I haven't seen Atarka's Command in any recent top 8 lists. Not sure why anyone would play RWG over RWg in this meta.
Straight Boros (with a single Stomping ground and DRev in the SB) is much more streamlined and redundant than Naya Burn. The meta is much faster now than it was 1-2 years ago, and Atarka's command only slow the deck down.
If the meta is much faster, I think that supports playing Atarka's Command builds because they are faster than RW and RWg builds. It's easier to assemble T3 and T4 wins off of AC. AC is necessarily at least as fast as a build that swaps Skullcrack for it. It's 2 mana and 3 damage at its worst, and that's identical to Skullcrack. Frankly, I think an AC build is stronger against ETron because it's easier to turn a slow start on their side into an immediate game win.
Affinity has always existed, and we've played AC in a meta with Affinity near the top (AC is better because of Reach, too). AC is better than Skullcrack against Storm. I think it's better against all flavors of Tron. They're the same against Jeskai because they're going to be lifegain hate... About the only new development is that GDS exists and Fatal Push exists. I'll concede that it could be worse against GDS because you're spotting them so much damage.
If AC is so good, then why is it that very few top 8 list in the last 2 months are running it?
The answer is because it's slower to play RWG over RWg. Thats a simple fact - I've been playing Burn for over 4 years and I used to play AC when it was beneficial. Now it isn't, and when I switched to Boros (along with the rest of the pro scene) I noticed how much more streamlined Boros Burn is, and overall just better for this meta.
thats probably the main reason ppl dropped to RWg is to take less dmg from shocks and fetches. if the meta has picked up speed then we dont want to help them in the dmg race. i dont think AC is slower nor a worse card... just of the format has gotten faster, we want to be taking less dmg
If AC is so good, then why is it that very few top 8 list in the last 2 months are running it?
The answer is because it's slower to play RWG over RWg. Thats a simple fact - I've been playing Burn for over 4 years and I used to play AC when it was beneficial. Now it isn't, and when I switched to Boros (along with the rest of the pro scene) I noticed how much more streamlined Boros Burn is, and overall just better for this meta.
Atarka's Command is definitely not slower. It's 2 mana for 3 damage at minimum and is therefore at least as fast as any other 2cmc/3damage spell. The pump mode makes it faster sometimes, and if you're struggling to get a color and can't cast it then you possibly made a mistake or just weren't going to win anyway because of land problems.
The reason it has largely been cut by most players is that it requires another color and players fear being able to support that from a fixing perspective and from a self damage perspective. Atarka's Command builds without Nacatl existed for a few months before Nacatl showed up and they were successful, so AC has demonstrated it's worthiness already.
My personal feeling is that not so many people recalled that time (or weren't playing burn) and they incorrectly think AC and Nacatl are necessarily a package deal. It was correct to drop Nacatl after Fatal Push (though I think it never should have been played to begin with), and that led to AC getting dropped because of the aforementioned package deal. After that, you have people playing RW and RWg "because so-and-so at GP XYZ did it", which slowly dominates what sees play in general and therefore high performing builds.
tl;dr: Fatal Push killed Nacatl, lack of Nacatl (not a valid reason imo) and fear about land pain (valid reason imo, though I don't hold this position) killed AC. It's got nothing to do with speed, because AC is as fast or faster.
I disagree. I never played Nacatl either, and the meta that supported AC was VASTLY different than the current meta (there was no Eldrazi back then).
If AC was viable, I guarantee that pro players would be playing it at a much higher frequency. The extra life loss is very significant in this current meta, but not only that, it's the lands that kill you. Missing a color is not uncommon in a 3-color deck with 20 land and no deck fixing / card draw. Burn needs to be redundant and streamlined, and playing Green mainboard just isn't worth the uses that AC "might" get you.
In addition to the data I provided showing ~20 top placing lists not playing AC, I've experienced every meta in the last 4 years with Burn, and I can assure you the deck is better as Boros rather than Naya for this current meta. Even when people were played AC, the decks were split 50/50 with those running Nacatl, so your argument about people dropping AC because they also dropped Nacatl doesnt hold much weight.
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to convince each other though, so agree to disagree
I disagree. I never played Nacatl either, and the meta that supported AC was VASTLY different than the current meta (there was no Eldrazi back then).
If AC was viable, I guarantee that pro players would be playing it at a much higher frequency. The extra life loss is very significant in this current meta, but not only that, it's the lands that kill you. Missing a color is not uncommon in a 3-color deck with 20 land and no deck fixing / card draw. Burn needs to be redundant and streamlined, and playing Green mainboard just isn't worth the uses that AC "might" get you.
In addition to the data I provided showing ~20 top placing lists not playing AC, I've experienced every meta in the last 4 years with Burn, and I can assure you the deck is better as Boros rather than Naya for this current meta. Even when people were played AC, the decks were split 50/50 with those running Nacatl, so your argument about people dropping AC because they also dropped Nacatl doesnt hold much weight.
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to convince each other though, so agree to disagree
I'm not so sure the meta is so different now than it has been in the past. Jund and Junk aren't so big anymore, but that's because GDS out-Junds Jund and is basically just Jund with blue instead of green. ETron is a big mana deck that is hard to race, but it's not like it's half the meta. Affinity has always been there. Storm isn't a boogeyman for us. Counters Company is just a new version of the Abzan CoCo decks that have always been there. There's been a Scapeshift variant with PrimeTime for a while.
"If AC was viable, I guarantee that pro players would be playing it at a much higher frequency." I just don't buy into arguments like this. People can be wrong, especially when people's perception of things is more or less based on going to mtggoldfish/mtgtop8, seeing what everyone else is doing, and copying it.
I think part of the disagreement here is that we're talking about different things. I think I'm talking about why people don't play AC much anymore based on the history of how AC vanished from decks, and I think you're talking about reasons why people shouldn't play AC. Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they're also not the same. Based on history of how AC vanished, there are two reasons: a) Nacatl got dropped, people associated them as as package, so they dropped AC too, b) the perception that the meta is full of fast aggro and that makes 2 splash colors too costly to play. Of those, I believe only b) is a valid reason for someone to not play AC because we know from Summer 2015 that AC without Nacatl is definitely viable, and I think that b) is the root of your argument.
I think another reason for the disagreement is that what you actually mean by discussing AC's speed is that the meta has too much fast aggro and fast aggro makes land pain hard to swallow which makes AC hard to play because of land pain. It's the speed of other decks that is the problem, not the speec of AC. AC is necessarily as fast as Skullcrack, just like any other 2CMC 3 damage spell is, because they have identical conversion of mana and cards into opponent's life points. While there's a non-zero amount of the time that I hold AC (or a white card) and can't play it because I haven't gotten both colors yet, and a non-zero amount of the time that I've lost because of it, I believe that many of those situations would have been lost anyway because of having too few lands or would have been salvaged through better sequencing on my part earlier in the game. I believe that this risk is worth it because there are times that I'll just win on T3 because AC is insane.
"so your argument about people dropping AC because they also dropped Nacatl doesnt hold much weight." Considering most discussions about AC today involve someone saying "yeah, but you don't have enough creatures...", I think my argument that Nacatl vanishing led to AC vanishing does hold weight. Some people associate AC with an absolute necessity to play Zoo-Burn, otherwise they believe that build is not viable. I think those people are totally wrong, but they exist and truly believe that AC requires a lot of creatures.
Bump in the night is strictly superior to Lava Spike (dodge red hate, loss of life vs worship effect & flashback)
Yet why are we playing Lava Spike instead of Bump? Color
Even if we don't factor in the damage we take from splashing a third color, GETTING the 3rd color can be a problem in itself
Consider this hand:
Mountain,Fetch,GG,Bolt,Blaze,SkullCrack,BorosCharm
Great hand, no foreseeable problem with it!
Now consider:
Mountain,Fetch,GG,Bolt,Blaze,AC,BorosCharm
What color do we fetch for?
Looking at most list, we should probably get a white source since we have 8 white spell and 4 green spells
Then until we draw a green source, our AC and all future AC we draw are dead
And by the time we draw it, we might have multiple AC in hand, meaning we can only cast 1 per turn
and let's not forget, we're also much more likely to get screwed over by land hate like Spreading Sea/Ghost Quarter/Etc
NOW the big question:
Is losing a few more lives and opening our-self to be colored screwed (via land hate or simply not drawing it) worth playing a slightly stronger spell?
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"What's your plan?" Gideon asked.
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
Let's take a step back for a second. This discussion started because someone asked me, specifically, why I continue to play Atarka's Command and I answered why I, specifically, continue to play Atarka's Command.
In your fetch situation, I get white because I can generally deal with waiting to cast AC and there are more white cards than green. It happens from time to time. It's not a show stopper for me.
There are absolutely situations where you'd be willing to pay extra life for a slightly better spell in another color. You're already doing it by playing RW or RWg. Why play Helix when you could avoid the 3 life loss by playing mono-R and Lightning Strike? You could find a card to replace Charm, too. Path would be hard to replace, but you could deal with pro-red stuff easily still. So, why White? Because you have correctly made the judgement that white makes the deck better, even at the cost of land pain.
I guarantee we would all be playing Mardu or Jund Burn if Bump in the Night was an instant.
In my opinion, based on the experience I've had from playing ~2000 games with Atarka's Command in my deck, is that Atarka's Command is worth it. If you don't think it's worth it to you, fine, but that doesn't change my opinion on the card. My only objection here is the assertion that Atarka's Command is slower than Skullcrack, because it is necessarily the same speed or faster. Magma Jet is slower, because it deals 2. AC deals 3 or more. I do not object to someone believing that the life loss isn't worth it, even though I believe the life loss is worth it. "Slow" is the exact opposite of what Atarka's Command is.
My only objection here is the assertion that Atarka's Command is slower than Skullcrack, because it is necessarily the same speed or faster. Magma Jet is slower, because it deals 2. AC deals 3 or more. I do not object to someone believing that the life loss isn't worth it, even though I believe the life loss is worth it. "Slow" is the exact opposite of what Atarka's Command is.
Agreed. When I play Burn I use AC for the same reason.
Let's take a step back for a second. This discussion started because someone asked me, specifically, why I continue to play Atarka's Command and I answered why I, specifically, continue to play Atarka's Command.
In your fetch situation, I get white because I can generally deal with waiting to cast AC and there are more white cards than green. It happens from time to time. It's not a show stopper for me.
There are absolutely situations where you'd be willing to pay extra life for a slightly better spell in another color. You're already doing it by playing RW or RWg. Why play Helix when you could avoid the 3 life loss by playing mono-R and Lightning Strike? You could find a card to replace Charm, too. Path would be hard to replace, but you could deal with pro-red stuff easily still. So, why White? Because you have correctly made the judgement that white makes the deck better, even at the cost of land pain.
I guarantee we would all be playing Mardu or Jund Burn if Bump in the Night was an instant.
In my opinion, based on the experience I've had from playing ~2000 games with Atarka's Command in my deck, is that Atarka's Command is worth it. If you don't think it's worth it to you, fine, but that doesn't change my opinion on the card. My only objection here is the assertion that Atarka's Command is slower than Skullcrack, because it is necessarily the same speed or faster. Magma Jet is slower, because it deals 2. AC deals 3 or more. I do not object to someone believing that the life loss isn't worth it, even though I believe the life loss is worth it. "Slow" is the exact opposite of what Atarka's Command is.
i play both. personally i prefer AC. i gladly will pay 3 life to have multiple viable modes. it does both of what skull crack does and more so to me, the life pays out int the ability to have ore flexibility. im not saying one is slower than the other. they are the same card for the same cmc. Personally I don't see how getting the right colors would ever be an issue. I play rakdos burn main, posible 4 color out of sideboard, and never have an issue. If you run enough fetches there's no reason to ever have an issue with colors. The only thing I feel hurts AC is the thing you mentioned about spreading Seas and ghost quarters but that does not make atarka's Command slower
I'm a new player, and I have three questions that are probably dumb.
First: Why is it good to board out Boros Charm against Storm? Intuitively, I would think it would be useful in that matchup to protect my Eidolons.
Second: Is there a good rule of thumb for when I should kill my opponent's Dark Confidant? Some cases are obvious: leave it alive when they're at 1, kill it when they're at 20. But where's the borderline?
Third (and this might be a question better-suited for the Budget forum): Does Manamorphose make any sense at all in this deck? I was thinking that, since I don't have fetchlands, Manamorphose does a lot of the same things: fixes my mana, thins my deck, and fills my graveyard for Grim Lavamancer. Of course, it does take up a spell slot, unlike fetches.
I'm a new player, and I have three questions that are probably dumb.
First: Why is it good to board out Boros Charm against Storm? Intuitively, I would think it would be useful in that matchup to protect my Eidolons.
Second: Is there a good rule of thumb for when I should kill my opponent's Dark Confidant? Some cases are obvious: leave it alive when they're at 1, kill it when they're at 20. But where's the borderline?
Third (and this might be a question better-suited for the Budget forum): Does Manamorphose make any sense at all in this deck? I was thinking that, since I don't have fetchlands, Manamorphose does a lot of the same things: fixes my mana, thins my deck, and fills my graveyard for Grim Lavamancer. Of course, it does take up a spell slot, unlike fetches.
On charm: in the primer, it says Boros Charm because it doesn't kill a creature but you should regard that as the last thing to take out of you need room. You should be able to cut spikes and skullcracks to make room for everything you want. You might get to protect eidolon with charm, but they'll usually be trying to kill it while you don't have the mana to protect it.
On confidant: I'll often just leave it alive and play the odds that it will bleed them constantly, keep in mind that they'll probably happily block a guide with it. They don't actually want confidant against us.
Manamorphose does not make sense. Imagine your deck is 39 Bolts, 1 Manamorphose, 20 lands to avoid situations where you play MM and draw MM (for making the math simple here). Those Manamorphoses are worth 39/59 of a Burn spell. You could instead play a Burn spell that's worth 100% of a Burn spell, so why play a card that is a fraction of a Burn spell where the best outcome is you draw a Burn spell? The same goes for playing 4 of them.
Deck thinning is an almost negligible effect. Your Burn spells do a fine job filling the grave for Lavamancer on their own. Fetches are played for fixing, grave, and landfall, not deck thinning.
Wednesday night brief. Mardu burn. (1 bye) 2 wins, 1 loss
Round 2: 20-land burn (I'll call it that cuz I don't know if it's naya with drev or full on boros)
Both games I was on the draw.
- First game he kept a risky 1 lander and didn't get lands until turn 7.
- Second game by turn 3 we were equal in life, turn 5 was dramatic when I had 1 energy and gonti's on the board, tapped out for lethal but in response lightning helix me which resolves first, triggering gonti's for 2nd energy, and deal back 3 and gain back that 3 so net lethal. Borderlinne 1 black mana helix counterspell.
Afterthoughts: I happily face mirror matches now. Last year it was boros for consistency versus naya for pain. This year I think mardu speed (18 lands) versus consistency boros (20 lands) is key. Mardu is 8 cmc lower in deck total cmc count compared to boros.
Round 3: G/b elves
- First game on the play I do a turn 5 win. 1x Searing blaze kept his turn 3 in check.
- Second game on the draw we go to somewhere turn 14 or so. A rare care of land flooding ensured I never had enough to turnabout the momentum just like how I do so for a burn mirror.
- Third game on the play I do a turn 4 win. Turns out 2 lands 2 searing blazes 1 swiftspear on hand is crazy. enough to do a turn 4 uptap, upkeep, bolt+boros to the face ftw
Round 4: Eldrazitron
- First game had a turn 5 chalice land on me. Got down to 3 life for opponent. He ghost quartered my sacred foundry and I had 2 mountains (1 on field) already and something told me to declare: refuse to find, but by the time I realized that I had already flipped my deck, and the next card was a rift bolt that I shuffled away. #regret
- Second game he didn't have a chalice until turn 6 on hand, and I ran out of threats with turn 3 and turn 4 TKS, wisely taking away my artifact hates shattering spree and rakdos charm before trying to land his chalice. Turn 8 I'm empty handed and the wurmcoil lands so I saved time by scooping as I had 2 of 3 artifact hates, in my GY already.
Sideboard needs work. I'm deciding whether or not I should rid my exquisite firecrafts and rending volley (1 of) to beef up threats instead. Last night we had no blue control decks except not-so-control grixis DS and storm. I'll think about it somemore, most likely more rakdos charms and maybe something spicy like engineered explosives, molten rain, or stay safe with grim lavamancers.
Right now against both decks I go +3 Path, +3 DR, +2 Bridge and -4 Eidolon and -4 Charm. For humans, if they stabilize, is my strategy to take out their guys until I can land a Bridge? Or just keep burning and hope to win the race? I played against a version with Canonist out of the sideboard to go with Meddling Mage and Thalia -- made for rough sledding when any 2 of those were on the board.
Also taking suggestions on Affinity. There's that one guy at my store I always play and he's always beating me. I usually go -4 Eidolon, -4 Spike, -1 Charm for 3x Path, 2x Palm, 4x DRev. Usually he's able to land a Ravager that I can't just deal with. Tonight I got jammed on lands so that didn't help, but I'm sure there are small tweaks I can make to get that extra 2-3 damage I need to win the game.
Finally, I'm torn about going with a Naya build with 4x AC in the main (the elconquistador1985 build) instead of the Boros + DRev build I have now. I hate losing to spreading seas and blood moon, but I'm thinking those aren't super popular right now. Thoughts?
Bump in the night is strictly superior to Lava Spike (dodge red hate, loss of life vs worship effect & flashback)
Yet why are we playing Lava Spike instead of Bump? Color
Even if we don't factor in the damage we take from splashing a third color, GETTING the 3rd color can be a problem in itself
Consider this hand:
Mountain,Fetch,GG,Bolt,Blaze,SkullCrack,BorosCharm
Great hand, no foreseeable problem with it!
Now consider:
Mountain,Fetch,GG,Bolt,Blaze,AC,BorosCharm
What color do we fetch for?
Looking at most list, we should probably get a white source since we have 8 white spell and 4 green spells
Then until we draw a green source, our AC and all future AC we draw are dead
And by the time we draw it, we might have multiple AC in hand, meaning we can only cast 1 per turn
and let's not forget, we're also much more likely to get screwed over by land hate like Spreading Sea/Ghost Quarter/Etc
NOW the big question:
Is losing a few more lives and opening our-self to be colored screwed (via land hate or simply not drawing it) worth playing a slightly stronger spell?
You hit the nail on the head.
AC can be cast at the same speed of Skullcrack, I don't think anyone is saying it's slower because it cost more mana or anything like that, but playing 3 colors main slows the deck down, and opens up many potential weaknesses that Boros doesn't have.
Color screw
Turning on enemy land hate
Taking extra damage from lands
We want to be redundant and streamlined. These weaknesses are not worth playing AC over Skullcrack. In 95% of cases, you will be using the prevent life mode. Pumping a creature get's it blocked or path/bolt/push most of the time, making it a 2 for 1 for our opponent.
With Burn I'd much rather be redundant than versatile.
Also, elconquistador19985; you made a comment about the meta not being that different from a year ago, but I disagree. Sure, a lot of the same decks are around, but with new card additions, those decks are much faster now than before. Storm got Baral, Chief of Compliance, the Amulet Titan and Scapeshift decks were separate before the Amulet ban, and now they've merged and are more streamlined (technically a new deck), Affinity has been around forever but they got several new cards, Grixis Death Shadow is new, Eldrazi Tron is new, and all of those decks are much faster than anything we had 1-2 years ago when AC was popular.
If you don't mean that AC is slow, don't say it's slow. Previously, my only objection to everything that's been said is the assertion that it's slow. Now you're using another word that's wrong by saying it's not redundant. It's redundant because of the 3 damage mode.
Things AC is: color intensive, painful because of it, susceptible to land hate because of it, as fast because of the 3 damage mode, faster because of the pump mode, redundant because of the damage mode, versatile because of all the modes.
Things it isn't: slow, not redundant, demanding of a creature heavy build.
In your opinion, land pain and fixing risk isn't worth it. In my opinion, it is. When someone asks me why I play the card, the answer will contain my personal justification for playing the card, not the opposite. In particular, they said it requiring more creatures (it doesn't) and we're perplexed that is play it with 13 creatures instead of 16.
When I said the meta is not substantially different, I meant that its archetype composition is not substantially different and that's correct. GDS is new but it's just Jund in different colors that incidentally plays into our gameplan. Affinity is the same, so what if they got a new land? Storm plays gifts, but it's still a cake matchup that we steamroll all day. It's still not a substantially different meta that's now 80% zoo decks, or something drastically different like that. There's about as much combo as there has been for a while, as much aggro, as much midrange, as much control/tempo. It doesn't matter if affinity gets a new toy, it's still affinity and still makes up as much of the meta as it has for a while. Same restaurant, new management, slightly different menu.
Once again, if your claim is that most other decks are faster now (a claim I agree with), you should be playing AC so that you have access to a faster win than Boros. Avoiding 2 damage against another fast deck at the cost of speed doesn't necessarily win you the game.
I think the 90-10 thing is being a bit hyperbolic.
In any case, I have no problem with someone looking at the two cards and choosing to play Skullcrack. I choose Atarka's Command, someone asked me why that's the case, so I answered.
I just don't feel Atarka's command is actually faster than Skullcrack.
Both have a floor of 3 damage. Agreed?
Let's look at the following turns one and two of a game.
T1, Guide, Swing 2.
T2, Skullcrack, Swing 2. Total damage: 5.
T2, AC for 3 + buff the team. Swing 3. Total damage: 6.
And one creature is the worst case scenario for AC. You don't have to have a creature heavy build - our normal 12-14 creatures is fine.
The thing is, it's literally not possible for AC to be slower than Skullcrack unless damage is somehow prevented - and I've used the extra land mode on AC more often than I've cared about the damage prevention on Skullcrack.
Yes, playing it opens you up to color screw/makes you more vulnerable to land hate. If there's a significant amount of that in your meta then that's a pretty big con.
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If AC is so good, then why is it that very few top 8 list in the last 2 months are running it?
The answer is because it's slower to play RWG over RWg. Thats a simple fact - I've been playing Burn for over 4 years and I used to play AC when it was beneficial. Now it isn't, and when I switched to Boros (along with the rest of the pro scene) I noticed how much more streamlined Boros Burn is, and overall just better for this meta.
Here's a comparison of all top placing Burn decks in the last 2 months (spoiler: only 2 of 20 decks play AC) - http://mtgtop8.com/archetype?a=226&meta=51&f=MO
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company
You replace AC with Skullcrack. Same CMC but the former can do more damage and requires damaging yourself. Slower is an incorrect word to use.
Atarka's Command is definitely not slower. It's 2 mana for 3 damage at minimum and is therefore at least as fast as any other 2cmc/3damage spell. The pump mode makes it faster sometimes, and if you're struggling to get a color and can't cast it then you possibly made a mistake or just weren't going to win anyway because of land problems.
The reason it has largely been cut by most players is that it requires another color and players fear being able to support that from a fixing perspective and from a self damage perspective. Atarka's Command builds without Nacatl existed for a few months before Nacatl showed up and they were successful, so AC has demonstrated it's worthiness already.
My personal feeling is that not so many people recalled that time (or weren't playing burn) and they incorrectly think AC and Nacatl are necessarily a package deal. It was correct to drop Nacatl after Fatal Push (though I think it never should have been played to begin with), and that led to AC getting dropped because of the aforementioned package deal. After that, you have people playing RW and RWg "because so-and-so at GP XYZ did it", which slowly dominates what sees play in general and therefore high performing builds.
tl;dr: Fatal Push killed Nacatl, lack of Nacatl (not a valid reason imo) and fear about land pain (valid reason imo, though I don't hold this position) killed AC. It's got nothing to do with speed, because AC is as fast or faster.
If AC was viable, I guarantee that pro players would be playing it at a much higher frequency. The extra life loss is very significant in this current meta, but not only that, it's the lands that kill you. Missing a color is not uncommon in a 3-color deck with 20 land and no deck fixing / card draw. Burn needs to be redundant and streamlined, and playing Green mainboard just isn't worth the uses that AC "might" get you.
In addition to the data I provided showing ~20 top placing lists not playing AC, I've experienced every meta in the last 4 years with Burn, and I can assure you the deck is better as Boros rather than Naya for this current meta. Even when people were played AC, the decks were split 50/50 with those running Nacatl, so your argument about people dropping AC because they also dropped Nacatl doesnt hold much weight.
It doesn't seem like we'll be able to convince each other though, so agree to disagree
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company
I'm not so sure the meta is so different now than it has been in the past. Jund and Junk aren't so big anymore, but that's because GDS out-Junds Jund and is basically just Jund with blue instead of green. ETron is a big mana deck that is hard to race, but it's not like it's half the meta. Affinity has always been there. Storm isn't a boogeyman for us. Counters Company is just a new version of the Abzan CoCo decks that have always been there. There's been a Scapeshift variant with PrimeTime for a while.
"If AC was viable, I guarantee that pro players would be playing it at a much higher frequency." I just don't buy into arguments like this. People can be wrong, especially when people's perception of things is more or less based on going to mtggoldfish/mtgtop8, seeing what everyone else is doing, and copying it.
I think part of the disagreement here is that we're talking about different things. I think I'm talking about why people don't play AC much anymore based on the history of how AC vanished from decks, and I think you're talking about reasons why people shouldn't play AC. Those aren't mutually exclusive, but they're also not the same. Based on history of how AC vanished, there are two reasons: a) Nacatl got dropped, people associated them as as package, so they dropped AC too, b) the perception that the meta is full of fast aggro and that makes 2 splash colors too costly to play. Of those, I believe only b) is a valid reason for someone to not play AC because we know from Summer 2015 that AC without Nacatl is definitely viable, and I think that b) is the root of your argument.
I think another reason for the disagreement is that what you actually mean by discussing AC's speed is that the meta has too much fast aggro and fast aggro makes land pain hard to swallow which makes AC hard to play because of land pain. It's the speed of other decks that is the problem, not the speec of AC. AC is necessarily as fast as Skullcrack, just like any other 2CMC 3 damage spell is, because they have identical conversion of mana and cards into opponent's life points. While there's a non-zero amount of the time that I hold AC (or a white card) and can't play it because I haven't gotten both colors yet, and a non-zero amount of the time that I've lost because of it, I believe that many of those situations would have been lost anyway because of having too few lands or would have been salvaged through better sequencing on my part earlier in the game. I believe that this risk is worth it because there are times that I'll just win on T3 because AC is insane.
"so your argument about people dropping AC because they also dropped Nacatl doesnt hold much weight." Considering most discussions about AC today involve someone saying "yeah, but you don't have enough creatures...", I think my argument that Nacatl vanishing led to AC vanishing does hold weight. Some people associate AC with an absolute necessity to play Zoo-Burn, otherwise they believe that build is not viable. I think those people are totally wrong, but they exist and truly believe that AC requires a lot of creatures.
Yet why are we playing Lava Spike instead of Bump? Color
Even if we don't factor in the damage we take from splashing a third color, GETTING the 3rd color can be a problem in itself
Consider this hand:
Mountain,Fetch,GG,Bolt,Blaze,SkullCrack,BorosCharm
Great hand, no foreseeable problem with it!
Now consider:
Mountain,Fetch,GG,Bolt,Blaze,AC,BorosCharm
What color do we fetch for?
Looking at most list, we should probably get a white source since we have 8 white spell and 4 green spells
Then until we draw a green source, our AC and all future AC we draw are dead
And by the time we draw it, we might have multiple AC in hand, meaning we can only cast 1 per turn
and let's not forget, we're also much more likely to get screwed over by land hate like Spreading Sea/Ghost Quarter/Etc
NOW the big question:
Is losing a few more lives and opening our-self to be colored screwed (via land hate or simply not drawing it) worth playing a slightly stronger spell?
"Are you serious?" Chandra replied.
In your fetch situation, I get white because I can generally deal with waiting to cast AC and there are more white cards than green. It happens from time to time. It's not a show stopper for me.
There are absolutely situations where you'd be willing to pay extra life for a slightly better spell in another color. You're already doing it by playing RW or RWg. Why play Helix when you could avoid the 3 life loss by playing mono-R and Lightning Strike? You could find a card to replace Charm, too. Path would be hard to replace, but you could deal with pro-red stuff easily still. So, why White? Because you have correctly made the judgement that white makes the deck better, even at the cost of land pain.
I guarantee we would all be playing Mardu or Jund Burn if Bump in the Night was an instant.
In my opinion, based on the experience I've had from playing ~2000 games with Atarka's Command in my deck, is that Atarka's Command is worth it. If you don't think it's worth it to you, fine, but that doesn't change my opinion on the card. My only objection here is the assertion that Atarka's Command is slower than Skullcrack, because it is necessarily the same speed or faster. Magma Jet is slower, because it deals 2. AC deals 3 or more. I do not object to someone believing that the life loss isn't worth it, even though I believe the life loss is worth it. "Slow" is the exact opposite of what Atarka's Command is.
Agreed. When I play Burn I use AC for the same reason.
i play both. personally i prefer AC. i gladly will pay 3 life to have multiple viable modes. it does both of what skull crack does and more so to me, the life pays out int the ability to have ore flexibility. im not saying one is slower than the other. they are the same card for the same cmc. Personally I don't see how getting the right colors would ever be an issue. I play rakdos burn main, posible 4 color out of sideboard, and never have an issue. If you run enough fetches there's no reason to ever have an issue with colors. The only thing I feel hurts AC is the thing you mentioned about spreading Seas and ghost quarters but that does not make atarka's Command slower
First: Why is it good to board out Boros Charm against Storm? Intuitively, I would think it would be useful in that matchup to protect my Eidolons.
Second: Is there a good rule of thumb for when I should kill my opponent's Dark Confidant? Some cases are obvious: leave it alive when they're at 1, kill it when they're at 20. But where's the borderline?
Third (and this might be a question better-suited for the Budget forum): Does Manamorphose make any sense at all in this deck? I was thinking that, since I don't have fetchlands, Manamorphose does a lot of the same things: fixes my mana, thins my deck, and fills my graveyard for Grim Lavamancer. Of course, it does take up a spell slot, unlike fetches.
On charm: in the primer, it says Boros Charm because it doesn't kill a creature but you should regard that as the last thing to take out of you need room. You should be able to cut spikes and skullcracks to make room for everything you want. You might get to protect eidolon with charm, but they'll usually be trying to kill it while you don't have the mana to protect it.
On confidant: I'll often just leave it alive and play the odds that it will bleed them constantly, keep in mind that they'll probably happily block a guide with it. They don't actually want confidant against us.
Manamorphose does not make sense. Imagine your deck is 39 Bolts, 1 Manamorphose, 20 lands to avoid situations where you play MM and draw MM (for making the math simple here). Those Manamorphoses are worth 39/59 of a Burn spell. You could instead play a Burn spell that's worth 100% of a Burn spell, so why play a card that is a fraction of a Burn spell where the best outcome is you draw a Burn spell? The same goes for playing 4 of them.
Deck thinning is an almost negligible effect. Your Burn spells do a fine job filling the grave for Lavamancer on their own. Fetches are played for fixing, grave, and landfall, not deck thinning.
Round 2: 20-land burn (I'll call it that cuz I don't know if it's naya with drev or full on boros)
Both games I was on the draw.
- First game he kept a risky 1 lander and didn't get lands until turn 7.
- Second game by turn 3 we were equal in life, turn 5 was dramatic when I had 1 energy and gonti's on the board, tapped out for lethal but in response lightning helix me which resolves first, triggering gonti's for 2nd energy, and deal back 3 and gain back that 3 so net lethal. Borderlinne 1 black mana helix counterspell.
Afterthoughts: I happily face mirror matches now. Last year it was boros for consistency versus naya for pain. This year I think mardu speed (18 lands) versus consistency boros (20 lands) is key. Mardu is 8 cmc lower in deck total cmc count compared to boros.
Round 3: G/b elves
- First game on the play I do a turn 5 win. 1x Searing blaze kept his turn 3 in check.
- Second game on the draw we go to somewhere turn 14 or so. A rare care of land flooding ensured I never had enough to turnabout the momentum just like how I do so for a burn mirror.
- Third game on the play I do a turn 4 win. Turns out 2 lands 2 searing blazes 1 swiftspear on hand is crazy. enough to do a turn 4 uptap, upkeep, bolt+boros to the face ftw
Round 4: Eldrazitron
- First game had a turn 5 chalice land on me. Got down to 3 life for opponent. He ghost quartered my sacred foundry and I had 2 mountains (1 on field) already and something told me to declare: refuse to find, but by the time I realized that I had already flipped my deck, and the next card was a rift bolt that I shuffled away. #regret
- Second game he didn't have a chalice until turn 6 on hand, and I ran out of threats with turn 3 and turn 4 TKS, wisely taking away my artifact hates shattering spree and rakdos charm before trying to land his chalice. Turn 8 I'm empty handed and the wurmcoil lands so I saved time by scooping as I had 2 of 3 artifact hates, in my GY already.
Sideboard needs work. I'm deciding whether or not I should rid my exquisite firecrafts and rending volley (1 of) to beef up threats instead. Last night we had no blue control decks except not-so-control grixis DS and storm. I'll think about it somemore, most likely more rakdos charms and maybe something spicy like engineered explosives, molten rain, or stay safe with grim lavamancers.
4 Goblin Guide
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Lava Spike
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rift Bolt
4 Boros Charm
4 Skullcrack
4 Searing Blaze
4 Lightning Helix
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Sacred Foundry
3 Mountain
4 Inspiring Vantage
1 Stomping Ground
3 Path to Exile
2 Deflecting Palm
4 Destructive Revelry
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Ensnaring Bridge
Right now against both decks I go +3 Path, +3 DR, +2 Bridge and -4 Eidolon and -4 Charm. For humans, if they stabilize, is my strategy to take out their guys until I can land a Bridge? Or just keep burning and hope to win the race? I played against a version with Canonist out of the sideboard to go with Meddling Mage and Thalia -- made for rough sledding when any 2 of those were on the board.
Also taking suggestions on Affinity. There's that one guy at my store I always play and he's always beating me. I usually go -4 Eidolon, -4 Spike, -1 Charm for 3x Path, 2x Palm, 4x DRev. Usually he's able to land a Ravager that I can't just deal with. Tonight I got jammed on lands so that didn't help, but I'm sure there are small tweaks I can make to get that extra 2-3 damage I need to win the game.
Finally, I'm torn about going with a Naya build with 4x AC in the main (the elconquistador1985 build) instead of the Boros + DRev build I have now. I hate losing to spreading seas and blood moon, but I'm thinking those aren't super popular right now. Thoughts?
You hit the nail on the head.
AC can be cast at the same speed of Skullcrack, I don't think anyone is saying it's slower because it cost more mana or anything like that, but playing 3 colors main slows the deck down, and opens up many potential weaknesses that Boros doesn't have.
We want to be redundant and streamlined. These weaknesses are not worth playing AC over Skullcrack. In 95% of cases, you will be using the prevent life mode. Pumping a creature get's it blocked or path/bolt/push most of the time, making it a 2 for 1 for our opponent.
With Burn I'd much rather be redundant than versatile.
Also, elconquistador19985; you made a comment about the meta not being that different from a year ago, but I disagree. Sure, a lot of the same decks are around, but with new card additions, those decks are much faster now than before. Storm got Baral, Chief of Compliance, the Amulet Titan and Scapeshift decks were separate before the Amulet ban, and now they've merged and are more streamlined (technically a new deck), Affinity has been around forever but they got several new cards, Grixis Death Shadow is new, Eldrazi Tron is new, and all of those decks are much faster than anything we had 1-2 years ago when AC was popular.
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company
Things AC is: color intensive, painful because of it, susceptible to land hate because of it, as fast because of the 3 damage mode, faster because of the pump mode, redundant because of the damage mode, versatile because of all the modes.
Things it isn't: slow, not redundant, demanding of a creature heavy build.
In your opinion, land pain and fixing risk isn't worth it. In my opinion, it is. When someone asks me why I play the card, the answer will contain my personal justification for playing the card, not the opposite. In particular, they said it requiring more creatures (it doesn't) and we're perplexed that is play it with 13 creatures instead of 16.
When I said the meta is not substantially different, I meant that its archetype composition is not substantially different and that's correct. GDS is new but it's just Jund in different colors that incidentally plays into our gameplan. Affinity is the same, so what if they got a new land? Storm plays gifts, but it's still a cake matchup that we steamroll all day. It's still not a substantially different meta that's now 80% zoo decks, or something drastically different like that. There's about as much combo as there has been for a while, as much aggro, as much midrange, as much control/tempo. It doesn't matter if affinity gets a new toy, it's still affinity and still makes up as much of the meta as it has for a while. Same restaurant, new management, slightly different menu.
Once again, if your claim is that most other decks are faster now (a claim I agree with), you should be playing AC so that you have access to a faster win than Boros. Avoiding 2 damage against another fast deck at the cost of speed doesn't necessarily win you the game.
I just don't feel Atarka's command is actually faster than Skullcrack. Here are the pro's / con's of each.
Skullcrack
Pros:
Cons:
Atarka's Command
Pro's:
Cons:
RWG Burn
GW Abzan Company
In any case, I have no problem with someone looking at the two cards and choosing to play Skullcrack. I choose Atarka's Command, someone asked me why that's the case, so I answered.
Both have a floor of 3 damage. Agreed?
Let's look at the following turns one and two of a game.
T1, Guide, Swing 2.
T2, Skullcrack, Swing 2. Total damage: 5.
T2, AC for 3 + buff the team. Swing 3. Total damage: 6.
And one creature is the worst case scenario for AC. You don't have to have a creature heavy build - our normal 12-14 creatures is fine.
The thing is, it's literally not possible for AC to be slower than Skullcrack unless damage is somehow prevented - and I've used the extra land mode on AC more often than I've cared about the damage prevention on Skullcrack.
Yes, playing it opens you up to color screw/makes you more vulnerable to land hate. If there's a significant amount of that in your meta then that's a pretty big con.