Spark Mod wins 1st Constructed
This evening, Victory Point Cafe hosted the first constructed tournament of Lab Mayhem. Eight players showed up to test their deck construction skills as well as their playing skills. The last week or two there had been a notable buzz as people started thinking seriously about what deck they'd be playing tonight, and testing out various decks.
I myself thought of an entirely new deck while walking home last night, cause my brain had been churning about constructed non-stop. But with no time to test the deck at all, I went with one of the decks I knew a bit better. I believe that if you want to win a lot in constructed tournaments, it is not crucial to figure out and play the best deck; instead it is important to play a deck that 1) you enjoy playing and 2) you have some experience playing. Because a lot of games will be decided by how well the two people play, not just the cards they have; and thus your familiarity and skill with a certain deck will be a great advantage. Kind of like in chess, the Ruy Lopez may be "better" than the King's Gambit, but if I am way more comfortable playing the King's Gambit, I will still score better with it.
Of the 8 decks, there were 2 "combo" decks, 1 "mid-range" deck, and 5 "aggro" decks. The interesting point is that there was not a single control deck in this first tournament. I'm quite curious to see what people can come up with once they have a look at the decklists of various aggro decks used in the first event. I don't know if we will be posting decklists for all decks (I think we will), but for now here's the winning decklist, Spark Mod:
4 Marvelous Magnet Mittens
4 Supreme Wargear
4 Mod Missionary
4 Havoc Transfuser
4 Encase
4 Animate Towers
4 Engine Breath
4 Ironwed Saw
3 Quicksilver Lacquer
2 Loadbearing Apprentice
2 Barb Matrix
2 Telkine Salvager
1 Tactical Grease
1 Jump to Attention
Another result I wanted to mention is that Andrew played a singleton deck-- meaning no more than 1 of any card. This constricts your deck-building options a lot, since you can't rely on having certain combinations of cards reliably, as they are all 1-ofs; it also means that you can not play 3 or 4 of the strongest cards, as some people would. Overall a huge disadvantage. On the other hand, the trick of building these singleton decks and then playing with them (Andrew built 7 different decks and tested them for weeks), refines your deck-building and playing skills. It must be a really valuable exercise. And impressively, Andrew's Singleton deck finished in 2 place with 2 wins and 1 loss (to Spark Mod in the final round).
I'm also planning a future post talking about the Spark Mod deck.