Tribal Games Version 2 administration

[Oversoul]

Note: I got rid of the previous note because it didn't even make sense anymore, now that this thread is its own thing with a sticky and such. As of October 8th, 2013, I've made some minor updates to this first post. The only important part is that goblins, elves, and zombies are banned.

Tribal Lowlander Rules

• One-third of every deck must be of a single creature type.
• Constructed decks must contain a minimum of sixty cards.
• All sets legal in Legacy are legal in Tribal Lowlander.
• All cards, other than basic lands and creatures of the chosen tribe, are restricted to one copy per deck.
• Tribes that have been played are temporarily barred from use. Tribe rotation schedule to be determined. Due to format changes, all tribes used in games 1 through 14 are not barred from use.

Banned tribes:

• Goblins
• Elves
• Zombies

Unavailable tribes:

• Spiders
• Cats
• Snakes
• Bears

All cards banned in Legacy and all cards banned in Tribal Wars Legacy are banned. As of January, 2017 the banned list is:

• All "ante" cards.
• All cards with the "conspiracy" type.
• Ancestral Recall
• Arboria
• Balance
• Bazaar of Baghdad
• Black Lotus
• Channel
• Chaos Orb
• Circle of Solace
• Demonic Consultation
• Demonic Tutor
• Dig Through Time
• Earthcraft
• Engineered Plague
• Falling Star
• Fastbond
• Flash
• Frantic Search
• Goblin Recruiter
• Gush
• Hermit Druid
• Imperial Seal
• Library of Alexandria
• Mana Crypt
• Mana Drain
• Mana Vault
• Memory Jar
• Mental Misstep
• Mind Twist
• Mind's Desire
• Mishra's Workshop
• Moat
• Mox Emerald
• Mox Jet
• Mox Pearl
• Mox Ruby
• Mox Sapphire
• Mystical Tutor
• Necropotence
• Oath of Druids
• Peer Pressure
• Shahrazad
• Skullclamp
• Sol Ring
• Stasis
• Strip Mine
• Survival of the Fittest
• The Abyss
• Time Vault
• Time Walk
• Timetwister
• Tinker
• Tolarian Academy
• Treasure Cruise
• Tsabo's Decree
• Umezawa's Jitte
• Vampiric Tutor
• Wheel of Fortune
• Windfall
• Yawgmoth's Bargain
• Yawgmoth's Will

Overview of Tribal Games on CPA

• Tribal Game 1: BigBlue (Beast), Spiderman (Cat), Mythosx (Sliver), Oversoul (Wall)
• Tribal Game 2: Limited (Insect), Mythosx (Sliver), BigBlue (Cleric), Oversoul (Cleric), Spiderman (Cat)
• Tribal Game 3: Spiderman (Bringer), Oversoul (Soldier), BigBlue (Bird), Mythosx (Sliver), Limited (Barbarian)
• Tribal Game 4: Oversoul (Chimera), DarthFerret (Soldier), Spiderman (Spider), Limited (Plant)
• Tribal Game 5: DarthFerret (Elemental), Limited (Giant), Mooseman (Druid), mythosx (Wizard), Oversoul (Wizard), Spiderman (Rat)
• Tribal Highlander Special: Oversoul (Zombie), Limited (Drake), Spiderman (Angel), DarthFerret (Cleric), Mooseman (Zombie)
• Tribal Game 6: Spiderman (Elephant), DarthFerret (Centaur), Oversoul (Merfolk), Mooseman (Illusion), Limited (Illusion)
• Tribal Game 7: DarthFerret (Assassins), Oversoul (Dragons), Spiderman (Fungus), Mooseman (Gargoyles), mythosx (dropped)
• Tribal Game 8 (Redux): Spidey (Thrulls), Oversoul (Skeletons), Mooseman (Faeries)
• Tribal Game 9: BigBlue (Myr), Spidey (Kithkin), Oversoul (Griffins), Mooseman (Specters?)
• Tribal Game 10: Spidey (Scarecrows), BigBlue (Avatars), Modus Pwnens (Nightmares), DarthFerret (Humans), Oversoul (Crabs), Mooseman (Horrors)
• Tribal Game 11: Oversoul (Wurms), Mooseman (Dwarves), Spiderman (Golems), BigBlue (Shapeshifters), DarthFerret (Demons)
• Tribal Game 12: Spiderman (Hydras), Oversoul (Angels), DarthFerret (Trolls), Al0ysiusHWWW (Vedalken), BigBlue (Bats), Mooseman (Snakes)
• Tribal Game 13: Mooseman (Allies), Spidey (Orcs), turgy22 (Treefolk), Oversoul (Spirits)
• Tribal Game 14: Mooseman (Shamans), Spiderman (Frogs), Turgy22 (Eldrazi), Oversoul (Constructs)
• Tribal Game 15: Spiderman (Spiders), Mooseman (Cats), CanadianBrad (dropped), Oversoul (Goblins, what a jerk), turgy22 (Snakes), Killer Joe (Bears)

 

[Killer Joe]

Are cards from any of the Portal sets allowed? i.e. Bear Cub
Yes, there's Grizzly Bears but in the regular sets there are no Bear Cub cards.

I would assume that cards from either of the "Un" sets are not allowed, I mean, how will you know that I didn't take off my jeans when your creature has Denimwalk?

 

[Spiderman]

I hope I can speak for everyone when I say "Please keep your jeans on." Whether a creature has denimwalk or not

 

[Oversoul]

Portal's fine (this includes the Three Kingdoms set, which might be of interest), Unglued isn't. I was going to just paste in the set legality note for Vintage and Legacy that would exclude Unglued, but I didn't actually see one on the official banned list pages, even though those sets are of course not legal there...

 

[Oversoul]

So Spiderman has convinced me to update this thread on the subject of banning goblins, elves, and zombies. They were banned in the previous rules and leaving that out was something of an oversight that some jerk exploited. I don't want to play one of those tribes and then immediately turn around and say no one else should get to, but it really does seem like they're overpowered here and should be banned: the "lowlander" deckbuilding restriction seems like it would barely affect them. I'm happy to add in a section to the rules here banning those three tribes if there's a consensus that they should be banned. So far it's just Spiderman and myself that have commented on the matter...

 

[Spiderman]

I don't think anyone else has the inclination to play them, otherwise they would have in that last game (unfortunately, it looks like we'll never know what CanadianBrad's tribe was...)

 

[BigBlue]

Tribal 16? Are there new rules? Having not played in 3 years leaves me a bit worried.

 

[Oversoul]

The rules are in the first post of this thread. It looks like we're also banning goblins, elves, and zombies. We apparently decided not to ban them, or at least didn't decide to ban them, and some jerk played goblins in the first new game and killed everyone. No more of that. Oh, I have a deck ready for the next game.

So yeah, in answer to your question, the rules are in the first post. It's pretty similar to before, but with the partial highlander gimmick as a means of nerfing non-tribal sources of power.

 

[Spiderman]

We apparently decided not to ban them, or at least didn't decide to ban the...

I think we decided to give them a try (or allow them) because no one could remember why they were banned from the first Tribal set of rules. I think CanadianBrad was one of the initial proponents for it so if he had played, he might have had one of those tribes.

 

[Mooseman]

I can have a deck in.... uh... a day or two...
Give us a start date. (Spidey may not get this until Monday)

 

[Spiderman]

I'm in today, but don't think I'll have a deck ready. We also need a head count of who else might be in for another.

 

[BigBlue]

So - are all tribes (except the banned 3) available? I had a concept going with an unplayed tribe... but I may switch it with another if that's still an option.

Thanks!

 

[Oversoul]

I haven't updated this thread with the tribes played in Game 15, even though it's been quite a while. My apologies for that. I was lazy.

Spiders, cats, snakes, and bears are currently unavailable. Goblins, elves, and zombies are banned. All other tribes are available.

 

[Oversoul]

Well, all has been silent on the CPA tribal front. I finally got around to updating the first post of this thread to reflect the results of Game 15 and the subsequent tribal bans. I still have a deck ready for Game 16, if anyone's up for it.

Anyway, today I was toying around with some archetypes and it occurs to me that we might want to actually expand our list of banned tribes. A few tribes are raising red flags for me and I think I could break them. I'm not trying to. No really, I mean it! I learned my lesson this time. The whole reason we've modified this format in this way is so that we can all try out tribes, not kill everyone in five turns with the most broken tech that isn't banned in either Legacy or Magic Online's Tribal Wars Legacy. My new deck is, I think, much more in the spirit of this. And if I get run over by a broken deck, well, that's just karmic justice or whatever. Anyway...

I really do like the singleton limitation on cards that aren't creatures of the chosen tribe. It cuts down the explosiveness of the format and shifts more of the focus to the tribes. Goblins, elves, and zombies have so many powerful creatures that it's possible to build explosive decks that don't give smaller tribes a chance. Basically, those three are broken. I demonstrated that directly in Game 15, although in hindsight that really shouldn't have happened. My bad. So those three are off the table, and that makes more room for tribes that wouldn't stand a chance against them. At least, in theory it does that. But the experimenting I've been doing, most of which hasn't been specifically for this format, is indicating to me that those three aren't the only broken tribes. Maybe they were back in 2005, when we started this, but things have changed. New sets have come out and the newer creatures are generally more powerful. There have probably been more creatures printed that are strong in tribal games since 2005 than there were before 2005. Tribes that were weak or nonexistent back then have turned into total powerhouses.

So, how do we want to handle this? I don't even know enough to say which tribes might be candidates for banning, although with a bit more testing I could definitely posit some. We could do some sort of vote or something. So far the only tribal bans that have had any support have been the original three. I'm hoping to see if we can formulate a consensus on which other tribes, if any, should be barred from these games.

Here's my proposed watch list. I don't know for sure if these tribes should be banned, but I'm wary of them because I think I could break them, even in Tribal Lowlander. I won't be playing any of these myself no matter what, at least not until I lose a bunch more games and then BigBlue hits me with a Sneak Attacked avatar or something...

Oversoul's Watch List:

• Humans
• Faeries
• Merfolk
• Wizards
• Soldiers
• Angels
• Eldrazi
• Spirits
• Vampires

 

[Spiderman]

Well, all has been silent on the CPA tribal front

I think only three people expressed interest in another Tribal game, unfortunately.

I agree that newer cards might have made more tribes "bannable". Does that Tribal website that we referred to earlier have similiar ideas?

 

[Oversoul]

The only site I can remember being referred to was the DCI page, and the list I have at the top of this thread is, I believe, up-to-date for both Legacy and Tribal Wars Legacy. I'm largely ignorant of Magic Online goings-on, but it seems that they don't ban any tribes in their tribal formats.

This is all speculation, since we've only had one game under the new system (and have changed the rules to go back to banning the three originally banned tribes since that game). But here are the issues I'm seeing...

1. We possibly don't even have enough time and interest in this to play games, let alone maintain a banned list.
Answer: Magic Online has Tribal Wars as an official format. We can piggyback off that.

2. Magic Online's Tribal Wars doesn't have the full card pool available in print, although they seem to have possibly been catching up on that?
Answer: By combining the Legacy banned list with the Tribal Wars banned list, we hit the most egregious offenders. We probably end up banning some cards that wouldn't actually be problematic, but not very many.

3. Tribal Wars and Legacy are formats that focus on single-player games. Multiplayer is different.
Answer: This might not really be a big deal. The explosive aggro and aggro-combo decks that would be most dangerous in single-player have their power diluted when facing multiple opponents. There are other possible concerns with this, but they seem pretty minor. I guess infinite combos are one way to bypass the problem of needing to kill multiple opponents, so we could address that by reinstating the moratorium on infinite combos. Not sure how best to word that as a rule but the "gentleman's agreement" on it seemed to work in the past. The singleton restriction on non-tribe cards solves most of that issue anyway.

4. We want to bring down the explosiveness and diversify the field.
Answer: The ban on goblins, elves, and zombies as tribes cut out the three most powerful tribes and made more room for obscure stuff. Later, the stipulation that tribes would become unavailable after being played did even more for that.

5. It's still too fast and a lot of decks are built around things that have nothing to do with tribes at all, like Recurring Nightmare and Sneak Attack.
Answer: Restrict all cards that aren't creatures of the chosen tribe. CanadianBrad seemed to think that goblins, elves, and zombies wouldn't be too overpowered with that, and if I'd actually given it some thought instead of just trying to build and play a goblin deck, I'd have spotted the problem with that instead of illustrating it.

6. The banned lists we're using focus mainly on non-creatures. And our "tribal lowlander" deckbuilding restriction doesn't do anything to the overpowered creatures. Goblin Recruiter is a noteworthy exception, but goblin decks aren't exactly crippled by the loss of one card.
Answer: At the moment, it's just a reinstatement of the ban on the big three as tribe choices.

And that brings us to where we are now, which might not be important if there aren't going to be any more of these games anyway. I noted some tribes that I think would still be problematic because back when we initially decided to bar goblins, elves, and zombies, they were the three tribes that Onslaught Block had strengthened the most. Other sets introduced some new tribe options and boosted some existing ones, but the big three were still probably in a league of their own. There wasn't much commentary here because of the way we play these games, but if we'd been some group that met every week for tribal games, we'd have all noticed that Lorwyn hit the format like a ton of bricks, bringing back virtually abandoned tribes like merfolk and making them stronger than ever before. The other big change was the revision of creature types that Wizards of the Coast did for older cards. A tribe that wasn't available back when we started this, humans, emerged and lots of creatures not explicitly defined as human were retconned to be human. With Goblin Recruiter banned, I think a human deck might actually be more powerful than a goblin deck.

In the past, I took it for granted that goblins and elves were the easiest tribes to break. They've been around for so long and have so many powerful members. Zombies seemed like the obvious runner-up in the brokenness contest. But newer sets have really helped other tribes catch up. Not trying to deter people from playing this format. I'm still up for a game. I have a lhurgoyf deck (I'm going to be Killer Joe and announce my tribe to everyone before the game starts). But if we do end up playing more of these games, it seems like it would be a good idea to figure out how we want to balance them.

 

[Mooseman]

Everyone could just make decks in 10 minutes like me...
I am up for a tribal game.... I will play an off tribe like Moose... oh wait, there isn't one...
I put togather a deck shortly (like next week)

 

[Spiderman]

Weirdly enough, the link contained in the Tribal Wars Legacy link above that refers to Tribal Wars discussion forums (with "gleemax" in the link) doesn't seem to be active, so I'll have to do some searching for a current thread as I find it hard to believe that everyone gave up on MTGO tribal wars

I can't do a deck in 10 min (as you all well know ) but we can put out another call to see if anyone's interested at this date...

 

[Oversoul]

Weirdly enough, the link contained in the Tribal Wars Legacy link above that refers to Tribal Wars discussion forums (with "gleemax" in the link) doesn't seem to be active, so I'll have to do some searching for a current thread as I find it hard to believe that everyone gave up on MTGO tribal wars

Wizards of the Coast did some renovation of the website a while back. It seems that they weighed the options regarding hyperlinks on their own pages that would become broken and decided to just have everything redirect to that page.