Alt PDC 1.05: The Format, The Decks, The Winners

A. Genesis

So, let's jump right in at the beginning: How did we come up with the idea for Auction of the People, and how did we settle on using it for Alt PDC 1.05?

Like Build-Your-Own-Standard before it, Auction of the People as an Alt PDC format arose out of the PDCMagic forums. In both cases, the format itself was brought to the Alt PDC hosts' attention by a single individual and a single post. We were generally aware of the Auction of the People format, but we never considered it as a viable Pauper alternate format until it was mentioned. Even then, we didn't form meaningful plans to use Auction of the People until chatter picked up on PDCMagic in a forum thread dedicated to the format. An active thread reassures us that sufficient interest exists to justify focusing on a particular format, so the lesson here is simple: If you have a passion for a particular alternate format, start a thread, work through any kinks, and show us that other Paupers share your interest! (Even better: Include a POLL!!!!)

Of course, Auction of the People still presented a number of issues: Would we be able to get enough deck submissions? How would players get the cards they needed on the fly? (And could we find a solution that wouldn't alienate players with small collections?) Could the logistics of running an auction be managed? Would too much time investment be demanded of the hosts?

After significant internal discussion, we had answers to enough of these questions that we felt safe to proceed. We thought that there were enough Johnnies in PDC to fill out our deck submission needs, and I'm enough of a Johnny myself that I could fill in some gaps. As long as we could avoid overwhelming card overlap, we could supply a substantial portion of the cards players might need. We were also willing to deal with the time investment of AOTP (although if I had only known just how much time was going to be required of us, I might well have changed my mind). Lastly, we glossed over the handling of the auction itself. We knew that it would take time, but we had several options (run it well in advance on the forums or in the previous week, or run it immediately before the event and just start the event earlier or run it later), so we resolved to figure it all out down the road.

B. Format Development and Theme Selection

Once we had settled on using Auction of the People, it moved into our list of pending votes. At any time, the hosts have several formats and/or groups of formats in mind for future use. The order of these pending formats remains fluid, and what gets used on any given week depends on a variety of factors -- What's hot? What did we do before? (We like variety.) What preparation is required?

In Auction of the People's case, preparation and lead time were significant requirements. It required a theme, a number of deck submissions, and planning for an auction. However, AOTP was definitely hot, and it was highly unique. We went ahead and planned to run the format a couple weeks out. (In retrospect, this was a mistake; Auction of the People intrinsically calls for a big turnout, and we should have held it until after the holidays.)

Ah, but what theme would we use? In Pauper, options are limited compared to those available to the Magic Invitational (from which the AOTP format was borrowed). We could of course use a pre-existing alternate format, like Tribal or Block Wars, or we could go with something completely different, like Artists. Players in the forums began throwing out ideas before our use of AOTP was even officially announced (more on these suggestions shortly), but I already had an answer in mind for this issue. We would use a pre-existing alternate format, but we would select one that has historically proved hopelessly unbalanced and narrow: Alphabet.

By using Alphabet for AOTP, we were able to redeem an otherwise unviable format. Alphabet has proven generally unfun as a stand-alone format because of the overwhelming power of just a few letters (C, S, etc.), so we would ordinarily never use Alphabet for Alt PDC. AOTP opens Alphabet up, however, making it vibrant and interesting. The Auction itself provides balance and insures that players will use a variety of letters. Setting aside its shortcomings, Alphabet lets people stretch their creative deckbuilding brains in ways they otherwise might not and play cards they would otherwise never consider. Furthermore, Alphabet's very failings meant that it had been largely untouched, providing pristine Johnny territory in letters like B, E, I, L, N, O, R, T, X, and more. One final little point in Alphabet's favor was that it meant decks' card choices would overlap very little -- a small point, but a significant one, given that we were anticipating having to lend out large numbers of cards to avoid deterring players with small collections.

ASIDE: So what about all those other formats people went to all that work suggesting in the forums? Was everyone wasting their time? No!!! Some wildly interesting ideas were uncovered, and the suggestions were all duly noted. We'll certainly revisit the best of those ideas if and when we do a new Auction of the People. What caught the hosts' eye? Artist decks potentially feature the inherent imbalance, creativity, virgin territory, and lack of card overlap that were Alphabet's biggest selling points. Vanguard is a good option for some of the same reasons (mainly imbalance and creativity). And, of course, we're still looking...

C. Choosing the Decks

So Auction of the People hit the calendar for Alt PDC 1.05, and Alphabet was the announced theme. With only 24 viable letters (X and Y need not apply) and no real combo options, we opened up "All Letters" as a choice for submissions. This gave flexibility to handle high turnouts and allowed more diversity in the decks we might receive. We created a thread to take decklist submissions and offered prizes for the most creative decks.

Confounding the concerns of a few naysayers, decklists promptly poured in. We had six pages of submissions in the forums, 48 decklists in all, from over a dozen different players, in the span of around a week.

Even with so many submissions, many letters offered no choices. H, J, K, N, O, P, Q, T, U, V, W, and Z decklists were selected by default, with only one option present in each case. How, though, did we settle on lists for A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I, L, M, R, S, and ALL?

A surprising number of factors were involved in our selections.

First and foremost, of course, creativity mattered. Little things, like the subtler interactions in Azorius Rebels and Necromancer, caught our eye and pushed some decks over the top. In general, though, the submitters all took creativity to heart, so we had to move on to a number of other considerations to help us make our decisions.

We wanted to choose decks from each submitter, where possible, both to recognize the efforts of a number of Paupers and to help produce diversity in the pool of decks. Azorius Rebels got a boost by being This_Guy_Dan's moment in the sun, and "L"ves got a huge boost by being one of Kehmesis's two fantastic submissions. SillyMagician's competing Lightning Attack! deck was excellent, but Kehmesis's "L"ves was a similarly strong submission and we had already had a SillyMagician deck. Furthermore, Kehm's S deck, one of the strongest submissions in the entire field, had already been bumped out by Polyjak's Saprolings (and Slivers) (which we considered rather distinct in the field and one of the decks to beat, and which was Polyjak's only submission).

We wanted decks that would play well; creating the absolute strongest deck possible in a letter was not a criterion, but creating a deck that "worked" was, because nobody has fun playing a deck that just struggles to do anything. Empty the Elves, for instance, while tremendously creative and fun-looking, just didn't come together in the testing games we played with it. The deck spent a disturbing amount of time sitting around acting helpless, casting random 1/1's for 1. Furthermore, we wanted to use two other Elf-themed decks, and we just didn't need a third (note the discussion of variety, below). Hybrid "I"s came about based on this consideration, as Boin's and KingRitz's initial I lists each left elements to be desired. After a quick discussion, both players agreed that a modified list would run more smoothly and help out this seemingly difficult letter.

We also wanted a good amount of variety in the pool. Since generic midrange aggro is by far the easiest to build in an Alphabet deck, we prioritized control and especially combo wherever we could get them. This factor buoyed Beats and Boosters, Saprolings (and Slivers), and the "ALL" combo decks. In fact, we pretty much had "ALL" earmarked for combo from the very beginning. Despite the tremendous creativity of its keyword alphabet, Flying Letters simply lost out to ABC Freed and Alphabet Storm's comboliciousness when we had to make the hard choices. Empty the Elves was almost pushed over the top by this factor, being one of only a few combo options. In practice, though, Empty the Elves never really could "combo out," so ultimately it became "just another Elf deck" (of which we already had two: L and W), and the variety consideration ended up helping keep it out instead. Desire for variety also led to the selection of Fire, Frost, and Flowstone over the (perhaps stronger) F This; the former was simply the only straight burn deck in the pool once Lightning Attack! lost out to "L"ves. Rancid Roots Run Deep, besides being Hurriboy's only submission, won out in part for bringing some scarce land destruction to the table. Although we insisted on taking KingRitz's MB"C" deck for its sheer synergy and strength, Boin's muC got a "Leftovers" nod almost solely for its permission-based control nature -- rather unique in the Alphabet pool.

D. "Best Deck" Nominees and Voting

With two Crown of Convergence and a Konda's Banner up for grabs, we decided to put the "most creative deck" awards up for a vote rather than deciding them ourselves. Unfortunately, we received only five votes, and each came for a different deck. Thus, we posted a forum poll as a runoff for these five decks, at http://www.pdcmagic.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=649.

UPDATE: "Best Deck" Voting is now Closed. Read on to hear about each deck and find out who won!

Here are my brief notes on the five decks (full decklists can be found in the vote thread):

Azorius Rebels has as much internal synergy as any deck in the list, and it does it with far less linear tools than, say, Saprolings, or bunches of black X-spells. Sure, This_Guy_Dan runs some Rebels, but his list has so much more. Among many other points, all that bounce is great with Aven Riftwatcher. More subtly, note the fascinating Angelic Renewal/AEthersnipe interaction -- "Turn 3, Undo your first two guys and I'll keep my 4/4." Ouch.

Q Makes Me Queasy is my own list, and I have no idea what it's doing in this runoff; I just ran every Q card other than Quick Sliver and tried to hide the least synergistic stuff in the largely useless sideboard. To the deck's credit, it perhaps manages to make Q not the worst letter (other than X and Y) in the whole Auction -- a distinction that falls, maybe, to U?

Rancid Roots Run Deep is a land destruction deck by Mister Stone Rain himself, Hurriboy. Need we say more? Probably not, but if we did, we'd say something like this: Managing to squeeze an entire land destruction deck into a single letter is impressive. The fact that Hurriboy's list looks like it might actually win some matches is downright remarkable. Redwood Treefolk plays nice with Rootgrapple, and Reap and Sow plays nice with Rakdos Carnarium, which plays nice with Rock Slide.

S is Kehmesis's untitled paean to face-smashing. There isn't much to say about it but to note that it is one of the most aggressive, tuned, and powerful decks we received. It lost out narrowly to Polyjak's Saprolings (and Slivers) deck, but Kehmesis's S remains fantastic and got a "Leftovers" mention on the strength of its tuning. Scryb Sprites and Seal of Fire feed the multiple Bloodthirst guys, and the creature suite is downright nasty all around. One could almost see S winning a Classic PDC someday.

Flying Letters gets massive creativity points in my book for SillyMagician's ridiculously ambitious inclusion of a "keyword alphabet" as a secondary theme. It's hard to believe that such a feat was even possible, and yet SillyMagician's list is actually a fairly solid evasive aggro deck to boot. We don't have room for the full list of keywords here, so we'll just link you to SillyMagician's discussion of the deck: http://www.pdcmagic.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=472&start=53.

UPDATE: After the final ballots were cast, Rancid Roots Run Deep by Hurriboy emerged as the clear winner, with five votes. With three votes, the runner-up was Flying Letters by SillyMagician. Congratulations to both our prize winners, and thanks again to everyone who submitted decks or voted for their favorite!

E. The Auction

So the big day arrived and it was time for the Auction. How did it all shake out?

Due to our unfortunate placement of AOTP on the weekend before Christmas, we had only 11 participants for Alt PDC 1.05. With such a small turnout, we immediately restricted the Auction to a random subset of 12 of the Alphabet decks -- an unfortunate step, but necessary to preserve a proper balance of supply and demand. The bidding ran slowly (45+ minutes for 11 people) but smoothly.

A few interesting notes:

Early on, GravespwnGoddess was pushing the bidding against Boin for Boin's own Hybrid "I"s deck. Things were moving along quickly when, much to GravespwnGoddess's consternation, Boin abruptly bowed out at 7 cards/18 life. As it turned out, GravespwnGoddess was only pushing the bidding to force Boin to pay more for a deck that GravespwnGoddess didn't even want. Now GravespwnGoddess was stuck with this awkward-looking three-color pile of... stuff. Was this the end of our friend GravespwnGoddess? Was he... doomed?

Midway through, one player (I believe it was ChronicHeaves, but I'm not certain) placed his first bid of the entire auction... and everyone else promptly stopped bidding. This poor player, who professed that the auction itself was the most fun part of the event, found himself finished with the auction after only one bid.

Also midway through, KLinke made the bold move of going to 5 cards/25 life to win the powerful MB"C" deck amid heavy bidding. Would raw power carry him through, or would 5 card hands in a high-curve deck lead to his mana-based demise?

As the auction wound on, KingRitz was involved seriously on practically every deck, frequently as one of the last two players bidding. He repeatedly bowed out, though, as the bids went beyond his comfort zone. Despite bidding more than any other two players combined, KingRitz ended up as one of the last two without a deck. He and Boin went one-on-one with only Q, T, and Z remaining. KingRitz opened the T deck at the maximum (8 cards/25 life) and the final two bidders began trading life points. At 8/16, Boin had enough. KingRitz claimed Tough to Beat, and Boin snatched Zombies and Zealots (another Boin build) uncontested at 8/25.

The results, available at http://www.pdcmagic.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=609, were:

Kingritz: T - 8/16
Cadaeic314: D - 7/18
KLinke: C - 5/25
Boin: Z - 8/25
StiLLiRise: V - 8/17
BweeBwee: P - 7/18
HWolverine83: F - 6/21
ChronicHeaves: L - 7/14
GravespwnGoddess: I - 7/18
stiffdiddypinky: ALL Freed - 6/21
redleg: S - 6/18

F. The Matches

The event itself ran quickly and smoothly, with winners emerging from all corners of the auction. GravespwnGoddess rolled along with the deck he didn't want, KingRitz pulled out win after win with his bottom-of-the-barrel reject deck, KLinke swatted opponents like flies with the sheer power of the letter C, and Boin slipped in with a Round 3 win by his last-pick Zombies and Zealots.

The Top 4 looked like this:

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1 ( 1) Kingritz,
4 ( 4) Boin,
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3 ( 3) KLinke,
2 ( 9) GravespwnGoddess,
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As GravespwnGoddess's unwanted little deck that could kept chugging along undefeated in the bottom bracket, KingRitz dispacted Boin thanks to Treetop Bracers after two massive ground stalls in the top bracket.

The finals were:

------------------------------------------
1 ( 1) Kingritz,
2 ( 9) GravespwnGoddess,
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The much-awaited epic battle of unbeatens ended up not being that close. The first game took both players down to the tops of their decks, as Hybrid "I"s coughed up a flurry of the right removal at the right times to clear the board and nearly stabilize. However, GravespwnGoddess came up just short when his opponent ripped one more threat than he could handle. Game 2 was rather less interesting, as large numbers of X/4's simply overran Hybrid "I"s' glut of three-toughness removal.

And the winner is... KingRitz!

G. The Winning Decks

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Tough to Beat by SillyMagician
8 Cards/16 Life
KingRitz, Alt PDC 1.05 Champion
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4 Thornweald Archer
4 Twisted Abomination
4 Treespring Lorian
4 Titanic Bulvox
4 Trained Armodon
4 Tangle Golem
2 Tyrranax
4 Terror
4 Tendrils of Corruption
2 Treetop Bracers
4 Tranquil Thicket
4 Terramorphic Expanse
8 Swamp
8 Forest

Sideboard
3 Tranquility
4 Tangle Spider
4 Toxic Stench
4 Tar Pit Warrior

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Hybrid "I"s by Boin and KingRitz
7 Cards/18 Life
GravespwnGoddess, Alt PDC 1.05, 2nd Place
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4 Infiltrator il-Kor
4 Izzet Chronarch
3 Inkfathom Divers
3 Inner-Flame Acolyte
4 Incinerate
4 Ichor Slick
3 Icefall
4 Innocent Blood
4 Impulse
4 Izzet Signet
4 Izzet Boilerworks
8 Swamp
6 Island
5 Mountain

Sideboard
1 Icefall
3 Ingot Chewer
1 Inkfathom Divers
4 Induce Paranoia
2 Iron Myr
4 Inspiration

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MB"C" by KingRitz
5 Cards/25 Life
KLinke, Alt PDC 1.05, Top 4
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4 Cadaverous Knight
4 Consume Spirit
4 Corrupt
4 Cremate
2 Cruel Revival
4 Crypt Rats
3 Call to the Netherworld
4 Chilling Shade
3 Chill to the Bone
4 Corpulent Corpse
24 Snow-Covered Swamp

Sideboard
2 Chittering Rats
3 Choking Sands
4 Coercion
2 Coffin Purge
4 Cry of Contrition

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Zombies and Zealots by Boin
8 Cards/25 Life
Boin, Alt PDC 1.05, Top 4
-----------------------------------------------------------
4 Zombie Assassin
4 Zombie Boa
4 Zombie Cannibal
4 Zombie Cutthroat
4 Zombie Musher
4 Zombie Scavengers
4 Zealot il-Vec
4 Zealous Inquisitor
4 Zhalfirin Knight
14 Snow-Covered Swamp
10 Snow-Covered Plains

Sideboard
4 Zephyr Net
4 Zodiac Monkey
1 Zephyr Spirit
3 Island
3 Forest

H. Updated Power Rankings (with Commentary!)

Alt PDC 1.05 really shook up the Power Rankings. Please see the Alt PDC Season 1 Master Document for the full list.

Here's the new Top 5:

1. GravespwnGoddess - 4.25

With his win in Alt PDC 1.04 and his second place in Alt PDC 1.05, GravespwnGoddess shoots right to the top of the rankings. Two finals in three tries is impressive, to say the least.

2. Boin - 4.00

Boin's got a win in Alt PDC 1.01, and he adds a Top 4 finish here. That's quite good in any case, but when you see that he's only played twice it becomes downright remarkable.

2. ZechMaples - 4.00

ZechMaples remained idle and dropped into a tie for second with Boin. Like Boin, he has a win and a Top 4 finish in only two events played. Bravo!

4. KingRitz - 3.40

KingRitz vaults into the Top 5 with a win here and a Second Place in Alt PDC 1.02. He'd be ranked higher if only he hadn't played and lost so darn much.

5. StiLLiRise - 3.11

StiLLiRise had a disappointing 1-2 finish in Alt PDC 1.05. His Viashino deck just couldn't pull out wins even at 8 Cards/17 life. Like Boin and ZechMaples, StiLLiRise has a win and a Top 4 finish. Unlike those two, though, StiLLiRise needed four tries to achieve those results.

And the next 5:

6. Shadezz0fHades - 3.00
7. White_djinn - 2.33
8. coolbartbr - 2.00
8. karakusk - 2.00
10. KLinke - 1.33
10. LostSymphonies - 1.33

I. AOTP Redux

So what's next for Alt PDC and Auction of the People? Well, the format was a great success despite its small turnout, even drawing raves from several players who were unable to play due to holiday obligations. It was also a massive amount of work to put together, and we only got to use fewer than half of the decklists we chose. It's safe to say this format will be back, with all the same decklists... soon!!! Beyond that, we have multiple theme possiblities should we ever decide to run AOTP again. If Alt PDC returns for Season 2 and beyond, expect Auction of the People to return with it.