Thought I'd update and say I went to the shop to pickup the cards I needed. Surprisingly I got the suns I needed,even more surprisingly they only had 2 drakes >.< Looks like I'm sticking with UR control this week.
I mean, if you got the time, feel free. However I don't think anyone has said that it. You're talking as if it's not a threat and well...I think perhaps you're the one who's delusional with that mindset. Fighting fire with fire isn't the worst thing you can do in a control mirror. I play UR. If you play a sphinx, sure I can play my own, however without having black or white in my colors, I'm more likely to lose as you have tools at your disposal ie sac spells and lands, and I...don't. Not without a lot of luck and 2 for 1'ing myself anyway. I'm not trying to be condescending in my posts, I'm trying to be helpful. You're trying to write of a card with poor merit, I'm just trying to get you to rethink your evaluation before you write it off altogether.
Because even in the control mirror, the edge usually goes to whoever can maintain a board presence. I'm not saying Kefnet is the "end all, be all." I'm saying I like how it stacks up more in the control mirror a lot more than Sphinx. My whole strategy against control is to force them to respond to me or my board so I can fight the spell war on my terms. If I happen to run you down on resources or catch you with your defenses down, it's generally lights out. Let's not forget that counter magic isn't what it used to be. Efficient spells and cantrips are essentially gone. That's a big reason why I still board in Baral against control decks. That guy living for a few turns can be brutal. Amother issue I've seen locally is relying too hard on counter magic is the folly of every single control mage at my LGS. Apparently people don't remember or never learned how to play through counter magic. I'm not saying that's what you're doing all of these things, but I can't imagine what else your plan is if you're trying to wait until turn 12 to cinch the win. We need to be able to close a game inside of 10 minutes if you plan on winning a long match.
My plan is to make land drops, sculpt a hand to keep their side of the board clean, then deploy threats at the appropriate time. You know...control.
So what are you going to do when your only plan goes sideways? Let's say you get matched with a tap out control opponent. All they do is attempt to land haymaker after haymaker until the dam breaks. You might have every perfect answer on each and every turn. Odds are that you won't. That's why I'm always looking for my path to victory instead of sitting back and weathering the storm.
That's kinda the point I wanted you to bring home and why I brought up Sphinx. More often than not, you aren't going to be matched against tap out control, you're going to be matched against UR control, which is 15% of the meta. Sphinx is generally a 4 turn clock that protects your gearhulk casts. That's a pretty decent value if you ask me, and the only answer I personally have in my 75 is Summary Dismissal. I fear it a lot more than I do Kefnet, generally. I could be wrong though, but IME I've lost to sphinx a lot more than I have kefnet because I can generally keep a decent grip of counters or at least dig to one.
I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with your mana base. 22 lands even with 4 copies of attune when you are wanting to be able to hit 6 lands t6 while maintaining open mana for your counter package seems sketchy at best. I could be way off, it just seems awkward to me. Again, my off the top of my head math could be way off. I do agree with your thoughts on flames over suns in this case as well. The only downside is the possibility of a dead card pending on matchup while suns is never dead. That being the only downside though...
Not to backtrack, but can we readdress the reasons you guys dislike Sphinx? I see 2 cards that are rarely played as a reason it isn't played...and um...every time I've used it against control it's dominated. Every time it's been used against me, I've struggled to pull 2 copies of Suns. I keep 1 copy in my sideboard. Haven't had a good reason not to keep it even considering alliance and glare. And if people keep Fumigate in versus me, I'm kinda ok with that.
I seriously had to look up the legality of Sphinx of Magosi considering the card was only showing up as RoE and COM. Welcome deck '16 folks, save yourself the hassle, I was proven wrong today /wrists
@Tiemuuu, I'm not the one disagreeing with you. I'm the one defending the current standard in all actuality. Review my previous posts in the past day or two. I was simply saying that it's not quite as diverse as some seasons, but just as diverse if not more so than others. It's standard, you either like it or you don't. This isn't my favorite season, but it's far from the worst.
I'm just saying the general power level of the color pie was there where you could make decent decks. The top tier decks of the format wasn't an auto loss to a decently constructed brew. As I said, you could do that in RTR/THS standard, and even more so when RTR rotated and we had KTK block.
I'm just saying the general power level of the color pie was there where you could make decent decks. The top tier decks of the format wasn't an auto loss to a decently constructed brew. As I said, you could do that in RTR/THS standard, and even more so when RTR rotated and we had KTK block.
That's not entirely true. RTR/Theros standard and to perhaps more an extent Theros/KTK standard I quite literally had dozens of variations of decks I could play at a somewhat competitive level.
You're probably right, I just remember during that time before I hopped on Esper control I was on Gruul and Jund aggro and almost couldn't compete because every serious tournament I went to that was the deck to beat. Perhaps reanimator would have been the better example there.
Let me rephrase some things because perhaps I'm not being fair. Marvel got the ax when emrakul was banned (debatable point at best) but we still have around 5 months to deal around it. It's not the craziest thing old time players have seen in standard, so yes a lot of us are desensitized to some of the crap. I just made a comment to a friend of mine that resonates to this thread, and that is that there are so many flavorful cards this season deemed unplayable due to a *****ty meta. That much is undeniable. However I can't stand bans, they ruin the game almost more than the cards themselves. Wotc apparently finally employed a team that will keep problems like these from haopening in the future so hopefully next season will be the best in a long while.
Is that as far back as you can remember? Mono black devotion I'm pretty sure comprised of over 30% of the meta. Junk angeltusk decks took up well over 30% of the meta. Affinity took up over 30% of the meta. Do I need to keep going? Welcome to standard. Things will change pretty drastically this fall.
That's kinda the point I wanted you to bring home and why I brought up Sphinx. More often than not, you aren't going to be matched against tap out control, you're going to be matched against UR control, which is 15% of the meta. Sphinx is generally a 4 turn clock that protects your gearhulk casts. That's a pretty decent value if you ask me, and the only answer I personally have in my 75 is Summary Dismissal. I fear it a lot more than I do Kefnet, generally. I could be wrong though, but IME I've lost to sphinx a lot more than I have kefnet because I can generally keep a decent grip of counters or at least dig to one.