So does mine, but it's ludicrously powerful unless the whole meta shifts against it. Which would mean no turn 2 combo...which would make value excellent...

I'll probably change my deck, but I just feel like it's clever enough to be an acceptable poor choice

Really? I guess that means you had some form of Vindication...even Grave Titan only 4-1's a turn 1 Karn. I'll have to look around a lot more then...perhaps my clever deck is less clever than I thought...

Edit: Nevermind, gotta remember that no tie thing. Karn 3-3s Titan.

Decks I'm not playing

Painter's Servant/Grindstone/Mishra's Workshop (I submitted this at first for the t2 win but it seemed too vulnerable. Also, didn;t win t2, derp.)
Painter's/Grindstone/Something for cover (Countermagic?)
Treasure Hunt/Seismic Assault/Lotus (Kills the everloving heck out of Karn decks, but sweeps to any anti-combo tech)

Thought I had a really fun deck in Winds of Change, Banefire, mysterious third card I wasn't sure about...but it turns out the opponent would be able to put their cards on top of their library and yours on the bottom of yours.

I thought I had found an auto 3-3 that I had to find JUST the right third card to sneak out some on the draw wins.

My deck is gonna suck so bad. I just can't be bothered this week to think of something serious.

I think my deck is good, but that probably means its not . It definitely folds to one available archetype. I'm still considering another deck though.

Seems like the choice this round is "lose to turn 2 combo" or "win with turn 2 combo." If everyone is all "screw combo" then going full bore power train sweeps the round. If everyone super metas and goes full bore power, then turn 2 combo sweeps the round.

If everyone mega-metas then we have an indeterminate blob of decks, the most efficient of which will probably get more points

I just made an anti-mill deck. It will probably suck against everything that does not try to mill

Timesifter is implicitly banned too, right?

I believe a deck that could play it on T1 would be banned (could win before opponent's first complete turn), but the card in a deck that couldn't get it out on T1 is allowed. But I'd defer to CJ on official stance.

I must have spent a solid 10 hours studying this meta last time we had it. The #1 deck to beat in the format ended up winning it all. Sadness.

Valentine's, 2013. Unless another time has come along.

There aren't reliable ways to get a lot of mana. And with Wasteland so easily going into so many decks, fringe possibilities like Cloudpost just aren't gonna be good. That said, there have been 10 or so sets released since then, so maybe that shakes things up. But not really in regards to mana.

Wasteland does seem pretty useless since it doesn't stop anything from actually coming down as far as I can tell. (Unless peeps start playing Karoo to try and bypass Daze)...either way Encroach seems like a much better anti-land strategy. I think this format would be much more fun if the power 5 were banned. Then some pretty fun and interesting decks become viable.

Because Desert and Mutavault are both things that are gonna get played.

I wish Disenchant only cost 1...

Is there some generally accepted list of cards that this concept of 'power 5' is so self-explanatory that they need not be named?

I assume Daze is one. Wasteland I'd have assumed is one but if in the same paragraph you describe it as useless, maybe not. Mutavault, Chronomaton, ?Desert? ?Memnite?

Daze
Chronomaton
Wasteland
Bitterblossom
Encroach

I didn't list them because it gives out pretty much the only "viable" three decks. Mutavault is ok, because there are many decks which can chump it and still win. Desert is ok because I dont really see how it's useful, but I could be wrong.

Daze is like...unstoppable, outside of exposiing yourself to Wasteland/Encroach.
Chronomaton goes in any deck and can't really be answered in combo with removal.
Wasteland is fine...unless the rest is banned, then it becomes the most powerful card in the format.
Bitterblossom is crazy strong even with Daze around, without Daze it may be fine, but it still feels like the winning card.
Encroach is wasteland on crack in this format.

Here's the spreadsheet from the last time that I know we did this format. I don't remember all the decks I considered, but on top of the list was Daze/Chronomaton/Island and Bitterblossom/Swamp/Mutavault or Wasteland, depending on your other expectations. Daze is the obvious first deck since it's a real deck in Vanilla, but when I found Sparksmith, I ran with it due to my expectations of the format having a lot of tokens and Mutavaults. Did pretty good, but Daze was such a format beast. As you can see, it didn't lose to anything completely and only did less than tie against one opponent. 2-lands, 1-mana spell is probably the best way to attack Daze, but at that point, you might leave yourself vulnerable to Bitterblossom. Tough decisions.

That's the issue I've found, you can't beat Daze without becoming vulnerable to decks ignoring Daze...which pretty much guarantees a tie round (anyone playing Daze), a HUGE meta-shift (all anti-daze, Wasteland/Encroach wins), or Daze wins...

Swamp/Gravecrawler/Gravecrawler hates on daze without becoming vulnerable to nonbasic land hate... but I think it might be too slow in the end.

Double Gravecrawler only splits with DazeChron. It loses the race on the draw.