Mowie, I am loving the Minotaur , it’s been really fun for me. The opponent takes a lot of time debating to chump block or not. I’ve had fun playing haunted dead from yard and turning the Minotaur to 4 Power as a surprise. So hot.

No offense to Nomad but if I never play Kefnet it’ll be too soon. So many headaches that caused me.

I forget which of the two remaining decks in my playtesting Cryptbreaker but he’s been killer for me. A discard and drawing machine. One drops like him and Bomat Courier are hilarious that the opponent has to respond to them

Mowie, yeah your deck is 7-0 so far. I love it. DCGs deck is right up my alley too. These are easy for me to pilot.

You’re on for that Halifax beverage, I’ll prolly go cider if I’m there tho. The cider choice in Quebec is BALLS


Ok finals are on

Mowie wins versus Izzet something 8-0

DCG up next...omg what a nightmare. I’m up against mid rank gruul werewolves. He forgets to play a haste guy before combat so I think I have this in the bag. I have a dream hand with a bomat with two cards, copter, furyblade. He swings into me with lucane and I go to tap bomat to activate copter but instead Sac my bomat and discard a dream hand. It’s a total disaster. He plays combat instants and kills my copter. I get haunted from the graveyard and carefully play removal cleverly. I have to swing into his empty board with me having only three life cuz it’s my only chance before he draws burn. He gets one haste’s creature and I’m finished. I have to swing twice like this and the second time I’m able to play Ribbons to finish him off. So close because of my dumb blunder. 8-0

Round nine!

DCG first...oh no!! Yo against rank 1 RDW with mage ring bullies and stuff. I get a dream opening hand of 3-4 land, Reunion, brawler, fiery temper, Alms and I draw into Bombay. On turn 2 I have lots of options. I decide that I’d rather play brawler on T3 so I can fiery temper his mage ring, so I ditch my two remaining land assuming I will draw at least one. I do not. The third land never shows u. I’m 17 cards deep with two land. Luckily I drew into furyblade so each turn I temper a mage ring or Chandra. I can’t play alms cuz I need to be zapping creatures. He has one mage ring which sticks with an infectious bloodlust and he swings for 9 with a stupid titans strength out of nowhere. I die because I have no land because I intentionally throw it all away. 8-1

If Mowies deck loses too, then we have a tie!

Mowie comes up against rank 39 WRg. I get a great opener. Flame blade into Copter into Scrounger into Reunion. He harass lightning my copter immediately and then declaration in stoned my Scrounger. I have two Adepts in play about to fire off Reunion and he plays Radiant Flames. Things are looking really grim and then... disconnect!! It’s a draw! Mowie isn’t out yet

Let’s try again with Mowie...up against scary avatar...a rank 3! Playing Orzhov Zombies. I’m not sure what went wrong here. The guy had a dream draw. On T2 he had wandering zombie, life link cat and festering mummy out. I only have flameblade adept and key to the city. He then drops plague belcher which kills mummy which nerfs my adept. He then drops binding mummies back to back. I’m able to kill off one of them and the wandering zombie but I can’t draw a miracle cut or anything. 8-1!

It’s a tie! I’m keeping both decks and will foil them. They will enter the fields of Valhalla all shiny and chrome!!

Final scoring for Judge Barney

Mowie and DCG : 5.5 points each
Nomad: 4 points
Haven and Cucho: 2.5 points each
Flaky and Barney: 0.5 points each

Good luck to all participants in your scoring from the other judges! Yay I get to keep both Mowie and DCGs decks! So happy

Flaky's Birds & Stone go 5-2, which kinda surprised me. Maybe it's just that I don't play a lot of slow control with scant win cons and I underestimated it, but I was going to be happy if this just got me to a winning record. Slow, grindy stuff here, and I do think it could use some more work. Yahenni's Expertise over Languish for one, so our Drakes and Titis could survive. Think I'd run a Kalitas and a Cut over the two Flings as well; maybe I just had problem finding my Drakes in these matches, but it never felt worth it to me with such a low creature count. And this deck is just screaming for Kalitas with all that removal.
Reunion worked well here, nothing exciting but mana fixing and keeping removal on hand while occasionally casting a cheap Temper. I'd probably experiment with fewer/no Wilds in favor of basics here and see if the Reunions can support that smoothly; the mana can just be so slow at times.

Record: 5/7
Build: 3/5
Enjoyment: 3/5
Reunion: 2/3
Total: 13/20

1. Lose vs Naya 2 Drops. Miss land drop #3 and Radiant Flames leaves a flipped Lambholt Pacifist on the board. Can't find land #4, even with Reunion, and the Kessig Prowler and Thalia that follow finish the job.

2. ‎Win vs RDW. Mana is slow (seriously, all 4 Wilds in the top quarter of the deck), but T3 Reunion Tempers Kari Zev. They over commit with a Call of the Full Moon and Seige Modification on a Goblin Arsonist, and I Disintegrate that. Play Chandra but that meets Impetuous Devils. Play Lily and that gets hit with a Crasher then a Collective Defiance. Play both Fevered Visions and try to burn everything coming my way, but they're under the cap so it's not helping me kill them. An Aethersphere Harvester on their side is looking like trouble, but I finally find some Drakes just it time. With me at 3, they play Fleetwheel Cruiser and a Seige Modification on the Harvester, but I'm ready with a Disintegration again for that, and just trade the Cruiser for my Caravan. My turn I counterattack for the win with a giant Drake and Manticore.

3. ‎Lose vs Dimir Artifacts. Don't love a 3 lander with no red, but it's got Titi and I don't want to start at 6 so I keep. Mistake. Find a Caravan about 15 cards in. Find a Mountain as the 20th card, and a Wilds as the 24th. That gives them way too much time to build. There's a Harvester killing me, and even with a Radiant Flames and a Titi bounce I can't get all their artifacts clear at once to slow down their double Spy Network. They add a Copter, counter my Disintegration and win.

4. ‎Win vs Abzan Tokens. This takes forever. They get Procession and From Beyond right of the bat, so luckily my hand is sweeper heavy. Get a couple drakes Start/Finished, get close with a Manticore and Chandra's Ignition but they gain 20 life off that sac land in response. Eventually Dark Intimations a Drake back, find one more Radiant Flames for good measure and fly over accompanied by burn.

5. ‎Win vs Azorius Spirit Control. Start with Titi, then get a Reunion Unsubstantiated. Great. Thinking I'm playing mono blue control and now at hopeless card disadvantage. They cast Rattlechains on end step and I Temper it, but they respond with essence Flux. I try another Reunion, and they let this one through. Cast the Disintegration I get from it, which they choose to counter cause I guess they don't realize how Titi works, because it flips and bounces their spirit before Disintegration would resolve anyway. Attack, attack again next turn and their only response is to crack a Wilds for a surprise Plains. I try a Chandra's Ignition, and it resolves for the win.

6. ‎Win vs Selesnya Good Stuff. I have a great hand, T2 Jace, T3 Caravan & Temper their Advocate via Jace, T4 Reunion and another Temper to face via Jace, though I forget he doesn't flip if you Madness cast what would be the fifth card in library, and he gets Dec Stoned their turn. Oh well, they're stuck on two land and I've got answers to spare. Fevered Visions, Titi, Manticore, two more Reunions. I Never a Tracker, they Skywalker Manticore, and try to actually compete with another Advocate, a Collective Effort knocking out Visions and the embalmed Manticore, then a Gisela. I respond by Returning a token and Flinging it, which gets me down to my last counter on Titi, and then Ignition resolves after it flips for lethal. That was a pretty fun way to win.

7. ‎Win vs Rakdos Good Stuff. Slow lands again. Reunion into more, get a caravan to catch up, play Lily and Chandra Torch but have them both knocked off. I get ahead and I've got removal for their stuff as it comes out, and add a couple Fevered Visions for fun. Tense moment near the end where they get Hazoret and have the mana to do some real damage with her discard off the Visions draws, but I've been waiting for something to use Dark Intimations on so she leaves, along with a Collective Defiance that would have killed me their next turn, and Chandra comes back. They can't do the last 4 damage in their turn and I win.

So totals:

6 points to Cardboard's Cathartic Evolution
Record: 6/7
Build: 4/5
Enjoyment: 5/5
Reunion: 3/3
Total: 18/20

5 points to Mowie's Don't Fear the Reaper
Record: 5/7
Build: 5/5
Enjoyment: 5/5
Reunion: 2/3
Total: 17/20

4 points to Cucho's Cathartic Mill
Record: 5/7
Build: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5
Reunion: 3/3
Total: 16/20

3 points to Haven's I Suck at Reunions
Record: 5/7
Build: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5
Reunion: 1/3
Total: 14/20

1.5 points to DCG's Shotgun Catharsis
Record: 4/7
Build: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5
Reunion: 1/3
Total: 13/20

1.5 points to Flaky's Two Birds, One Stone
Record: 5/7
Build: 3/5
Enjoyment: 3/5
Reunion: 2/3
Total: 13/20

0 points to Barney's Banedon Ramp
Record: 4/7
Build: 2/5
Enjoyment: 3/5
Reunion: 2/3
Total: 11/20

Great builds everyone! All with winning records for me!

Getting started with Barney's on Twitch now. Probably just AI and maybe a few Versus matches tonight.

AI 1: Win against Jeskai Embalm. Opp Commits my little Lili about to ult, fine. It then uses Memory and I get little Lili back in hand. A few turns later, I ult Lili - it doesn't matter though, because Gaea's Revenge has already flattened the Opp.

AI 2: Opp is a certified dumb dumb after leaving only a single blocker up against a Jund deck with an 8/5 non-trampler.

AI 3: Opp gets early beats on and I lose to a Manticore flinging a Khenra Charioteer.

AI 4: Win vs UW Embalm. Opp only ever gets small creatures down. I accidentally leave a small window open where I could lose to an In Oketra's Name, but Opp doesn't have it. Gaea smash for the win.

Onto Versus!

V1: Win against R2 GW stuff. I mull a keepable but meh seven into garbage, into a garbage six, into an ok five. Somehow I end up with two Gaea Revenge that can attack through indestructible Kytheon.

V2: Win against R3 5c Fat Stack. He does very little outside of resolving a Sandwurm Convergence, but it's far too late. Big Nissa animated lands and manlands powered by Sylvan Advocate overpower the Opp.

V3: Solid win against R39 Esper Cycling/Embalm! Tread water with wipes till Ulamog. Mog gets Cast Out, which is cute. Big Chandra and Gaea stomp the Opp in vengeance.

V4: Win against R0 bad stuff. Didn't check the rank, Opp made numerous egregious errors.

V5: Loss to R39 WB weenie/enchantments. Dug fairly deep, but couldn't find a wipe to deal with Opps board.

V6: Win against R1 Mono-white weenie/auras. Patiently waited till Opp overcomitted and I wiped his board. A Fatal Push with Siegecraft on the stack effectively ended the game.

V7: Win against R9 RW stuff. Opp keeps a one lander and only plays three spells in the game. I hold Languish for a turn waiting to see if Opp plays anything else, but nothing comes up. Big Chandra arrival is met with Opp concession.

V8: Win against R-something GB salt. Opp was in no mood to deal with walkers, but that's all I drew. Sorry mate, get valued.

V9: Loss vs R40 UW artifacts. Opp's vehicles were troublesome, as there are almost no instant speed outs to deal with them.

V10: Win against R1 UW stuff. Gaea and super-Advocate force chump blocks until I can plow through.

Wasn't expecting to make it through all ten games so quickly, so that's neat. I hit a final record of 8-2 with Banedon Ramp, against an admittedly soft field. The deck lost two of its three matchs against competent opponents, not sure yet how that'll factor into the final score. I'll score this and Flaky's deck tomorrow.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/206606094

Shotgun Catharsis:

Game 0 vs AI:

Game 1 vs R29 Rakdos Hellbent on the draw:
He plays Condemned. I play Brawler discarding a Reunion. He plays Youths with madness and swings for 8 but I trade my Brawler for Youths and then Reunion discarding Temper and Reunion and burn out the Condemned. He bounces right back with Chandra, Torch. I get stuck at 3 mana. I have Key, Haunted, Scrounger, 2 Tempers and Alms at this point so I play Key. He plusses Chandra and plays Hazoret off of her but he has 4 cards so I don’t take any damage. I disco Haunted eot and draw Chandra. Pass and he plays Asylum Visitor off Chandra and Yahenni from hand. Swings with Yahenni and I play Haunted from gy discarding Temper and Scrounger and burning Chandra. I top another Brawler snd play it, discarding the last Temper to burn Chandra again. Then I send the Haunted token over to finish her off. Opp plays Smuggy and Gifted Aetherborn and passes. I spent too many resources dealing with Chandra and his board has gotten out of hand! I top the other Scrounger and use Alms to key Brawler taking him to 13 and me to 18. (Risky but what else can I do?) and then play Scrounger. He plays Insult, then Injury, clearing Haunted. Then he sends his army over. I do the math and realize my one blocker won’t keep me alive so I take it like a man with his thumb in his mouth and call it a game.

Will update when I play more

Recap:



Game 4 vs Ramp. WIN.
Not a good start: Mull 2 1-landers into a no-lander which left me five 5 cards (mountain x2, swamp, copter, temper)
He drops a bunch of mana dorks, I drop the copter.
I play the key, he plays tracker, so I temper it off the key.
I get a Haunted dead and hardcast it, pilot copter and attack.
He rec sages my copter next turn. I attack with the spirit token. Drop a furyblade.
He ramps...
Next turn I draw hazoret, which is nice because I'm out of cards anyway. I attack with the token and hazoret and he doesn's chump and is down to 10.
He plays ballista with 4 counters and clears my token and the furyblade.
I activate the key and attack with hazoret. He's down to 5 and has 1 turn to deal with an indestructable/unblockable hazoret or do 19 damage.
He did neither, just dropped a gearhulk to pump his ballista an attacked (I chumped with the dead). GG

Game 5 vs rec sage
T1 tap land
T2 scrounger
T3 Attack (3 damage), drop furyblade.
He's stuck at 2 land (so was I for 1 turn).
T4 Discard Alms to furblade (+3 damage) and attack (+7 damage), drop a visitor
He rec sages my Scrounger.
T5 Discard temper to furyblade (kill rec sage) and attack (+7 damage). GG (Nice and efficient)

So DCG's deck pulls a clean sweep (technically) and kicks some serious butt, even against the odds. Fast games, without much to tell really, because it was all very wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and I often didn't get to see what I was up against. Don't remember using or needing the reunions, so my suspicion that it would be better-off as something else was kind of confirmed...
Anyway, great deck, some sweet victories and I had fun.

Ok judge Cucho -feeling important- summary
Dcg: 6 points/ solid deck but as has been addressed the reunions dont shine coz they are not that much needed.
Flaky 5 points/ jank-o-rama this deck I liked it works much like Barneys/ Banedon and Nomad decks reunion is basically a filtering device to get your tools for the specific match.
Barneys/Banedon pijama party: 4 points, the deck has some issues with mana I would personally cut black and keep a gruul ramp so Nissa pilgrimage can shine. I guess 7 forest is the magic number here.
Nomad 3 points: I did not like this deck but it has game, If you survive 7 turns this can drop bomb after bomb to seal the deal
Cucho 2 points / this deck uses the reunion to mill, to pump spells like take inventory and bombardment to eneable madness or to filter the cards, I did change a bit the burn suite cut 2 bombardments add 3 censor and 2 Impulses, cut the dragons and add Disciple of the ring... it's working great! / overall mill isn't that competitive anymore but this deck has game and it is fun IMO
Haven and Mowie share the 0,5 points
Mowie's deck uses reunion more effectively that DCG's deck coz it can pull a lot more recursion solid build just found it's nemesis to early
Haven deck did not work for me, it had some interesting synergies but it felt like a lesser version of ot self

So there it is, the sudden death style benefits the spikes over the build so next time I will be awarding points to the top three decks and keep some points to award the builds.

Ps: where is that lazzy judge? Soup get bussy!

Mowie now that I'm done with the judging I've gone back to tinkering with yours. To answer your Minotaur question, I love Neheb, to the point that I'm trying a couple Crashers in place of the top end Demon package right now.

-2 Cryptbreaker
-1 Mindwrack Demon
-1 Archfiend of Ifnir
-3 Aether Hub

+2 Bomat Courier
+2 Ahn-Crop Crasher
+2 Mountain
+1 Swamp

Working great so far.

I never drew mindwrack even once. What’s he doing in there? Can I activate madness off the cards he sends to the yard?

Cool Cardboard I'll give that a whirl. Barney, Mindrack is in there to give the deck some more reach and to fill up the yard to potentially get the Haunted Dead / Amalgam train going.

Off topic but I've been trying to make a viable ingest/processing deck with the old BFZ eldrazi, not easy! Mindmelter is a fun card for hand discard, but really hard to build a shell around.

In my nine games with your deck, I didn’t get Analgram out even once.

I played against some deck that exiled a ton of my cards but it didn’t play any processors to take advantage of it. I forget what was exiling everything but I remember wondering if it could work with Processors cuz all the ingest creatures suck so bad

Wait, Mowie when you win this contest are you going to make us all ingest for the next round? You sick bastard.

I see Amalgams often enough. Here's a fun turn 5:

That’s what you deserve for voting my deck LAST

Hey man, I just do what the points tell me.

Mowie's deck:

Things didn't go too well, the deck had potential but things didn't go according to plans probably and the reunions just like DCG's deck didn't add much and were often discard fodder. Probably aggree with nomad's suggested changes, but UD seems like a worthy addition too, especially with 6 artifacts and bomats too.

Game 1 vs mid-range goodstuff/ramp. LOSS.
I drop a copter that got saged.
Then I cut his sage. Then things just started getting nasty and he dropped beaters all over the place. Cool moment was when he dropped bellower + tracker which I both zapped with lightning axe and temper, but then he drops Ulvenwald Hydra next turn and I'm done for (UD would have been perfect here). I eventually run out of answers/chumpers and lose.

Game 2 vs Izzet Thopters. LOSS.
T1 cryptbreaker eats a shock, then it was all downhill... He's dropping multiple thopters/servos and since I don't have sweepers, I'm overwhelmed. I even had to discard archfiend (which was a possibly a way out) to a reunion to keep hazoret, and it was the right call because I never saw a 5th land. My opponent on the other hand had it all, a swarm and the removal to keep my board clear...

Game 3 vs Boros Vehicles. WIN.
T1 dread wanderer.
T2 Reunion (ditch amalgam + Haunted Dead).
He plays heart of kiran.
I start to flood and had to make some key plays here, but in the end double amalgams + haunted dead saved my neck, helped out with a couple of brawlers because I maintained pressure and made him block on his turn with the heart, so I could finish it with cut.
When he drops gideon, he chose to block with everything and clear the board, but I recovered more quickly with the amalgams and dead and gideon went bye-bye. From there He drew vehicles with no pilots and I finished him off.

G4 vs Izzet Tide-Burn. LOSS.
This guy drew 3 take inventory in the first 10 cards, that and all 4 fiery tempers, titi (who got cut), dynavolt tower, 3x shock, 2x avacyn's judgement, his own cathartic reunions... He burned everything I dropped and when I thought he finally ran out of gas, plays tides for 15 zombie tokens and I was miles away from lethal still... Oh well...

G5 vs Simic Fog-mill. WIN.
Never saw a tutelage, saw a couple of fogs, but then they ran out. He was casting pulls like crazy to get them, but no cigar. I got a good strong start, with cryptbreaker making zombies and scrounger doing the beatdown. Easy win.

Well 2-3 isn't a very good run for the deck, but the wins were satisfying at least. Like I said before, the reunions didn't add all that much and were dead cards in a couple of matches, so no points for break-the-card-value.

I'm going to play this blue black processor deck until I am able to transform a grizzled angler into a grizzly anglefish! See you in 2 weeks!

See you never!!

Get a room!

That's more like the deck I remember Watched the loss vs WB weenies / enchantments. Comments:

1) With Evolving Wilds I would've fetched red mana, since Cathartic is the best play you had on turn 2. Fortunately you topdecked a Mountain.
2) I would never discard Nissa, Vastwood Seer to the first Cathartic on turn 2. She's a turn 3 play, and you didn't have another one in hand at the time. I would've discarded a land + one of the 5-mana planeswalkers, because the draw-3 effect is odds on to find a land.
3) Afterwards the opponent fetching Angelic Destiny on turn 3 is very dangerous so holding up mana on turn 4 for Unlicensed Disintegration was fair. On the other hand opponent crudely played spells before attacking, which meant it was safe to activate Hissing Quagmire and eat something.
4) I would've played big Nissa on turn 5. Not sure why you didn't. The situation was desperate enough + the opponent had already shown he didn't have a fourth land the turn previous.

Nonetheless, sometimes vs. aggro decks, it really is sweeper or bust. gg!

Also watched the other loss vs. UW artifacts. Comments:

1) Surprised you didn't keep the original 7-card hand. It's not great, but it did have the mana to cast Liliana. It also had a sweeper a topdecked land would've cast. Cathartic is in the deck to fix the fact you have two uncastable ramp payoffs, too.
2) On turn 2 playing the Dragonskull Summit was practically forced, to enable Cathartic Reunion on turn 3. This would've sped up your development by one turn, and it could've meant playing Chandra on turn 4.
3) I would've slammed Gaea's instead of Yaheeni's into Liliana. Life totals were 14-22, and Gaea's hits for 8. He is not going to be able to race you. It's not like Liliana's +1 had any targets either, and the opponent had an active Smuggler's Copter to hit Liliana with so you can't tick down. Promptly punished for burning Yaheeni's by the tokens later, too. Oh well. gg wp.

Scoring for Flaky and Barney:

Flaky:
Wins: 7 points from a record of 7-3.
BQ: 3. Nomad beat me to the suggestion of Yahenni's Expertise over Languish, so I'll endorse that here. I'll also agree that the Flings feel out of place - the Manticores are sufficient for that ability and are more flexible in that they can return themselves if you need to discard. I'd just run two Cuts or potentially look into something more exotic. Kefnet is a sizable Fling-able with upside. Or would an Aether Hub/Harnessed Lighting/Dynavolt Tower package be worth looking into?
EV: 3. This is more an extension of the build score than anything. If the quantities of the various tools were tweaked, I could see this being a fun deck. As is, the win cons are too scarce, leading to frustrating stretches of do-nothing.
CB: 3. Reunions help dig for action and enable Temper. Happy to see one in hand, but nothing game-breaking.
Total: 16/25

Barney:
Wins: 8 points from a record of 8-2.
BQ: 3.5. Couldn't decide on a whole number, so here you go. Three Pilgrimages for four Forests seems questionable at best, but credit to Haven for pointing out that they make good Reunion fodder. I found myself forgoing ramp spells at some points in favor of drawing, knowing that I'd draw sufficient lands and/or ramp spells along with action on the way. Too bad the ship sunk before we could get Vraska's Contempt, would love it in place of Never for more instant speed interaction. Fling almost makes sense here, and it would help steal some games a turn earlier as well.
EV: 4. Peculiar as it is, the deck was smooth. Ramp -> wipe -> smash -> rinse -> repeat.
CB: 3. Digging for action is great, but no madness spells and a single reanimator means shenanigans are kept to a minimum.
Total: 18.5/25