Does anyone else share the opinion that the life span of competitive magic decks is way too short? From the way it's going, it looks like a new set will be released every 3 months -- a new set introduces an average of 200+ new cards into the format, which means most decks either go obsolete, or need to be altered beyond recognition. This means that every 3 months, the hard work of testing, theorizing and reporting from thousands of people of each existing deck goes down the toilet. Not only does this make it extremely costly for the player but it makes any sort of deck development entirely irrelevant. Instead of making a 2-300 dollar investment per year, now they must buy 4 or more decks in that span, just to remain reasonably competitive. Also, it's not very motivating to the player that all their hard work and time meant almost nothing.
Unless you're a hardcore fnm or modo player, the work involved isn't very worthwhile. The only important events that happen within the span of a year are regionals, champs, mss's, and ptqs. There's 1 regionals, 1 champs, 2 mss's, and probably only 2-3 tops ptq's you'd attend (ptq's and mss's aren't even necessarily applicable for most players). That's only a handful of events throughout the whole year that, withholding entry and travel fees, you'd have to spend nearly a thousand dollars and a huge investment of time and energy preparing for. Even just catering to the modo and fnm crowd, who's "hardcore" enough to invest that much time and money?
When a new set is released, it usually takes 2-4 weeks before a new, competitive deck arises out of it. Afterwards, it takes a good 4 weeks of testing before it becomes good. After that, it'd probably take you 2-4 weeks to test and refine it to your own playstyle. But oh look, a new set has been released and all of a sudden all of your work and money mean no more because the deck you'd had your eyes on for the past 2-3 months has now been made void, and the cycle begins once more. Good examples of this process are flores teachings and narcobridge in standard. Essentially, the only reason for the creation of either of these decks was for regionals, but in the rush, neither of them were very strong or successful as compared to "older" decks like dralnu, dragonstorm or gruul. What's more, they don't even get the chance to be improved since teachings essentially becomes useless after 10th rotates in (it practically has), and dredge becomes wholly disbanded after ravnica rotates in oh, what do you know, 3 months.
This creates a disgustingly unstable format which others have deemed "healthy" and "diverse". Hardly. Even sticking with a safe deck like dralnu with over half a year's worth of development behind its back will still land you in troubles if you face a sulfur elemental or detritivore. Or the random guy that won on turn 1 with a randomly thrown together ignite the warrens deck. Or you could be the guy that should have top-8'ed with dragonstorm but randomly got scrubbed out by the monoblack guy who so far was going 1-3. You could be the top gruul player who lost and embarrassing game vs. snow white, all because some card in the new set made it playable again. Bringing a deck into a tournament, even if you know your meta, you still have no idea what to expect. This boils the game down to little more than rock paper scissors, something which shouldn't exist in a strategy game. Jank decks spring up like weeds in the current format, and only because they can specifically, randomly beat some top tier deck and not because they're any good. It's not an uncommon sight to see some exciting new deck, be discussed for a week, and then disappear off the face of the earth simply because the meta shifted.
Finally, playing the game is very fun until you realize the lack of longevity of what you're playing. You simply can't pick a deck, then stick with it, own it, love it until it naturally fades away. Decks nowadays are little more than flashes in a rapidly changing meta, almost nonexistent outside of theory. It's simply not financially nor physically feasible to maintain a deck in top condition; there isn't such a thing. Even when you have something like it, the deck either becomes disbanded through rotation, or destroyed by some new deck that will itself suffer the same fate within only a few months time - possibly not even live long enough for its first large tournament. In short its disappointing not to be able to sit down, play the game, and compete without investing an inordinate amount of time and money, all because of an overly-rapid rotation schedule. Something like two sets a year would make decks far more complex, as well as increasing the game's quality and stature.
Already, pressure can be felt from the upcoming rotations, where over a 1000 cards will be made illegal to play, and then an additional 300 or so being dumped into the already large cardpool. You can already experience that sinking feeling where a year's worth of work will be banished forever into the pitch black hole of the standard archives.
Would stories by Alexandre Dumas such as the Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo be as "prestiged" as along the lines of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Oliver Twist? I need this info for a project I'm doing.
I think our meta is really underestimating the power of an instant speed vindicate. Necrotic sliver negates the need for a large amount of specific removal such as disenchant or deathmark in the sideboard, making him extremely versatile mainboard. At worst he swings a few times for the win, at best he simply dumps half your opponent's board into the graveyard within a few turns. I've done some basic testing against some matchups and here's what I found so far:
Dragonstorm
Game 1 is slightly better than 50/50 since you have castigates, persecutes AND martyrs mainboard. You should be able to win even if they go off on turn 4; any later and the game is essentially yours. After board, things get a lot easier with an additional persecute and a full set of augur of skulls which replace necrotic sliver.
Gruul
Also a surprisingly easy matchup. Martyrs, wraths, faith's fetters and skeletal vampire mops this match. It's very hard to lose game 1. Game 2 is slightly better for them, but I wouldn't call it past 50/50.
Dralnu
Dralnu's going to counter most of your early stuff however you should be able to out-mana them quite quickly. The beauty of this deck's design is, once any part of the combo hits the field it just makes it incredibly hard to stop. If they say, let you resolve a necrotic sliver, every single one of your grim harvests are essentially uncounterable. If you resolve a grim harvest, the whole cycle just starts all over again. After board becomes slightly harder, however augur of skulls in place of martyr of sands messes with them quite a lot. Extirpate can be trouble, but you have PFE's, which 3 outnumber their 1.
Solar Flare
This one's quite close; I'd say it's in solar flare's favor game 1. It's not impossible to win, but you'll have to try pretty hard to get there. Game 2 is slightly better with Augur of skulls, and an additional persecute. The most important thing about this match is maintaining tempo.
Mono Red Aggro
Gruul, but easier. One trick they can use is keldon megaliths + sulfur elemental to hit your white guys, but there are ways around it (playing wrath of god or skeletal vampire for one, saccing in response another). There's not much to write home about for this matchup, play it as if it were gruul.
UR Storm
Very, very easy matchup. Everything that applies to DS applies here, except afterboard you have those nifty augurs and extirpates to pretty much blow them out of the game. I had a hard time imagining how to lose while testing this.
Project X
This very much depends on the draw but I'd say it's in their favor game 1. Neither necrotic nor martyr does much game 1, however in g2 you have access to last gasp and extirpate to disrupt their combo, very much improving the matchup.
That's what I have so far. The deck's been surprisingly successful against top tier decks so far and it can only get better. What's more, most of it will survive rotation. While rav rotating will probably bring the end to several top tier decks at the moment, I think you could safely work on this one without having to worry about it becoming obsolete within only a couple months.
Faith's Fetters is enchanting Pariah's Shield now
Danehar puts Faith's Fetters into play from Hand
Danehar's life total is now 37 (+4)
It is now the Combat Phase, Declare Attackers Step
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps Skeletal Vampire
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps Skeletal Vampire
Player's life total is now 1 (-5)
It is now the Postcombat Main Phase
Danehar discards Caves of Koilos <Danehar> End my turn
Player untaps his/her permanents
Player draws a card
Player taps Urza's Tower
Player taps Urza's Mine <Player> to bad thats not an activated ability its static
Player taps Urza's Tower
<Danehar> um
Pariah's Shield is enchanting Stuffy Doll now
<Danehar> of course it's an activated ability
<Player> explain
<Danehar> ....
<Danehar> have you ever seen another equip cardd?
<Danehar> mana: attach to target thing blah blah
<Danehar> that's an activated ability
<Player> and faiths fetters says mana abilityies are allowed
<Danehar> mana abilities are abilities that produce mana
<Danehar> equipping isn't such an ability
<Player> the fact that damage is redirected is static
<Player> mana abilities are abilites that require a mana cost
<Danehar> the fact that you can't equip it to stuffy doll in the first place makes that irrelevant
<Danehar> no dude..mana abilities are abilities that produce mana
<Danehar> like on land
<System> Player Lost
Where do jokes like this get that they know the rules? Did they actually play like this against someone and their opponent thought they were right too? The plague that is casual!
Here's an idea that I saw a while back, back in around the time of the planar chaos release. Essentially, it's a BW deck that uses the sac effects of necrotic sliver and martyr of sands to gain an edge over control and aggro respectively. With grim harvest, a recursive effect occurs which almost resembles buyback except a lot more flexible. The cycling of necrotic sliver can get out of hand fast, and grim harvest is possibly even better with martyr than proclamation of rebirth. The combo is extremely hard to stop because if either grim harvest or the creature is countered or killed, the recursiveness of harvest will balance that out. Effectively what you get a nonstop card advantage machine that either blows something up or gains you 10+ life every time it cycles; i.e. every turn.
Using this idea, a rough decklist would look like this
The only obvious weakness I see in this deck idea is that it can have problems against extirpate. However, very few decks play it mainboard and the decks that play it in the sideboard, this deck can handle with pull from eternity. One other thing I'm worried about is the consistency; if it doesn't get enough land or the pieces required to work, it can fall behind fast and possibly never recover. However these two points hold true for many top tier decks at the moment and I think with a little work, this deck can become very competitive.
There are very, very few things that a deck can do against this without some sort of intentional mainboard hate and a nut draw. Gruul matchup is unwinnable? It's not good, but certainly not worse than dralnu's which last time I checked top 8's everywhere. Like was mentioned before, this deck's success will reflect your playskill. If you simply "vomit on the board", you'll have far less success with this than with dragonstorm or gruul. On the other hand, if you're a master dralnu-like player, your opponent will have an extremely hard time dealing with your plays. Don't pick this deck at the last minute if you're not experienced or if you're not EXTREMELY EXTREMELY good.
I don't think korlash is superior. Korlash is better against aggro, but a lot worse against control. You don't have mystical teachings to tutor for silver bullets or keep your draws consistent, and you don't have remand which has a powerful synergy with persecute along with several uses against control. In short, this version is better against control and Korlash is probably better against aggro. My meta's going to mainly control, combo and dredge so if you know your meta, choose your build.
I mentioned before that sedge sliver was quite good. However, although creatures stick removal gets the job done. For example, the uber sideboard tech of sedge sliver doesn't do much vs. dark confidants or dredge enablers. 4x Last gasp should pretty much be enough for aggro I think, perhaps alongside an additional sudden death or tendrils.
So well all agree that the name is now Koalabear Funtime? Good? Okay time to go change it ;).
In regards to the deck I really think repeals should go. The only matchup they're good against is gruul and even then you'll have a hard time finding time to cast it if you're on the draw. Unlike remands which force your opponent to replay the mana, you end up spending more mana on repeal than your opponent does on the spell; that's no good for tempo. Right now, you're pretty much deciding whether to keep repeals in or up the count of teachings, damnation, persecute, tendrils; all far more powerful spells.
I've played against that deck before; at first you are a bit shocked at how it works sort of like your first game against narcobridge. But then you realize how completely fragile and lacking of power it is, it's not so hard to beat. Counter-heavy decks and aggro beat it quite easily. Other decks can use any form of grave-hate or disruption like extirpate, sudden death or pull from eternity to beat it. It's a lot worse than the other urb decks around. The remainder of the deck is likely remand, clockwork hydra, triskelavus etc.
Main problem would be it'd just be so tremendously weak against aggro. Aggro players will laugh as you play jhoira and suspend chronicler and beat you for 8 per turn without you being able to do anything. I'm sure a decent build could be made, I just can't think of it at the moment.
The guy's weird obsessive underlining and italicizing makes him seem more occult than the random garbage he's spewing out of his tiny brain. Did he just discover the wonders of microsoft word when he was writing this or what? He sure knows a lot about witchcraft for a pastor as well.
Unlike angelfire, this deck is mainly a UB deck with a red splash. You can easily fit a bunch of basics into it which is why so far I haven't found any tremendous effect from blood moon.
I don't know why people keep suggesting molten disaster for pickles. This deck never hits triple red and uh, pyroclasm does the same thing. In retrospect pickles is not such a hard matchup. Just get a shapeshifter in the yard and extirpate it; what else do they have to win after that? Fathom seer beats?
Does anyone else share the opinion that the life span of competitive magic decks is way too short? From the way it's going, it looks like a new set will be released every 3 months -- a new set introduces an average of 200+ new cards into the format, which means most decks either go obsolete, or need to be altered beyond recognition. This means that every 3 months, the hard work of testing, theorizing and reporting from thousands of people of each existing deck goes down the toilet. Not only does this make it extremely costly for the player but it makes any sort of deck development entirely irrelevant. Instead of making a 2-300 dollar investment per year, now they must buy 4 or more decks in that span, just to remain reasonably competitive. Also, it's not very motivating to the player that all their hard work and time meant almost nothing.
Unless you're a hardcore fnm or modo player, the work involved isn't very worthwhile. The only important events that happen within the span of a year are regionals, champs, mss's, and ptqs. There's 1 regionals, 1 champs, 2 mss's, and probably only 2-3 tops ptq's you'd attend (ptq's and mss's aren't even necessarily applicable for most players). That's only a handful of events throughout the whole year that, withholding entry and travel fees, you'd have to spend nearly a thousand dollars and a huge investment of time and energy preparing for. Even just catering to the modo and fnm crowd, who's "hardcore" enough to invest that much time and money?
When a new set is released, it usually takes 2-4 weeks before a new, competitive deck arises out of it. Afterwards, it takes a good 4 weeks of testing before it becomes good. After that, it'd probably take you 2-4 weeks to test and refine it to your own playstyle. But oh look, a new set has been released and all of a sudden all of your work and money mean no more because the deck you'd had your eyes on for the past 2-3 months has now been made void, and the cycle begins once more. Good examples of this process are flores teachings and narcobridge in standard. Essentially, the only reason for the creation of either of these decks was for regionals, but in the rush, neither of them were very strong or successful as compared to "older" decks like dralnu, dragonstorm or gruul. What's more, they don't even get the chance to be improved since teachings essentially becomes useless after 10th rotates in (it practically has), and dredge becomes wholly disbanded after ravnica rotates in oh, what do you know, 3 months.
This creates a disgustingly unstable format which others have deemed "healthy" and "diverse". Hardly. Even sticking with a safe deck like dralnu with over half a year's worth of development behind its back will still land you in troubles if you face a sulfur elemental or detritivore. Or the random guy that won on turn 1 with a randomly thrown together ignite the warrens deck. Or you could be the guy that should have top-8'ed with dragonstorm but randomly got scrubbed out by the monoblack guy who so far was going 1-3. You could be the top gruul player who lost and embarrassing game vs. snow white, all because some card in the new set made it playable again. Bringing a deck into a tournament, even if you know your meta, you still have no idea what to expect. This boils the game down to little more than rock paper scissors, something which shouldn't exist in a strategy game. Jank decks spring up like weeds in the current format, and only because they can specifically, randomly beat some top tier deck and not because they're any good. It's not an uncommon sight to see some exciting new deck, be discussed for a week, and then disappear off the face of the earth simply because the meta shifted.
Finally, playing the game is very fun until you realize the lack of longevity of what you're playing. You simply can't pick a deck, then stick with it, own it, love it until it naturally fades away. Decks nowadays are little more than flashes in a rapidly changing meta, almost nonexistent outside of theory. It's simply not financially nor physically feasible to maintain a deck in top condition; there isn't such a thing. Even when you have something like it, the deck either becomes disbanded through rotation, or destroyed by some new deck that will itself suffer the same fate within only a few months time - possibly not even live long enough for its first large tournament. In short its disappointing not to be able to sit down, play the game, and compete without investing an inordinate amount of time and money, all because of an overly-rapid rotation schedule. Something like two sets a year would make decks far more complex, as well as increasing the game's quality and stature.
Already, pressure can be felt from the upcoming rotations, where over a 1000 cards will be made illegal to play, and then an additional 300 or so being dumped into the already large cardpool. You can already experience that sinking feeling where a year's worth of work will be banished forever into the pitch black hole of the standard archives.
4x Caves of Koilos
4x Flagstones of Trokair
4x Orzhov Basilica
3x Swamp
2x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2x Urza's Factory
1x Plains
4x Martyr of Sands
4x Necrotic Sliver
3x Skeletal Vampire
4x Orzhov Signet
4x Castigate
4x Wrath of God
3x Persecute
3x Phyrexian Arena
3x Skeletal Vampire
4x Augur of Skulls
4x Last Gasp
3x Pull From Eternity
2x Extirpate
1x Persecute
1x Damnation
I think our meta is really underestimating the power of an instant speed vindicate. Necrotic sliver negates the need for a large amount of specific removal such as disenchant or deathmark in the sideboard, making him extremely versatile mainboard. At worst he swings a few times for the win, at best he simply dumps half your opponent's board into the graveyard within a few turns. I've done some basic testing against some matchups and here's what I found so far:
Dragonstorm
Game 1 is slightly better than 50/50 since you have castigates, persecutes AND martyrs mainboard. You should be able to win even if they go off on turn 4; any later and the game is essentially yours. After board, things get a lot easier with an additional persecute and a full set of augur of skulls which replace necrotic sliver.
Gruul
Also a surprisingly easy matchup. Martyrs, wraths, faith's fetters and skeletal vampire mops this match. It's very hard to lose game 1. Game 2 is slightly better for them, but I wouldn't call it past 50/50.
Dralnu
Dralnu's going to counter most of your early stuff however you should be able to out-mana them quite quickly. The beauty of this deck's design is, once any part of the combo hits the field it just makes it incredibly hard to stop. If they say, let you resolve a necrotic sliver, every single one of your grim harvests are essentially uncounterable. If you resolve a grim harvest, the whole cycle just starts all over again. After board becomes slightly harder, however augur of skulls in place of martyr of sands messes with them quite a lot. Extirpate can be trouble, but you have PFE's, which 3 outnumber their 1.
Solar Flare
This one's quite close; I'd say it's in solar flare's favor game 1. It's not impossible to win, but you'll have to try pretty hard to get there. Game 2 is slightly better with Augur of skulls, and an additional persecute. The most important thing about this match is maintaining tempo.
Mono Red Aggro
Gruul, but easier. One trick they can use is keldon megaliths + sulfur elemental to hit your white guys, but there are ways around it (playing wrath of god or skeletal vampire for one, saccing in response another). There's not much to write home about for this matchup, play it as if it were gruul.
UR Storm
Very, very easy matchup. Everything that applies to DS applies here, except afterboard you have those nifty augurs and extirpates to pretty much blow them out of the game. I had a hard time imagining how to lose while testing this.
Project X
This very much depends on the draw but I'd say it's in their favor game 1. Neither necrotic nor martyr does much game 1, however in g2 you have access to last gasp and extirpate to disrupt their combo, very much improving the matchup.
That's what I have so far. The deck's been surprisingly successful against top tier decks so far and it can only get better. What's more, most of it will survive rotation. While rav rotating will probably bring the end to several top tier decks at the moment, I think you could safely work on this one without having to worry about it becoming obsolete within only a couple months.
Faith's Fetters is enchanting Pariah's Shield now
Danehar puts Faith's Fetters into play from Hand
Danehar's life total is now 37 (+4)
It is now the Combat Phase, Declare Attackers Step
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps Skeletal Vampire
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps bat
Danehar taps Skeletal Vampire
Player's life total is now 1 (-5)
It is now the Postcombat Main Phase
Danehar discards Caves of Koilos
<Danehar> End my turn
Player untaps his/her permanents
Player draws a card
Player taps Urza's Tower
Player taps Urza's Mine
<Player> to bad thats not an activated ability its static
Player taps Urza's Tower
<Danehar> um
Pariah's Shield is enchanting Stuffy Doll now
<Danehar> of course it's an activated ability
<Player> explain
<Danehar> ....
<Danehar> have you ever seen another equip cardd?
<Danehar> mana: attach to target thing blah blah
<Danehar> that's an activated ability
<Player> and faiths fetters says mana abilityies are allowed
<Danehar> mana abilities are abilities that produce mana
<Danehar> equipping isn't such an ability
<Player> the fact that damage is redirected is static
<Player> mana abilities are abilites that require a mana cost
<Danehar> the fact that you can't equip it to stuffy doll in the first place makes that irrelevant
<Danehar> no dude..mana abilities are abilities that produce mana
<Danehar> like on land
<System> Player Lost
Where do jokes like this get that they know the rules? Did they actually play like this against someone and their opponent thought they were right too? The plague that is casual!
Using this idea, a rough decklist would look like this
4x Grim Harvest
4x Wrath of God
4x Necrotic Sliver
4x Martyr of Sands
3x Faith's Fetters
4x Castigate
3x Persecute
4x Orzhov Signet
3x Phyrexian Arena
3x Skeletal Vampire
The only obvious weakness I see in this deck idea is that it can have problems against extirpate. However, very few decks play it mainboard and the decks that play it in the sideboard, this deck can handle with pull from eternity. One other thing I'm worried about is the consistency; if it doesn't get enough land or the pieces required to work, it can fall behind fast and possibly never recover. However these two points hold true for many top tier decks at the moment and I think with a little work, this deck can become very competitive.
I don't think korlash is superior. Korlash is better against aggro, but a lot worse against control. You don't have mystical teachings to tutor for silver bullets or keep your draws consistent, and you don't have remand which has a powerful synergy with persecute along with several uses against control. In short, this version is better against control and Korlash is probably better against aggro. My meta's going to mainly control, combo and dredge so if you know your meta, choose your build.
Btw, I proposed a non-reanimating more control-based solar flare in October 2006 and people laughed at me. Now who's laughing?
In regards to the deck I really think repeals should go. The only matchup they're good against is gruul and even then you'll have a hard time finding time to cast it if you're on the draw. Unlike remands which force your opponent to replay the mana, you end up spending more mana on repeal than your opponent does on the spell; that's no good for tempo. Right now, you're pretty much deciding whether to keep repeals in or up the count of teachings, damnation, persecute, tendrils; all far more powerful spells.
I don't know why people keep suggesting molten disaster for pickles. This deck never hits triple red and uh, pyroclasm does the same thing. In retrospect pickles is not such a hard matchup. Just get a shapeshifter in the yard and extirpate it; what else do they have to win after that? Fathom seer beats?