4CBS13: a 4-cards blind backbuild bannathon season

[dte]

4 Card Blind Season 13 : backbuild bannathon!

Season 13 is now finished, big congrats to BirdsOfParadise for winning this season, and nice job of symbi too!



4CB tournaments were very well organised by Asthereal for 12 seasons. Here is plenty (330 pages!) to read about it: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...2-4-Card-Blind

I will try to organise the thirteenth season, and not make too much of a mess of it.
This season, we play 8 rounds of Vintage backbuild Bannathon, doing our worse. Indeed, we get points by losing games! Yet, our matches are calculated as usual, each deck doing its best to win.
In doubt, consider everything is normal, except decks are swapped with each opponent before the match.

Banlist
The full list is presented in the second and third posts of this thread, accessible via my signature.

Deadline every Tuesday at 19h CEST (Central European Summer Time).

Sending in your deck
Here it is slightly different from previous rounds, as two more info need to be present: the goldfish turn (GT) or your deck (at which turn do you win against no interaction), and how do you beat the target deck.
You send your deck for the round via PM to the tournament organizer, which (for now) is me: dte.
Please send your deck as follows (enter relevant season number, round number, username):

Subject: 4CB S13R01 deck
(4CB so I know what it's about / S13R01 means Season 13 Round 1, please adjust accordingly)
username, decklist with tags, GT. Comma separated so I can paste it into excel.

dte, Black lotus, channel, Lich's Mirror, Pox, GT1
Legality: my deck is faster and not disrupted by the target deck, which has GT202: Leyline of Sanctity,noxious revival,Veldt,Helix Pinnacle

(I prefer to receive the cards in card tags, and in this way of presenting: {cards}cardname1{/cards}, {cards}cardname2{/cards}, {cards}cardname3{/cards}, {cards}cardname4{/cards}, but with [] instead of {}. If you send the deck this way, I can copy and paste quickly.

Never hesitate to send your deck much in advance!
You can always change it later on by sending me a new PM.


The tournament organizer will make calculations (or have Google Spreadsheet figure that stuff out) and keep track of standings below. Note: season points are always rounded to one decimal. You will find the Google Spreadsheet for season 13 here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1710229930

Participation is entirely voluntary, and all you can win is bragging rights. We do this for fun. If you missed a round, or want to enter mid-season, no problem. You can (re-)enter in any round. All you missed was some fun.


Final standings for season 13:
1. BirdsOfParadise 31,1
2. Symbi 29
3. RoosterCocoa 24,5
4. Silkster 23,7
5. FTW 21,3
6. Reeplcheep 20,1
7. jfb1337 19,6
8. Wrath of Pie 19,5
9. dte (TO) 19,4
10. GoblinSmash 15,9
11. Dooey 12,9
12. FourDogsinaH 12,4
13. alphastryk 8,6
14. Asthereal 6,6
15. Raketenudo 2,9


Direct links to posts with the decks for each round in the 13th season:
- Decks and discussion for round 8: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1102310
- Decks and discussion for round 7: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1102166
- Decks and discussion for round 6: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1101944
- Decks and discussion for round 5: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1101799
- Decks and discussion for round 4: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1101683
- Decks and discussion for round 3: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1101561
- Decks and discussion for round 2: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1101391
- Decks and discussion for round 1 : https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1101209


HOW 4 CARD BLIND WORKS
All participants create a legal 4 card deck, and send it to the tournament organizer via PM before the deadline, but after the organizer has officially started the round.
After the deadline has expired, the tournament organizer posts all decks on the forum, and participants get to figure out who wins against who, and post results.
Every participant posts results for every opponent, so that everybody gets to cross-check their results and agree on the outcome. When in doubt, the community will help.
All participants play one game on the play and one on the draw against every other participant in that round. A win gets you 3 points, a draw is worth 1 point. Except in backbuild, where a win nets you 0, and a loss 3 points.
This means if you win on the play and score a draw when on the draw, you will score 3 + 1 = 4 points against that particular opponent (or 1 point in backbuild).
The tournament organizer will add all scores and create a scoring table for the round, which will show who did the best in that particular round.
We will try to play a round every week. Every round the participants send in a new deck, hoping to out-smart the others.
Note: The tournament organizer (me) also plays along. Before each round starts, he sends his own deck to himself via PM.
Afterwards, he posts on the forum that the round can start, and only then, other participants may send in their decks for the round.

You can read much more of it and see exemples here: https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...2-4-Card-Blind
Otherwise, don't hesitate to ask a question, on this thread or via PM!


The games go as follows
- You start with all four cards from your deck in your opening hand, and play from there.
- You don't lose the game for having to draw a card when you can't, rest stays the same as in regular MtG, e.g. if a card ends up in your library, you will draw it next draw step.
- Random effects always have the effect that is most favorable to the opponent.
- Every player always plays optimally. If anyone finds a better line, that line is played.


Loops
4CB by its nature violates several ideas behind regular Magic. One of them is the idea that games should never get 'stuck'. In regular Magic you will eventually draw your library and lose, for instance. In 4CB we lose that failsafe, and since we play with only four cards, we get stuck all the time, for instance if both players have a Greenbelt Rampager in play, and attacking becomes pointless. Another way you can get stuck is if one player has an action they can perform every turn in order to prevent the opponent for doing anything, like tapping a land every turn with Rishadan Port. Technically, this would fall under the ruling of a "loop". These can occur across turns, and the regular Magic rules say you can't eternally perform a loop containing a voluntary action. Instead you have to choose a number. This doesn't fit with the main rule of 4CB that says every player always plays optimally. Because when you need to tap a land eternally to stop something from getting cast, there is no optimal number except infinite. Getting stuck is part of 4CB, so we don't worry about it too much, but we can't ignore the loop rule completely, because otherwise a player would be able to activate Nomads en-Kor infinitely just to force a draw.
So we will be using the following rule:
If a loop containing at least one optional action would be repeated indefinitely during a single turn, then an optimal number is determined for the loop to repeat, and after the loop has been repeated that number of times, it will stop.
If a loop containing at least one optional action would be repeated indefinitely across multiple turns, that loop may continue indefinitely, even if that would lead to a draw. So Time vault,voltaic key,plains,city of traitors can DD against any deck that present no win or interaction before T3.