Im not saying that the made up numbers. I am saying that they have focussed on a handful of tournaments that Delver decks happen to have not done well in. It has been observed in this thread that Delver has not done particularly well in the WMCQ events. If WotC had focussed on the SCG Open series (which they never would admit to, but bare with me) they would have to acknowledge that UW delver clearly scores much higher than 51%. While the numbers have been all over the place, when a deck is regularly putting players into the top 8 / top 16, these are players going X-0 or X-1; the deck, in the hands of a good player clearly has a much greater win % than any other deck. And that is the issue - UW Delver rewards good play far more than any other deck in the format. That sounds like a weird point to argue, but what I mean is that if two equally good players pick decks, the one who picks delver has an unfair advantage; the deck is just much stronger against a range of decks.
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Im not saying that the made up numbers. I am saying that they have focussed on a handful of tournaments that Delver decks happen to have not done well in. It has been observed in this thread that Delver has not done particularly well in the WMCQ events. If WotC had focussed on the SCG Open series (which they never would admit to, but bare with me) they would have to acknowledge that UW delver clearly scores much higher than 51%. While the numbers have been all over the place, when a deck is regularly putting players into the top 8 / top 16, these are players going X-0 or X-1; the deck, in the hands of a good player clearly has a much greater win % than any other deck. And that is the issue - UW Delver rewards good play far more than any other deck in the format. That sounds like a weird point to argue, but what I mean is that if two equally good players pick decks, the one who picks delver has an unfair advantage; the deck is just much stronger against a range of decks.
So, no, you don't have any data to disprove WotC's claim? This is just you ranting because you personally think Wizards is wrong, despite having no proof to back up your claim?
LOL at people who said that all people who wanted Delver banned just has entitlement mentality. Some people just want diversity in what they play and what they play against.
But of course, in competitive magic, people would always try to play the best deck. Netdecking or homebrewing is irrelevant as long as its the best.
I think this one of the negative contributions that competitive magic gave us.
The real kick in the nuts is that WotC could give two ****s about everyone's reasonable arguments for bannings because they only look at percentage and tournament attendance. Want something done? Too bad.
I guess if WoTC thinks this way, then there is nothing we can do about it. I am just wondering what will happen if there will come a time when a dominating deck on the level of Delver would be mindless aggro...
I guess the days of diverse Standard metas is over. We will just have to deal with whatever is the most dominant deck from now on.
The complaining will never end since there will always be a dominating deck. If one archetype is dominating, the fans of the others will complain. I can still remember complaints on the WRR deck, then the RG aggro deck and now the Delver deck.
Until WoTC stops deliberately engineering metas to skew to certain archetypes and colors, expect ban calls to always be present.
Player skill involving a deck has nothing to do with the deck being powerful, though. In Legacy I can pick up High Tide or TES and and my opponent can pick the same deck up. Both decks have an equal chance to beat each other but because my opponent is playing the same deck and is better with it than I am gives him the advantage, as it should be.
What are you even arguing about Zenmaj? Delver is not auto pilot. WRR is auto pilot and to be honest is just as powerful. It just has a bad match up vs Delver while because of the card pool we have Delver has virtually no `poor` match up in the same sense that WRR does. Tempo and aggro control are SUPPOSED to beat Ramp and Mid range decks. You can take R/G aggro or Naya Pod and beat Delver in the same percentage if not greater than the deck can beat you. There is no overwhelming advantage with Delver like there was with Caw-blade.
The numbers DO reflect this.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
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Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
Im not saying that the made up numbers. I am saying that they have focussed on a handful of tournaments that Delver decks happen to have not done well in. It has been observed in this thread that Delver has not done particularly well in the WMCQ events. If WotC had focussed on the SCG Open series (which they never would admit to, but bare with me) they would have to acknowledge that UW delver clearly scores much higher than 51%. While the numbers have been all over the place, when a deck is regularly putting players into the top 8 / top 16, these are players going X-0 or X-1; the deck, in the hands of a good player clearly has a much greater win % than any other deck. And that is the issue - UW Delver rewards good play far more than any other deck in the format. That sounds like a weird point to argue, but what I mean is that if two equally good players pick decks, the one who picks delver has an unfair advantage; the deck is just much stronger against a range of decks.
What they said was that it had slightly below 51% against non-delver decks. That is the more statistically significant percentage, because saying Delver won 60% of a given top 8 doesn't mean anything if the field was 60% delver. There is no site that reports those kinds of statistics to my knowledge. It doesn't mean it's the best deck, it means its the most popular deck. Delver is a good, extremely popular deck, arguably the best, but not oppressively so. I don't play it, but I honestly don't mind playing against it. I would prefer not to play against it every game, but I believe the meta will fix itself. If it doesn't, there's draft, sealed, legacy, modern, pauper, chess, checkers, WOW, take up playing an instrument, work on your bowling skills, work on your free point shots, whatever. It's not the end of the world if some of chose to take a break from standard. They're more likely to listen to our absence than our *****ing...though I admit the later can often be more fun.
I knew nothing was going to get banned in standard. I'm personally fine with the decision because we're honestly going to have a new meta when M13 comes out and things will change anyways once Scars rotates out in about 3 months time. Wotc was right in their analyzes and it's true that delver is strong against some decks but very weak against other decks. Also just use the color pie and beat the deck at the weaknesses it has. I mean let's break it down:
Black: Exactly how many kill spells and sacrifice spells can they negate? Sword or no sword black can kill everything this color has. I've seen plenty of delver matchups taken over just because a Liliana resolved and force-sacced a geist or delver.
Red: The creature killing, sword breaking, land blowing up color should be all over delver. Combust hits and will kill everything in the deck outside of geist. Color also has the cheapest field wipes with slagstorm and whipflare.
Green: Anti-control, hexproof, grabbing things out of the sky like a boss color is also a good combat color for delver. It can break swords just as easily as red can, drop much stronger creatures on the ground to block whatever delver throws at them and hates on fliers more than any other color which is exactly what delver is all about. It even has a ton of hexproof granting cards and non-negating cards to shutdown a bunch on blue's tricks. I've won many of games using mono-green just because I dropped autumn's veil to stop that key bounce spell or negate spell.
White: Anyone who's played delver and had to deal with thalia and grand abolisher together knows how annoying it can be. When my ponders and vapor snags cost 2, my mana leaks three, and my swords four, it can be a very bad game for me. Delver can't really outright kill a creature unless they block it so just landing either of those two cards on the field, may have to get through a counter, can be punishing enough to allow you to close out a game very quickly.
Blue: Use their color against them. Start snagging delvers, copying geist, negating swords, and countering mana leaks and all that fun stuff until you drop that huge blue creature they can't stop because none of the swords that they run gives pro blue. Again delver can't outright kill creatures so sticking a Consecrated Sphinx can be backbreaking against them.
I've seen a bunch of these solutions work in real life and it's just more proof that it's possible to beat this deck down. Saw a kid with a scrub deck at my last FNM mainboard Plummet and he killed a lot of things that day. Just reach outside of the box people and maybe you'll come up with those solutions you're look for with the delver.
Just don't fall into the trap of beating delver easily but losing to just about everything else.
Im not saying that the made up numbers. I am saying that they have focussed on a handful of tournaments that Delver decks happen to have not done well in. It has been observed in this thread that Delver has not done particularly well in the WMCQ events. If WotC had focussed on the SCG Open series (which they never would admit to, but bare with me) they would have to acknowledge that UW delver clearly scores much higher than 51%. While the numbers have been all over the place, when a deck is regularly putting players into the top 8 / top 16, these are players going X-0 or X-1; the deck, in the hands of a good player clearly has a much greater win % than any other deck. And that is the issue - UW Delver rewards good play far more than any other deck in the format. That sounds like a weird point to argue, but what I mean is that if two equally good players pick decks, the one who picks delver has an unfair advantage; the deck is just much stronger against a range of decks.
The problem is, and this is part of what I meant by entitlement to the poster who argued with my reasoning, Delver was a self fulfilling prophesy. As soon as the first few pros came out and said "This is the best deck" everybody and their grandmother jumped on the bandwagon and started playing that deck, regardless of how true or not true that statement was.
And has long as you have a "few" people leading the rest of us by the nose, we are ALWAYS going to have this problem. So naturally, if the majority of the player base is playing deck X, then deck X is going to take up a majority if the top spots, and it doesn't have to be necessarily overpowered to do that.
Take Naya Pod, which nobody is *****ing about. Or Zombies, or RG Aggro or Humans.
If we were to artificially populate a tournament with any one of those decks, they would take up the majority of the top spots. There would be no way around it.
And this all comes back to the entitlement mentality. Pro X says Deck X is best so everybody plays Deck X because they want to win or, more specifically, they want to win while putting in the least amount of effort TO win. After all, it's hard to sit down and actually make your OWN deck from scratch. That's too much work. It's much easier to just copy a list.
Well, when you have that option, which the Internet makes amazingly easy today, THIS is what you end up with.
Welcome to modern day Magic. You asked for it...YOU got it.
And now that people have gotten what they've asked for, they suddenly don't like it. Well, at least a minority feels that way. Because if more people really WERE sick of Delver, they would have STOPPED playing, attendance would have fallen, and WotC WOULD have banned something.
So obviously, the people in this thread *****ing about Delver are in the minority and NOT the majority. In a way, that kind of restores my faith, not only in this game, but in humanity itself.
But back to the main point. Yes, Delver gets played a lot. It gets played a lot because that's what people want. They want a BEST deck. They want as little variance, in a variance saturated game, as possible. If all the decks are TRULY equal, then nobody REALLY has an advantage. Don't kid yourselves. The pros don't want that, though they can still figure out the next best deck pretty quickly. But until they do, their win percentages go down if their pet deck is blown out of the water via a ban.
The bigger issue is this. The problem we are seeing won't go away as long as set sizes are small. There are only about 33% playable cards in any one set. That doesn't leave a lot of cards between the 5 colors. In fact, it's about 7% per color. Think I'm wrong? Go count all the different cards in this meta that are actually being played out of 6 expansions and a core set.
The number of played cards would shock the hell out of you.
But that's what we have when we have core sets of 249 cards instead of 350 cards.
If you want this problem to go away, WotC needs to make bigger sets with more playable cards between the colors.
I do agree with what a lot of people here have said, that some of the colors have been treated very poorly. Red and black have been so screwed up of late that it isn't even funny. In fact, it's disgraceful. But again, increase the card pool and this problem goes away. There will be more design space and all the colors will get their fair share of good cards.
Having said that, it might take a whole year to fix red and black. And that's IF WotC makes larger sets, which I don't think they'll ever do again even though it is in their best interests and best for the game.
Why?
Because larger sets means more expense. And now that they have to answer to Hasbro, the word expense is a dirty one. It's not something that they're likely to consider unless they can show Hasbro why it's in their best interest.
Personally, I'm not holding my breath for this to happen, which is why Standard will probably be what it is now for the foreseeable future.
I'm not worried one way or another if Delver is the go to deck through RTR, but blue mages should be aware that it's unlikely you'll get any neat Blue tricks while Snapcaster is around.
Wotc doesn't want to face more ire from its fanbase by making a bunch of cheaply costed cards that SCM can abuse
So, have fun for the next couple months, I suppose.
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"That would work well in my EDH deck"
... If I only had a nickel
Steve, I still stand by my assessment of how I imagine you in my mind. An old man in a rocking chair with silver hair and a beard swatting kids with a cane that has a black lotus attached to the end like "BACK IN MY DAY YOU LOST BEFORE YOU DREW YOUR HAND YOU LITTLE ****S"
Your posts are hilarious though. Don't listen to the haters.
@ Parkway: Lack of decent counter, cantrips, deck manipulation and cheap removal in the next year for Snapcaster Mage? Fair trade to have one of the best creatures ever printed for every other format.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
The problem is, and this is part of what I meant by entitlement to the poster who argued with my reasoning,
I didn't argue with your reasoning of entitlement...or at least didn't mean to. I agree whole heartedly about entitlement being an issue with the current standard. I just took exception to your example of welfare being entitlement. It's more a political statement than anything, where entitlement is a negative word applied primarily to the poor, when it is in fact much more an issue with the haves than the haves not. Welfare and Medicaid are "entitlement" but oil subsidies are "capitalism". Standard being broken is a first world problem, not one that extends to welfare recipients.
Steve, I still stand by my assessment of how I imagine you in my mind. An old man in a rocking chair with silver hair and a beard swatting kids with a cane that has a black lotus attached to the end like "BACK IN MY DAY YOU LOST BEFORE YOU DREW YOUR HAND YOU LITTLE ****S"
Damn straight sonny and don't you ferget it! Back in my day, we ate moxen and spit them over our Timetwisers. Power 9 my ass. That wimp of a card doesn't deserve the title of dog catcher. Time Vault. Now THAT'S a card.
Yeah, things were so much better back when Moses was parting the Red Sea.
But back to the main point. Yes, Delver gets played a lot. It gets played a lot because that's what people want. They want a BEST deck. They want as little variance, in a variance saturated game, as possible. If all the decks are TRULY equal, then nobody REALLY has an advantage. Don't kid yourselves. The pros don't want that, though they can still figure out the next best deck pretty quickly. But until they do, their win percentages go down if their pet deck is blown out of the water via a ban.
I think this may be a slight reply to me. I agree with everything you're saying Steve, I was just pointing out bannings are more beneficial to pros than the general magic player, because they have the time/knowledge/whatever, that makes them able to solve formats more quickly. Creating more instances where a format needs to be solved, creates more opportunities for pros to exploit the advantage they have in doing such a thing to get victories.
I think this may be a slight reply to me. I agree with everything you're saying Steve, I was just pointing out bannings are more beneficial to pros than the general magic player, because they have the time/knowledge/whatever, that makes them able to solve formats more quickly. Creating more instances where a format needs to be solved, creates more opportunities for pros to exploit the advantage they have in doing such a thing to get victories.
This may very well be true. In order to find out, now specifically, a ban would have had to go into place to see how the meta shaped up and what kind of advantage or disadvantage the pros had afterwards. Right now, it's just guess work and a moot point since nothing is going to change until October.
In Magic if there's a deck that's beating everything with no resistance it's probably overpowered. Too bad there is no such deck in any format right now.
Anyone who has tested standard extensively over the past few months knows this is blatantly untrue. There is a reason why no pro will play anything other than Delver if they want to win. Hell I'm sure you know this as well. I'm now stuck playing the same deck I have been since AVR came out, and having no fun doing it because opponents have very little chance of beating me if they're not playing Delver (god I hate mirrors all day) or Zombies. If they are playing Zombies they are probably bad, if playing Delver about half the players are awful because they pick up the deck because it does well at tournaments without testing it or having any discernible skill at the game to start with.
Steve, I still stand by my assessment of how I imagine you in my mind. An old man in a rocking chair with silver hair and a beard swatting kids with a cane that has a black lotus attached to the end like "BACK IN MY DAY YOU LOST BEFORE YOU DREW YOUR HAND YOU LITTLE ****S"
I thought that was my job around here!!
Glad to see no bans, but of course I've never viewed Delver as an issue in the slightest. I don't know if it's just been dumb luck or the places I've played, but I've only seen a couple of Delver decks in the tournaments I've been too over the last 6 months. I see more RG, Zombies, Esper, and Pod decks.
I know sometimes it's because I get paired down (like GPMIN main event), but I've also been in events were I placed in the top 4 and didn't play against a single Delver list. I remember when you couldn't go to an FNM or larger event and have that happen when Affinity, Caw, Jund, or Fae was popular.
Anyone who has tested standard extensively over the past few months knows this is blatantly untrue. There is a reason why no pro will play anything other than Delver if they want to win. Hell I'm sure you know this as well. I'm now stuck playing the same deck I have been since AVR came out, and having no fun doing it because opponents have very little chance of beating me if they're not playing Delver (god I hate mirrors all day) or Zombies. If they are playing Zombies they are probably bad, if playing Delver about half the players are awful because they pick up the deck because it does well at tournaments without testing it or having any discernible skill at the game to start with.
I said with no resistance. Delver decks lose all the time. Caw-blade didn't lose all the time to anything but Caw-blade. Delver doesn't come close to it's power level and dominance. I'm a really good Delver player and I still lose to r/g aggro and esper enough time's for me to believe it's not as dominant as everyone makes it out to be. Then again my preferred LGS isn't full of a bunch of new players.
Delver has a great win/loss ratio % against the majority of the field. Against some decks it's less than 50% while others it's well over. That doesn't make the deck oppressive.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
Glad to see no bans, but of course I've never viewed Delver as an issue in the slightest. I don't know if it's just been dumb luck or the places I've played, but I've only seen a couple of Delver decks in the tournaments I've been too over the last 6 months. I see more RG, Zombies, Esper, and Pod decks.
I know sometimes it's because I get paired down (like GPMIN main event), but I've also been in events were I placed in the top 4 and didn't play against a single Delver list. I remember when you couldn't go to an FNM or larger event and have that happen when Affinity, Caw, Jund, or Fae was popular.
You're lucky. Once I'm out of the first couple of rounds it's a sea of Delver decks and while I can win the mirror (about 70% against it at the moment), it's just terribly uninteresting to play.
I said with no resistance. Delver decks lose all the time. Caw-blade didn't lose all the time to anything but Caw-blade. Delver doesn't come close to it's power level and dominance. I'm a really good Delver player and I still lose to r/g aggro and esper enough time's for me to believe it's not as dominant as everyone makes it out to be. Then again my preferred LGS isn't full of a bunch of new players.
Delver has a great win/loss ratio % against the majority of the field. Against some decks it's less than 50% while others it's well over. That doesn't make the deck oppressive.
I have only lost a couple of times to either of those decks since Resto Angel came out. Also I don't play FNM as much anymore, I'm mostly sticking to MODO dailies and larger tournaments where I'm having a fair amount of success.
Pre-NPH, Cawblade had a really bad matchup with MonoR Midrange. I think at one point I was over 70% in that matchup, even when they could side in a fair bit of hate. Batterskull changed that of course.
If I were to say Delver is oppressive (and I wouldnt, you will remember I was advocating for a snapcaster ban because the card is, to be blunt stupid) my argument would be the way that it warps the format, despite not having amazing win-loss in all matchups; control decks and any midrange deck (zombies, humans) have been pushed out of the format. Restoration Angel and GoST blank red decks entirely. AVR was definitely a case of the "rich getting richer" which is what happened with NPH.
My FNM is probably 80% delver variants (although I would say a good 40% of that is the esper spirits version) which is pretty horrid, especially following UW cawblade last year. I hate seachrome coasts. Im doing very well with a RBg Metalcraft control deck (Jund is for the mage who likes card advantage, but doesnt like blue), but because its an "anti-delver" deck it has some awful, awful other matchups (cannot beat control or WRR). I think that whats going to be effectively 3 years of UW dominating standard, playing exactly the same game and abusing many of the same type of cards, while other colours get powered down is just really annoying.
For full disclosure, the card I hate most in standard is primeval titan, followed closely by snapcaster and geist of st traft. Theyre all format warping and represent efficiency way above their cost.
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Caw-blade didn't lose all the time to anything but Caw-blade.
I beat Cawblade well over 50% of the time with RDW. "Oh, nice Batterskull in your hand from that SFM." *burns Stoneforge* "I guess we'll see that Batterskull on turn 5." "Oh! A fleet of Squadron Hawks!" *Forked Bolt* "Wow, that seemed like value." "Oh, nice Jace, I'll just ignore him and Koth will throw this mountain at your head."
Maybe that is part of the problem now. No good aggressive red deck to keep UW in check as it traditionally has.
I am NOT whining about not being able to beat Delver. My decks (Big Red and RUG ramp) do that very well. My complaint is that I get sick of playing against it repeatedly. It is boring. Am I whining? Yes. I still am holding out hope that something will change because I do like Standard but I won't be playing it until this Delver issue is solved.
Legacy will provide me with a diverse and fun metagame in the mean time. Thank goodness they didn't ban Griselbrand as that format is actually fine, unlike Standard.
My FNM is probably 80% delver variants (although I would say a good 40% of that is the esper spirits version) which is pretty horrid
That's pretty bad, especially if I was playing Delver. I hate mirrors of any type, which is why I usually play rogue-ish decks, and don't win consistently anyway. I actually net-deck rogue decks, (talk about an oxymoron) which probably makes me the scourge of the mtg world. But regardless, if I had to face 80% delver all the time, oppressive or not, I'd want a ban too. Isn't there another game store you could go to?
I beat Cawblade well over 50% of the time with RDW. "Oh, nice Batterskull in your hand from that SFM." *burns Stoneforge* "I guess we'll see that Batterskull on turn 5." "Oh! A fleet of Squadron Hawks!" *Forked Bolt* "Wow, that seemed like value." "Oh, nice Jace, I'll just ignore him and Koth will throw this mountain at your head."
Maybe that is part of the problem now. No good aggressive red deck to keep UW in check as it traditionally has.
Yeah I stated a few pages back that the problem is no efficient RDW deck pooping on the tempo decks consistently every format. Regardless of how good your RDW deck was when Caw-blade was oppressing the format it didn't stop me from beating RDW with Caw-blade near every time. >_>
To be honest I beat it with MBC nearly every time too. RDW sucked last format, dude. LOL
Delver isn't nearly as resilient as Caw-blade. A strong RDW list would help even the format out.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
I beat Cawblade well over 50% of the time with RDW. "Oh, nice Batterskull in your hand from that SFM." *burns Stoneforge* "I guess we'll see that Batterskull on turn 5." "Oh! A fleet of Squadron Hawks!" *Forked Bolt* "Wow, that seemed like value." "Oh, nice Jace, I'll just ignore him and Koth will throw this mountain at your head."
Maybe that is part of the problem now. No good aggressive red deck to keep UW in check as it traditionally has.
I am NOT whining about not being able to beat Delver. My decks (Big Red and RUG ramp) do that very well. My complaint is that I get sick of playing against it repeatedly. It is boring. Am I whining? Yes. I still am holding out hope that something will change because I do like Standard but I won't be playing it until this Delver issue is solved.
Legacy will provide me with a diverse and fun metagame in the mean time. Thank goodness they didn't ban Griselbrand as that format is actually fine, unlike Standard.
I am also super glad that they didn't ban Griselbrand, although I did expect Griselbrand to be banned in Legacy, but not anything in Standard.
To be honest, I hated mirrors of any kind in Standard since I began playing. It seemed too luck based. Now, I am learning to enjoy the mirror more while playing Delver. I think playing the best I can is all I can do and I am happy with that. I do however, have to improve on mulligan decisions.
During Caw Blade, I never had a problem with RDW. I felt around 60/40 at least in this matchup. Boros, RUG, and GW Questvine were more of a problem. Vengevine laughs at Jace. I remember at the time, I wanted an altered Vengevine eating Jace's head.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Want to see me in action? Check out my stream! Currently broadcasting Boros Burn in Standard. Full archive available.
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So, no, you don't have any data to disprove WotC's claim? This is just you ranting because you personally think Wizards is wrong, despite having no proof to back up your claim?
Correct me if I'm wrong
But of course, in competitive magic, people would always try to play the best deck. Netdecking or homebrewing is irrelevant as long as its the best.
I think this one of the negative contributions that competitive magic gave us.
I guess if WoTC thinks this way, then there is nothing we can do about it. I am just wondering what will happen if there will come a time when a dominating deck on the level of Delver would be mindless aggro...
I guess the days of diverse Standard metas is over. We will just have to deal with whatever is the most dominant deck from now on.
The complaining will never end since there will always be a dominating deck. If one archetype is dominating, the fans of the others will complain. I can still remember complaints on the WRR deck, then the RG aggro deck and now the Delver deck.
Until WoTC stops deliberately engineering metas to skew to certain archetypes and colors, expect ban calls to always be present.
- H. L. Mencken
French Duel Commander
WBR Kaalia of the Vast WBR
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer RUG
What are you even arguing about Zenmaj? Delver is not auto pilot. WRR is auto pilot and to be honest is just as powerful. It just has a bad match up vs Delver while because of the card pool we have Delver has virtually no `poor` match up in the same sense that WRR does. Tempo and aggro control are SUPPOSED to beat Ramp and Mid range decks. You can take R/G aggro or Naya Pod and beat Delver in the same percentage if not greater than the deck can beat you. There is no overwhelming advantage with Delver like there was with Caw-blade.
The numbers DO reflect this.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
What they said was that it had slightly below 51% against non-delver decks. That is the more statistically significant percentage, because saying Delver won 60% of a given top 8 doesn't mean anything if the field was 60% delver. There is no site that reports those kinds of statistics to my knowledge. It doesn't mean it's the best deck, it means its the most popular deck. Delver is a good, extremely popular deck, arguably the best, but not oppressively so. I don't play it, but I honestly don't mind playing against it. I would prefer not to play against it every game, but I believe the meta will fix itself. If it doesn't, there's draft, sealed, legacy, modern, pauper, chess, checkers, WOW, take up playing an instrument, work on your bowling skills, work on your free point shots, whatever. It's not the end of the world if some of chose to take a break from standard. They're more likely to listen to our absence than our *****ing...though I admit the later can often be more fun.
Black: Exactly how many kill spells and sacrifice spells can they negate? Sword or no sword black can kill everything this color has. I've seen plenty of delver matchups taken over just because a Liliana resolved and force-sacced a geist or delver.
Red: The creature killing, sword breaking, land blowing up color should be all over delver. Combust hits and will kill everything in the deck outside of geist. Color also has the cheapest field wipes with slagstorm and whipflare.
Green: Anti-control, hexproof, grabbing things out of the sky like a boss color is also a good combat color for delver. It can break swords just as easily as red can, drop much stronger creatures on the ground to block whatever delver throws at them and hates on fliers more than any other color which is exactly what delver is all about. It even has a ton of hexproof granting cards and non-negating cards to shutdown a bunch on blue's tricks. I've won many of games using mono-green just because I dropped autumn's veil to stop that key bounce spell or negate spell.
White: Anyone who's played delver and had to deal with thalia and grand abolisher together knows how annoying it can be. When my ponders and vapor snags cost 2, my mana leaks three, and my swords four, it can be a very bad game for me. Delver can't really outright kill a creature unless they block it so just landing either of those two cards on the field, may have to get through a counter, can be punishing enough to allow you to close out a game very quickly.
Blue: Use their color against them. Start snagging delvers, copying geist, negating swords, and countering mana leaks and all that fun stuff until you drop that huge blue creature they can't stop because none of the swords that they run gives pro blue. Again delver can't outright kill creatures so sticking a Consecrated Sphinx can be backbreaking against them.
I've seen a bunch of these solutions work in real life and it's just more proof that it's possible to beat this deck down. Saw a kid with a scrub deck at my last FNM mainboard Plummet and he killed a lot of things that day. Just reach outside of the box people and maybe you'll come up with those solutions you're look for with the delver.
Just don't fall into the trap of beating delver easily but losing to just about everything else.
The problem is, and this is part of what I meant by entitlement to the poster who argued with my reasoning, Delver was a self fulfilling prophesy. As soon as the first few pros came out and said "This is the best deck" everybody and their grandmother jumped on the bandwagon and started playing that deck, regardless of how true or not true that statement was.
And has long as you have a "few" people leading the rest of us by the nose, we are ALWAYS going to have this problem. So naturally, if the majority of the player base is playing deck X, then deck X is going to take up a majority if the top spots, and it doesn't have to be necessarily overpowered to do that.
Take Naya Pod, which nobody is *****ing about. Or Zombies, or RG Aggro or Humans.
If we were to artificially populate a tournament with any one of those decks, they would take up the majority of the top spots. There would be no way around it.
And this all comes back to the entitlement mentality. Pro X says Deck X is best so everybody plays Deck X because they want to win or, more specifically, they want to win while putting in the least amount of effort TO win. After all, it's hard to sit down and actually make your OWN deck from scratch. That's too much work. It's much easier to just copy a list.
Well, when you have that option, which the Internet makes amazingly easy today, THIS is what you end up with.
Welcome to modern day Magic. You asked for it...YOU got it.
And now that people have gotten what they've asked for, they suddenly don't like it. Well, at least a minority feels that way. Because if more people really WERE sick of Delver, they would have STOPPED playing, attendance would have fallen, and WotC WOULD have banned something.
So obviously, the people in this thread *****ing about Delver are in the minority and NOT the majority. In a way, that kind of restores my faith, not only in this game, but in humanity itself.
But back to the main point. Yes, Delver gets played a lot. It gets played a lot because that's what people want. They want a BEST deck. They want as little variance, in a variance saturated game, as possible. If all the decks are TRULY equal, then nobody REALLY has an advantage. Don't kid yourselves. The pros don't want that, though they can still figure out the next best deck pretty quickly. But until they do, their win percentages go down if their pet deck is blown out of the water via a ban.
The bigger issue is this. The problem we are seeing won't go away as long as set sizes are small. There are only about 33% playable cards in any one set. That doesn't leave a lot of cards between the 5 colors. In fact, it's about 7% per color. Think I'm wrong? Go count all the different cards in this meta that are actually being played out of 6 expansions and a core set.
The number of played cards would shock the hell out of you.
But that's what we have when we have core sets of 249 cards instead of 350 cards.
If you want this problem to go away, WotC needs to make bigger sets with more playable cards between the colors.
I do agree with what a lot of people here have said, that some of the colors have been treated very poorly. Red and black have been so screwed up of late that it isn't even funny. In fact, it's disgraceful. But again, increase the card pool and this problem goes away. There will be more design space and all the colors will get their fair share of good cards.
Having said that, it might take a whole year to fix red and black. And that's IF WotC makes larger sets, which I don't think they'll ever do again even though it is in their best interests and best for the game.
Why?
Because larger sets means more expense. And now that they have to answer to Hasbro, the word expense is a dirty one. It's not something that they're likely to consider unless they can show Hasbro why it's in their best interest.
Personally, I'm not holding my breath for this to happen, which is why Standard will probably be what it is now for the foreseeable future.
Wotc doesn't want to face more ire from its fanbase by making a bunch of cheaply costed cards that SCM can abuse
So, have fun for the next couple months, I suppose.
... If I only had a nickel
Your posts are hilarious though. Don't listen to the haters.
@ Parkway: Lack of decent counter, cantrips, deck manipulation and cheap removal in the next year for Snapcaster Mage? Fair trade to have one of the best creatures ever printed for every other format.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
I didn't argue with your reasoning of entitlement...or at least didn't mean to. I agree whole heartedly about entitlement being an issue with the current standard. I just took exception to your example of welfare being entitlement. It's more a political statement than anything, where entitlement is a negative word applied primarily to the poor, when it is in fact much more an issue with the haves than the haves not. Welfare and Medicaid are "entitlement" but oil subsidies are "capitalism". Standard being broken is a first world problem, not one that extends to welfare recipients.
Damn straight sonny and don't you ferget it! Back in my day, we ate moxen and spit them over our Timetwisers. Power 9 my ass. That wimp of a card doesn't deserve the title of dog catcher. Time Vault. Now THAT'S a card.
Yeah, things were so much better back when Moses was parting the Red Sea.
Where's my cane? Damn whippersnapers.
I think this may be a slight reply to me. I agree with everything you're saying Steve, I was just pointing out bannings are more beneficial to pros than the general magic player, because they have the time/knowledge/whatever, that makes them able to solve formats more quickly. Creating more instances where a format needs to be solved, creates more opportunities for pros to exploit the advantage they have in doing such a thing to get victories.
This may very well be true. In order to find out, now specifically, a ban would have had to go into place to see how the meta shaped up and what kind of advantage or disadvantage the pros had afterwards. Right now, it's just guess work and a moot point since nothing is going to change until October.
Anyone who has tested standard extensively over the past few months knows this is blatantly untrue. There is a reason why no pro will play anything other than Delver if they want to win. Hell I'm sure you know this as well. I'm now stuck playing the same deck I have been since AVR came out, and having no fun doing it because opponents have very little chance of beating me if they're not playing Delver (god I hate mirrors all day) or Zombies. If they are playing Zombies they are probably bad, if playing Delver about half the players are awful because they pick up the deck because it does well at tournaments without testing it or having any discernible skill at the game to start with.
I thought that was my job around here!!
Glad to see no bans, but of course I've never viewed Delver as an issue in the slightest. I don't know if it's just been dumb luck or the places I've played, but I've only seen a couple of Delver decks in the tournaments I've been too over the last 6 months. I see more RG, Zombies, Esper, and Pod decks.
I know sometimes it's because I get paired down (like GPMIN main event), but I've also been in events were I placed in the top 4 and didn't play against a single Delver list. I remember when you couldn't go to an FNM or larger event and have that happen when Affinity, Caw, Jund, or Fae was popular.
I said with no resistance. Delver decks lose all the time. Caw-blade didn't lose all the time to anything but Caw-blade. Delver doesn't come close to it's power level and dominance. I'm a really good Delver player and I still lose to r/g aggro and esper enough time's for me to believe it's not as dominant as everyone makes it out to be. Then again my preferred LGS isn't full of a bunch of new players.
Delver has a great win/loss ratio % against the majority of the field. Against some decks it's less than 50% while others it's well over. That doesn't make the deck oppressive.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
You're lucky. Once I'm out of the first couple of rounds it's a sea of Delver decks and while I can win the mirror (about 70% against it at the moment), it's just terribly uninteresting to play.
I have only lost a couple of times to either of those decks since Resto Angel came out. Also I don't play FNM as much anymore, I'm mostly sticking to MODO dailies and larger tournaments where I'm having a fair amount of success.
If I were to say Delver is oppressive (and I wouldnt, you will remember I was advocating for a snapcaster ban because the card is, to be blunt stupid) my argument would be the way that it warps the format, despite not having amazing win-loss in all matchups; control decks and any midrange deck (zombies, humans) have been pushed out of the format. Restoration Angel and GoST blank red decks entirely. AVR was definitely a case of the "rich getting richer" which is what happened with NPH.
My FNM is probably 80% delver variants (although I would say a good 40% of that is the esper spirits version) which is pretty horrid, especially following UW cawblade last year. I hate seachrome coasts. Im doing very well with a RBg Metalcraft control deck (Jund is for the mage who likes card advantage, but doesnt like blue), but because its an "anti-delver" deck it has some awful, awful other matchups (cannot beat control or WRR). I think that whats going to be effectively 3 years of UW dominating standard, playing exactly the same game and abusing many of the same type of cards, while other colours get powered down is just really annoying.
For full disclosure, the card I hate most in standard is primeval titan, followed closely by snapcaster and geist of st traft. Theyre all format warping and represent efficiency way above their cost.
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I beat Cawblade well over 50% of the time with RDW. "Oh, nice Batterskull in your hand from that SFM." *burns Stoneforge* "I guess we'll see that Batterskull on turn 5." "Oh! A fleet of Squadron Hawks!" *Forked Bolt* "Wow, that seemed like value." "Oh, nice Jace, I'll just ignore him and Koth will throw this mountain at your head."
Maybe that is part of the problem now. No good aggressive red deck to keep UW in check as it traditionally has.
I am NOT whining about not being able to beat Delver. My decks (Big Red and RUG ramp) do that very well. My complaint is that I get sick of playing against it repeatedly. It is boring. Am I whining? Yes. I still am holding out hope that something will change because I do like Standard but I won't be playing it until this Delver issue is solved.
Legacy will provide me with a diverse and fun metagame in the mean time. Thank goodness they didn't ban Griselbrand as that format is actually fine, unlike Standard.
Standard: UWR
Modern: RDW, Twin
Legacy: I am 3 Candelabra of Tawnos from being able to build almost any tier 1 or 1.5 deck. Here are the ones I care about right now:
-Aggro: UWR/RUB/WUB/RUG/UR Delver; Affinity; Burn
-Control: Stoneblade; UWr Miracles; UB Tezzeret
-Combo: Hive Mind; Combo Elves; Omni Tell; T.E.S.
Vintage: Grixis Painter
EDH: Rith, the Awakener
That's pretty bad, especially if I was playing Delver. I hate mirrors of any type, which is why I usually play rogue-ish decks, and don't win consistently anyway. I actually net-deck rogue decks, (talk about an oxymoron) which probably makes me the scourge of the mtg world. But regardless, if I had to face 80% delver all the time, oppressive or not, I'd want a ban too. Isn't there another game store you could go to?
Yeah I stated a few pages back that the problem is no efficient RDW deck pooping on the tempo decks consistently every format. Regardless of how good your RDW deck was when Caw-blade was oppressing the format it didn't stop me from beating RDW with Caw-blade near every time. >_>
To be honest I beat it with MBC nearly every time too. RDW sucked last format, dude. LOL
Delver isn't nearly as resilient as Caw-blade. A strong RDW list would help even the format out.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
I am also super glad that they didn't ban Griselbrand, although I did expect Griselbrand to be banned in Legacy, but not anything in Standard.
To be honest, I hated mirrors of any kind in Standard since I began playing. It seemed too luck based. Now, I am learning to enjoy the mirror more while playing Delver. I think playing the best I can is all I can do and I am happy with that. I do however, have to improve on mulligan decisions.
During Caw Blade, I never had a problem with RDW. I felt around 60/40 at least in this matchup. Boros, RUG, and GW Questvine were more of a problem. Vengevine laughs at Jace. I remember at the time, I wanted an altered Vengevine eating Jace's head.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)1U
Instant
Common
Tap up to three target creatures."
Delver decks - run for the hills! The card that will end your tempo reign has been printed!
Wait...
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
I see what you did there wizards.
I really want Ajani Vengeant sleeves. And foil planeswalkers. Check my trade thread!