It's Sunday already! By popular demand the format for this event will be Kamigawa Block Constructed. Everybody is excited about the release of Ravnica and can't wait until it becomes available on MTGO, but now is the time to bid farewell to CHK before guildmania hits online.

Our numbers keep swelling on Tuesday nights, we were up to 13 last week, so bring your friends to keep this going. With our growing numbers, I have retired the old notebook for keeping score, with DCI reporter onboard we are officially computerized.

Anyone wishing to donate prizes to this, or future events please contact me.

Who: Anyone who wants to play PDC
What: PDC Gaming
Where: /join tpdc (Games will be played in the Casual Play/Anything Goes room)
When: Tuesday, October 4
Signups @ 8:30pm EST, 7:30 Central, 5:30 Pacific.
Start Time is approximately 30 minutes after signups.
Why: To have fun and be creative without expensive cards.
Cost: Absolutely FREE, no tickets needed just bring a deck that fits the rules below.

This tournament will be 3 rounds of Swiss followed by a top 4 playoff. The format will be Kamigawa Block Constructed. Ignore the banned/restricted lists this week, they are not applicable.

The following cards will be restricted to one copy each:
-none-

The following cards will be banned:
Artifact Lands
Cranial Plating
All Uncommons
All Rares

The following uncommons have online common counterparts and can be used as proxies:
* Invasion - Chromatic Sphere
* 7th Edition - Befoul
* 7th Edition - Foul Imp
* 8th Edition - Lightning Blast
* 8th Edition - Circle of Protection: Blue
* 8th Edition - Circle of Protection: Green
* 8th Edition - Circle of Protection: White
* 8th Edition & 9th Edition - Circle of Protection: Black
* 8th Edition & 9th Edition - Circle of Protection: Red
* 8th Edition & 9th Edition - Stream of Life
* 9th Edition - Anarchist
* 9th Edition - Consume Spirit
* 9th Edition - Drudge Skeletons
* 9th Edition - Nantuko Husk
* 9th Edition - Regeneration
* 9th Edition - Tanglebloom
* 9th Edition - Thought Courier
* 9th Edition - Ur-Golem's Eye
* 9th Edition - Vulshok Morningstar
* 9th Edition - Zealous Inquisitor

The penalty for using a banned card or 2 or more restricted cards will be a match loss and warning for the first offence, and a DQ for the second.

The deck and sideboard that you start the first match with are what you are committed to use for the remainder of the tournament. Changing any maindeck or sideboard cards, or switching decks, after the first match is cheating, and you will be DQed.

Prizes (if any) will be awarded to the finalists. Donations are welcome.

I have family business to attend to that may last until 8:00 or a little later, I should be online to start registration between 8:30 and 9:00.

Hope to see you there.

:bump:

Blasted!

Finally a format I've been waiting for and I can't get the time off work!

:mad:

Have fun everyone!

Is everyone going to be playing some incarnation of the arcane deck?

13 Island
11 Mountain
4 Consuming Vortex
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Glacial Ray
4 Ideas Unbound
4 Ire of Kaminari
4 Lava Spike
4 Murmurs from Beyond
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Reach Through Mists

Sideboard
3 Frostling
4 Hisoka's Defiance
4 Minamo's Meddling
4 Shimmering Glasskite

I don't think so geoff, or should I say I hope not. I won't be at very least. :P

I was actually more worried about Devouring Greed decks!

But, I'm working.

While the final is finishing up, I'll go ahead and post my t4 deck.

4 Ashen-skin Zubera
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Okiba-gang Shinobi
4 Shimmering Glasskite
4 Soratami Cloudskater
18 Creatures

4 Thoughtbind
4 Consuming Vortex
4 Horobi's Whisper
4 Psychic Spear
2 Reach Through Mists
18 Spells

13 Swamp
11 Island
24 Land

Sidboard
4 Distress
4 Hisoka's Defiance
4 Rend Flesh
3 Rend Spirit

I didn't see any Devouring Greed Decks, I tried really hard to do something with it, but was unable to find anything acceptable. But I did see a lot of Splice decks. Some run creatures, others didn't.

I found that my sideboard, Humble Boduka was ridiculous. Coming down quickly and putting your opponent on a 10 turn clock is pretty nice. With no blockers and no way to target him, he's perfect.

Green is a very good colour to have because of Kodama's Reach. It allows you to ramp up your mana supply something that properly splicing really requires. It also allowed for lifegain, which was nice to bounce back from defeat with Vital Surge and Joyous Respite -- Late Game. I even ran STE too, often if I had access to all mana i needed I used them as attackers as in mirrors the opponent had no blockers and they didn't want to waste glacial rays on them.

10 Forest
13 Island
4 Consuming Vortex
4 Elder Pine of Jukai
4 Floating-Dream Zubera
2 Ideas Unbound
4 Kodama's Might
3 Kodama's Reach
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Okina Nightwatch
3 Shinen of Life's Roar
3 Teardrop Kami
3 Teller of Tales

Sideboard
4 Hisoka's Defiance
4 Minamo's Meddling
3 Moss Kami
4 Mystic Restraints

2nd Place ain't bad... Next week back to normal I hope,

"Black Paw"

22 Swamp

4 Nezumi Cutthroat
4 Wicked Akuba
4 Skullsnatcher
2 Raving Oni-Slave
4 Takenuma Bleeder
3 Okiba-Gang Shinobi

4 Horobi's Whisper
4 Rend Flesh

3 Sink into Takenuma
4 Psychic Spear

2 Death Denied


Sideboard
4 Ashen-Skin Zubera
2 Kuro's Taken

3 Rend Spirit

4 Distress
2 Waking Nightmare

--------------------------------------------

Wow, an officially dead format and I finally win a PDC event. Thanks to Hoadley for hosting. I hope I can be back for more TPDCs :) .

The deck is like Black Hand, but doesn't actually run the guy. I was expecting Ire decks, red decks, soulshift shenanigans, and maybe one or two U/G control. Instead, I played mono-U, U/B (loss), U/G, the same U/B (win this time), and U/G. Thanks to briefcandle for going 3-0 and almost certainly putting me into the finals on tiebreakers.

The idea is to get down some early guys, then Sink my four swamps and put the opponent in topdeck mode. Okiba-Gang is a backup plan, although he's more fragile. Distress is not maindeck because the 2cc slot is already so crowded with guys.

Sideboarding: vs. blue, bring in discard and take out Raving Oni-Slave (bounce is very bad) and normally Skullsnatcher (since he just trades with a Zubera). Also bring in Rend Spirit; if you get the chance to spend 2-for-1 to kill a Shimmering Glasskite, it's usually still worth it.

It's also good to remember that Thoughtbind can't counter a hard-cast Okiba-Gang, and that you don't want to ninjutsu him out right into a bounce spell. I expected to see Oppressive Will all night but never saw one. In a lot of these U/G decks it would have been very strong vs. me, at least if my early discard did not happen.

Vs. sligh the idea was to bring in the zubera and Kuro's Taken to slow/stop them, and then tear their glacial rays out of their hand. I'm not positive how well that would have worked since I don't have a way to gain any life back, and all of my creature kill is so much more expensive than their guys.

I figured out by the end of the night that vs. U/G the goal is to tear up the hand first, so there is no card drawing, and then beat down. In the finals luckybear41 had a crazy amount of draw, and if I had let him, he would have drawn arcane spells and spliced bounce on my guys all night.

Versus zuberas, I was going to hope to grab their Devouring Greeds out of their hands, but probably it's a bad matchup since they have so many chump blockers, card drawing, and can still topdeck the Greed.

-----------------------------------

I didn't decide to go with black until right at the tournament kickoff time (really - pairings were being calculated when I made the call). As a bonus, here's the sligh deck I almost played. I eventually decided not to go with it, since it goes nowhere vs. zuberas. Also, I expected some Minamo's Meddling and didn't like to have to plan to splice Rays for the last few points of damage.

20 Mountain

4 Akki Avalanchers
4 Frostling
4 Goblin Cohort
4 Akki Underling
4 Hearth Kami
4 Ronin Houndmaster

4 Lava Spike
4 Glacial Ray
4 Yamabushi's Flame

2 Path of Anger's Flame
2 Unearthly Blizzard

Sideboard
4 Uncontrollable Anger (vs. other weenies)
3 Yamabushi's Storm (ditto)
4 Stone Rain (vs. control)
2 Path of Anger's Flame (if they don't have blockers)
2 Unearthly Blizzard (if they do)

Thank you all for playing last night, I'm sorry that I couldn't watch the final match but we went a little long last night. (My own fault for playing a first round match that took almost the entire hour before I lost when I ran out of time with my opponent at 4 minutes and a probable win for me the next turn...but I digress.) It was a great event and we set a new high water mark for attendence with 16 players last night.

Next week will be back to Classic.

Here are the final results from last night. I will post updated overall standings later this evening.

TPDC 1.5:

Name / points earned

Lathspell 32
luckybear41 30
briefcandle 28
noridoom 26
lordofducks 24
talionis11 22
tusker 20
evu 18
hoadley 16
nuklear cooper 14
digdude13 12
russellmagictooth... 10
geoffreyharlow 8
taunton_cider_elf 6
cloak1783 4
plutar 2

Hoadley, GREAT JOB on the Tournament!!!!

Not only a huge turnout, but a lot of new people. I think using more recent cards is a big advantage to getting newer people into the format. New people have access to cards.

I also think that people thought the format would be much like drafting. But I would say the decks were very organized. I had no idea that MUC and U/G control would be so good. I knew MBC would be good, and I was surprised not to see more of it. I expected and saw a lot of Splice in at least three different forms: URG/RGaggro?/UR. Look at what a rich format this was. I hope we play block formats more often, especially as Ravinica comes online.

I found that because cards were less good than the extended versions or only had relavance in the block, I didn't own the cards. Which may be a reason that many regular veterans have not pushed for these formats. This kept me from using the Blue Counter cards and from having MBC as an option.

Games did run long in the format, which was a little upsetting. Some of this may have been because people didn't realize when to concede games that they couldn't win. But I would also say that if you watched some of the fights they were very interesting matchups.

Overall my opinion was that it was a format that had more potential than I think people thought. It had a lot of room for creative decks. Good luck, thank you for a great format. I wish we had done this more often!!!

Thanks for all of the feedback. I enjoy playing and hosting this event and I hope that you all do too. The block format did go over well but I think that it is something that should only be pulled out every so often. Ravnica will definitely have it's own night after it's been available online for a while to make cards available to most players.

With the number of players growing I was really grateful for the pairing software. Without it, this event would be really hard to handle.

Somehow I managed to forget to put the winner of TPDC 1.5 onto my world standings spreadsheet. Here is the updated and correct (I hope) version.

TPDC World Standings
Rank Points Player
1 82 luckybear41
2 66 briefcandle
3 52 noridoom
4 42 hoadley
5 42 tusker
6 40 talionis11
7 36 digdude13
8 32 evu
9 32 lathspell
10 28 vylander13
11 24 hobo_in_a_tuxedo
12 24 lordofducks
13 14 does3damage
14 14 nuklear cooper
15 11 rpitcher
16 10 russellmagictoothandnail555
17 8 neo10
18 8 cloak1783
19 8 geoffreyharlow
20 7 metalatog
21 6 psycho_atlas
22 6 taunton_cider_elf
23 4 swamprat
24 4 mountainproud
25 2 zombiefl12
26 2 speilmage
27 2 nateetan
28 2 plutar