On the back of another classic thread on the standard board. Lets talk about Thoughtseize.
So it always seems as standard gets more threat dense Thoughtseize gets better.
Esper Dragons was not to be seen in the top 8 of Toronto or Paris but the winnings decks were both Abzan with a full playset of good ol' Thoughtseize.
Even the Mardu deck that has popped up is just a Thoughtseize deck with dragons.
Many will agree this is the most powerful card printed in standard. I think it could just be the best card right up to rotation.
So how to this shift the metagame? Well what deck is good against Thoughtseize? If you said mono red you'd be correct. Even the pro tour winning Atarka's Command version of the deck has fallen off in favor of a more consistent mono color build. There was 2 different lists in the top 8 of Paris but it seems to me like punishing cards such as Eidolon of the Great Revel in conjunction with burn spells is where you want to be to punish those full playsets of Thoughtseize.
Thoughtseize just forces you to the route of redundancy. This is a bit of a pain for some strategies. Thoughtseize basically punishes decks that only play a handful relevant threats or that try to many diverse but narrow answers. You don't really have to go as far as mono red. Any deck that aims to be proactive and cast their cards on time can be good against all but the earliest of Thoughtseizes. To be resilient against earlier ones you need to play essentially 8 of any card you deem worth playing. Sometimes you will still get stuck in an awkward spot but generally you can be largely unaffected. Graveyard recursion at no extra value is also great against Thoughtseize. I play both Den Protector and Haven in my 75 and while the obvious choice is take the Den Protector the number of times you just draw into it and basically undo their Thoughtseize isn't trivial.
Sure there are ways to punish the Thoughtseize decks more than that. But as long as you play a reasonable game plan that isn't all in on a linchpin card or has the all ramp no threats sort of issue, or thinks it can get away with 1 or 2 of each removal spell to cover the wide metagame you should be fine.
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Thoughtseize is nowhere near as good as it was last season because there's no more Pack Rat. It's no longer a 2-card, turn 2 win combo with anything. It's just an efficient discard spell, and nothing more.
Thoughtseize is nowhere near as good as it was last season because there's no more Pack Rat. It's no longer a 2-card, turn 2 win combo with anything. It's just an efficient discard spell, and nothing more.
Yep, Pack Rat + mono removal = redundancy. It's tricky when the deck that plays Thoughtseize best is the most redundant.
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It is a pretty format warping card. Two top decks that use it don't even care about the life gain loss unless they are against rdw (esper dragon/ub has foul tongue, abzan has rhino to gain it all back). It makes mulligans even worse and can rip a answer from your hand to one of their things. We are not even counting they get to see your hand and write down what you have. That alone is invaluable and essentially you are playing Pegasus from yu-gi-oh.
If you look at standard there really isn't any good synergy decks. Sure we have rdw foundry street denizen+creatures,den protector+deathmist, and a few others but those are far and few between. If you look at a lot of stuff in decks, it is mostly value creatures that are good by themselves. To deal with thoughtseize, you need to be redundant.
On the draw impossible to counter, on the play possible to counter but unlikely.
Thoughtseize isn't broken, but it is pretty degenerate. I don't think standard was the right place for it to be reprinted as the power level is a lot lower. It seems fine in modern as we have turn 3 infinite combos that need to be kept in check. With this in mind, two out of three of the top tier decks use thoughtseize. If that isn't format warping, I don't know what is.
If there is any card in standard that is anti-fun other than getting counter spelled a gorillion times it would be this card.
I use thoughtseize but look forward to it rotating, along with hero's downfall. That should cool down the Abzan strategies a bit, and might open up UWx control as viable over UBx
Discarding is integral part of black's disruption. Without it the color loose it's answer to non-creature spells, making it incomplete, much like blue until Silumgar's Scorn.
Thoughseize is a necessary evil as Duress is not good enough for main boards. Ideally something weaker the seize and better then Duress (something at the level of Cabal Therapy) should exist but WotC still gotta come up with it. I think seize was a test on how good discard impacts a standard meta and the test was positive, there are people mad at it but it's nowhere near as bad as last time. It's clear something weaker to replace it is needed, but it's also clear black needs discard in order to play like black.
Discarding is integral part of black's disruption. Without it the color loose it's answer to non-creature spells, making it incomplete, much like blue until Silumgar's Scorn.
Thoughseize is a necessary evil as Duress is not good enough for main boards. Ideally something weaker the seize and better then Duress (something at the level of Cabal Therapy) should exist but WotC still gotta come up with it. I think seize was a test on how good discard impacts a standard meta and the test was positive, there are people mad at it but it's nowhere near as bad as last time. It's clear something weaker to replace it is needed, but it's also clear black needs discard in order to play like black.
You just said thoughtseize was needed to remove "NON CREATURE cards" and yet duress, which can only do that isn't good enough? That's the problem, thoughtseize answers everything. No other colour can do anything close to that proactively for 1 mana.
That said, I don't think it's an overpowered card, annoying sure, and definitely stops me playing my heroic deck with it getting popular again. And I do believe it stops creativity. But abzan does that in general. In fact, my problem isn't thoughtseize, it's that all the top tier cards are in Abzan. Compare it to any other clan, and none of the others have anywhere near the number of playable rares in their colours.
Also keep in mind both decks that abuse it have mainboard lifegain (abzan is rhino, esper dragons is foul tongue) making the 2 life moot unless fighting burn.
Discarding is integral part of black's disruption. Without it the color loose it's answer to non-creature spells, making it incomplete, much like blue until Silumgar's Scorn.
Thoughseize is a necessary evil as Duress is not good enough for main boards. Ideally something weaker the seize and better then Duress (something at the level of Cabal Therapy) should exist but WotC still gotta come up with it. I think seize was a test on how good discard impacts a standard meta and the test was positive, there are people mad at it but it's nowhere near as bad as last time. It's clear something weaker to replace it is needed, but it's also clear black needs discard in order to play like black.
You just said thoughtseize was needed to remove "NON CREATURE cards" and yet duress, which can only do that isn't good enough?
Yes because removing non-creature spells is crucial but a card that do just that is not MB material because it's not relevant against the whole field. It's a bit like Dromoka Command whole in GW aggro decks. Those decks needed a MB answer to Whip of Erebos because no deck can afford instantly fold game 1 against a card that is in 15%+ decks of the meta but no deck can also play a card that is dead against the rest of the meta as well.
I only record Duress being a main deck card once and it was when the meta was basically MBC vs. Psychatog vs. Astral Slide/Mirrari's Wake (control vs. control vs. control).
1 card format folks. I'm not saying you can't win without it but good luck trying in a field full of decks playing it.
There's plenty of good options outside of black based midrange/control. Abzan aggro does not even use 4 copies of it...
Discarding is integral part of black's disruption. Without it the color loose it's answer to non-creature spells, making it incomplete, much like blue until Silumgar's Scorn.
Thoughseize is a necessary evil as Duress is not good enough for main boards. Ideally something weaker the seize and better then Duress (something at the level of Cabal Therapy) should exist but WotC still gotta come up with it. I think seize was a test on how good discard impacts a standard meta and the test was positive, there are people mad at it but it's nowhere near as bad as last time. It's clear something weaker to replace it is needed, but it's also clear black needs discard in order to play like black.
You just said thoughtseize was needed to remove "NON CREATURE cards" and yet duress, which can only do that isn't good enough?
Yes because removing non-creature spells is crucial but a card that do just that is not MB material because it's not relevant against the whole field. It's a bit like Dromoka Command whole in GW aggro decks. Those decks needed a MB answer to Whip of Erebos because no deck can afford instantly fold game 1 against a card that is in 15%+ decks of the meta but no deck can also play a card that is dead against the rest of the meta as well.
I only record Duress being a main deck card once and it was when the meta was basically MBC vs. Psychatog vs. Astral Slide/Mirrari's Wake (control vs. control vs. control).
1 card format folks. I'm not saying you can't win without it but good luck trying in a field full of decks playing it.
There's plenty of good options outside of black based midrange/control. Abzan aggro does not even use 4 copies of it...
No offense, but to say there is plenty of options outside of black based decks and then mention a black based deck is just...
But either way, I think green is the core colour of this standard season.
Also keep in mind both decks that abuse it have mainboard lifegain (abzan is rhino, esper dragons is foul tongue) making the 2 life moot unless fighting burn.
Regardless, you still "gain" life if you take a card that would've dealt more than 2 damage to you. Hitting, say, a Stoke means you're "up" two life from it being thrown at your face. Casting it and hitting a creature that would've dealt you more than 2 damage before being answered is likewise a virtual gain. I still board it out against red aggro, but you don't need lifegain to realize a life-based advantage off Thoughtseize.
Discarding is integral part of black's disruption. Without it the color loose it's answer to non-creature spells, making it incomplete, much like blue until Silumgar's Scorn.
Thoughseize is a necessary evil as Duress is not good enough for main boards. Ideally something weaker the seize and better then Duress (something at the level of Cabal Therapy) should exist but WotC still gotta come up with it. I think seize was a test on how good discard impacts a standard meta and the test was positive, there are people mad at it but it's nowhere near as bad as last time. It's clear something weaker to replace it is needed, but it's also clear black needs discard in order to play like black.
You just said thoughtseize was needed to remove "NON CREATURE cards" and yet duress, which can only do that isn't good enough?
Yes because removing non-creature spells is crucial but a card that do just that is not MB material because it's not relevant against the whole field. It's a bit like Dromoka Command whole in GW aggro decks. Those decks needed a MB answer to Whip of Erebos because no deck can afford instantly fold game 1 against a card that is in 15%+ decks of the meta but no deck can also play a card that is dead against the rest of the meta as well.
I only record Duress being a main deck card once and it was when the meta was basically MBC vs. Psychatog vs. Astral Slide/Mirrari's Wake (control vs. control vs. control).
1 card format folks. I'm not saying you can't win without it but good luck trying in a field full of decks playing it.
There's plenty of good options outside of black based midrange/control. Abzan aggro does not even use 4 copies of it...
No offense, but to say there is plenty of options outside of black based decks and then mention a black based deck is just...
But either way, I think green is the core colour of this standard season.
You can read that as "there's plenty of options outside black based control/midrange AND there are even black decks that don't use 4 copies of it = it's not too strong".
I feel like the big thing that changed is that right now there's so much good card advantage, in one form or another, in most play styles and decks. So thoughtsiezing something away is not near as damaging to your plan as it used to be when the only good draw was sphinx's rev and jace, aot. Or at least that's what it feels like to me.
T-seize is not fun to play against, but it accomplishes a nice narrative goal of making black decks seem EVIL.
I would like each color to get their own equivalent 1-drop card that improves card quality, though doesn't grant card advantage per se. Not Thoughtseize, but...
StormbreezeR
Sorcery
Set aside any number of cards in your hand, then draw that many cards plus one. Shuffle the set aside cards into your library. You lose 2 life.
OldtreesG
Sorcery
Return target card in your graveyard to your hand. You lose 2 life.
GuildfeesW
Sorcery
Choose a card type. Target opponent cannot play cards of that type until your next turn. You lose 2 life.
DreamteaseU
Sorcery
Look at the top 7 cards of your library. Put one into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library. You lose 2 life.
Isn't it kinda funny that black is the only unequivocally morally-aligned colour? It's evil. It's always evil. Every other colour is evil sometimes, and good other times. There is no colour that's always good.
Why black? I mean it seems obvious enough, but then why wasn't white or green made "always good"?
On the back of another classic thread on the standard board. Lets talk about Thoughtseize.
So it always seems as standard gets more threat dense Thoughtseize gets better.
Esper Dragons was not to be seen in the top 8 of Toronto or Paris but the winnings decks were both Abzan with a full playset of good ol' Thoughtseize.
Even the Mardu deck that has popped up is just a Thoughtseize deck with dragons.
Many will agree this is the most powerful card printed in standard. I think it could just be the best card right up to rotation.
So how to this shift the metagame? Well what deck is good against Thoughtseize? If you said mono red you'd be correct. Even the pro tour winning Atarka's Command version of the deck has fallen off in favor of a more consistent mono color build. There was 2 different lists in the top 8 of Paris but it seems to me like punishing cards such as Eidolon of the Great Revel in conjunction with burn spells is where you want to be to punish those full playsets of Thoughtseize.
Sure there are ways to punish the Thoughtseize decks more than that. But as long as you play a reasonable game plan that isn't all in on a linchpin card or has the all ramp no threats sort of issue, or thinks it can get away with 1 or 2 of each removal spell to cover the wide metagame you should be fine.
GWU Knightfall Modern
UW Tempo Legacy
UGR Burning Wish Cobra Vintage
Yep, Pack Rat + mono removal = redundancy. It's tricky when the deck that plays Thoughtseize best is the most redundant.
GWU Knightfall Modern
UW Tempo Legacy
UGR Burning Wish Cobra Vintage
At least it was good for a couple of weeks there. Time to play some Siege Rhino and Thoughtseize myself.
GWU Bant Manifest - The Future Is Here. Or it will be at the end of turn. GWU
If you look at standard there really isn't any good synergy decks. Sure we have rdw foundry street denizen+creatures,den protector+deathmist, and a few others but those are far and few between. If you look at a lot of stuff in decks, it is mostly value creatures that are good by themselves. To deal with thoughtseize, you need to be redundant.
On the draw impossible to counter, on the play possible to counter but unlikely.
Thoughtseize isn't broken, but it is pretty degenerate. I don't think standard was the right place for it to be reprinted as the power level is a lot lower. It seems fine in modern as we have turn 3 infinite combos that need to be kept in check. With this in mind, two out of three of the top tier decks use thoughtseize. If that isn't format warping, I don't know what is.
If there is any card in standard that is anti-fun other than getting counter spelled a gorillion times it would be this card.
Thoughseize is a necessary evil as Duress is not good enough for main boards. Ideally something weaker the seize and better then Duress (something at the level of Cabal Therapy) should exist but WotC still gotta come up with it. I think seize was a test on how good discard impacts a standard meta and the test was positive, there are people mad at it but it's nowhere near as bad as last time. It's clear something weaker to replace it is needed, but it's also clear black needs discard in order to play like black.
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
You just said thoughtseize was needed to remove "NON CREATURE cards" and yet duress, which can only do that isn't good enough? That's the problem, thoughtseize answers everything. No other colour can do anything close to that proactively for 1 mana.
That said, I don't think it's an overpowered card, annoying sure, and definitely stops me playing my heroic deck with it getting popular again. And I do believe it stops creativity. But abzan does that in general. In fact, my problem isn't thoughtseize, it's that all the top tier cards are in Abzan. Compare it to any other clan, and none of the others have anywhere near the number of playable rares in their colours.
Ruined that Grixas deck with my own Thoughtseize before getting ruined by Mardu playing Thoughtseize.
1 card format folks. I'm not saying you can't win without it but good luck trying in a field full of decks playing it.
Yes because removing non-creature spells is crucial but a card that do just that is not MB material because it's not relevant against the whole field. It's a bit like Dromoka Command whole in GW aggro decks. Those decks needed a MB answer to Whip of Erebos because no deck can afford instantly fold game 1 against a card that is in 15%+ decks of the meta but no deck can also play a card that is dead against the rest of the meta as well.
I only record Duress being a main deck card once and it was when the meta was basically MBC vs. Psychatog vs. Astral Slide/Mirrari's Wake (control vs. control vs. control).
There's plenty of good options outside of black based midrange/control. Abzan aggro does not even use 4 copies of it...
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
No offense, but to say there is plenty of options outside of black based decks and then mention a black based deck is just...
But either way, I think green is the core colour of this standard season.
Regardless, you still "gain" life if you take a card that would've dealt more than 2 damage to you. Hitting, say, a Stoke means you're "up" two life from it being thrown at your face. Casting it and hitting a creature that would've dealt you more than 2 damage before being answered is likewise a virtual gain. I still board it out against red aggro, but you don't need lifegain to realize a life-based advantage off Thoughtseize.
You can read that as "there's plenty of options outside black based control/midrange AND there are even black decks that don't use 4 copies of it = it's not too strong".
BGU Control
R Aggro
Standard - For Fun
BG Auras
I would like each color to get their own equivalent 1-drop card that improves card quality, though doesn't grant card advantage per se. Not Thoughtseize, but...
Stormbreeze R
Sorcery
Set aside any number of cards in your hand, then draw that many cards plus one. Shuffle the set aside cards into your library. You lose 2 life.
Oldtrees G
Sorcery
Return target card in your graveyard to your hand. You lose 2 life.
Guildfees W
Sorcery
Choose a card type. Target opponent cannot play cards of that type until your next turn. You lose 2 life.
Dreamtease U
Sorcery
Look at the top 7 cards of your library. Put one into your hand and the rest on the bottom of your library. You lose 2 life.
Isn't it kinda funny that black is the only unequivocally morally-aligned colour? It's evil. It's always evil. Every other colour is evil sometimes, and good other times. There is no colour that's always good.
Why black? I mean it seems obvious enough, but then why wasn't white or green made "always good"?