KrazyCaley's Deckbuilders' Challenge- Freeform Tournament (and results from A is for Artifacts!)

Deck Challenges

KrazyCaley

9 March 2011

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Let's begin with some honorable mentions:

Honorable Mention - T is not for thopter - Micah_408

Tower deck. YES. This deck was a little inconsistent, but still performed reasonably well while having a truly awesome premise. Good work!

Honorable Mention - sssands of time - shuflw

A clever Sands of Time-based deck that could get really fun to play, unless you were playing against it. The Prince of Persia would be proud.

On to the top 10.

10 (tie) - E is for Etherium - Siegfried and My Pee is infected by Legendinc

Score- 19.5

Master Deckbuilder Siegfried has the gall to run Eater of Days without nullifying its drawback; the amazing thing is that this strategy works very well, given Siegfried's many ways to recover quickly from losing the time. Siegfried now has 5 top-10 appearances.

Meanwhile, Legendinc weighs in with a very innovative infect deck that could get rolling frighteningly quickly. Bonus points for making do with a very small theme (infect) that is limited within an already limited challenge. Legend has a sophomore top 10.

9 - M is for Morbid - pookypuppy6

Score - 20.5

This deck has more card interactions than you can shake a stick at, even if that stick is an Isochron Scepter. Plus, it's about time that Mishra's Helix got some love. While I think a few mana-producing artifacts would have made this deck even more devastating (are there any in this letter?), it was still extremely potent. This is pookypuppy's first top 10 appearance.

8 - Horny artifacts - squire1

Score - 21

I don't think squire1 's brain works like the rest of ours do. I mean, I'm pretty twisted and love me some obscure cards and ridiculous ideas, but I don't think I would look at this challenge and go "SWEET, Hornet Cannon time!" But hey, it works well with Helm of Possession, and a never-ending stream of flying 1/1s never hurt anyone. squire1 marches on with his seventeenth top 10 appearance, and has appeared in the top 10 of seven straight challenges.

7 - Energized Evolution - mossflower

Score- 21.5

"E is for Sunburst," says mossflower, and you best believe it does. This deck is basically a Rube Goldberg machine to turn Etched Oracle into an unstoppable transinfinite nightmare that draws tons of cards and swings for unstoppable, huge amounts of damage. And personally I like unstoppable transinfinite nightmares. Mossflower is on the board with a premiere top 10.

6 - Chimeric Clockwork - AegairEtapa

Score- 23

The trickiest and most effective of the proliferate-with-c-cards decks to appear. It's an elegantly simple and brutally effective work that carefully defends against potential weaknesses and ensures constant inteference with enemy plans while pushing forward its own idea. I was highly impressed by this well-balanced and considered effort; balancing and tuning a deck is hard to do with such constraints! AegairEtapa has a first top 10.

5 - L is for losers anyway - vazhar

Score- 23.5

Faced with the creature constraint, vazhar came up with a very clever idea- use Lightning Coils to evade the restriction with a few creatures that one can recur. This deck was able to swarm many an opponent to death with its waves of elementals. The choice of L also gave vazhar access to some of the most potent cards available- Lion's Eye DiamondGC, Lotus Petal, and Lotus Bloom all among them. A well-done deck to get vazhar a freshman top 10.

4 - C is for Cookie.. er.. Colossus - backyardmetal

Score- 24.5

Colossus of Sardia is the centerpiece of this very effective deck- how often can you say that? Colossus of Sardia is the winner, Clone Shell adds extra oomph and can cheat a Colossus out early, and the rest of the deck controls and makes sure that you get the Colossus and Clone out properly. 9 mana = you lose. Clock of Omens = you lose. Simple as that. backyardmetal adds to the parade of first-time top 10ers dominating this challenge.

3 - Make Mine Metal - awesomusprime

Score- 26.5

Behold, one of the most effective M decks. There were a lot of M decks. Many of them had similar cards to this one. But none of them, except for the deck that finished in the #2 spot, had Monkey Cage. THAT is an awesome card for this challenge, ladies and gentlemen. You have to reach deep into the brain pan scroll room (google it) to come up with that card. My only complaint- only one copy. Awesomus said he included it for "wtf" purposes, and yet there is only one copy. EMBRACE the wtf, Awesomus. Only then a Jedi will you be. Awesomus still has an excellent debut in the top 10.

2 - Fighting M - zerotimestatechamp

Score- 27.5

Veteran challenger Zerotime steps in to restore order against the upstart first timers. He Of The Invisible Name used one of the more horrifying decks to make use of Mirrorworks (oh god Magister Sphinx ), and just generally built a very solid deck. Plus he had FOUR Monkey Cages, which really vaulted his deck ahead, because the card was ALWAYS what you wanted to draw! It really did crush the opposition very well. Zerotime's climb up the leaderboard continues; this is his fifth top 10.

1 - D is for Darksteel Control - IronHead

Score- 28.5

Ever since his first top 10 in the "Best of the Worst" challenge, IronHead has been steadily improving his finishes, and it culminates here with his victory here. Don't be fooled- the Darksteel Colossus isn't even really necessary in this deck. The deck can murder basically anything you try to disturb it with in short order, to the extent that Darksteel Reactor is a quite viable win condition. The constant and repetitive swatting of any threats whatsoever with such a limited card base was extremely amusing AND impressive, and more than enough to win IronHead his third top 10 appearance in three tries, $25 (a smooth quarter-Jace) over at coolstuffinc.com, and the title of Master Deckbuilder. Well done!

Leaderboard

(minimum 4 top 10s)

1- squire1 - 17 top 10s, 2 Master Deckbuilder Titles, average finish of 6.18.

2- TAMA - 9 top 10s, 1 Master Deckbuilder Title, average finish of 3.89.

3- blueclay - 8 top 10s, 1 Master Deckbuilder Title, average finish of 5.88.

4- Zanven - 7 top 10s, 1 Master Deckbuilder Title, average finish of 6.00.

5- $ªmHεiπ - 7 top 10s, 0 Master Deckbuilder Titles, average finish of 5.71.

6- Siegfried - 5 top 10s, 1 Master Deckbuilder Title, average finish of 5.00.

7- Illiad - 5 top 10s, 0 Master Deckbuilder Titles, average finish of 5.60.

8- Dr. McMeen - 5 top 10s, 0 Master Deckbuilder Titles, average finish of 6.00.

9- zerotimestatechamp - 5 top 10s, 0 Master Deckbuilder Titles, average finish of 6.40.

10- Selsenay - 4 top 10s, 1 Master Deckbuilder Title, average finish of 4.50.

11- I_Call_BS - 4 top 10s, 0 Master Deckbuilder Titles, average finish of 6.75.

(5 with 3 top 10s, 15 with 2 top 10s, 38 with 1 top 10)

Next challenge

The rules:

1 - ONE deck per competitor. If you post more than one deck, tell me which one you want entered or I will assume it is the last one you enter.

2- The decks will all be pitted against each other in a huge round robin format. One game per match. Note that this means that any sideboards will be ignored.

3- Entries are due by Wednesday, March 16, by midnight. I will try to have them graded by the end of that week, but I make no promises when I have to pit all the decks against each other.

4- No cards from the "un" sets, or special cards like Archenemy, Planechase, Vanguard cards, etc. Also, Timetwister is banned, as is Time Vault and Time Walk.

5- Your deck must have at least 60 cards.

6- There are no other rules. Except as in rule 4, you may use any Magic card ever printed, and you may use as many copies of it in a deck as you like. Throw in 40 copies of Black Lotus and 20 copies of Fireball, see if I care.

Winner gets $25 to Coolstuffinc.com, as before! Enjoy, and consider your metagame when building your deck!

Good luck, and remember, you must defeat Turbo Great Wall to stand a chance.