2001)

INTRODUCTION

Gen Con 2001 - Milwaukee, Michigan
Saturday, August 4, 2001

This year's Gen Con featured the first ever Master of the
Peasant Format Tournament. With over 90 players competing,
it was a great success and a ton of fun to play in and
report on. This event, and the related groundswell of
interest in the format, has created what can be considered
a revolution in magic play - a peasant revolution, if you
will.

Prior to Gen Con, both Pojo.com and Card-shark.com had
content discussing the format. Pojo.com had a page,
http://www.pojo.com/magic/PeasantMagic/index.html listing
numerous peasant format deck-lists and I mentioned the
format at discussed the format here on Card-shark.com.

After Gen Con, the enthusiasm and interest in the format
has grown even more. After seeing how much fun the format
was at Gen Con, the Card-shark crew has committed to become
a resource site for Peasant Format. Meridianmagic.com,
probably the most-utilized MTG portal, recently mentioned
the format on its front page. Look for ´´Peasant Uprising
under the FUN AND GAMES section at http://meridianmagic.com/

Finally, the tournament organizer began a Yahoo group
centered around discussion of peasant format and has
already received at least one quality tournament report
discussing his experience playing in the first Peasant
Format tournament. See:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/peasantmagic.

WHAT IS PEASANT FORMAT?

In case you're not familiar with the format, Peasant Format
is a constructed event where only commons and five
uncommons can be used in a 60 card constructed deck. The
organizer, Robert Baronowski, started the event this year
at Gen Con simply because he's fan and enjoys the game of
magic. His wife Laura originally planned to play in the
event, but Robert asked her to help him Judge/Organize the
event when he saw that over 90 people showed up for the
event.

Before the tournament, Robert clarified some of the rules
that some people had been wondering about:

WHAT COUNTS AS COMMON AND WHAT COUNTS AS UNCOMMON?

Any common card in any set can be used as a common and any
uncommon in any set counts as an uncommon unless it was a
common in another set.

Implications: This means that common and uncommon cards
that are banned or restricted can be played in multiples of
four. Ball lightning, which was uncommon in the Dark, is
legal as four of your uncommon cards. So is Strip Mine.
You can play four Crop Rotation, which is common.

IS UNGLUED LEGAL? YES.

Implications: This means that you should be prepared to do
the Hokey-Pokey (Knight of the Hokey Pokey is legal) and
wearing jeans may be a bad metagame call because you might
have to face denimwalk (Hurloon Wrangler). This year,
someone was rumored to have played a Chaos Confetti, with
chaotic results.

OTHER RULES.

Ante cards are not legal. No sideboarding. Land muligan
rule: you can mulligan into seven cards once if you have
no land (you have to keep a one-land hand); not paris
mulligan, where you draw one less if you mulligan. You
draw if you're playing first.

These other rules can have a tremendous impact on the
format. Nevertheless, tournament organizer Robert
Baronowski seemed somewhat flexible on these unconventional
rules. For example, during the tournament, he allowed
players to agree to paris mulligan rules before starting
their match if you are consistent throughout the match.

The event ran very smoothly overall since pretty much
everyone was there to have fun and cooperated to make it a
positive experience for all.

MINI-TOURNAMENT REPORT - Top 8
Johnny Lai, ´´Officer of the Peasant Revolution´´

As one of the first writers for Commons Corner because I
announced the existence of Peasant Format, I felt it would
be embarrassing for me to scrub out of this tournament.
Thus, I played a deck that I felt would be string against
the field, but also good enough to beat random decks
because I knew there would be a lot of players there to
have fun with random commons decks.

In case you missed the title, I did make top eight, but
lost in the Top 8 to another Card-Shark person I was
testing with earlier in the weekend, Eric Weissman, playing
Goblin Sligh with the powerful Death Spark as several of
his uncommon slots.

As those of you who've read my previous articles know, I
believe Goblin Sligh is probably one of the defining decks
of the format. Indeed, as the top eight results show, the
winning deck was a White Weenie anti-red deck called Red
Hate. I chose to play Rebel White Weenies with 4 Swords to
Plowshares and 1 Mother of Runes as the uncommons. After
seeing my decklist, the organizers chuckled while
commenting that 4 Swords to Plowshares is a very fitting
choice for Peasant Format magic. I should have added that
Rebels are fitting for recruiting others to join the
Peasant Format Revolution.

HOMEMADE GOODNESS

COMMONS
4 Ramosian Sergeant (foil)
2 Ramosian Lieutenant (foil, now signed)
3 Defiant Falcon (foil)
4 Fresh Volunteers (foil)
4 Steadfast Guard (foil)
2 Nightwind Glider (foil)
3 Thermal Glider (2 foil, 1 nonfoil, now signed)
2 Disciple of Law (Now signed)
2 Disenchant (foil)
3 Empyrial Armor (too good to pass up)
4 Army of Allah (I just picked up four of these Arabian
Nights commons)
4 Desert
20 Plains (foil)

UNCOMMONS
1 Mother of Runes (Foil, now signed)
4 Swords to Plowshares [now signed]

As you can see, most of my deck was foils, except for cards
like Army of Allah and Desert, which do not come in foils,
and the Swords and Empyrial Armors, which are foil promos
but I did not have time to acquire in foil. In fact, I
borrowed three of the Swords to Plowshares from my friend
Adam Fischer, whom I traveled to Gen Con with from
California. Because of the Artists room at Gen Con, I also
got many of the cards signed by the artists afterwards,
which was awesome.

In case you're wondering about the name, I named it after
the on the foil Mother of Runes I had in the deck, but also
because we were asked to write our deck name on our the
index cards for pairings and I didn't want the name to be
too obvious like ´´Rebel White.´´

I have to apologize to my opponents after Round 2 for not
having their names because I do not remember most of your
names and I lost my Card-shark notepad on which I recorded
my notes and life totals for those matches. That's why
this is a mini-tournament report.

Round 1 - Jennifer Hougen
Playing: R/U Walls and Tims with Burn to your head

Jennifer is playing the first deck she's designed herself,
a blue and red deck with large blue walls for protection,
several ´´Tims´´ (coincidentally, I think she said her
husband's name is Tim), and large burn spells she aims at
your head. First game, she got out some walls to block and
started throwing burn at my head. She brings out a pinging
fairie, which I need to swords to save my Ramosian
Sergeants. My life total goes down in increments of four
life for Lightning Blasts and other various burn as I begin
to search out a Rebel Army. Each turn, I get a few points
in from attacking since she can only block one or two
rebels at a time. I start sweating when she burns me down
from eight to four life with one of the various fireball
variants. Fearful she will topdeck a lightning blast, I
make one big attack and Army of Allah for the win since she
does not have the Counterspell.

RESULT: I WIN.

BONUS TRACK 1:

After seeing her deck, I was inspired to build something
similar on apprentice.

4 Wall of Earth (1R, 0/6 Wall)
4 Wall of Heat (2R, 2/6 Wall)
4 Quicksliver Dagger
4 Miscalculation
4 Arcane Denial
4 Stinging Barrier
4 Impulse
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
11 Islands
11 Mountain
2 Desert

The key to this deck is getting a Quicksilver Dagger on a
big fat wall and drawing lots of cards. The testing that I
did against Sligh was unsuccessful, but it's a fun deck
nonetheless. Maybe I need to replace the Incinerates with
Fireballs.

Round 2 - Dan Hertfeldt
Playing: Stompy with Blastoderm and Hunted Wumpus

This matchup was all about my uncommons coming through for
me. In both games I won, I played a first turn Mother of
Runes. In the decisive (3rd) game, he played a Hunted
Wumpus and I had no creatures in hand to put into play
which seemed to make him happy. During his next turn, he
cast Rancor on the Hunted Wumpus, which would make it a 8/6
trampling monster. Forunately, I had a Swords to
Plowshares in hand and was happy for it to became a 1cc
Stream of Life for 6 life targeting my opponent.

RESULT: WIN

I lost the notes form the rest of my matches, but here are
some highlights (in no particular order) from what I can
remember.

MATCH A: Invunerability on Wall of Glare and Flagbearer
This deck can stop my ground assault with a Wall of
Glare with invulnerability on it along with a Flagbearer to
protect it from my Swords to Plowshares. Indeed, in one
game, I was happy to Swords his Wall of Glare after he cast
invulnerability on it, netting a two-for-one card
advantage. I think he was also playing with Soltari
Trooper, which game me problems one game (he may have won
the second game with the Trooper's shadow beatdown). Even
with the Wall of Glare, I can still fly over with my
Gliders and Defiant Falcons and accelerate his demise with
Army of Allah, which I remember happened in the other game
I won.

RESULT: WIN

MATCH B

In a match against a G/R Deck with Blastoderm, Silt
Crawler, Wooly Spider
Ernam Djinn. I think I won the first game, but the second
game, the land mulligan rule really had an impact.

Early in game 2, my Ramosian Sergeant beats down for
something like seven turns while I sit at one land.
Fortunately, my opponent has two lands and no red mana, so
he cannot capitalize on my problem at that point.

We ended up 1 and 1 in games and go into game three. The
final game was a nail bitter. He's gotten out a Ernam
Djinn, Fires of Yavimaya and Llanowar Elf and has one red
mana source. He's attacking with the Djinn with the Elf on
defense. I Emphyrial Armor up a Steadfast Guard and attack
for Seven, which would put him at 7 if he does not block
with his elf. Since the Steadfast Guard is my only
creature, it will gain forestwalk next turn from the Ernam
Djinn, so I am surprised how much he agonizes over the
decision of whether or not to block. I'm even more
surprised when he finally decides NOT to block because I
could not imagine what he could do next turn since there's
no way I can see that he can kill me next turn and I can't
imagine someone playing enchantment removal in an
aggressive green-red deck like his.

He's now at Seven and I'm still healthy enough to take his
attack without blocking his Djinn. During his turn, he
gives my 7/7 Steadfast Guard forestwalk and then he then
casts Hull Breach on the Armor! He attacks me with the
Djinn again, putting me at 11 or something like that since
I do not block. I should be worried now that he will win
the race, except that I have another Empyrial Armor in hand
and I confidently Armor up the Guard during my turn and go
in for the forestwalking win. Afterwards, he shows me his
hand, which had an Incinerate (he didn't have another red
mana source after casting hull breach!). If had drawn a
mountain, it would have been bad for me because he would
have been able to Incinerate my Guard in response to my
second Empyrial Armor and come over to smash me for a lot.
That game was closer than I thought!

RESULT: WIN

MATCH C: WW Life Gain Deck

This White Weenie deck featured massive life-gain in the
form of Soul Warden and the powerhouse Congregate. The
other dangerous card in his deck was Soltari Trooper, a
shadow creature which can hit me for two a turn until I die
unless I draw my Swords to Plowshares or kill him first.

RESULT: WIN

I may have forgotten one of the matches here, so I'm sorry
if I did.

SPEED ROUND

Although the tournament was supposed to be double-
elimination, Rob was trying to cut the number of rounds so
we could finish since it had already been a long
afternoon. Thus, he gave those of us who were undefeated
got a bye for a round. Then, since there were three people
who were undefeated and six people who only had one loss,
Rob had a what he called ´´speed round´´ to narrow down the
top nine into a top eight. The three of us who were
undefeated all agreed to this since it had been a long day
as a quickly way to cut to the top eight.
The six people who had one loss were randomly
paired against each other. The first person to lose would
be eliminated and the person to eliminate him would get
some packs as a prize. Since the 9th place player also got
some packs for placing ninth, everyone was a winner at this
point. (I was going to write coverage on what happened
during the speed round, but I lost my notes. Sorry.) As
you can tell from the Top 9 results

TOP EIGHT:

During the top-eight, it's single elimination.

T8 Round 1:
Mono Red Sligh by Erik Weissman - Erik's deck had Fire
Whip, Goblin Gernades, and Death Spark (the closest thing
this format has to Hammer of Bogardan).

Erik and I had been having a blast play-testing and
discussing peasant format tech in the past day or so at Gen
Con. He's another Card-shark associate and I'm sorry we
had to meet in the first round of the top eight, but at
least it didn't happen until the top eight. Gen Con was a
ton of fun for me because I got to meet him, Marcus, Matt,
and the rest of the Card-shark crew.

From our testing, he feared allowing me to Empyrial Armor
up one of my Steadfast Guards, which can easily go the
distance. He seemed to think I had the edge but I knew
better and it showed in this match. His Death Sparks are
too much for my one-toughness Sergeants and Falcons. He's
got plenty of Goblins to fuel his Goblin Gernades, which
can often mean: oops, you're dead. That's what happened
to me.

RESULT: LOSS

Oops, that means I'm eliminated.

POST-TOURNAMENT REVIEW

MY DECK
Overall, I was happy with how my deck fared. My 2
maindeck Disciple of Law as anti-Sligh cards served me well
and they cycled away when I was not facing a red deck. The
Army of Allah were amazing as were the Empyrial Armors, but
the MVC (Most Valuable Card) has to have been Swords to
Plowshares because they fizzled Rancors and killed the Soul
Wardens and those shadowy Soltari Troopers which game me
such fits.

METAGAME
As I expected, red seemed to be the defining deck
of the format, even though it was not the most prevalent
deck in the top-nine. What I mean by that is that the top-
9 decks were dominated by Red decks and Anti-red decks
(such as White weenie decks using a lot of life-gain and
pro-red creatures). In fact, the winning deck was called
Red Hate. I admit I was personally surprised by the
prevalence of Green decks, which I expected to lose to
Sligh, but in fact, Green can hold its own against red
because Green has superior creatures, so I think I mis-read
the metagame in this regard.
You can take a look at the top nine decklists in
full on your own, but here's a quick review of the top 9
decks and the Uncommons they used:

*** 9 TH PLACE ***
´´Red Foil´´ - a white-green deck using Armadillo Cloaks
played by Gerald Davis

Uncommons
3:Voice of All
1:Charging Troll
1:Berserk

*** SEMI - FINALST ***
´´Green Stompy´´ - standard Stompy
played by Josh McCarthy

Uncommons
4:Karoo Meerkat
1:Hunted Wumpuss

*** SEMI - FINALST ***
´´Homemade Goodness´´ - White Rebel Deck with Army of Allah &
Empyrial Armor
played by Johnny Lai

Uncommons
4:Swords to Plowshares
1:Mother of Runes

*** SEMI - FINALST ***
´´Sixty Second Man´´ - 16-land Stompy deck with Scent of Ivy
& Fog!
played by Jeremie Bradley

Uncommons: None

*** SEMI - FINALST ***
´´Tight White Life´´ - White Protection deck with 10 ROPs &
Lifegain
played by Joe Anderson

Uncommons
3:Swords to Plowshares
2:Radiant's Dragoons
1:Soltari Priest

Third and Fourth places are Finalists
*** FINALIST ***
´´Goblin Bomb´´ - Goblin Sligh deck w/ Fire Whip & Death Spark
played by Erik Weissman

Uncommons
1:Goblin Cadets
4:Death Spark

*** FINALIST ***
´´Pack o' Fat Rats´´ - standard Sligh deck with Spellshocks
played by Jason Burden

Uncommons
3:Spellshock

*** SECOND PLACE ***
´´Village Idiot´´ - 10-land Stompy with Blastoderm & Wall of
Roots
played by Mark Gottleib

Uncommons
4:Treetop Village
1:Hurricane

*** FIRST PLACE ***
´´Red Hate´´ - WW anti-red deck w/ eight 2cc pro-red creatures
played by David Semonchik

Uncommons
2:Mother of Runes
3:Swords to Plowshares

Here's a breakdown of top 9 decks by color.

WH/GRN - Red Foil
GREEN - Green Stompy
WHITE - Homemade Goodness
GREEN - Sixty Second Man
WHITE - Tight White Life
RED - Goblin Bomb
RED - Pack o' Fat Rats
GREEN - Village Idiot
WHITE - Red Hate

2 Mono-Red
3 Mono-Green
3 Mono-White
1 Green-White

Noticeably absent in the top-9 were any black or
blue decks of any kind. I saw a Suicide Black deck that
lasted until one or two rounds before the speed round, but
it did not survive.

BONUS TRACK 2: WHERE'S THE BLUE?

Rob and his wife were lamenting the lack of blue decks in
the tournament and challenged those present to bring some
blue Peasant decks next time. There has already been one
article discussing blue in peasant format: See the Yahoo
Group on Peasant Format which has a Tournament Report with
several Blue decks and discussions of some solid cards in
the format, such as Wayward Soul and Ophidian.
I want to add here a quick mention of an Unglued card which
I believe will allow Mono-Blue to hold off Sligh and Stompy:

Card Title: Clam Session
Rarity: C
Card Type: Summon Clamfolk
Cost: 1UU
Pow/Tgh: 2/5
Card Text: When Clam Session comes into play, choose a
word. During your upkeep, sing at least six words of a
song, one of which must be the chosen word, or sacrifice
Clam Session. You cannot repeat a song.
Flavor Text: ´´Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Pearl . . . .´´
Artist: Randy Elliott

You heard it here first, a 2/5 for three mana with a
minimal drawback (if you plan ahead and are willing to sing
for your creatures). Personally, I plan to exploit this
card for its full potential as a powerful creature and as a
means to repeatedly embarrass myself in public.

Watch this space for a Peasant Format tech article that
will review song lyrics which will allow you to play this
card (assuming you're willing to sing for your creatures).
My preliminary top five candidates for words to choose when
Clam Session comes into
play: ´´Baby,´´ ´´Don't,´´ ´´You,´´ ´´Love,´´ and ´´Me.´´

BONUS TRACK 3: COLORLESS POWER CARDS

The following peasant format power cards can go into any
deck because they are colorless or land.

- Phyrexian War Beast (Common) - ¾ Creature for 3 Mana is
huge. It's hard to kill so the drawback is minimal.
- Desert (Common) - this land controls weenie creatures and
gives you colorless mana. In addition, it allows red or
black Mono-colored decks to get around the protection from
color Rebel Gliders.
- Maze of Ith (Common) - You can play four of these in your
deck, but they do not give you mana like Desert does.
- Serrated Arrows (Common) - In such a creature-heavy and
weenie-heavy environment, this artifact can often go three-
for-one.
- Strip Mine (Uncommon) - Yes, you can play four strip
mines if you're willing to given up your uncommon slots for
them!
- Library of Alexandria (Uncommon) - Although it's
restricted in Type one and banned everywhere else, you can
play four of these uncommons in Peasant Format. This card-
drawing powerhouse is waiting to be exploited in this
format, perhaps alongside 4 Crop Rotation (Common).

CONCLUSION

All in all, the tournament was a lot of fun with friendly
opponents in every round. As a top-eight finisher, Robert
proclaimed us ´´officers´´ in the Peasant Revolution, a title
I will wear with pride!

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