Hello everyone! I’m kayiu, and around Fall of last year I took over format management of Primordial from Fanfan. Today, I’m going to give an update on the events we’ve held since then, and plans for the future. If you want to find the top lists for the following tournaments, you can find them on our deckstats page.
Primordial Discord Tournament #6
The first of these was the sixth Primordial Discord Tournament, which ended up being our largest event to date. Eventually, Styx managed to take it with IKO Cycling, completing a whopping three-peat streak of Primordial Discord Tournament wins! With 22 participants, it was the first time that the wider theorycrafted meta could be seen in action. It was also around this time that the League system was established – a formalized way for players to test and share decks during our off-season. Both of these factors ended up revealing something that had been on our radar for a while. The individual card quality of both cards in general and more specifically the commons of post-WAR sets was much higher than that of sets that came before them, to the point that in a competitive setting, there was effectively no point in playing decks from pre-WAR sets. This was troubling to us, as we wanted to foster meta diversity and brewing potential.
What-If? #1
As a result, our next event banned all WAR and beyond sets in order to shake up the meta. It was one among many solutions discussed, but we decided to try this one out first because of its simplicity. This series of alternative ruleset tournaments was given the name “What-If.” The final results demonstrated the meta diversity we were hoping for, with our top 5 having completely different sets and archetypes represented.
Kaldheim Klash
After a few months hiatus, Primordial returned with Kaldheim Klash! This event was, as the name indicated, Kaldheim-only, and was meant to provide a testing ground for this new set/a fun way to test out its best archetypes!
Upcoming Events
And that concludes the events we’ve had in the past six months! Now, as for what’s coming up… starting tomorrow, we’re going to be having the Primordial Discord Tournament #7, which features both Pre-WAR and unlimited set tournaments! After that finishes in early May, we’ll be having a Strixhaven-only tournament as well as What If? #2. (testing out alternative balancing schemes as opposed to simply banning WAR-on sets) Based on the feedback from these interim tournaments, the tournament offerings of June’s Primordial Discord Tournament #8 will be adjusted!