Alt PDC 1.08: The Weird, The Demented, The Evil

You see, we at Alt PDC know a little something about evil. Our villainous delusions of grandeur lead us to write using "the royal 'we'" and inflict random nonsense on the PDC community. We cut the "do not remove" tag off every mattress we buy. We kick puppies. Hard. Our avatar on this very site is a cute little mouse in a scarf sipping hot chocolate.

When the boogeyman goes to sleep at night, he checks the closet for Chuck Norris. Well, when Chuck Norris goes to sleep at night, he checks the closet for us. But, when we go to sleep at night, Judge of Currents kills a kitten.

Note: We like our mixed metaphors shaken, not stirred.

Now, as Mark Rosewater has observed, archetypical conventions call for two villains: "one the brains and the other the brawn." Our story is no different; where Judge of Currents is the brains, Wellgabber Apothecary is the brawn. And after a bit of arm-twisting (ouch!) by the ever-helpful, advice-loving brawn of this story, we have made the belated decision to conduct this column as a "Dear Abby" piece. For our sake, send in your letters now!

Okay, let's get right to our mailbag!*

*Some quotes fabricated without permission.

Dear KingRitz,
Don't overdo it too much without some content?
--WoCoNation

Dear WoCo,
That wasn't a question?

Dear KingRitz,
Nobody awesome ever talks to me, and that makes me sad. But you even got that big-shot celebrity Chris Millar to play in Alt PDC! How come you're so much cooler than I am?
--Polyjak

Dear Loser,
Don't be such a wuss!

In our case, we noticed -- completely on our own, with no help from this thread (evil geniuses never give credit where it's due) -- that The Great Chris Millar had written an entire article devoted to the Pauper format, featuring thirteen totally original, creative, spiffy new Lorwyn Pauper decks. With no help whatsoever from Polyjak, WoCoNation, Baron_Sengir6989, SypherSun, Carinon, or co-host Cadaeic314, we personally (all by ourselves!) came up with the idea that these decks would be great for an Auction of the People event like the one we used in Alt PDC 1.05.

Goal-oriented, self-starter evil genius that we are, we took it upon ourselves to contact The Great Chris Millar. We flattered The Great Chris Millar profusely and talked about how his participation in our prospective event could help both our causes. Well, a few days later we got a positive response. The Great Chris Millar, intrigued by the idea and no doubt deeply flattered, was both interested and free on our prospective tournament date. He even looked into his "column inches," whatever those are, and determined that he would be able to devote an article to discussion of the event. Well the rest, as they say, is history: The Great Chris Millar showed up, abandoned his wicked ways in favor of some wussy little Elementals, and went 1-2. His (far saner) article on these proceedings drops later this week (we cool kids say "drops" now, you see).

What does this all mean for a giant lame-o like you? It's simple, really. If you want something special, you have to put yourself out there; take risks; give it a shot! You never know what good (er, evil) might come out of it.

P.s. Also we threatened to kick his puppy.

Dear KingRitz,
Holy #@&^ing $^%& dude, are you on crack or something?
--Kehmesis

Dear Kehmesis,
...
...
[long pause]
...
...
Moving on.

Dear KingRitz,
How did you make the idiotic decision to go with pods of twelve?
--Cadaeic314

Dear Hater,
Let us tell you a little story. One of our closest friends is dating a guy who's really into raw food veganism. Not long ago, this friend decided to go with her guy to a raw food potluck, which meant that she would have to find a recipe and prepare a raw food vegan dish. Now, we (the collective 'we') evil villains like our bloody slabs of meat, and of course we all love watching things burn, so we (back to the royal 'we') found this whole situation a bit silly. We were even more amused when our dear friend positively insisted that her guy makes really good raw food vegan... salads! From that point on, every time the subject of the potluck arose, we suggested that our friend should consider bringing a bowl of mixed nuts as her dish for the potluck.

For some reason, we found this suggestion really amusing, and we just wanted to share. So, uh, that had nothing to do with anything.

The decision to go with pods of twelve was made because the supply-and-demand balance of the Auction of the People format works best when there is one more deck available than there are bidders (every bidder gets a choice). There were 13 decks, but we didn't want to limit attendance to 12, because we figured The Great Chris Millar's presence would draw a motley bunch of hangers-on, groupies, and barns. We didn't want to leave decks out, becase we loved each one and we didn't want to deny The Great Chris Millar a chance to write about how each deck did. We didn't want to split into uneven pods, with different sets of decks, because we wanted a fair, unified Top 8 to determine the winner. We hated to leave anyone out at all, but we figured that pre-registration would soften the blow by letting everyone know where things stood well in advance.

Fortunately, despite a handful of late entrants and several no-shows, we managed to accomodate every interested, on-time player. Ha ha ha, in yo' face, haters!

Dear KingRitz,
The Great Chris Millar said that Faeries were good, and all the cool kids were playing Faeries on the Pro Tour, so I bid all the way to 5 cards/25 life to get them -- but I lost! What did I do wrong?
--TheTestament

Dear TheTestament,
Let us tell you a story...

Dear KingRitz,
Seriously, if you don't start talking about Magic I'm going to send Captain Planet after you.
--Ted Turner

Dear Mr. Turner,
Drat! Foiled again! Okay, okay -- Content:

Do you know what evil villains love? Evil villains love lemmings. They're mindless, they're easy to control, and they make great stew. (Here in our hollowed-out-volcano lair, we recently hired a lemming as our private chef.) Magic players, on the other hand, make poor lemmings and poor stew. (Magic players are really gamey.)

Many players who are new to PDC fail to realize how Pauper Magic reshapes many of the usual principles of winning Magic. Even established Pauper players sometimes make the mistake, often out of laziness, of simply assuming that was is good in other formats is good in Pauper. Having made this mistake, these players copy, lemming-like, whatever they have seen succeeding in regular Magic, or whatever a columnist -- say, The Great Chris Millar -- suggests (understandably, based on his extremely limited Pauper experience, by looking to decks successful in regular Magic) ought to be good. Having spent no time testing, these players will march merrily off of cliffs because it's what the players in front of them are doing.

Happily for the evil villains among us (as opposed to the good villains among us?), there was lots of lemming behavior at Alt PDC 1.08, and having run two pods of twelve players allows for a careful examination of exactly how it happened.

UB Faeries is a successful Standard deck, and the Alt PDC list was arguably little-changed from the Standard version. It must be good, right? Well, Alt PDC players certainly thought so, bidding it down to an average starting point of 5.5 cards and 21.5 life. Now, the deck was obviously far from hopeless, given its one Top 8 appearance, but its aggregate record of 2-4 shows that it was badly overbid at the very least.

RG Giants, a popular draft archetype that was similarly hyped by The Great Chris Millar, was an even bigger flop at 1-4 overall. It was bid all the way down to average starting totals of 6 cards and 17.5 life.

So why would a successful Standard or draft deck flop in a lower-powered format? We see three reasons:

1. People Over-bid -- No matter how strong your deck is, starting with two or even three fewer cards than your opponents forces you to fight quite a severe uphill battle, especially in Pauper Magic (as we will explore below). Let's look at just how decks with different starting card and life totals did both in Alt PDC 1.08 and in the earlier Alt PDC 1.06.

   In Alt PDC 1.05:
   

   • Decks with 5 cards went 2-2
   
   
   • Decks with 6 cards went 3-5
   
   
   • Decks with 7 cards went 4-6
   
   
   • Decks with 8 cards went 8-4
   
   
   • Decks with under 15 starting life went 0-1
   
   
   • Decks with 15-20 starting life went 12-8
   
   
   • Decks with 21-25 starting life went 5-8
   
   

   In Alt PDC 1.08:
   

   • Decks with 5 cards went 0-2
   
   
   • Decks with 6 cards went 7-15
   
   
   • Decks with 7 cards went 13-16
   
   
   • Decks with 8 cards went 20-7
   
   
   • Decks with under 15 starting life went 1-2
   
   
   • Decks with 15-20 starting life went 16-20
   
   
   • Decks with 21-25 starting life went 23-18
   
   

   Cards appear to have been undervalued, whereas life seems to have been valued accurately, taking both events together. It may be that too many players in Alt PDC 1.08 were rather inflexible. We heard many participants commenting in advance that they had figured out the deck that they wanted. It seemed like the bidding went accordingly, with several long two-player bidding wars for what was apparently "the deck" for each of the competing players. We, on the other hand, went in with a "top 6" list and a commitment not to go to six cards except for UW Merfolk (the best deck in our testing). If you're going below 15 life or 7 cards for a deck, you had better be really sure that it's worth it.
   



2. Pauper Magic is a creature format -- There is no true Wrath of God effect at common. As such, Pauper players are used to running the most efficient spot removal and using it with care. With so many Pauper decks creature-oriented, the control decks all come prepared to stop creatures as soon as they hit; no waiting for the turn 4 reset button here. Relying too heavily on a single, vulnerable creature is usually a really bad idea in this format. Elvish Handservant is great, but it does less against decks that all have 4-of answers. At the same time, decks built to smash up traditional control decks find few targets to hit in Pauper. UB Faeries strikes us as falling into this category. In regular Standard, it's dangerously quick, runs several powerful anti-removal spells, and gives critter control only the small nod of Sower of Temptation (noteworthy by its absence in Pauper).
3. The Great Chris Millar Did A Good Job -- Coming back to the whole "overbidding" idea, maybe these heavily bid decks just weren't that strong to begin with. After all, The Great Chris Millar is known to have said that he aimed to balance the House of Commons decks as much as possible. Comparatively, the Alphabet decks from Alt PDC 1.05 were all over the place; it's hard to balance a "Q" deck with a "S" deck. Is it any surprise, then, that people who payed through the nose in Alt PDC 1.08 rather than taking a deck of comparable power on the cheap largely failed, while some of the heavy bidders in Alt PDC 1.05 turned out okay?

How can you avoid falling into the traps that ensnared many players in Alt PDC 1.08 -- leaving them helpless victims of an evil villain like myself (Wa ha ha ha ha ha!!!!)? It's simple, really. Test, test, test!

P.s. TheTestament, please return the cards you borrowed.

Counts as a Lemming?

Dear Kingritz,
Are you saying that we can't learn anything about other Magic formats by playing Pauper, and vice versa?
--"The Great CM"*

*Name abbreviated to conceal identity.

Dear "The Great CM",
Not at all, "The Great CM"! Pauper Magic has a lot to say about how one should test, metagame, and tune decks; and given the low cost of entry, Pauper allows all players, from newbies to veterans, to do full metagame testing with a number of archetypes without totally draining their bank accounts. Of course, Pauper also hones play skill like any other competitive format. Furthermore, despite its differences, Pauper still retains much in common with low-power formats like Block Constructed and Draft.

What did your evil reporter take away from his Alt PDC 1.08 experience? Well, double-mulligans hurt (obviously). Try not to start your games down two cards. Judge of Currents really shouldn't be tabling in drafts. Maybe it isn't these days, but when Lorwyn came out these guys would just go around and around. Wellgabber Apothecary, a card we've never paid any attention to before, should perhaps go 13th rather than 15th in draft; it's still weak, but it's a sideboard house against removal-poor fat creature decks. Streambed Aquitects can be used to turn off Elvish Branchbender (a cute trick; thanks Cadaeic314). Goblins deserve a little more respect than we had given them. Kithkin draft decks aren't truly amazing even if you somehow put every build-around-me Kithkin common together. None of these lessons may be especially profound, but we're glad to have learned them, just the same.

Dear KingRitz,
Aren't you going to talk more about the event itself??? We want to know who won!
--KingRitz

Dear KingRitz,
Why yes, KingRitz, we are!

As previously noted, Alt PDC 1.08 managed to draw fully 24 other brave Paupers to challenge The Great Chris Millar for the title. Given thirteen decks to auction, Alt PDC 1.08 was split into two pods of 12 players each (one latecomer was allowed to replace an early dropout).

Due to hosting, auctioneering, handing out cards, and playing the slowest deck in the pool, our notes are sadly sparse and lacking on this event, but we do recall a few interesting notes.

• Players were assigned to pods at random, and play was in-pod until the joint Top 8, so sadly most players never had a shot to challenge The Great Chris Millar.
• Interestingly, although The Great Chris Millar got a bargain on his RB Elementals (7/23 versus 7/18 in the other pod), the other RB Elementals deck was the one to show up in the Top 8. The same phenomenon showed up with RW Changelings. RB Goblins, which couldn't even get picked at 8/25 in one pool, went to the Top 4 at 7/19 out of the other pool.
• Both pools saw players losing track of the decks and players remaining... The hosts managed to keep nearly flawless notes (more on this below) even as they hosted and auctioneered, but many players didn't bother. This led to situations such as the one at the end of our pod, where the two eventual finalist and TheUsualSuspect got to pick among four decks, three of which made the Top 4.
• Sadly for TheUsualSuspect, he guessed wrong and DCI Reporter seems to hate him. After quickly starting 1-0 with the solid (in our testing), aggressive Wb Kithkin deck at 8 cards/25 life, TheUsualSuspect ran smack into Lawnmower Elf's board-stalling, 23-life BG Elves monster. Then, sitting at 1-1, TheUsualSuspect's impeccable tiebreakers led to him getting paired up to face your evil reporter with his board-stalling, 23-life, lifegaining UW Merfolk terror. With the two worst possible matchups for his aggressive weenies, TheUsualSuspect simply could not overcome either of the two eventual finalists, leaving with one of the most hard-luck 1-2 finishes this evil reporter has witnessed.
• Earlier, your evil reporter had found himself in a furious bidding war for the one deck he would go to 6 cards for: UW Merfolk. Asked for a list of remaining decks, he rattled them off only to be informed that UW Merfolk was still left -- the deck KingRitz was bidding furiously for was actually Mono-U Merfolk. This turned out quite fortunate, as the bidding war removed one of the last remaining aggressive bidders and the timely deck update request saved KingRitz from his imminent doom!!!
• In the other pod, UW Merfolk actually did end up at 6 cards, as KingRitz's testing partner Coolbartbr had seen the power of the dark side and insisted on grabbing the fishy little guys. Impressively, Coolbartbr went 2-1 and was a lock for the Top 8. Sadly, he dropped in part because of the unappetizing prospect of a down-two-cards mirror match ahead of him.

Late arrivals and no-shows pushed the event late, and a winner was not crowned until after 2 am EST.

The Top 8 bracket looked like this:

------------------------------------------------------
plainstrider (RB Goblins, 7/19),
lathspel (RB Elementals, 7/18),
------------------------------------------------------
KingRitz (UW Merfolk, 8/23),
BlueWurm (RW Changelings, 7/16),
------------------------------------------------------
Lawnmower Elf (BG Elves, 8/23),
GravespwnGoddess (UB Faeries, 6/18),
------------------------------------------------------
Cadaeic314 (Mono-U Merfolk, 8/25),
rickwins1971 (4-Color Elementals, 8/20),
------------------------------------------------------

The Top 4 was:

---------------------------
plainstrider,
KingRitz,
---------------------------
Lawnmower Elf,
Cadaeic314,
---------------------------

Plainstrider's RB Goblins had as good a shot as any against KingRitz's UW Merfolk machine, given the amount of removal Plainstrider could play and recur, but timely defensive bounce and counters eventually allowed KingRitz to hold on to his key board control elements and prevail 2-0.

Cadaeic's Islandwalking team managed to evade Lawnmower Elf's swarm of (what else?) Elves once, but Lawnmower's little green army proved too much to handle in the other two games.

The Finals were:

---------------------------
KingRitz,
Lawnmower Elf,
---------------------------

In the finals, KingRitz's Merfolk twice flooded (ROFL... flooded... get it?) mercilessly, but Lawnmower Elf's Elves repeatedly failed to produce sufficiently aggressive hands to take advantage. Again and again, that evil genius Judge of Currents backed by his loyal henchman Wellgabber Apothecary put KingRitz's life totals far out of reach. In both games, Meloku the Clouded Mirror eventually dropped in to seal victory.

And the winner is... KingRitz!!!

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,
Who's the fairest of them all?
--An Evil Queen

Dear Evil Queen,
I like your style. Here you go:

Power Rankings (Through Alt PDC 1.09*):
Note: Power Rankings are used for Alt PDC Worlds seeding. They are a pure measure of success on a 0-to-10 scale, rewarding only appearances in the elimination rounds.

The Top Five:

1. White_djinn - 5.39
Congratulations, White_djinn! With a win and two second-place finishes in just three tries, you are truly the fairest of them all! (Just watch out for poison apples.)
2. KingRitz - 5.32
We at Alt PDC would like to salute... uh... ourselves. We're pretty good at this Pauper Magic thing, or so we hear.
3. Boin - 4.71
Not long ago, Boin was #1 on this list. Then he showed up late for Alt PDC 1.08 and skipped Alt PDC 1.09 altogether, while KingRitz and White_Djinn each got another win. Slacker.
4. ZechMaples - 3.67
Speaking of slackers, ZechMaples hasn't been heard from since Alt PDC 1.03. Clearly, we were too threatened by his two-great-finishes-in-two-tries dominance, and we had poor Zech "taken care of." Naturally, no one has heard from him since.
5. GravespwnGoddess - 3.32
Sneaking in at the #5 spot, GravespwnGoddess has a win, a second, and a Top 8 finish in five tries. Not half bad for the guy with the misspelled, mis-gendered name.

And the Next Five:

6. StiLLiRise - 2.75
7. Lawnmower Elf - 2.20
8. Shadezz0fHades - 2.10
9. karakusk - 1.83
10. Cadaeic314 - 1.69

Season Points (Through Alt PDC 1.09*):
Note: Season Points are used to determine the sixteen invitations to Alt PDC Worlds. They are primarily a measure of participation, awarding at least one point for every game played.

1. KingRitz - 62
2. Cadaeic314 - 42
3. Boin - 31
4. GravespwnGoddess - 27
5. StiLLiRise - 25
6. R3b3lw4rr10r - 24
7. Shadezz0fHades - 22
8. White_djinn - 20
9. arachnid1313 - 19
10. coolbartbr - 19
11. ZechMaples - 17
12. jamuraa - 16
13. HWolverine83 - 14
14. jtamaro - 14
t-15. Baron_Sengir6989 - 13
t-15. BlueWurm - 13
t-15. Krosanbeast9359 - 13

--------------------Alt PDC Season 1 Worlds Cut--------------------

18. Colakim3 - 11
19. Lawnmower Elf - 11
20. LostSymphonies - 11
21. mrjgiles - 11
22. karakusk - 10
23. PredatorGR - 10
24. nick220997 - 9
25. plainstrider - 9
26. ecupiratefan69 - 8
27. RobE - 8
28. hurriboy - 7
29. NanofChaos - 7
30. KLinke - 6
31. lathspel - 6
32. Polyjak - 6
33. rickwins1971 - 6
34. ShardFenix - 6
35. WoCoNation - 6
36. hater_666 - 5
37. Nate316 - 5
38. redleg - 5
39. _houseofcards - 4
40. arhanta - 4
41. benbw - 4
42. cp70 - 4
43. fissionessence - 4
44. Iberian Wolf - 4
45. khirareq - 4
46. Lysandar - 4
47. riealan - 4
48. TheUsualSuspect - 4
49. ChronicHeaves - 3
50. majorob - 3
51. OSUAvenger - 3
52. RaiserUK - 3
53. subliminal man2 - 3
54. taunton_cider_elf - 3
55. 53N531 - 2
56. BweeBwee - 2
57. capt_ludo - 2
58. hokusai22 - 2
59. inlovingmemory - 2
60. sadisteck - 2
61. stiffdiddypinky - 2
62. TheTestament - 2
63. zaxx81 - 2
64. Bulldog333 - 1
65. kaityson36 - 1
66. VTC - 0

*Yes, yes; this article is just the Alt PDC 1.08 roundup. Alt PDC 1.09 hasn't happened yet. *Wink*. Seriously though, its a magic mirror. Just go with it.

Dear Santa,
I want a pony!
--A Good Little Girl

Dear Little Girl,
Hmh... so this is where all those silly letters to Santa end up.

Well, we have this "bad list" sitting here, so perhaps we should check and see who's on it...

The Bad List

ChronicHeaves - Warning: No-show after pre-registration for Alt PDC 1.08
eMo eMu - Warning: No-show after pre-registration for Alt PDC 1.08
kerch2007 - Warning: No-show after pre-registration for Alt PDC 1.08
ShardFenix - Warning: No-show after pre-registration for Alt PDC 1.08

Really, guys, we're disappointed. Big lumps of coal all around. Please don't be bad again.

Nope, no Little Girls on the list. Good for you. Now, if only we were, say, Santa Claus instead of an evil villain, we might be bringing you a pony...

Oh no, don't cry, little girl. Please stop crying! You're a good little girl. Here; look here, it's a pony!

We have to tell you though, that little guy only went a collective 3-3 this week. It looks like he might be destined for the glue factory. Maybe next time you should just ask for a fish.

Merry Super Tuesday, everyone!