Summary: bring a Challenge Deck or make one with similar restrictions including max 3 rares, 15 card sideboard, and certain banned cards and rule modifications to reduce traps for new players and decks getting totally shut down. Same deck against all opponent alignments.
The goals of this event are:
- a constructed format that is less scary to less-experienced players than General Opponent;
- potential for more card play diversity than expansion-restricted formats (such as METW-only) or the traditional Challenge Deck format;
- bring to the community new decks that generally wouldn't be too terribly expensive for new collectors to create with physical cards.
Civilized Challenge Format Rules:
- Game Format - Games must be in accordance with the 2-deck game format.
- Deck Integrity - Players must use the same deck (pool, main deck, sideboard, Fallen sideboard, and rare site(s)) for each game. Players may optionally submit their custom deck lists 3 days in advance of their first game for verification of legality. The server logs may also be used to check legality afterwards.
- Deck Construction - Players use the same single deck against all opponents. There are two options for decks:
Players may use any ICE Challenge Deck, except The Witch-king preconstructed deck must replace Long Winter and Foul Fumes with other allowed cards (see below). Challenge Deck players may move any of their non-avatar characters into their draft pool. They may also add a sideboard up to 10 cards against Fallen Wizards following the below restrictions to deckmaking, as well as backup wizard characters in case opponent declares as Fallen. Note that the decks included on cardnum account creation were historically incorrect; players should consult viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1601 to verify (viewtopic.php?f=128&t=4215 may help).
Players may alternatively make a custom ICE-legal deck following 2-deck game format along with these additional restrictions:- No more than 3 rares, which must be different. Cards that only appear once in the MEBA box set are considered rares (cardnum lists these as rares). English-printed promos are not considered rares. Rare sites count against this limit and should be placed into the sideboard in the cardnum deckbuilder.
- No more than 15 cards in the standard sideboard.
- Players cannot have the following cards anywhere in their custom decks:
- Sustainable roadblock hazards: Long Winter, Snowstorm, Foul Fumes, Beorning Skin-changers, Drowning Seas, Winds of Wrath, The Way is Shut
- Immediate removal hazards: Call of Home, Muster Disperses, News of Doom, Tookish Blood, Call of the Sea, Early Harvest, Stay Her Appetite, Your Welcome is Doubtful, Will not Come Down, Twisted Tales, Unhappy Blows, Reluctant Final Parting, Neither so Ancient Nor so Potent, Rats!, Aware of their Ways, Desire All for Thy Belly, Rolled down to the Sea, Pilfer Anything Unwatched, Veils Flung Away, Indur Dawndeath
- Character removal resources: A Malady Without Healing, Ren Unleashed, No Better Use, Sack Over the Head, Treason the Greatest Foe, Use Your Legs
- Additional Modifications to Play:
- There is no One Ring victory.
- At any time during the character draft, a player with a Challenge Deck may announce that they are using a Challenge Deck to get character priority over an opponent that has not so announced. That is, an announced Challenge Deck player that has a duplicate reveal with an unannounced opponent successfully drafts the character. This does not change that players may not draft characters already drafted by an opponent.
- Players may only use their own rare sites explicitly included in their deck (counting against the rare limit). To use, players should place the standard cardnum copy from the site deck face down as they would any site, and when it is revealed they should retrieve the explicit copy from their sideboard as proof. (An announced Challenge Deck Saruman, Alatar, Radagast, or Adunaphel can also use their specific rare site without explicit sideboard proof.) Other sites may be used freely.
- Influence checks against opponent’s characters and resources cannot add more than 8 to the roll, and an identical character cannot be revealed.
- Discards of hazard player’s characters and resources are ignored for these cards: The Arkenstone [M], People Diminished, Lord and Usurper, Invade Their Domain, The Riddle Game, Bow of the Galadhrim
- Attacks from CvCC or Hounds of Sauron get a -2 prowess penalty. Uncivilized!
- Additional Card Errata: Chance of Being Lost may be used against any opponent. Against an opponent of the opposite alignment, the site is set aside and the opponent uses his or her own version of the chosen site. If it is taken from the discard or is an unavailable rare it enters play tapped and is not usable by that player for any purpose besides that movement. If the used site becomes tapped otherwise, the original site set aside is discarded when the opponent discards the used site. Otherwise, the original site is returned to the location deck when the used site leaves play.
- Tournament Points - This event will be using an adaptation of the CoL tournament points, roughly 1.5x of the CoL TP, designed to slightly elevate the importance of winning over the CoL MP gaps, as well as reduce Swiss pairing skill variance from early concessions and One Ring losses. Details below.
