Very interesting that there were so many aggro lists making it to Top16.
You'd think that with the popularity of caryatid and courser, 2-mana removal and nyx-fleece ram... that aggro would have a hard time of it.
Then again I've been running a Naya planeswalkerish build for about 3 weeks now; and the only decks I've consistently lost to are aggro decks and that's with 4x caryatid, 4x courser, 3+1 mizzium mortar and 0+2 last breaths.
So much complaining jfc just admit you're bad at the game and stop blaming everything but yourselves. And planar cleansing is amazing, and it is just complete lack of experience to say it is a strictly worse supreme verdict. Planar Cleansing hits everything but lands, tonight I hit two underworld connections, a lifebane zombie AND a desecration demon with the one planar cleansing, I'll give you one guess who won that game. While I certainly haven't mastered the Jim Davis control deck, I assure you it is a viable strategy, as is obvious from making it to the semi-finals. This is the best a pure u/w control deck has done in a month.
Haven't seen this many aggro decks played successfully since Dallas, I wonder why they performed so well. And no one mentions the brand new G/B aggro deck? Experiment One into Tusker into Dreg Mangler swinging for 9 Turn 3? Aggressively costed and resilient threats with plenty of bestow creatures to capitalize on excess mana. Would like to see more of this. 3 Golgari Charm and 3 Abrupt Decay mainboard must give classic u/w/x control decks headaches. Best of all it is extremely affordable.
And it might seem silly but it's nice to see a girl play magic successfully, playing my go to deck nonetheless.
11 distinct archetypes in the top 16
1. Mono Red Aggro
2.Mono Blue Devotion
3.Mono Black Aggro
4.U/W Control
5.G/R/x Monsters
6.W/G Aggro
7.R/W Burn
8.G/B Aggro
9.Mono Black Devotion
10.R/x Devotion
11. Junk Midrange
How can you even complain about the current metagame with so many unique and viable strategies? WTF do you people want?
So, Mono-U devotion and UW control... 80 minutes into the match, while Mono-Red aggro takes down Mono-Black aggro in under 15 minutes...
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Be a lemming hunter. Don't be a lemming. Really, all you had to do was explain to him the popularity metric, not give him the lemming hunter manifesto...
oh.. I missed that black devotion in the top 16. still its on the way down still.
Yay mono blue returns to the top!!.. still doesn't feel like it is worth the money for the nightveil spectors at this point, if I need them I'll borrow them from someone... just hoping for any UU1 flyier so I can play the deck next standard. :S.
"Boring" here is a pretty subjective word. Yes, a season dominated by Black Midrange and Azorius Control decks (two seasons, really) might make for slow, ponderous Magic, but who cares? The people playing those games are involved in intense, high skilled matches with a lot of critical decision making. THe rest of the format has slowly but steadily widened as Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx came to leave their own mark on it, and now as it enters its final stages we can see that while a few of the formats best decks from PT Theros are still at large (Black Devotion, Azorius Control, Gruul Monsters and Blue Devotion effectively surviving the entire RTR/THeros Standard), a whole slew of other options have cropped up which means the best deck from week to week will likely rotate consistently. So while the new metagame is relatively established, in the fashion if Extended before it and Modern now, the best deck every week will be the one with the largest edge over the expected competition with each week's shift in deck popularity.
What this all means is that Standard has finally hit the Goldilocks Zone. There are multiple successful archetypes that define the format and a host of secondary archetypes that can prey on the expected metagame in any given week as people tweek their decks in one direction while opening holes in another. Why did so many aggro decks do well this week? That's an interesting question, and anyone whose answer to it is, "Standard is boring and never changes and no fun," is likely making excuses for their own lack of ability to predict the metagame shift from week to week.
No one should be so delusional as to expect the best strategies (not decks, but archetypal linchpins) to somehow be wiped off the map by the release of a single set. Thoughtseize into Pack Rat is such a powerful sequence of plays that it can make up the backbone of a variety of fundamentally different Black Decks. The comboination of Sphinx' Revelation, Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere allows a corer Azorius control shell to survive against all odds (though this week proves that some decks preparing for the slogging midrange and control matches opens them up to the numerous aggro decks). These are immutable facts of the current Standard. Saying the format is boring because good decks tend to stay good in the hands of competent players is asinine, a rebuttal made with only discontent as its qualifier, and thus symbolizes exactly the kind of arguments that wannabe-pro players tend to make.
Much like Innistrad/RTR before it, the format's end game is wide open and healthy, which is what people were clamouring for all along. Nonetheless, there will always be forum goers who can't be satisfied, because their sense of expectation is so deep that nothing will ever fill it, even an excellent Standard format.
How can you even complain about the current metagame with so many unique and viable strategies? WTF do you people want?
Who is this even addressed at?
I have no clue who he is addressing in this thread but there have been a few in other threads that have been complaining about the current Standard. Its nice to see a variety of different decks in the top 16.
How can you even complain about the current metagame with so many unique and viable strategies? WTF do you people want?
Interesting, synergistic strategies that go beyond the humdrum "Play a Threat / Play an Answer" format that we have presently. There's a difference between viable archetypes and viable strategies. At present, there are only 3 viable strategies amongst the 11 archetypes you listed. Looking ahead to the rotation in October, I can only cross my fingers and hope that M15 and Warlords offer a significant amount of cards that will bring variety to the Theros Block Constructed decks. Otherwise, I hope you really like Courser, Caryatid and Elspeth.
I'll admit that I've grown to tolerate standard more over the last several weeks, but it's hardly the poster boy for a healthy, diverse format.
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Currently playing:
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
part of me feels bad for harry because he had that game in the bag, but at the same time he took sooo much longer on his turns then frank did, so it really was his fault
Oooooooorrrrr, people can just play something else besides durdle Revelation decks.
By the way, if Harry manages to win game 1, does that count as him winning the match?
Urgh, and the UW control list topdecks its way to victory. I'm done, I'm going to bed. This is the worst Standard season I've ever had the misfortune of playing through (I thankfully missed the Cawblade era).
basic mono-red aggro deck, but tops the curve wit Chandra's Phoenix, Boros Reckoner, and Fanatic of Mogis. Also ran BTE and 2 copies of Searing Blood main. Hammer of Purphorous out of the SB.
Sounds like the RDW I used to play lol. Too bad so many people at my LGS are tryhards and almost all play expensive decks. But on the bright side, my R/W Burn has pretty good matchups in this meta.
Jim Davis made top 8 with UW control WITHOUT Dsphere. VERY interesting to see if it picks up and we have 2 different versions of UW running around now. He wrote an article on the 5th at SCG free side about it.
As a R/W Burn player, Planar Cleaning is not that great. First of all, I can kill a U/W Control deck by turn 6. And second of all, Planar Cleaning is just a strictly worse version of Supreme Verdict. I mean, what other non-land permanents does a R/W Burn deck have besides the few creatures it runs?
Hmmm 4 complaints about competitive decks and the guy trashing planar cleansing, apparently I wasn't just imagining things and can read unlike the people replying to my post. Like seriously what do you guys want from standard? It's just an endless complaints about literally every aspect of every deck. Ehhhh aggro decks you just turn creatures sideways. Ehhhhh revelation durdle. Ehhhh thoughtseize into pack rat. Ehhhh caryatid into courser. What on god's earth do you want from this game. There were 11 different archetypes in the top 16 and yeah that boils down to 3 different core strategies like every standard open in the past several years. We have aggro, control, and midrange and their hybrids, like seriously wtf do people want? Play a competitive deck if you want to win. If all you do is complain about the metgame you either A. don't play a competitive deck or B. aren't very good at the game. It's not the metagame's fault you can't win, it can only ever be your fault. If the metagame is so predictable, why are you unable to capitalize on it?
Hmmm 4 complaints about competitive decks and the guy trashing planar cleansing, apparently I wasn't just imagining things and can read unlike the people replying to my post. Like seriously what do you guys want from standard? It's just an endless complaints about literally every aspect of every deck. Ehhhh aggro decks you just turn creatures sideways. Ehhhhh revelation durdle. Ehhhh thoughtseize into pack rat. Ehhhh caryatid into courser. What on god's earth do you want from this game. There were 11 different archetypes in the top 16 and yeah that boils down to 3 different core strategies like every standard open in the past several years. We have aggro, control, and midrange and their hybrids, like seriously wtf do people want? Play a competitive deck if you want to win. If all you do is complain about the metgame you either A. don't play a competitive deck or B. aren't very good at the game. It's not the metagame's fault you can't win, it can only ever be your fault. If the metagame is so predictable, why are you unable to capitalize on it?
Or, you can stop being such a immature kid. People have the right to critique Standard if they so choose. If you don't like it, then that's your problem.
Hmmm 4 complaints about competitive decks and the guy trashing planar cleansing, apparently I wasn't just imagining things and can read unlike the people replying to my post. Like seriously what do you guys want from standard? It's just an endless complaints about literally every aspect of every deck. Ehhhh aggro decks you just turn creatures sideways. Ehhhhh revelation durdle. Ehhhh thoughtseize into pack rat. Ehhhh caryatid into courser. What on god's earth do you want from this game. There were 11 different archetypes in the top 16 and yeah that boils down to 3 different core strategies like every standard open in the past several years. We have aggro, control, and midrange and their hybrids, like seriously wtf do people want? Play a competitive deck if you want to win. If all you do is complain about the metgame you either A. don't play a competitive deck or B. aren't very good at the game. It's not the metagame's fault you can't win, it can only ever be your fault. If the metagame is so predictable, why are you unable to capitalize on it?
Or, you can stop being such a immature kid. People have the right to critique Standard if they so choose. If you don't like it, then that's your problem.
I personally think people have a right to critique standard (obviously be nice and respectful about it no matter your opinion). And similarly, people have a right to say "I think the people critiquing standard should pick a competitive deck instead of complaining about the lack of a specific archetype in the metagame". Don't call people bad magic players, or ignorant or whatever.
Now... there's been a lot of borderline flaming posts, and things seem to start getting heated. I've already given out two cards for earlier posts. I'm usually more lenient than other mods about what I give to a warning for, but after this post and until things cool down in this thread I'm going to be a lot less lenient about what I give a card for.
You guys can still discuss the topic. But again, just be respectful about it.
Nice to see that U/W control can be piloted without Detention Sphere. While, I would argue that not everyone has jumped from the Mono B devotion to now B/G devotion for Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm it's nice to know that Jim Davis proved his theory correct.
I strongly expect Adrian Sullivan to be back on the U/W control train again and maybe try to modify the deck. He thought that maybe going U/W/R was the way, but honestly the mana is just much more consistent in U/W than U/W/R.
Now as for Mono U winning the tournament. Welcome back, Thassa, God of the Sea and Master of Waves! I now I am not at Sam Black's level of Mono U and while it did alright results in my LGS by putting me in the 5th-8th the times I would play it. I sucked at the Open in SCGDetroit with a lot of misplays, but I hope it continues to put success. I too don't know whether I should get the Nightveil Specter since I can also borrow them as well.
Mono black and control don't win every open series weekend. That means the meta is healthy.
I was really hating it when those 2 decks were dominating. Now the mana base from the full set of scrylands has stabilized things have settled down a bit.
I love that revelation decks get punished with draws. If people want to play control they need to win, not not lose.
It was the type of weekend where many went in expecting green based midrange decks to be good and got beat up by aggro. Black aggro, red aggro and blue aggro all over the top 8. The blue deck was good because it could shift gears with a sideboard full of counters otherwise UW control might have done it. That long semi was the real final and a great match of magic, one for the ages.
It is good that the metagame shifts around but on the flip side it means you need more cards to build more decks so you can change your strategy when you need to.
What happened to Eidolon of Blossoms? Current flavor of the month. I have no love for the card. Just too slow and too weak. Hall of Triumph is a better card and proved its worth. Can't kill the wave tokens by taking out Master of Waves?? NOOOOOO!!!!!
Mono black and control don't win every open series weekend. That means the meta is healthy.
I was really hating it when those 2 decks were dominating. Now the mana base from the full set of scrylands has stabilized things have settled down a bit.
I love that revelation decks get punished with draws. If people want to play control they need to win, not not lose.
It was the type of weekend where many went in expecting green based midrange decks to be good and got beat up by aggro. Black aggro, red aggro and blue aggro all over the top 8. The blue deck was good because it could shift gears with a sideboard full of counters otherwise UW control might have done it. That long semi was the real final and a great match of magic, one for the ages.
It is good that the metagame shifts around but on the flip side it means you need more cards to build more decks so you can change your strategy when you need to.
What happened to Eidolon of Blossoms? Current flavor of the month. I have no love for the card. Just too slow and too weak. Hall of Triumph is a better card and proved its worth. Can't kill the wave tokens by taking out Master of Waves?? NOOOOOO!!!!!
I think people (myself included) are still trying to work out the right build for Eidolon. I do think it will be a very real card in the coming months. (just my opinion!)
I started paying attention to standard again during the Cawblade era. I believe since that time, the only period of time where a deck was just crazy dominant was when Delver got popular. And it's been like 2 years since then and we haven't had a deck represent more than 40$ of the field in that time. I don't know if it's Wotc has gotten much better at balancing sets or if the popularity of SCGs and GPs and other pro level tournaments and the access that regular magic players have to results and decklists now. I'm thinking it's a combination of the 2. Because I think we're seeing people react quicker to changing metagames. Banishing Light came out, and it seemed like next week B/g devotion was a deck with Golgari Charm and Abrupt Decay to kill off Banishing Light and Detention Sphere.
Yeah mono blue devotion was a pretty big surprise as it seemed to have disappeared for a month. I can tell you first hand eidolon of blossoms is a very high variance card. Sometimes it is very explosive, other times it literally does nothing. It's too hard to make an enchantress deck that is powerful AND has a high enough enchantment density. Mana bloom is a nice fix but too often is just a dead card in your hand. Eidolon really isn't there yet and might never get there. Yeah BBD did amazing things with enchantress but im willing to bet he could go x-3 with almost any deck he played.
And I've always wondered how competitive U/W/x control decks are really. I think it is extremely common for them to enter the draw bracket and then they go god knows how many rounds of control mirrors and it boils down to who sided for the mirror better and has better mirror experience. Just seems at the least this phenomenon distorts results.
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You'd think that with the popularity of caryatid and courser, 2-mana removal and nyx-fleece ram... that aggro would have a hard time of it.
Then again I've been running a Naya planeswalkerish build for about 3 weeks now; and the only decks I've consistently lost to are aggro decks and that's with 4x caryatid, 4x courser, 3+1 mizzium mortar and 0+2 last breaths.
Haven't seen this many aggro decks played successfully since Dallas, I wonder why they performed so well. And no one mentions the brand new G/B aggro deck? Experiment One into Tusker into Dreg Mangler swinging for 9 Turn 3? Aggressively costed and resilient threats with plenty of bestow creatures to capitalize on excess mana. Would like to see more of this. 3 Golgari Charm and 3 Abrupt Decay mainboard must give classic u/w/x control decks headaches. Best of all it is extremely affordable.
And it might seem silly but it's nice to see a girl play magic successfully, playing my go to deck nonetheless.
11 distinct archetypes in the top 16
1. Mono Red Aggro
2.Mono Blue Devotion
3.Mono Black Aggro
4.U/W Control
5.G/R/x Monsters
6.W/G Aggro
7.R/W Burn
8.G/B Aggro
9.Mono Black Devotion
10.R/x Devotion
11. Junk Midrange
How can you even complain about the current metagame with so many unique and viable strategies? WTF do you people want?
Flaming
-DarkRitual
Be a lemming hunter. Don't be a lemming.
Really, all you had to do was explain to him the popularity metric, not give him the lemming hunter manifesto...
Originally posted by MemoryLapse and DotMatrix
Yay mono blue returns to the top!!.. still doesn't feel like it is worth the money for the nightveil spectors at this point, if I need them I'll borrow them from someone... just hoping for any UU1 flyier so I can play the deck next standard. :S.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
What this all means is that Standard has finally hit the Goldilocks Zone. There are multiple successful archetypes that define the format and a host of secondary archetypes that can prey on the expected metagame in any given week as people tweek their decks in one direction while opening holes in another. Why did so many aggro decks do well this week? That's an interesting question, and anyone whose answer to it is, "Standard is boring and never changes and no fun," is likely making excuses for their own lack of ability to predict the metagame shift from week to week.
No one should be so delusional as to expect the best strategies (not decks, but archetypal linchpins) to somehow be wiped off the map by the release of a single set. Thoughtseize into Pack Rat is such a powerful sequence of plays that it can make up the backbone of a variety of fundamentally different Black Decks. The comboination of Sphinx' Revelation, Supreme Verdict and Detention Sphere allows a corer Azorius control shell to survive against all odds (though this week proves that some decks preparing for the slogging midrange and control matches opens them up to the numerous aggro decks). These are immutable facts of the current Standard. Saying the format is boring because good decks tend to stay good in the hands of competent players is asinine, a rebuttal made with only discontent as its qualifier, and thus symbolizes exactly the kind of arguments that wannabe-pro players tend to make.
Much like Innistrad/RTR before it, the format's end game is wide open and healthy, which is what people were clamouring for all along. Nonetheless, there will always be forum goers who can't be satisfied, because their sense of expectation is so deep that nothing will ever fill it, even an excellent Standard format.
I have no clue who he is addressing in this thread but there have been a few in other threads that have been complaining about the current Standard. Its nice to see a variety of different decks in the top 16.
That semi was epic. Can't believe I watched it all lol
Interesting, synergistic strategies that go beyond the humdrum "Play a Threat / Play an Answer" format that we have presently. There's a difference between viable archetypes and viable strategies. At present, there are only 3 viable strategies amongst the 11 archetypes you listed. Looking ahead to the rotation in October, I can only cross my fingers and hope that M15 and Warlords offer a significant amount of cards that will bring variety to the Theros Block Constructed decks. Otherwise, I hope you really like Courser, Caryatid and Elspeth.
I'll admit that I've grown to tolerate standard more over the last several weeks, but it's hardly the poster boy for a healthy, diverse format.
Standard: I, for one, welcome our new rhinoceros overlords
Modern: Pod's dead, Bob's back.
Legacy: Lands, Deathblade, Death and Taxes, Elves, MUD
Retired Legacy: Merfolk, Goblins, Jund, Delver, Reanimator
Hmmm 4 complaints about competitive decks and the guy trashing planar cleansing, apparently I wasn't just imagining things and can read unlike the people replying to my post. Like seriously what do you guys want from standard? It's just an endless complaints about literally every aspect of every deck. Ehhhh aggro decks you just turn creatures sideways. Ehhhhh revelation durdle. Ehhhh thoughtseize into pack rat. Ehhhh caryatid into courser. What on god's earth do you want from this game. There were 11 different archetypes in the top 16 and yeah that boils down to 3 different core strategies like every standard open in the past several years. We have aggro, control, and midrange and their hybrids, like seriously wtf do people want? Play a competitive deck if you want to win. If all you do is complain about the metgame you either A. don't play a competitive deck or B. aren't very good at the game. It's not the metagame's fault you can't win, it can only ever be your fault. If the metagame is so predictable, why are you unable to capitalize on it?
Or, you can stop being such a immature kid. People have the right to critique Standard if they so choose. If you don't like it, then that's your problem.
I personally think people have a right to critique standard (obviously be nice and respectful about it no matter your opinion). And similarly, people have a right to say "I think the people critiquing standard should pick a competitive deck instead of complaining about the lack of a specific archetype in the metagame". Don't call people bad magic players, or ignorant or whatever.
Now... there's been a lot of borderline flaming posts, and things seem to start getting heated. I've already given out two cards for earlier posts. I'm usually more lenient than other mods about what I give to a warning for, but after this post and until things cool down in this thread I'm going to be a lot less lenient about what I give a card for.
You guys can still discuss the topic. But again, just be respectful about it.
I strongly expect Adrian Sullivan to be back on the U/W control train again and maybe try to modify the deck. He thought that maybe going U/W/R was the way, but honestly the mana is just much more consistent in U/W than U/W/R.
Now as for Mono U winning the tournament. Welcome back, Thassa, God of the Sea and Master of Waves! I now I am not at Sam Black's level of Mono U and while it did alright results in my LGS by putting me in the 5th-8th the times I would play it. I sucked at the Open in SCGDetroit with a lot of misplays, but I hope it continues to put success. I too don't know whether I should get the Nightveil Specter since I can also borrow them as well.
I was really hating it when those 2 decks were dominating. Now the mana base from the full set of scrylands has stabilized things have settled down a bit.
I love that revelation decks get punished with draws. If people want to play control they need to win, not not lose.
It was the type of weekend where many went in expecting green based midrange decks to be good and got beat up by aggro. Black aggro, red aggro and blue aggro all over the top 8. The blue deck was good because it could shift gears with a sideboard full of counters otherwise UW control might have done it. That long semi was the real final and a great match of magic, one for the ages.
It is good that the metagame shifts around but on the flip side it means you need more cards to build more decks so you can change your strategy when you need to.
What happened to Eidolon of Blossoms? Current flavor of the month. I have no love for the card. Just too slow and too weak. Hall of Triumph is a better card and proved its worth. Can't kill the wave tokens by taking out Master of Waves?? NOOOOOO!!!!!
I think people (myself included) are still trying to work out the right build for Eidolon. I do think it will be a very real card in the coming months. (just my opinion!)
In development (Post rotation):
RUGWalkersRUG
And I've always wondered how competitive U/W/x control decks are really. I think it is extremely common for them to enter the draw bracket and then they go god knows how many rounds of control mirrors and it boils down to who sided for the mirror better and has better mirror experience. Just seems at the least this phenomenon distorts results.