Interim Challenge Results

Before we start, a few shout-outs and awards.

TAMA receives the “Did I Win Yet?” Award for his total of 9 decks, and user:squire, with his deck take a chance wins the “Hey, Heads Or Tails” Award.

I’ve decided that round robin is not probably the most efficient way to test the decks for these challenges, but it IS the most fair. So after what I think was more than 600 matches, I have the winners.

Well done everyone who submitted a deck! Most decks were very creative, and very effective in the round robin tournament. However, there are a number of them which definitely deserve honorable mention.

To start off, each deck was scored x/40. The lowest score I gave was a 23, because the deck just did not work, and didn’t follow many of the criteria. The highest score, however, was a 40. But more on that deck later. I give you, the top 10 (ish) finishers!

10th Place

9th and 10th place were determined by a tie breaker, because both decks came out of the round robin with the same score. I ran the best two of out three, and the loser was…

l0ki- Wait for it...wait for it...BAM! 35 points, loser of the 9/10th place breaker

l0ki’s idea for this deck was creative. There were MANY things I was not expecting out of a burn without burning challenge, and suspend definitely wasn’t one of them. Every card is his deck made use of this mechanic, and that’s why it did so well in the round robin. Pure consistency. The re-triggering future-sight/arc-blade.jpgArc Blade was definitely a means of creature control, and, in the end, a win mechanic when paired with planar-chaos/timecrafting.jpgTimecrafting. l0ki finishes with a top ten deck.

9th Place

The winner of the tie breaker was…

user: squire- ramp drags on 35 points, winner of the 9/10th place breaker

This deck is vicious. It mana-ramped into dangerous dragons, and then pumped them for the win. That’s about all that can be said. Very strong finish, user:squire.

8th Place

For 7/8th place, another tie breaker was in order. The loser…

user:squire- searing control 36 points, loser of the 7/8th place breaker

user:squire’s build was creative, and quite effective. The point was to gain life, and then deal damage with unique “I gain/you lose’’ cards like ravnica-city-of-guilds/searing-meditation.jpgSearing Meditation. Good control, and a well thought out theme.

7th Place

halogod989- Milled with devour! 36 points, winner of the 7/8th place breaker

Life gain does very little for you when your opponent is going for your deck. halogod989’s deck seemed almost like the perfect foil to user:squire’s, but the true devastation was the fact that this deck got its main combo of conflux/extractor-demon.jpgExtractor Demon + zendikar/seismic-shudder.jpgSeismic Shudder out so frequently! It would pop on average 8th turn, and then the game was over. A little bit of good luck for halogod989 lands him a 7th place finish.

6th Place

$ªmHεiπ- Pardon me, I Belched 36.5 points

Oh, $ªmHεiπ, I knew SOMEBODY was going to build a belcher deck, and it was you! Normal belcher decks aren’t very creative, but this one was different. 2010-core-set/fabricate.jpgFabricate and future-sight/magus-of-the-vineyard.jpgMagus of the Vineyard were unique cards that were key players, which leads $ªmHεiπ on to 6th place!

5th Place

These decks stepped it up a notch. In fact, 4 decks received the same score, so what did I do? A 4-way round robin of course; the deck that wins the most claims their rightful place as #5.

The following occurred:

$ªmHεiπ- Dingus Destruction vs. i_call_bs- White fire at the end of the tunnel, 2-1 $ªmHεiπ- Dingus Destruction vs. tapanmeister- Book Burning!, 2-1 $ªmHεiπ- Dingus Destruction vs. TAMA- Spark Fire, 0-2 TAMA- Spark Fire vs. tapanmeister- Book Burning! , 2-1 TAMA- Spark Fire vs.i_call_BS- White fire at the end of the tunnel, 0-2 tapanmeister- Book Burning! vs. i_call_bs- White fire at the end of the tunnel, 0-2

The total: i_call_BS- 5 wins, $ªmHεiπ- 4 wins, TAMA- 4 wins, and tapanmeister- 2 wins.

The winner…

i_call_BS- White fire at the end of the tunnel 37 points, winner of the 5th place round robin

This deck isn’t exactly what I would creative, but its simple combos like eventide/hearthfire-hobgoblin.jpgHearthfire Hobgoblin with eventide/scourge-of-the-nobilis.jpgScourge of the Nobilis made life gain no sweat. When playing this deck, I would often drop zendikar/felidar-sovereign.jpgFelidar Sovereign 6th turn and win 7th. Great submission.

4th Place

user:squire- take a chance 37.5 points

We meet again, user:squire. Pure creativity brings this deck in at 4th place. I’ve never seen a deck that utilizes coin flip like this one, and with the certainly-achievable alt win odyssey/chance-encounter.jpgChance Encounter, winning was no sweat. One game, I was a turn away from losing, and had odyssey/chance-encounter.jpgChance Encounter out with 3 counters. I dropped a few guildpact/stitch-in-time.jpgStitch in Times and ended up winning. Fun deck.

3rd Place

Interestingly enough, 3rd place was again, decided by a round robin. 3-way this time. But still, fun to play. Again, the following occurred:

user:squire- land recycle vs. blueclay- Whiplash, 1-2 user:squire- land recycle vs. darkmonk6593- Panoptic Stupor, 1-2 darkmonk6593- Panoptic Stupor vs. blueclay- Whiplash, 2-1

The total: darkmonk6593-4 wins, user:squire- 2 wins, blueclay- 3 wins

The winner…

darkmonk6593- Panoptic Stupor 38 points, winner of the 3rd place round robin

darkmonk6593 was an unknown entity, at least to me, before now. His submissions were the last few that I got, and when I looked at this one, I was blown away. I was used to seeing Panoptic decks abuse things like 2010-core-set/lightning-bolt.jpgLightning Bolt and 2010-core-set/silence.jpgSilence, but a discard deck that utilized one with time-spiral-timeshifted/stupor.jpgStupor? Magical mayhem ensued. Hope to see more from darkmonk6593 soon.

2nd Place

i_call_BS- BETTER burn up the hand 38.5 points

i_call_BS submitted a first attempt at this deck early on in the challenge, but later realized how much more abusive it could be. The inclusion of dissension/pain-magnification.jpgPain Magnification sparked a series of combos where the opponent ended up draining their hand, only to draw more cards later and have it wiped again. Overall, the best discard deck I’ve seen in a while. A very clever build, and an even more impressive placing by i_call_BS.

1st Place

darkmonk6593- Sprouting Lock? 40 points

This deck nails it. It abuses its lack of land with coldsnap/braid-of-fire.jpgBraid of Fire and Mana Barb, and controls the field perfectly with cards like planar-chaos/pyrohemia.jpgPyrohemia. And then, to make things worse, pair it with dissension/sprouting-phytohydra.jpgSprouting Phytohydra to give enough chump blockers for a lifetime. The possibility of dropping a first turn shadowmoor/deus-of-calamity.jpgDeus of Calamity was awe inspiring, and I even managed to pull it once. Once I got him out, the opponent was cut from their mana source for the rest of the game. Perfect in every category of this challenge, I would like to give darkmonk6593 my first of hopefully many awards, the Freezer Burn Award.

That’s it! I hope to make another challenge soon, and I especially hope you enjoyed this one. Have fun with ‘em.