I could only watch like a game and a half, Bant Coco grinds are boring to watch. Doesn't help that the commentators are very... dull, which is weird because I remember SCG having amazing commentators
It was CVM/Boswell unfortunately. Both great players/dudes (I guess), but neither one really has a flair for commentary. There isn't a clear analysis/play caster split like there is with Cedric/Patrick, so you just get two magic players...talking.
Also they missed an illegal Avacyn trigger in Semifinals (Evo Leap sac'ing an Angel token, triggered Avacyn which triggers off non-Avacyn) which happened right after Chris Andersen made one of the most horrific plays I've ever seen on camera*.
* Anderson is stuck on 4 lands, has 2 creatures on board (Duskwatch/Reflector I think). Osyp has an Avacyn and Leap in play, and draws for turn (2 cards in hand). Anderson is rocking a full grip with Negate/Queller and other main phase goodies, electing to pass the turn with 4 mana open.
Osyp drew Oath of Nissa for turn, having a land in hand. Osyp plays Oath. Anderson elects to let Oath of Nissa resolve, fearing a greater threat to Queller/Negate. I think Queller'ing here was correct (Osyp had already played all 3 Tragic Arrogance, what the hell else do you want to Negate, and Queller only answers 4 CMC or less and he can only have 1 card in hand which he didn't play last turn, Dec. Stone for Queller at best), but this is not the huge misplay.
The misplay comes when Osyp reveals the card from Oath; a Linvala. Osyp then goes to attack with Avacyn. Anderson flashes in Spell Queller for no value before blocks. He then fumbles around a bit and doesn't block the Avacyn, taking 4. Osyp now is able to mainphase 2 the Linvala that he showed Anderson and get a "free" 3/3.
Then the rules violation happens, Anderson loses his board to something illegal, and he concedes despite having cast literal 4 Companies that game. He tweeted "Avacyn doesn't flip on Angels. That ones gonna sting for a bit. Oops. Good run & good luck to Osyp in the finals. #SCGBALT #teamcardhoarder" while somehow ignoring the more important part, aka his massive **** up.
There is no real difference between the two so far as how many copies should be played in the deck. Twin was mostly useless outside of comboing as well and people often played 5th copies in Kiki-Jiki. Combo pieces often only work with the other combo piece, that doesn't mean you only play two copies though because then you won't find them when you need them consistently enough. Only playing 2 means you either A You die to pact too often or B your gameplan goes away from winning through giving them Pact and more towards trying to grind them out and once in a while, you'll pull off a combo kill.
This is what I have in mind, really. The combo kill merely adds a new dimension to the deck, rather than being the end all be all.
Have you ever played a similar combo deck? I don't think I ever saw a Splinter Twin List with only 2 copies of twin. When you are going for a combo kill, you maximize your odds of getting both combo pieces. That means playing as many pieces as possible. 2 is not enough. Also, extra copies can be discarded to Tormenting Voice or Collective Brutality.
This combo ain't no Twin though. Twin is composed to two individually usable pieces that go off together immediately. Donate Pact is composed of one playable card that kills you and one otherwise useless card, which can only be used together at a specific window (after the Pact is depleted).
Pure RB pales in comparison to 3c for sure. It doesn't matter whether you play Jund, Grixis, or Mardu; the extra color adds crucial ways to off your own Pact, giving you redundancy beyond merely Donating it to your opponent. Good ways to do this by color include...
White: Angelic Purge, Anguished Unmaking, Bound by Moonsilver, Nahiri
Blue: Disperse, Silumgar's Command
Green: Naturalize (or some variant of it)
Mardu seems like the front runner to me, based mostly on how good Nahiri seems like it would be in this style of shell (exiles your Pact, loots away lands/poor answers/extra Pacts/needless Donates, alt win con/removal). Can't provide a list though, would have to actually brew one up first.
In addition, there's no reason to ever run 4 Harmless Offering; the card only works alongside Pact (there's no other card we want to Donate ever), and is only good when you've depleted the Pact of three uses anyways. 2 copies seems like plenty.
Liliana, the Last Hope... I was really hoping this would be a good planeswalker, but alas it is not.
Her +1 giving -2/-1 is stupid, doesn't kill even half of the creatures in standard which happen to be 2/3, Sylvan Advocate, Reflector Mage, heck it doesn't even kill Tireless Tracker. This ability should've been a -2/-2 at least!
Her -2 is underwhelming AF since she only comes in with 3 loyalty, this would probably mean she will die immediately. Also it only mills 2 cards? Are you freaking serious? Even Corpse Churn mills 3 at Instant speed. This should've been a mill 4, being sorcery speed and costing loyalty counters.
Her -7 ult is the only good thing about her. Which still will never happen given the fact that she comes in with 3 loyalty and they just printed a 2 mana burn spell for 3 that hits both creature and players.
Wizards of the Coast you ruined Liliana, yet you printed Tamiyo, the Field Researcher in Green and White... Which were already overpowered! Thanks for nothing! How about you print good cards in other colors like Red, Blue and Black?
+1 -2/2 would be insanely busted. I've heard this "suggestion" a few times...take this example.
Me: land go
Op: land go
Me: land go
Op: Duskwatch Recruiter go
Me: Lily, +1 kill DR
Op: Tireless Tracker go
Me: Lily +1 kill TT play a guy go
Op: ...
Killing creatures like that with a 3 mana walker will never + loyalty. Imagine if LotV was +1 "Target opp sacs a creature". Same deal.
G1, WR Humans should just dump and make them have Languish. Don't sandbag your Gossipmongers/Thalia's Lieutenants/etc., these cards won't win you the game with no board anyways. Just dump and accept the virtual 50/50.
G2 all you need to do is get them low enough so that they die to Bushwacker + goons or Needle Spires post Languish. You shouldn't slow roll, just keep 1-2 creatures plus Bushwacker if you drew one. If not, just dump and again make them have it.
Or better yet, sideboard in Gideon Ally of Zendikar and play it on T4 after curving out with triple one drop -> Thalia's Lieutenant. Basically unbeatable.
I started playing magic with KTK standard and fell in love with U/B control right away.
Not also did we have better counters with Dissolve and better card draw with Dig through Time, we also had better answers in Hero's Downfall, Bile Blight and especially Perilous Vault which would be very bad right now because of manlands, but was amazing back then.
Important to me is that we also got to choose good threats back then: Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, Pearl Lake Ancient, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.
PLA certainly beeing the weakest and I never loved Ugin, but Ashiok was perfect for me - hard to answer, cheap, taking over the game.
You don't have much of that anymore - Sphinx of the Final Word is way too expensive and I never liked Dragonlord Ojutai all that much. I miss the tools to at least try and build a good control deck that has the best late game over every other deck and doesn't get trumped by ramp or midrange or whathaveyou.
And the scry lands gave the deck consistency. You just had more influence on what you'd draw and could mitigate flood this way.
Perilous Vault would be amazing right now, the card could literally dunk on everything GW Tokens hopes to accomplish.
Also I don't understand why everyone is so happy with Clash of Wills. The card is largely unfunctional on the draw (exactly where your GW opponents want you) and is a nerfed Syncopate in a format with worse tools to play alongside Syncopate type cards anyways. Condescend may be a little much for Standard, but Power Sink variants deserve small upside (as with every creature these days having playable stats + upside).
Even bad Magic is still Magic. I'm not bored with Standard so much as I am disappointed. There's a ton of cool cards/interactions in the format, and none of them really stand a chance against the raw efficiency of CoCo/Gideon/Advocate/Avacyn/D. Command.
As a salty control player, SOI standard has been a miss for me so far (for the record, I hated BFZ/Khans too). CoCo leads to very similar decks, and the format is more color skewed than any format I can remember, with 75% or so of Top 32 decks being white, with green trailing closely behind. Red/Blue are just terrible in this format as well; barring Reflector Mage and Chandra, Flamecaller, there is almost no incentive to play either color competitively.
Building control decks currently is miserable as well. You have to answer top tier threats like Advocate, Duskwatch Recruiter, Nissa, Gideon, Tireless Tracker, etc. all of which either kill you or mass CA (or both in Trackers case) if they don't immediately die. CoCo also dominates control decks; best case scenario is you counter it at your end step, realistically it Lava Axes you, draws them cards off their freeroll green creatures, and then forces a Languish. White Weenie is another issue, as its an extremely fast goldfish deck that embarrasses counter magic and demands you play sweepers (which are so-so against the other top decks). And what's even worse is, if you somehow managed to contain the front end of the format, control currently autofolds to GR Ramp, with its World Breaker/Ulamog loops and mass cast triggers.
I feel like this format would've been a lot more balanced if a few key cards were less overpowered, mainly Sylvan Advocate, Avacyn, Declaration in Stone, and Gideon. Advocate shouldn't outscale several of the few playable answers in the format for free (+2/1 instead of +2/2 on 6 lands would've been correct), Avacyn should've costed 4WW (its criminal at 5 CMC), Declare in Stone should've off'd your own guys if they had the same name, and Gideon should've -1'd for Knight Allies.
It was CVM/Boswell unfortunately. Both great players/dudes (I guess), but neither one really has a flair for commentary. There isn't a clear analysis/play caster split like there is with Cedric/Patrick, so you just get two magic players...talking.
Also they missed an illegal Avacyn trigger in Semifinals (Evo Leap sac'ing an Angel token, triggered Avacyn which triggers off non-Avacyn) which happened right after Chris Andersen made one of the most horrific plays I've ever seen on camera*.
* Anderson is stuck on 4 lands, has 2 creatures on board (Duskwatch/Reflector I think). Osyp has an Avacyn and Leap in play, and draws for turn (2 cards in hand). Anderson is rocking a full grip with Negate/Queller and other main phase goodies, electing to pass the turn with 4 mana open.
Osyp drew Oath of Nissa for turn, having a land in hand. Osyp plays Oath. Anderson elects to let Oath of Nissa resolve, fearing a greater threat to Queller/Negate. I think Queller'ing here was correct (Osyp had already played all 3 Tragic Arrogance, what the hell else do you want to Negate, and Queller only answers 4 CMC or less and he can only have 1 card in hand which he didn't play last turn, Dec. Stone for Queller at best), but this is not the huge misplay.
The misplay comes when Osyp reveals the card from Oath; a Linvala. Osyp then goes to attack with Avacyn. Anderson flashes in Spell Queller for no value before blocks. He then fumbles around a bit and doesn't block the Avacyn, taking 4. Osyp now is able to mainphase 2 the Linvala that he showed Anderson and get a "free" 3/3.
Then the rules violation happens, Anderson loses his board to something illegal, and he concedes despite having cast literal 4 Companies that game. He tweeted "Avacyn doesn't flip on Angels. That ones gonna sting for a bit. Oops. Good run & good luck to Osyp in the finals. #SCGBALT #teamcardhoarder" while somehow ignoring the more important part, aka his massive **** up.
This is what I have in mind, really. The combo kill merely adds a new dimension to the deck, rather than being the end all be all.
This combo ain't no Twin though. Twin is composed to two individually usable pieces that go off together immediately. Donate Pact is composed of one playable card that kills you and one otherwise useless card, which can only be used together at a specific window (after the Pact is depleted).
White: Angelic Purge, Anguished Unmaking, Bound by Moonsilver, Nahiri
Blue: Disperse, Silumgar's Command
Green: Naturalize (or some variant of it)
Mardu seems like the front runner to me, based mostly on how good Nahiri seems like it would be in this style of shell (exiles your Pact, loots away lands/poor answers/extra Pacts/needless Donates, alt win con/removal). Can't provide a list though, would have to actually brew one up first.
In addition, there's no reason to ever run 4 Harmless Offering; the card only works alongside Pact (there's no other card we want to Donate ever), and is only good when you've depleted the Pact of three uses anyways. 2 copies seems like plenty.
+1 -2/2 would be insanely busted. I've heard this "suggestion" a few times...take this example.
Me: land go
Op: land go
Me: land go
Op: Duskwatch Recruiter go
Me: Lily, +1 kill DR
Op: Tireless Tracker go
Me: Lily +1 kill TT play a guy go
Op: ...
Killing creatures like that with a 3 mana walker will never + loyalty. Imagine if LotV was +1 "Target opp sacs a creature". Same deal.
G2 all you need to do is get them low enough so that they die to Bushwacker + goons or Needle Spires post Languish. You shouldn't slow roll, just keep 1-2 creatures plus Bushwacker if you drew one. If not, just dump and again make them have it.
Or better yet, sideboard in Gideon Ally of Zendikar and play it on T4 after curving out with triple one drop -> Thalia's Lieutenant. Basically unbeatable.
Perilous Vault would be amazing right now, the card could literally dunk on everything GW Tokens hopes to accomplish.
Also I don't understand why everyone is so happy with Clash of Wills. The card is largely unfunctional on the draw (exactly where your GW opponents want you) and is a nerfed Syncopate in a format with worse tools to play alongside Syncopate type cards anyways. Condescend may be a little much for Standard, but Power Sink variants deserve small upside (as with every creature these days having playable stats + upside).
Building control decks currently is miserable as well. You have to answer top tier threats like Advocate, Duskwatch Recruiter, Nissa, Gideon, Tireless Tracker, etc. all of which either kill you or mass CA (or both in Trackers case) if they don't immediately die. CoCo also dominates control decks; best case scenario is you counter it at your end step, realistically it Lava Axes you, draws them cards off their freeroll green creatures, and then forces a Languish. White Weenie is another issue, as its an extremely fast goldfish deck that embarrasses counter magic and demands you play sweepers (which are so-so against the other top decks). And what's even worse is, if you somehow managed to contain the front end of the format, control currently autofolds to GR Ramp, with its World Breaker/Ulamog loops and mass cast triggers.
I feel like this format would've been a lot more balanced if a few key cards were less overpowered, mainly Sylvan Advocate, Avacyn, Declaration in Stone, and Gideon. Advocate shouldn't outscale several of the few playable answers in the format for free (+2/1 instead of +2/2 on 6 lands would've been correct), Avacyn should've costed 4WW (its criminal at 5 CMC), Declare in Stone should've off'd your own guys if they had the same name, and Gideon should've -1'd for Knight Allies.