Pauper Gauntlet round six

We are now in round six. If a deck loses a single match now it is eliminated for good.

What is the Pauper Gauntlet?
All about the Pauper Gauntlet Season 03: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/the-pauper-gauntlet.html
All the deck lists: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/the-decks-of-pauper-gauntlet-s03.html

Round six
Round six is played in the Tournament Practice room.Here are all the results of round six so far
23 decks entered round six.

Aristocrats defeats Burn 2-1
Pauper Nightmare is bested by RUG Tron 0-2
BorosKitty Initiated defeats Affinity 2-0
MBC wins over JeskaiKitty
BUGs & Pigs defeat Infect

Pig Trinket crushes the Goblins
Goblin Storm defeats Dimir Teachings somehow
Bant Sword and Shield defeats Grixis Affinity
Slivers defeats Bant Tokens
RUG Tron wins the mirror against RUG Tron

Spitful Leeches takes out DelverFiend
UG Madness defeats Grixis Teachings
WW Soul Tokens defeats Grixis Control


These were the matches played last week in round six:
Mono Red Heroic defeats Kuldotha Jeskai 2-0
Infect is crushed by Dimir Teachings 0-2
Green One defeats Affinity 2-1
Izzet Cooldotha defeats Midnight Presence 2-0
Blue Bichinho loses to MBC 0-2

Death Control dies to Izzet Tron 0-2
Stompy defeats a quitter 2-0
Burn loses to Teachings 1-2
Stompy Tokens races Burn 2-0

17-5 so far. Only one deck remains to be played in round six; Cyborgs


What happens now?
Round six will end on March 14th. Round seven will then begin and last only one week.

Top 10 decks still alive
BUGs & Pigs, Green One, Mono Red Heroic, Stompy (5)

The Eliminations to this point
Round six eliminations so far: Infect, Blue Bichinho, Death Control, Burn (runner-up from last season) and Pauper Nightmare.
24th place (round five) Illusory Tricks, White Heroes, Goblins, Suicide Black, Turbo Angler, Simic Oracle, Kuldotha Mardu, Elves, Rhystic Tron, MUC, Black Auramancer, Love Train, 
36th place (round four) Counter-Kitty,UB Trinket Control, Rakdos Vampires, Flying Ninjas, Turbo Zoo, Shroudfang Ninja. Delver, Green Ramp LD, Snow-Go, Turbo Exhume
45th place: Shared by the 26 decks eliminated in round three: Affinity, Exhume Control, Familiars, Rebel Grind, Pestilence Control, Encroaching Blight, Green Grifters, The Pauper Gauntlet, Project X, Tortured Toolbox, RG Land Crusher, RG Landfall, DelverFiend, Eggs, Gary Busey LD, Selesnya Flash, Abzan Grindhouse, Bant Fog, Crocajund, BUG Proliferators, Evil Allies, Land-o-derm, Pig Trinket, Sultai Delve, 5-color Green
70th place: Shared by nine decks that died during double Elimination, (round one and two): Red Land Destruction, Mono Black Land Destruction, Glass Cannon Red, Tortured Madness,  Cheaty Morph, Living End, 1-land Spy, UB Justice Control and Dragon Delve.

Round 1 ended 56-22 (72% match win rate)
Round 2 ended 13-9 (59% win)
Round 3 ended 43-26 (62% win)
Round 4 ended 32-11 (74% win - best win rate so far in Pauper Gauntlet history!)
Round 5 ended 23-12 (66% win)

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Shadows over Innistrad: mechanics

Shadows over Innistrad set is on the way, hence it is high time to introduce new mechanics:

• double-faced cards. It is well known mechanic, however some rules changes take place with SOI prerelease. Since then, the converted mana cost of a flipped card is equal to the cost of the unflipped side. Well, it's relevant change and keep it in mind.
• Investigate: put a colorless Clue artifact token onto the battlefield with {2}, Sacrifice this artifact: Draw a card.
• Madness comes back from Torment / Time Spiral. It allows you to pay an alternate cost to cast a spell if it is discarded. It doesn't matter what its card type is, so for example you may cast creature with madness cost during yours opponent turn. The spell's mana cost and converted mana cost don't change. You're just paying the madness cost instead.
• Delirium: an ability word that gives an advantageous effect whenever there are four or more card types among cards in your graveyard. The card types that could show up in your graveyard are artifact, creature, enchantment, instant, land, planeswalker, sorcery and tribal.
• Skulk: a creature with skulk ability can't be blocked by creatures with greater power

Converting Pauper to Modern part 2 - Angler Delver

Part 1 (Stompy and Delver) here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2016/03/converting-pauper-to-modern-part-1.html

In this series we are trying to convert Pauper decks to Modern. This week we will look at Angler Delver, also known as Turbo Angler. This is the blue black tempo deck featuring Delver of Secrets and Gurmag Angler along with self-mill and counterspells.

Deck list
2 Deprive
6 Island
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Flooded Strand
1 Gitaxian Probe
3 Gurmag Angler
2 Murderous Cut
3 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4 Watery Grave
1 Mortuary Mire
3 Thoughtseize
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Thought Scour
2 Victim of Night
1 Swamp
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Think Twice
4 Serum Visions
2 Cryptic Command
1 Dispel

Sideboard
2 Duress
3 Negate
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Spellskite
4 Fulminator Mage
1 Thoughtseize

A sample match with Angler Delver:


I was a bit discouraged when I discovered the more recent Grixis Delver decks (right before the Modern format was overtaken by Eldrazi). Grixis Delver just seems like a much better version of this deck.

The idea is to build a budget Modern deck that resembles the Pauper deck. What changes would you make? What would you take out? What would you bring in instead? When suggesting changes, keep in mind that we are under heavy budget restrictions here.

Next week: Another one of my recent experiments - Mono Black Control!

Stay tuned for more Pauper to Modern deck conversions.

Best of 5

Wizards decided to make a change to how sideboarding functions in best-of-five matches played on Sunday at Pro Tours and the Magic: The Gathering World Championship. Starting with Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad in Madrid, Spain. The first two games played in a best-of-five playoff match on Sunday will be pre-sideboard games. After Game 2 is completed, players may change cards in and out from their sideboards and main decks in between games.

In my opinion, it is a possitive change. Imagine, you are in the finals. Five digits prize for being a winner. You lost game one, just because. Some deck are really difficult to stop pre-sideboard if they have a decent starting hand, for instance Affinity in Modern. In second game you got a screw and you are out of tournament. You may say life or shit happens, but Magic the Gathering is not a lottery and the luck factor should be minimalized if it is possible. Best of 5 is one of the ways the to do it. It favors better players. However, the fact is that some deck will benefit more on this change than others. I'm speaking of decks which have higher percentage winning rate pre-sideboard. But still, there is no deck which wins every game pre-sideboard. Assume, it is 80% of games. So, winning two games in a row pre-sideboard is only 64%. Competition will be more balanced.

Pauper Gauntlet round six first half

We are now in round six. If a deck loses a single match now it is eliminated for good.

What is the Pauper Gauntlet?
All about the Pauper Gauntlet Season 03: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/the-pauper-gauntlet.html
All the deck lists: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2015/11/the-decks-of-pauper-gauntlet-s03.html

Round six
Round six is played in the Tournament Practice room.Here are all the results of round six so far
23 decks entered round six.

Mono Red Heroic defeats Kuldotha Jeskai 2-0
Infect is crushed by Dimir Teachings 0-2
Green One defeats Affinity 2-1
Izzet Cooldotha defeats Midnight Presence 2-0
Blue Bichinho loses to MBC 0-2

Death Control dies to Izzet Tron 0-2
Stompy defeats a quitter 2-0
Burn loses to Teachings 1-2
Stompy Tokens races Burn 2-0

5-4 so far. 14 decks are left to play in round six.



Top 10 decks still alive
BUGs & Pigs, Green One, Mono Red Heroic, Stompy (5)

The Eliminations to this point
Round six eliminations so far: Infect, Blue Bichinho, Death Control, Burn (runner-up from last season)
24th place (round five) Illusory Tricks, White Heroes, Goblins, Suicide Black, Turbo Angler, Simic Oracle, Kuldotha Mardu, Elves, Rhystic Tron, MUC, Black Auramancer, Love Train, 
36th place (round four) Counter-Kitty,UB Trinket Control, Rakdos Vampires, Flying Ninjas, Turbo Zoo, Shroudfang Ninja. Delver, Green Ramp LD, Snow-Go, Turbo Exhume
45th place: Shared by the 26 decks eliminated in round three: Affinity, Exhume Control, Familiars, Rebel Grind, Pestilence Control, Encroaching Blight, Green Grifters, The Pauper Gauntlet, Project X, Tortured Toolbox, RG Land Crusher, RG Landfall, DelverFiend, Eggs, Gary Busey LD, Selesnya Flash, Abzan Grindhouse, Bant Fog, Crocajund, BUG Proliferators, Evil Allies, Land-o-derm, Pig Trinket, Sultai Delve, 5-color Green
70th place: Shared by nine decks that died during double Elimination, (round one and two): Red Land Destruction, Mono Black Land Destruction, Glass Cannon Red, Tortured Madness,  Cheaty Morph, Living End, 1-land Spy, UB Justice Control and Dragon Delve.


Round 1 ended 56-22 (72% match win rate)
Round 2 ended 13-9 (59% win)
Round 3 ended 43-26 (62% win)
Round 4 ended 32-11 (74% win - best win rate so far in Pauper Gauntlet history!)
Round 5 ended 23-12 (66% win)

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ML Bot 10.80, tide protected

We released ML Bot 10.80, implementing "tide protection".

As many of you probably remember, Jan 16th WotC updated the banned card list. The list included valuable cards like Splinter Twin. The banning affected the value of several other cards. The value of some decks decreased and the cards in these decks followed the same sort. Splinter Twin  and Keranos, God of Storms are two notable examples.

The banning had a bad impact on the bots - in few hours they bought a large quantity of these cards. The prices dropped in the following 2 days and so the bots had a neat loss. Basically the players used the bots to drop off all their copies before the price went down.

We worked very hard to implement a protection system which has now been tested and deployed tested successfully. The protection system is automatically active on all the bots, monitors the market and stops buying certain card when conditions are met. The trigger is very reactive, meaning that 1-2 hours after the banning the protection already "senses" the problem and automatically stops the bots from buying the card.

The system, which we internally named "flood protection system", is similar to the one implemented on mtgotraders and cardbot. On Jan 16h, if you tried to sell Splinter Twin and Keranos, they did not buy them even if they website said the opposite. Mtgotraders and cardbot had already a protection system to prevent the flood and we are guess it worked pretty well - we were unable to sell them any banned card nor any other card whose price was going down.

Don't expect the protection to apply in normal market conditions. The system is tuned to almost never trigger, except in exceptional cases like the ones of Jan 16th.

Converting Pauper to Modern part 1 - Stompy and Delver

Back in the day (2013 that is) I started a video series about converting Pauper decks to  (budget) Modern.

Recently I decided to resume this project, partly because of the current state of Modern. Playing RG Tron competetively felt pointless given that the April banning of something will change the format entirely after the Eldrazi stunt by Wizards.

Next week I will start showing you my recent experiments (including Angler Delver, MBC and DelverFiend) but here, as a start, are my two old attempts at this format jumping thing.

STOMPY¨


 DELVER
 

Stay tuned for more Pauper to Modern deck conversions.