Notable information: Cards like tooth and nail, Primal surge,enter the infinite, insurrection are soft banned in my playgroup. As well as extremely powerful cards that abuse the multiplayer format. (prophet of kruphix) Ie. you're considered boring and nobody are happy with your win if its because of those cards.
Maybe my meta is overpopulated with johnnies and/or people that prefer legacy etc. when they want to play cutthroat.
But you do not have to play combo/stax to keep gravepact.dec, and typically GUx goodstuff decks in check. What is running rampant in my meta is synergies and hate cards. (especially for creatures). This makes any gravepact.dec, or BUG i mill myself.deck struggle very much. spells like Rite of replication will typically never resolve (except if its followed by a wrath before the tokens can attack or simmilar.).
Infinites are frowned upon, but what we do see alot of is f. ex: Jarad, golgari lich lord wiping the board with a reanimated fatty. Scapeshift combos, instant speed entreat the angels etc. I would say very few decks belong to the goodstuff category, and gravepact.dec would do very little in our meta since its so unfriendly to creatures anyway.
In addition goodstuff decks are usually pretty hated out because you cannot deal with their game-plan with single target removal.
edit: While golgari based grindy decks do quite well in our meta at times, more or less every deck playing white has Rest in peace. So theres some games with permanently exiled gravyards.
How is any of that different from a combo win through hate?
All of them come out of nowhere and instantly win the game. Just because one's an infinite combo and the other isn't shouldn't have any bearing on what is "fair".
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Oath of the Gatewatch; the set that caused the competitive community to freak out over Basic Lands.
The difference is the timing required and the scale of it. You wont deal infinite damage to the table or gain infinite mana. And it can usually be stopped by instant speed removal.
Most of these combos wont kill the table outright. Jarad can typically drain for 20+ something. but wont kill you at 40 health or above. (as i said. graveyards get a lot of hate. Lord of extinction will never pass 30-ish power. Scapeshift usually deals about 50 something damage in total, and rarely takes out more than one player. even if its lategame. But is very close to the "too good" cards i mentioned. But wont do much if cheated out early, contrary to T&N.
As with entreat the angels its a finite damage cap based on how much mana thats available. And i think thats the defining difference.
Uncool combo: At any point in the game, as long as you assemble it, is just as effective and will kill the board or the majority of it. Reanimate triskelion + mike on turn three is not cool. Scapeshift kill turn 10 with 15 lands in play is a bit more managable.
Cool combo: Scales with gamestate/rescources to help close out games when they go to long, but requires alot of setup in the form of manabase, contents of graveyard, cards in hand, storm count etc.
edit: to clarify, by scale, i mean that theres always a cap on the damage output, lifedrain, power, etc.
I feel your opinion OP (not trying to be insulting) is that of a competitive player who always wants to win, play the best cards, etc.
Hmmm, I would characterize myself more as somebody who doesn't have fun if my deck has no chance at all of winning, and that I feel my Boros/Mardu/Rakdos/monowhite decks have almost no chance of winning against BigSimic.dec or GrindyGolgari.dec if I can't use MLD or combo or stax.
if you can't out-mana U/G with rakdos you're doing it wrong. Olivia Voldaren + Mana Geyser/Braid of Fire/Caged Sun/Crypt Ghast/Gauntlet of Power = your board is either dead or mine.Not to mention most colors now have access to A LOT of ramp if you look in the right places, hell I've seen a mono white Heliod deck out-ramp my U/G Ezuri deck.
Pick a theme and build to it's strengths, and don't be afraid of battlecruiser hosers like Torpor Orb, Angel of Jubilation and Stranglehold, if your opponent is light on answers outside their primary strategy (ETB/Sac decks) it sucks to deal with cards like those
The difference is the timing required and the scale of it. You wont deal infinite damage to the table or gain infinite mana. And it can usually be stopped by instant speed removal.
Most of these combos wont kill the table outright. Jarad can typically drain for 20+ something. but wont kill you at 40 health or above. (as i said. graveyards get a lot of hate. Lord of extinction will never pass 30-ish power. Scapeshift usually deals about 50 something damage in total, and rarely takes out more than one player. even if its lategame. But is very close to the "too good" cards i mentioned. But wont do much if cheated out early, contrary to T&N.
As with entreat the angels its a finite damage cap based on how much mana thats available. And i think thats the defining difference.
Uncool combo: At any point in the game, as long as you assemble it, is just as effective and will kill the board or the majority of it. Reanimate triskelion + mike on turn three is not cool. Scapeshift kill turn 10 with 15 lands in play is a bit more managable.
Cool combo: Scales with gamestate/rescources to help close out games when they go to long, but requires alot of setup in the form of manabase, contents of graveyard, cards in hand, storm count etc.
edit: to clarify, by scale, i mean that theres always a cap on the damage output, lifedrain, power, etc.
this is also a fantastic guideline. Although to simplify it further, just don't be a boring douche. You have access to almost every card in MTG, playing with the same top 20% of the card pool in the name of being competetive is not only boring but an insulting waste of every player at the table's time.
I think if you feel that a certain strategy is being unfairly hated on like MLD, why not talk to your group about it? or if you wanna try to shake up the meta a tiny bit, build a deck with a minor amount of targeted land-D with things like sinkhole, pox and avalanche riders, and then scale it up if people don't whinge too much about it. in most games we play here, most of us can't be bothered to change our decks anymore, but we're happy with where we're at. having said that, i HAVE been sliding in stone rain and wildfire-like effects into my decks again, 'cuz ive noticed that instant-kill lands have popped up once in a while (we house-unbanned tolarian academy too). most of the group understands that troublesome permanents, land or otherwise, just need to get blown up once in a while, so its fine (as long as it doesn't completely stall the game).
you might also wanna try sliding in some targeted land-D, and then scale it up as your group warms up to it
speaking of wasting players' time, hating on "You Can't Play the Game.dec" is entirely fair and should be expected, if you don't like it, find players who cater to that flavor of douchieness and don't cry when people justifiably tell you to get off their table.
A multiplayer victory has to exist beyond simply beating your opponent, there has to be a mutual enjoyment of everyone involved. If you win the game and everyone else is miserable then you've still lost. What gets played is irrelevant.
speaking of wasting players' time, hating on "You Can't Play the Game.dec" is entirely fair and should be expected, if you don't like it, find players who cater to that flavor of douchieness and don't cry when people justifiably tell you to get off their table.
"You Can't Play the Game.dec" is pretty vague. Does that include stuff like dedicated counterspell decks? Lots of people want to play their stupid ***** and "You Can't Play the Game.dec"s stop that. Whether it is via LD, stax or counterspells.
speaking of wasting players' time, hating on "You Can't Play the Game.dec" is entirely fair and should be expected, if you don't like it, find players who cater to that flavor of douchieness and don't cry when people justifiably tell you to get off their table.
"You Can't Play the Game.dec" is pretty vague. Does that include stuff like dedicated counterspell decks? Lots of people want to play their stupid ***** and "You Can't Play the Game.dec"s stop that. Whether it is via LD, stax or counterspells.
I think a better name for it would probably be IHaveAllTheFunAllOfTheFunIsMineSoStopHavingFun.dec - a lot of control decks that rely on counterspells lose their efficacy in EDH due to the sheer number of good counterspell targets, and if you know you're playing against someone with counters then you should be prepared to bait their counters or force a stall until you get them tapped out. This is also known as the "playing against anyone with an island" strategy, and the people who whine because they get their win condition countered are usually doing so because they thought it was going to be as simple as casting it and winning, but instead they're getting angry because they think all the counterspells should be saved for someone playing something "unfair"
The ones people hate are the ones that start out with a turn 1 Winter Orb followed up by a Crucible of Worlds and a Smokestack. Or the ones that do that on any turn. It usually comes shortly after things like Oblivion Stone - which is one of the major reasons why people hate playing against them. Attrition is manageable if you can prepare for it, but the idea of a mid game boardwipe followed up by playing draw-go while the stax player is the only one doing anything just isn't fun.
People just flat out dislike playing against LD because their decks aren't as capable of getting back up to speed after an Armageddon as the ones that are actually prepared for it.
Make a very unfriendly deck that does stupid things people aren't prepared for. Like donating Immortal Coil and then dropping Bojuka Bog.
It doesn't win very often but it is entertaining to watch someone lose to a donated Transcendence
I love giving people a present and saying "Happy Birthday".
Any unwelcome permanent works, but Illusions of Grandeur is great for nostalgia reasons.
But in general, Commander is a format where there are a lot of 'HAHAHAHAHA game over I win' big mana spells played. You either have to kill before those spells come online or have an answer for them, and mass land destruction is all white and red really have to stop things like Insurrection, Cyclonic Rift or Tooth and Nail.
People just flat out dislike playing against LD because their decks aren't as capable of getting back up to speed after an Armageddon as the ones that are actually prepared for it.
Thats the whole point of LD, to attack from an angle people aren't prepared for. If you dislike everything that you aren't prepared for then you should stop playing magic.
I feel your opinion OP (not trying to be insulting) is that of a competitive player who always wants to win, play the best cards, etc.
Hmmm, I would characterize myself more as somebody who doesn't have fun if my deck has no chance at all of winning, and that I feel my Boros/Mardu/Rakdos/monowhite decks have almost no chance of winning against BigSimic.dec or GrindyGolgari.dec if I can't use MLD or combo or stax.
Argh. I was about to point out that kaalia of the vast demolishes most run of the mill Simic decks (those other than Edric, Momir, and occasionally Kruphix), but then I remembered every strong Kaalia deck runs MLD. The brain farts are strong this morning.
But yeah, sadly R and W really don't have any exceptionally strong strategies by themselves other than providing amazing MLD tools. Take those away and you're weakening what are already the two weakest colors in EDH.
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"Instead of building a fast car to win the race, you fill the race track with manure and drive your tractor to victory.
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
the people who whine because they get their win condition countered are usually doing so because they thought it was going to be as simple as casting it and winning, but instead they're getting angry because they think all the counterspells should be saved for someone playing something "unfair"
Thank you. I was playing against a guy who griped for a whole game after I used Swords to Plowshares on his turn-two Metalworker. He was playing Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, so there was no way was I going to let him untap with that kind of mana advantage. Some people hate it when you make the correct play.
People just flat out dislike playing against LD because their decks aren't as capable of getting back up to speed after an Armageddon as the ones that are actually prepared for it.
Thats the whole point of LD, to attack from an angle people aren't prepared for. If you dislike everything that you aren't prepared for then you should stop playing magic.
Honestly I find LD to be ineffective in my playgroup due to how many people are prepared for it...or in other words, have mana rocks. LD is too easy to play around in my opinion. If you have 0 mana rocks and 0 ways to return things from the graveyard, you're going to have a bad time if your opponent drops 'geddon. If you have mana rocks and 0 ways to return things, you'll probably manage a decent recovery if you don't get unlucky draws. If you have mana rocks and ways to return stuff, i.e. Crucible of Worlds then you've got no reason to worry. If you lose all of your land and aritfacts, then you're either in the same boat as your opponent (aside from all the mana I would assume the nuker floated prior to wipe resolutions) so you're just relying on your draws. That's just getting mad over bad draws if you complain there.
the people who whine because they get their win condition countered are usually doing so because they thought it was going to be as simple as casting it and winning, but instead they're getting angry because they think all the counterspells should be saved for someone playing something "unfair"
Thank you. I was playing against a guy who griped for a whole game after I used Swords to Plowshares on his turn-two Metalworker. He was playing Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, so there was no way was I going to let him untap with that kind of mana advantage. Some people hate it when you make the correct play.
Right? In my playgroup, using Mental Misstep turn 1 on the combo player's Sol Ring or Mana Vault is always considered the right play. Our games last anywhere from 2 to 40+ turns.
Thats the whole point of LD, to attack from an angle people aren't prepared for. If you dislike everything that you aren't prepared for then you should stop playing magic.
No, you should find people who enjoy the same things you do, and play with them. People don't like MLD because it slows the game to a grind, this isn't supposed to be work.
And I honestly have no issue with MLD if they win the game in less than 3 turns. If they don't they are bad at playing MLD and I scoop. People want to count that as a win, good on em.
If people are sick of reading about stuff just stop taking part. You have 100% control over what you read. Simic Ascendancy isn't going to get banned just because you didn't tell someone to shut up on the internet.
Long answer: It's a combination of mid range and control, with some aggro/tempo. There just isn't Hyper ramp or hard combo. Most decks do have some complicated combo or strong synergies. It could straight up be that ramp and hard combo is just not very interesting so people don't play them or the strength of control decks in the meta can leave people trying to play ramp and combo high and dry with nothing to do. All in all when either you win fast or you don't get to play at all it's not fun.
Thats the whole point of LD, to attack from an angle people aren't prepared for. If you dislike everything that you aren't prepared for then you should stop playing magic.
No, you should find people who enjoy the same things you do, and play with them. People don't like MLD because it slows the game to a grind, this isn't supposed to be work.
And I honestly have no issue with MLD if they win the game in less than 3 turns. If they don't they are bad at playing MLD and I scoop. People want to count that as a win, good on em.
I haven't really played versus lots of MLD, but how does MLD slow the game down so much? Wouldn't turns be super quick, because all people have to do is draw-go or draw, play land, check hand for 1-cmc spell, then go, etc. I guess it might be slow if there are lots of players who take super long turns even though they can't do nothing...
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Modern:UB Taking Turns Modern:URW Madcap Experiment Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
I love it when people say "Turn 1 Winter Orb". Like, almost as good as playing a Turn 1 Armageddon when you are on the play. It must be that kind of experiences that lead to all the sour opinions of MLD. "Dude won on Turn 1 with mana denial, so I asked him to change his deck."
I haven't really played versus lots of MLD, but how does MLD slow the game down so much? Wouldn't turns be super quick, because all people have to do is draw-go or draw, play land, check hand for 1-cmc spell, then go, etc. I guess it might be slow if there are lots of players who take super long turns even though they can't do nothing...
Your game effectively gets reset to turn 1. So, even though your turns may speed up a tiny bit, if the MLD caster doesn't win the game in the next few turns, the game goes on too long.
My group is similar in that mld/fast-combo/stax are generally avoided, but I haven't noticed the trend you are seeing. Sure, various GUx and GBx goodstuff/style style decks exist, they are such an easy/natural part of the format it is inevitable. But I haven't noticed them dominate in a major way, as they tend to be on the slower side which can leave them vulnerable to fast opposing starts AND at this point everyone knows how dangerous their key pieces are so if they start getting out of hand they tend to get checked hard by the rest of the table. Personally my favorite decks are Edric tempo and Marchesa aggro, and I've been fine with both against those styles of decks, as I'm just much faster than them and have ways to disrupt their key plays (cheap counters/removal) in the mid-game while already applying a lot of pressure.
I think they also don't get played too much simply because everyone is kind of bored of them. We all played them in some form or another when we started playing the format, and at this point we are well past the desire to play stuff like that. So they show up in the group from time to time, but aren't everywhere.
That sounds a bit like my current meta. It pretty much devolved into comatose value/goodstuff, with a side of chaotic "hug" that ramps everybody and then just steals the board and wins but nobody seems to remember that as he's so "huggy" before. Ugh. I tried to combat it with a slightly unpleasant black deck with Contamination, but it didn't go over well to say the least.
Are you able to pay for the entwine on the TaN when you plunder it? Rulings seem to indicate that you may.
Otherwise this only works when you have massacre wurm in hand.
Yep, entwine is an ability that works on the stack that lets you pay an additional cost, kinda like with kicker, and you can pay those even if you use an alternate cost (flashback, "without paying its mana cost" etc.) to pay for the spell.
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You arn't wrong about the meta shifting to goodstuff.dec/timmy'sstuff.dec to some degree, but my meta cares most about everyone having fun first and foremost (and timmy tends to be the most interactive, EDH did originally start more or less as battlecruiser magic). Denying resources and/or winning instantly with a combo prevents us from having fun, it simply ends the game with one player getting off and leaving the rest of us entirely unsatisfied.
The difference is the timing required and the scale of it. You wont deal infinite damage to the table or gain infinite mana. And it can usually be stopped by instant speed removal.
Most of these combos wont kill the table outright. Jarad can typically drain for 20+ something. but wont kill you at 40 health or above. (as i said. graveyards get a lot of hate. Lord of extinction will never pass 30-ish power. Scapeshift usually deals about 50 something damage in total, and rarely takes out more than one player. even if its lategame. But is very close to the "too good" cards i mentioned. But wont do much if cheated out early, contrary to T&N.
As with entreat the angels its a finite damage cap based on how much mana thats available. And i think thats the defining difference.
Uncool combo: At any point in the game, as long as you assemble it, is just as effective and will kill the board or the majority of it. Reanimate triskelion + mike on turn three is not cool. Scapeshift kill turn 10 with 15 lands in play is a bit more managable.
Cool combo: Scales with gamestate/rescources to help close out games when they go to long, but requires alot of setup in the form of manabase, contents of graveyard, cards in hand, storm count etc.
edit: to clarify, by scale, i mean that theres always a cap on the damage output, lifedrain, power, etc.
I am lost here, you say your meta is packed to the gills of Graveyard Hate but then have problem with a reanimation combo?
I play in 3 different regular groups and the overriding rule in all of them is everything goes. Here is the thing about saying that though.
It doesn't turn into solitaire, it doesn't make the turns or the games take any extra time because everyone is equally aware that they can't just play a deck that is dedicated to doing a single thing in a bubble because it will be demolished, so there is removal on removal on removal.
So I guess I don't have that problem and there are also the BigStuff decks and the stax decks to mix well with the voltron decks and the storm decks and the combo nonsense machines.
I'd say it turns everything into BigDumbStuff.dec. As scrub metas tend to.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
My group allows combo, but tends to frown on MLD or stax. It's not disallowed, but you'll become target number one, because we only get so many games in and no one really wants to deal with it.
That said, the more semi-competitive end (not actually counting the anything goes super competitive decks) is combo/control. I'm usually the odd one out with bigstuff.dec, but that's just my favorite way to play.
My LGS is quite competitive and I love it. Anything goes and we see quite the diverse pool of decks.
"No combos" and I'm playing Titania, which is fine, but will definitely leave non-green decks in the dust. So yes, the push for "fair" is very much the push for G/x midrange strategies.
How is any of that different from a combo win through hate?
How is Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord winning by flinging a Lord of Extinction any different than a Michaeus the Unhallowed winning with a Triskelion?
How is Scapeshift any different than Tooth And Nail?
All of them come out of nowhere and instantly win the game. Just because one's an infinite combo and the other isn't shouldn't have any bearing on what is "fair".
Most of these combos wont kill the table outright. Jarad can typically drain for 20+ something. but wont kill you at 40 health or above. (as i said. graveyards get a lot of hate. Lord of extinction will never pass 30-ish power.
Scapeshift usually deals about 50 something damage in total, and rarely takes out more than one player. even if its lategame. But is very close to the "too good" cards i mentioned. But wont do much if cheated out early, contrary to T&N.
As with entreat the angels its a finite damage cap based on how much mana thats available. And i think thats the defining difference.
Uncool combo: At any point in the game, as long as you assemble it, is just as effective and will kill the board or the majority of it. Reanimate triskelion + mike on turn three is not cool. Scapeshift kill turn 10 with 15 lands in play is a bit more managable.
Cool combo: Scales with gamestate/rescources to help close out games when they go to long, but requires alot of setup in the form of manabase, contents of graveyard, cards in hand, storm count etc.
edit: to clarify, by scale, i mean that theres always a cap on the damage output, lifedrain, power, etc.
RWU Narset, jeskai burn
RUB Marchesa the black rose
R Daretti, reanimator goodstuff
BU Vela, ninja assasin
UG Ezuri, woodland critters.
if you can't out-mana U/G with rakdos you're doing it wrong. Olivia Voldaren + Mana Geyser/Braid of Fire/Caged Sun/Crypt Ghast/Gauntlet of Power = your board is either dead or mine.Not to mention most colors now have access to A LOT of ramp if you look in the right places, hell I've seen a mono white Heliod deck out-ramp my U/G Ezuri deck.
Pick a theme and build to it's strengths, and don't be afraid of battlecruiser hosers like Torpor Orb, Angel of Jubilation and Stranglehold, if your opponent is light on answers outside their primary strategy (ETB/Sac decks) it sucks to deal with cards like those
this is also a fantastic guideline. Although to simplify it further, just don't be a boring douche. You have access to almost every card in MTG, playing with the same top 20% of the card pool in the name of being competetive is not only boring but an insulting waste of every player at the table's time.
speaking of wasting players' time, hating on "You Can't Play the Game.dec" is entirely fair and should be expected, if you don't like it, find players who cater to that flavor of douchieness and don't cry when people justifiably tell you to get off their table.
"You Can't Play the Game.dec" is pretty vague. Does that include stuff like dedicated counterspell decks? Lots of people want to play their stupid ***** and "You Can't Play the Game.dec"s stop that. Whether it is via LD, stax or counterspells.
I think a better name for it would probably be IHaveAllTheFunAllOfTheFunIsMineSoStopHavingFun.dec - a lot of control decks that rely on counterspells lose their efficacy in EDH due to the sheer number of good counterspell targets, and if you know you're playing against someone with counters then you should be prepared to bait their counters or force a stall until you get them tapped out. This is also known as the "playing against anyone with an island" strategy, and the people who whine because they get their win condition countered are usually doing so because they thought it was going to be as simple as casting it and winning, but instead they're getting angry because they think all the counterspells should be saved for someone playing something "unfair"
The ones people hate are the ones that start out with a turn 1 Winter Orb followed up by a Crucible of Worlds and a Smokestack. Or the ones that do that on any turn. It usually comes shortly after things like Oblivion Stone - which is one of the major reasons why people hate playing against them. Attrition is manageable if you can prepare for it, but the idea of a mid game boardwipe followed up by playing draw-go while the stax player is the only one doing anything just isn't fun.
People just flat out dislike playing against LD because their decks aren't as capable of getting back up to speed after an Armageddon as the ones that are actually prepared for it.
WUBRGReaper King - Superfriends
WUBRGChild of Alara - The Nauseating Aurora
WUBSharuum the Hegemon - Christmas In Prison
WUBZur the Enchanter - Ow My Face
WRJor Kadeen, the Prevailer - Snow Goats
BRGrenzo, Dungeon Warden - International Goblin All Purpose Recycling Facility Number 12
WGSaffi Eriksdotter - Saffi Combosdotter
UPatron of the Moon - The Age of Aquarius
BHorobi, Death's Wail - Bring Out Your Dead
GSachi, Daughter of Seshiro - Sneks
I love giving people a present and saying "Happy Birthday".
Any unwelcome permanent works, but Illusions of Grandeur is great for nostalgia reasons.
But in general, Commander is a format where there are a lot of 'HAHAHAHAHA game over I win' big mana spells played. You either have to kill before those spells come online or have an answer for them, and mass land destruction is all white and red really have to stop things like Insurrection, Cyclonic Rift or Tooth and Nail.
Thats the whole point of LD, to attack from an angle people aren't prepared for. If you dislike everything that you aren't prepared for then you should stop playing magic.
Argh. I was about to point out that kaalia of the vast demolishes most run of the mill Simic decks (those other than Edric, Momir, and occasionally Kruphix), but then I remembered every strong Kaalia deck runs MLD. The brain farts are strong this morning.
But yeah, sadly R and W really don't have any exceptionally strong strategies by themselves other than providing amazing MLD tools. Take those away and you're weakening what are already the two weakest colors in EDH.
That is stax."
~cmv_lawyer, 2016
WUI Don't Mean to Brago, But... RWBI'll Kaalia Back Later GBWKaradora the Graveyard Explorer BRGLive Long and Prosshper
BGUMuscle Plasm URGImperial Animarch BGLemon Meren Pie GWStop Being Such a Sisay UTefearsome RGWMarath of the Titans
UBRNow Watch me Trai Trai RWBAleshstax GWUPrison Can Roon Your Life BRGrenzo: Your Doom UArcum's Asylum of Stax
BGFeel the Ground Croak GThe All New 2016 Yisan Wanderer URFo Rizzle Mah Mizzle UBRA Game of Marchess
Thank you. I was playing against a guy who griped for a whole game after I used Swords to Plowshares on his turn-two Metalworker. He was playing Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, so there was no way was I going to let him untap with that kind of mana advantage. Some people hate it when you make the correct play.
Honestly I find LD to be ineffective in my playgroup due to how many people are prepared for it...or in other words, have mana rocks. LD is too easy to play around in my opinion. If you have 0 mana rocks and 0 ways to return things from the graveyard, you're going to have a bad time if your opponent drops 'geddon. If you have mana rocks and 0 ways to return things, you'll probably manage a decent recovery if you don't get unlucky draws. If you have mana rocks and ways to return stuff, i.e. Crucible of Worlds then you've got no reason to worry. If you lose all of your land and aritfacts, then you're either in the same boat as your opponent (aside from all the mana I would assume the nuker floated prior to wipe resolutions) so you're just relying on your draws. That's just getting mad over bad draws if you complain there.
Right? In my playgroup, using Mental Misstep turn 1 on the combo player's Sol Ring or Mana Vault is always considered the right play. Our games last anywhere from 2 to 40+ turns.
WUBRGReaper King - Superfriends
WUBRGChild of Alara - The Nauseating Aurora
WUBSharuum the Hegemon - Christmas In Prison
WUBZur the Enchanter - Ow My Face
WRJor Kadeen, the Prevailer - Snow Goats
BRGrenzo, Dungeon Warden - International Goblin All Purpose Recycling Facility Number 12
WGSaffi Eriksdotter - Saffi Combosdotter
UPatron of the Moon - The Age of Aquarius
BHorobi, Death's Wail - Bring Out Your Dead
GSachi, Daughter of Seshiro - Sneks
And I honestly have no issue with MLD if they win the game in less than 3 turns. If they don't they are bad at playing MLD and I scoop. People want to count that as a win, good on em.
Long answer: It's a combination of mid range and control, with some aggro/tempo. There just isn't Hyper ramp or hard combo. Most decks do have some complicated combo or strong synergies. It could straight up be that ramp and hard combo is just not very interesting so people don't play them or the strength of control decks in the meta can leave people trying to play ramp and combo high and dry with nothing to do. All in all when either you win fast or you don't get to play at all it's not fun.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
I haven't really played versus lots of MLD, but how does MLD slow the game down so much? Wouldn't turns be super quick, because all people have to do is draw-go or draw, play land, check hand for 1-cmc spell, then go, etc. I guess it might be slow if there are lots of players who take super long turns even though they can't do nothing...
Modern: URW Madcap Experiment
Pauper: MonoU Tempo Delver
My EDH Commanders:
Aminatou, The Fateshifter UBW
Azami, Lady of Scrolls U
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed B
Edric, Spymaster of Trest UG
Glissa, the Traitor BG
Arcum Dagsson U
Your game effectively gets reset to turn 1. So, even though your turns may speed up a tiny bit, if the MLD caster doesn't win the game in the next few turns, the game goes on too long.
I think they also don't get played too much simply because everyone is kind of bored of them. We all played them in some form or another when we started playing the format, and at this point we are well past the desire to play stuff like that. So they show up in the group from time to time, but aren't everywhere.
Are you able to pay for the entwine on the TaN when you plunder it? Rulings seem to indicate that you may.
Otherwise this only works when you have massacre wurm in hand.
Yep, entwine is an ability that works on the stack that lets you pay an additional cost, kinda like with kicker, and you can pay those even if you use an alternate cost (flashback, "without paying its mana cost" etc.) to pay for the spell.
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Any new cool Daretti cards printed in the latest set? Tell me about it!
Rules Advisor
I am lost here, you say your meta is packed to the gills of Graveyard Hate but then have problem with a reanimation combo?
I play in 3 different regular groups and the overriding rule in all of them is everything goes. Here is the thing about saying that though.
It doesn't turn into solitaire, it doesn't make the turns or the games take any extra time because everyone is equally aware that they can't just play a deck that is dedicated to doing a single thing in a bubble because it will be demolished, so there is removal on removal on removal.
So I guess I don't have that problem and there are also the BigStuff decks and the stax decks to mix well with the voltron decks and the storm decks and the combo nonsense machines.
I'd say it turns everything into BigDumbStuff.dec. As scrub metas tend to.
On phasing:
That said, the more semi-competitive end (not actually counting the anything goes super competitive decks) is combo/control. I'm usually the odd one out with bigstuff.dec, but that's just my favorite way to play.
My Helpdesk
[Pr] Marath | [Pr] Lovisa | Jodah | Saskia | Najeela | Yisan | Lord Windgrace | Atraxa | Meren | Gisa and Geralf
My LGS is quite competitive and I love it. Anything goes and we see quite the diverse pool of decks.
"No combos" and I'm playing Titania, which is fine, but will definitely leave non-green decks in the dust. So yes, the push for "fair" is very much the push for G/x midrange strategies.
UTeferi, Temporal ArchmageU's prison: blue is the new orange is the new black.
Mizzix Of The Izmagnus : wheels on fire... rolling down the road...
BSidisi, Undead VizierB: Bis zum Erbrechen
GTitiania, Protector Of ArgothG: Protecting Argoth, by blowing it up!
GYisan, The Wanderer BardG: Gradus Ad Elfball.
Duel EDH: Yisan & Titania.
In Progress: Grand Arbiter Augustin IV duel; Grenzo, Dungeon Warden Doomsday.
Funny play that happened online with my Aurelia deck recently.
Tooth and Nail entwined, I cast Reverberate. I fetch Godo, Bandit Warlord and Dualcaster Mage, copying T&N. Second T&N copy finds Aven Mindcensor and Containment Priest.
Player disconnects.