I have no idea how you could possibly come up with such a ridiculously small number of AC without Nacatl lists. So I'll go to mtgtop8 and check.
I searched for all decks in its database containing AC and Lava Spike at Major and Professional. I found 19 dating back to last June, so I don't know how you got 19 in the last 7 months. Of those, 10 had 0 Nacatl. One of those had a single Devil. In that span, there are 56 decks containing Lava Spike and Boros Charm.
Let's go with back to last August:
25 total decks containing Boros Charm and Lava Spike.
17 contain those two plus Atarka's Command.
8 contain AC but no Nacatl, and a single deck has 1 Devil.
I'm not seeing how you could come up with "10% of burn decks with AC and without Nacatl are seeing success". It looks like 9/25 with Nacatl and 8/25 without Nacatl and 8/25 without AC and Nacatl. Looks pretty evenly distributed to me.
well I had an extra 4 result because I included the top 32 of these past GP, sorry, I din't make that clear enough
Now lets look at that list of 25! I also got the same numbers!
Nacatl & AC: 9/25
Only AC: 8/25
Neither: 8/25
but now lets look at the order those number came in!
(Most Recent on top) April
Nacatl & AC
Neither
Neither
March Feburary
Nacatl & AC
Neither
ONLY AC
Nacatl & AC
January
Neither
Nacatl & AC
December
Nacatl & AC
Nacatl & AC
November
Neither
Nacatl & AC
Nacatl & AC
Neither
October
ONLY AC
Neither
Neither
September
ONLY AC
ONLY AC
Nacatl & AC
ONLY AC (and a devil lol)
ONLY AC
ONLY AC
ONLY AC
I see a trend here! at first, everyone tried to add AC to the the deck, then after September, players that either din't have AC or had AC with Nacatl have much better showing
So if we eliminated September (last 7 results), the list becomes:
Nacatl & AC: 8/18
Only AC: 2/18 (11.1%)
Neither: 8/18
What if we eliminated October?
Nacatl & AC: 8/15
Only AC: 1/15 (6.7%)
Neither: 6/15
What does that tell you? Playing Atarka's Command without Nacatl is a thing of the past
Conclusion: If you want to play AC, play more creatures
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"What's your plan?" Gideon asked.
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
I have no idea how you could possibly come up with such a ridiculously small number of AC without Nacatl lists. So I'll go to mtgtop8 and check.
I searched for all decks in its database containing AC and Lava Spike at Major and Professional. I found 19 dating back to last June, so I don't know how you got 19 in the last 7 months. Of those, 10 had 0 Nacatl. One of those had a single Devil. In that span, there are 56 decks containing Lava Spike and Boros Charm.
Let's go with back to last August:
25 total decks containing Boros Charm and Lava Spike.
17 contain those two plus Atarka's Command.
8 contain AC but no Nacatl, and a single deck has 1 Devil.
I'm not seeing how you could come up with "10% of burn decks with AC and without Nacatl are seeing success". It looks like 9/25 with Nacatl and 8/25 without Nacatl and 8/25 without AC and Nacatl. Looks pretty evenly distributed to me.
well I had an extra 4 result because I included the top 32 of these past GP, sorry, I din't make that clear enough
Now lets look at that list of 25! I also got the same numbers!
Nacatl & AC: 9/25
Only AC: 8/25
Neither: 8/25
but now lets look at the order those number came in!
(Most Recent on top) April
Nacatl & AC
Neither
Neither
March Feburary
Nacatl & AC
Neither
ONLY AC
Nacatl & AC
January
Neither
Nacatl & AC
December
Nacatl & AC
Nacatl & AC
November
Neither
Nacatl & AC
Nacatl & AC
Neither
October
ONLY AC
Neither
Neither
September
ONLY AC
ONLY AC
Nacatl & AC
ONLY AC (and a devil lol)
ONLY AC
ONLY AC
ONLY AC
I see a trend here! at first, everyone tried to add AC to the the deck, then after September, players that either din't have AC or had AC with Nacatl have much better showing
So if we eliminated September (last 7 results), the list becomes:
Nacatl & AC: 8/18
Only AC: 2/18 (11.1%)
Neither: 8/18
What if we eliminated October?
Nacatl & AC: 8/15
Only AC: 1/15 (6.7%)
Neither: 6/15
What does that tell you? Playing Atarka's Command without Nacatl is a thing of the past
Conclusion: If you want to play AC, play more creatures
This is what I am also thinking about for some time now.
Atarka is a beast of a card but the best modes by far are the 3 damage and the +1. The +1 is really good when you have a lot of creatures on the field. I played Gruul Zoo before I switched to Burn and it was the best card in the deck. Zoo floods the board in 2 or 3 turns and when all those creatures attack backed by Atarka you will net another 6 damage easily, this is sadly not the case with Burn.
I am told by a lot of people that it is Skullcrack with the bonus of +1 wich I think is a very good argument BUT if it is primarly used as a Skullcrack why would you not play Skullcrack instead and wich is a lot easier to cast because of the mana symbols.
The next argument that I hear a lot is that when you attack with a creature it is basicly a Boros Charm, I agree with that BUT you have to first have a creature on the board, attack with it and it has to connect for Atarka to be a Boros Charm. This is just to many steps you have to take for it to net 4 damage and that is something I am really not that big of a fan off because the more steps you have to take to more can go wrong.
Anyway this is just my view of playing games and I am just throwing it out here.
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():
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Legacy - Reanimator
Modern - Burn
EDH - Neheb the Eternal
I could have told you that would be the case simply by being a burn player throughout that time. It took time for AC to get adopted and it took time for the Nacatl fad to get off the ground even once AC was adopted.
What does that tell you? Playing Atarka's Command without Nacatl is a thing of the past
Conclusion: If you want to play AC, play more creatures
Actually, it just tells me that people have, over time, erroneously bought into your conclusion that AC requires more creatures. It is not, however, correct that AC necessitates Nacatl nor is it proof that AC+Nacatl > AC without. Correlation should not be construed as causation.
Nacatl is a higher variance deck that sacrifices the consistency of the 12-14 creature build for some explosiveness. I prefer consistency. It's not really worth rehashing the same set of posts every 5 pages. However, it is not correct to claim that AC necessitates Nacatl or that Nacatl is superior.
We hope that they take 4. That's the dream. If they don't, the consequence is still better than what Nacatl gives us. That's the beauty of the Devil. Everything you've been arguing against is when he's at his very worst. And yes, if they choose not to take 4 and bolt or path him, then that's one less removal spell aimed at another one of my creatures. I'm very aware of what I'm saying. You're factoring in the ability to kill Devil without the damage from the surviving creature as a result. These equations aren't binary.
Remember to keep it civil and respectful. It's fine to disagree with each other, but make sure you are staying constructive and relatively polite. If in doubt, DO NOT RESPOND TO PROBLEMATIC POSTS. Just report them and let staff handle it. No one has crossed the line yet, but some posts are very close.
Thing is, Vexing Devil allows your opponent that choice, so we often have to evaluate it based on the worst-case scenario. When your opponent has hands that a 4/3 attacker would go wild on and get you great value, the Devil is instead a one-shot burn spell, which is helpful, but it could have been so much more. Against hands that can deal with creatures, it's Bolt/Path/insert-removal-here fodder. I've played both with and against it, and I'm very convinced it's simply subpar. I'd rather just run something like Skullcrack or even Shard Volley with my flex spots. Burn's calling card is consistency, and you're diluting it by introducing cards that offer your opponent an out.
I could have told you that would be the case simply by being a burn player throughout that time. It took time for AC to get adopted and it took time for the Nacatl fad to get off the ground even once AC was adopted.
What does that tell you? Playing Atarka's Command without Nacatl is a thing of the past
Conclusion: If you want to play AC, play more creatures
Actually, it just tells me that people have, over time, erroneously bought into your conclusion that AC requires more creatures. It is not, however, correct that AC necessitates Nacatl nor is it proof that AC+Nacatl > AC without. Correlation should not be construed as causation.
Nacatl is a higher variance deck that sacrifices the consistency of the 12-14 creature build for some explosiveness. I prefer consistency. It's not really worth rehashing the same set of posts every 5 pages. However, it is not correct to claim that AC necessitates Nacatl or that Nacatl is superior.
I double checked and my April result was
Jory White (both)
Ross Merriam (neither)
Maarten Knaepen (neither - mardu)
I guess the Mardu one doesn't really belong in that list, since it can't cast either of the spells!
So the updated list would be:
Nacatl & AC: 8/17 - 47%
Only AC: 2/17 - 12%
Neither: 7/17 - 41%
However you are right, these stats are not solid. Since we don't have the full day 1-2 list of each event, we can't know how many were playing each deck, and it's obviously wrong to assume that each list represents 33% of the burn players.
But those are the only stats we have!
Unless we consider the lower tournaments, and the "it's working for me" arguments
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"What's your plan?" Gideon asked.
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
We hope that they take 4. That's the dream. If they don't, the consequence is still better than what Nacatl gives us. That's the beauty of the Devil. Everything you've been arguing against is when he's at his very worst. And yes, if they choose not to take 4 and bolt or path him, then that's one less removal spell aimed at another one of my creatures. I'm very aware of what I'm saying. You're factoring in the ability to kill Devil without the damage from the surviving creature as a result. These equations aren't binary.
Once again, you're claiming that it's nonsense to assume that your opponent has a kill spell yet you're willing to assume that you have a creature standing next to Devil. You can't evaluate a card based solely on the best case scenario. It's called Magical Christmasland and it's just foolish to evaluate cards that way. Vexing Devil is simply not good enough. The only edge that it has over Nacatl is that you don't have to pay up to 6 life to have it deal 0 damage and die.
You're the one playing the card, yet you just rely on these wishy-washy "yeah but if..." arguments rather than providing anything quantitative.
If you're going to rely on the best case scenario, why not play Thunderous Wrath? After all, it's 5 damage for R! That's 1 more than Devil! Why consider the fact that it's much more likely to be a dead card in your opening hand when you can just assume it's 5 damage for R? See the issue yet?
Top-decking Thunderous Wrath (as long as you are not on the draw) is surely better than top-decking Devil. And the Devil and Cat discussions are once again adding up pages in this forum.
Anyway, I say that the Devil could be considered a thing in the past during the time when Monastery Swiftspear and Eidolon of the Great Revel doesn't exist yet and also when Burn is still mono R. It is because they aren't good cards for burn yet during that time, hence the Devil and sometimes the ElementalGuys. Also, Boros Burn doesn't exist yet during Devil's time since, Boros Charm doesn't come until the next block following it (although I'm not sure if guys used Lightning Helix, but I doubt it).
Now to the present, Burn has branched into several builds from its mono R form to Naya WRG, Mardu WBR, Jund BRG and even good 'ol Boros WR. With this, there are a lot of better options to choose from unlike before.
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Modern Decks:WRGThe Colors of FireGRW || CUBRAge of Ultron (Affinity - Under Construction)RBUC
If you're going to rely on the best case scenario, why not play Thunderous Wrath?
That was a rhetorical question. Wrath is bad, but I can use the same terrible reasoning that's being used for Devil to claim Wrath is good even though we all agree that it's awful.
Devil was a necessary evil, at best, simply because there wasn't much else to play. Now there are much better cards to play, so you don't have to go fishing for cards just to fill out a 60 card list.
That was a rhetorical question. Wrath is bad, but I can use the same terrible reasoning that's being used for Devil to claim Wrath is good even though we all agree that it's awful.
Devil was a necessary evil, at best, simply because there wasn't much else to play. Now there are much better cards to play, so you don't have to go fishing for cards just to fill out a 60 card list.
Yeah, T.Wrath is bad indeed, although I admit playing 1x during my mono R days. And yes, there are lots of better cards today that could fit in that 60. Also, who knows if we could get some new toys in the future set? The only new toy we had is Atarka's Command (that is, if using Naya/Jund builds).
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Modern Decks:WRGThe Colors of FireGRW || CUBRAge of Ultron (Affinity - Under Construction)RBUC
2-0 vs. Infect. Was just able to race and had plenty of burn for his creatures. Game two my opponent made a mistake by hitting me for one poison with Inkmoth Nexus then casting Blighted Agent and I Searing Blazed both of them.
2-0 vs. Sultai mid-range? Not too much to report. Was able to race him pretty quick.
0-2 vs. Jeskai control. Nahiri with Emrakul. Too much control and game two I drew about 5 lands in a row. Variance is a bummer. Not sure how to side against this match-up. Any suggestions would be welcomed!
For those of you who dropped Atarka's Command, mind sharing your thoughts on why? There's been a huge spike of burn in my area and I'm tempted to give Boros Drev a shot despite how much I like AC.
2 Deflecting Palms are ideal. Useful vs Infect, Affinity (Cranial Plating, Master of Etherium and Arcbound Ravager shenanigans)and a big Tarmogoyf, Emrakul, Primetime swing.
2 Deflecting Palms are ideal. Useful vs Infect, Affinity (Cranial Plating, Master of Etherium and Arcbound Ravager shenanigans)and a big Tarmogoyf, Emrakul, Primetime swing.
For those of you who dropped Atarka's Command, mind sharing your thoughts on why? There's been a huge spike of burn in my area and I'm tempted to give Boros Drev a shot despite how much I like AC.
I piloted a Naya list (for the record, my list was sans Nacatl) to 3rd place at states a couple weeks ago, and I'm also considering straight up Boros as opposed to Naya.
The thing I ultimately like is that the mana is more consistent. There were plenty of times where I wanted to cast both SB destructive revelry and Atarka's command, but could only do one or the other. Otherwise it was fetching for basics at first, then drawing a RG spell after not having a fetch available. I think having white for Boros Charm and Lightning Helix is enough. It also allows for more useful sideboarding. My ideal SB would be something like this:
Obviously this is mostly a meta call, but I think that currently helps out for a decent few of our bad match-ups. As for main board, nothing wrong with having 3-4 foundries instead of no grounds. If you previously run copperline forge, either more mountains or Clifftop retreat would do in a pinch. It's not that green stretched the mana too much, it just didn't seem necessary for one MB option and one SB option. Most of the time I was playing A-command, it was for the Skullcrack effect, so I think there's plenty of validity to running 4x Skullcrack in your 60.
Are there recent drops of Atarka's Command on burn lately? Is Boros Burn a thing again over Naya? Just curious.
The top-8 results since October:
deck with Nacatl & AC: 8/17 - 47%
deck with only AC: 2/17 - 12%
deck with neither: 7/17 - 41%
At the moment boros & nacatl burn seems like the way to go; there is a few nacatl-less naya version, but nothing like we used to see
(all boros burn still had a splash of green for destructive revelry, but nothing in the main)
Private Mod Note
():
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"What's your plan?" Gideon asked.
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
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well I had an extra 4 result because I included the top 32 of these past GP, sorry, I din't make that clear enough
Now lets look at that list of 25! I also got the same numbers!
Nacatl & AC: 9/25
Only AC: 8/25
Neither: 8/25
but now lets look at the order those number came in!
(Most Recent on top)
April
Feburary
I see a trend here! at first, everyone tried to add AC to the the deck, then after September, players that either din't have AC or had AC with Nacatl have much better showing
So if we eliminated September (last 7 results), the list becomes:
Nacatl & AC: 8/18
Only AC: 2/18 (11.1%)
Neither: 8/18
What if we eliminated October?
Nacatl & AC: 8/15
Only AC: 1/15 (6.7%)
Neither: 6/15
What does that tell you? Playing Atarka's Command without Nacatl is a thing of the past
Conclusion: If you want to play AC, play more creatures
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
This is what I am also thinking about for some time now.
Atarka is a beast of a card but the best modes by far are the 3 damage and the +1. The +1 is really good when you have a lot of creatures on the field. I played Gruul Zoo before I switched to Burn and it was the best card in the deck. Zoo floods the board in 2 or 3 turns and when all those creatures attack backed by Atarka you will net another 6 damage easily, this is sadly not the case with Burn.
I am told by a lot of people that it is Skullcrack with the bonus of +1 wich I think is a very good argument BUT if it is primarly used as a Skullcrack why would you not play Skullcrack instead and wich is a lot easier to cast because of the mana symbols.
The next argument that I hear a lot is that when you attack with a creature it is basicly a Boros Charm, I agree with that BUT you have to first have a creature on the board, attack with it and it has to connect for Atarka to be a Boros Charm. This is just to many steps you have to take for it to net 4 damage and that is something I am really not that big of a fan off because the more steps you have to take to more can go wrong.
Anyway this is just my view of playing games and I am just throwing it out here.
Modern - Burn
EDH - Neheb the Eternal
I could have told you that would be the case simply by being a burn player throughout that time. It took time for AC to get adopted and it took time for the Nacatl fad to get off the ground even once AC was adopted.
Actually, it just tells me that people have, over time, erroneously bought into your conclusion that AC requires more creatures. It is not, however, correct that AC necessitates Nacatl nor is it proof that AC+Nacatl > AC without. Correlation should not be construed as causation.
Nacatl is a higher variance deck that sacrifices the consistency of the 12-14 creature build for some explosiveness. I prefer consistency. It's not really worth rehashing the same set of posts every 5 pages. However, it is not correct to claim that AC necessitates Nacatl or that Nacatl is superior.
PS: Your April results undoubtedly include this list which is erroneously labeled as Burn when it should be Zoo: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=12130&d=269587&f=MO
Mardu Burn
Monogreen Stompy
Legacy
Burn
Pauper
Dimir Flicker
Monowhite Tokens
Carry on!
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
I double checked and my April result was
Jory White (both)
Ross Merriam (neither)
Maarten Knaepen (neither - mardu)
I guess the Mardu one doesn't really belong in that list, since it can't cast either of the spells!
So the updated list would be:
Nacatl & AC: 8/17 - 47%
Only AC: 2/17 - 12%
Neither: 7/17 - 41%
However you are right, these stats are not solid. Since we don't have the full day 1-2 list of each event, we can't know how many were playing each deck, and it's obviously wrong to assume that each list represents 33% of the burn players.
But those are the only stats we have!
Unless we consider the lower tournaments, and the "it's working for me" arguments
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
Once again, you're claiming that it's nonsense to assume that your opponent has a kill spell yet you're willing to assume that you have a creature standing next to Devil. You can't evaluate a card based solely on the best case scenario. It's called Magical Christmasland and it's just foolish to evaluate cards that way. Vexing Devil is simply not good enough. The only edge that it has over Nacatl is that you don't have to pay up to 6 life to have it deal 0 damage and die.
You're the one playing the card, yet you just rely on these wishy-washy "yeah but if..." arguments rather than providing anything quantitative.
If you're going to rely on the best case scenario, why not play Thunderous Wrath? After all, it's 5 damage for R! That's 1 more than Devil! Why consider the fact that it's much more likely to be a dead card in your opening hand when you can just assume it's 5 damage for R? See the issue yet?
Anyway, I say that the Devil could be considered a thing in the past during the time when Monastery Swiftspear and Eidolon of the Great Revel doesn't exist yet and also when Burn is still mono R. It is because they aren't good cards for burn yet during that time, hence the Devil and sometimes the Elemental Guys. Also, Boros Burn doesn't exist yet during Devil's time since, Boros Charm doesn't come until the next block following it (although I'm not sure if guys used Lightning Helix, but I doubt it).
Now to the present, Burn has branched into several builds from its mono R form to Naya WRG, Mardu WBR, Jund BRG and even good 'ol Boros WR. With this, there are a lot of better options to choose from unlike before.
That was a rhetorical question. Wrath is bad, but I can use the same terrible reasoning that's being used for Devil to claim Wrath is good even though we all agree that it's awful.
Devil was a necessary evil, at best, simply because there wasn't much else to play. Now there are much better cards to play, so you don't have to go fishing for cards just to fill out a 60 card list.
Yeah, T.Wrath is bad indeed, although I admit playing 1x during my mono R days. And yes, there are lots of better cards today that could fit in that 60. Also, who knows if we could get some new toys in the future set? The only new toy we had is Atarka's Command (that is, if using Naya/Jund builds).
2-0 vs. Infect. Was just able to race and had plenty of burn for his creatures. Game two my opponent made a mistake by hitting me for one poison with Inkmoth Nexus then casting Blighted Agent and I Searing Blazed both of them.
2-0 vs. Sultai mid-range? Not too much to report. Was able to race him pretty quick.
0-2 vs. Jeskai control. Nahiri with Emrakul. Too much control and game two I drew about 5 lands in a row. Variance is a bummer. Not sure how to side against this match-up. Any suggestions would be welcomed!
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Yeah, I have one in the side. Might go up to two.
I will give it a try.
I piloted a Naya list (for the record, my list was sans Nacatl) to 3rd place at states a couple weeks ago, and I'm also considering straight up Boros as opposed to Naya.
The thing I ultimately like is that the mana is more consistent. There were plenty of times where I wanted to cast both SB destructive revelry and Atarka's command, but could only do one or the other. Otherwise it was fetching for basics at first, then drawing a RG spell after not having a fetch available. I think having white for Boros Charm and Lightning Helix is enough. It also allows for more useful sideboarding. My ideal SB would be something like this:
3x Molten Rain
2x Smash to Smithereens
2x Wear // Tear
2x Path to Exile
2x Celestial Purge
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Anger of the Gods
Obviously this is mostly a meta call, but I think that currently helps out for a decent few of our bad match-ups. As for main board, nothing wrong with having 3-4 foundries instead of no grounds. If you previously run copperline forge, either more mountains or Clifftop retreat would do in a pinch. It's not that green stretched the mana too much, it just didn't seem necessary for one MB option and one SB option. Most of the time I was playing A-command, it was for the Skullcrack effect, so I think there's plenty of validity to running 4x Skullcrack in your 60.
The top-8 results since October:
deck with Nacatl & AC: 8/17 - 47%
deck with only AC: 2/17 - 12%
deck with neither: 7/17 - 41%
At the moment boros & nacatl burn seems like the way to go; there is a few nacatl-less naya version, but nothing like we used to see
(all boros burn still had a splash of green for destructive revelry, but nothing in the main)
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.