. Hopefully this isn't too late. (I like to do my write ups before looking at the other summaries.)

Me. silkster: Subterranean Hangar, Innocent Blood, Cast Down, Moan of the Unhallowed

1. Asthereal (TO): Saprazzan Skerry, Force of Will, Infiltrator il-Kor, Infiltrator il-Kor
I have comfortable answers and a resilient threat.
6 points

2. Wrath of Pie: Mercadian Bazaar, Firebolt, Gathan Raiders, Vulshok Sorcerer
Answers and resilient threat again.
6 points

3. jhhdk: Blight Mamba, Rancor, Selesnya Sanctuary, Treetop Village
6 points

4. dte: treetop village, Golgari Rot Farm, terrain elemental, terrain elemental
I got excited by the 3/2s that trade unfavourably into me, but I think you're actually too fast for me. LL?
pending...
okay, still 0 points

5. alphastryk: Saprazzan Skerry, Force of Will, Infiltrator il-Kor, Phantasmal Terrain
0 points (hoping Terrain wouldn't be in vogue)

6. H: Mountain, Reckless Waif, Forge Devil, Death Spark
You can deal 11 damage in your first 4 turns, and then Cast Down kills the Werewolf, and I have plenty of time to make 2/2s.
6 points

7. maxx!: Treetop Village, Selesnya Sanctuary, Qasali Pridemage, Trapped in the Tower
I have too many answers.
6 points

9. Reeplcheep: Island, Judge's Familiar Familiar, Mistblade Shinobi, Wingcrafter
You can hit for 0, 1, 2, 2, 3 in the five turns before I cast two kill spells. Then you get 5 more damage before I cast Moan, then you get 5 more attacks before you die. I'm pretty sure that trying to slow roll and get value either out of a bounce or out of making me Innocent Blood one of my own creatures is just bad for you.
6 points

10. GoblinSmashmaster: Hickory Woodlot, Channel, Eldrazi Devastator, Porcelain Legionnaire
The efficiency of Innocent Blood was chosen because I was worried about this deck but the best I could manage was to scrape 3 points out of it. WL
3 points

11. FTW: Swamp, Inquisition of Kozilek, Ruthless Ripper, Hired Poisoner
The slow 1/1s I was hoping for.
6 points

12. Tylert: Island, Aether vial, Faceless butcher, Qasali pridemage
6 points

51 points, I think

I should have just played this too. It was my 2nd choice, but I was reluctant to replay the same deck thinking everyone would metagame around it again. Instead I played something janky due to the lack of good creatures left to pair with discard.

I was wondering when this day would come. I never played Duress or Cabal Therapy before they got banned, but I knew that Blackmail and Shrieking Affliction were good enough to make winning decks, even after black one-drops got banned along side Cry of Contrition, Funeral Charm, Liliana's Steward, Divest, Ostracize, Tendrils of Despair, and Mind Swords. After Blackmail, I looked to Inquisition, but I didn't like the creatures that were left.

When I decided on a storage land plan for round 3, the two top standouts were Moan of the Unhallowed and Steadfast Sentinel. I played the white card so that I could play the broader Oblivion Ring, but it didn't really help and my threat wasn't resilient enough to go through Path to Exile. I really thought Swords to Plowshares would be popular this round, but that's okay. It was much more important that Phantasmal Terrain and Channel didn't show up in droves.

8. silkster: Subterranean Hangar, Innocent Blood, Cast Down, Moan of the Unhallowed
silkster OTP
[...]
*edit: if I attack with tv instead of playing te2 I win OTD: it prevents silkster to gain 1 mana by playing blood + cast on the same turn.
s sh
d tv
s sh1
d grf
s sh2
d tv, te
s keep sh2 open
d activate tv, attack (s17) --> kill tv (you cannot use blood on tv)
s sh1
d att (s14), play te2
s blood, kill te2
d s11
s sh1
d s8
s sh2
d s5
s sh3
d s2
s sh4
d win
6-0 for me?

I might be better off using Cast Down on the Elemental since you can't cast the next elemental and attack the following turn.

d: Activate TV, attack (s17), TE dies to Cast Down
s: SH1
d: cast TE2
s: Blood to kill TE2
You now get 5 attacks before I can make blockers, so I life at 2, but I can't kill you because you can block. So maybe you don't cast TE2.

d: activate TV, attack (s17), TE dies to Cast Down
s: SH1
d: activate TV, attack (s14)
s: SH2
d: activate TV, attack (s11)
s: SH3
d: activate TV, attack (s8)
s: SH4
d: activate TV, attack (s5)
I can make blockers here, but then you have 7 turns to cast TE2 and attack with it to force a trade and then clean up with TV. Okay, still LL, but even more close (I know, horseshoes and hand grenades).

[Asthereal]

I was so ready to go on Wednesday, and then not for a while after that. Hopefully this isn't too late. (I like to do my write ups before looking at the other summaries.)

(*went on to post results)

I had these same results, so I think we're good with the standings.

[dte]

When I decided on a storage land plan for round 3, the two top standouts were Moan of the Unhallowed and Steadfast Sentinel. I played the white card so that I could play the broader Oblivion Ring, but it didn't really help and my threat wasn't resilient enough to go through Path to Exile. I really thought Swords to Plowshares would be popular this round, but that's okay. It was much more important that Phantasmal Terrain and Channel didn't show up in droves.

I've been quite impressed by the storage deck (both your white and your black, but WoP's one as well). I understand they are powerful - after all it is akin to an uncounterable vial that frees you one additional card and allows for non-creature spells - but I would have no clue how to start building them.

For most decks, I usually go for the effect and the manacosts I want in scryfall. That does not seem like good restrictions for this. So I guess my question is: did you look over all magic commons??

[silkster]

- loser bannathon: 3 points for L, 0 for W. Decks still have to be able to win the goldfish, and to be played optimally to aim at winning. Trouble though, it would probably involve even more unfamiliar cards than the current pauper/peasant. But we would have to find some crazy ideas :)

The loser variant is usually called backbuild, and due to some atrociously terrible cards, I think it usually works better to require that the decks beat a certain minimum standard, like Forest, Forest, Grizzly Bears, Grizzly Bears.

There's also the variant of requiring that all decks lose to a certain deck, which we did in the last Deviant Legacy season (round 8, Storm Season), which I really liked. Both of these are nice because changing up the dummy deck completely changes the round. They're just a bit awkward because people sometimes submit illegal decks without realizing it. And it's not obvious to Asthereal either, because sometimes it's not the line you think is generally best.

I've been quite impressed by the storage deck (both your white and your black, but WoP's one as well). I understand they are powerful - after all it is akin to an uncounterable vial that frees you one additional card and allows for non-creature spells - but I would have no clue how to start building them.

For most decks, I usually go for the effect and the manacosts I want in scryfall. That does not seem like good restrictions for this. So I guess my question is: did you look over all magic commons??

I had a shortlist of abilities I wanted, and I didn't care about mana cost except for colour. It's a deck that goes over the top, so I wanted two removal spells so I wouldn't be that slow. The one-mana removal spells are all dregs, but there are tons of options at 2 and 3 mana. With only one slot for a threat, the main priority was not to draw against a lone Force of Will or Wretched Banquet, which basically means Embalm, Eternalize, or Flashback on a token producer. There are only 13 commons that fit the description (Embalmed Brawler is a false positive), and many are pretty bad for this purpose. Several have only 1 power. Battle Screech and Reap the Seagraf can't be flashed back.

Wrath of Pie's deck kinda went the other way, with two threats and a removal spell with Flashback. Looking closely, the difference in our results is basically just the mirror and match against Maxx!.

Speaking of Aether Vial, I was thinking about Deviant variants that would encourage completely different cards to be played. Giving players an Aether Vial sounded like a good idea, but with access to 4 creatures of any cost the games might get overall too complicated. (I think it's fine to have complicated matches, but it wears on you if every single match is a grind to compute.) Some nice solutions to make it playable and expand the card pool even further:

• Players have an emblem with "Discard a card: create an Aether Vial token."
• Players have an emblem with ": Create an Aether Vial token."
• It's possible that we want to have players create Aether Vial emblems instead. Technically emblems don't tap, but I don't think allowing this creates any problems.
• In separate rounds, it could be an "Aether Vial for instants" and an "Aether Vial for enchantments".

[Reeplcheep]

Instead of an aether vial round, why not a momir round where you get to rig your deck to be 56 basic lands in your favourite order and then any 4 creatures in any order. That stops weird pithing needle situations.

[FTW]

I had a shortlist of abilities I wanted, and I didn't care about mana cost except for colour. It's a deck that goes over the top, so I wanted two removal spells so I wouldn't be that slow. The one-mana removal spells are all dregs, but there are tons of options at 2 and 3 mana. With only one slot for a threat, the main priority was not to draw against a lone Force of Will or Wretched Banquet, which basically means Embalm, Eternalize, or Flashback on a token producer. There are only 13 commons that fit the description (Embalmed Brawler is a false positive), and many are pretty bad for this purpose. Several have only 1 power. Battle Screech and Reap the Seagraf can't be flashed back.

Yeah, that's basically how I conceptualized these storage decks. 2x answer, 2x threat. Since you only get 3 cards, that means 1 has to have some kind of flashback/embalm effect, which is possible when mana cost is not a restriction. 2 answers deals with most decks while 2 threats beats most disruption, even better with multiple bodies. That handily beats the 3x 1-drop decks just by having 4 things to do, and 3x 1 drop is the tempting thing to play against FoW.

I thought land destruction and fast combo would scare off these slow ramp decks for a while. But with only 1 Phantasmal Terrain in the last 2 rounds it was a smart choice for this week. You get so much more power when not limited to 1-2cc mana, especially this late in the bannings.

Regretting not just playing my own FoW deck after the top problems (Factory and Chrono) got banned. I thought it was "too obvious". alphastryk made a great call!

More deviant rounds would be fun. But even just resetting the banlist or adding in rares (or more than one uncommon) is enough to keep things interesting.

[silkster]

Instead of an aether vial round, why not a momir round where you get to rig your deck to be 56 basic lands in your favourite order and then any 4 creatures in any order. That stops weird pithing needle situations.

Land rule is another option. This version has some issues with cards like Mesmeric Fiend and Merrow Witsniper, and to a lesser extent with things that interact with lands. I think treating them as emblems solves those problems the best. I also think that having 4 creatures in any of these cases will lead to many very long and complicated matches.

I thought land destruction and fast combo would scare off these slow ramp decks for a while. But with only 1 Phantasmal Terrain in the last 2 rounds it was a smart choice for this week. You get so much more power when not limited to 1-2cc mana, especially this late in the bannings.

Regretting not just playing my own FoW deck after the top problems (Factory and Chrono) got banned. I thought it was "too obvious". alphastryk made a great call!

More deviant rounds would be fun. But even just resetting the banlist or adding in rares (or more than one uncommon) is enough to keep things interesting.

Factory and Chrono were big ones, but there were other answers to Force of Will. I was actually counting on Force of Will to keep fast combo at bay, and I hoped that the Phantasmal Terrain variant wouldn't be the preference this week, either going back to the hard racing version or an altogether new version.

Growing the banlist definitely keeps things interesting, but I suspect people are getting tired of digging through the same junk commons. I think creatures that cost is the best example. It also gets really complicated to keep track of.

[dte]

The loser variant is usually called backbuild, and due to some atrociously terrible cards, I think it usually works better to require that the decks beat a certain minimum standard, like Forest, Forest, Grizzly Bears, Grizzly Bears.

I've seen the word "backbuild" appears a couple of times in the thread, and meant to ask what it was.
A banlist does not fix the atrociously terrible cards?

There's also the variant of requiring that all decks lose to a certain deck, which we did in the last Deviant Legacy season (round 8, Storm Season), which I really liked. Both of these are nice because changing up the dummy deck completely changes the round. They're just a bit awkward because people sometimes submit illegal decks without realizing it. And it's not obvious to Asthereal either, because sometimes it's not the line you think is generally best.

It is exactly these kind of rounds (actually, the whole legacy deviant season) that made me read the thread and wanting to participate :)

I had a shortlist of abilities I wanted, and I didn't care about mana cost except for colour. It's a deck that goes over the top, so I wanted two removal spells so I wouldn't be that slow. The one-mana removal spells are all dregs, but there are tons of options at 2 and 3 mana. With only one slot for a threat, the main priority was not to draw against a lone Force of Will or Wretched Banquet, which basically means Embalm, Eternalize, or Flashback on a token producer. There are only 13 commons that fit the description (Embalmed Brawler is a false positive), and many are pretty bad for this purpose. Several have only 1 power. Battle Screech and Reap the Seagraf can't be flashed back.

Wrath of Pie's deck kinda went the other way, with two threats and a removal spell with Flashback. Looking closely, the difference in our results is basically just the mirror and match against Maxx!.

Makes a lot of sense. I before dismissed a bit the idea to build vial/storeland from the number of cards to look up, it's just that I didn't figure out what to look for ;)

Players have an emblem with "Discard a card: create an Aether Vial token."
Players have an emblem with ": Create an Aether Vial token."
It's possible that we want to have players create Aether Vial emblems instead. Technically emblems don't tap, but I don't think allowing this creates any problems.
In separate rounds, it could be an "Aether Vial for instants" and an "Aether Vial for enchantments".

Sounds quite fun, but I think I am a bit newer here, so everything sounds fresh.

[silkster]

Sounds quite fun, but I think I am a bit newer here, so everything sounds fresh.

Could have fooled me! Mistveil Plains? Freaking Tel-Jilad Stylus? Who figures out how to break those? It's interesting that you say you're not as familiar with the cards. I mean, I believe it, but you still keep coming out of left field with crazy stuff like Channel and Isochron Scepter and Deftblade Elite and the aforementioned Stylus and Plains.

An open backbuild with a banlist is probably fine. The issue is that creating the banlist takes some amount of work, and then the discussion of the banlist itself gives away most of the ideas. Whereas saying that you must be able to beat Swamp, Swamp, Swamp Scathe Zombies is really clean, and also repeatable with different cornerstone decks.

[dte]

Could have fooled me! Mistveil Plains? Freaking Tel-Jilad Stylus? Who figures out how to break those? It's interesting that you say you're not as familiar with the cards. I mean, I believe it, but you still keep coming out of left field with crazy stuff like Channel and Isochron Scepter and the aforementioned Stylus and Plains.

My first understanding was that trying to get the draw phase back was very powerful, so I looked for these effects that put cards on top or bottom of the library.

But I also read the whole thread before starting, so I saw a lot of strategies and discussions. So "new", but I built on your earlier work ;)

[silkster]

My first understanding was that trying to get the draw phase back was very powerful, so I looked for these effects that put cards on top or bottom of the library.

But I also read the whole thread before starting, so I saw a lot of strategies and discussions. So "new", but I built on your earlier work ;)

Wait, all 150 or however many pages there were? I thought about doing that, then just went to the google sheets for each season, but even that I didn't look through that carefully. Did you see the round where I properly did my homework and found Nether Spirit plus Mind Swords and then decided at the last minute that everyone was going to play that so I jumped to something middling instead? That was the one round where I really dug through the Blocked season, and my digging was almost successful. You'll also notice that I ended up on a storage land. I'm a really big fan of them. I was actually expecting that they'd have taken over Peasant much sooner, but there are far more land destruction spells than I was expecting, and they're not going away very fast. I had thought that there was a decent chance, for example, that Strip Mine and Ghost Quarter would be banned in the same round, like how Simian Spirit Guide and Lotus Petal were at the start of Pauper.

[Wrath of Pie]

Speaking of Aether Vial, I was thinking about Deviant variants that would encourage completely different cards to be played. Giving players an Aether Vial sounded like a good idea, but with access to 4 creatures of any cost the games might get overall too complicated. (I think it's fine to have complicated matches, but it wears on you if every single match is a grind to compute.) Some nice solutions to make it playable and expand the card pool even further:

• Players have an emblem with "Discard a card: create an Aether Vial token."
• Players have an emblem with ": Create an Aether Vial token."
• It's possible that we want to have players create Aether Vial emblems instead. Technically emblems don't tap, but I don't think allowing this creates any problems.
• In separate rounds, it could be an "Aether Vial for instants" and an "Aether Vial for enchantments".

Phyrexian Revoker wants to make itself known.

[Wrath of Pie]

I've seen the word "backbuild" appears a couple of times in the thread, and meant to ask what it was.
A banlist does not fix the atrociously terrible cards?

Traditional backbuild is building to lose to very specific conditions (like being able to produce unrestricted mana), so requiring it to win against something relevant stops this and makes it far more interesting.

[dte]

Wait, all 150 or however many pages there were? I thought about doing that, then just went to the google sheets for each season, but even that I didn't look through that carefully. Did you see the round where I properly did my homework and found Nether Spirit plus Mind Swords and then decided at the last minute that everyone was going to play that so I jumped to something middling instead? That was the one round where I really dug through the Blocked season, and my digging was almost successful. You'll also notice that I ended up on a storage land. I'm a really big fan of them. I was actually expecting that they'd have taken over Peasant much sooner, but there are far more land destruction spells than I was expecting, and they're not going away very fast. I had thought that there was a decent chance, for example, that Strip Mine and Ghost Quarter would be banned in the same round, like how Simian Spirit Guide and Lotus Petal were at the start of Pauper.

Well, only 135 pages at the time :)
But yes, I read it all. It is long, but there are a lot of fun, and plenty of epics. And a lot of posts with rationales about why and what, like the one you gave for the storage land builds, so that was very informative/useful. Did not prevent me to submit a first deck (2*battle screech) that was losing to land destruction, discard and counter.

Traditional backbuild is building to lose to very specific conditions (like being able to produce unrestricted mana), so requiring it to win against something relevant stops this and makes it far more interesting.

Do you by any chance have a link to a topic where that was played? I looked but did not find anything, and I still do not get how the search function on thesource works.

[Asthereal]

Wait, all 150 or however many pages there were?

I'm reading The Wheel of Time right now. That's a lot longer.

But this discussion is great. I'm getting tons of ideas for Deviant Legacy, part 2.

[dte]

I'm reading The Wheel of Time right now. That's a lot longer.

But this discussion is great. I'm getting tons of ideas for Deviant Legacy, part 2.

To link two definitely unrelated things: we start with a Wheel of Sun and Moon emblem.