The Chalice of Life thing was interesting....... Is that better or worse than scalding tongs. Or the same?

Most often equivalent but in some situations better (and in some situations, worse).

Being lifeloss rather than damage means it doesn't get prevented by the likes of Energy Field, Glacial Chasm, Worship/Ali from Cairo, etc. On the other hand, Tongs being damage means it can be redirected to a Planeswalker (often meaning the planeswalker's +1 per turn is offset by 1 redirected damage), while Chalice's lifeloss will never hurt a planeswalker.

Doing its hurting in 5-life chunks means it can outrace a 1-life-per-turn lifegain mechanism like Sheltered Valley, while the best Scalding Tongs can do is hold pace with such a lifegainer.

However, requiring the 10 points of lifegain to transform and become a wincon means there's a risk of never being able to transform if you're taking 1 pt of damage per turn.

Also, Pithing Needle / Phyrexian Revoker et al can shut down a Chalice of Life by denying it the ability to be activated, but can't shut down a Scalding Tongs.




I entered my line in that I just copied Scarlet's line and filled in the one blank with the 6-0 score I am pretty sure is correct (Leyline of Singularity makes sure two Chronomatons never coexist, and Karakas bounces a Chronomaton at some point in the cold war making the Cenn's Tactician the big dog without threatening opposition.) Any other mistakes on my line, I blame Scarlet's math and my laziness.

Haha razor, we are too good.

Was the discard rule removed?

Good point. The 'rule' is in the banned list. "Any deck that can reduce the number of cards in an opponent's hand by more than one card during a single turn.". Jace, the Living Guildpact is a banned card.

So POSValkir probably should get reverted to the last valid submission (it sounds like there were resubmits). Jim?

Whoops. Yeah, that slipped through the cracks. I forgot what that ultimate actually did.

Sorry, Valkir, but I'm going to have to revert your deck.

EVERYBODY WHO'S ALREADY PUT IN THEIR SCORES, please redo your score against deck 9.

Hmmm, that feels a bit over the top, but ok. I feel like this particular ability should be ok since it takes so long to activate and allows the opponent to replay everything they initially had since everything not on the battlefield (or exiled) is reshuffled and drawn. Seems like the difference between daze and force of will.

I was just gonna ask how the cards got stacked the library since I was trying to figure out if I could etch a win out of the 2-2 mine and Jacks deck seems to be.

Edit: To clarify though...I totally missed that as well, since all my "testing" only ever made them discard one card...

Booo for perfect information lol

Yeah, Jace isn't really a problematic card, but I have to be consistent with enforcing that rule. The alternative is individually listing every card that breaks that rule, which would make the banned list much longer and harder to read.

Aww, now I have 1 point less

Bah, I was gonna be a smart ass and say "Non-Planeswalker" but Chandra is staring at me like she's just waiting to burn me. Oh well...I was hoping to enhance the Jace deck by swapping in Sand Silos and Imaginary Pet or some acceptable 1 CMC blue guy too

I think you do better than you had before (you sure do vs me!) so all-win for you!

Some other rulesets define legality of discard by turn (they allow multiple discard in a single turn, but disallow any discard at all before the opponent's second turn). Our ruleset is the "max one" form. And even if it's a not-actually-likely-to-be-used case, the ruleset should be concrete, not negotiable or open to interpretation. Ensures no cases of "You allowed him to run that card? I wouldd have run that card but didn't because I could see it was against the rules!"


But on the academic point of deck stacking resolution: random effects like deck shuffles are chosen to resolve in the best interests of the non-owner of the source of the random effect. Which is to say your opponent gets to stack both decks to the opponent's best outcome. So you get the things you want first last, while your opponent will get the things the opponent wants first first.



Oh, and I believe Scarlet misscored vs Zuty and I copied that misscore. Leyline only makes nonland permanents legendary, so Karakas can't bounce Inkmoth, and Inkmoth wrecks us.

I'm losin' points left and right.

Next time I won't calculate 15 rounds within the 15 minutes I'm off at work. Haven't made this many errors in a while.

But we do get 2 points from Kiora. Her Kraken tokens die to our Leyline/Karakas.
Still worse than the 3-3 we had from Jace though

Started filling in mine. And may have accidentally deleted a couple of the scores for deck 15 during editing =/

I'm finishing my row now before I go to work, but I'm leaving notes on the ones I'm not sure about.

That's what I thought at first, too.

And it's true, for her first emblem, we can bounce the Krakens as fast as Kiora can make them.

Unfortunately, once Kiora creates a second Kraken-making emblem we quickly get dunked.

(edit) No, wait, they're legendary! She can't get multiple Krakens in play at once! Lol!

Yeah, I did much worse overall. I know it's a technicality, but I can never activate Kiora's ultimate against you or you win. I just plus one to infinity...

As for Jace vs. Chrono: The way I saw it I get you to 2 life then you win.

Actually, Kiora can't even survive firing her ult.

Whenever she fires her ult, that's a turn where she didn't fire her +1. So that's a turn where our Tactician, that's been quietly growing every turn, can attack and kill Kiora!

Kiora drops on T1, as does Cenn's Tactician. Kiora +1's right away, so after turn 1, Kiora has 3 Loyalty, and Cenn's Tactician is a 1/1.

After we each have had turn 4, Kiora has 6 loyalty, and Cenn's Tactician has 3 +1/+1 counters on it.

This could go on as long as we want, but the fact of the matter is, until Kiora fires her ult, she has only 2 more loyalty counters than Cenn's Tactician's power. So if she ever fires her ult (-5 loy, she now has notably less loyalty than CT has power) , on our next turn we bounce the Kraken and attack and kill Kiora. And we'd go on to win (bouncing a kraken every turn then attacking).

So Kiora can't even usefully fire her ult. She needs to keep on +1'ing the Tactician in perpetuity. Our Tactician gets to be a zillion/zillion creature but never gets an opportunity to attack and deal some damage.

(damn, sniped)

Finished mine. I figured Lodestone would be a weak choice, but Vintage MUD is my jam, especially when I don't know what to expect

Also, I know razor all too well. And it's kinda funny how little Lotus there was.

kiora +1 targets, the deck can't win against someone that does nothing

oh crap, I missed that it had to target your opponent's permanent. why the heck did they do that?