We play a lot of paper pauper with MTGO rules in my local gaming cafe, and the meta is very diverse in terms of aggro decks. What happened over here is that you've got people who've been playing for 20-odd years and they tend to know cards which folks online just don't seem to use. Dead // Gone, for example works rather well against both Delver and Angler - noone online is using it, and over here everyone's got a playset in their sideboard and it helps beat Delver up. We also brewed up plenty of tweaks for decks which otherwise have lousy matchups or fatal flaws - Self Assembler, for example, completely changes the tendency of Mono Black Ponza to run out of threats.
People fear Goblins more than they do Delver around here, and we've had multiple guys who are decent players but have been playing MTG for only about 5 years or so try to get into pauper by buying up the most cutting edge delver list... and failing to dominate the competition as much as the online lists would suggest. They literally quit the moment it became clear to them that Delver isn't nearly as dominant as they thought, and they sold me (I organize these things) their decks. I rent decks to people who don't have them for 1 E, and folks don't even want to rent delvers, because they're not winning tourneys.
Similar thing with Tron. Several Modern players tried to get into pauper because they had tron decks in Modern. Didn't work, some did well, others did badly, depends on the tourney. But not one won a tourney yet. Part of it is that they don't put Self-Assemblers in their Trons because those don't seem to be on net deck lists, so they end up having way too low threat density. Last time around a young guy who otherwise won every draft we did in the last several months left the tourney completely spooked because it was the first time he faced G/x Madness in his life and he literally kept repeating "What do I even do against a deck like that?" afterwards despite walking into the place all cocky and sure he was going to beat everyone up with the internet approved Tron list... He really didn't expect to get his ass handed to him by anyone, let alone a deck with no blue in it. He had plenty of reasons to believe he was a great player, and he is, but he literally never faced a Wild Mongrel deck before in his life and it was probably the first time he had to ask himself whether the internet could actually be wrong about something. And it can.
Another birght and very good young guy changed his deck to include Dead Weight after the last tourney. The prospect of playing vs Wild Mongrel without something that can kill him for sure was just terrifying.
Last five tourneys the winners were Mono Black Control (not even fully "put together"), Deep Hours Aggro (yes, it's a "Delver" but what won it were Spire Golems in a close 2 - 1 finals vs. Goblins), then it was Elves, then it was Mono Black Ponza (without Chittering Rats in it) and now RG Madness. Notice how only one of the mentioned decks has blue in it (and not one of the others ran even Gitaxian Probe).
I'm not sure what the deal is with the online meta, but if anything seems dominant from over here it's colors with access to either board wipes (red, black) or decks with access to repeatable removal (Pestilence, Kris Mage, Sparksmith etc.). And even they're not necessarily dominant as privy to stuff that really gives you free wins vs. certain otherwise powerful decks.
I do agree that Blue could stand to lose something, probably Delver of Secrets, and that everything with Delve and Bojuka Bog probably ought to be banned. Anything with Delve ends up being stupidly undercosted and playable in way too many decks (and flat out better than otherwise fine cards which simply aren't 5/5 or 4/4 trample for 1). And Bojuka Bog shuts down too many things with too little effort and no way around it - without the major delve threats that kind of thing probably wouldn't be necessary.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
We play a lot of paper pauper with MTGO rules in my local gaming cafe, and the meta is very diverse in terms of aggro decks. What happened over here is that you've got people who've been playing for 20-odd years and they tend to know cards which folks online just don't seem to use. Dead // Gone, for example works rather well against both Delver and Angler - noone online is using it, and over here everyone's got a playset in their sideboard and it helps beat Delver up. We also brewed up plenty of tweaks for decks which otherwise have lousy matchups or fatal flaws - Self Assembler, for example, completely changes the tendency of Mono Black Ponza to run out of threats.
Dead//Gone is an interesting card but U has about a billion ways to play around it or counter it. With all their free counter and counter the tempo loss after casting a failed Dead//Gone you might as well hang it up.
A decent pilot of mono U control or UB Control can usually gum up most decks long enough to establish a dominant board state against all but the absolute fastest decks. Blue has too many tools in my book. I think I would prefer your meta, wherever you are.
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STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
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I know, and I agree - blue really does have too much silly bussiness going on. But there's plenty of cards and silly stuff that does work against blue and has its applications elsewhere. Dead // Gone for example also does a number on RB Reanimator of which a few are floating around, and a resolved Sparksmith, especially in a non-goblin deck, really messess a lot of decks. After taking a good look at Delver and acknowledging that it's nasty bussiness folks retooled red decks to account for it - Firebolts in place of Lightning Bolts, Kris Mages, Sparksmiths, red Martyrs, Squall in green decks, even that silly green thing from Judgement which takes someone's flying off and flashbacks. We've got a rather good Mono White skies/metalcraft thingy with a ton of cheap fliers which gets under Ponza's due to the low curve and challenges Delvers in the air easily. Gruul Aggro and Goblins/RDW seem to go wide fast enough. It's not that everyone beats Delver all the time, it's that one time Delver can do well, but the next time it can crash and burn, and even if it does do well it's not remotely guaranteed to win the thing.
Oh and we have hilarious mono green infect nonsense going on, too. The guy piloting it decided to go for consistency rather than speed, so he put Llanowar Elves and more Lotus Petals in there to make sure he can chain a tiny bit more expensive pumps, and now he's running Predator's Strike and that one with flashback from Odissey that used to be uncommon. They give trample, and the setup lets him play a 3 mana infect guy on turn 2, and this tends to make him way more dangerous than you'd expect. Having Delver be a "dooooh" must-play choice for people playing pauper kills exploration of that sort, as the routine for new players seems to be a) get Delver / Tron b) don't destroy everyone c) sell deck give up. Delver variants with snow lands being enticing due to what red brings to the table is also a lousy thing because that just adds more money to what you have to pay to get into pauper if you're convinced there's no choice buy to play blue (and Delver decks are already seriously more expensive than pretty much anything else).
I'd agree that blue having access to stuff that's banned in legacy for good reasons hurts the format a lot and that something ought to be done about it. The way things are now you've got people getting into Pauper only because it's the place where they can play cards they know are broken (and banned) in Legacy, and this helps create a flood of Delver decks. And it also discourages other people from trying to get into it because all they hear about Pauper is that it's "that format where you can play broken legacy cards and blue makes up all the metagame" so it sounds boring AF.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
I'd agree that blue having access to stuff that's banned in legacy for good reasons hurts the format a lot and that something ought to be done about it. The way things are now you've got people getting into Pauper only because it's the place where they can play cards they know are broken (and banned) in Legacy, and this helps create a flood of Delver decks. And it also discourages other people from trying to get into it because all they hear about Pauper is that it's "that format where you can play broken legacy cards and blue makes up all the metagame" so it sounds boring AF.
Agreed. We also need stronger non-blue creatures as well. Some more downgrades from uncommon in the very near future would be nice. For instance Lightning Mare.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
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Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I'm not sure it's downgrades from uncommon we need, as those can be hit or miss. A lot of nonsense is caused by cards which never should have been common in the first place being available in a format where a vast majority of things simply can't compete with them. If you downgrade stuff from higher rarities, what you get is just more stuff that gets to be common even if it was never meant to be one, just in this case explicitly.
Delve creatures, and Gurmag Angler in particular, are causing a lot of harm to the format because they're making a rather large field look tiny. Most of the mechanics which produced above the curve creatures are available in Pauper with just commons. You've got:
- Madness
- Affinity
- Undercosted red attackers w/wo downside
- Threshold
- Infect
- Double Strike (there's a Boros Double Strike build which plays pretty much like Infect)
- Metalcraft
- Devotion / Mimics
- Domain
And probably stuff I'm overlooking right now, but they're all landmark critters for times and archetypes where mechanics and designs caused even common dudes to be pretty large for the casting cost. OG madness guys were costed as if Madness was a downside, Infect guys were costed as if they didn't effectively have double-strike, Threshold guys used to be Tarmogoyf before there was Tarmogoyf, double-strike guys which are playable were actually designed as uncommons, Metalcraft was meant to be played against similarly undercosted-by-design infect and looks plain broken in a meta where the other guys don't also have effectively double the power and damage which doesn't go away, and some mimics and their support are pretty huge for what you pay for them (and effortlessly played in mono decks). Domain flat out gives you above the curve effects provided you can get domain, and this includes dudes Except some of them don't even need full domain). Those are just examples, I could go into a few more.
The problem is that all of that still doesn't hold a candle to a 5/5 for one. Or ever for 2. Especially when it doesn't take very much to enable it's cheapness. That card could've been a Mythic. And it would not have been a crap Mythic, either. It's only as cheap as it is because it was a common in a large print run set which got opened a ton. I'm not sure what you could downshift, and how many cards per color would need to be downshifted, in order to get the other dudes to compete with that. Plenty of the guys that fall into the above categories have at one time or another pushed rares out of regular constructed decklists themselves. Some are or were staples in various formats. Many of them are flat out design mistakes and most folks who played them in regular constructed can agree either that those were design mistakes, that their Standard metas were remarkably high-power, and/or that those should not have ever been commons to begin with.
So what Delver and Angler are doing is not being "exceptional commons", they're pushing around cards and archetypes which were terrifying enough to hold their own against cards from higher rarities. Hooting Mandrils I can get behind because if Arrogant Wurm and Reckless Wurm are now commons, and that's plenty dodgy but at least they give payoffs to an archetype, and Carapace Forger is a thing, then a cheap 4/4 might be ok. They'd make a really good uncommon. But if you try to find comparisons for Gurmag Angler, you're in Tarmogoyf territory. Now try to explain to someone that "pretty much a tarmogoyf" is legal in an all-commons format.
Sorry for long windedness, in short, I feel like it's nore even possible to match some cards by downshifting, because there's nothing much to downshift which wouldn't either fail to keep the problem in check, or just add to the pile of "how is this a common" nonsense that's kind of piling up.
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"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
There would have to be a ton of cards banned using your paradigm I'm afraid. I'm okay for bans in Pauper, but there are so many overpowered commons that it pushes any halfway decent common out of the format. It would be easier to print or downgrade cards into the format that have a ban-fest that may be needed to clean it up.
Without Wizards official endorsement of the format we are probably going to see neither and a continual degradation of the format into a more narrow and even more blue-centric format.
Frankly I think a couple of things that could help the format would be cheaper land destruction like Ghost Quarter or Strip Mine, some sort of Man-land and some access to creatures that are uncounterable as I mentioned above. I don't think they are a format fix, more of a band-aid but I think it could help.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
What I was complaining about in the previous post wasn't every single overly pushed common or design mistake, there's way too many to ban, ofc. I was trying to explain that Delve specifically is a problem. Because even in format where there's so many above the curve "not-really-commons", Gurmag Angler is still just plain larger and cheaper and raises the bar way too high. I really think the format would be much healthier without him in many ways. There are things avaliable in Pauper which only got pushed out of rather nasty formats by Tarmogoyf, and they're not being played in all-commons because of Angler. I think that really warrants a ban.
It's also very unlikely they'll print a creature for pauper which can be a viable alternative to Angler. How do you top an unconditional 5/5 for 1? At any rarity, let alone common?
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
I'm with you. I'd be okay on a Delver and Angler ban. I'd just like to see more aggressively costed red and green creatures to try to keep up with all the crazy blue, black and white creatures in the format.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
why not restrict the problem cards instead? delver at 1, angler at 1, gush at 1. isn't gush at one in legacy anyway? The meta doesn't change much but you are forced to run less "broken" stuff in the same decks and face answers of the same power.
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Latest proof this forum is a trashfire:
Your authoritarianism will be the reason the company suffers another 60M in losses.
Gush and the cantrips probably should go. Inside out combo would be a side-casualty though. The ninja card in u/r delver would be a distant third for a ban target too.
Faulty manabases also share a lot of the blame. The best lands are stuff like dimir aquaduct, which naturally pushes people into blue/black. Putrid leach and quasali pridemage should be seeing more play but they need untapped dual lands at common.
I'd be okay on restrictions as well, but outside of Legacy/Vintage it doesn't seem to happen.
Manabase is an issue, but blue can do a lot of powerful things with just one island. Other colors not even close.
With the Jan. 21st date coming I'd like to see something happen but I think Wizards has ZERO interest in Pauper right now and no incentive to get interested as well.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
With the Jan. 21st date coming I'd like to see something happen but I think Wizards has ZERO interest in Pauper right now and no incentive to get interested as well.
This is not true, actually. They did all they could to get certain archetypes into pauper. Madness for example. Their policy on what gets to be uncommon also seems to be taking pauper into account.
What I'd like them to finally get over with would be to resolve the whole paper and online mess in any way they can. Get everything that was ever common to be playable, and then they could properly sort the format out.
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"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
With the Jan. 21st date coming I'd like to see something happen but I think Wizards has ZERO interest in Pauper right now and no incentive to get interested as well.
This is not true, actually. They did all they could to get certain archetypes into pauper. Madness for example. Their policy on what gets to be uncommon also seems to be taking pauper into account.
What I'd like them to finally get over with would be to resolve the whole paper and online mess in any way they can. Get everything that was ever common to be playable, and then they could properly sort the format out.
That they don't sort the two out shows that they don't really give a fig about the format. The format doesn't make them money. I believe they kind of look at it as an annoyance and have to do something about it every once in a while as more people become interested. Sure they downshift, which I'm glad they do. They take Pauper into account, but its basically last in line unfortunately. I will be shocked if they ban something coming on the 21st. I wish I could share your optimism. I can't.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Gush and the cantrips probably should go. Inside out combo would be a side-casualty though.
Speaking of this, I just put together an Inside Out Combo deck to rent to the guys, but since noone rented it I went to give it a spin. And having this discussion on my mind I decided to try out a bit of a toolbox approach with Dizzy Spell and to try out Fathom Seer. Gush was always a pretty silly card and having the effect actually cost you something (but leave behind a dude!) seemed... more then fine.
I got second place at an 8-man tourney. Drew the first round vs. Burn, got a 2 - 1 win vs. Affinity and a 2 - 1 vs. Infect. I think the combo is fine enough that you could just go 4 Fathom Seer if, say, Gush is banned. This deck in particular doesn't care about the cost of gushing as long as it puts a lot of cards in its hand, and getting a chump-blocking / edict eating dude to go with your gush is quite easy to appreciate.
Also, I'm not even sure the deck needs Inside Out as such. A one-mana blue card which swaps power and toughness would be tutorable with Dizzy Spell, which means you could go for all of it, Tireless Tribe and Slip Through Space. And Dizzy Spell actually came in handy vs Infect, while all my million cantrips and digging couldn't find me an Inside Out in my second game vs. Affinity. On the other hand, drawing a card with Inside Out doesn't really matter as when it resolves the Tribe is almost always as pumped as it's going to be. (Even though I did use it to swap p/t on one of my Augurs and kill an infect dude, and once to flip-kill a Thermo-Alchemist).
Also, if you're not really going for speed, counting that you won't really have all the necessary combo pieces fast enough to profit from the quick kill potential (you do need 4 things - Tribe, swap, unblockable and gush), and go for Merfolk Thaumaturgist as swap effect backup... then Dizzy Spell doubles as proper removal.
So, um, there seems to be more than one way to build that deck.
"Masques Block is the worst block ever! There's not one decent card in there! The whole internet say's so, you're literally the only person who ever said it was good!" - random noob in a conversation with an Eldrazi.
Before UMA I used to think that Delver being borderline OP was good for the format because it kept other degenerate decks in check and was itself fun and interactive.
Gush & Foil go too far now.
Gush and foil need to be banned. Sure, that hurts Tribe and Blitz but those are uninteractive combo decks that:
1.) Shouldn't exist anyways.
2.) Have reasonable alternative cards.
Additionally, Ghostly Flicker, Displace (and any other Flicker facsimiles) and potentially the Tron lands need to go also. There really is nothing holding Tron back from being the best deck in the format except the tedious nature of playing it online. All the deck needs to do is get to turn 5 and then the game is over, it's terrible for the state of the game. Without Flicker they'd have to:
1.) Go with Eggs/Fangren Marauder and Rolling Thunder, which can be stopped reasonably easily.
2.) Use Rhystic Circle, which dies to enchantment removal.
3.) Resolve Self-Assemblers and Ulamog's Crushers or other fatties, which can be dealt with in a reasonable manner.
I was really expecting a Gush ban today. I tought "hey, if they downgraded Foil they must know that Gush is OP".
Not to be.
I read the thread and I think there are lots of waysto reduce U's supremacy. Restrict cards, improve manabases so cards like Terminate or Putrid Leech stop being fringe, or unban Invigorate or downgrade some other cards.
I think we are in a "if you can't beat them, join them" moment. I quitted Modern because I was sick and tired of losing to cards like Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, and the like. I have been playing pauper for a year now and I feel that if I really want to stop losing to Blue, I should just play Blue.
Maybe that's what WotC wants too, as Pauper reached the Pro Tour.
We've heard some recent discussion amongst the Pauper community about the potentially problematic interaction between Gush and Foil, the latter of which was recently added to the environment through Ultimate Masters. While our metagame data indicates that taking action at this time would be premature, we'll watch the format as decks adjust to play with and against this combination. We appreciate continued community feedback on this topic through discussion on forums, in articles, and on social media.
Looks like they may be listening. I'm hoping they end up banning both, although I'd settle for one at least. As for their metagame data it should show that most all of the top cards played are blue and these cards show up there as well. As for the decks adjusting to this, its just plain stupid, you don't. The free spells are free and the only way to counter them is to use them. The effects are leaps and bounds better than anything else out there. I don't know what they are waiting for.
I think we are in a "if you can't beat them, join them" moment. I quitted Modern because I was sick and tired of losing to cards like Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, and the like. I have been playing pauper for a year now and I feel that if I really want to stop losing to Blue, I should just play Blue.
Agreed and that isn't healthy for the format. They need to continue deeper into blue as well. A simple ban of Gush isn't going to slow down the Blue dominance in the meta. It needs more plain and simple. They aren't willing to print strong creature cards at common so the format is going to continue to degenerate into everyone plays or splashes blue to compete.
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STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
The free spells are free and the only way to counter them is to use them. The effects are leaps and bounds better than anything else out there. I don't know what they are waiting for.
I think a deck of 20 Sacred Cat, 20 Battle Screech, and 20 Plains will beat a deck of 30 Foil, 1 Spire Golem, and 30 Islands anytime. That's a hypothetical thought experiment, but you get the gist...cards with inherent card advantage can out-grind the free spells.
cards with inherent card advantage can out-grind the free spells.
They can but when you combine the free spells with the card advantage and tempo in blue and with another color then it pulls ahead again.
At this rate the entire meta is going to be Blue Delver variants, Boros and Tron (which is basically a blue variant). I think there are a whole lot of "unfun" cards out there in the meta. Prismatic Strands is one of those. But with that said you aren't casting either of those mentioned until turn 3 or 4, where Foil and Gush are played turns 1 and 2, a huge tempo advantage. There are way to many good fog effects, creature stoppers and damage preventers as well that plain overpower whatever creatures are out there. The format needs better creatures in colors that don't rhyme with shoe. And it needs to slow down blue a bit, don't nerf it, just restrain it a little to open up the format a bit, imo.
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STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
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People fear Goblins more than they do Delver around here, and we've had multiple guys who are decent players but have been playing MTG for only about 5 years or so try to get into pauper by buying up the most cutting edge delver list... and failing to dominate the competition as much as the online lists would suggest. They literally quit the moment it became clear to them that Delver isn't nearly as dominant as they thought, and they sold me (I organize these things) their decks. I rent decks to people who don't have them for 1 E, and folks don't even want to rent delvers, because they're not winning tourneys.
Similar thing with Tron. Several Modern players tried to get into pauper because they had tron decks in Modern. Didn't work, some did well, others did badly, depends on the tourney. But not one won a tourney yet. Part of it is that they don't put Self-Assemblers in their Trons because those don't seem to be on net deck lists, so they end up having way too low threat density. Last time around a young guy who otherwise won every draft we did in the last several months left the tourney completely spooked because it was the first time he faced G/x Madness in his life and he literally kept repeating "What do I even do against a deck like that?" afterwards despite walking into the place all cocky and sure he was going to beat everyone up with the internet approved Tron list... He really didn't expect to get his ass handed to him by anyone, let alone a deck with no blue in it. He had plenty of reasons to believe he was a great player, and he is, but he literally never faced a Wild Mongrel deck before in his life and it was probably the first time he had to ask himself whether the internet could actually be wrong about something. And it can.
Another birght and very good young guy changed his deck to include Dead Weight after the last tourney. The prospect of playing vs Wild Mongrel without something that can kill him for sure was just terrifying.
Last five tourneys the winners were Mono Black Control (not even fully "put together"), Deep Hours Aggro (yes, it's a "Delver" but what won it were Spire Golems in a close 2 - 1 finals vs. Goblins), then it was Elves, then it was Mono Black Ponza (without Chittering Rats in it) and now RG Madness. Notice how only one of the mentioned decks has blue in it (and not one of the others ran even Gitaxian Probe).
I'm not sure what the deal is with the online meta, but if anything seems dominant from over here it's colors with access to either board wipes (red, black) or decks with access to repeatable removal (Pestilence, Kris Mage, Sparksmith etc.). And even they're not necessarily dominant as privy to stuff that really gives you free wins vs. certain otherwise powerful decks.
I do agree that Blue could stand to lose something, probably Delver of Secrets, and that everything with Delve and Bojuka Bog probably ought to be banned. Anything with Delve ends up being stupidly undercosted and playable in way too many decks (and flat out better than otherwise fine cards which simply aren't 5/5 or 4/4 trample for 1). And Bojuka Bog shuts down too many things with too little effort and no way around it - without the major delve threats that kind of thing probably wouldn't be necessary.
Dead//Gone is an interesting card but U has about a billion ways to play around it or counter it. With all their free counter and counter the tempo loss after casting a failed Dead//Gone you might as well hang it up.
A decent pilot of mono U control or UB Control can usually gum up most decks long enough to establish a dominant board state against all but the absolute fastest decks. Blue has too many tools in my book. I think I would prefer your meta, wherever you are.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Oh and we have hilarious mono green infect nonsense going on, too. The guy piloting it decided to go for consistency rather than speed, so he put Llanowar Elves and more Lotus Petals in there to make sure he can chain a tiny bit more expensive pumps, and now he's running Predator's Strike and that one with flashback from Odissey that used to be uncommon. They give trample, and the setup lets him play a 3 mana infect guy on turn 2, and this tends to make him way more dangerous than you'd expect. Having Delver be a "dooooh" must-play choice for people playing pauper kills exploration of that sort, as the routine for new players seems to be a) get Delver / Tron b) don't destroy everyone c) sell deck give up. Delver variants with snow lands being enticing due to what red brings to the table is also a lousy thing because that just adds more money to what you have to pay to get into pauper if you're convinced there's no choice buy to play blue (and Delver decks are already seriously more expensive than pretty much anything else).
I'd agree that blue having access to stuff that's banned in legacy for good reasons hurts the format a lot and that something ought to be done about it. The way things are now you've got people getting into Pauper only because it's the place where they can play cards they know are broken (and banned) in Legacy, and this helps create a flood of Delver decks. And it also discourages other people from trying to get into it because all they hear about Pauper is that it's "that format where you can play broken legacy cards and blue makes up all the metagame" so it sounds boring AF.
Agreed. We also need stronger non-blue creatures as well. Some more downgrades from uncommon in the very near future would be nice. For instance Lightning Mare.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Delve creatures, and Gurmag Angler in particular, are causing a lot of harm to the format because they're making a rather large field look tiny. Most of the mechanics which produced above the curve creatures are available in Pauper with just commons. You've got:
- Madness
- Affinity
- Undercosted red attackers w/wo downside
- Threshold
- Infect
- Double Strike (there's a Boros Double Strike build which plays pretty much like Infect)
- Metalcraft
- Devotion / Mimics
- Domain
And probably stuff I'm overlooking right now, but they're all landmark critters for times and archetypes where mechanics and designs caused even common dudes to be pretty large for the casting cost. OG madness guys were costed as if Madness was a downside, Infect guys were costed as if they didn't effectively have double-strike, Threshold guys used to be Tarmogoyf before there was Tarmogoyf, double-strike guys which are playable were actually designed as uncommons, Metalcraft was meant to be played against similarly undercosted-by-design infect and looks plain broken in a meta where the other guys don't also have effectively double the power and damage which doesn't go away, and some mimics and their support are pretty huge for what you pay for them (and effortlessly played in mono decks). Domain flat out gives you above the curve effects provided you can get domain, and this includes dudes Except some of them don't even need full domain). Those are just examples, I could go into a few more.
The problem is that all of that still doesn't hold a candle to a 5/5 for one. Or ever for 2. Especially when it doesn't take very much to enable it's cheapness. That card could've been a Mythic. And it would not have been a crap Mythic, either. It's only as cheap as it is because it was a common in a large print run set which got opened a ton. I'm not sure what you could downshift, and how many cards per color would need to be downshifted, in order to get the other dudes to compete with that. Plenty of the guys that fall into the above categories have at one time or another pushed rares out of regular constructed decklists themselves. Some are or were staples in various formats. Many of them are flat out design mistakes and most folks who played them in regular constructed can agree either that those were design mistakes, that their Standard metas were remarkably high-power, and/or that those should not have ever been commons to begin with.
So what Delver and Angler are doing is not being "exceptional commons", they're pushing around cards and archetypes which were terrifying enough to hold their own against cards from higher rarities. Hooting Mandrils I can get behind because if Arrogant Wurm and Reckless Wurm are now commons, and that's plenty dodgy but at least they give payoffs to an archetype, and Carapace Forger is a thing, then a cheap 4/4 might be ok. They'd make a really good uncommon. But if you try to find comparisons for Gurmag Angler, you're in Tarmogoyf territory. Now try to explain to someone that "pretty much a tarmogoyf" is legal in an all-commons format.
Sorry for long windedness, in short, I feel like it's nore even possible to match some cards by downshifting, because there's nothing much to downshift which wouldn't either fail to keep the problem in check, or just add to the pile of "how is this a common" nonsense that's kind of piling up.
Without Wizards official endorsement of the format we are probably going to see neither and a continual degradation of the format into a more narrow and even more blue-centric format.
Frankly I think a couple of things that could help the format would be cheaper land destruction like Ghost Quarter or Strip Mine, some sort of Man-land and some access to creatures that are uncounterable as I mentioned above. I don't think they are a format fix, more of a band-aid but I think it could help.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
What I was complaining about in the previous post wasn't every single overly pushed common or design mistake, there's way too many to ban, ofc. I was trying to explain that Delve specifically is a problem. Because even in format where there's so many above the curve "not-really-commons", Gurmag Angler is still just plain larger and cheaper and raises the bar way too high. I really think the format would be much healthier without him in many ways. There are things avaliable in Pauper which only got pushed out of rather nasty formats by Tarmogoyf, and they're not being played in all-commons because of Angler. I think that really warrants a ban.
It's also very unlikely they'll print a creature for pauper which can be a viable alternative to Angler. How do you top an unconditional 5/5 for 1? At any rarity, let alone common?
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Manabase is an issue, but blue can do a lot of powerful things with just one island. Other colors not even close.
With the Jan. 21st date coming I'd like to see something happen but I think Wizards has ZERO interest in Pauper right now and no incentive to get interested as well.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
This is not true, actually. They did all they could to get certain archetypes into pauper. Madness for example. Their policy on what gets to be uncommon also seems to be taking pauper into account.
What I'd like them to finally get over with would be to resolve the whole paper and online mess in any way they can. Get everything that was ever common to be playable, and then they could properly sort the format out.
That they don't sort the two out shows that they don't really give a fig about the format. The format doesn't make them money. I believe they kind of look at it as an annoyance and have to do something about it every once in a while as more people become interested. Sure they downshift, which I'm glad they do. They take Pauper into account, but its basically last in line unfortunately. I will be shocked if they ban something coming on the 21st. I wish I could share your optimism. I can't.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Speaking of this, I just put together an Inside Out Combo deck to rent to the guys, but since noone rented it I went to give it a spin. And having this discussion on my mind I decided to try out a bit of a toolbox approach with Dizzy Spell and to try out Fathom Seer. Gush was always a pretty silly card and having the effect actually cost you something (but leave behind a dude!) seemed... more then fine.
I got second place at an 8-man tourney. Drew the first round vs. Burn, got a 2 - 1 win vs. Affinity and a 2 - 1 vs. Infect. I think the combo is fine enough that you could just go 4 Fathom Seer if, say, Gush is banned. This deck in particular doesn't care about the cost of gushing as long as it puts a lot of cards in its hand, and getting a chump-blocking / edict eating dude to go with your gush is quite easy to appreciate.
Also, I'm not even sure the deck needs Inside Out as such. A one-mana blue card which swaps power and toughness would be tutorable with Dizzy Spell, which means you could go for all of it, Tireless Tribe and Slip Through Space. And Dizzy Spell actually came in handy vs Infect, while all my million cantrips and digging couldn't find me an Inside Out in my second game vs. Affinity. On the other hand, drawing a card with Inside Out doesn't really matter as when it resolves the Tribe is almost always as pumped as it's going to be. (Even though I did use it to swap p/t on one of my Augurs and kill an infect dude, and once to flip-kill a Thermo-Alchemist).
Also, if you're not really going for speed, counting that you won't really have all the necessary combo pieces fast enough to profit from the quick kill potential (you do need 4 things - Tribe, swap, unblockable and gush), and go for Merfolk Thaumaturgist as swap effect backup... then Dizzy Spell doubles as proper removal.
So, um, there seems to be more than one way to build that deck.
Gush & Foil go too far now.
Gush and foil need to be banned. Sure, that hurts Tribe and Blitz but those are uninteractive combo decks that:
1.) Shouldn't exist anyways.
2.) Have reasonable alternative cards.
Additionally, Ghostly Flicker, Displace (and any other Flicker facsimiles) and potentially the Tron lands need to go also. There really is nothing holding Tron back from being the best deck in the format except the tedious nature of playing it online. All the deck needs to do is get to turn 5 and then the game is over, it's terrible for the state of the game. Without Flicker they'd have to:
1.) Go with Eggs/Fangren Marauder and Rolling Thunder, which can be stopped reasonably easily.
2.) Use Rhystic Circle, which dies to enchantment removal.
3.) Resolve Self-Assemblers and Ulamog's Crushers or other fatties, which can be dealt with in a reasonable manner.
Ignoring what Magic players say isn't the answer, it's listening to what they have to say and doing the exact opposite that's correct.
I was really expecting a Gush ban today. I tought "hey, if they downgraded Foil they must know that Gush is OP".
Not to be.
I read the thread and I think there are lots of waysto reduce U's supremacy. Restrict cards, improve manabases so cards like Terminate or Putrid Leech stop being fringe, or unban Invigorate or downgrade some other cards.
I think we are in a "if you can't beat them, join them" moment. I quitted Modern because I was sick and tired of losing to cards like Rest in Peace, Stony Silence, and the like. I have been playing pauper for a year now and I feel that if I really want to stop losing to Blue, I should just play Blue.
Maybe that's what WotC wants too, as Pauper reached the Pro Tour.
Looks like they may be listening. I'm hoping they end up banning both, although I'd settle for one at least. As for their metagame data it should show that most all of the top cards played are blue and these cards show up there as well. As for the decks adjusting to this, its just plain stupid, you don't. The free spells are free and the only way to counter them is to use them. The effects are leaps and bounds better than anything else out there. I don't know what they are waiting for.
Agreed and that isn't healthy for the format. They need to continue deeper into blue as well. A simple ban of Gush isn't going to slow down the Blue dominance in the meta. It needs more plain and simple. They aren't willing to print strong creature cards at common so the format is going to continue to degenerate into everyone plays or splashes blue to compete.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
If you look at the most recent MTGO Pauper Challenge results, the Top 8 has 3 Boros Monarch decks, 1 UB Delver, and 1 U Delver. Those concrete results would suggest that Battle Screech and Prismatic Strands are much stronger than Gush and Foil.
I think a deck of 20 Sacred Cat, 20 Battle Screech, and 20 Plains will beat a deck of 30 Foil, 1 Spire Golem, and 30 Islands anytime. That's a hypothetical thought experiment, but you get the gist...cards with inherent card advantage can out-grind the free spells.
Corrupt Control B | Burn R | UG Turbofog UG | White Weenie W | GW Tethmos WG | BG Cycling Combo BG
Enchantress GBW | Colorless Tron C | Red Deck Wins R | UG Madness UG | Mono-G Tron G | UR Puzzlehorns UR
Rhystic Tron WU| WU Prowess WU | BR Reanimator BR | Mono-R Control R | Stompy G | Temur Tron URG
Mardu Infinite Priest WBR | 85-Card Dredge BRG | Elves GU | Boros Bully RW | Jeskai Familiars RWU
They can but when you combine the free spells with the card advantage and tempo in blue and with another color then it pulls ahead again.
At this rate the entire meta is going to be Blue Delver variants, Boros and Tron (which is basically a blue variant). I think there are a whole lot of "unfun" cards out there in the meta. Prismatic Strands is one of those. But with that said you aren't casting either of those mentioned until turn 3 or 4, where Foil and Gush are played turns 1 and 2, a huge tempo advantage. There are way to many good fog effects, creature stoppers and damage preventers as well that plain overpower whatever creatures are out there. The format needs better creatures in colors that don't rhyme with shoe. And it needs to slow down blue a bit, don't nerf it, just restrain it a little to open up the format a bit, imo.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."