bump!

Tournament this weekend!

--Bryan

David,

Congrats on the win!

Your round 4 opponent was Doozer here on TMD.  His mother was quite a character, she demanded that she pay me back for the fries I bought him.  Like $1 is really going to break me.     (You're mom's cool Doozer, esp. since she'll cart you out to B.F.E. Durham for a tourney!)  I'm supprised he didn't get any jewelry out on you, I know it was in the deck..

As for StarCity; they only want reports from major metagames like Waterbury, Germany, Worlds, etc..  our poor little scrubby meta isn't cool enough.

True Lies Ownz,

As I recall, Philip needed Skeletal Scryings (!), and some other random stuff and split for about $150.  It was a pretty fair deal, and the Mox is fabulous; "pack mint" is right.

See ya on the 25th!
--Bryan

urza_insane,

I'm not convinced of the Kobold angle on breaking Glimpse of Nature.  They do nothing by themselves, and without a Taskmaster (or other pumper), they can't even swing!  That's 12/60 of your deck 'wasted'.

I think Ravager/Afinity is much more likely, most of the cards already do something useful (at least swing).  Throw in Skullclamp and there's something to be proud of.

I could also see this used in the new Army of Squirrels as one of the card engines.

--Bryan

North Carolina

Durham:
Sports Cards Unlimited
1058 W. Club Blvd. Unit 251 Northgate Mall, Durham , NC 27701
4504 N. Roxboro Rd, Durham, NC 27704
Northgate Mall store phone# (919-286-5585)
Roxboro Rd. store phone# (919-477-4597)
sportcard.unlimited@verizon.com

Cary:
Sports Zone
1022 Ryan Rd
Cary, NC
919-469-6656
Village Square Shopping Center

Highpoint:
DJ's Cards & Stuff
High Point, NC
336-883-9900
djscards@aol.com
http://www.djscards.com

Moxlotus,

As always, it is the players who decide which formats will succeed and which will fail.  If you desire to play Vintage, make sure your tournament organizers know this, and be vocal in the community.  If you desire to play the new 1.5, make sure to mention this too.

There is room in Magic for many formats!

I will certainly stick with Vintage, not the least of which for the $10K+ investment I already have, but it's just that much more interesting.  Especially with 20+ archtypes battling for supremacy, it's exciting times!

--Bryan

Sports Cards Unlimited
1058 W. Club Blvd. Unit 251 Northgate Mall, Durham , NC 27701
4504 N. Roxboro Rd, Durham, NC 27704
Northgate Mall store phone# (919-286-5585)
Roxboro Rd. store phone# (919-477-4597)
sportcard.unlimited@verizon.com

Saturday, Sept 18th : Type 1, 5-Proxy !!! POWER 9 !!! - WIN A BETA TIMETWISTER!
4504 N. Roxboro Rd, $25, 2:00 pm, Pre-Register and Entry is only $22.00
Prizes will be given out to the top 4 places.

Back again with the tournament results.  14 people attended (missing one sedan for this meta), and many excellent decks were represented.

4CC - Bryan (brturn), Doozer (doozer), Phil, Big Red
Fish - David (yare), Pete Jr.
Rector Tendrils - Dick
B/G MaskNaught - Phillip
Stax/Titan - Ryan
Hulk - Adam
7/10 Split - EJ
Belcher - Jared
W/G TurboGeddon - Pete Sr.
DragonAnimator - Little Ozzy

Phillip split with David (yare) for first place.  Congratulations, David, on your first piece of power!

There will be another Power Tournament next month, I'll post it in it's own thread to get on the calendar.

--Bryan

And lastly, some pics of the event:

Oh.. Woe is me!

AnyCraze messed up in loading the 'deck' and said it had all the cards but did not calculate the correct value (I thought it seemed awfully cheap, especially at retail prices)..

I uploded the deck in 3 parts, then added them together to get the final result.  All the statistics were the same as before, but the cost was different, looks like I found a bug in their database!  

The corrected cost:

Sub-Total: $11,103.25
10% Off: - $1,110.32
TOTAL: $9,992.93

*sigh*  Well there goes the argument I was forming to my girlfriend about T1 being cheap..

Still.. after removing the Power 9 and the fat lands, the cost is somewhat more reasonable:

Sub-Total: $5,439.25
10% Off: - $543.93
TOTAL: $4,895.32

--Bryan

This is kinda random, but I thought someone might find it interesting.

I was curious what the 'cost' of a full set of tier-1 vintage cards would be.  I took Philip Stanton's July Metagame card list and set it up as an apprentice deck format such that each restricted card was included once, and every other card was a 4-of.  Then I imported the list into the AnyCraze deck database.

AnyCraze has a new feature that you can 'buy' a deck.  So, it calculates the cost of each card and adds it to your shopping cart.

The result?

----------------------------------------------------------------
Deck size:  880
Lands:  115 (13%)
Creatures:  236 (27%)
Enchantments:  78 (9%)
Artifacts:  230 (26%)
Spells:  301 (34%)
White:  28 (3%)
Blue:  163 (19%)
Black:  100 (11%)
Red:  122 (14%)
Green:  94 (11%)
Gold:  28 (3%)  

Buy This Deck:  
Sub-Total: $3,970.00
10% Off: - $397.00  (AnyCraze gives 10% off for buy-a-deck)
TOTAL: $3,573.00
----------------------------------------------------------------

The obligatory comparison with Type-2, based on some rough eBay searches for the legal sets in standard:

4x each of 8th Edition, Fifth Dawn, Darksteel, Mirrodin, Onslaught, Legions, Scourge.

~$2,040.00

While these numbers aren't directly comparable (ie: Type 2 players don't need to get 4x of each set, etc.) I find it interesting that they are not far apart in value.  A typical 5-proxy event means that both formats are essentially equivelent in cost.

--Bryan

policehq,

I'll be there Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon.  It's mostly a party convention for my group, but I always make concessions for Type 1 tournaments.

I will most likely have an Emerald you can borrow.  Send me a PM and we'll exchange contact info.

--Bryan

Hello,

Dragon*Con is right around the corner, sound off if you're going!
I'll be in attendance and would like to meet up with other TMDers at the con.

http://www.dragoncon.org

Looks like the online schedule is not up to date.  I'll post the schedule from the pre-con flyer later.

..edit..
Here's Jebus' thread in the tournament forum with schedules.
http://www.themanadrain.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18769

--Bryan

Good to see some tournaments south of DC!

Questions:
- Is this an announcement for one of a regular series of tournaments?
- How many Type 1 players do you typically get?
- Does your store sell singles of power and high-end T1 cards?
- Are you planning on holding power tourneys in the future?

Thanks!
--Bryan

Update..

Based on the nearly unanimous support for gunmetal sleves, I bought a few hundred.  I must say they are very nice, they are strong like the Dragon Shields, and tall to protect the card.

I have one issue with them; the 'speckled' gunmetal color is not consistent, in 300 sleves I have 60 which have a very obvious 'seam' in the gunmetal coloring.  Has anyone else seen this issue?  Is it possible to get a refund for the unusable sleeves, or even replacements?

Thanks!
--Bryan

The Power Tournament is this weekend!   I hope everyone in the area will make it out and support the Type 1 scene in North Carolina!

--Bryan

I'll add my vote to the 3 Skeletal Scrying brigade.  It's been working well for me, not sure if I'm ready for the 4th one MD yet, but the arguments for it are pretty good.

Actually, removing the Skeletal from the board is an interesting idea, I just realized that 80% of my wishes pull Gush (it's free and gets me two cards deeper).  I think wish->gush is one of the strongest early plays with this deck, usually in response to a strip or 'must counter' from the opponent.  I  completely forgot that Skeletal was in the sideboard, and it's use there has faded.

I was never in favor of Vampiric Tutor in the board, but I can see the argument for a Misdirection..

I've also never been in favor of Fact or Fiction; I use it because it works, but always grudgingly..  4CC can't take advantage of the graveyard-filling potential as well as other decks can, so it tends to be 3U: Draw 2 cards.  As much as I dislike FoF, I don't think Skeletal is an acceptable replacement for it, the two have different uses.  If anything I would have 4x Skeletal AND 1x FoF.

My current sideboard:
3x Red Elemental Blast
2x Rack & Ruin
2x Flametongue Kavu
1x Swords to Plowshares
1x Disenchant
1x Diabolic Edict
1x Fire/Ice
1x Blue Elemental Blast
1x Gush
1x Stifle
1x free slot (was Skeletal)

--Bryan

Smmenen,

Loved the article!  A little too 'meaty' for the average joe on WotC in my opinion, but well worth the read for tournament players.  I hope it generates enough interest to get regular Type 1 coverage over there.

I've been searching on wizards for an article about the 'new artwork' for Black Lotus & Timetwister.  Where can I find a picture of the Black Lotus from last year?

Thanks!
--Bryan

I use UltraPro Blue.  Like Law, I've had decks sleved in them for 4+ years now, and they're still growing strong.  I've lost about 10 sleves out of 1000+ in the last 2 years.  I think that's a pretty good record.  Only the very oldest ones need replacing now (6+ years old).

My only complaint would be the grime that collects on them, but a quick scrape clears it off nicely.  I've noticed a slight disparity in their cut length over the years, but this has never caused problems - also I play with the top of the sleves facing me, so I doubt my opponents would ever notice it.

Dragon Shield is very inconsistent in their coloring.  I've got 400+ sleves from them and every box was slightly different in color (enough so that I could mark my deck with them).  They are completely unusable in my opinion.   For the record, these are the gold and silver Dragon Shields.

--Bryan

Gandalf_The_White_1,

[Not to hijack this thread, but it seems somewhat relevent]

I chose to run without Library of Alexandria simply because all the decks I play against are fast; either combo, necro, sui, stompy, etc..  LoA doesn't have the time to 'come online' when you're forcing spells on turn 1-2 then trying to lay land/moxen to build a mana base.  LoA sits useless as a colorless mana source all game long.

This is highly metagame dependant.. if there was even one other control player, then I would put LoA back in.  But there were none at the last tournament and I decided to take it out for a (arguably more useful) Underground Sea.  It worked very well.

Wastelands are another source of disagreement, I'm not as enchanted with them in my metagame, since the players around here tend to be un-powered.  There are more basic lands in one deck here than all the nonbasics in the entire tournament.

Given the metagame Dracosux proposed (U/r fish, 4CC, trinistax, dragon, etc..) I suggested a manabase which is more suitable for him (including the 4x waste and LoA).  I also kept 1 island in that list because it seemed important in his build.  Whether -1x Island, +1x Volcanic is better may be a good question for him to ponder.

--Bryan

Dracosux,

Congratulations on 2nd place, that's an impressive accomplishment in a diverse metagame!

My suggestions are the following:

- Go down to 3x win conditions to free up a slot.  These can be any combination of [Morphling, Exalted, Decree].  I find Exalted to be the most flexible, but if morphling/decree are working for you, then by all means keep them.

- Go down to 3x removal spells to free up a slot.  Any combination of [Fire/Ice, StoP].

- Bring in two cards, in some combination of [Skeletal Scrying, Crucible, Cunning Wish].

- I totally agree with Gandalf_The_White_1, if you play basic plains you must use all 4 Flooded Strand, not Polluted Delta.

- Your mana is a tad higher than the norm (22 land vs 20), is this working out for you?  I would suggest this configuration:

4x Wasteland
4x Flooded Strand
4x Tundra
3x Underground
2x City of Brass
1x Volcanic
1x Island
1x Strip
1x Library of Alexandria

This gets you to 21 land, freeing up a slot for whichever card you did not bring in from the previous step.

- Take a look at my sideboard choices below.  It may give you some ideas.

--------------------------------------------
I'm running a non-standard setup also, the major differences from Zherbus' build being:

3x Exalted Angel (no Decree)
2x Fire/Ice (replace 1 StoP)
1x Crucible (replace 1 mox monkey; this card is excellent!)

3x Wasteland (instead of 4x, not as many nonbasics around here)
4x Tundra (instead of 3x, replace 1 wasteland)
4x Underground Sea (instead of 3x, replace LoA)
no LoA (testing this, there are not many control mirrors around here)

I've been happy with my board also:
3x REB
2x FTK
2x Rack & Ruin
1x BEB
1x Stifle
1x Gush (it's a house!)
1x Skeletal Scrying
1x Diabolic Edict
1x Coffin Purge
1x Disenchant
1x Swords to Plowshares

I don't take credit for any of these card choices, they are gleaned off the forums here.  But this build has been working well for me.

--Bryan

VGB/TrixR4Kidz,

That's correct, I was searching for cards specifically for the maindeck.  If green were added as a tertiary color alongside red & white, would any green cards make it into the maindeck?

Holistic Wisdom - I totally love this card, but I've never been able to get it to 'work' in a deck.  If only it was 1UU!

Bind, Oxidize, Berserk, Drop of Honey, Seedtime, Root Maze, Krosan Reclamation - I'm not sure these would fit the theme of 5CC, although I'm certainly willing to entertain the possibility.  Root Maze is very interesting as a sideboard card vs combo.

Pernicious Deed - I hadn't thought about this one, but it is arguably the most flexible Disk effect.  And with all the cheap permanents running around the meta, this card is more valuable every day.  (I notice WTF/r is using it too)

Matt,

You are correct, green is much more valuable in standard than it was before they began balancing the color wheel.  But the topic of the thread is to entertain the idea of adding green to 5CC and see which cards 'shake out' as being worthy.  I guess I shouldn't poke at WotC for not adding control to green..

VGB,

1) Completely valid point, and the major reason I don't think Living Wish is vialble in a 'real' 5CC build.

2) I would disagree.  Cunning Wish was touted as being too slow when it was first introduced, but I rarely have trouble finding drain-mana or a sol-ring to fill up the 2U, not to mention the spell that it fetches.  I'll stick out my neck here and say that most of the situations you need one of your sideboarded options, Living Wish will provide adequate speed for; Exalted Angel, FTK, Mox Monkey, Plaguebearer, Stripmine, LoA, fetchland..

3) Yes, exactly what I was reffering to when I mentioned deck compression.  Let's say you run 4x Living Wish (go all out!) replacing 1x Mox Monkey, 2x Exalted Angel, and Stripmine.  Now you can drop LoA(it's sided), and the other Exalted Angel + Mox Monkey, freeing up 3 slots maindeck.  I should mention that my 4CC build runs 3x Exalted, 2x Mox Monkey.

More interestingly.. what if you ran 2x Cunning, 2x Living, and one win condition main.  That's 2 cards (replacing 1x Cunning, 1x Mox Monkey), freeing up 6 slots (2x Exalted Angel, 2x Mox Monkey, 1x Stripmine, 1x LoA).  That's a lot of slots!

You're safe in the end-game, since you still have an Exalted Angel maindeck, but you put situationally relevent cards in the sideboard (1x Exalted, 1x Mox Monkey, 1x Stripmine, 1x LoA, 1x Fetch, 1x FTK).

-------------------------------

Thanks for entertaining this thread, I hope you've had fun with it too.  So far, the consensus seems to be:

Worthy Green cards for hypothetical 5CC (and why we don't use them):
Regrowth - Would probably be used in 5CC.
Living Wish - Interesting, but not realistic due to sideboard squeezing.
Pernicious Deed - Color cost too high.
Artifact Mutation - Color cost too high.
Hollistic Wisdom - Color cost too high.

Did I miss any?

--Bryan

Hello,

I've been following the discussions of metagaming 4CC against 7/10 split and the resurgance of using City of Brass in 4CC.  This got me thinking back to the time when 4CC was 5CC and we used a few green cards here and there.  I wonder if Green would be viable in 5CC today?

The thought project is this:

If all lands produced 5-colors, would green have a place in 5CC - and which green cards would you use?

Give it a ponder before reading my thoughts below!





------------------------------------------------
My initial search narrowed the field to these five cards, focusing on maindeck-only cards:
- Regrowth
- Living Wish
- Sylvan Library
- Crop Rotation
- Gaea's Blessing

With all this talk of "balancing the color wheel", you'd think the intervening 3 blocks since 5CC was typical would have given something more useful in green.. *sigh*  As far as my search revealed, the only recent viable card is Living Wish.

Discussion:

Regrowth - Still the same; broken and loving it.  I believe this card is still viable in a 5CC build.  1G: Destroy target land.  1GU: Draw 3 cards.  2GU: Take another turn after this one.  etc.

Living Wish - Has two modes: Creature-fetch and Land-fetch.

As creature-fetch, the typical utility-creatures would not have to take up MD space (mox monkey, plaguebearer, flametongue kavu).  Eventually there may be a useful 1 or 2-drop blue creature with card drawing which could act as the standard target when utility-creatures were not needed.

As a land-fetch, place the specialized lands in the board (Stripmine, Library of Alexandria, 1x fetchland) and wish out the one you need.

Alternatively, a 'block' of wishes can be viewed as 'deck compression'.  For instance the most recent 4CC lists have included 2x Mox Monkey, 2-3x Angel, Stripmine, 4x Wasteland, fetchlands, etc.  Moving some to the sideboard (finding room is left as an excersize for the reader) could free up maindeck room.  Perhaps up to 4 slots not including those taken up by the wishes.

The obvious negative for Living Wish is that it is a Sorcery..

Sylvan Library - Brainstorm every turn with the option of keeping all the cards sounds too good to be true.  With ubiquitous fetchlands Sylvan is better than ever.  Is it good enough?  I belive not, but a permanent draw engine is a nice touch.  Also Sylvan interacts poorly with brainstorm.

Crop Rotation - Can be viewed as a narrow version of Living Wish in 5CC.  In that light, it pales in comparision to Living Wish.

Gaea's Blessing - Cantrip, Regrowth, and Mill-avoidance rolled into one.  From the perspective of 5CC, this card does not meet the bar.

Addenum:

My discussion on Sylvan/Brainstorm dissonance got me thinking; in a 5CC deck with Sylvan, Serum Visions would synergize with Sylvan much better than brainstorm.

Thanks for reading, and I hope it's been entertaining/educational!  Are there any green cards (perhaps good utility or sideboard cards) that I missed?
--Bryan

Doozer,

Not sure what info you are looking for, do you have a specific question about the tournament or venue?

The venue:

Sports Cards Unlimited is a card shop with two locations in Durham, NC.  They've been around over 10 years now and hold in-store magic tourneys.  They run T1 because there is enough local interest in the format and the turnout is pretty consistent (last year when I played, they had 10-15 people every week).

I've never actually been to the north Durham location (Roxborro road), but I've driven by it many times.  I belive it is larger and has more table space for tournaments.

Tournaments:

While they're not on the leading edge of tournament management, they do tend to be consistent.  They typically hold double elimination tourneys.  I tried to get them to switch over to swiss rounds, but the software for running the events is a little cumbersome to use.

For a power torney, I would expect 20-25 people to show up.

The metagame:

We're pretty low-power out here.  The top players (as of last year - I have not been to a tournament recently) consisted of about 5 powered and semi-powered players that are well read in the forums and play regularly.  I would say we lean towards control (3/5) while the other two tend to play a random tier 1 deck each tourney.

The other players will bring all kinds of random decks from sligh to sui to combo, etc.  And the kids typically bring a stack of big creatures with some utility.

Last year, we regularly saw: Enchantress, Draw-7, Long, Fish, GrowATog, MaskNaught, 4CControl, W/G Beatdown, PandeBurst, W/u Weenie, Dragon, Stax, TnT, Stompy, PTFunk, etc.

Hope that helps!
--Bryan

There have been other power tournaments at SCU in the past, so I assume if the power languishes in the case too long they hold a tourney for it.

I won a Timetwister at the last one, and before that was a Mox Ruby.

--Bryan

Hello, I'll chime in too..

Name: Bryan Turner
Age: 28
Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Occupation: Software Engineer

I've been playing since The Dark, with various entries into Type II during Tempest and Odyssey, but nothing beats Type 1!  At this point, I have every card in the format and only need to spend around $50 on each new set.

I started playing competitively in '02, and average about 3 major tourneys a year (plus some local stuff).  I only play 4cControl, unless the meta is really poor.  The games are always different, challenging, and rewarding.  It's been fun to watch the deck evolve over the years as new metas come and go.

--Bryan

Hello, just a quick note about an upcoming power tourney in NC.  If this is the wrong forum, I appologize (can't post in the Tourney forum).

--Bryan

-----------------------------------
5-Proxy Type 1 Tournament
Sports Cards Unlimited: Roxborro Rd. Location
Durham, NC
August 28th
2:00pm
$25.00

MapQuest: 4504 N. Roxboro Rd, Durham, NC 27704
Phone: 919-286-5585 or 919-477-4597

The 1st place prize will be a Pack Mint Unlimited Mox Emerald.

The Mox will be given away ONLY if a minimum of 15 players participate. If we have have at least 20 participants, 2nd place will get a choice between an VG-EX condition Unlimited Berserk or PACK MINT Unlimited Forcefield, 3rd will be the other card 2nd place doesn't pick (Berserk or Forcefield) and 4th place will be a Sealed Pack of Antiquities.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO  PLAY WITH 5 PROXY CARDS, must be written or printed on a regular magic card.