What's "just below" top tier?

Say we had a tournament where the following combinations were banned:

  • Strength + Growth cannot be paired
  • Demon + Necro cannot be paired (yes, this means mono-black would be blocked
  • Peace cannot be paired with purple starter

What would be the tournament meta? Which decks would be the next best? Would anyone want to play in such a tournament?

Curious to hear thoughts and opinions!

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Hey @mysticjuicer, would you have any objections if the Codex community used the 19XX name for a format like this? :laughing:

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Can you enlighten me as to what this format is? Iā€™m familiar with Yomi mechanics-wise, but not the meta; is there a ā€œban the dominant charactersā€ tourney format in the Yomi community?

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Not at all!

@FrozenStorm - Yeah, I run a tournament format that basically bans 4 characters: two of them the consensus top tiers, 2 others among the most popular in the usual no-bans format.

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An explanation of the 20XX and 19XX naming convention. From the ā€˜know your memeā€™ site.

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I think the only way to find out is to try (which means ā€˜yesā€™ on the third question, at least for me!).

I will say that in my view, Vandy+black starter is a bigger problem than Vandy+Garth. So I would consider banning decks like your Nightmare and my own [Demon]/Balance/Anarchy, but allowing e.g. [Finesse]/Demon/Necro.

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Banning black starter+Vandy? You know Iā€™m down

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Hmm, Iā€™m not sure I agree (I think your CAMS '18 deck is less of a problem than Nightmare or Mono-Black), but Iā€™d be fine with the broader ban if people would prefer that.

Upon reflection, I think the following combos would emerge as ā€œjust below S-tierā€

  • [Necro]/Blood/Fire. @Bob199 ran this a fair bit in early tournaments, and I can attest it is Very Strong (graveyard + lobbers is nasty, skeletons + drakk frenzy is gross)
  • [Present]/Truth/X (probably Necro or Anarchy, maybe Future or Feral. Quince copying Hyperions is scary, as is Quince copying Omegacrons).
  • Blood/Peace/X (probably Necro or Anarchy, Frenzy offers similar upshot as Suits, good tech 1s to cycle through Peace engine)
  • Anarchy/Growth/Necro (similar to Miracle Grow)
  • Finesse/Demon/Necro I think would still be very strong (Harmony + Dark Pact / Discord / Nether Drain is still good, Finesse Engine + Dark Pact is still good, Meta is still good)
  • Anarchy/Blood/Strength (Birds and Drakk are friends, Zane is still Zane)
  • Balance/Strength/Demon (scary Meta targets, green starter plays keep-away pretty well, birds are still obnoxious)
  • [Past]/Strength/X (Present or Discipline or maybe Necro maybe. Birds + Stewardess makes for some nasty early tempo, splashing Grave gives you upgrade control and a bully hero, Present has purple synergy)

Basically, a lot of red and black still, with a little of the other colors XD

Mono Red and Mono Purple I think would be pretty competitive as well

Who else has thoughts on what would be ā€œplaying to winā€ tournament-viable in this ā€œCodex 19XXā€ format?

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I think [Necromancy]/Truth/Blood would still be very strong too.

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Iā€™m actually curious whether Garth (especially his maxband) or the black starter (especially Graveyard) is more beneficial to the Finesse plan. Iā€™ve never played the deck myself, but Iā€™d be interested to see both a [Finesse]/Demon/Necro and a [Demon/Disease]/Finesse variant. Not in the proposed 19XX format, though.

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@FrozenStorm you could call the format CodeXX to avoid copyright a longer clunky name

Though I do also like 19XX becoming a tournament brand (licensed by juicercorp ofc)

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