When I was first cutting my teeth in Magic I spent a lot of time on the Wizards forums, especially in Standard General. You can find me over there as ReleasetheAnts. Since 2008, I’ve become a bit of a fixture there. I’m not the type who posts endlessly in every thread, on average I have maybe two or three posts per day, but I tend to stay involved around Standard discussions, and the occasional forum contest.
This summer I wanted to try my hand at starting a competition on the forums. One of my favorite televisions shows (forgive me for nerding out) is Iron Chef, both the original Japanese series and the American revival. I enjoy how chefs can come in, be handed a random ingredient, and still produce amazing things. Of course later in life I discovered my romanticized view wasn’t really accurate, but I wanted to carry the same concept over to Magic deckbuilding. I wanted players to stretch their skills building decks by adding different variables to construction. And so, Iron Deck-Builder was born.
The rules were very simple to begin with. Competitors were given a format, and a challenge to complete. Each challenge also came with a “secret ingredient”, a restriction or twist each player would have to adapt to. It could be flavor based, something to do with a card type, or just about anything! Whatever it was, it was sure to throw the deck builders for a curve. Builders had roughly a week to complete their builds, and then submit them before a pre-established deadline. From there, decks would be scored out of a possible twenty points.
Ten points are derived from two judges scoring the decks on a number of categories relevant to the challenge. Generally they’re divided to give about 40% for a deck’s build strength, keeping in mind the things that make a constructed deck excel. Another 30% is devoted to a deck’s innovation within the challenge restrictions. Creative builds and card choices that don’t subtract from a build’s viability are rewarded here. The final 30% varies based on the challenge, whether it’s use of a theme, accessibility to new players, or some other metric.
The remaining ten points are split between a public vote, where people answer about 3 questions on each deck, with bonus points going to the highest scoring deck in each question. The final five points come from the decks actually playing against each other. Decks are randomly drawn into two pods of four decks, with the winner of each pod meeting in a final match. Builders do not play their own decks, instead a team of experienced forum players put them through their paces, adding to the suspense for the competitors
Points are added from all three catergories, and the highest deck in the round wins, and earns 5 league points for its builder. Second place recieves four points, and so on down to a single point for fifth place. Each season will consist of five rounds, with the four leaders in league points receiving automatic byes into the next round, and another 6 spots being open to the forum users to sign up first come, first served. Currently Round 4 has just gotten underway, but before we get to that, here’s a brief recap of the first three rounds.
The innaugural round began with 8 competitors, and was a simple challenge to get everyone up to speed. “Ladies Night” was an art based challenge, where builders had to have at least half of their main deck nonland cards (rounded up) include a female in the art. As a special secret ingredient, decks had to include at least 3 copies of Realms Uncharted in the deck, which opened up all kinds of color combinations. Guest Judging for this round was done by Wizards of the Coast’s own Michael Robles! In the end, a three-color deck packed with removal won out. Five league points went to forum vet Niche, and with that we were off and running.
View all 8 Decks from Round 1 here
With round 2, we expanded the field to 10 entrants, and proceeded to ramp up the challenge in a hurry. This time, in tribute to both Commander and From the Vault: Legends, contestants were asked to build 60-card Singleton decks centered around the Extended-Legal legend of their choice. Decks could only have 8 rares (one of which could be mythic), and 17 uncommons. The secret ingredient for this challenge was ‘Variety’. Each set in Extended had to be represented at uncommon, rare, or mythic rare.
Only 7 of the 10 competitors submitted a deck for Round 2 guest judge Smi77y, so league points for the round were reduced by one. While newcomer zpikduM and Niche managed top 3 finishes, It was FIRE_REIGN_2_02’s Sharuum the Hegemon deck that surged to a first place spot, pulling even with Niche in the league standings after two rounds.
View All 7 Decks from Round 2 here
Heading into Round 3, Niche and FIRE_REIGN_2_02 were threatening to pull away from the rest of the field. This time the contest headed back to standard, but players could only use cards whose name either began with a vowel or had all 5 vowels somewhere within (maximum of 1 copy each from the second group) . To keep the format from being too lopsided, Ajani Goldmane and Elspeth Tirel were both restricted to a single copy. Harry Ryttenberg (@mrfridays) stepepped in to the guest judge spot this round, and in the end it was a newcomer taking the top spot.
pyroclown’s ‘Fast Red’ deck paired an early Immolating Souleater with powerful Elemental Appeals to race every other deck out of the arena, defeating sir_leo_iii in the finals two games to none. The two league leaders both managed to finish inside the points, and FIRE_REIGN_2_02’s third place finish was enough to push him into top spot in the league with two rounds to go.
View All 9 Decks from Round 3 here
We’re almost through with construction for Round 4 with only Saturday and Sunday remaining. Can Fire put the competition away? can pyroclown match his result from the last round? You can keep track off all the action on the Standard General Forums . Aussie twitter fiend Russell Tassicker will be passing judgement on this round, which covers the modern format. Voting will be posted Monday, and anyone is free to vote
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