Yes, I realise that Abbot is, by definition, card advantage. I'm just commenting that in my experience, I seem to flip cards into exile more often that I play them (in reality, my guess is it's about 50/50. Let's say that we've done nothing other than play two land and two one drops on the first two turns, and have all 2-3 drops and one land in hand. A T3 Abbot has about 30 cards to hit and be able to play that turn, based on my list). Therefore, rather than frustrate myself, I enjoy nibbling away at people with my Alchemist. Each to their own!
The miss rate is really high, if that's what you're getting at. And yes, that is a problem. There was talk early on that Abbot was close to the power level of Snapcaster Mage or Dark Confidant, and that's definitely not the case. It's not even in the Augur of Bolas tier, honestly. It is a decent aggressive two-drop, sometimes it gets you a card, but it's rather mediocre in lists that aren't built around it. It works if your deck is really consistent and really low to the ground, but Standard doesn't really support something like that...
Yeah, the thinking that you might exile something you want to play is completely flawed. That Incendiary Flow is just as likely to be second from the top as it is to be on top.
Disagreed. Drawing only 1 Hurkyl's Recall in a game vs. Affinity is much better than drawing 1 Echoing Truth or Gut Shot. Actually, I think the latter two are average at best in the matchup.
If your argument is "run 4 Hurkyl's or ignore the matchup entirely," then that makes sense, but if you are specifically trying to deal with the matchup and you only have 2 slots for it, then 2 Hurkyl's is better than 0 Hurkyl's.
@GW2GuruUser7586 sadly Sin Prodder is not that good, because it can be exiled by Spell Queller or can be returned to your hand by Reflector Mage loosing your turn 3.
...so can anything else you play on turn 3 (or 4, for that matter). I don't see anyone having issues with Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh for the same reasons.
If you have a 2 drop thread on the board - having them use Reflector Mage on the sin prodder actually winds up being not so bad tempo-wise.
Personally, I do not recommend Chandra either. I wasn't a fan of her to begin with, I'll admit she's better than I thought, but I think the current meta is just hostile to red decks playing three-mana creatures if they don't do anything on the turn they enter play.
In fact, I'll go a step further and say that I also found Hanweir Garrison to be pretty terrible when I played it in SCG Baltimore, and I don't plan on playing that either at this point. As powerful as it is, you are just walking into a huge tempo loss against Company/Spirits, or a huge blowout against Languish decks. Yes, everything dies to removal as we all know, but it is important to play threats that line up well against the meta. Hero of Bladehold was a very powerful Magic card in its day, and it also completely folded to Vapor Snag and Snapcaster Mage. We have a similar problem right now. The result of this may very well be that red aggro decks continue to be non-competitive for the duration of the current Standard. But if red is going to have success (and it has historically pulled out a few surprise victories in hostile metas dominated by blue tempo!) it is going to depend on playing cheap threats and going very low to the ground, or things like Haste, strong ETB effects, protection from removal, etc.
Also, if you have a two-drop on the board and they cast Mage, then that means you have a creature and they have a similarly-sized creature, which is not ideal for the beatdown deck. If you have a one-drop, two-drop, three-drop on T3, then congratulations on curving perfectly, and it's still not necessarily a winning position if they have a Mage out.
We've discussed it in the past. It's not quite good enough. Too slow, not quite powerful enough. The bar for 3-mana threats is really high for red aggro. Goblin Rabblemaster was good enough. In general though, mono-red wants as many one and two mana spells as possible, to get under the decks that start playing on turn 3.
Another thing to consider is that some tournament players don't want signed cards, because if they run multiples of the same card, they want them to look identical. It can be a (very slight) competitive advantage, since your opponent could otherwise figure out how many copies of a card you're playing. That said, I'm not sure if signatures are any worse for the value of tournament staples than they are for casual cards.
Right. Blue spells are always going to be better in our deck because all of our colored sources make blue.
The white splash has been done, it has had some success here and there, it's not completely without merit, it just has never really been better than the mono-blue approach.
Sorcery speed is actually a huge deal, even if it might not appear to be the case on the surface.
So is the exile clause though. Remember, Pillar of Flame was a very strong card for that reason, better than Shock would have been in that Standard format. In the current metagame, the exile isn't quite as relevant, but if something like Deathmist Raptor were a major player, it would be a different story.
Lightning Strike is obviously taking a break, but not because it's "too powerful."
Primal Druid definitely does not seem like a Constructed-caliber card to me. If people do play it, I think it might be OK against red aggro, but it's not that great. I can see the similarity to Sakura-Tribe Elder, but that's like comparing Dark Confidant to Blood Scrivener. Sometimes it's a very fine line between a good card and garbage. In any case, it's not something I would be concerned about. Things that are 3 toughness are not usually a problem for red decks.
Reejerey is extremely powerful and consistent. I definitely recommend running four. The tap/untap ability can provide some massive tempo swings by untapping Islands and/or tapping blockers.
Casting two enchantments is easier than getting a PW ultimate off.
I do think that if there is a Starfield of Nyx deck, it probably plays Lunar Force, but I think it will remain a rogue deck which can win games but not consistently enough.
Obviously red got a big boost from this set, but I think one card to keep in mind is Savage Alliance which I think can be a very strong sideboard option for red decks, depending on the position of white weenie decks, the mirror, and anything else with low-toughness creatures. It will be at its best when we have 4-5 mana to put into it, as it becomes a mini-Overrun effect at that point (keep in mind how creature damage and trample interact), but even just casting it for 3 as a light instant-speed removal spell will get the job done at times.
I think TCGPlayer has given up on providing a premier play option. The MaxPoint series was not nearly as successful as the StarCityGames or Pro Tour tournament circuits. From what I understand, they had some success in the midwestern US where SCG doesn't have much of a presence, but they never got much national attention. Here in the east, there were never any TCG events so we didn't really notice a change.
The miss rate is really high, if that's what you're getting at. And yes, that is a problem. There was talk early on that Abbot was close to the power level of Snapcaster Mage or Dark Confidant, and that's definitely not the case. It's not even in the Augur of Bolas tier, honestly. It is a decent aggressive two-drop, sometimes it gets you a card, but it's rather mediocre in lists that aren't built around it. It works if your deck is really consistent and really low to the ground, but Standard doesn't really support something like that...
If your argument is "run 4 Hurkyl's or ignore the matchup entirely," then that makes sense, but if you are specifically trying to deal with the matchup and you only have 2 slots for it, then 2 Hurkyl's is better than 0 Hurkyl's.
It can't be countered by spells or abilities. Spell Queller doesn't counter, it exiles. Rending Volley absolutely can be exiled.
Personally, I do not recommend Chandra either. I wasn't a fan of her to begin with, I'll admit she's better than I thought, but I think the current meta is just hostile to red decks playing three-mana creatures if they don't do anything on the turn they enter play.
In fact, I'll go a step further and say that I also found Hanweir Garrison to be pretty terrible when I played it in SCG Baltimore, and I don't plan on playing that either at this point. As powerful as it is, you are just walking into a huge tempo loss against Company/Spirits, or a huge blowout against Languish decks. Yes, everything dies to removal as we all know, but it is important to play threats that line up well against the meta. Hero of Bladehold was a very powerful Magic card in its day, and it also completely folded to Vapor Snag and Snapcaster Mage. We have a similar problem right now. The result of this may very well be that red aggro decks continue to be non-competitive for the duration of the current Standard. But if red is going to have success (and it has historically pulled out a few surprise victories in hostile metas dominated by blue tempo!) it is going to depend on playing cheap threats and going very low to the ground, or things like Haste, strong ETB effects, protection from removal, etc.
Also, if you have a two-drop on the board and they cast Mage, then that means you have a creature and they have a similarly-sized creature, which is not ideal for the beatdown deck. If you have a one-drop, two-drop, three-drop on T3, then congratulations on curving perfectly, and it's still not necessarily a winning position if they have a Mage out.
The white splash has been done, it has had some success here and there, it's not completely without merit, it just has never really been better than the mono-blue approach.
So is the exile clause though. Remember, Pillar of Flame was a very strong card for that reason, better than Shock would have been in that Standard format. In the current metagame, the exile isn't quite as relevant, but if something like Deathmist Raptor were a major player, it would be a different story.
Lightning Strike is obviously taking a break, but not because it's "too powerful."
I do think that if there is a Starfield of Nyx deck, it probably plays Lunar Force, but I think it will remain a rogue deck which can win games but not consistently enough.