3CB Tournament #68 - Special Format! RULE CHANGE - BE AWARE!

[combo_dude]

The rules for this competition will be: Different!

OK, the rules are:

1) Every card that you submit must have an "e" in its name somewhere.

2) For each match, you score the usual number of points, plus an extra point for every "e" in your three cards that exceeds the number of e's in the opponents' decks.

For example, a deck consisting of three Engineered Explosives (which is an illegal deck for two reasons!) against a deck such as Blinkmoth Nexus, Mox Pearl, Balance (which is also illegal - I'm just making a point) would score zero in game points, but the total score would be 15-6 to the EE deck, since it has 18 e's to the winning deck's 3; since the difference is 15, this makes the score 15-6.

3) Every deck must be able to win of its own accord. (so no 3x EE then...)

4) There will be a ten-point bonus prize for the most obscure card used. My decision is final!

Banned list:
Portal (in ALL its forms)
Unglued AND UNHINGED
[card]Engineered Explosives[/card] <---- WATCH OUT!
[card]Mesmeric Fiend[/card]
[card]Strip Mine[/card]
[card]Balance[/card]
All cards without an 'e' in their name
EDIT: Basic lands are all legal, regardless. Although Scrappy Kid has a snow-covErEd point...

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 loss, 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 combo_dude in the following format:

Subject: 3cb Tournament #68 Entry or 3cb Tournament#68 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 8th December 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!

Hope this works! Can I make a request to anyone who enters something particularly obscure for the E-numbers (pardon the pun) puts a [card] tag in their PM so that I can immediately see what it does?

Adam

PS For a future format, I have a couple of ideas in mind already - one of them would be to legalise all cards created here on TMD! Does anyone think that would work? If so, can any horribly broken cards be pointed out to me, either in this thread or a PM?

PPS See a post below for a change in rules for the tournament, and the rationale behind it.

[Matt]

This format rules. :DDDDD

[Limbo]

I think I might give this a go as well. Props for making this interesting, as I believe the same decks from "my time" were still popping up. Hooray for innovation

[Godder]

This format is cool. No Workshop or Factory, the only basic land is Forest, and the only non-legal Mox is Ruby . I love it!

[Scrappy Kid]

This format is cool. No Workshop or Factory, the only basic land is Forest, and the only non-legal Mox is Ruby . I love it!

One part of this sentence isn't actually true (you can play all five basic land types).

Edit: Energy field is fine. Better to start a new format with a small banned list anyway. This format seems good for more than one 3cb ,so we can always ban more cards next time if necessary.

[Limbo]

Energy Field only has three E's, so it sucks

[Godder]

This format is cool. No Workshop or Factory, the only basic land is Forest, and the only non-legal Mox is Ruby . I love it!

One part of this sentence isn't actually true (you can play all five basic land types).

You can? The rules don't say that anywhere, and all cards without an 'e' in their name seems quite explicit to me. Island, Plains, Swamp, Mountain don't have an 'e' between them, so I assumed they were banned.

[Limbo]

Godder is right, unless you would use Dutch translations, because then you could use all  BUT the forest (mountain swamp plains island forest would become berg moeras vlakte eiland bos).

[combo_dude]

Basic lands are legal. As is Energy Field.

Go to town, guys!

Any advice on TMD cards?

[ReAnimator]

Any advice on TMD cards?

I've never acctually looked at these cards ever before so i probably wouldn't bother unless an entire list got posted or linked, I'm not going to wade through that many posts.

unless of course a compiled list already exists.

[Godder]

Conveniently, such a list can be found here.

[Scrappy Kid]

One part of this sentence isn't actually true (you can play all five basic land types).

You can? The rules don't say that anywhere, and all cards without an 'e' in their name seems quite explicit to me. Island, Plains, Swamp, Mountain don't have an 'e' between them, so I assumed they were banned.

You need to apply a little lateral thinking. Try a Gatherer search on Ice Age Lands

[Godder]

Heh, I forgot the Snow Covered lands... That said, in a format without MWS, and with 3Sphere being very difficult to suitably play, moxen are where it's at anyway.

Random idea for a competition - the 3sphere effect and upwelling effect was an interesting idea, but was compromised by people playing Mishra's Factory + Mountain + Stone Rain style decks. How about the same, but ban non-basic lands?

[ix-ir]

Run this one again sometime. I think it might be interesting enough to establish some kind of metagame unless of course something totally broken turns up, then you can mass ban. It'd be nice to enter more than one deck since I have some differing ideas that could take advantage of the potential metagame. I may be mistaken but I don't think any of the cards listed by name needed banning.

[Jacob Orlove]

Æther = one "e" or two?

edit: multiple decks would be good

edit again: never mind, I found the best deck!

[ix-ir]

O RLY?

[Jacob Orlove]

O RLY?

Yeah, I think so. It certainly has more Es than anything else.

A question: would it be appropriate to post some of the other decks I came up with, or should I wait until after the deadline? I'm not interested in actually entering them in the event, because the Best Deck is so much better than they are.

[That0neguy]

Why is portal still banned??  It's legal in T1 and most other casual formats are accepting it why is it still illegal there.

Also too bad Unhinged is banned otherwise this deck would be insane:
Our marktet reseach... - 18 e's
Treetop villiage - 3 e's
Selesnya Sanctuary - 2 e's

It could possibly win a few games and even if it doesn't it still beats most decks that I could think of just with 23 e's.  There are probably better lands but I came up with this fast just trying to make a deck with Our market reseach... by adding lands with more e's or if there is some land that im forgetting that could get to 3 mana and then play 2 our market...

O well good thing UN is banned anyways.

[Jacob Orlove]

You'd just have to run Hollow Trees and 2x Our Market Research Shows That Players Like Really Long Card Names So We Made this Card to Have the Absolute Longest Card Name Ever Elemental. That trumps my deck by quite a few "e"s.

[combo_dude]

Jacob - I've sent you a PM about your other decks.

An alteration to the rules: you have to be able to play ALL THREE CARDS in your deck if you were goldfishing. There is a card which several people have submitted only due to the quantity of e's in its name, which cannot be cast in their deck (i.e. it's only there to earn them lots of bonus points, not because it works as part of the deck itself), and it's breaking the format. I still want people to submit decks that could conceivably work as decks in their own right; please don't let this put you off resubmitting decks, but I want this tournament to be people using obscure cards, not just using them as placeholders.

If people disagree with this then say so, but unless I hear a convincing argument the other way, the rule stands. "It wasn't on the banned list" is not a convincing argument; experimental formats always carry the caveat that when some *&$£!%@ing huge loophole is found, it should be stopped. In a regular tournament, if one new card is broken, I can just get rid of it in the next tournament, but since this is a one-off I want it to be as competitive as possible. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.

[Jacob Orlove]

In that case, I'll ask again: Æther = one "e" or two?

[ix-ir]

A sensible rule change, I was planning on suggesting it after dominating the format. I think with this rule the tension between high-E and mid-E but competitive decks is balanced or even requires decks to try to win rather than E all over everything.

Jacob_orlove: What was the E-value of your top deck? I got to 17 E before the ban and I'd guess we were using the same card that caused the rule change.

[jro]

A clarification on the new rule: Do you have to be able to cast all three cards in your deck absolutely, or just have the potential to cast them?  For instance: Crystal Vein, Toymaker, Copper Myr.  Any card can be cast, but not both of them.  Also, suppose your deck was Terror, Drain Life, Bottomless Vault. You can't cast Terror without a target: does that matter?

I don't think that Kangee^H^H^H^H^H^H secret brokEn card decks would have dominated the format.  They would all lose to decks with not that many less E's.

Aether Vial is surely 2 although in the deck you're probably thinking of isn't the flexibility of Hollow Trees to allow your other distruption element freedom better than recursion? I may be barking up the wrong tree but we seem to have come to similar conclusions so far. What was the E-value of your top deck? I had a 17 E one before the ban.

My top E-value under the old system was 15, and I don't see how you can fit in any more E's than that.  So congrats to you.  And as far as Aether Vial, its value comes from its speed and resistance to disruption, of which the recursion is only a part, which is why the Aether Vial deck beats the Hollow Trees deck.

Edit:  I'm so stupid; I see what the 17E deck is.

[Limbo]

If you didn't need to be able to cast them / win with them, why not go for the triple Kangee deck?

Btw, being able to actually cast your stuff and win has been a rule for a very long time...

[combo_dude]

You already needed to be able to win under your own steam: I'm now making it so that you can't have a win condition, a mana source, and a card that you can't cast but that has millions of e's in it (since in normal 3cb, there's no benefit to having a card in your deck that doesn't interact with the rest of your deck). jro makes a good point, though - you don't need to be able to use both, just that you have to be able to demonstrate a way to cast any card in the deck. So those decks would be fine.

Also, Aether is two e's.

Adam

[ix-ir]

I think a 17E deck could, most effective designs seem to come in at the 10-12E range and the 17E deck can beat a couple of those. 10 to 12E decks would also have won and lost to each other while the 17E picked up a reliable 6 or so per game. The less effective 14Eish decks that would be a problem for max E decks would get caught between the two extremes, beaten by the more competitive 10 to 12s and not high enough E to compensate.

It seems a pity to require all things to be castable during a goldfish, there are plenty of valid interactive cards that require targets.

[Limbo]

Removal like terror is legal afaik...

Btw, I would be impressed by any playable deck that breaches the 15 E barrier. I have found all 5E+ cards, and there are not many mana sources among them...

[ix-ir]

It's more along the lines of left-field 10-12 strats being vulnerable to a minimal win condition than a good high E deck. =)

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, I too had the 17E deck, with an uncastable Kangee, although I think I submitted it first. Too bad it's now illegal.

[That0neguy]

What was the 17E deck or is there still some secrets there regarding mana with a didikolous amount of e's?