Oh, I read that as old Emrakul. Now that I know it's new Emrakul, I should see if that changes my outcome.


Nah, still a 3-3 split. When you're on the play you get to swing for 13 while my Mindbender is summonsick, then you get to sac your Vassal+Pact to my Mindbender who only hits for 15 before you swing for 13 in the air again.

Okay, now that I've gone through the matchups, Emrakul's cast trigger was relevant a couple times.

The 14/15 Chameleon Colossus could outrace a 13/13 on the play, except for the fact that if they cast the Colossus before I cast Emrakul, I just swing the 7/8 Colossus into Emrakul and it dies.

Zlehtnoba's deck could also try to outrace me by playing Omnath, Locus of Mana first (which will get bigger even faster than usual because of the extra turn Emrakul gives it), but when I'm controlling Zlehtnoba, I can just spend four mana on Nylea, swing with a 2/2 Omnath, and block it with my Blood Vassal.

So scoring turned out to be more interesting than I initially thought.

I thought about the Emrakul you used, but its only advantage was stopping lotus decks, which I didn't think important. It didn't stop Bridge type decks or board wipe decks and it felt like it might lose a few matchups that infinite tokens of any kind would definitely win.

I had Toad on my list too. The first turn-1 kill I found (outside of the obvious fireball to the face) was Toad into Hellkite Charger which looked fun, but I couldn't find a way to slow it down and I never found Pact in my searches for some reason. Just Abduction, Fool's Demise, False Demise, and Gift of Immortality, or maybe I stopped looking after finding those, I don't know.

Another thought I had was running my deck but with Lashweed Lurker in place of Distended Mindbender (still wearing Eldrazi Conscription). And I admit I mostly ran Mindbender for the vanity of being able to run a 2-discard-in-a-turn deck (because it couldn't force multiple discard against 3blanks.dec).

But that seems like it would have been effective. Against Elemental Resonance decks, on the play it would return a Leyline to library and wreck them on mana; on the draw it could either return whatever they cast turn 1 to library and then make them recast it too late and too slow, or return the Leyline (and kill the Resonance) and then Annihilate the thing that was cast.

How is Distended Mindbender legal?

The discard rule only bans "Any deck that can reduce the number of cards in a blank opponent's hand by more than one card during a single turn. (A blank opponent is an opponent with three blank cards.)"

A blank opponent will never have a card with CMC 4 or greater, so Distended Mindbender doesn't break the rule. This is why Cabal Therapy has to be on the banned list explicitly.

Thank you for correcting my deck.

I'm not sure I can win against Spy. Nylea does not have trample, so he can just pump out a bear each turn to block. I must keep Nylea back until Omnath grows big enough to stop the Collossus, but then I'm mostly dead already. Collosus can either pump to survive Nylea and deal me five damage, or regenerate to survive Omnath.



And I just don't have the will to calcuate the match against Valkir. So I'll beleive him

Edit: I need to do this again. Leyline actually has relevant text

And actually, I'm quite sure I can't win against Spy. Garruk always kills Omnath the turn I play it, and Nylea cannot win against the swarm. The deck just doesn't function without the Embrace.

Maybe I should have put Ancestral Mask on Omnath. But for some reason I thought I have no other enchantments on the battlefield, when actually I would have had four.

Darn. I wanted to play a turn one 11/11 haste trampler (Ulrich of the Krallenhorde with Primal Visitation) but that loses to disruption. And (almost) nobody played disruption.

And for the future, Elemental Resonance gives colorless mana, not generic. So Though-Knot was a consideration too.

Also, Ancestral Mask counts all other enchantments on the battlefield, not just yours. So your opponent's enchantments count towards the boost.

I briefly thought about running Aura Gnarlid with an Ancestral Mask on it, but I couldn't find a mana source I felt like running (Leyline Resonance felt too cheap and Black Lotus could be countered by Artifact Blast, which is also what won the Auras! round I looked at).

Actually, I just dejectedly thought you win because Om had trample, but I now realize that Master beats it and I 6-0 you.

When you're on the play, you can attack turn 3 into a 7/7 Master to trade your 6/7 Om before I get enough Wolves to fight it, but that leaves me with Mayor to Chump/Overrun Nylea. If you only attack with Nylea, then I trade 3 wolves and Mayor to kill Om and am left with Master to do the Chump/Overrun game with Nylea.

When you're on the draw, it's the same.

I haven't checked if it matters, but Zleht's Om is 2/3 because of the Leyline.

Edit: It does not matter, you have Emrakul lol

Oh, right. That means I can't get rid of Omnath unless I trade it with Emrakul, which would cause a draw. Fortunately, I have an immortal blocker, and Omnath doesn't have trample. The Nylea beats alone aren't enough to win before Emrakul does.

So I still get the 6-0, but the Emrakul trigger is definitely less relevant than I thought.

Plus the smart move is to spend all of the green mana on Nylea's ability and let the colorless mana dissipate, which makes Omnath a 1/2 with pseudo-deathtouch.

Gah, another thing I completely forgot. I had it in my head that they'd get four green mana every turn (which is clearly not what Elemental Resonance does). Anyway, yeah, result still doesn't change.

that probably would have been better overall for me than garruk relentless

I think this round shows we should preemptively ban infinite-mana combos, like we ban the two-card discard and turn-one wins. I mean, playing Emrakul on one is just about the same as a turn-one win. At, least, it doesn't make sense to allow one and ban the other. I'd suggest we ban both, or neither. I'm fine with either option, it's just the inconsistency that bothers me (probably something to do with my theoretical physics training ).

Disruption already beats combo. It's just that precious little disruption got played this round. Last time we ran Auras (and only one person had figured out LeylineResonance), ArtifactBlast.dec won. The game continues to be about reading the meta and positioning yourself well in it.


Upside formats are always going to be powerful whether there's an infinite mana engine or not. It it isn't infinite mana, it'll be a first turn lockdown. The game will continue to be about figuring out what deck others are likely to play and submitting a deck that beats them.

So you don't think it's about discovery? Because I started thinking, maybe banning combos would kill the joy for some people. And I thought, maybe we should allow turn-one kills, if anybody can find them, and then just ban the offending card? Thus rewarding the person who figured out something new? As you said, the infinite mana engine can be beat by Artifact Blast. So let's unban turn-one kills and see where this gets us.

Reading the meta is different for established formats, like Vanilla, and for new formats, like Auras. I must say vanilla is getting a bit boring.

Alt rounds are sometimes about discovery, sure. I'm sure nobody ever ran distended mindbender in any earlier round. Since alt rounds so infrequently recur, banning for them is futile. The key card to CJ's deck is Unhallowed Pact, but banning that now seems pointless. Emrakul is just one bomb fatty of many - notice my deck had a t1 15/16 trample annihilate double discard, and without infinite mana. The regular ban list procedure keeps vanilla rounds in check - generally even keeping t2 wins on the ban list. There are no t1 kills hiding in vanilla, but upside alt rounds need a safety valve because reactive bans are too slow when the nature of the alt round itself was the real culprit, and it's not coming back anytime soon.

So, let's keep the alt rounds about discovery, with some extra bans based on previous occurences of that format? If nothing is obvious enough to be banned pre-emptively, than maybe the person who finds the non-obvious turn-one kill/combo/lock should get the reward (round win)?