Its not even hyperbole, its some weird lament for a format he mentions disliking multiple times throughout, while he martyr's himself to play in the "last" event for a 'good format i hate' with what he's been told is the best deck for leveraging what must be his immense levels of skill.
Its frankly an embarrassment.
At least he kept his shtick of saying things alive. Few things tilt me more than seeing the phrase "There, I said it" overused and boy does he hit that spot.
Look at that data. Ramunap Red had 60% winrate against everything save energy, good god.
I tried to tell people this lol. RR has always been the problem.
Ya that's why it took up half of the meta.
Oh wait.
That was Energy.
Go read their B&R article where they posted the stats.
RR is favored against everything they list except Temur Energy and posted routine 60+% winrates outside of the energy MU. That is extremely good for Standard.
Temur had a bunch of slightly-above-50% MUs with some decks and outright sub-50% (albeit narrow like 49%) winrates against other decks.
Several decks, like Approach and Tokens, can go over the top of Temur. I won't say "easily" because Temur is quite good, but the data shows that they were at least moderately successful in this.
But those decks couldn't beat RR to save their lives. Nothing could, except Temur.
Energy got hit because it was stale and people griped. This staleness and griping went from being normal "best deck blues" to being cause for health concern because of the OTHER deck that got hit in the bans which crushed everything except Temur Energy -and- won a PT.
ok so I was not too far off, but the decision to ban Ramunap Ruins rather than Hazoret is puzzling. Well, maybe RR would survive without Hazoret, but it's not clear it's that crippled without Ramunap Ruins. I guess they want to make RR still viable.
Hazoret the Fervent is the new Gideon, Ally of Zendikar: an obviously overpowered 4-mana threat that pushes aggro decks over the top but has become so involved in WOTC's story marketing that they will arbitrarily never ban it.
Getting rid of Ramunap Ruins is a little sad because that angle for making red powerful is cool, but Ruins and Hazoret together were too good. Since they will arbitrarily never ban Hazoret they have to ban Ruins.
Banning Rampaging Ferocidon is a joke obviously intended to force-rotate red and enable their Vampire tribal deck that they have a hard-on for.
I think everything would be fine if mono-red weren't so resilient. The only reason mono-red isn't favored against every deck in the format is because Temur Energy can spend 3 mana to get 5/6 worth of PT spread out over 4 bodies. As it stands, the current builds of mono-red are still fast enough to kill on turn 4-5 like a normal red deck, but have a lot of reach built into them with Hazoret and the utility lands, so they don't really ever sputter out unless they flood out and don't draw Ramunap Ruins and other Desert fodder. And even if they do, sometimes Hazoret just dominates the game singlehandedly and wins anyway.
This puts more pressure than normal on the red deck's opponent to be able to clock and kill the red player. Most red decks have "inevitability" in the sense that they can get you to six and make you have to fade double Lightning Strike, but this deck takes it up to 11 because it has four Hazoret and eight lands that are superb topdecks on top of burn spells.
I think it was very cool design space that WOTC played with when they came up with this red deck in R&D, but they overdid it (probably because they underestimated how good Hazoret would be). You're not really supposed to be able to be this fast and topdeck this well going long.
Have any of you tried running a Carnage Tyrant in the deck? I feel like my deck would be stronger if I ran a Carnage Tyrant.
I tried running 4 colour so I could get Bolas out at my last FNM, but I didn't draw him once hehe, and I only got my Vraska and Scarab once each, so I'm thinking about adding two Cut//Ribbons next time I splash black.
Carnage Tyrant isn't very good in this deck I think. It's obviously too slow against aggro decks like mono-red. It's bad against white control due to sweepers, and mediocre against black control due to Gifted Aetherborn and Gonti, Lord of Luxury. And in the energy mirrors and pseudo-mirrors, it is usually the biggest thing on the board, but it has two issues:
(1) The boards where one player doesn't just run away with the game early tend to get very clogged up, so it's not unreasonable for them to have a couple of Rogue Refiners or a Refiner and Cub to trade up with it. (And it obviously has no impact in games where one player does run away with it.)
(2) It's expensive, and having it rotting in your hand during the crucial middlegame turns 3-5 will kill you more than it coming down on turn 6+ will save you.
Bonus (3): Vizier of Many Faces is a hard counter that sees widespread SB play in Temur already.
What do you guys think about adding a Carnage Tyrant as a game finisher? It doesn't synergise with the rest of the deck, but I kinda think people wouldn't be expecting it.
I asked about carnage tyrant in the temur thread too, but I thought I'd ask here too since the decks are quite different and I'm curious.
You don't really want to make six land drops to resolve a Tyrant in this deck. It makes more sense in Temur, where it's usually significantly bigger than the rest of the board and where you have mana accelerants in Servant of the Conduit and Chandra, Torch of Defiance to power it out earlier and not need to hit a bunch of land drops.
The Scarab God is a better top-end / trump card on power level and cost, and if you want to play a trump that just puts a bunch of beef into play, I would look into Verdurous Gearhulk before Carnage Tyrant in this shell. But I would advise just sticking with the core plan of playing the format's most powerful 1-2 cmc cards instead of clunking things up with big bombs.
Rhonas isn't making the cut because space is tight. You really need to play Bristling Hydra over Hostage Taker in the 4 spot before Rhonas becomes attractive, since outside of a Rishkar trigger with Constrictor out or Longtusk Cub growing, Rhonas isn't coming online without using his activated ability.
From there it's just a matter of Hostage Taker being a better card than Bristling Hydra and the deck having so many cards that are good all the time that you don't really want to cut any for a card that is sometimes phenomenal and sometimes a blank.
He's also much easier to answer than he used to be a few months ago (with Vraska's Contempt, Hostage Taker, and Confiscation Coup seeing much more play than they did in spring/summer), which limits his effectiveness. Awful lot of hoops to jump through for a card that every deck in the format can answer cleanly (though they do have to have it pretty quickly).
edit: Hazoret is a different case with the removal question because she's online almost always when she hits the field, and the decks she goes in will put you on one turn to answer her or die. Rhonas decks usually give you a couple of turns of breathing room after he comes down before you're going to die, so you have more time to find and deploy your answers. Additionally, Hazoret decks are much leaner, which makes the expensive answers to Hazoret awkward, since you have to walk a line where you have this Confiscation Coup or Hostage Taker that you have to have for Hazoret that you would ordinarily never play against mono-red in a million years. The cards that are good against Rhonas are also great against green aggro-midrange decks in general, so there's much less tension.
Haha my team got ****ed, WOTC closed registration 3 hours earlier than normal. I will be grinding out side events like a real MTG grinder
Very late update: StarCityGames is great and found a way to let us play anyway! Now day 2 at 6-3. Somehow only played 3 energy decks and a bunch of aggro which was awesome.
I spilled a few thousand words of ink on Temur Energy this week and I'm playing Sultai Snek in Atlanta, go figure.
I have the exact PT 75 sleeved up and a couple of Champion of Wits and Vraska, Relic Seeker in the deckbox in case I get frisky. We'll see what happens.
At least he kept his shtick of saying things alive. Few things tilt me more than seeing the phrase "There, I said it" overused and boy does he hit that spot.
In older formats? Fatal Push.
Go read their B&R article where they posted the stats.
RR is favored against everything they list except Temur Energy and posted routine 60+% winrates outside of the energy MU. That is extremely good for Standard.
Temur had a bunch of slightly-above-50% MUs with some decks and outright sub-50% (albeit narrow like 49%) winrates against other decks.
Several decks, like Approach and Tokens, can go over the top of Temur. I won't say "easily" because Temur is quite good, but the data shows that they were at least moderately successful in this.
But those decks couldn't beat RR to save their lives. Nothing could, except Temur.
Energy got hit because it was stale and people griped. This staleness and griping went from being normal "best deck blues" to being cause for health concern because of the OTHER deck that got hit in the bans which crushed everything except Temur Energy -and- won a PT.
Hazoret the Fervent is the new Gideon, Ally of Zendikar: an obviously overpowered 4-mana threat that pushes aggro decks over the top but has become so involved in WOTC's story marketing that they will arbitrarily never ban it.
Getting rid of Ramunap Ruins is a little sad because that angle for making red powerful is cool, but Ruins and Hazoret together were too good. Since they will arbitrarily never ban Hazoret they have to ban Ruins.
Banning Rampaging Ferocidon is a joke obviously intended to force-rotate red and enable their Vampire tribal deck that they have a hard-on for.
I tried to tell people this lol. RR has always been the problem.
LMAO at banning Lay of the Land
This puts more pressure than normal on the red deck's opponent to be able to clock and kill the red player. Most red decks have "inevitability" in the sense that they can get you to six and make you have to fade double Lightning Strike, but this deck takes it up to 11 because it has four Hazoret and eight lands that are superb topdecks on top of burn spells.
I think it was very cool design space that WOTC played with when they came up with this red deck in R&D, but they overdid it (probably because they underestimated how good Hazoret would be). You're not really supposed to be able to be this fast and topdeck this well going long.
Carnage Tyrant isn't very good in this deck I think. It's obviously too slow against aggro decks like mono-red. It's bad against white control due to sweepers, and mediocre against black control due to Gifted Aetherborn and Gonti, Lord of Luxury. And in the energy mirrors and pseudo-mirrors, it is usually the biggest thing on the board, but it has two issues:
(1) The boards where one player doesn't just run away with the game early tend to get very clogged up, so it's not unreasonable for them to have a couple of Rogue Refiners or a Refiner and Cub to trade up with it. (And it obviously has no impact in games where one player does run away with it.)
(2) It's expensive, and having it rotting in your hand during the crucial middlegame turns 3-5 will kill you more than it coming down on turn 6+ will save you.
Bonus (3): Vizier of Many Faces is a hard counter that sees widespread SB play in Temur already.
You don't really want to make six land drops to resolve a Tyrant in this deck. It makes more sense in Temur, where it's usually significantly bigger than the rest of the board and where you have mana accelerants in Servant of the Conduit and Chandra, Torch of Defiance to power it out earlier and not need to hit a bunch of land drops.
The Scarab God is a better top-end / trump card on power level and cost, and if you want to play a trump that just puts a bunch of beef into play, I would look into Verdurous Gearhulk before Carnage Tyrant in this shell. But I would advise just sticking with the core plan of playing the format's most powerful 1-2 cmc cards instead of clunking things up with big bombs.
From there it's just a matter of Hostage Taker being a better card than Bristling Hydra and the deck having so many cards that are good all the time that you don't really want to cut any for a card that is sometimes phenomenal and sometimes a blank.
He's also much easier to answer than he used to be a few months ago (with Vraska's Contempt, Hostage Taker, and Confiscation Coup seeing much more play than they did in spring/summer), which limits his effectiveness. Awful lot of hoops to jump through for a card that every deck in the format can answer cleanly (though they do have to have it pretty quickly).
edit: Hazoret is a different case with the removal question because she's online almost always when she hits the field, and the decks she goes in will put you on one turn to answer her or die. Rhonas decks usually give you a couple of turns of breathing room after he comes down before you're going to die, so you have more time to find and deploy your answers. Additionally, Hazoret decks are much leaner, which makes the expensive answers to Hazoret awkward, since you have to walk a line where you have this Confiscation Coup or Hostage Taker that you have to have for Hazoret that you would ordinarily never play against mono-red in a million years. The cards that are good against Rhonas are also great against green aggro-midrange decks in general, so there's much less tension.
Very late update: StarCityGames is great and found a way to let us play anyway! Now day 2 at 6-3. Somehow only played 3 energy decks and a bunch of aggro which was awesome.
I have the exact PT 75 sleeved up and a couple of Champion of Wits and Vraska, Relic Seeker in the deckbox in case I get frisky. We'll see what happens.
Hot. Thanks bro!
I see Brad Nelson and Seth Manfield wrote about the deck today too. Lots of high-quality reading material.