Nope, I wasn't referring to your deck, just that Ice Age the set totally sucks ball.

I was toying with a UWB build earlier that included Swords, Binding Grasp, Merieke, Blinky, and Icy, but while that version runs good cards (yes, I don't think Merieke Ri Berit is bad), the mana base is a severe issue. Which led me to ponder if some kind of ponza-esque deck that has a good mana base is viable, and thus, the "Sabretooth Tiger.dec" I proposed. I'm not saying Sabretooth tiger is good, its just the general awfulness of the set, thus, I had put the next best creature for those 4 slots. Those 4 slots can actually be something in black (foul familiar, abyssal specter) or even balduvian barbarian but the overall power would not really matter too much. I preferred the first strike over the 2 nonflyers and thought the specter might be slightly too costly for the quality you get. If we are still talking about the b/r aggro build, the 8 slots up for debate is really tor giant and tiger for which I think specter could be a fine replacement.

The point I was trying to suggest with the new decklist was that perhaps Ice Age can be made more aggressive and thus more focused. Hence, the inclusion of a few bad creatures.

Anyway, the ultimate decision is up to you and I actually like Alfred's decklist quite a bit.

One last question, don't you do a tourney shortly after a new set is released?

The next BotS will def be interesting. Ice Age will just have to suck it up for being so poorly designed.

Here's a proposal for a new list for Ice Age:

Manipulation: (6)
3X Orcish Librarian
3X Demonic Consultation

Beats: (20)
4X Tor Giant
4X Orcish Cannoneer
4X Sabretooth Tiger
4X Knight of Stromgald
4X Flow of Maggot

Removal/Win: (7)
2X Lavaburst
4X Incinerate
1X Hecatomb

Disruption: (4)
4X Stone Rain

Land: (23)
4X Sulfurous Spring
9X Swamp
10X Mountain

Oh my god, no necropotence! I think some people overrate necro's power in the ice age deck. Ice age simply can't abuse a dark ritual, necro first turn play. It has very few early drops. I don't think it has any worthy 1 drop and the only 3 that came to mind for 2 drops were the white and the black pump knights and balduvian bears. Balduvian bears goddammit! For that reason, I don't like Necropotence at all. It has good synergy with zuran orb, but I don't know how helpful it will be to sacrifice lands (and thus land drops) for cards.

The deck switched from Aggro-control to aggro since I think the present aggro-control deck is a little confused. Its got both elements but Jolkuhaup only works in your favor if you have necro out, otherwise, its waay to damaging for yourself. Then its got crappy aggro creatures that are too costly for what you get out of them.

I'm not sure Ice Age has what it takes to make itself into a decent deck, but in my opinion, aggressiveness is the way to go.

Basically, the plan is to just beat with subpar creatures until you whittle your opponent's life total down into burn range, then consult for a lava burst or hecatomb for the win.

Stone Rain is there to disrupt mana intensive decks or just simply make them mana screw. Orcish Librarian to get rid of those stupid lands later in the game.

Potential cards to include:
Soul Kiss
Goblin mutant

What do you guys think?

I too like 4 wurms. It doesn't look bad. I'm particularly interested on how well it can play against the onslaught deck. It seems like onslaught can outplay both upheavals and big wurms with its angel/rift/slide synergy. But hey, you never know.

I really like how the OD deck is developing.

For the invasion deck, I think its a matter of preference. With sphere you get to sift your deck slightly more efficiently, without it, you have more options instead of cutting out spells entirely or make 3 ofs. I don't see it altering the deck drastically. With that said, I do like the current version better.

For the Oddysey deck, I am with Naz here. Upheaval just seems stronger than traumatize. Threshold or not, Upheaval is a gamebreaking play. Traumatize..is a bad quiet spec. 24 land seems a bit high and 22 seems a bit risky, so probably 23lands? What about 4 upheavals? Also, have you tested with 4 cephalid looters? The ability is good enough that you are willing to pay 3 mana to cast it i think. Maybe its not aggro enough. Just a thought.

Here's my list for Oddysey, only slightly different than yours:

4X Upheaval
4X Wild Mongrel
4X Nimble Mongoose
4X Werebear
4X Call of the Herd
4X Roar of the Wurm
4X Aether Burst
4X Standstill
4X Careful Study
1X Bearscape
10X Island
12X Forest
1X Citadel

Base on what I see, there's about 2-6 slots that are debatable. Namely that 24th land/bearscape slot, an upheaval slot, and the aether burst slots. Perhaps even a roar of the wurm slot. Probably not though. These slots can be interchangeable with 1-2 ofs of cards like: Overrun, Thought Devourer, or if you're me, Mystic Enforcer.

That build above is emphasizing more aggressiveness and consistency, since the deck is rather aggro, based on aggressiveness, I'm pretty sure the burst should never get cut. However, they are absolutely dead against control/combo; at least, it would be of minimal importance. But for now, its fairly safe to say that they will be for the most part, good. I chose 4 upheavals because thats just 1 friggin powerful card and 4 seems to make the deck that much stronger. Bearscape replaced the devourers because playing green spells first seems most likely the better play over the blue ones making green slightly more important than blue. Hence, there's some slight consistency issue with the devourer. The evasion is quite awesome but hopefully bearscape provides another kind of aggro-ness by making lots of bears. Overrun kind of fills that same purpose by providing yet another finisher. But again, some consistency issues. To be honest, I like all 3 of them.

For a slightly more controllish build, I would either ditch the bursts or the standstills for 4 looters and play slightly more evasive creatures. Looters will primarily find you the answers you need fast enough. Opponent just played a random 5/5 like Morifen, scuta, or Balduvian Horde? Find that Roar of the Wurm. Don't like the board position? Upheaval. This is where Thought Devourers can show its ability. You can have combatical superiority either by huge wurms or choking the ground, then flying over the air.

Since you said the field is mostly aggro, I think you definitely need to run 4 routs. Against something like Antiquities that lay down 4-5 beat sticks before you get 5 mana, you definitely want to have a rout very early in the game.

I think you are safe at 24 lands right now since you run both sphere and opt. If anything though, you should add more, not less.

For which card to take out, my gut instinct is to take out a lobotomy. That card is kind of clumsy. Perhaps my perception is a bit skewed since disruption like duress and therapy exist. Perhaps its better to compare it to Cranial Extraction. Otherwise, an agenda. I'm not really sure how limiting yourself to playing one spell a turn will do to the deck. Everything else seems fairly un-cuttable.

Also, I'm not entirely sure if you want to play 8 CIPT lands. hopefully, you can just put more strain on the chromatic sphere and play around 5 CIPT lands (3 tower, 2 marsh?) so you wouldn't have to play them later in the game.

I don't think the lack of Deed, legacy weapon, trenches and estate is something to lament over. Invasion itself has strong enough win conditions/ removal.

What I do see is the lack of lay of the land which is probably one of the cards making domain good. Harrow, fertile land, and utopia tree all seems fairly weak to replace it. Allied strategy however, can be replaced by fof. Although strategy is definitely far superior in domain, replacing it with fof doesn't make it that horrible either.

The one card you should probably as a 4 of, changing the primary color to blue instead of green, is Opt. One of invasions weakness, to my knowledge is lacking the ability to find whatever it needs at the right time. Opt doesn't solve that completely, but shores up that weakness. Furthermore, its comparable to lay of the land in the same manner. I'm sure you realize the comparison to brainstorm and impulse as well.

The shifting to blue allows Invasion to run 8 very good counterspells as well as others like prohibit, exclude or spite/malice, the raw power of counterspells can not be forgotten. It stops bombs like mind sludge, a big fat aggro creature, or a combo piece. The ability to use absorb consistently would be a major boon over the green-based counterpart as I believe the life gaining is important. Thus, I think the UWB build will play better than Domain or 4cc.

neato card. Obviously power issue as mentioned. However, making it a vet explorer land makes its power a little low and will only allegate it to multiplayer land.

extremely undercosted. I think 4GG would make it quite balanced. I like the flavor a lot though.

This card won't see play in a dwarf deck since its not strong enough to make dwarves viable. I would suggest tapping only two dwarves and make some other alternate cost like:

RR, tap 2 dwarves: destroy target land.

Or

Bounce dwarf lord, tap 2 dwarves: destroy target land.

The way it is now, this thing is pathetically weak and miserable.

Also, Cinder Shade is not a good creature, but I think you now realize that. Way too mana-intensive, and including it simply because it fits a curve is not alone nearly enough of a reason to consider it. You also mentioned that adding a 26th land (Necropolis) helps, but Shade needs either black or red mana, so that wouldn't really do much.

This came across to me appearing like not much thought was put into it. Hopefully, you just didn't have enough time to put more thoughts into it, but that statement is weak at best. I respect that you've put a lot of time into testing for Battle of the Sets, but that just didn't cut it for me.

So, with all due respect, here's my rebuttal:

On shivan zombie vs cinder shade:

Suppose turn 2 you play rats or addle over zombie since they are both usually superior plays (perhaps you would play the zombie first against white, but even then, its arguable). Turn 3, you play the zombie, basically a 2/2 that only has good matchups against things like ww. (are there any ww decks out there?) Against any white based control, your opponent will want to target bigger threats anyway and a 2/2 is a slow clock.

If you play the shade turn 3, yes, he is unlikely to block your opponents creatures, but once you untap for your 4th turn, your opponent probably won't block him when he swings. If he does, he's probably doing a unfavorable trade. Against control, he grows bigger than the zombie can ever hope to be.
The only dis-synergy, if you can call it that is playing it alongside blazing specter and skizzik, both would tap you out if you played them on their respective earliest turn. Then the shade would just be a 1/1 idiot for that turn. However, here's where a decent player can draw the distinction between what is the right play. Against aggro, play out more stuff and develop board position, or if you aren't really under a lot of pressure, poke with specter for disruption. The shade will largely remain unimpressive until several turns later provided you tap out to play things on turn 4 and 5.

Against permission control, it will hardly matter because you have an insane arsenal of disruption and threat. Furthermore, Necropolis is uncounterable damage and pyre zombie keeps coming back for more. If the control player has some random efficient weenies that are played alongside his control strategy (things like mother of runes, silver night, exalted angel, meddling mage, maybe even walls), shivan zombie may have a slight edge over the shade, but in the long run, the shade will still be more potent than the zombie.

Against control that can develop superior board position like masticore, crater hellion, scuta, baloth, and any other efficient fatties or board control creature, shivan zombie is not superior to the shade. Consider if you were running the shade over the zombie versus legacy, you could have topdecked rage as well as the shade to deal with the masticore when your opponent tapped out to machine gun with the masticore. Furthermore, you have a reasonable chance to win the race to protect the shade if a masticore do try to gun it down. If he succeeds and taps out, you can just fling the shade somewhere, most likely at the core. Against any other fattie.dec, zombie most likely will just sit there and chump block once and die (there isn't many white fatties aside from empyrial armor, also, white creatures will likely just fly over your head anyway) while the shade can go toe to toe with things like scuta or a 6/6 wurm token.

On the mana issue, you could simply make the 26th land a swamp instead of a necropolis and any uncertainty with the mana base can be resolved. Aside from color mana being used for the cinder shade, most of your other spells cost some kind of colorless mana, hence why I suggested necropolis over a basic land. It would require testing to see if the deck is indeed very color intensive and need that extra basic land instead of a good land that can do something else in addition to providing mana.

Agenda cost 5 and can fit nicely in both aggro and control decks. It is really that good. But 2 is probably the magic number.

The point is to try to make the deck better and its because of that that I'm more adamantly trying to convince you to run Cinder Shade. Hopefully, you will see that Cinder shade will be more likely better than the zombie in a lot of matches.

I feel assinine for repeatedly focusing on only the machinehead archetype. So here's another invasion deck that can be really strong, again reiterating making invasion a potential candidate for going deep in the tournament the next time instead of scrubbing out.

Go-Mar:

3X Dromar
4X Absorb
4X Undermine
4X Opt
4X Fact or Fiction
4X Repulse
2X Lobotomy
4X Addle
4X Recoil
3X Washout

3X Salt marsh
3X Coastal Tower
3X Plains
5X Swamp
10X Island

The numbers need to probably be tweaked. There are other good candidates for this deck: Prohibit, Exclude, Spite/Malice, Probe, Collective Restraint, chromatic sphere, and Rout.

Compared to Machinus's build, which one do you think is better?

I did a couple matches on Balancing tings the other day. The deck did not test as well as I had hoped. However, Traumatize/Haunting Echoes did better than I had imagined. Basically, you can traumatize turn 4/5, followed by echoes, followed by upheaval, and then win. The deck's curve seems quite good and it has ran smoothly for the few times I was playing with it.

Here's the deck that might be worth checking out although I'm convinced you are going to be playing the UG threshold/traumatize build:

3X Ghastly Demise
3X Innocent Blood
4X Aether Burst
4X Milikin
3X Tainted Pact
4X Shadowmage Infiltrator
4X Concentrate
4X Traumatize
4X Haunting Echoes
3X Upheaval
4X Darkwater Catacomb
10X Island
10X Swamp

It would be interesting to put in 2-3 psychatogs then use traumatize as tog food.

Anyway, on your UG build, I love it. May I suggest skycloud expanse/sungrass praire so you can allow yourself to play Mystic Enforcer. With filter lands, splashing white might not hinder your mana base so much. Of course, t2 ug madness ran city of brass to smooth up its supposedly horrid mana base, so splashing white might be too much. I suggest testing to see how it would run.

For the invasion deck, I still stick to my suggestion. I admit Cinder shade is hardly an improvement over shivan zombie. It might even turn out worse. The deck is mana intensive and it will only get more mana intensive if you play the shade. However, thats why I also suggested adding an extra land. I've testing the build several times against several random decks and Cinder shade definitely served as a good 3 drop that once you untap on your 4th turn, he's a force to be reckoned with.

Furthermore, to stress the importance of mana curve again, if you choose shivan zombie over cinder shade, you'd be sporting 12 two-drops and no 3 drops excluding the Urza's rages. that just won't play out as nicely when there's that many cards competing to be played on turn 2.

Also, I didn't hear any argument against Yawgmoth's Agenda. Will you include it?

Its such a shame invasion got ousted in the first round. If it had a better matchup, I think it would have gone fairly deep in the tournament. I'm not saying it would win the whole thing, but the deck is just really solid.

Has it ever gotten t8? t4?

I would like to say that while I don't think the invasion deck can be improved significantly, I think it can be changed for the better.

The first thing I notice is the lack of Yawgmoth's Agenda. While it may not have synergy with Pyre zombie, it is clearly a bomb for the deck regardless. The invasion deck sports both Skizzik and blazing specter, both creatures are prime targets for removal as if either cards are not dealt with, they can possibly cripple the opponent's game. Playing with 2 agendas MD will allow you to recur these creatures plus re-use any burn you may have used.

Secondly, Shivan zombie is a weak card for the deck. Its fighting plays with 2 often superior cards: Ravenous rats, and Addle. Furthermore, the deck doesn't have any great turn 3 plays. I assume a lot of times, you don't need to play a rage on turn 3, so I think its safe to assume Cinder Giant will make the deck play out better. Its an efficient shade that can easily make 2 for 1. Furthermore, its a beating in the late game.

Onto the land base, another look at casting cost reveals that the deck has no one drop. It certainly will not hurt to play urborg volcano over 3-4 of your basic lands.

Furthermore, playing another keldon necropolis as your 26th land would not hurt. With rage/ghitu fire/cinder giant as filters, it would not at all hinder you from having 1 less spell in the deck. Plus, with a bunch of 5cc cards as bombs, namely skizzik and void, you want to be dropping a land every single turn for at least 5 turns. Pyre Zombie contributes to the need for mana due to its mana intensive nature.

To add some of these proposed cards (the 26th land, 2 agendas, and  3cinder giant) I suggest replacing all 4 shivan zombies and 2 ghitu fire.

Edit: After taking a look at the weatherlight deck, i think it will be quite a strong deck. However, it just seems wrong to play 7 5cc creatures in a deck with 21 lands...there are a few cards that could be played over them although it might not be superior:

Coils of the medusa: I remember when twisted experiment was used in extended suicide black to double as pump and removal. This could be used in the same manner

Spinning darkness: This puts a lot of burden on your already over utilized graveyard. But hey, its spinning darkness, its been a staple for black decks in the old days.

Tendrils of despair: There's no card advantage or quality here, but it fills the disruption role this deck is missing. Its also a sac outlet if you need to pay the upkeep cost of a few of your creatures. Furthermore, its solid against control while against aggro, you can sacrifice straw golem to it.

Took me awhile to find this awesome thread.

Honestly, I enjoyed this tournament read a lot and am looking forward to the next one already.

I think I agree with Nazdakka that Odyssey needs a makeover.

Oddyssey is definitely a powerhouse set and I think a UB build featuring infestation is better than Tog as the win condition. I also think a UG aggro deck can be much more lethal than a UB control build. Consider all these cards:

Wild Mongrel
Werebear
Careful Study
Cephalid Looter
Cephalid Broker
Roar of the Wurm
Call of the Herd
Aether Burst
Standstill
Thought Devourer
Upheaval
Springing Tiger
Overrun
Sylvan Might
Syncopate
Cephalid Coliseum
Centaur Garden
Mystic Enforcer (Sungrass Prairie)

Or you can go combo control using
Chamber of Manipulation
Malevolent Awakening/Animal Boneyard
Diabolic Tutor
Traumatize
Haunting Echoes

Or you can go one of its many flashback routes accompanied by CIP creatures like gravedigger and Anarchist. Morbid Hunger, Innocent blood, firebolt, ghastly demise, among others. Catalyst stone can be a really good enabler if you go the flashback route. Diligent Farmhand, Deep Reconnaisance, and Odyssey's host of filter lands are available if you ever wanted to go 3 colors.

Braids can make a deck of its own, particularly with so much cheap token generation available.

The set can even go the reanimator route with all its discard outlet, entomb, and zombify. Yes, zombify is no doubt slow, but odyssey should have no problem finding it and at best, reanimating something huge like a vampiric dragon or iridescent angel on the 3rd turn. Then use some anarchist/gravedigger to recur the zombify. Or recoup.

Balancing Act is a powerful sorcery. I'm thinking of Balancing Tings here. It has the CIPT lands to do so. Obliterate can be replaced by Epicenter, this 5 mana sorcery is 3 mana cheaper than obliterate so you don't need the CIPT invasion lands that can get you 2 mana. Werebear and even diligent farmhand can go nicely in here. After you've CRIPPLED your opponent, cast terravore and win.

My personal favorite is either Balancing Tings or UG threshold,they should be considered. At any rate, I'm sure you've considered most if not all of these potential builds for Oddysey but think at least one build exist that is going to work out better than UB tog.

Also, have you consider SB options for each deck? Some matches were a bit one sided (certain sets just can't compete with visions without some SB tools, judgement finding some dead card in ray of revelation, etc) Having SBs will make matches much more interesting.