Results November 25, 2011

It's been a long, long time since I uploaded any actual decklists to this site. Things have changed in my life, and Magic hasn't been the first thing on my mind every day for a while now. Instead I'm thinking of stuff like how wonderful it is my girlfriend's pregnant! It's still nice to read some of the comments on my latest (banned list) update calling for more updates though, so here is a small one. Only two decks had a better than 5/3/0 result, and one of those was mine. Not that I won, but at least I didn't completely fail at building a decent deck, I just played the wrong one :)

---

Results

.

Nr.	Name	Deck	Colors	P/W/D/B
01.	Andre Pannekoek	UB Reanimator		5/5/0/0
02.	Desmond Scholtens	Burn		5/4/0/0
03.	Siebe van der Veer	MBC		5/3/0/0
04.	Jasper Boelens	Affinity		5/3/0/0
05.	Mathijs Hoogeveen	Umbral Elves		5/3/0/0
06.	Maarten Jacobs	MBC		5/3/0/0
07.	Gijsbert Haaksman	GU Mimic		5/3/0/0
08.	Sebastiaan Tuinstra	GU Madness		5/3/0/0
09.	Johan Nobel	RUG Proliferator		5/2/0/0
10.	Martijn Hennink	GW Hatebears		5/2/0/0
11.	Chris *****	Vial Slivers		5/2/0/0
12.	Niels *****	Burning Vengeance		5/1/0/1
13.	Oswin ten Brinke	Affinity		5/1/0/1
14.	Elderik Peeman	Grapeshot Combo		5/2/0/0
15.	Johan Nobel	Affinity		3/1/0/0
16.	Allard van der Made	UB Reanimator		5/1/0/0

---

Andre Pannekoek - UB Reanimator

Creatures
4 Hapless Researcher
4 Owl Familiar
4 Ulamog's Crusher
2 Pathrazer of Ulamog (U)

Spells
4 Lotus Petal
4 Careful Study
4 Duress
1 Ponder
4 Preordain
3 Reanimate (U)
4 Exhume
3 Dragon Breath

Lands
10 Island
9 Swamp

Sideboard
SB: 4 Disfigure
SB: 4 Spell Pierce
SB: 4 Steel Sabotage
SB: 3 Daze

---

Desmond Scholtens - Burn

Creatures
4 Spark Elemental
3 Hellspark Elemental (U)

Spells
1 Burst Lightning
4 Chain Lighting
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Needle Drop
3 Shard Volley
4 Flame Rift
2 Magma Jet (U)
4 Rift Bolt
4 Fireblast

Lands
19 Mountain

Sideboard
SB: 2 Burst Lightning
SB: 4 Incinerate
SB: 3 Martyr of Ashes
SB: 3 Kiln Fiend
SB: 3 Smash to Smithereens

---

I hope you can forgive me for posting less and less often. I'm not yet planning on quitting this blog though, so please bear with me ;)

Until next time!

Banned List Update 6

As of 07/11/2011, Cranial Plating and Thopter Foundry are banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen. At the same time Ancient Den, Great Furnace, Seat of the Synod, Tree of Tales, and Vault of Whispers will be pulled off the banned lists and are, once again, legal to play at our tournaments.

So, what happened while this little blog didn't get updated? We rebranded our Peasant tournaments to Budget, and have been playing Pauper events for the last few months as an experiment. Our conclusion was that it is not quite as varied as Peasant, and certainly doesn't offer the same amount of build-around-me cards as Peasant. Starting this month we will be running Peasant events again. Playing Pauper did offer a few insights though.

One of our players pointed out (a while ago) that the Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek combo, while seemingly beatable, kept other control decks in check. Playing Pauper reinforced that impression, as that format has a wider range of control decks than our Peasant metagame had, while still having a lot of agressive decks. There doesn't seem to be a playable control deck that can handle both the early onslaught of the various aggressive decks as well as the inevitability of that combo. Once we knew we wanted to kill the combo, the question remained which one of the pieces we had to ban.

This is where our second insight helped us, namely that Affinity isn't a problem in Pauper. The artifact lands have been banned not once, but twice in the, I mean our little history of Peasant. The last few years of Magic have really enriched the metagame with numerous good cards and archetypes, as well as answers to decks that previously seemed unbeatable. When first we unbanned the artifact lands because of this, eventually a gross list incorporating the Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek combo proved to be so much better than anything else that we could bring to the table, that we couldn't think of any solution other than banning the artifact lands again. Our first reaction was to ban Sword of the Meek, but than we asked ourselves, is there a deck that wants to play Thopter Foundry without the Sword? We figured that, without artifact land in the equation, there is no such deck. Then we asked ourselves, do we want to bring back artifact lands? After all, affinity is, as I said before, not a problem in Pauper, and certainly not more explosive than the various infect decks that prompted us to ban Invigorate.

Once we decided it was okay to bring back artifact land, we knew Thopter Foundry was the card to ban. Of course, that meant Cranial Plating also had to go. In the end I think we have a list that more closely resembles the Pauper banned list, adjusted for Peasant concerns. I hope you will enjoy the changes to the banned list and the certain changes to the metagame it entails. Have fun!

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

PS. In an effort to clean up the rules section, I stopped chronicling changes to the banned list. I hope you can appreciate it.

Banned List Update 5

As of 02/06/2011, Invigorate is banned in peasant tournaments in Groningen.

We realize this banning comes short after the March bannings, but we did put Invigorate on the watchlist then. After only two tournaments we have to conclude that Invigorate is simply too strong in infect decks. Yes, an infect deck is still beatable, but you have to have a one-mana answer, because they can kill you on turn two. Black has good options that fit in black deck's strategies, but other colors aren't as fortunate.

We believe that, rather than let the metagame warp itself around these super-aggressive infect builds, it's better to eliminate the worst offender in the deck. This will slow down infect decks by a turn or two and give other decks the room to be somewhat more inventive with their answers.

To see the full list of banned cards, click here.

Results April 29, 2011

A tad late, but we're not dead! It's been a bit hectic for me lately, so I didn't spent too much time on magic, let alone on this blog. There's been two tournaments since, the Spring Qualifier and the end-of-season Finale. More on the last one later, but first the results of that qualifier. Unfortunately, they're not quite up to speed, because I can't remember what everyone was playing. Apologies for that.

PS. Since Johnny played the same deck as in september (save for some sideboard slots) and I don't have decklists for André and Sietze, I'll be posting the top 3 deck only.

Rank

Player (click * to see decklist)

Deck

Colors

P/W/D

01.

Gijsbert Haaksman *

Grapeshot Combo

5/4/0

Creatures Spells 4 Lotus Petal 4 Chromatic Sphere 4 Chromatic Star 4 Dark Ritual 4 Rite of flames 4 Demonic Tutor (U) 4 Grapeshot 4 Ideas Unbound 4 Manamorphose 3 Words of Wisdom 4 Seething song 1 Ignite Memories(U) Lands 4 Ancient Spring 4 Irrigation Ditch 4 Island 4 Sulfur Vent Sideboard SB: 4 Disrupt SB: 3 Duress SB: 4 Red Elemental Blast SB: 4 Early Frost

02.

Rob de Jonge *

B/G Infect

5/4/0

Creatures 4 Vector Asp 4 Blight Mamba 4 Ichorclaw Myr 4 Plague Stinger 1 Cystbearer 3 Rot Wolf Spells 4 Berserk (U) 3 Bonesplitter 3 Rancor 3 Vines of Vastwood 1 Sylvan Library (U) 4 Invigorate Lands 2 Evolving Wilds 11 Forest 6 Swamp 3 Teramorphic Expanse Sideboard SB: 2 Duress SB: 4 Nature's Claim SB: 2 Relic of Progenitus SB: 1 Doomblade SB: 3 Nausea SB: 3 Snuff Out

03.

Jasper Boelens *

Thopterpost

5/4/0

Creatures 4 Aven Riftwatcher 4 Sea Gate Oracle 1 Mnemonic Wall 2 Mulldrifter Spells 1 Condescend 1 Enlightened Tutor (U) 1 Expedition Map 4 Accumulated Knowledge 1 Azorius Signet 1 Counterspell 2 Momentary Blink 1 Muddle the Mixture 4 Prohibit 3 Prophetic Prism 1 Sword of the Meek (U) 3 Thopter Foundry (U) 1 Faith's Fetters 1 Mystical Teachings 1 Quicksilver Geyser Lands 1 Azorius Chancery 4 Cloudpost 4 Glimmerpost 8 Island 6 Plains Sideboard SB: 2 Sunlance SB: 1 Circle of Protection: Black SB: 1 Circle of Protection: Red SB: 1 Hindering Touch SB: 3 Journey to Nowhere SB: 3 Lone Missionary SB: 1 Dismantling Blow SB: 1 Holy Light SB: 1 Serrated Arrows SB: 1 Ulamog's Crusher

04.

Sietze Wijma

Elves

5/3/0

05.

André Pannekoek

???

5/3/0

06.

Johnny Niemeyer

Cheese

5/3/0

07.

Matthijs Hoogeveen

Umbral Elves

5/2/0

08.

Desmond Scholtens

???

5/2/0

09.

Martijn Hennink

Brown-White Beatdown

5/2/0

10.

Remco van der Berg

???

5/1/0

11.

Niels Gramser

Moosebite

5/1/0

12.

Julius Sijtstra

MBC

5/1/0

That's all for this installment!

Until next time!