Really depends on the control. Oppressive tier 0 control like Caw Blade. Nope dont miss it at all. Combo Control like Twin that makes people have to play their decks different or change your play style, nope dont miss it. Control that drags out rounds for everyone in an event? Nope dont miss it. But decks like Eternal ruse or Bant control I have no issue with. Grixis is fine in Modern. As long as the format is not 'you have to play control to be competitive', I am fine with it.
I like all kinds of decks. So I think people should be able to play what they wish and still be able to be competitive. I dont think any one type of deck should be heads and shoulders above all the rest.
I enjoy playing against people who actually know how to play control and not people who take forever to play it because they don't know how to play it.
as a control player myself, control mirrors can be fun. although I understand why people hate playing against it
I miss the days when people could play with whatever they wanted to without the player base whining and complaining that having their cards countered is "cancerous" or unfun.
I miss control because of the time period of magic it represents for me. When everybody didn't send wizards mad tweets and found ways to beat decks they didn't like outside of "ban it" "needs to be banned " "ruins my fun".
Old school control was "unfun" because you lost on turn 6 but they didn't actually kill you until turn 50. Also, if we're talking pre-Mirrodin, you simply didn't beat control in that era of MTG. If you weren't playing a Counterspell-based control deck, you were either playing a completely broken combo deck that was destined for banning or your plan against control was, "hope that they forgot your deck exists." If they made any effort towards beating what you were playing, you were getting rolled.
I don't miss playing against control, and I think that it's been an unfortunate amount of excessive hyperbole for people to claim that control decks don't exist I played against control at States yesterday (two variants, UW and Jeskai). There were plenty of other control decks there as well. I think the real issue is that people don't like that their assumed "proper" control isn't as prevalent as it might have once been. If we look at the results from States across the U.S., there was plenty of control variants that made top 8, and that's not even counting the decks that didn't make top 8. Many of the complainers aren't old enough to have played against real control decks, like the old Forbid lock type. I find that it's usually people who look at a past that they probably never experienced with rose-tinted glasses. I remember the days of Tog, and how people complained about Counterspell then
The biggest issue that I really see is the bias towards what people who like to complain have to say about what should and shouldn't be classified as control. I usually find that this is a transparent attempt to criticize WotC for banning Splinter Twin in the end.
I miss the days when people could play with whatever they wanted to without the player base whining and complaining that having their cards countered is "cancerous" or unfun.
I miss control because of the time period of magic it represents for me. When everybody didn't send wizards mad tweets and found ways to beat decks they didn't like outside of "ban it" "needs to be banned " "ruins my fun".
Old school control was "unfun" because you lost on turn 6 but they didn't actually kill you until turn 50. Also, if we're talking pre-Mirrodin, you simply didn't beat control in that era of MTG. If you weren't playing a Counterspell-based control deck, you were either playing a completely broken combo deck that was destined for banning or your plan against control was, "hope that they forgot your deck exists." If they made any effort towards beating what you were playing, you were getting rolled.
I think there was that old adage: "If control really wants to beat you, they will." Guess that's where it came from.
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
I really do. I began playing back in the ancient times when Thallids roamed the lands and a massive ice age began blanketing Dominaria in snow. Playing around control was frustrating, but fun, and it definitely shaped the way I still play today.
The main issue control has in modern is that control wants the game to go long, which is fine for those long sunday afternoons where you want to sit around with some friends and play a game of Magic, but is not the best for when people are trying to do an 8 round swiss match and everyone has to wait until the time limit every match to move on to the next round.
Aggro and control are the two extremes of the spectrum that will always exist, but shouldn't be encouraged. Most people probably want to play games where they are trading and interacting with the opponent and that runs completely contrarian to what aggro and control try to do. Aggro just wants to end the game before the opponent can even attempt to really interact, while control is nothing but shutting down every action the opponent has and grinding the game out until they are basically helpless.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I miss the days when people could play with whatever they wanted to without the player base whining and complaining that having their cards countered is "cancerous" or unfun.
I miss control because of the time period of magic it represents for me. When everybody didn't send wizards mad tweets and found ways to beat decks they didn't like outside of "ban it" "needs to be banned " "ruins my fun".
Would love to know where you were playing in the 90s and early 2000s, because I have been playing since the inception of the game and there has always been complaints about certain types of decks during certain times of Magic, even the beginning. Its almost part of the game for a certain group of players to ***** about what they have to play against and it being 'unfun' or 'unfair'.
Its those complaints that made ban lists, and division of formats.
I can take it or leave it. I enjoy playing against control as much as I enjoy playing against any other type of deck (one exception being Lantern). Blue moon is what, a highly meta dependent tier 2 deck?
I think the issue is that flash creatures and combos in modern are powerful enough that it's never going to make sense to NOT skew away from pure control at least a little bit. Which I think is actually a good thing... decks that can attack from multiple angles are better than decks that have exactly one game plan.
To me, Control decks are an integral part of the game. In MTG, you get to go up against several different kinds of archetypes and the gameplay is varied between each one.
I'm a control player at heart and the mirror is like a whole different game.
I played U based control or tempo/fish decks from 1996 to about 2008 so I got my games in. Still play URx based tempo or control in modern Grixis builds, Blue Moon, etc....
I think that the game has gone in new interesting directions since WotC abandoned traditional counterspell.dek style control in favor of mid-range creature decks. If a decade ago you would have told me that the consistent best strategies in Standard would all most always be creature based mid-range I would have laughed in your face.
I do think that overall modern does suffer from a very large disparity in the quality of non creature spells and spells. I would like to WotC perhaps have a cyclical approach to designing standard rotating the power from non-creature to creature spells and back again, have a set that is openly more spell centered and then a more creature centered one.
People also tend to speak about how we can have a happy medium in which aggro/mid-range/control all co-exist in a even break of the meta-game 33.333,33.333,33.333....but that isn't how draw-go control works. Draw-go counterspell decks do not co-exist with mid-range strategies that want to tap out and play 3-5c.c. sorcery speed cards. You get aggro/combo/control when draw-go control decks are T1 quality because you either go under with aggro or you have to have some very powerful combo that can penetrate the permission barrier, tapping out for any card priced over 2cc is how Draw-go punishes players and why WotC phased Counterspell out of the game.
In more recent standard formats, when a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck is viable it is normally the best deck by a wide margin and stifles any other late game decks.
I personally think that with the "cannot be countered" text, Cavern of Souls and the "upon casting triggers" WotC has developed tools that can allow for more classic control cards like counterspell to see print in standard, it just has to be a standard that is openly hostile to counterspells. Card draw is a different story since good cheap card draw is oppressive to the BGx attrition game plans.
In more recent standard formats, when a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck is viable it is normally the best deck by a wide margin and stifles any other late game decks.
Such as? What recent Standard formats do you refer to? Innistrad-RTR, RTR-Theros, and Theros-Khans all had decks that were at least somewhat of the Draw-Go variety (even if they didn't rely as much on counterspells), they were viable, but none of them were the best deck, let alone by a wide marign. What Standard are you talking about? The last time I can think of any Standard where we had a Draw-Go style deck that was viable and was "the best deck by a wide margin" was Psychatog way back in Invasion-Odyssey.
Someone could make a case for Faeries, I guess? But it's still a stretch to call that "recent" and it was more of a tempo deck.
If by traditional control you mean a blue deck full of counters and answers, then no, I don't miss it at all. People want to be able to play their deck out. I hope Wizards continues to shy away from "blue control" much like they have with land destruction. It's just not fun to play against. Even if you successfully play around their counterspells it's still not a very fun deck to play against. It's often one dimensional and uninspired. So I can't say I miss those decks at all.
In more recent standard formats, when a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck is viable it is normally the best deck by a wide margin and stifles any other late game decks.
Such as? What recent Standard formats do you refer to? Innistrad-RTR, RTR-Theros, and Theros-Khans all had decks that were at least somewhat of the Draw-Go variety (even if they didn't rely as much on counterspells), they were viable, but none of them were the best deck, let alone by a wide marign. What Standard are you talking about? The last time I can think of any Standard where we had a Draw-Go style deck that was viable and was "the best deck by a wide margin" was Psychatog way back in Invasion-Odyssey.
Someone could make a case for Faeries, I guess? But it's still a stretch to call that "recent" and it was more of a tempo deck.
Old school control was "unfun" because you lost on turn 6 but they didn't actually kill you until turn 50. Also, if we're talking pre-Mirrodin, you simply didn't beat control in that era of MTG. If you weren't playing a Counterspell-based control deck, you were either playing a completely broken combo deck that was destined for banning or your plan against control was, "hope that they forgot your deck exists." If they made any effort towards beating what you were playing, you were getting rolled.
Lets take a look at the pre-Mirrrodin-Era, (pre 2003).
I am using the Magic World Championship data, because they were the big event between 1997 and 2004:
lets take a look at the winning decks:
1997 Prismatic Black Agro - The deck did play blue, but only for Man-O-War. It has not a singel Counterspell in it, and no Combo, and i am pretty sure neither Black Knight nor Nekrataal was banned.
1998 Nightmare Survival: Again, no Counterspell, and i would not classify it as combo, although it had some strong synergies. It was the classic toolbox deck. But the deck might have seen a ban, since both keycards were or are banned in older formats, but i don´t remember for sure.
1999 Wildfire Dragon: some artefakt ramp, some big Hitter, wildfire. No Counterspell, no combo
2001 Machine Head: Black Red Aggro and discard. No counterspell, no combo, no bannings.
2002 Psychatog: Ok, Counterspells, good clock, that is one, i agree.
2003 Mirari: Ok, Combo-like and counterspells.
So, with these examples, i disagree with you. 2 out of 7 World champion decks were control, Tinker falls in the banned/combo thing, but neither Wildfire, Machine Head or Black Aggro fall into that.
That leds me to the conclusion that you are wrong, and have either no clue what you are talking about, or might purposely misleading.
Sure, if you think i am wrong, you can instead of just claiming use some actual proof for your claims, in case the World championship is not representative enough for you.
Actually your post is misleading. You can not look at the winner of a large event(s) and say..'see, no counter spells'. You have to look at the whole meta. The top 8,16,32 decks. That paints a more accurate picture of the format as a whole. The best deck doesnt always win an event, nor does the best player. You need many things to fall in your favor to win.
Quote from bizzycola »
Caw-go/Caw-blade for one
Sphinx's Rev decks
Esper Control in Dragons of Tarkir standard.
Interesting, you mention Caw-blade which Wotc has said attendance was terrible during, hence the ban of JTMS and SFM in Standard. Then you mention Esper control which seems to be about the beginning of the down turn of the most recent attendance problems for Standard.
That leds me to the conclusion that you are wrong, and have either no clue what you are talking about, or might purposely misleading.
Sure, if you think i am wrong, you can instead of just claiming use some actual proof for your claims, in case the World championship is not representative enough for you.
The way people define "control" as "must be monoblue and contain counterspell" is as if people said you can't play aggro anymore because there's no Erhnam Djinn and Armageddon.
Machine Head was a deck that won through tons of discard, tons of creature destruction, and four Rishadan Ports to tap down your lands. It's the dang definition of a control deck.
And the Wildfire Deck was one of the better Grim Monolith + Voltaic Key decks, which were ridiculous combo decks.
I think a lot of the arguments about control in modern are about blue based counterspell decks.
Yea, jund plays a control game quite often, but its not a control deck, and the entire point of threads/discussion like this is to inquire if wizard's depowering of blue permission because people don't like it actually holds water as far as competitive modern players go.
Its like when people keep insisting that the answer to "why is there no good control deck in modern?" is "but actually theres lantern".
I could tell you to just play storm in legacy because it just quickly and noninteractively reduces the other player's life to zero when you complain there aren't any good aggro decks.
I could tell you that by playing a million lock pieces in your goblin or soldier deck, then you can do well. Sure, maybe its true, but its blatantly unhelpful at best. The prison/aggro hybrids aren't the same kind of aggro decks that people refer to.
In more recent standard formats, when a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck is viable it is normally the best deck by a wide margin and stifles any other late game decks.
Such as? What recent Standard formats do you refer to? Innistrad-RTR, RTR-Theros, and Theros-Khans all had decks that were at least somewhat of the Draw-Go variety (even if they didn't rely as much on counterspells), they were viable, but none of them were the best deck, let alone by a wide marign. What Standard are you talking about? The last time I can think of any Standard where we had a Draw-Go style deck that was viable and was "the best deck by a wide margin" was Psychatog way back in Invasion-Odyssey.
Someone could make a case for Faeries, I guess? But it's still a stretch to call that "recent" and it was more of a tempo deck.
Caw-go/Caw-blade for one
Caw-Blade was absolutely not "a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck." It was much more of a tempo or midrange deck.
Sphinx's Rev decks
Esper Control in Dragons of Tarkir standard.
These were not the best decks in their formats, let alone "the best deck by a large margin."
Interesting, you mention Caw-blade which Wotc has said attendance was terrible during, hence the ban of JTMS and SFM in Standard. Then you mention Esper control which seems to be about the beginning of the down turn of the most recent attendance problems for Standard.
No it wasn't. The attendance problems started about when Collected Company took over the format (after Shadow Over Innistrad). The time Esper Control was at its most notable (but still far from the best deck) was before Shadow Over Innistrad.
I suppose someone could claim that the format before Shadow Over Innistrad "set up" the downfall in popularity, but it's puzzling to blame Esper Control for that rather than the much more obvious facts that Abzan was on top of the metagame for more than a year or the extremely high cost of manabases, i.e. the things people actually complained about.
I won't dispute that attendance was terrible during Caw-Blade, but the problem there was the sheer dominance of Caw-Blade, not the kind of deck it was. You could've had it be any kind of deck and people would've lost interest in the format due to its insane presence, as was the case during Affinity's era of Standard (and Affinity was definitely NOT a control deck).
Esper Control hasn't been a good deck since INN-RTR when we had Nephalia Drownyard/Sphinx's Rev decks. Even then, it's debatable whether it was better than UWR or the 'Dark' Bant control decks that splashed just to play Drownyard.
In more recent standard formats, when a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck is viable it is normally the best deck by a wide margin and stifles any other late game decks.
Such as? What recent Standard formats do you refer to? Innistrad-RTR, RTR-Theros, and Theros-Khans all had decks that were at least somewhat of the Draw-Go variety (even if they didn't rely as much on counterspells), they were viable, but none of them were the best deck, let alone by a wide marign. What Standard are you talking about? The last time I can think of any Standard where we had a Draw-Go style deck that was viable and was "the best deck by a wide margin" was Psychatog way back in Invasion-Odyssey.
Someone could make a case for Faeries, I guess? But it's still a stretch to call that "recent" and it was more of a tempo deck.
Caw-go/Caw-blade for one
Caw-Blade was absolutely not "a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck." It was much more of a tempo or midrange deck.
Sphinx's Rev decks
Esper Control in Dragons of Tarkir standard.
These were not the best decks in their formats, let alone "the best deck by a large margin."
Interesting, you mention Caw-blade which Wotc has said attendance was terrible during, hence the ban of JTMS and SFM in Standard. Then you mention Esper control which seems to be about the beginning of the down turn of the most recent attendance problems for Standard.
No it wasn't. The attendance problems started about when Collected Company took over the format (after Shadow Over Innistrad). The time Esper Control was at its most notable (but still far from the best deck) was before Shadow Over Innistrad.
I suppose someone could claim that the format before Shadow Over Innistrad "set up" the downfall in popularity, but it's puzzling to blame Esper Control for that rather than the much more obvious facts that Abzan was on top of the metagame for more than a year or the extremely high cost of manabases, i.e. the things people actually complained about.
I won't dispute that attendance was terrible during Caw-Blade, but the problem there was the sheer dominance of Caw-Blade, not the kind of deck it was. You could've had it be any kind of deck and people would've lost interest in the format due to its insane presence, as was the case during Affinity's era of Standard (and Affinity was definitely NOT a control deck).
Caw-Blade certainly was a control deck, it was 8 creatures all of which replace themselves card for card or up if you cast Hawks after burning through some of your Spell Snares and Mana Leaks and top ended with JtmS.
uwx based control decks certainly was one of the best decks for a period of standard it was one of the highlights of the entire RTR block standard season and 10/xx/12 - 12/xx/12 was probably the best deck with the most consistent results. In fact I think Shinx's Rev Snap Rev was probably the last time I can remember a real OG control plan you just answer everything your opponent does and reset your hand and some of that life total and just rinse and repeat with snap on rev a couple turns later or cast the other if you drew it already, or you know just Supreme Verdict.
I'll give you Dragons as I haven't touched Standard since RTR.
Caw-Blade certainly was a control deck, it was 8 creatures all of which replace themselves card for card or up if you cast Hawks after burning through some of your Spell Snares and Mana Leaks and top ended with JtmS.
A relatively small amount of creatures doesn't make something a control deck (also, not all Caw-Blades played only 8 creatures; that was the minimum, but a lot ran 10 and some went up to 12). I mean, Death's Shadow Jund runs 9 creatures (Street Wraith does not count as a creature and you know it), but that doesn't make it a control deck. Caw-Blade was an aggro-control deck, so it obviously had some control elements, but it was also perfectly content to just attach a Sword to a Squadron Hawk and bury you under sheer tempo.
At any rate, even if we call it a control deck, it wasn't a control deck of the kind you described.
uwx based control decks certainly was one of the best decks for a period of standard it was one of the highlights of the entire RTR block standard season and 10/xx/12 - 12/xx/12 was probably the best deck with the most consistent results. In fact I think Shinx's Rev Snap Rev was probably the last time I can remember a real OG control plan you just answer everything your opponent does and reset your hand and some of that life total and just rinse and repeat with snap on rev a couple turns later or cast the other if you drew it already, or you know just Supreme Verdict.
That's not proof of what you claimed. You claimed that when such decks are viable (and they were viable in these formats), they would be the "best deck by a wide margin." That's flatly untrue for these decks.
In Innistrad-RTR, it's true that UWx Control was a decent deck through much of it, though it did lose steam after Dragon's Maze because Voice of Resurgence was such a pest for it to deal with. The problem is that Innistrad-RTR was a rather diverse format where there wasn't really a clear best deck; you can't claim anything is the best deck "by a wide margin" if there isn't a clear best deck to begin with (and honestly, if I had to pick something as the best for that format, it would be Jund because while the other decks waxed and waned, it managed to stay the most consistently good). And I looked back at some metagame data; in the time period you describe (October 2012 to December 2012), the top deck was actually Naya Blitz. Not by a huge margin or anything, but it wasn't UWx Control that was on top.
In RTR-Theros, to claim anything other than Monoblack Devotion was the best deck is completely laughable. Monoblack Devotion utterly dominated that format. UWx Control couldn't even take the #2 spot, because that was continually occupied by Monoblue Devotion. UWx Control did manage to spend a decent amount of time in the #3 spot, but claiming a deck that couldn't get above third place (and it wasn't even always that high) as the best deck seems to be a contradiction in terms.
Caw-Blade certainly was a control deck, it was 8 creatures all of which replace themselves card for card or up if you cast Hawks after burning through some of your Spell Snares and Mana Leaks and top ended with JtmS.
A relatively small amount of creatures doesn't make something a control deck (also, not all Caw-Blades played only 8 creatures; that was the minimum, but a lot ran 10 and some went up to 12). I mean, Death's Shadow Jund runs 9 creatures (Street Wraith does not count as a creature and you know it), but that doesn't make it a control deck. Caw-Blade was an aggro-control deck, so it obviously had some control elements, but it was also perfectly content to just attach a Sword to a Squadron Hawk and bury you under sheer tempo.
At any rate, even if we call it a control deck, it wasn't a control deck of the kind you described.
uwx based control decks certainly was one of the best decks for a period of standard it was one of the highlights of the entire RTR block standard season and 10/xx/12 - 12/xx/12 was probably the best deck with the most consistent results. In fact I think Shinx's Rev Snap Rev was probably the last time I can remember a real OG control plan you just answer everything your opponent does and reset your hand and some of that life total and just rinse and repeat with snap on rev a couple turns later or cast the other if you drew it already, or you know just Supreme Verdict.
That's not proof of what you claimed. You claimed that when such decks are viable (and they were viable in these formats), they would be the "best deck by a wide margin." That's flatly untrue for these decks.
In Innistrad-RTR, it's true that UWx Control was a decent deck through much of it, though it did lose steam after Dragon's Maze because Voice of Resurgence was such a pest for it to deal with. The problem is that Innistrad-RTR was a rather diverse format where there wasn't really a clear best deck; you can't claim anything is the best deck "by a wide margin" if there isn't a clear best deck to begin with (and honestly, if I had to pick something as the best for that format, it would be Jund because while the other decks waxed and waned, it managed to stay the most consistently good). And I looked back at some metagame data; in the time period you describe (October 2012 to December 2012), the top deck was actually Naya Blitz. Not by a huge margin or anything, but it wasn't UWx Control that was on top.
In RTR-Theros, to claim anything other than Monoblack Devotion was the best deck is completely laughable. Monoblack Devotion utterly dominated that format. UWx Control couldn't even take the #2 spot, because that was continually occupied by Monoblue Devotion. UWx Control did manage to spend a decent amount of time in the #3 spot, but claiming a deck that couldn't get above third place (and it wasn't even always that high) as the best deck seems to be a contradiction in terms.
Yes for a part of Inn-RTR block UW control was the best deck as I said. Go look at the Top 8's of events from that time UW was the best performing deck with the most top 8's and taking down many events. It being as good as it was was the only thing that even kept me in standard at all.
Going on and on about how it wasn't the best deck during the entire existence of RTR standard is really pointless since I used the qualifier "for a period of standard" I'm well aware that with cards like Voice of Resurgence being printed later in the block that it had the desired negative affects on draw-go control.
I have to assume you are just being lazy in your "searching" UW sphinx's rev decks dominated states in 2012 took down multiple TCG and SCG events, not only winning more than any other decks but also dominating the top 16 listing. A Quick glace shows UWx decks dominating the meta-game for months pretty much any splash color was viable with Bant probably being the best since it had the best cards for the mirror. Naya was only a "ok" deck during that period because it could run cards that were naturally strong against Supreme Verdict like Thragtusk and Selesnya Charm. It isn't until 02/xx/13 that UW decks start to drop off in performances.
Pointing out that as future sets came out that Draw-go control fell out of viability in the Meta-game is almost like pointing out that designers of the game can influence which strategies are viable in a given standard format. Its almost like WotC designed the format to empower the up coming set over the previous.....
Also you lose points for attempting to put things in my mouth, I gave a very specific time in Standard and you took it upon yourself to then insist that i must have been speaking about a period over almost a entire year after the period that I mentioned. When did I say that it dominated Theros Standard? I didn't your just attempting to change the subject because you are so clearly wrong regarding UWx decks in the period I gave.
You are grasping at straws trying to say that caw-blade was a aggro-control deck it was a deck with 4 1/1 fliers and 4 1/2 squires that only are playable in a control deck because they tutor up other cards. It was a counterspell (mana leak, spell pierce) Card advantatge (JtmS + fetchlands, preordain). It certainly was a Draw-go style control deck, counter relative spells, Day of Judgements to clear the board, stick JtmS and start working towards Colonnade beats
Stoneforge isn't only playable in control decks, and saying that the reason thats the case is because it tutors is insane. A vast majority of the tutors in the game are played in non-control decks (GSZ, eladamiris call, traverse, chord, natural order, etc, in aggro decks, or demonic tutor, infernal tutor, tinker, etc, in combo decks).
Just because a deck has counterspells and card advantage doesn't make it a draw-go deck.
The fact that every card you listed other than the permission is a sorcery (and thus, can't be played if you're just drawing and passing the majority of your turns).
Literally the entire point of the caws and the swords was that your game plan was not only to counter things, wrath, and slam jace. You had that option, but sometimes t2 creature > t3 sword > t4 beats was the line you took, and you played a more tempo game.
Its not a draw-go deck. If anything, you could argue that it not aggro-control and its just regular tap-out control, which has some merit (though I still think is wrong) but claiming it was draw-go and not anything else is silly.
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I like all kinds of decks. So I think people should be able to play what they wish and still be able to be competitive. I dont think any one type of deck should be heads and shoulders above all the rest.
as a control player myself, control mirrors can be fun. although I understand why people hate playing against it
Old school control was "unfun" because you lost on turn 6 but they didn't actually kill you until turn 50. Also, if we're talking pre-Mirrodin, you simply didn't beat control in that era of MTG. If you weren't playing a Counterspell-based control deck, you were either playing a completely broken combo deck that was destined for banning or your plan against control was, "hope that they forgot your deck exists." If they made any effort towards beating what you were playing, you were getting rolled.
The biggest issue that I really see is the bias towards what people who like to complain have to say about what should and shouldn't be classified as control. I usually find that this is a transparent attempt to criticize WotC for banning Splinter Twin in the end.
Lantern Control
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Netdecking explained
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On speculators and counterfeits
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Every single competitive deck in existence is designed to limit the opponent's ability to interact in a meaningful way.
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I think there was that old adage: "If control really wants to beat you, they will." Guess that's where it came from.
I do really enjoy control mirrors though, miss those.
Modern - GB Elves, UW Ojutai Control
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Aggro and control are the two extremes of the spectrum that will always exist, but shouldn't be encouraged. Most people probably want to play games where they are trading and interacting with the opponent and that runs completely contrarian to what aggro and control try to do. Aggro just wants to end the game before the opponent can even attempt to really interact, while control is nothing but shutting down every action the opponent has and grinding the game out until they are basically helpless.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Would love to know where you were playing in the 90s and early 2000s, because I have been playing since the inception of the game and there has always been complaints about certain types of decks during certain times of Magic, even the beginning. Its almost part of the game for a certain group of players to ***** about what they have to play against and it being 'unfun' or 'unfair'.
Its those complaints that made ban lists, and division of formats.
I think the issue is that flash creatures and combos in modern are powerful enough that it's never going to make sense to NOT skew away from pure control at least a little bit. Which I think is actually a good thing... decks that can attack from multiple angles are better than decks that have exactly one game plan.
I'm a control player at heart and the mirror is like a whole different game.
UBRGrixis Kiki Control
BGUSultai Shadow
GWRBushwhacker Zoo
EDH:
BGU Sidisi, Brood Tyrant
UBR Marchesa, the Black Rose
GWU Roon of the Hidden Realm
I played U based control or tempo/fish decks from 1996 to about 2008 so I got my games in. Still play URx based tempo or control in modern Grixis builds, Blue Moon, etc....
I think that the game has gone in new interesting directions since WotC abandoned traditional counterspell.dek style control in favor of mid-range creature decks. If a decade ago you would have told me that the consistent best strategies in Standard would all most always be creature based mid-range I would have laughed in your face.
I do think that overall modern does suffer from a very large disparity in the quality of non creature spells and spells. I would like to WotC perhaps have a cyclical approach to designing standard rotating the power from non-creature to creature spells and back again, have a set that is openly more spell centered and then a more creature centered one.
People also tend to speak about how we can have a happy medium in which aggro/mid-range/control all co-exist in a even break of the meta-game 33.333,33.333,33.333....but that isn't how draw-go control works. Draw-go counterspell decks do not co-exist with mid-range strategies that want to tap out and play 3-5c.c. sorcery speed cards. You get aggro/combo/control when draw-go control decks are T1 quality because you either go under with aggro or you have to have some very powerful combo that can penetrate the permission barrier, tapping out for any card priced over 2cc is how Draw-go punishes players and why WotC phased Counterspell out of the game.
In more recent standard formats, when a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck is viable it is normally the best deck by a wide margin and stifles any other late game decks.
I personally think that with the "cannot be countered" text, Cavern of Souls and the "upon casting triggers" WotC has developed tools that can allow for more classic control cards like counterspell to see print in standard, it just has to be a standard that is openly hostile to counterspells. Card draw is a different story since good cheap card draw is oppressive to the BGx attrition game plans.
Eh. I've played a lot of control mirrors and they're not all they're cracked up to be imo.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Such as? What recent Standard formats do you refer to? Innistrad-RTR, RTR-Theros, and Theros-Khans all had decks that were at least somewhat of the Draw-Go variety (even if they didn't rely as much on counterspells), they were viable, but none of them were the best deck, let alone by a wide marign. What Standard are you talking about? The last time I can think of any Standard where we had a Draw-Go style deck that was viable and was "the best deck by a wide margin" was Psychatog way back in Invasion-Odyssey.
Someone could make a case for Faeries, I guess? But it's still a stretch to call that "recent" and it was more of a tempo deck.
Caw-go/Caw-blade for one
Sphinx's Rev decks
Esper Control in Dragons of Tarkir standard.
Actually your post is misleading. You can not look at the winner of a large event(s) and say..'see, no counter spells'. You have to look at the whole meta. The top 8,16,32 decks. That paints a more accurate picture of the format as a whole. The best deck doesnt always win an event, nor does the best player. You need many things to fall in your favor to win.
Interesting, you mention Caw-blade which Wotc has said attendance was terrible during, hence the ban of JTMS and SFM in Standard. Then you mention Esper control which seems to be about the beginning of the down turn of the most recent attendance problems for Standard.
The way people define "control" as "must be monoblue and contain counterspell" is as if people said you can't play aggro anymore because there's no Erhnam Djinn and Armageddon.
Machine Head was a deck that won through tons of discard, tons of creature destruction, and four Rishadan Ports to tap down your lands. It's the dang definition of a control deck.
And the Wildfire Deck was one of the better Grim Monolith + Voltaic Key decks, which were ridiculous combo decks.
Yea, jund plays a control game quite often, but its not a control deck, and the entire point of threads/discussion like this is to inquire if wizard's depowering of blue permission because people don't like it actually holds water as far as competitive modern players go.
Its like when people keep insisting that the answer to "why is there no good control deck in modern?" is "but actually theres lantern".
I could tell you to just play storm in legacy because it just quickly and noninteractively reduces the other player's life to zero when you complain there aren't any good aggro decks.
I could tell you that by playing a million lock pieces in your goblin or soldier deck, then you can do well. Sure, maybe its true, but its blatantly unhelpful at best. The prison/aggro hybrids aren't the same kind of aggro decks that people refer to.
Caw-Blade was absolutely not "a traditional counterspell Draw-go style deck." It was much more of a tempo or midrange deck.
These were not the best decks in their formats, let alone "the best deck by a large margin."
No it wasn't. The attendance problems started about when Collected Company took over the format (after Shadow Over Innistrad). The time Esper Control was at its most notable (but still far from the best deck) was before Shadow Over Innistrad.
I suppose someone could claim that the format before Shadow Over Innistrad "set up" the downfall in popularity, but it's puzzling to blame Esper Control for that rather than the much more obvious facts that Abzan was on top of the metagame for more than a year or the extremely high cost of manabases, i.e. the things people actually complained about.
I won't dispute that attendance was terrible during Caw-Blade, but the problem there was the sheer dominance of Caw-Blade, not the kind of deck it was. You could've had it be any kind of deck and people would've lost interest in the format due to its insane presence, as was the case during Affinity's era of Standard (and Affinity was definitely NOT a control deck).
Caw-Blade certainly was a control deck, it was 8 creatures all of which replace themselves card for card or up if you cast Hawks after burning through some of your Spell Snares and Mana Leaks and top ended with JtmS.
uwx based control decks certainly was one of the best decks for a period of standard it was one of the highlights of the entire RTR block standard season and 10/xx/12 - 12/xx/12 was probably the best deck with the most consistent results. In fact I think Shinx's Rev Snap Rev was probably the last time I can remember a real OG control plan you just answer everything your opponent does and reset your hand and some of that life total and just rinse and repeat with snap on rev a couple turns later or cast the other if you drew it already, or you know just Supreme Verdict.
I'll give you Dragons as I haven't touched Standard since RTR.
A relatively small amount of creatures doesn't make something a control deck (also, not all Caw-Blades played only 8 creatures; that was the minimum, but a lot ran 10 and some went up to 12). I mean, Death's Shadow Jund runs 9 creatures (Street Wraith does not count as a creature and you know it), but that doesn't make it a control deck. Caw-Blade was an aggro-control deck, so it obviously had some control elements, but it was also perfectly content to just attach a Sword to a Squadron Hawk and bury you under sheer tempo.
At any rate, even if we call it a control deck, it wasn't a control deck of the kind you described.
That's not proof of what you claimed. You claimed that when such decks are viable (and they were viable in these formats), they would be the "best deck by a wide margin." That's flatly untrue for these decks.
In Innistrad-RTR, it's true that UWx Control was a decent deck through much of it, though it did lose steam after Dragon's Maze because Voice of Resurgence was such a pest for it to deal with. The problem is that Innistrad-RTR was a rather diverse format where there wasn't really a clear best deck; you can't claim anything is the best deck "by a wide margin" if there isn't a clear best deck to begin with (and honestly, if I had to pick something as the best for that format, it would be Jund because while the other decks waxed and waned, it managed to stay the most consistently good). And I looked back at some metagame data; in the time period you describe (October 2012 to December 2012), the top deck was actually Naya Blitz. Not by a huge margin or anything, but it wasn't UWx Control that was on top.
In RTR-Theros, to claim anything other than Monoblack Devotion was the best deck is completely laughable. Monoblack Devotion utterly dominated that format. UWx Control couldn't even take the #2 spot, because that was continually occupied by Monoblue Devotion. UWx Control did manage to spend a decent amount of time in the #3 spot, but claiming a deck that couldn't get above third place (and it wasn't even always that high) as the best deck seems to be a contradiction in terms.
Yes for a part of Inn-RTR block UW control was the best deck as I said. Go look at the Top 8's of events from that time UW was the best performing deck with the most top 8's and taking down many events. It being as good as it was was the only thing that even kept me in standard at all.
Going on and on about how it wasn't the best deck during the entire existence of RTR standard is really pointless since I used the qualifier "for a period of standard" I'm well aware that with cards like Voice of Resurgence being printed later in the block that it had the desired negative affects on draw-go control.
I have to assume you are just being lazy in your "searching" UW sphinx's rev decks dominated states in 2012 took down multiple TCG and SCG events, not only winning more than any other decks but also dominating the top 16 listing. A Quick glace shows UWx decks dominating the meta-game for months pretty much any splash color was viable with Bant probably being the best since it had the best cards for the mirror. Naya was only a "ok" deck during that period because it could run cards that were naturally strong against Supreme Verdict like Thragtusk and Selesnya Charm. It isn't until 02/xx/13 that UW decks start to drop off in performances.
Pointing out that as future sets came out that Draw-go control fell out of viability in the Meta-game is almost like pointing out that designers of the game can influence which strategies are viable in a given standard format. Its almost like WotC designed the format to empower the up coming set over the previous.....
Also you lose points for attempting to put things in my mouth, I gave a very specific time in Standard and you took it upon yourself to then insist that i must have been speaking about a period over almost a entire year after the period that I mentioned. When did I say that it dominated Theros Standard? I didn't your just attempting to change the subject because you are so clearly wrong regarding UWx decks in the period I gave.
You are grasping at straws trying to say that caw-blade was a aggro-control deck it was a deck with 4 1/1 fliers and 4 1/2 squires that only are playable in a control deck because they tutor up other cards. It was a counterspell (mana leak, spell pierce) Card advantatge (JtmS + fetchlands, preordain). It certainly was a Draw-go style control deck, counter relative spells, Day of Judgements to clear the board, stick JtmS and start working towards Colonnade beats
Just because a deck has counterspells and card advantage doesn't make it a draw-go deck.
The fact that every card you listed other than the permission is a sorcery (and thus, can't be played if you're just drawing and passing the majority of your turns).
Literally the entire point of the caws and the swords was that your game plan was not only to counter things, wrath, and slam jace. You had that option, but sometimes t2 creature > t3 sword > t4 beats was the line you took, and you played a more tempo game.
Its not a draw-go deck. If anything, you could argue that it not aggro-control and its just regular tap-out control, which has some merit (though I still think is wrong) but claiming it was draw-go and not anything else is silly.