Biweekly (for now) 3CB: #13 (entries close 01/18/08)

[Illissius]

3CB #13 is open for entries! Congrulations go to, as far as I can tell, me, for winning the last one.

Turns out I'm doing these every other week during exam period. Should be back to normal in February.

Special format continues this week! At a price of one point per opponent you end up facing, you may optionally include a banned card in your deck, or break the multiple discard rule.* (If a card is both banned and breaks the rule, you will only be penalized once). You may invoke this as many times as you like, in which case the price is cumulative. Barren Glory, Balance, and Force of Will cost double! So for example, if your deck is Black Lotus - Coercion - Ornithopter, and 15 people enter, you will deduct 14 points from your total to pay for Coercion.

* "You may not submit a deck that can force an opponent to lose more than one card from his or her hand in a single turn."

Morningtide is not legal yet!

Decklists and results for previous 3CBs can be found at the wiki. Edit your results in for 3CBs #3-5 goddamnit, if you played in those (password is 3cbthesource). We have full results up on the wiki for all the other rounds, and 3-5 are an ugly, gaping hole; it'd be great if we could fill it, and it only takes a minute to copy your results in from the thread, to which there's a link (conveniently) right there at the wiki.

Entries for this round close at 23:59 EST on Friday, January 18th. To enter, either PM me, or send your deck by email to thesource3cb at gmail. I'm not accepting second decks this week. Preferred format for submissions:

3CB #13 Entry (title of PM or email)
ThisIsMyUsername - Goblins
Mountain
Goblin Lackey
Siege-Gang Commander

Notes, comments, etc.

Please try to follow this format, it makes posting the lists much quicker and easier. (In particular, don't put any other stuff before or after the card names, that's annoying.)

If you're paranoid about me seeing your deck (I won't), I'll be posting the MWS security code for my own deck within the next few days and you can wait for that.



-- What is 3CB? --

3CB, which stands for Three Card Blind, is a unique format of Magic play, quite unlike any other; sort of like a very (very, very -- in the way a government bureaucracy is an advanced form of a pickpocket --) advanced form of Rock, Paper, Scissors. As per the name, you have three cards, of your own choosing. They are your deck and your hand. Your opponent also has three cards. All normally hidden information is visible to both players, and nothing happens randomly, so the optimal play for each player is always known -- meaning you don't actually play any Magic, per se. You submit a deck, so does everyone else, and all outcomes (all decks versus all other decks) are determined deterministically, usually by a moderator, or (as we do here) group effort. Unless you can break the format in half, it often comes down to metagaming.


-- Rules of 3CB --

Your deck is composed of 3 cards which all start in your hand.
Your library contains 0 cards and you don’t have a sideboard nor own any cards outside of the game. (Wishes fetch nothing.)
Random effects always go in your opponent's favor. (This includes Chaos Orb and Falling Star. If controllership of something with random effects changes, they go in favor of the player who doesn't own it.)
You can see your opponent's hand, so you make the best possible play. (If both players' taking an action would cause that player to lose the game, then neither player takes any action, and the game is a draw.)
You don't lose as a result of not being able to draw a card. (If cards are put in your library, you draw them as normal. Effects which require you to skip a draw work as normal.)
You play each opponent twice; once going first and once going second.
For each win, you score 3 points.
For each draw, you score 1 point.
For each loss, you score 0 points.

Three rules restrict the kind of deck you can send. They are:
1. You may not submit a deck that can win before the opponent's first main phase.
2. You may not submit a deck that can force an opponent to lose more than one card from his or her hand in a single turn.
3. You may not submit a deck that uses a card on the 3CB banned list.

Other than the aforementioned, everything is handled exactly like a real game of Magic.


-- 3CB Banned List --

All Ante Cards
All Promo cards not available on Gatherer/Autocard
All Unglued and Unhinged Cards (excluding basic lands)

Creatures:
Magus of the Moon
Mesmeric Fiend
Nezumi Shortfang
Voidstone Gargoyle

Lands:
Ghost Quarter
Glacial Chasm
Strip Mine
Wasteland

Artifacts:
The Rack

Enchantments:
Barren Glory
Form of the Dragon

Instants:
Force of Will

Sorceries:
Abandon Hope
Balance
Blackmail
Cabal Therapy
Coercion
Pulse of the Dross
Restore Balance
Thoughtseize

[Illissius]

My security code is: 1FD7B894.

[Illissius]

Bit more than a day left... I only have three decks so far, my own included. So, er, do something about that.

[Illissius]

Apologies. My sense of time is terrible. Yesterday was somehow simultaneously Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for me.

So, today is the real Thursday, and now there's approx. 1.75 days left.

Still only 5 decks.

[Illissius]

1. freakish - (-10)
Black Lotus
Balance
Ivory Giant

2. Xero - You can't take my balance-ness away!!!!!!!!! (-5)
Black Lotus
Wheel of Fortune
Dryad Arbor

3. donaldB - thallid (-5)
Bayou
Blackmail
Thallid

4. Illissius - Staxless Stax (-5)
Strip Mine
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Dryad Arbor

5. Sacearuse - Special 3CB FTL (-0)
Mishra's Workshop
Sphere of Resistance
Epochrasite

6. yawg07 - Sphere of Torture (-0)
Wheel of Torture
Trinisphere
Mishra's Workshop

Well we just set the negative record for participation here. Anyone have an idea why? Don't like the special format? Or it's not "special" enough? Or that I'm not having time to do them every week this month?

Anyways. The one upside of this is the results are ridic easy to calculate, and so I've done so. See wiki. I did pretty.... badly this week. My deck doesn't even work.

Tell me quickly what to do with the next one, so I can put it up.

[PhanTom_lt]

I wonder how this rule: "You may not submit a deck that can force an opponent to lose more than one card from his or her hand in a single turn." is comatible with all of those Balances and Wheel of Fortunes. Care to explain a little more?

[freakish777]

1. NA
2. WL
3. WL
4. WD (you lead Tabernacle, I Balance your hand away and can't pay for Giant's upkp)
5. WL
6. WD (how exactly did you plan on winning any game?)

Total 17 - 10 = 7.

Basically this format is really dumb. Win on the play. Lose on the draw. gfg

[Illissius]

PhanTom_It: Because you can "pay" points to break rules. Read the post.

freakish777: I already did the results. ;)

Yeah, the format is pretty dumb like this. It was pretty fun at TMD though, so I dunno what changed. So what should I do now? Back to the old format? Some input please.

[Illissius]

Thanks for all the feedback, guys.

[technogeek5000]

I dont play because i just dont feel like editing my results in the wiki page. Is it realy needed.

[Illissius]

Man, and I thought I was lazy. At least you made the effort to post in the Goddamned thread. Props for that, I guess.