4 Card Blind: The Silkster Seasons

[silkster]

4 CARD BLIND - SEASON 14 - Vintage* Bannathon

The vote results were positive but without a clear winner, so I'm choosing the option that is less likely to have illegal submissions (after having personally failed 2/8 rounds last season).

You start the game with , and unspent mana from this isn't lost as steps and phases end. Other unspent mana is lost normally. It can be emptied through effects like that of Mana Short. Other unspent mana is lost normally.

*The list of legal cards is the cards that are legal in Vintage, except for cards in Unfinity. (From what I can tell, those require bringing sticker sheets, and I honestly don't know even exactly how they work in paper, so we're just not including them.) Each round, all cards from all decks scoring more than 3.0 round points will be banned, or a minimum of 3 decks if the scoring is too flatly distributed. A banned list will be carefully maintained in the second post of this thread and in the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Scoring (same as in previous seasons):
All players score season points for all rounds they play. Season points for each round equal total points scored for the round, divided by the number of opponents in that round.
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 14 here:

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 a few potential season points.
And fun. You missed out on fun. Which is a lot worse than lagging behind on the score sheet.


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.
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.
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, ho 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.
We do this because otherwise, participants can accuse the organizer of creating a deck designed to beat what others have sent in.

Sending in your deck
As mentioned, you send your deck for the round via PM to the tournament organizer, which (for now) is me: Asthereal.
Please send your deck as follows (enter relevant season number, round number, username):

Subject: 4CB S14R01 deck
(4CB so I know what it's about / S14R01 means Season 14 Round 1, please adjust accordingly)
Message: Plains, Mother of Runes, Student of Warfare, Swords to Plowshares
(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 super fast. That saves me a LOT of time!

Please only send it after I have announced the round has started, and before the deadline (obviously).
I also participate, so I have to send my own deck to myself before any other decks come in.

When a player submits a deck containing a banned card
When a player sends an illegal deck, and it's not noticed by either the player or the tournament organizer before posting decks for the round, that the player gets to swap the illegal card(s) with (a) basic land(s) of their choice.
This way, if someone accidentally sends in a deck containing a banned card, at least they get to still play using the remaining cards.
If you do notice before decks are posted for the round, just send a new PM with a new deck containing only legal cards.
If the TO catches it in time, he/she will send a PM to the player, but the TO is not responsible for the legality of entries.

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 (obviously), rest stays the same as in regular MtG, so 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.

Example
John sends in this deck: Taiga, Kird Ape, Lightning Bolt, Raze
Sarah sends in this deck: Sandstone Needle, City of Traitors, Boldwyr Heavyweights, Aftershock
This looks like John's in trouble, because the Heavyweights will crush him big time, but actually, John wins this 4 to 1 because Sarah's lands are too slow.
OTP: T1 John plays Taiga, Kird Ape, T1 Sarah plays Sandstone Needle. T2 John plays Raze and kills the Needle, after which he rides the Ape to victory.
OTD: T1 Sarah plays Needle, T1 John cannot allow her to add a City and cast the Heavyweights, so he just goes Taiga, Raze the Needle and it's a draw because no one can cast anything anymore.

If anyone finds better lines, they can be openly discussed on the forum, and in the end the score for the optimal play on both sides is the final score.
So if you're not a very experienced player, that's no problem. Others will help you find the optimal play. 4CB is all about deck building and adapting to trends in the "meta".

Bannings
We will use special banning lists for 4CB, because certain cards that seem boring end up completely breaking this format (best example is Burning Inquiry).
In the post below you will find the bannings for the formats we play.

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 controlled by both players, that loop may continue indefinitely, even if that would lead to a draw.

Examples:
- Aimlessly activating Nomads en-Kor in order to force a draw is a loop containing a voluntary action that occurs during a single turn. This loop will not happen indefinitely.
Instead, an optimal amount is determined for the loop to occur, after which it will stop. And the optimal number, in this case, will be zero times, as there is no benefit to the game state in activating Nomads en-Kor on itself.
- If you have a land, enchanted with Squirrel Nest and an Earthcraft, you can create infinite tokens. This is also a loop containing a voluntary action that occurs during a single turn.
Here, again we would determine an optimal amount to perform the loop. Since the loop creates a token, which benefits the game state, in this case we decide the optimal number of tokens to create, and create that amount of tokens, but no more. Say the opponent has one blocker and one removal spell, and he is at 20 life. We would create 22 tokens: 1 will die to removal, 1 will get blocked, and 20 will do damage to the opponent and kill him.
- If one player has a Stormscape Apprentice in play, with mana to activate it, and the other player has a Rotting Regisaur in play, eternally tapping the Regisaur in order to not die to it would be a loop across multiple turns.
This loop is allowed in 4CB and will lead to a draw (unless there are other cards that can influence this loop, or otherwise change the outcome of the game).
- If one player is able to take infinite turns through taking actions, that does not move the game forward and so that player must make a choose a finite number of turns to take before ending the loop.

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