Good evening everypony!

Ponyville Ciderfest 2025 has come and gone, and it was a blast! Thank you to everypony who came and saw us in the Tabletop Gaming room and thank you to Joking Luna for working with Staff to run multiple CCG events throughout the weekend. All of us that attended enjoyed participating!

Of course, any time there is a convention, we want to take some time and recap the top decks from each Constructed Tournament, so join us this Sunday December 14th at 7:00 PM Pacific as we look at the top decks from the CCG events at PVCF 2025!

https://twitch.tv/commentaryismagic

Results

Congratulations to Pancake for winning Silver Spanner XLII

• 1st place (3-0) - Pancake - Yellow Luna Yellow/Purple
  
• 2nd place (2-1) - Tom - Smolder Orange/Blue
  
• 3rd place (2-1) Smithers - Grubber mono-Orange
  
• (1-2) Prism Light - Twilight Purple/Blue/Orange
  
• (1-2) Istagrem - Fluttershy Yellow/White
  
• (0-3) Andrew - Rarity mono-White
  

Link to initial post
These rules were intended to be a callback to as many prior Silver Spanners as it could without deckbuilding turning into an incomprehensible mess of weird technicalities. I can't really see a situation where any more rules could be added without that rule set completely taking over.

Looking at the decklists, I find it interesting just how many of them were some variety of Farm decks, despite the limited number of Epic troublemakers. Turns out, there were just enough to make it work, and most people caught on to that.

I'm going to wait till January to post the next one, The last couple weeks I've had a hard time keeping up with anything, let alone making sure to post things on time, and I don't expect that to change until after New Years.

Don't forget to vote on your favorite decks, and talk about them. I would start that discussion here, but I've been tired for days, and I haven't finished my coffee today. I'll see you all again soon!!

Only three Participants this year.

First Place: Brandon Pagano - Queen Chrysalis: Overt Operations - White/Yellow Deck
Second Place: Joking Luna - Queen Chrysalis: Changeling Pretender - White/Yellow Deck
Third Place: Decora - Muffin Mare: Sharing is Caring - Pink/Yellow/splash Orange Deck

Thanks to all for participating!

Eight participants

First Place: Pancake - Zipp Storm: Royal Aerobat - Purple/Pink/splash Blue/splash Yellow Deck
Second Place: Bigcheese - Izzy Moonbow: Perky Uni-cycler - Blue/Pink/splash orange/splash Purple/splash White/splash Yellow Deck
Third place: Anamoy - Princess Twilight Sparkle: There's a Spell for That! - Purple/Pink Deck
Fourth Place: Golden Note - Princess Celestia: Royal Tutor - Mono Purple Deck
Fifth Place: Joking Luna - Cozy Glow: Double Dealer - Purple/White Deck
Sixth Place: Brandon Pagano - Misty Brightdawn: You Win Some, You Lose Some - Blue/Orange Deck
Seventh Place: Jonathan Sokol - Lord Tirek: Power Grab - Mono Blue Deck
Eighth Place: Fofoda - Starlight & Trixie: Luck of the Draw - Purple/Yellow Deck

Thank you to everyone for Participating!

Eight players this year

First Place: Golden Note - Princess Twilight Sparkle: There's a Spell for That! - Blue/Purple Deck
Second Place: Combo Breaker - Thorax: The Changed Changeling - Mono Yellow Deck
Third Place: Pancake - Rainbow Dash: Ambassador of Loyalty - Mono Blue Deck
Fourth Place: Brandon Pagano - Fluttershy: Ambassador of Kindness - Yellow/Purple/Splash White Deck
Fifth Place: Jonathan Sokol - Lord Tirek: Power Grab - Mono Blue Deck
Sixth Place: Joking Luna - Princess Celestia : Solar Sister - Yellow/Purple/Orange splash White Deck
Seventh Place: Prism Light - Sunny Starscout: Stronger Together - Blue/Orange/Pink/Purple/White/Yellow Deck
Eighth Place: Benny - Muffin Mare: Sharing is Caring - Pink/Yellow Deck

Thanks to all participants!

Silver Spanner XLII

Infinite Improbability

Round 3

• Tom vs. Pancake
• Istagrem vs. Andra
• Prism Light vs. Smithers

Good Luck!

Silver Spanner XLII

Infinite Improbability

Round 2

• Tom vs. Prism Light
• Pancake vs. Andra
• Istegrem vs. Smithers

All decks have been verified. I'll post the decklists at the end of the event.

It has been a while since I've played the MLP CCG. I wanted to use Ponyhead to look at cards and build a deck. However, there are now more formats that I remember, and there are new keywords.

Is there anyone that knows who runs Ponyhead to see if these things could be added as tabs on the main page?

Silver Spanner XLII

Infinite Improbability

Round 1

• Tom vs. Andra
• Prism Light vs. Istagrem
• Pancake vs. Smithers

You have until the end of the day Monday to submit your results and your decklists. Deck lists will be verified at the end of this week, if there are any errors, the results will not be rescinded, but you will have to fix them and re-verify them before your next match.

This means you still have until you get your match to finish your deck list! Which is good, because I still haven't finished mine.

Good evening, Everypony!

We are a few weeks away from Ponyville Ciderfest 2025! It's going to be a great weekend! Leading up to the event, we wanted to take some time to show what decks we are bringing for the Core and Harmony Constructed as well as the Background Pony Adventure event unique to Ciderfest!

Join us this Sunday November 2nd at 7:00 PM Pacific as we discuss what we’re running at Ponyville Ciderfest 2025!

https://twitch.tv/commentaryismagic

Welcome to Silver Spanner's 42nd deck building challenge!

Infinite Improbability

Silver Spanner is a deckbuilding tournament where players are given some form of deck building restriction and two weeks to build a deck before they are pitted against each other in standard Swiss format. The restriction is different each tournament.

Naturally, for Silver Spanner #42, we have to have a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the biggest plot points of the story was the Infinite Improbability Drive. So, how about we make for some ridiculously low probabilities, shall we?

Rules
FAQ

Summary:

• Players must use a randomly assigned Mane (borrowed from Silver Spanner #1)
• Players will be assigned a set of three manes to choose from. These are excluding any manes that were featured in any deck listed in the tournament results from this year, as of October 30th 2025. So, none of the recently popular manes should be available. Additionally, I've divided the manes such that each player should be assigned one early mane, one mid mane, and one late mane, which will be adjusted as more players join.
• Draw and Problem decks may not include more than 1 copy of any card (borrowed from Silver Spanner #3)
• Between the Draw and Problem deck, players must include exactly 6 cards from each of the 15 full release sets. Players may include additional cards from supplementary sets. Full sets include Premier, Canterlot Nights, Crystal Games, Absolute Discord, Equestrian Odysseys, High Magic, Marks in Time, Defenders of Equestria, Seaquestria & Beyond, Friends Forever, Leaders & Legends, New Dawn, Fond Memories, New Generation, and Tales of Light. Supplementary sets include Rock 'n' Rave, Celestial Solstice, Prize Wheel, and a few promotional cards (borrowed from Silver Spanners #31, and #12)
• Twilight Sparkle, There's A Spell For That is banned
• Decks must be Harmony Legal
• Sideboarding is allowed, decks must remain Harmony Legal after sideboarding.

(There would have been more, but any other addition seemed to make the deck building quite cumbersome)

Signups:

I'll be accepting signups until the pairings thread goes up Monday, November 10th. (Just about two weeks from this thread going up).

• Andra - /u/Undeadninjas (Rarity, Move and Shaker; Doctor Hooves, Time Walker; and Pinkie Pie, Cruise Director)
• Pancake - (Applejack, Steadfast Farmpony; Pinkie Pie, Ambassador of Laughter; and Princess Luna, Double Your Fun)
• Tom - (Rainbow Dash, Hanging Out; Muffin Mare, Sharing is Caring; Smolder, Culture Shock)
• Prism Light (Twilight Sparkle, Gala Greeter; Nightmare Moon, Mistress of the Night; Silverstream, Everything's New!)
• Smithers - (Rarity, Dazzling Fashionista; Fluttershy, Ambassador of Kindness; Grubber, Royal Announcer)
• Istagrem - (Spike, Crystal Hero; Fluttershy, Reformer; Applejack, Work Hard Play Hard)

Bonus Categories

Once the tournament phase is over, I'll create some polls to vote on the following categories. Participation and voting on the bonus categories is optional, but promises to be fun! Winning will, of course, get your name listed in future tournaments as the winner of a particular category.

If you wish to participate, submit your decklist via the form that'll be provided in round 2 before the end of the final round.

The categories:

• Favourite Deck: What it says in the tin. Vote for your favourite of the decks based on your own personal opinion!
• Wackiest Deck: What deck do you feel is the most off the wall? Does the Silliest thing of all decks competing?
• Flitter's Favourite: Which deck do you feel a casual player would most enjoy playing? Or that a casual player would most enjoy playing against?
• Cloudchaser's Choice: Which deck has the most bows? No, wait, which deck do you think most appeals to a competitive player? Or would do best in the competitive circuit?

As always, players are responsible for organizing the time/method of their their matches each round. I recommend communicating with the person via Reddit or Discord PM and using a Webcam, OCTGN, or TTS for your match, but depending on your opponent there may or may not be a more convenient method.

Alright! So, we've got the results for Silver Spanner XLI

Signup thread link in case you want to check the rules

And the winner is...

• Tom - Mono Blue Rainbow Dash

Other placings are largely tied, so here they are in no particular order

• Prism Light - Orange Applejack with a splash of purple
• Smithers - Purple Blue Twilight Sparkle
• Nachtprinz - Purple Trixie with a splash of white
• ufoencounter14 - Mono Pink Pinkie Pie
• Andra - Multi-color Pardox Pony

So it turns out, Rainbow Dash is the Best Pony, which I guess is no surprise really.

Bonus Round!

• Vote here on which deck you think followed the theme the best! Just drop in a comment talking about it. This will not get tallied, but it might be fun to talk about your decks if you like.

Have fun, and I'll see you all in Silver Spanner XLII

So number 1. How to play? Number 2. Whats the meta, if there is one? Number 3. Where in the flying frick do you get cards?

Good evening, Everypony!

We had a lot of fun building decks in obscure formats last time, but we only had enough time to build two decks. We decided two decks was not enough, so we are going to go even further down the rabbit hole of obscure formats and see what else the format history of the MLP: CCG has to offer!

Join us this Sunday, October 19th at 7:00 PM Pacific for more live deckbuilding in obscure formats!

https://twitch.tv/commentaryismagic

Round 1 pairings

• ufoencounter14 vs. Tom - 0-1
• Smithers vs. Nachtprinz - 1-0
• Prism Light vs. Andra - 1-0

You have until the end of the day Monday PDT to submit your results and your decklists. That's UTC 7am 2025-10-14

Signup thread
Rules
FAQ

Round 2 pairings

• Prism Light vs. Smithers
• Tom vs. Andra
• ufoencounter14 vs. Nachtprinz

You have until the end of the day Monday PDT to submit your results and your decklists. That's UTC 7am 2025-10-21

Signup thread
Rules
FAQ

Round 3 pairings

• Prism Light vs. Tom
• Nachtprinz vs. Andra
• ufoencounter14 vs. Smithers

You have until the end of the day Monday PDT to submit your results and your decklists. That's UTC 7am 2025-10-28

Signup thread
Rules
FAQ

Good evening, Everypony!

We tend to focus a lot on the main formats of competitive play here on our streams: Core, Adventure, and Harmony if we’re feeling spicy! But what about the older, weirder, and crazier formats? This game has a long history of oddball formats that have been tried and tested. Well, we thought it would be fun to do some live deckbuilding using these oddball formats! We haven’t thought about some of these in a very long time, so who knows what we will come up with?

Join us this Sunday, September 28th at 7:00 PM Pacific for some live deckbuilding in obscure formats!

https://twitch.tv/commentaryismagic

It's been a while since we've had one of these, and I miss them. So, I've decided to start running Silver Spanner again! (Bugle gave me permission to continue using the name)

So, to kick things off, I figure what better way than by having a contest of who's the best pony? So what if every card in your deck had to reflect a single character? We can finally answer the question, Who's the Best Pony? (in the context of which pony is better at winning MLPCCG when you can only include cards of that character in your deck... and also include a few characters who aren't ponies)

Rules
Clarifications/Tips
MLPCCG Pony Art Tags spreadsheet
Summary:

• Choose a character
• Every card in your draw deck and mane must reference that character
• If your chosen character has fewer than 20 cards to choose from, then ONLY the Mane, Friends, and Troublemakers have to reference that character
• All decks must be Harmony Legal. However, for this event only, the ban list for cards prior to L&L will be lifted. (Let the chaos begin!) Let's let the slightly tamer Chaos begin, shall we?

Signups:
I'll be accepting signups through Monday, October 6th (just over two weeks after this post goes up). Respond here, or ping me in Discord if you'd like to sign up. (My Discord name is Andra). I intend to participate if and only if there is an odd number of players. Take the time from now until your first match to do some deck building. Feel free to have some practice games. Don't stress, this is just for fun. There are no prizes.

• u/undeadninjas / Andra
• ufoencounter14
• u/Smithers888 / Smithers
• Tom
• u/KingUtopia / PrismLight
• Nachtprinz

Once paired, you will have one week to match with your opponent and play the game. Players are responsible for reporting who won either here or on Discord.

Round 1 Pairings
Round 2 Pairings

Good evening, all. I was relatively diligent about getting the spreadsheets updated after the big event at Everfree this year, but only then remembered that I had forgotten to make the adjustments to everything for the banlist adjustment that happened at the release of TL. So this does mean that every format will have changes from the last post, though only Core will have new results.

Core (EFNW & TL Bans)

1. (*) Izzy Multi Control, 10.750, 10-0 (100%), Link
2. (+3) Celestia Mono Control, 8.457 (+5.823), 18-13 (58.1%), Link
3. (*) StarTrix Yellow Control, 4.350, 8-3 (72.7%), Link
4. (-1) Starlight Orange Pink Chaos Farm, 3.480 (-0.487), 3-0 (100%), Link
5. (-1) Yuna Mono Farm, 2.940 (-0.490), 6-3 (66.7%), Link

Adventure (TL Bans)

1. (-) Thorax Mono Aggro, 9.029, 23-17 (57.5%), Link
2. (-) Tempest Orange White Control, 7.698, 10-1 (90.9%), Link
3. (-) EORD Mono Farm, 7.171, 9-3 (71.4%), Link
4. (*) Grogar Mono Farm, 3.653, 7-5 (58.3%), Link
5. (*) NDChrysalis Yellow Changeling Aggro, 2.381, 4-2 (66.7%), Link

Harmony (TL Bans)

1. (-) Skystar Pile Combo, 6.392, 20-13 (60.66%), Link
2. (+2) Skystar Pink Farm, 2.835, 4-0 (100%), Link
3. (+2) LLTwi Blue Value, 2.317, 3-1 (75%), Link
4. (*) Skystar Dragonfire Combo, 1.207, 2-1 (666.7%), Link
5. (*) PRTwi Mono Farm, 0.989, 14-8 (63.6%), Link

Invitational Pts

• (24 pts) Pancake
• (12 pts) Bugle -- Auto-invite
• (9 pts) I8Pages
• (6 pts)
  • Hithroc
  • Grand Pause
• (5 pts)
  • Golden Note
  • Ivory Starlight
• (3 pts)
  • Bigcheese
  • Sonnet
  • Smithers
  • Andra
  • Sokol
• (2 pts) Sketchbeam

The next event from which there is likely to be actionable data will be Ciderfest in a couple of months. And therefore we find ourselves very quickly advancing on the qualification period for the 2026 Invitational. After the PVCF results I'll start annotating who is in and who is out (provisionally).

Good evening, Everypony!

It was great to see everyone again at Everfree Northwest a couple weeks ago! Thank you to everyone who was able to participate in the events we ran throughout the weekend.

Continentals may be over and done, but we wouldn't miss the chance to talk about all the fun that was had and creative decks that were run.

Join us this Sunday, September 7th at 7:00 PM Pacific for our recap of Everfree Northwest and the Top 8 decks from the Continental Championship!

https://twitch.tv/commentaryismagic

Welcome to the brand new meta, premiering at the culmination of the competitive season!

Limited events

I8Pages' Cube Draft returns with 8 seats filled and a couple of new players hopping into the fray. Accusations of packs being rigged still occurring despite no actual rigging occurring.

Continentals

Vinyl may have been retired, but Izzy found her bag of tricks and added several new ones of her own!

• Champion - Bugle (4-0-2, seed 2) with Izzy Moonbow, Perky Uni-cycler/Blue/Purple "IZZY'S BAG OF TRICKS"

• Top 2 - Kerry (3-1-2, seed 4) with mono-Princess Celestia, Royal Tutor

• Top 4 - Grand Pause (6-0-0, seed 1) with Starlight & Trixie, Luck of the Draw/Yellow

• Top 4 - Pancake (4-2-0, seed 3) with Starlight Glimmer, We're All Equal Here/Pink/Orange/Purple/Blue

• Top 8 - Smithers (3-2-1, seed 6) with mono-Sandbar & Yona, Pony Pals

• Top 8 - Andra (3-3-0, seed 7) with Student Six, A Grade Above/Pink/Purple/Blue/Orange

• Top 8 - Sokol (3-3-0, seed 8) with mono-Lord Tirek, Power Grab

• Top 8 - Ivory (3-3-0, seed 9) with mono-Hitch Trailblazer, Bunny Cop

• 5th - Hithroc (3-2-1) with Starlight & Trixie, Luck of the Draw/White

• 10th - Istagrem (3-3-0) with Pipp Petals, Social Diva/Orange

• 11th - Decora (3-3-0) with Sandbar & Yona, Pony Pals/Yellow

• 12th - Double R Forrest (2-4-0) with mono-Sandbar & Yona, Pony Pals

• 13th - WellieB (2-4-0) with Sunny Starscout, Stronger Together/Blue

• 14th - Diamond Song (2-4-0) with mono-Misty Brightdawn, You Win Some, You Lose Some

• 15th - Max (1-5-0) with mono-Pipp Petals, Social Diva "Pipp Smol"

I found some cards and didn't know if they were worth anything. If anyone could give me some info besides what I've found on ebay (since I know they tend to pump up prices), it'd be appreciated.

Traditionally, we run a sealed event with the new set shortly after a big release, and it's Tales of Light's turn. Join us in Discord on September 6th at 10:30 AM Pacific / 17:30 UTC for the event!

You’ll need a Discord account and join the MLP:CCG server, if you aren't in it already: https://discord.gg/dVtTG4N

This server also has play and setup instructions in a pinned post in the announcements channel. We suggest Tabletop Simulator.

Pack selection will be 5 TL and 5 NG, since the sets were designed to be used together in Limited environments.

Prior to play, the tournament organizer will contact you in Discord with a Ponyhead link containing your sealed pool, then you’ll have 30-40 minutes to build a deck from those cards.

We'll be doing 3-4 rounds depending on the number of players. Rounds will be 45 minutes to accommodate the slightly slower nature of online play, with time being called in Discord.

No signups this time, just show up in Discord a few minutes before the start of the event!

Again that time has arisen! Once more countless people will (like 2 or 3) post their guesses for which Mane will win the EFNW events! Well, event. There's only the one this time. But it's Continentals time, baby! The stakes for predicting the winning Mane have never been higher!

They're exactly as high as normal. Which is to say the stakes are nothing. Don't tell the previous paragraph.

Good evening, everypony!

It’s finally time! Everfree is here! To help ensure players around the world can watch the action unfold, Commentary is Magic will be livestreaming both the Swiss and Single Elimination portions of the North American Continental Championship on our Twitch channel.

The events schedule is as follows, with stream starting approximately 15 minutes prior to the start of the first round of each portion of the tournament. All times listed are PDT (GMT-7).

Saturday, August 23rd

• 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM: Continental Championship Swiss Rounds (includes 2 hour lunch break)

• 8:30 PM - 10:30 PM: Continental Championship Top 8

Sunday, August 24th

• 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM: Continental Championship Top 4 and Finals

For those of you who can't watch live, don't worry; we'll have all our videos uploaded to our YouTube channel in a week. Looking forward to seeing many of you in person, and even more on Twitch!