Evolution Experiment

[Zherbus]

Here's an idea I had:

We set up an Invitational style tournament where each participant creates a deck with a set of specific restrictions and we play it one round. For the next round, the restrictions change and so forth. The evolution part comes in with the sets allowed with each set. I think this would not only be a fun activity, but also an excellent way for people to research magic and deck history.

Here's the proposed structure:

Round 1: Alpha, Beta only.
Round 2: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights only.
Round 3: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities only.
Round 4: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends only.
Round 5: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark only.

Top 8: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires only.

Top 4: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, 4th Edition, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Ice Age only.

Finals: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, 4th Edition, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Homelands only.

Deckbuilding guidelines should be the same (I.E. 4 of each card only) though restriction and banning will go along with the historical timeline if we can even properly emulate it.

I'd like to refine the guidelines and rules for this before beginning, so offer up your thoughts here.

A sequel to this tournament will pick up with Mirage Block and evolve forward.

[Sylvester]

a. Yes, this is the proof that moving a post to casual isn't some sort of backhanded slap to the poster.

b. IIRC, early B/R lists just weren't good enough. I'll assume banned cards will stay banned (no falling star), but 4x balance, moxen, vise are still legal.

There has been some discussion of evolving decks. May i suggest diverging evolution instead of converging? It could be similar to mental magic, in that each player can only use (non-basic land) cards only n times in the tourney. Do you use power right now to make it to the next round easily, or do you save it for later rounds?

[wuaffiliate]

I like the idea of making each player play a minimum of 4-5 cards from each legal set, a la 96' PT NY.

[Zherbus]

@ Sylvester : We will have to hammer out some sort of good banned/restricted list thats different from the way it actually was but I also want the historical context to remain sort of the same... so yeah, we'll possibly have our own Balance.dec infestation and Vice Age and black summer.

[Jacob Orlove]

Okay, here's my thoughts on this.

First, I love this kind of format. We used to play casual games where after each game you got to "sideboard" up to 15 cards out of your collection. After four games, you might be playing a completely different deck. Anticipating what they'd bring in was key.

Anyway, to make this really about the same decks evolving, I'd set a limit on the number of cards that players can change per round. 12 seems like a reasonable number, because that's 20% of your deck--enough to change it significantly, but a small enough number to force you to plan ahead when you put your first build together. The effects this would have on player's manabases is particularly interesting.  

However, I would also let people change their maindeck vs sideboard configuration each time they get to swap out cards. You'd only get 12 new cards each round, but you could then split your 75 total cards into any 60/15 configuration you like. That way, you can start building up to a major change (in anticipation of, say, Mana Drain) without affecting your current build, but you have to sacrifice sideboard space to do it.

Adjusting the restrictions/bannings for each round would be interesting, but I think it'd be at least as fun to have one set of guidelines for the whole tournament, or at least impose somewhat artificial B/R lists early, since iirc they didn't ban anything until after Arabian Nights came out, and a lot of really broken stuff was left alone for quite a while.

We should DEFINITELY play this under the old rules, though. Mirror Universe 4L.

[Zherbus]

I think period appropriate rules would be good. Also, I don't know if keeping with the same deck is what I had in mind for evolution. I mean, I might want to play KirdApes and Juggernauts one round, then turn around and play Necro. How do others feel about this?

[Jacob Orlove]

Oh, I misunderstood what you meant. I was thinking of each deck evolving as new cards were added, but you were looking at the evolution of the metagame. I'm not sure which would be more interesting.

[Matt]

When you allow that much variation, it kind of loses the sense of 'evolving'. It becomes revolution, not evolution.\

EDIT: Jacob posted before me. Metagame evolution would be cool.

[jcb193]

This might help: (pre-Urza banned/restriction timeline)

Ali from Cairo   1/25/1994
Ancestral Recall   1/25/1994
Berserk   1/25/1994
Black Lotus   1/25/1994
Braingeyser   1/25/1994
Dingus Egg   1/25/1994
Gauntlet of Might   1/25/1994
Icy Manipulator   1/25/1994
Mox Emerald   1/25/1994
Mox Jet   1/25/1994
Mox Pearl   1/25/1994
Mox Ruby   1/25/1994
Mox Saphire   1/25/1994
Orcish Oriflamme   1/25/1994
Rukh Egg   1/25/1994
Shahrazad   1/25/1994
Sol Ring   1/25/1994
Timetwister   1/25/1994
Time Vault   1/25/1994
Time Walk   1/25/1994
Channel   3/23/1994
Copy Artifact   3/23/1994
Demonic Tutor   3/23/1994
Regrowth   3/23/1994
Wheel of Fortune   3/23/1994
Candelabra of Tawnos   5/2/1994
Feldon's Cane   5/2/1994
Ivory Tower   5/2/1994
Library of Alexandria   5/2/1994
Mishra's Workshop   6/13/1994
Chaos Orb   8/1/1994
Divine Intervention   8/1/1994
Falling Star   8/1/1994
Mind Twist   8/1/1994
Mirror Universe   8/1/1994
Recall   8/1/1994
Sword of the Ages   8/1/1994
Underworld Dreams   8/1/1994
Maze of Ith   10/10/1994
Balance   4/19/1995
Fork   4/19/1995
Zuran Orb   11/1/1995
Black Vise   2/1/1996
Fastbond   10/1/1996
Strip Mine   1/1/1998

[Zherbus]

Matt and Jacob: Lets do it evolution style then and allow for a set # of cards swapped per set addition. I think its a very interesting tournament mechanic.

jcb193: Thanks! That'll certainly help.

[Kasuras]

Already been chosen:

-The cards.
-Restriction + banned list + named when those cards are restricted, for example: Balance wasn't restricted from the beginning. Putting in the list it is restricted in sets X and not in set X should be enough.

Still necessary:

-Set of rules. Are we going to use the pre or post 6th rules?
-Name of the chosen program. Are we going to use apprentice, shandalar, mws or should everyone move to America to play with real cards?
-Timeline.
-Number of changes after each round.

And really, I think that's about everything required to host such a tournament.

I think we should use the post 6th rules to avoid miscommunications. That way: no one has an excuse to not know the rules, and lets face it: not everyone has been a round before 6th. This would also be a good idea to avoid to much pressure on the judges.

I'm in for apprentice because I'm lazy, but the obvious problem with that program is the lack of wish capatability. But: there aren't any wishes in the sets used, with the exception of 1 card no one is going to play. Just to avoid problems with clowns using that card I think the main program should be MWS. Both programmes tend to have crappy shufflers so that's not really an argument.

Timeline: its not that hard to make.


By the way: I like the changing of decks with infinite cards more than the limited amount of changes you can bring in after each round. Although the latter adds more strategic thinking, the first is the right way to go if you want to examine/learn more about metagames at that time.


And finally: I really think this is a good idea, and like it too. I would surely enter if the tourney isn't too far from now or being held in a weekend.

[Alfred]

#1. Also, though I didn't organize the tournament, I am going to have to say screw the pre- 6th edition rules. Have you seen the flow chart that applies to LIFO? IT'S RETARDED.

#2. Shandalar is definately out, because it doesn't have a lot of the cards that zherbus mentioned i.e. homelands, mana drain etc. I would personally lean towards MWS, because I like it better, but some people have ancient computers so I would have to advocate Apprentice.

Has anyone else noticed that the dice roller seems less than random in both programs? More often than not if I roll a 4, the other player rolls a 14 or if I roll a 12, the other player rolls a 2.

[Nazdakka]

Like this idea a lot, hope you can time this to be Euro-friendly

My opinions on the various questions:

Rules: Please forget authenticity for this. I really don't want to have to learn a new set of interactions and timing tricks - I never played under pre-6th Ed. rules and reverting to them is just going to cause trouble for myself and those with similar experience.

Program: MWS would be ideal for me... I have no idea if my Apprentice still works! I guess I could probably resurrect it if need be though.

Number of changes: I would be in favour of an evolutionary approach, with only 10-20 changes per round. The reason: Laziness! Having to build and 'test' 4-6 independant decks is a large commitment, even if it's just grabbing a list off the Dojo or whatever. Limited changes also give a nice 'my deck' feeling to it all

[Jacob Orlove]

Pre-6th edition rules are where it's AT. Like I said before, Mirror Universe 4 Life.

It's really not that complicated a system. No, actually, that's a lie. It's horrendously complicated. Most of those complications are pretty irrelevant, though (like how you can cast spells during the untap phase). It'll just take a short list of pointers for everyone to be fine.

[MuzzonoAmi]

I love Mirage rules (e tu, trivia?). Would that be the rules you're referring to? We've gotta use those.

[Zherbus]

What I had in mind was going with newer rules and errata. This just keeps in simpler without adding the complication of remembering stuff like what Time Vault used to do.

[Jet]

This is a cool idea, a chance to combine modern deckbuilding with oldschool card pools.
To get a good view of deck evolution, I'd suggest going with unrestricted deck changing after each round, adding restrictings to deck building will only give an example of deck evolution for this tournament, not actual magic progression.
For rules, mirror and tapped blockers are the only significant changes, could we possibly just allow for life totals to be checked at end of step? The 6th change to Mirror's interaction ruins a card that had a huge impact on the game, while the blockers thing mostly just effects factories (common in decks then anyways) and Icy.

I'd like to see the restricted list for this based off the results from the experiment, like did these cards ever need to be restricted?

Ali from Cairo 1/25/1994
Dingus Egg 1/25/1994
Gauntlet of Might 1/25/1994
Icy Manipulator 1/25/1994
Orcish Oriflamme 1/25/1994
Rukh Egg 1/25/1994
Shahrazad 1/25/1994
Candelabra of Tawnos 5/2/1994
Feldon's Cane 5/2/1994
Ivory Tower 5/2/1994
Divine Intervention 8/1/1994
Recall 8/1/1994
Sword of the Ages 8/1/1994
Underworld Dreams 8/1/1994
Maze of Ith 10/10/1994
Zuran Orb 11/1/1995


And what about cards that have either been proposed for unrestiction or re-restriction now?

Braingeyser 1/25/1994
Channel 3/23/1994
Mishra's Workshop 6/13/1994
Mirror Universe 8/1/1994

These 4 interest me the most.
Is the Braingeyser effect running more than 1 or 2 of in a world with almost no other draw, and no Misdirections?
Can we build a deck to abuse Channel without any modern combo pieces?
Aggro-Shop decks still have the base 8 creatures, and can have almost any color built around it. Can the enviroment handle that?
Would Mirror decks want to run more than one, and if so, would they be hurt by its restriction?

These things can't really be answered by one match in a tournament though, would need like some reported exhibition matches and minis to get good results on what needs to be restricted.

[Zherbus]

For rules, mirror and tapped blockers are the only significant changes, could we possibly just allow for life totals to be checked at end of step? The 6th change to Mirror's interaction ruins a card that had a huge impact on the game, while the blockers thing mostly just effects factories (common in decks then anyways) and Icy.

That's not a bad idea.

[rvs]

In any case, I'm probably in (assuming people use MWS over Apprentice).

[Zherbus]

OK, looks like we're using current rules with the alteration of life totals being checked at the end of each phase. I say that gets allowed until 6th.