Aggro always had a super favorable match up against control. 4 mana wrath in most cases was make or break. Even the infamous Sphinx's Revelation most of the time could not provide enough life gain to come back from an aggro or burn deck where you didn't draw verdict. Now apologise for wasting my time.
But there's two 3CMC sweepers that can be used to combat aggro, and the midrange decks are slow enough that End Hostilities is a fine card, even at 5CMC. Perilous Vault, and hell, even Extinguish All Hope are reasonable alternatives if you're not in white and need a way to sweep midrange.
I think it's much more interesting to have conditional sweepers spread across different colors. Despite the fact that U/B control had the best showing at the Pro Tour, I think it's only a matter of time until the meta settles and the other control decks figure out how to best tune their lists. There was some serious hedging going on with U/B control, seeing as they auto-jammed 4 copies of Downfall, Stroke, and Dissolve just to have a favorable match against Abzan, even if it meant folding to Jeskai.
U/B, American control, BUG, Grixis control, and Esper control all look perfectly reasonable depending on your meta. I guess I just don't get the appeal of having a pre-made deck handed to us on a platter (like U/W control was). The control decks have to actually evolve and adapt to the changing meta now.
Aggro always had a super favorable match up against control. 4 mana wrath in most cases was make or break. Even the infamous Sphinx's Revelation most of the time could not provide enough life gain to come back from an aggro or burn deck where you didn't draw verdict. Now apologise for wasting my time.
But there's two 3CMC sweepers that can be used to combat aggro, and the midrange decks are slow enough that End Hostilities is a fine card, even at 5CMC. Perilous Vault, and hell, even Extinguish All Hope are reasonable alternatives if you're not in white and need a way to sweep midrange.
Hostilities, vault, extinguish are all fine cards, they are just not fine for control, with the only exception being Perilous Vault for more specific control decks eg. draw go, but that's borderline too. There's only so many slots for your deck. I don't want to waste slots for an "aggro sweeper" a "midrange sweeper" and a "control sweeper" just to have those main archetypes covered while simultaneously weakening the rest of my deck by filling up slots with copies of the dead (sweepers) cards every match. With so many undercosted creatures eg. 2 mana 3/3s, 3 mana 4/4s, 4 mana 4/5s (not to mention the insane abilities on most creatures these days,) the sweepers presented are very unreasonable to the competitive control player.
I think it's much more interesting to have conditional sweepers spread across different colors. Despite the fact that U/B control had the best showing at the Pro Tour, I think it's only a matter of time until the meta settles and the other control decks figure out how to best tune their lists. There was some serious hedging going on with U/B control, seeing as they auto-jammed 4 copies of Downfall, Stroke, and Dissolve just to have a favorable match against Abzan, even if it meant folding to Jeskai.
In regards to sweepers see: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/controlling-game-flow. Turn 4 is the "sweet spot" for the basic sweeper in constructed. Read the article. It explains the natural development and power-to-mana-cost curves for creatures results in turn a 4 defensive turning point. This article was written back in 2011. Creatures are even more powerful and undercosted these days. Combined with inefficient ways to generate card advantage, no 4 mana sweeper is the bad joke your father recycles at family gatherings on control players. I also disagree with the hedging.
U/B, American control, BUG, Grixis control, and Esper control all look perfectly reasonable depending on your meta. I guess I just don't get the appeal of having a pre-made deck handed to us on a platter (like U/W control was). The control decks have to actually evolve and adapt to the changing meta now.
I really like the meta a lot more than I thought I would after the spoilers (I thought it would just be 3-color Midrange Goodstuff but it turns out that Burn, Combo, Aggro and Control are also all viable to some extent, which I really like).
I still don't get why Aggro players are happy about not having a 4 mana Wrath in Standard, though. I already said it when the full spoilers got discussed and I stand by it now that we got to play and see some tournament results:
No 4 mana Wrath is bad for Aggro ! Aggro usually doesn't have too many problems racing/playing around 4 mana Wraths, it's Midrange decks that get hit the hardest by those. The same Midrange decks that are the bane of most Aggro decks, the same Midrange decks that Control now has a hard time defeating because there is no 4 mana Wrath !
tl;dr: No 4 mana Wrath makes Control weaker against Midrange, thus makes Midrange more prevelant, thus makes Aggro indirectly worse in the meta !
This is spot on. Not having a 4 mana wrath is hurting control and destroying aggro. If things don't change with the next set this will become a Midrange versus Combo standard and that is only if they don't ban Jeskai Ascendancy . Good control decks keep Midrange decks in check and allows aggro decks the ability to feed on control decks. Food chain 101 remove Predator and the prey will over populate.
I really like the meta a lot more than I thought I would after the spoilers (I thought it would just be 3-color Midrange Goodstuff but it turns out that Burn, Combo, Aggro and Control are also all viable to some extent, which I really like).
I still don't get why Aggro players are happy about not having a 4 mana Wrath in Standard, though. I already said it when the full spoilers got discussed and I stand by it now that we got to play and see some tournament results:
No 4 mana Wrath is bad for Aggro ! Aggro usually doesn't have too many problems racing/playing around 4 mana Wraths, it's Midrange decks that get hit the hardest by those. The same Midrange decks that are the bane of most Aggro decks, the same Midrange decks that Control now has a hard time defeating because there is no 4 mana Wrath !
tl;dr: No 4 mana Wrath makes Control weaker against Midrange, thus makes Midrange more prevelant, thus makes Aggro indirectly worse in the meta !
This is spot on. Not having a 4 mana wrath is hurting control and destroying aggro. If things don't change with the next set this will become a Midrange versus Combo standard and that is only if they don't ban Jeskai Ascendancy . Good control decks keep Midrange decks in check and allows aggro decks the ability to feed on control decks. Food chain 101 remove Predator and the prey will over populate.
I think with time control players will figure out the magic recipe that stops midrange decks. I think control decks need to play with more walls and creatures to slow things down and buy some time to get set up. I think that some of the older control player have forgotten the older control builds that played stuff early.
Mind, if your wrath has a 5-6cmc overhead, it's not just a matter of waiting 'til turn 5 or 6 to cast it. You could have mana issues, your 5th land could come in tapped, you could find yourself bottlenecked on 6 land on turns 7-10 where you might've otherwise been able to stabilize by resolving your wrath and keeping permission mana up (being able to hold something like Murderous Cut with delve might help here?), etc. Control decks still do have to be wary of how clunky their spells are mana-wise.
Mind, I think control has other problems in this format. Midrange creatures are often netting value unless they're countered (particularly Siege Rhino) or killed immediately (Brimaz, Rabblemaster), and more worryingly there are a lot of midrangey planeswalkers in the format that allow a midrange deck to extend without being blown out by a wrath (unless that wrath is the very clunky Perilous Vault). All of these things contribute value before being answered, so waging a one-for-one attrition war is largely a losing battle. I suspect even RTR-THS Esper control would have difficulties dealing with a walker-heavy THS-KTK midrange deck.
A related problem is that the control decks aren't finding a reliable way to perch themselves upon an insurmountable pile of resources by end game. Maybe part of this is looking to Dig Through Time as aSphinx's Revelation replacement, despite the fact that they are very different cards that play very different roles - in particular, Dig's role isn't "stabilize and generate insurmountable resource advantage". Comparing the two cards is a disingenuous thing to do, and the fact that the comparison is being drawn (and that people are using RTR-THS Esper as a control template in general) is probably keeping people from properly building a potent late game for their control decks.
I don't know that such a potent late-game exists in the format. I don't think it has to involve lifegain or literal card-draw, it just has to put you ahead in resources and move the finish line further away from your opponent by a considerable margin. I'm thinking it may be work shuffling 5-or-so green sources and a couple of Villainous Wealth into Turtenwald's UB deck, because that deck gets a lot of lands on the table, and a Wealth for 8 or 9 seems like it could seal the deal. Otherwise I don't know.
Well judging by the SCG Open and Grand Prix today, I think we can safely say the latest incarnation of noskill-monored.dec (tm) has been discovered. A shame, I hoped we'd avoid it for another Standard season.
your tears taste delicious... and salty.
i don't even play the deck myself, but it's safe to say no deck is completely "nonskill". look at Tom Ross for example.
i don't even play the deck myself, but it's safe to say no deck is completely "nonskill". look at Tom Ross for example.
Except Abzan midrange? Kind of just curve out, play the best card in your hand and out-pace everyone else for value. Besides the boss mana dorks, there's 3/3s for 2, 4/4s for 3, 4/5s for 4, all with relevant abilities, deathtouch, hexproof, regen, pumpability, trample, life swap. Not to mention a plethora of removal spells and planeswalkers available. It's just Abzan GoodStuff. Really hard to lose with.
i don't even play the deck myself, but it's safe to say no deck is completely "nonskill". look at Tom Ross for example.
Except Abzan midrange? Kind of just curve out, play the best card in your hand and out-pace everyone else for value. Besides the boss mana dorks, there's 3/3s for 2, 4/4s for 3, 4/5s for 4, all with relevant abilities, deathtouch, hexproof, regen, pumpability, trample, life swap. Not to mention a plethora of removal spells and planeswalkers available. It's just Abzan GoodStuff. Really hard to lose with.
good decks play good cards, nothing new here. Abzan has a lot of interaction. something like Ascendancy combo is the least skill intensive deck because it just doesn't care.
Well judging by the SCG Open and Grand Prix today, I think we can safely say the latest incarnation of noskill-monored.dec (tm) has been discovered. A shame, I hoped we'd avoid it for another Standard season.
Obviously you have never played a boss sligh deck.
Well judging by the SCG Open and Grand Prix today, I think we can safely say the latest incarnation of noskill-monored.dec (tm) has been discovered. A shame, I hoped we'd avoid it for another Standard season.
Obviously you have never played a boss sligh deck.
Yah man mono red aggro is super skill intensive. Every decision is critical and bluffs are incredibly important. Sequencing is super tough and you ahv eot be a master mulliganner. I think low to the ground aggro is amongst the more difficult archetypes to pilot.
I like the new set. Drafting it has been fun, I'm looking forward to some team sealed at the next GP. As for constructed I'm running Orzhov aggro. I have to agree that Abzan seems to be a big deal, at least in my meta. That and shrapnel blasting doom engines...
I like it. It feels like the meta is made up of strong casual decks: 1 for 1's everywhere, high mana curves, vulnerable 4 card combos, and a big emphasis on creatures.
Of course, I feel like it might get boring after awhile, but so far deck variety is keeping things fresh for me as Abzan.
All Mardu needs are a few high value 1 and 2 drops and it's golden. There's some great stuff in the 3, 4, 5CMC range, but it's just too slow and not quite as much value compared to Jeskai and Abzan-specific stuff.
I think the next set will make or break standard. Right now there is a lot of brewing going on so the stale factor isn't a problem at the moment. If the next set doesn't offer any good pieces brewing will stop and people will become bored with standard. I think this is the reason wizards sped up rotation, they don't believe they can keep things Exciting and it keeps us buying packs to keep up.
All Mardu needs are a few high value 1 and 2 drops and it's golden. There's some great stuff in the 3, 4, 5CMC range, but it's just too slow and not quite as much value compared to Jeskai and Abzan-specific stuff.
It's got strong pieces, but it's just not as powerful as Abzan or as cohesive as Jeskai. It's made what, 1 top 8 appearance? On the other hand, the other two seem to make up 70-80% of every top 8 in some variation. Maybe someone can brew up a winning recipe, but I know my builds have not been all that good or consistent.
The only issue with Mardu is how the mana base scheme right now is not favorable to the colors. The reason you go black is to play the good black cards, which puts you into aggro. But scry lands do not cut it for aggro (not at x10~12) and there's no other option aside from pain lands. The deck is inherently inconsistent if you wanna go faster and if you wanna go slower it is inherently anti-synergistic (butcher is not the same without smaller creatures to feed him; doom is not the same if you're not putting pressure on the life points).
Not to mention right now standard has the best anti-aggro plan it had in years. The BG decks (Sultai and Abzan) can wipe your side of the board and play big threats because caryatid survives drown in sorrow, all without over committing to ramp. So not only it has big mana issues but it also has a large weakness against the best deck in the meta.
The only thing I don't like in this meta is that, again, there's not a blue in-spirit strategy. Jeskai Tempo is slowly transforming into Jeskai Burn. And there's not a cmc 1 or 2 counter in the whole pool :/
It seems like the good mardu decks are running RW with just a splash of black for Sorin, Butcher, Crackling Doom, and Murderous Cut. And each of those only has one Black mana symbol.
I think the meta is pretty balanced right now. There are a number of different decks winning tournaments. Abzan midrange, jeskai, mardu, mono red, U/B and now U/W control, GR Monsters. I really like it, and I expect that we will probably have another top deck next week as the meta shifts yet again to accommodate last weeks winners. I think there are decks that are going to be very good, but I think all the top decks are very fair as of right now.
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I meant cards that were strictly in blue.
Then you can't bring up Siege Rhino as an example of blue not getting pushed cards because even if it was part blue you wouldn't count it.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
But there's two 3CMC sweepers that can be used to combat aggro, and the midrange decks are slow enough that End Hostilities is a fine card, even at 5CMC. Perilous Vault, and hell, even Extinguish All Hope are reasonable alternatives if you're not in white and need a way to sweep midrange.
I think it's much more interesting to have conditional sweepers spread across different colors. Despite the fact that U/B control had the best showing at the Pro Tour, I think it's only a matter of time until the meta settles and the other control decks figure out how to best tune their lists. There was some serious hedging going on with U/B control, seeing as they auto-jammed 4 copies of Downfall, Stroke, and Dissolve just to have a favorable match against Abzan, even if it meant folding to Jeskai.
U/B, American control, BUG, Grixis control, and Esper control all look perfectly reasonable depending on your meta. I guess I just don't get the appeal of having a pre-made deck handed to us on a platter (like U/W control was). The control decks have to actually evolve and adapt to the changing meta now.
U/R Delver
Hostilities, vault, extinguish are all fine cards, they are just not fine for control, with the only exception being Perilous Vault for more specific control decks eg. draw go, but that's borderline too. There's only so many slots for your deck. I don't want to waste slots for an "aggro sweeper" a "midrange sweeper" and a "control sweeper" just to have those main archetypes covered while simultaneously weakening the rest of my deck by filling up slots with copies of the dead (sweepers) cards every match. With so many undercosted creatures eg. 2 mana 3/3s, 3 mana 4/4s, 4 mana 4/5s (not to mention the insane abilities on most creatures these days,) the sweepers presented are very unreasonable to the competitive control player.
In regards to sweepers see: http://www.gatheringmagic.com/controlling-game-flow. Turn 4 is the "sweet spot" for the basic sweeper in constructed. Read the article. It explains the natural development and power-to-mana-cost curves for creatures results in turn a 4 defensive turning point. This article was written back in 2011. Creatures are even more powerful and undercosted these days. Combined with inefficient ways to generate card advantage, no 4 mana sweeper is the bad joke your father recycles at family gatherings on control players. I also disagree with the hedging.
It's not the "pre-made deck." It's not the Sphinx's Revelation. It's not the Supreme Verdict. It's the 4 mana sweeper.
Couldn't of said it better myself.
Mind, I think control has other problems in this format. Midrange creatures are often netting value unless they're countered (particularly Siege Rhino) or killed immediately (Brimaz, Rabblemaster), and more worryingly there are a lot of midrangey planeswalkers in the format that allow a midrange deck to extend without being blown out by a wrath (unless that wrath is the very clunky Perilous Vault). All of these things contribute value before being answered, so waging a one-for-one attrition war is largely a losing battle. I suspect even RTR-THS Esper control would have difficulties dealing with a walker-heavy THS-KTK midrange deck.
A related problem is that the control decks aren't finding a reliable way to perch themselves upon an insurmountable pile of resources by end game. Maybe part of this is looking to Dig Through Time as aSphinx's Revelation replacement, despite the fact that they are very different cards that play very different roles - in particular, Dig's role isn't "stabilize and generate insurmountable resource advantage". Comparing the two cards is a disingenuous thing to do, and the fact that the comparison is being drawn (and that people are using RTR-THS Esper as a control template in general) is probably keeping people from properly building a potent late game for their control decks.
I don't know that such a potent late-game exists in the format. I don't think it has to involve lifegain or literal card-draw, it just has to put you ahead in resources and move the finish line further away from your opponent by a considerable margin. I'm thinking it may be work shuffling 5-or-so green sources and a couple of Villainous Wealth into Turtenwald's UB deck, because that deck gets a lot of lands on the table, and a Wealth for 8 or 9 seems like it could seal the deal. Otherwise I don't know.
UGB The mimeoplasm BGU
UBWSharuum the HegemonWBU
RUGAnimar, Soul of Elements GUR
BWGDoran, the siege towerGWB
GRBProssh, skyraider of kherBRG
UBRSedris, The traitor kingRBU
WRGRith, the awakenerGRW
Developing: Skullbriar zombies, Nekuzar Draw&Die, Zedruu enchantment control, Nath BG elves & 5C Slivers.
your tears taste delicious... and salty.
i don't even play the deck myself, but it's safe to say no deck is completely "nonskill". look at Tom Ross for example.
Youtube Channel
Except Abzan midrange? Kind of just curve out, play the best card in your hand and out-pace everyone else for value. Besides the boss mana dorks, there's 3/3s for 2, 4/4s for 3, 4/5s for 4, all with relevant abilities, deathtouch, hexproof, regen, pumpability, trample, life swap. Not to mention a plethora of removal spells and planeswalkers available. It's just Abzan GoodStuff. Really hard to lose with.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
good decks play good cards, nothing new here. Abzan has a lot of interaction. something like Ascendancy combo is the least skill intensive deck because it just doesn't care.
Youtube Channel
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Yah man mono red aggro is super skill intensive. Every decision is critical and bluffs are incredibly important. Sequencing is super tough and you ahv eot be a master mulliganner. I think low to the ground aggro is amongst the more difficult archetypes to pilot.
Of course, I feel like it might get boring after awhile, but so far deck variety is keeping things fresh for me as Abzan.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
mardu is already strong enough lol..
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Not to mention right now standard has the best anti-aggro plan it had in years. The BG decks (Sultai and Abzan) can wipe your side of the board and play big threats because caryatid survives drown in sorrow, all without over committing to ramp. So not only it has big mana issues but it also has a large weakness against the best deck in the meta.
The only thing I don't like in this meta is that, again, there's not a blue in-spirit strategy. Jeskai Tempo is slowly transforming into Jeskai Burn. And there's not a cmc 1 or 2 counter in the whole pool :/
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1219313
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1219310
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=75152
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate