Sure thing, if you guys think that there's a better BLINK deck than UWx then I'm all for it.

Let's find the most interesting / best blink deck next!

I know that colors are very restrictive, but i wanted some decklists that could be compared not only by the win rate. I felt that without color restrictions we could see some decks with good win rate but with very different builds. Anyway i can consider this possibility for the next one.

Very different takes on one concept was what I thought this thing was about imo. That's why I tried to go left of center with my deck idea, otherwise you get 5-6 very same-y decks, which would make testing a chore.

Yeah this makes them similar, but this week we have seen different concepts about revolt, who built around enchantments, who built revolt goodstuff, who put cards together in a deck
As i said i can consider the possibility to leave deckbuilders free to choose the colors, but let me just make an example about what could happen.
Let's say i choose "energy" as next theme. Then we could see a RG aggro energy deck, a UG ramp energy deck, a UR control or burn deck, and since we have said that "energy" is only a subtheme (as it was for revolt) we could see many different decks. Now we will have many different decks, that could be all strong and with high win rate, but you cannot compare them apart for the win rate.
What i wanted to do with this contest was to find a challenge for all the deckbuilders here on nga, and see who can tune and optimize better a concept, this is where the challenge is.

I have a pretty strong Bant Flicker deck that I will post later, I assume we are sticking with a giant thread rather than individual ones in the constructed forum?

It was amazing that we got such a variety of decks when the only guidance was Abzan Revolt. I agree that it should just be "Revolt" or "Abzan" and let people explore after that

Still it was really really fun

Yeah, I'm down for flash/blink as the next build around theme. I've got a couple of brews ready to go.

I agree with Giocher. It needs to be reigned in with theme and color so there can be a relative comparison between decks. If it's left too wide open, folks will gravitate to an archetype they're comfortable with (both builders and testers). So control will build control and vote control. Aggro will build aggro and vote aggro etc. We want people to show case building skills and testers to be limited in their bias.


elk

Yeah, good point Elky. It's true that it was much easier to compare the Abzan Revolts cuz of that. My dream contest of "best Spike deck" wouldn't make much sense

Indeed, a flash deck is very different than a blink/flicker deck. One wants to play creatures on oppo's end step to have the most board information advantage and the other wants to abuse ETB effects.

I don't mind if someone wants to go more aggro or control as long as they stay within the same theme of flicker.

I think that is normal going towards aggro or control or etc. if you are that kind of player, i see that my deck are always controlish and i cannot build a proper aggro deck.
If we take the last pro tour we see 6 mardu vehicles in the top 6, but which is the best one? The one that won? Not sure. The decklists are indeed very similar, with less than 10 different cards, but even these few differences can change a lot in multiple mathups in the long period.
I wanted to reproduce this here, find an excuse to make people discuss and test on the same archetype to find the best solutions for it. We have not the whole cardpool and rarity restrictions, so we would not see very similar decklists, but they would be different depending on the direction given by the deckbuilder.
If we consider this week archetype, what i would expect in the end was a discussion between deckbuilders and people that tested them on what actually worked nicely and what could be changed, things like "i think Bigone Bishop would be better than Solemn Recruit", but maybe since the theme was not really competitive or appreciated there was not an interest in discussing it a lot.
Anyway that was my original idea, to see that small differences that makes the best deckbuilder better than the others, but it was an experiment and people can say give us the freedom to build what we want.

You cannot really determine who is a better deck builder, as a lot will be down to personal choice, just like you cant say the person who won a tournament is the best builder, they just had a good deck and the cards fell for them rather than their opponent, there is always luck in cards.

Well, if you want to require colors, I'd still prefer not 3 colors. Asking for UWX flash is very different from saying must be esper. We just don't have the mana for 3 to be consistent in anything other than durdle, so having a choice, like UW or UG flash, instead of insisting on Bant, actually goes a long way if testing the concept is the goal.

But hey, do it your way, it worked this time, it will work next time too, imo. This was a lot of fun to participate in.

Regarding discussions, we had some, and they were uninteresting. We also, somewhat, demonstrated that revolt is not total garbage - surprising.

Regarding learning how to build solid Aggro decks - the trick is to practice building Aggro decks. A deck building tournament is probably a good place to start. Give us a control challenge, and I'll get to learn something from it too.

How about you define a color set... like must include at least 2 from UWB and be tap out control? Or haha, must try to break this card: ______. That way you are clear on the challenge, but give the deckbuilders some limited freedom for their designs.

I can live with this as long as minimal splashes don't constitute 3 colours. Or we could state UW/UG is just the base and the 3rd colour is optional. For instance I have an Azorius flash deck, but it has Tamiyo.

To me the interesting question is not: can we build a solid UGW flash deck? But rather: which is better, UG or UW flash? Although, I should mention, I'm not the best person to discuss flash decks... it's not something I'd be likely to build or play, tbh.

The best deckbuilder is only an excuse, the real goal is to see different choices about one deck, discuss which one works better than another and move towards a decklist that is the product of multiple deckbuilders and multiple people that tested it.

Why is this your example of the deckbuilding challenge going wrong? Those are very different approaches to energy and it does give you a way to feel out what is the best way to exploit energy, be it aggro, tempo, combo, ramp, control, etc.

The whole point of tapping deckbuilders with diverse perspectives and skillsets is that you will get unique tech strategies, and not just "my aggro deck is infinitesimally better vs. X decks, because I run 2x more 3-drops than you"

If you say "flicker deck" and some people say "I wonder what Selesnya Flicker looks like" and goes out and builds it and it turns out great, then you've opened whole new avenues for deckbuilding. If you say "Build Bant Flicker", well, then you'll 99% of the same cards and be arguing in the margins.

I concur.

So the argument FOR color restrictions is to ensure that you are comparing apples to apples and not, say apples to pickles. And the argument AGAINST it is that you'll end up comparing 50 different varieties of Red Delicious with nary a Granny Smith in sight.

So use color restrictions when the strat is very general and leave it open ended when the strat is specific. I think Revolt is kind of general - there are a lot of ways to trigger it, and plenty of different types of cards that utilize it. Flicker is a bit more specific - its pretty much ETB abuse (tho revolt gives it an added layer of value now, I guess) and the flicker cards are all in W and U so the colors are already sort of limited. I say leave the Flicker colors open to encourage more exploration. Or at the most have it be required that the deck contain at least a splash of an atypical color choice like B or R (and then everyone splashes B for Push and nothing else so maybe don't do that ).



I'd much prefer separate threads for each contest. It would make it much easier to follow the discussion for that particular contest.

goodboy!goodboy!goodboy! What a smart doggy!!