I recently played in the Alter Ante Tournament hosted by Old Order Old School in York, PA. The format and event were fantastic and I wanted to share some stories from the weekend.
Format Overview
Quick summary: Build a deck between $4k and $7k according to the official values posted. Reprints are okay. Matches will be best of one for ante. You don't lose cards from your deck, but you make a proxy card for the winner that can be added to their deck.
The cost restrictions made for an interesting brewing process. Black Lotus was banned as it was over $7k by itself. Other cards like Time Walk and Timetwister cost more money than they were probably worth. Deciding to include Ancestral Recall, or Mishra's Workshop, or any Mox would significantly restrict the rest of the deck.
Brewing Process
I built a spreadsheet that would auto-calculate the value of various decks. In preparation I made about 15 tabs on the sheet of different decks. Most of these weren't serious contenders, just thought experiments to see what was possible. A few truths emerged almost immediately: every deck would probably play the three restricted Black cards (Demonic Tutor, Contract from Below, and Mind Twist), and Fellwar Stone was a reasonable replacement for Moxen and would also usually count as a Black source.
I don't have any experience with regular ante formats, but my impression was that they are somewhat slow and grindy in nature. With that in mind, I identified Braingeyser as the potential "most valuable card" at only $60. Wheel of Fortune and Library of Alexandria also stood out as being undercosted. Overcosted cards like Serendib Efreet and Juzam Djinn would not be making an impact.
The other major constriction was dual lands. The cheapest dual lands were still over $300, and deciding to try to play a three-color mana base would take up the entire budget. Undergroud Sea cost twice the amount of City of Brass. I also decided that playing any Moxen was probably not worth it, but this may have been a mistake.
There were two lists I seriously considered. The first was a RW Atog list with Black Vise and Ankh of Mishra to exploit the lack of Moxen, and Savannah Lions plus Armageddon to close out games as fast as possible. I've played Atog a lot recently and decided to skip it this time. Instead, I ended up on a UW Skies list with Serra Angel, Mahamoti Djinn, and Control Magic. It was designed to be a tap-out style of control deck and I wanted to minimize targets for Disenchant and Divine Offering by not playing Jayemdae Tome.
Here is the deck I started the event with ($6927):
The Weekend
My wife and I went down to York early Friday evening. We had dinner and some beer at Collusion Tap Works. I had one of the best hamburgers I've ever eaten. The Ghost Pepper Burger:
The next morning, we checked out the market where the event would take place later in the day. I had a delicious Crab Cake Grilled Cheese for lunch:
The rest of the afternoon before the event we spent walking around York and seeing some of the historic spots. It's a small enough town that it didn't take too long and soon it was time to begin the tournament.
The Event
Each player was assigned a pod. You had to play everyone else in the pod plus five wild card games from outside the pod in order to get a final record. The best record in each pod would make the top four. I figured a 9-2 record would be a lock for top four, 8-3 would be mostly safe, and 7-4 may come down to tiebreakers if you made it at all.
I was in the Balance pod and you can see my scorecard here:
It is a lot harder to remember details from matches when they are single games. I played sixteen games total on the day, but each was against a different opponent. My brain is not used to that, so the best I can do is maybe remember what deck each player was on. I didn't play these in the order here either.
Geoff was on a RW Tax/Edge deck. I think I stuck a Mahamoti and had Counterspell for his Wheel of Fortune for the win. I won a Planes.
Nate Shue I don't remember this one. Maybe this was the game he tried to double Giant Growth plus Berserk into my Swords to Plowshares. I won a Demonic Tutor I think.
Jason Beaupre was on a RG deck with Channel and Fireball. I had Mind Twist for five on turn four and it wasn't really a game. I won a Taiga.
Chris Zach beat me with turn two Sinkhole and turn three Hypnotic Specter and I never found a white mana source. I gave him a Mahamoti Djinn.
Don was on UW and had turn one Library of Alexandria, but I was able to play enough big fliers to kill him before he could recover from a slight mana stumble. I won a Recall.
Mike R was on a UW deck with Copy Artifact and Su-Chi. My fliers won the race against his artifact army. I won a Jayemdae Tome.
I don't remember what Jeremy played, but I think I won
I don't remember how I lost to Ryan but I lost another Mahamoti Djinn.
Stephanie was on GW Enchantress and never drew more than two mana. I won a Strip Mine fittingly.
Mike M was on RG and I think I won Argothian Pixies. I won Sedge Troll but don't remember the game.
Nate G beat me with multiple Fireballs on my Serra Angels and I lost an Island.
My record was 8-3, but I could still play games to try to win more cards. Also, at three losses you could donate $10 to add a Mox to your deck so I added a Mox Sapphire.
I beat Mark with Serra plus Spirit Link on turn five. He made a sweet Armageddon for me:
Mike the third - I don't remember but I lost a Serra Angel I think.
I beat Dan but don't remember the game. He made an Italian Wheel of Fortune for me.
Mase beat me with Mind Twist into Contract and had Fireball before I could finish him off with my Factories. I think I gave him an Island.
Ian beat me with Atog and Black Vise. I didn't have double blue mana for Counterspell when he had Contract. I don't remember which card I drew for him.
Somewhere in there, dinner was served. Excellent food from the Italian place in the market. The macaroni and cheese was delicious.
Here are all the cards I "won" in ante:
After all was said and done, I won the Balance pod with the 8-3 record. The other pod winners were Ian on Red Atog, Levi on UW Aggro (with three Sol Ring, six Mishra's Factories, and five Su-Chi), and Mano on mono-white Howling Mine deck. Mano and I had the same record and hadn't played each other, so we high rolled to see who would be third seed vs fourth seed. I lost and had to play against Levi in the top four. At this point, my deck looks like this:
Levi made short work of me in the top four with a never ending stream of Factory beats. He won a Balance from me that he would want to use in the finals against Ian. Mano lost almost as quickly as I did, but then claimed that we didn't need to play for third place since he already won the die roll. I had already played the most games of anyone on the day but wouldn't have minded playing one more, but I guess the small amount of value for picking third on the prize cards was not something Mano wanted to risk in a game of "Ante".
Ian won over Levi in the finals after some mistakes were made despite being Mind Twisted for four on turn three. Congrats to Ian!
The patch is great. Erg Raiders for most games played was a nice bonus!
Thoughts on Things
The venue was great. The hosts were great. The tournament structure was good until I couldn't play a game to try to win third place. The format was a lot of fun. I don't think it makes me want to play actual ante though.
Some tweaks I would consider for the format:
1. Make Chaos Orb $1. I felt bad for not playing Orb in an Old School event, but didn't think I would miss it that much compared to it's $840 price tag when I had Disenchant and Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell in my deck. I think everyone should be playing Orb whenever possible and this would make it so.
2. Un-restrict the non-Contract ante cards. The best part of the event was seeing which cards you could get. Since no one is losing the cards for real, there isn't any feel-bad from Darkpact or Tempest Efreet, and I'd love to see people trying to use them more often.
3. Un-restrict Mishra's Workshop. The base format is Swedish so its restricted, but the price could be prohibitively expensive and it isn't possible to play more than two anyway. The same argument could be made for the Moxen as well.
4. Originally, I thought putting all dual lands to the same price would be a good change. I was worried that the best deck would be RWB that could utilize the cheaper dual lands. I no longer think this should be the case, but could be worth considering.
My deck was fine. I misidentified how good the blue cards would be. The mana was a bit rough even though I went to great lengths to make it better. Maybe I didn't need Factory since it rarely won me any games and didn't do much blocking. Land Tax and Ivory Tower would have been better than Control Magic and Factory I think. The format was a bit faster than expected as people were more willing to play expensive cards than in normal ante.
Overall, it was an A-plus event. I'm always excited to brew a new format.
Props and Slops
Props:
Mike Frantz for everything he did to put on the event.
Levi and rest of Old Order Old School for being great hosts.
Ian for winning the event.
All the opponents for making fun proxy cards.
All the great food.
My wife Beth for coming along and exploring York with me.
Slops:
Levi for punting in the finals.
Mano for not battling me for third place.
Me for not remembering match details like I normally would. 