Yes, Zendikar, the whole set, will end the Fae menace in Standard. Rotations solve any problem. Beyond that, though, we really cannot do more than speculate about the new Standard. A week or two, another couple hundred spoiled cards and we can talk. Until then, I am thinking about Ultimate Standard and introductory Pauper. I am refining the list of the best Standard decks of all time. I have also introduced some newer players to the commons-only Pauper format, and I’ll look at some decks for that.
Ultimate Standard Tournament
A couple years ago, I ran “the Ultimate Extended Tournament” (UET.) It matched the 32 greatest Extended decks of all time in a single-elimination tournament. I wrote a bunch of articles about it — check my archives.
The concept was pretty simple. To qualify, a deck had to have been a legal Extended deck at some point. It had to have been played in, and done well in, a major event, or been a well-known archetype for a significant time. It was played in the UET as played in the historic event, including complete sideboard (although I had to guess for a deck or two, since the really old event coverage often left out sideboards.)
The 32 decks chosen were sorted randomly, then we played a modified tournament. Each match was best of five, with each deck starting one unsideboarded game, then playing up to three sideboarded games. The idea was to lessen the advantage of going first, and lucky sideboarding. The event was single elimination.
The results were, in some cases, surprising. They also revealed how decks have evolved over the years.
I want to do the same thing with Standard decks, but with a twist. I want to add 6-8 Standard decks from the recent PTQ season. I want to see if past Standard decks are comparable to modern standard. If not, I want to see whether old-time Standard was weaker, or more broken. Magic has changed over time — what has that change done to constructed?
If the Ultimate Standard Tournament drags out until States this fall, I might mix in some Zendikar / Alara / M10 decks as well. We’ll see.
The first step is to choose the lineup. Here’s a list of powerful Standard decks from years past that I am considering. Which should make the cut? What am I missing? Decks with question marks are on the bubble. Nothing is set in stone, although the 199 Worlds decks have a bit of a leg up — I still have them around somewhere, complete with sideboards.
The Decks
Accelerated Blue
Affinity (w/ Skullclamp?)
B/R Necropotence, (Mark Justice, 1996 Worlds)
B/W Tokens? (before it died, it was the biggest winner
Boat Brew?
Cascade Swans?
CMU Blue (Randy Buehler, Worlds 1999)
Corrupter Black (Adrian Sullivan)
Cruel Control (Shuhei Nakamura, Japanese Nats 2009)
Cunning Wake (Daniel Zink, Worlds 2003)
Deadguy Red (Rubin, Worlds 1999)
Dragonstorm (Makahito Mihara, Worlds 2005)
Elf and Nail
Eminent Domaine (Adrian Sullivan, WI States)
Faeries (PauloVitor Damo da Rosa, Hollywood 2008)
Fires (Eugene Harvey, US nationals 2001, or maybe Zvi’s My Fires)
5Color Bloodbraid
Goblin Bidding (Wolfgang Eder, Worlds 2003)
JarGrim? (it was Standard legal for a month)
Kithkin? (If so, which?)
Kooky Jooky (Adrian Sullivan)
Ponza (maybe a version with Tangle Wire?)
Prosbloom?
Replenish (Tom Van de Logt, worlds 2000)
Rock and his Millions (Sol Malka)
Sabre Bargain (Mike Pustilnik, US Nats 2000)
Slide?
Stompy (Murray Evans, Worlds 2000)
Tinker (Jon Finkel, Worlds 2000)
Tog (Carlos Romao, Worlds 2002)
Tolarian Blue (Chris Warren — IL States)
Trinity Green (John Larkin, Euros 2000)
UG Madness (Humphries, Worlds 2003)
U/W Reveillark?
Wildfire (Kai Budde, Worlds 1999)
This sort of thing requires a ton of play — and double checking. It also requires putting together the actual decks. (Not just proxies — as the unfortunate experience from two articles ago demonstrates. We both misremembered the casting cost of Blistering Firecat that week. Sorry.)
So, let me know in the forums which decks should be in, or out. For decks that don’t have a name and tournament shown, I’d appreciate either decklists (with sideboards) or a pointer to where the decklist can be found. Ditto for anything you want to add. I mean, I’m sure that “Triple Kick-Ass Blaster” is a hell of a deck, but I have no idea what’s in it. In the same vein, Standard has had a lot of Red Deck Wins over the years — if you want to include one, tell me which version.
Bringing Tournaments to a Casual Crowd
Over the last few months, I have been helping out at a store that is working to increase its Magic presence. The store has always had a small but reliable group of casual players. We are trying to provide more options for play at the store, and to offer some casual tournaments. Finding the right balance is tricky.
This is Madison, after all, and the store in question – Pegasus Games – has its own niche. In Madison, Netherwood Games and Misty Mountain both have a much higher percentage of serious and high-caliber players. Pegasus doesn’t want to compete for those players. Getting a couple really good drafters into the mix at Pegasus would be easy enough — just increase the prize payout — but it would also scare away much of the casual crowd. Pegasus will stick with the casual crowd.
Right now, a significant part of the players at Pegasus on Thursdays are kids (meaning anyone not yet in college to an old fart like me), plus a mix of older players who like casual games, 2GH and other multiplayer variants — as well as some locals from that side of town that spend their evenings playtesting Legacy and Vintage with powered decks. It is a diverse crowd. That’s what we want to nurture.
Trying to find a tournament format that everyone can, and will, play has been a challenge. For the first month or two, I was running Two Headed Giant tournaments — Constructed, with the Vintage card pool. The idea was that, if players wanted to play, they could play whatever decks they had (after yanking the proxies and Unglued cards, that is.) I did random pairings much of the time, to prevent any pair of players from building coordinated decks. 2HG can be fun, but not when you are playing against one player with a deck full of counters and card drawing, while his partner has a Tier One Vintage combo deck. So far, though, that hasn’t been a problem. People are playing to have fun.
The tournaments have been free, with no prizes beyond participation foils (for everyone) and a high-five for the winner.
Part of the goal of running tournaments, though, is to introduce the players to deck building and the other tournament procedures. To that end, I wanted to run some constructed formats. However, with some players owning nothing but a collection of 200 or so old cards, choice of format was a problem. Many of the kids don’t have the budget for limited, and certainly don’t have the budget for serious constructed events. Others do. Something like a Standard tournament, or worse yet a Legacy tournament, would result in a lot of badly mismatched decks for the first event, and a lot fewer players in the subsequent events.
The best option we could find is Standard Pauper. That format only allows cards from the current Standard format — and only common ones at that. Pretty much anyone can get Pauper cards. I think. On the down side, dealers generally don’t stock a lot of commons, so finding commons to buy can be tricky. I decided I had to get some more into the local mix.
Commons Only M10 Drafting
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the logistics of draft as a PTQ format. As part of the research for that article, I physically went through the process of marking and banding packs, in the exact same manual process that Wizards uses to make marked packs for the Pro Tour. However, I added one minor variation after pack one — instead of swapping out the foils, I swapped out all the rares and uncommons. The second pack I busted had the second Baneslayer Angel I have ever opened, and I was keeping that.
Instead, I made packs of 15 commons, banded together with paper, then sets of three “packs” banded together in draft sets. I also pulled some of the real chaff — the number of Angels Songs and Bountiful Harvests were slightly lower than their actual frequency. When I was done, though, I had an entire draft made up of spare M10 commons. I decided to run it, and offered entry to the players most likely to need cards first. The entry fee was $0.50, which I split with the store.
A quick note on price — I had checked with the store ahead of time. I was looking to get cards into the players hands, but I did not want to cut into the store’s own sales. More importantly, the store sells the exclusive right to sell cards in the store to a local dealer. I didn’t want it to even appear that I was dealing behind his back, so I basically sold the packs to the store for half the entry fee.
If I do this again, we’ll probably raise the price. There was a Lightning Bolt or two in the draft, so the total price of the draft was less than the value of the singles. That’s not the way drafts usually work.
Running the draft was interesting. At least half of the players had never drafted before, so I had to be very careful and precise in my instructions. I also gave a lot more instructions that I almost ever do, even at prereleases. Still, the draft went well.
Watching the draft also exercised another judge skill: remaining impassive. I was standing behind a pair of players and I could see what they drafted. That’s often true when you are judging, but at higher level events you are watching eyes and hands, not what is being drafted. This was low REL, and I was curious, so I also watched picks as well.
As a judge, or as a spectator for that matter, you cannot give players any information on what is being drafted. That means you cannot grimace, or raise eyebrows — and you really cannot do a face-palm. Still…
The packs had some interesting choices — made more interesting because I had not thought all that much about what an all-commons M10 draft would be like. In pack one, the player had a choice, in my opinion, between Doom Blade and Pacifism. In pack two it was a choice between Blinding Mage and Bolt. In pack three I would have had to decide to pass either Seismic Strike or Snapping Drake. In the actual event, the player’s first three picks were Unsummon, Raging Goblin, Raging Goblin.
Keeping a totally impassive face was really, really hard.
Pretty much the entire draft was completely new drafters. I think I had given all but maybe two of them their first DCI cards, and all within the last month or so. The youngest player was pretty young, while his father, who has been accompanying him and playing with him in 2HG, was the oldest. The father, however, had a six digit DCI number. The father had been playing a long time — and playing well.
OMG did the father have a good deck. I think I could have replaced a third of his cards with basic lands and he still would have 3-0ed the draft.
In general, everyone enjoyed the draft. Everyone got a prize foil, and lots of cards for their Pauper decks. More importantly, everyone got a chance to draft, and they all will be better next time.
I have been running these events on Thursdays, at Pegasus Games on Odana Road in Madison. Everyone is welcome. Last pauper draft, we had nine people interested and enough product for eight. Next time, I’ll have lots more. The drafts won’t be frequent — most Thursdays will be Standard Pauper and/or 2HG.
Standard Pauper
The rules for “standard pauper” are pretty simple, at least according to the poster I have hung on the store window:
* The main deck must have at least 60 cards.
* Sideboards must have 15 cards, if you use one.
* All cards must be basic lands or commons from the following sets: M10, Lorwyn, Morningtide, Shadowmoor, Eventide, Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn
Cut and paste is so nice.
I also decided to bring some pre-built decks, just in case some of the players forgot / didn’t have time to build / were too lazy / etc. I decided to build some moderately good decks — and to play them against anyone looking for a game between rounds.
I busted open a bunch of Eventide and M10 packs, and started building.
That sentence made a bunch of you cringe, didn’t it?
First, the Eventide. Ingrid and I both judged at GenCon. As Sunday was winding down, we each went to get comped. The Pastimes guys told me that they could not compensate us in all M10 packs, since it was in short supply, but that we could get other packs. I took some of my product online, some in M10, and I also got half a box of Eventide. (I was missing some Eventide rares, like Figure of Destiny.) I know drafting is better than busting, but I didn’t have the Shadowmoor packs, and I really don’t see myself ever finding 16 casual Shadowmoor / Eventide drafts to join — so I busted them.
Ingrid and I both got some of paper M10 packs at Gencon. I had also bought boxes from both Pegasus and Misty Mountain the first week, both to support the stores and to get the foil Honor the Fallens. We had a lot of M10 packs — almost too many to draft.
That’s worse because my truck died, and I am having trouble replacing it. I wrote about losing the brakes — and that was just the start of a long series of problems that needed fixing. A good shade tree mechanic could put a bunch of sweat-equity into the truck and have a good vehicle. I had neither the time, tools nor skills, so I sold it off and started looking for a replacement. However, the cash-for-clunkers program has pretty much cleared out every local small pickup in the country.. I talked with our local Dodge dealer — he expects to get one truck somewhat close to what I want in November. Nothing earlier. This means that Ingrid and I are sharing one car — and Ingrid is working overtime all month.
In short, there is no way I was going to be able to play or draft through all those packs. Busting them actually made sense.
Yes, you can go argue about that in the forums.
I pulled two Figures of Destiny and some lands in the Eventide packs. Yay!
The Eventide packs also gave me a lot of Mimics, the two colored enchantments, like Edge of Divinity, and so forth. I ended up building two decks around Nightsky Mimic, and two around Noggles and Clout of the Dominus. I did have to pull some commons from my boxes of draft leavings, but I got them.
I busted the M10 packs and sorted the cards into several piles: rares for me, rares for trade, uncommons (mainly to sell in bulk), then commons, divided by color and into playable and non-playable piles. Then I built decks.
The first deck was mono-red, with the UR Mimics, assorted Noggles, Clout of the Dominus, an Inside Out or two, 24 Mountains, 4 Puncture Blasts, a couple Flame Jabs and some Lightning Elementals, Seismic Strikes and Lava Axes to bring the total up to 60 cards.
I also built a mono-blue deck with the same core of Mimics, Noggles and Clout, plus a mix of Divination, Ponder, Cancel, Essence Drain and Negate. I may have added a Horned Turtle or three, and some fliers.
I built a Soldiers deck, with Veteran Swordsmiths, Veteran Armorers, Palace Guards, assorted soldiers plus a couple Burrenton Bombardiers and the like. I added three Recumbent Bliss, and a playset of Excommunicates. After all, everything was playing auras, so a way of killing them seemed solid. I also added a couple random fliers, a Pacifism or two and a Blinding Mage to round out the deck.
The first Nightsky Mimic deck was also mono colored: mono-black. It had the Mimics, the Edge, some Unmakes, three Harvest Gwyllions, etc. (Hey, I was not trying to make perfect decks here — just some reasonably good ones.) I played 24 Swamps, 4 Sign in Blood, 4 Tendrils of Corruption and an assortment of Doom Blade, Mind Rot and a Gravedigger or two.
The white Nightsky Mimic deck had Plains, Blinding Mage, Pacifism, Recumbent Bliss and so forth.
All in all, I made 9 decks. They were all intentionally solid but not great. Three reasons. First, I wanted to make sure my opponents had a chance of winning. Second, if I gave any to players, I wanted them to be able to improve the decks. Third, I wasn’t going to dig too far. As a result, my blue decks did not have Mulldrifters, etc.
After consulting with the store, I offered the decks for $2.00 each. I sold two decks early one. One was to a kid without a deck. Another was to a kid who did not realize that a deck needed to be 60 cards. (I did try to bulk out his deck, but he was playing green, and my pile of random cards grabbed for the purpose did not have anything in green, and which he did not already have four.
After the tournament, I sold all but one of my remaining decks. My decks, even with just two or three copies of some critical cards, and a complete lack of cards like Mulldrifter, tended to beat people’s tournament decks.
Yay!
Last week’s event was quite successful. The players want to do Pauper again this week, and to keep going for a while. Great! However, on the drive home, I realized I should have avoided building all the Eventide —based decks. In a couple weeks, that set is going to rotate out and Zendikar is coming in. It is going to be just oodles of fun explaining a set rotation to the players. (Actually, it won’t be bad — and might be good if the Mimic decks are doing too well.)
The downside will be that a lot of players may need cards. I suspect I am going to have to run a Shards pauper draft or two, and a Zendikar one once that set is available. More prep work.
Thursdays, Pegasus Games, Madison, starting about 6:15pm.
Other than that, I’ll be playing online when home — which will be a fair bit until I can get a new truck.
PRJ
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