are people too afraid of combos that they flip out now? Jesus I'd hate to see how much you guys complained when turbo fog was happening. You can't speed that up and there's no combo to worry about.....hell....when stasis was type 2 you guys probably would have crapped yourselves.
Anyone remember Quillspike with Devoted Druid and Rite of Consumption? If I recall correctly that was a three card combo for block constructed that was only two colors
Yes, but UW control at least interacted with the opponent. Board wipes, counterspells, ect, ect.
The problem with this deck, and you can likely ask anyone, is that they do NOT care about the boardstate or the other player. This is a game of solitaire. When playing against someone who plays this deck, or speaking with him about it, he is rarely going to do ANYTHING with the other player. It is truly, "Get mana dork, start loop with Ascendency, win game." Sure, UW Control stalled the board, sat there and waited until the 53 card mill, but at least they were countering spells, interacting, waiting on opponents to do things and stopping them.
This deck really feels like it is not waiting or doing anything at all based off opponent and everything based off playing alone. That is my feeling on it.
That being said, bring it, I don't really care. I play against any and all decks, and I don't really get upset at playing against control, combo, or anything like that. I am just saying why and what people are thinking and my views on playing against this deck or speaking to people about it who play the deck.
I enjoy playing the deck, I'm very much a Jonny player and love playing decks where the cards interact together to win. Combo is the ultimate expression of that. Also, whenever people say the deck is uninteractive, I would like to point out that it can be, especially if you mill your Altar of the Brood. I would also like to say that an uninteractive game is a 2 way street. If you're also not interacting, you can hardly complain.
Yes, but UW control at least interacted with the opponent. Board wipes, counterspells, ect, ect.
The problem with this deck, and you can likely ask anyone, is that they do NOT care about the boardstate or the other player. This is a game of solitaire. When playing against someone who plays this deck, or speaking with him about it, he is rarely going to do ANYTHING with the other player. It is truly, "Get mana dork, start loop with Ascendency, win game." Sure, UW Control stalled the board, sat there and waited until the 53 card mill, but at least they were countering spells, interacting, waiting on opponents to do things and stopping them.
This deck really feels like it is not waiting or doing anything at all based off opponent and everything based off playing alone. That is my feeling on it.
That being said, bring it, I don't really care. I play against any and all decks, and I don't really get upset at playing against control, combo, or anything like that. I am just saying why and what people are thinking and my views on playing against this deck or speaking to people about it who play the deck.
I'd make the argument that Boss Sligh, and to an extent most non-white aggro decks don't interact with the opponent either. No deck wants to interact with it's opponent, it's just that usually they are forced to. The problem is never "does this deck interact enough?". It's if players are given reasonable tools to to either force the deck to interact or beat it within an acceptable time frame. Considering how recent tournaments have played out I'd say it's fine, with the caveat that I probably wouldn't really enjoy playing with or against the deck myself.
The deck very much does care about the other player in the same way that every deck does. It asks "Can they stop me?" and "should I focus on defending for the moment or trying to race?". It just so happens that it was win when your opponent has a big and scary board state? You know what else can do that? Burn. Turbofog. Every combo deck. Control is similar in the sense that it is pretty monotonous too. The difference is that instead of racing for putting something together, they ignore your threats with a variation of generic answers that commonly includes countering it because it is still a spell. Aggro only cares about the opposing board state in the sense that it knows it probably can't blitz without some interaction so it includes a package to minimize that as much as possible be it evasion, kill spells, etc but the name of the game is the same as any deck. "Get my deck to do what it is supposed to do with the least amount of interference from my opponent as possible". Often times the act of trying to minimize interaction is interaction in itself but that doesn't change the ultimate goal. They just decided that it was less of a speed bump to play some kill spells than to try to run over that fatty without them.
Yes, but UW control at least interacted with the opponent. Board wipes, counterspells, ect, ect.
The problem with this deck, and you can likely ask anyone, is that they do NOT care about the boardstate or the other player. This is a game of solitaire. When playing against someone who plays this deck, or speaking with him about it, he is rarely going to do ANYTHING with the other player. It is truly, "Get mana dork, start loop with Ascendency, win game." Sure, UW Control stalled the board, sat there and waited until the 53 card mill, but at least they were countering spells, interacting, waiting on opponents to do things and stopping them.
This deck really feels like it is not waiting or doing anything at all based off opponent and everything based off playing alone. That is my feeling on it.
That being said, bring it, I don't really care. I play against any and all decks, and I don't really get upset at playing against control, combo, or anything like that. I am just saying why and what people are thinking and my views on playing against this deck or speaking to people about it who play the deck.
I'd still rather lose to JA, and have the game end on that turn, than lose to U/W control, but have the game drag on and on while they find their "finisher." Both are boring, but at least JA ends the game while it's boring me to tears.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
I don't feel any comparison to last season's UW control makes any sense. I played UW/x control all through RTR standard and consider it a much more difficult deck to pilot than Jeskai Ascendancy. Jeskai Ascendancy combo requires very little thinking and there isn't a lot of room for errors. If your opponent has an answer, it's too bad and you just shuffle up and hope they don't draw it in the next game. You do this against every deck no matter what the deck is and regardless of what kinds of threats are coming your way. UW control could never have done this. Every game was different and you had to know the meta inside and out to do well in events. Fast red decks required one strategy, other control decks required another while midrange required yet a different one. Sometimes your opponents would attack your hand to sneak threats through and sometimes they'd just slam haste creatures. It could be planeswalkers coming, a mix of creatures and planeswalkers, low cmc creatures or even enchantments. The difference is that Jeskai Ascendancy combo is literally playing solitaire against you and is willing to lose if you happen to draw your sideboarded answer in your top 10 cards. UW Control needed to handle a wide range of threats and strategies which really burdened the pilot to know how to approach them all.
Now, if you're just comparing the experience for the opponent, I can see that. That new player who needs to have the Jeskai Ascendancy combo carefully explained to them is the same player who didn't know how to tune their deck to beat UW control. The difference here is that a loss to UW control left them with with an experience they can learn from and build better decks with going forwards. Control decks are a real thing and can be beaten with necessary deck design. A loss to Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 3-4 doesn't give them much experience except for a feeling that magic isn't that great of a game. You might say that there are other combo decks out there but the "oops I win" moment doesn't usually happen as quickly and consistently as turn 3-4 as I've seen the Jeskai deck accomplish in Standard - even more consistently in modern. Other combo decks like pod or Splinter Twin in modern are at least interacting on the side.
I don't feel any comparison to last season's UW control makes any sense. I played UW/x control all through RTR standard and consider it a much more difficult deck to pilot than Jeskai Ascendancy. Jeskai Ascendancy combo requires very little thinking and there isn't a lot of room for errors. If your opponent has an answer, it's too bad and you just shuffle up and hope they don't draw it in the next game. You do this against every deck no matter what the deck is and regardless of what kinds of threats are coming your way. UW control could never have done this. Every game was different and you had to know the meta inside and out to do well in events. Fast red decks required one strategy, other control decks required another while midrange required yet a different one. Sometimes your opponents would attack your hand to sneak threats through and sometimes they'd just slam haste creatures. It could be planeswalkers coming, a mix of creatures and planeswalkers, low cmc creatures or even enchantments. The difference is that Jeskai Ascendancy combo is literally playing solitaire against you and is willing to lose if you happen to draw your sideboarded answer in your top 10 cards. UW Control needed to handle a wide range of threats and strategies which really burdened the pilot to know how to approach them all.
Now, if you're just comparing the experience for the opponent, I can see that. That new player who needs to have the Jeskai Ascendancy combo carefully explained to them is the same player who didn't know how to tune their deck to beat UW control. The difference here is that a loss to UW control left them with with an experience they can learn from and build better decks with going forwards. Control decks are a real thing and can be beaten with necessary deck design. A loss to Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 3-4 doesn't give them much experience except for a feeling that magic isn't that great of a game. You might say that there are other combo decks out there but the "oops I win" moment doesn't usually happen as quickly and consistently as turn 3-4 as I've seen the Jeskai deck accomplish in Standard - even more consistently in modern. Other combo decks like pod or Splinter Twin in modern are at least interacting on the side.
I understand the hate at the speed of this deck but what is with the hate on the time it takes for these people to combo? The only combo deck that takes a long time to go off was eggs and they banned that.
Are you making your foe go through the leap every time?
I understand why a combo deck that is to fast should be banned but how is versing a combo deck so much worse than versing an agro deck of the same speed?
How is it more fun to get bolted 7 times by turn 4 then to die to unlimited pestermites on turn 4? Does the fact that combo have a few counter spells make it so unreasonable that it can't be versed?
They really are not more interactive than any burn deck that people play.
Every color can interact with the combo to some extent. I hate to repeat myself but the level of interaction in this deck is about the same as Boss Sligh against a known meta, just that players are more accustomed to interacting with creatures than global enchantments.
It's shocking to see how dead this forum can be. Anyone watching this week's SCG coverage, should know that this card has introduced legacy level power to standard. If that's not an obvious alarm bell for wizards, I don't know what is. Modern is supposed to be a t4 or later format. If heroic ascendancy ticks up in popularity, given how insanely overpowered it is (which anyone who's seen that deck could 1000% guarantee), this cards going to get banned much sooner than later. How soon? I'm unsure.
It's shocking to see how dead this forum can be. Anyone watching this week's SCG coverage, should know that this card has introduced legacy level power to standard. If that's not an obvious alarm bell for wizards, I don't know what is. Modern is supposed to be a t4 or later format. If heroic ascendancy ticks up in popularity, given how insanely overpowered it is (which anyone who's seen that deck could 1000% guarantee), this cards going to get banned much sooner than later. How soon? I'm unsure.
Anybody know the precedence on banning time-wise?
I'm going to say that this weekend's list *far* more troubling than the previous mana-dork list. Fewer necessary moving parts, leads to incredible life-total swings even if it doesn't combo off, and has the ability to go off in one turn after losing the entire board position, save Ascendancy. It's far more consistent looking and potent than the previous build, and really shows how utterly bonkers Ascendancy really is.
*That said*, I doubt it will take over Standard, or even get much attention. This has nothing to do with the combo itself, and more to do with how complicated the actual combo is. It appears to be an exceedingly difficult deck to pick up, and requires a high level of skill to play. Even if people pick it up to play it, I'm not certain it's even going to show that great results overall due to people screwing it up.
Still, it's a very potent card and really reveals how dumb the set of abilities on Ascendancy are. As far as interacting with the deck is concerned, it's actually not easy to do. The deck can rather easily go from apparenty nothing to comboing off in a single turn with very little set-up. It's fairly hard to actually stop, as it can reset itself rather handily. And capable of winning turn 4 fairly easily.
It's shocking to see how dead this forum can be. Anyone watching this week's SCG coverage, should know that this card has introduced legacy level power to standard. If that's not an obvious alarm bell for wizards, I don't know what is. Modern is supposed to be a t4 or later format. If heroic ascendancy ticks up in popularity, given how insanely overpowered it is (which anyone who's seen that deck could 1000% guarantee), this cards going to get banned much sooner than later. How soon? I'm unsure.
Anybody know the precedence on banning time-wise?
I'm going to say that this weekend's list *far* more troubling than the previous mana-dork list. Fewer necessary moving parts, leads to incredible life-total swings even if it doesn't combo off, and has the ability to go off in one turn after losing the entire board position, save Ascendancy. It's far more consistent looking and potent than the previous build, and really shows how utterly bonkers Ascendancy really is.
*That said*, I doubt it will take over Standard, or even get much attention. This has nothing to do with the combo itself, and more to do with how complicated the actual combo is. It appears to be an exceedingly difficult deck to pick up, and requires a high level of skill to play. Even if people pick it up to play it, I'm not certain it's even going to show that great results overall due to people screwing it up.
Still, it's a very potent card and really reveals how dumb the set of abilities on Ascendancy are. As far as interacting with the deck is concerned, it's actually not easy to do. The deck can rather easily go from apparenty nothing to comboing off in a single turn with very little set-up. It's fairly hard to actually stop, as it can reset itself rather handily. And capable of winning turn 4 fairly easily.
Even if that were true, it's a deck that will warp the entire format, without question. You yourself saw that no deck really had the answers. It doesn't matter how difficult the deck is to pilot, this deck will be represented at a large event by a aggro/combo player (Turtenwald/Ross?) who knows the archetype well and will just drive it all the way home-- every. single. time. If you want to win an event, you're going to be playing against this deck at the top tables, and everyone will thus be suiting up accordingly.
Think about Sphinx's Revelation decks, which only constituted <10% of the decks in the format. Certainly, you had to build your deck to stand a chance in that matchup, even though the deck wasn't highly represented at any given event. Hell, even the black decks changed entirely (into golgari and Orzhov) to deal with that deck after the event where multiple u/w controls topped, in spite of their meager number.
My guess is Wizards knew exactly what they were doing and wanted to introduce a really pushed card in the pool to see what people would come up with. I don't think this is an innocent mistake at all. I don't think it will get emergency banned. It may get banned if it warps the format (unlikely). TC is the likely candidate from Khans to see the ban hammer. Ascendancy just introduces a deck that not only requires skill to pilot, but also will force players to adapt their decks to do more than just cast big dumb dudes and swing.
People are simply over reacting because they haven't seen anything like it in a very long time in Standard. I personally feel like it's brilliant and am in love. This is what I want to be doing going forward.
How would a deck like this not warp the format? As stated in the above post, warping formats doesn't require high representation/large "Jundesque" showings, just a ton of power.
When a deck becomes nothing more than a pile of cards guaranteed to shut down another deck, in this case more or less JA, then what win conditions are left to use? Restating, if my deck has only answers to your deck, how can it win beyond frustrating you into scooping? Having to dedicate an entire massive package to disrupting JA decks leaves little to no room in the deck for my own win-condition. I have a bias as I have been a green mage since Invasion when I started, but this deck is becoming a terrific motivator for people to dump standard and jump into other formats. We may see an EDH surge happen with the new precons coming out and JA decks scaring everyone out of standard. But who knows. I remember when Skullclamp warped the meta to banning point in less than 4 whole months after official release. Soon followed Ravager and the artifact lands. Cards need to be better tested nowadays and they just aren't that well tested internally anymore, not with the scale that magic has reached at this point.
I think it's safe to say that a lot of people playing Boss Sligh and UW Heroic will port over to this build.
I've been goldfishing the deck and it's definitely powerful, but it's not nearly as unstoppable as people seem to think. Slow hands and dead draws happen just like with every other deck. The format is still in this durdly midrangey 7-drop decks phase and that is the prime environment for aggro / combo to prosper. I wouldn't be surprised if the format pivoted because of this deck existing and spurred some new brews. Now that this deck is out in the open people will learn to play against it. Eidolon of the Great Revel, just to name a card, wrecks this deck since nothing costs above 3 and it makes the infinite loop impossible. The creatures are in no position to trade or block profitably, you only have to watch out on not getting blown out by Gods Willing by having a one-color army. Doomwake Giant does plenty of work too.
I'm still not sure it needs to get banned. On the other hand, I am infinitely excited that we have a competitive, solid combo deck in Standard after who knows how long.
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"Dying with good cards in your hand is the surest sign that you did something wrong, somewhere." -Caleb Durward
Why do people seem to think you need to dedicate a lot to fighting Jeskai Ascendancy, if your deck runs white, 4 Erase is the answer. Which also happily answers banishing light, suspension field, Gods, Courser and all other enchantment creatures, Whip of erebos and any other enchantment.
The deck seemed format warping because no one was running enchantment hate, for whatever silly reason.
SCG Open results on GP weekends are always from a poorer pool of players than you'd otherwise get. The pros need those points as it leads to significant cash rewards once they gain platinum status so they simply can't miss an event.
Anyway on the deck it is complicated and can be a bit tedious going through the motions.
Playing 18 land, a stack of cantrips, Jeskai Ascendancy and a few 1/2 mana creatures and being able to win a tourny is a bit busted though.
Why do people seem to think you need to dedicate a lot to fighting Jeskai Ascendancy, if your deck runs white, 4 Erase is the answer. Which also happily answers banishing light, suspension field, Gods, Courser and all other enchantment creatures, Whip of erebos and any other enchantment.
The deck seemed format warping because no one was running enchantment hate, for whatever silly reason.
Last time I checked the following decks do not have access to erase:
U/B control
G/R monsters
B/G constellation
U/G devotion
MG devotion
boss sligh/RDW
Temur aggro
There's also the challenge of constantly holding up erase/naturalize mana (yes, even just 1w) while taking aggro beats from seeker, hoplite, crusader and company. Midrange already has some speed issues, and that's why these sligh/hyperaggro decks have gained so much traction in the meta. Further holding back on the curve to kill a threat which doesn't necessarily stop the Heroic deck from winning the game, isnt going to be a good deal. Also, if they have >3 mana up, they can simply respond to the erase, since the ascendancy has already resolved. Last time I checked, a spell that has 3cmc and says "all your creatures get +1/+1 and untap them, then loot" was still pretty powerful.
Honestly killing the creatures is probably easier and more fruitful than taking out Ascendancy. IMHO, the best tools in each color:
White: Banishing Light, Suspension Field, Devouring Light, Erase, End Hostilities (probably too slow), Spirit of the Labyrinth
Black: Murderous Cut, Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrows, Doomwake Giant
Red: Eidolon of the Great Revel, Anger of the Gods (best overall hate color despite enchantment removal)
Blue: Not much, Whelming Wave and other bounce spells (weakest by a fair bit)
Green: Setessan Tactics, Back to Nature, other enchantment removal
Artifact: Perilous Vault (like End hostilities, too slow)
As far as multicolored cards go, versatile removal like Utter End and Sultai Charm are probably the best bets. Crackling Doom, Destructive Revelry, and Deflecting Palm are pretty good as well. Basically you want a plan that can deal with Akroan Crusader AND Ascendancy. The deck doesn't win without them, but dealing with only one or the other can be fatal. I'd expect to see more stubborn denials, negates, and ajani's presence in the tuned lists, so they will be prepared for some of this hate.
Honestly killing the creatures is probably easier and more fruitful than taking out Ascendancy. IMHO, the best tools in each color:
White: Banishing Light, Suspension Field, Devouring Light, Erase, End Hostilities (probably too slow), Spirit of the Labyrinth
Black: Murderous Cut, Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrows, Doomwake Giant
Red: Eidolon of the Great Revel, Anger of the Gods (best overall hate color despite enchantment removal)
Blue: Not much, Whelming Wave and other bounce spells (weakest by a fair bit)
Green: Setessan Tactics, Back to Nature, other enchantment removal
Artifact: Perilous Vault (like End hostilities, too slow)
As far as multicolored cards go, versatile removal like Utter End and Sultai Charm are probably the best bets. Crackling Doom, Destructive Revelry, and Deflecting Palm are pretty good as well. Basically you want a plan that can deal with Akroan Crusader AND Ascendancy. The deck doesn't win without them, but dealing with only one or the other can be fatal. I'd expect to see more stubborn denials, negates, and ajani's presence in the tuned lists, so they will be prepared for some of this hate.
Actually, the deck doesn't need crusaders to win. All it needs is 2 creatures, drum, ascendancy and retraction helix.
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are people too afraid of combos that they flip out now? Jesus I'd hate to see how much you guys complained when turbo fog was happening. You can't speed that up and there's no combo to worry about.....hell....when stasis was type 2 you guys probably would have crapped yourselves.
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The problem with this deck, and you can likely ask anyone, is that they do NOT care about the boardstate or the other player. This is a game of solitaire. When playing against someone who plays this deck, or speaking with him about it, he is rarely going to do ANYTHING with the other player. It is truly, "Get mana dork, start loop with Ascendency, win game." Sure, UW Control stalled the board, sat there and waited until the 53 card mill, but at least they were countering spells, interacting, waiting on opponents to do things and stopping them.
This deck really feels like it is not waiting or doing anything at all based off opponent and everything based off playing alone. That is my feeling on it.
That being said, bring it, I don't really care. I play against any and all decks, and I don't really get upset at playing against control, combo, or anything like that. I am just saying why and what people are thinking and my views on playing against this deck or speaking to people about it who play the deck.
I'd make the argument that Boss Sligh, and to an extent most non-white aggro decks don't interact with the opponent either. No deck wants to interact with it's opponent, it's just that usually they are forced to. The problem is never "does this deck interact enough?". It's if players are given reasonable tools to to either force the deck to interact or beat it within an acceptable time frame. Considering how recent tournaments have played out I'd say it's fine, with the caveat that I probably wouldn't really enjoy playing with or against the deck myself.
I'd still rather lose to JA, and have the game end on that turn, than lose to U/W control, but have the game drag on and on while they find their "finisher." Both are boring, but at least JA ends the game while it's boring me to tears.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Now, if you're just comparing the experience for the opponent, I can see that. That new player who needs to have the Jeskai Ascendancy combo carefully explained to them is the same player who didn't know how to tune their deck to beat UW control. The difference here is that a loss to UW control left them with with an experience they can learn from and build better decks with going forwards. Control decks are a real thing and can be beaten with necessary deck design. A loss to Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 3-4 doesn't give them much experience except for a feeling that magic isn't that great of a game. You might say that there are other combo decks out there but the "oops I win" moment doesn't usually happen as quickly and consistently as turn 3-4 as I've seen the Jeskai deck accomplish in Standard - even more consistently in modern. Other combo decks like pod or Splinter Twin in modern are at least interacting on the side.
UBRGrixis Kiki Control
BGUSultai Shadow
GWRBushwhacker Zoo
EDH:
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose
GWU Roon of the Hidden Realm
Now, if you're just comparing the experience for the opponent, I can see that. That new player who needs to have the Jeskai Ascendancy combo carefully explained to them is the same player who didn't know how to tune their deck to beat UW control. The difference here is that a loss to UW control left them with with an experience they can learn from and build better decks with going forwards. Control decks are a real thing and can be beaten with necessary deck design. A loss to Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 3-4 doesn't give them much experience except for a feeling that magic isn't that great of a game. You might say that there are other combo decks out there but the "oops I win" moment doesn't usually happen as quickly and consistently as turn 3-4 as I've seen the Jeskai deck accomplish in Standard - even more consistently in modern. Other combo decks like pod or Splinter Twin in modern are at least interacting on the side.
UBRGrixis Kiki Control
BGUSultai Shadow
GWRBushwhacker Zoo
EDH:
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose
GWU Roon of the Hidden Realm
Are you making your foe go through the leap every time?
I understand why a combo deck that is to fast should be banned but how is versing a combo deck so much worse than versing an agro deck of the same speed?
How is it more fun to get bolted 7 times by turn 4 then to die to unlimited pestermites on turn 4? Does the fact that combo have a few counter spells make it so unreasonable that it can't be versed?
They really are not more interactive than any burn deck that people play.
Anybody know the precedence on banning time-wise?
I'm going to say that this weekend's list *far* more troubling than the previous mana-dork list. Fewer necessary moving parts, leads to incredible life-total swings even if it doesn't combo off, and has the ability to go off in one turn after losing the entire board position, save Ascendancy. It's far more consistent looking and potent than the previous build, and really shows how utterly bonkers Ascendancy really is.
*That said*, I doubt it will take over Standard, or even get much attention. This has nothing to do with the combo itself, and more to do with how complicated the actual combo is. It appears to be an exceedingly difficult deck to pick up, and requires a high level of skill to play. Even if people pick it up to play it, I'm not certain it's even going to show that great results overall due to people screwing it up.
Still, it's a very potent card and really reveals how dumb the set of abilities on Ascendancy are. As far as interacting with the deck is concerned, it's actually not easy to do. The deck can rather easily go from apparenty nothing to comboing off in a single turn with very little set-up. It's fairly hard to actually stop, as it can reset itself rather handily. And capable of winning turn 4 fairly easily.
Even if that were true, it's a deck that will warp the entire format, without question. You yourself saw that no deck really had the answers. It doesn't matter how difficult the deck is to pilot, this deck will be represented at a large event by a aggro/combo player (Turtenwald/Ross?) who knows the archetype well and will just drive it all the way home-- every. single. time. If you want to win an event, you're going to be playing against this deck at the top tables, and everyone will thus be suiting up accordingly.
Think about Sphinx's Revelation decks, which only constituted <10% of the decks in the format. Certainly, you had to build your deck to stand a chance in that matchup, even though the deck wasn't highly represented at any given event. Hell, even the black decks changed entirely (into golgari and Orzhov) to deal with that deck after the event where multiple u/w controls topped, in spite of their meager number.
People are simply over reacting because they haven't seen anything like it in a very long time in Standard. I personally feel like it's brilliant and am in love. This is what I want to be doing going forward.
I've been goldfishing the deck and it's definitely powerful, but it's not nearly as unstoppable as people seem to think. Slow hands and dead draws happen just like with every other deck. The format is still in this durdly midrangey 7-drop decks phase and that is the prime environment for aggro / combo to prosper. I wouldn't be surprised if the format pivoted because of this deck existing and spurred some new brews. Now that this deck is out in the open people will learn to play against it. Eidolon of the Great Revel, just to name a card, wrecks this deck since nothing costs above 3 and it makes the infinite loop impossible. The creatures are in no position to trade or block profitably, you only have to watch out on not getting blown out by Gods Willing by having a one-color army. Doomwake Giant does plenty of work too.
I'm still not sure it needs to get banned. On the other hand, I am infinitely excited that we have a competitive, solid combo deck in Standard after who knows how long.
Modern
Mono-U Tron
Zombie Loam
Infect
Legacy
Delver
TES
The deck seemed format warping because no one was running enchantment hate, for whatever silly reason.
SCG Open results on GP weekends are always from a poorer pool of players than you'd otherwise get. The pros need those points as it leads to significant cash rewards once they gain platinum status so they simply can't miss an event.
Anyway on the deck it is complicated and can be a bit tedious going through the motions.
Playing 18 land, a stack of cantrips, Jeskai Ascendancy and a few 1/2 mana creatures and being able to win a tourny is a bit busted though.
Format broken? Perhaps.
Last time I checked the following decks do not have access to erase:
U/B control
G/R monsters
B/G constellation
U/G devotion
MG devotion
boss sligh/RDW
Temur aggro
There's also the challenge of constantly holding up erase/naturalize mana (yes, even just 1w) while taking aggro beats from seeker, hoplite, crusader and company. Midrange already has some speed issues, and that's why these sligh/hyperaggro decks have gained so much traction in the meta. Further holding back on the curve to kill a threat which doesn't necessarily stop the Heroic deck from winning the game, isnt going to be a good deal. Also, if they have >3 mana up, they can simply respond to the erase, since the ascendancy has already resolved. Last time I checked, a spell that has 3cmc and says "all your creatures get +1/+1 and untap them, then loot" was still pretty powerful.
White: Banishing Light, Suspension Field, Devouring Light, Erase, End Hostilities (probably too slow), Spirit of the Labyrinth
Black: Murderous Cut, Bile Blight, Drown in Sorrows, Doomwake Giant
Red: Eidolon of the Great Revel, Anger of the Gods (best overall hate color despite enchantment removal)
Blue: Not much, Whelming Wave and other bounce spells (weakest by a fair bit)
Green: Setessan Tactics, Back to Nature, other enchantment removal
Artifact: Perilous Vault (like End hostilities, too slow)
As far as multicolored cards go, versatile removal like Utter End and Sultai Charm are probably the best bets. Crackling Doom, Destructive Revelry, and Deflecting Palm are pretty good as well. Basically you want a plan that can deal with Akroan Crusader AND Ascendancy. The deck doesn't win without them, but dealing with only one or the other can be fatal. I'd expect to see more stubborn denials, negates, and ajani's presence in the tuned lists, so they will be prepared for some of this hate.