3CB Tournament #54

[wonkey_donkey]

The rules for this competition will be: Anything Goes!

Banned list:
Portal
Unglued
[card]Black Lotus[/card]
[card]Mesmeric Fiend[/card]
[card]Nezumi Shortfang[/card]
[card]Blackmail[/card]
[card]Chain of Smog[/card]
[card]Hymn to Tourach[/card]
[card]Cabal Therapy[/card]
[card]Encroach[/card]
[card]Mind Swords[/card]
[card]Forget[/card]
[card]Anvil of Bogarden[/card]
[card]Strip Mine[/card]
[card]Wasteland[/card]
[card]Raze[/card]
[card]The Rack[/card]
[card]Wheel of Torture[/card]
[card]Balance[/card]
[card]Meddling Mage[/card]
[card]Isochron Scepter[/card]
[card]Phrexian Dreadnaught[/card]
[card]Lions Eye Diamond[/card]
[card]Evil Presence[/card]
[card]Seas Claim[/card]


NB this is subject to change within 48hrs of first posting.

What is 3cb?

3-Card Blind (3CB) is a very unique game. The rules are as follows

Your deck is composed of 3 cards, all of which start in your hand.
You have no library (technically, the library exists, but starts at 0 cards) and no sideboard (Wishes fetch nothing).
Random effects always go in your opponent's favour.
You can see your opponent's hand, so you can always make the best possible play.
You don't lose as a result of not being able to draw a card.
You will play each opponent twice, once going first, once going second.
For each win, you score 3.
For each draw, you score 1.
For each lose, you get nothing.
Other than the aforementioned, EVERYTHING IS HANDLED EXACTLY LIKE A REAL GAME OF MAGIC!

To make an entry, PM your deck to wonkey_donkey in the following format:

Subject: 3cb Tournament #54 Entry or 3cb Tournament#54 Revision
Deck Name
Card #1
Card #2
Card #3

Optional Deck discussion, random sucking up, etc.

I'll close entries after 2 weeks. Get your entries in by 14th April and I'll calculate. As I said, the banned list may change within 48 hours of this post going up. After that, it stays as it is. This is not a reason to withold your decks, though - this is not a particuarly serious format! If something's broke, please fix it whilst we can!

I'm wondering about making a few changes to the banned list - I'm very tempted to take any or all of phyrexian dreadnaught, forget, hymn to tourach, encroach, lion's eye diamond and maybe raze, sea's claim and evil presence off the list, whilst possibly adding glacial chasm, form of the dragon, leveler and paupers' cage. I don't think many of these require a trade-off some sort, but I'd be interested to hear people's views - some of the cards on the list simply aren't as dangerous any more as they were a while ago when the banned list was first drawn up. And people's thoughts on lotus, once again? I've had a 'Newser question me about it, so I'm asking, although I'd prefer if only people who didn't play elsewhere first answered this bit!

Results up later this week.

Tom

[Nazdakka]

Banned list changes:

Unbanning Phyrexian Dreadnaught essentially gives us a new Leveller deck to play which is a turn slower but doesn't kill itself (City of Traitors, Illusionary Mask, Phyrexian Dreadnaught). That's doesn't seem to bad a deck, especially as it's proof from bounce. If Leveller sticks around then it won't matter, but if it doesn't then we will still have a pure racing deck in the meta.

Forget and Hymn both wipe out the opponent's hand on turn 2, given 2 coloured mana. Even though a lot of decks have done something by then, double discard is still a very powerful effect... I'd rather see those 2 stay where they are. Of course, these murder Storage land decks

Encroach is a turn 1 win on the play against 15 of the 16 decks in 3cB #54, while doing nothing on the draw. You'll get a LOT of 3-3 results with legal encroach.

Seal's Claim, Evil Presence and Raze are similar to Forget and Hymn - no mana for most opponents after turn 2.  Most decks could cope, but like Forget and Hymn they render Storage lands unplayable.

LED I wouldn't mind - it's a mini lotus and could be very powerful in the right deck. It would be interesting to have around. However, Lotus itself we can do without. A lot of people, me inclusive play both here and over at News/Salvation (I started here though ), and personally I enjoy having to look at 2 different metagames. If we simply run the same format as Goblinboy over here then there'll be a huge amount of crossover decks and I suspect it would hurt us in the long run. We'd also have to abandon the current Banned list for one closely resembling Goblinboy's one.

As for bannings, why Form exactly? It's certainly powerful, but it's a challenge to get out quickly without devoting your entire deck to getting there and opening up yourself up to disruption. Leveller is meh - people know how to beat it, but it crops up every once in a while when people forget. Ditto Chasm. As for Pauper's Cage, it's extremely similar to Wheel of Torture, which resides on the banned list, and so there's a good arguement there.

[ReAnimator]

Why is hymn any more b0rken than wrentch mind?
 
Why is raze any more b0rken than crack the earth?  
 
I have played both recently and its not like they just ran over the field, though in the right meta Crack is quite good, (I do not endorse the use of Crack even though i stated it is good :lol: Dont do drugs)
 
As for Lotus, maybe you could run a lotus turney every couple of months just to change things up a bit get people thinking. I personly only play on this board so I wouldnt mind a change every now and again, but that totaly depends on how many weird/special turney's there are (T4, Duplicate)

[wonkey_donkey]

Before I do any explaining about the banned list, I should say that I'm accepting second decks. And first decks.

I think encroach should probably stay where it is, as it would probably do very little for the format. Arguably that's a reason to make it legal, but as I don't hear anyone clamouring for its legalisation, I'll leave it there.

I think dreadnaught is not desperately dangerous - it's just a case of whether it's better than leveler. It's 1 turn slower, but doesn't kill itself, has trample, and can still evade daze on the play. It'd be a strong deck, but would lose to slightly different things to leveler - artifact destruction and so on, rather than soldevi sentry.

As for the land destruction spells, it's certainly questionable as to whether they are any better than either crack the earth or lingering mirage. I personally think that one-drops tend to be better than playing mishra's factory, although there are good and bad points about both. There's nothing that scary about lingering mirage or crack, so should we unban? I think that they should all be on or off together, but I personally don't think there's all that much wrong with them.

The discard spells are not quite together, in that forget is better than hymn. Hymn is not that much stronger than wrench mind, and thinking about it most decks that would care tend to be too fast. Forget is a bit stronger because of imaginary pet providing such a strong threat. I think we could maybe unban hymn but keep forget where it is without too much hassle.

Finally, there's LED. I think that this would just be quite interesting, as it only adds 3 decks to the environment off the top of my head - LED-Roar of the Wurm-Karakas, and LED-Arrogant Wurm-Nether Spirit. There are probably a few others, but it's a card that rewards inventive deckbuilding. Is this a bad thing? Maybe replace it with Arrogant Wurm, even.

As for prospective bannings, I think that mercadian bazaar-maze of ith-FotD is verging on too strong. The same is true of Workshop-Chasm-Jinxed Choker. Leveler may be simply too fast, although I still feel that it's a worse deck than choker, whilst paupers cage seems to be a very strong card in the right deck. On top of this, there's wheel of torture - are the cards so different to warrant one of them being banned when the other isn't? Nazdakka brought this point up, and this is the main reason that I feel there's an issue.

What would be the effect of the metagame? It's not very clear. The first reaction is to say that there'd be no more storage lands, because everyone would be playing these fast decks. So then people would play trinisphere/workshop/thallid based decks to beat them. So people would then play storage lands. So people would then play these new decks and so on. There'd be a few decks either side that can still put up good, solid performances. It's just a thought I was having, anyway.

How about next tournament we try unbanning a few cards and see what happens? I won't ban anything extra, because I feel it's a bigger decision to ban than to unban, but try a slightly different metagame and then make the decision based on that tournament (or possibly play one more like it before deciding, depending on what people think). Maybe even go with one of those, tournaments, something a bit different, then go back to it so I've got a couple of weeks to get feedback. Thoughts, if you've read this far?

Tom

[Chifley]

I believe that the banned list should be as simple as possible. I don't see any reason for a card to be on the list if a stronger version isn't. This applies to Raze, obviousy, and perhaps a few others.

Still, I like the TMD metagame alot. Its interesting.