Maze of Ith Recap
Hasbro Doesn't Want You To Know About This One Weird Tournament
By Shawn
January 21, 2021
On Saturday, January 16, 2021, 31 mages gathered to attempt to cure the world of a terrible plague by playing Magic. In the end, Dave Firth Bard succeeded in doing so, winning the event and saving the world!
The Maze of Ith was uniquely structured, featuring both a novel deck building/gameplay rule and a special tournament structure. Below is a quick summary of those rules (because they affect deck building), and then without further ado, deck photos!
Three more quick things. First, a big thank you to all the players for their work brewing and playing in the event. The success of the event was in large part due to the fact that everyone put some real thought and effort into making fun, interesting new decks and having a good time.
Second, congrats to our six spice winners! While everyone brewed up something cool for the event, these people built particularly noteworthy decks: Park Cofield, Dave Portal, Jason Beaupre, Ricardo Centazzo, Patrick Quinn, and Brian Limbacher.
And, last but not least, we raised a total of $585.14 for Action Against Hunger, a wonderful charity that addresses a variety of hunger-related issues worldwide. In 2020 they helped over 17 million people in 46 countries, and 93% of everything they raise goes into their programs. We're thrilled playing cards can help such a great cause!
Now, rules, then decks (PS -- here are the full rules if you want them)!
The Leyline of Ith Deck Building/Gameplay Rule
Set in a world where a global pestilence is wreaking havoc (wonder what that's like...), participants in the Maze of Ith event are imagined to be travelling to an actual giant Maze, where the wizard Ith has cast a spell called The Leyline of Ith to enhance their magical powers. The Leyline has a persistant in-game effect on all games played in the Maze of Ith:
In preparation for the tournament, you choose a color, or colorless. As long as your deck contains at least 12 cards from the Dark, spells from The Dark of the chosen color receive a discount, as do abilities on permanents from The Dark of the chosen color. The discount equals one mana of the color you chose, or two colorless mana if you chose colorless. Should your deck ever not contain 12 cards from The Dark (e.g., if you sideboard them out), instead, all spells in your deck cost one colorless mana more to cost, and all abilities that do not generate mana cost one colorless mana more to cast.
This rule clearly incentivizes you to brew with cards from The Dark, and the cost reductions mean many cards from The Dark are suddenly much, much better. Lots of green and red 1/1's become 0-drops. Fire Drake becomes essentially a 2/2 flier for 2. Dust to Dust is a 2-mana 2-for-1. Fellwar stone becomes nearly a mox, and Standing Stones become a great mana fixer. And Book of Rass is basically an undercosted Yawgmoth's Bargain.
These changes were intended to get people to use some rarely used cards from The Dark, and every single player came up with something cool!
Randomly Fired Rounds Special Tournament Structure
The tournament was not set up like a normal tournament with fixed, timed rounds. Instead, rounds fired randomly, pairing whichever players happened not to be in a match at the time. The random timer was set up so players should expect new rounds to fire after they have waited 10 minutes (the random timer is a Poisson process), though sometimes it was longer, and sometimes it was shorter.
This random timer feature was important because, rather than the X-0 player just winning the event, the event was essentially a race to six match wins: every time a player won a match, they received a clue to a puzzle, and after they had won six matches, they had all the clues and were allowed to try to solve the puzzle.
Structuring the tournament in this way meant that you didn't want to play a deck that was too slow. You might have a great idea for a prison deck that you think is unbeatable, but if it takes you 1.5 hours to play every match, you won't win the race to six wins. Thematically, this element was intended to make it feel like players really were racing to the Center of a Maze against each other.
In the end, several players played over 20 games in the six hours it took for someone to successfully win the event. The highest number of matches a player played was 9, and DFB won the event with a 6-2 match record despite there being other players with better records, including an undefeated player. This tournament structure definitely played out in a new, interesting way, and might be something we reprise in the future.
One last thing: if you want to try your hand at the puzzle players needed to solve to win the event, it's posted at the bottom of this page.
Now, decks!
The Decks!
Player records shown as: (match wins, match losses, game wins, game losses, byes [if any]). Match win numbers include a bye as a win, but game win numbers exclude byes.
Dave Firth Bard (Event Winner) (7-2, 13-7, 1 Bye)
Park Cofield (Spice Winner) (3-4, 5-9, 1 Bye)
Dave Portal (Spice Winner) (6-4, 11-11, 1 Bye)
Jason Beaupre (Spice Winner) (3-5, 11-11)
Riccardo Centazzo (Spice Winner) (1-6, 3-13)
Patrick Quinn (Spice Winner) (5-2, 9-5, 1 Bye)
Brian Limbacher (Spice Winner) (7-1, 12-5, 1 Bye)
Adam Lemke (6-1, 12-3)
Andrew Ruschpler (3-2, 6-7)
Andy Baquero (5-3, 8-8, 1 Bye)
Ben Tash (3-3, 9-7)
Bryan Manolakos (4-3, 8-8, 1 Bye)
Charlie Peterson (0-5, 3-10)
David Third (6-3, 10-8, 1 Bye)
Flavio del Santo (5-1, 11-4)
James Lebak (1-4, 3-9)
Jamie Parke (6-3, 10-8, 1 Bye)
Jeff Liu (4-2, 10-6)
Justin Flynn (2-5, 6-10)
Luke Zinnen (6-0, 10-4, 1 Bye)
Marc Flore (2-4, 7-10)
Micah RagingRiver (2-4, 4-8, 1 Bye)
Mike VanDyke (4-2, 8-5)
Mox Emerald Scott (4-5, 11-12)
Noah Keating (5-2, 10-8, 1 Bye)
Shane Mccandlish (2-3, 6-8)
Slanfan (5-2, 9-7, 1 Bye)
Stephen Adams (2-6, 9-12)
Stephen Henke (4-5, 9-12, 1 Bye)
Stephen Williams (0-5, 4-10)
Victor Areces (3-4, 5-9, 1 Bye)
PS -- The Puzzle
The puzzle element of the event represented players searching the Maze for clues to discover a powerful spell that would end the pestilence. Whichever player could find the Center of the Maze (== win six matches) and correctly solve the puzzle won the event. Notably, the first player to reach the Center of the Maze was actually Brian Limbacher, but he said an incorrect spell and was vaporized. DFB was the second person to find the Center of the Maze (about 1 minuted behind Brian), and he correctly solved the puzzle.
At the start of the event, players were told the following:
The magic words in the spell are some permutation of: Geralsexli, Mekapian, Fugenkat, Anikmagous, and Betage-Tutelrex
Every time they won a match, or got a bye, players learned one of the following clues:
- The word with the fewest vowels comes first
- The longest word is either second or fifth
- No word is shorter than the word before it
- The fourth word is longer than the fifth word
- Exactly one pair of words with the same number of letters are adjacent
- One letter is in both the fourth and fifth words, but no other words
Importantly, one of those clues is a false clue. Players also were told exactly one clue\ was false.
So, given these clues, can you figure out the spell??? Spoiler alert below:
vv Spoiler vv
Fugenkat Betage-Tutelrex Geralsexli Anikmagous Mekapian
^^ Spoiler ^^
