Thanks for posting this up. I have been playing this a few times on MTGO and it can be pretty explosive at times, fun as well.
I do run 2 copies of Bone Saw as copies 5 & 6 of Bonesplitter. Leads to some even quicker starts at times. I drop down to 2 Frogmite for them. I like it better than the Chiss Goria stuff as those aren't always "free" and Bone Saw is.
I run Ornithopter as well. Again, free and you can can play the bounce shenanigans all day with them and the Bone Saws.
It can flop at times and if you don't win (or threaten lethal) by turn 5 or 6 you may not be able to finish against certain decks. But again, its fun, it is pure gas at times and best of all its aggro.
Getting beat by a Flung Atog isn't fun and is way to easy for some decks. And unless you are in black or blue (or maybe white) you are going to get beat on the spot.
I would think UR Delver may think twice about a sorcery speed 4 cmc with double red in its sideboard. It could also lead to play Darksteel Axe for Affinity/Metalcraft decks running a lot of artifact lands. Maybe legalize Pyroclasm along side it to even things out a bit. It would cause waves for sure but Grudges, Goriila Shamans and the Conspire artifact/enchantment card, just don't seem like enough.
How about a new card for 3 cmc in red that hits 3 artifacts instead?
Not really for Affinity although it hits it hard. More for Boros decks that spew out endless 2 mana card draw artifacts then recur them endlessly through bounce. Gorilla Shaman isn't good enough at all.
Besides it is double red, 4 cmc and sorcery speed. Affinity and Boros decks get their mountain of artifacts up and its basically lights out after turn 5 or 6. A nice artifact boardwipe could give creature decks some late game. I'd also be for a downgrade of Pyroclasm and/or Shattering Spree but that is a different question.
Do away with availability of fogs, let other dude strats have a shot, and Delver won't be as dominant. The way things are now decks which do slap Delver around have an incredibly lousy game vs. Tron and Turbo-Fog.
Quoted for truth!!!
Played another game today and got fogged out by Tron, knocked them down to one point, winning 20 to 1 with lethal on turn 6. Locked out by Moment's Peace with my aggro creature deck. Get that crap crutch of a card out of the meta, as well as Prismatic Strands another playing-not-to-lose crutch of a card. Get rid of this fog lock nonsense and all of a sudden Delver becomes less prevalent due to its game vs. fog-crutch strategies.
Then blue won't need that many bans as I suggested, maybe just one or two.
At this point if either of those 2 cards would be banned I'd weep with joy.
?????
Land
As an additional cost to play this card, exile a card from your hand. t Add X or Y
Hurts any deck trying to play it early, regardless of strategy. Doesn't aid graveyard strategies, doesn't aid landfall as it can't come into play without exiling a land. Lategame could be bad for aggro decks that are empty handed. Wouldn't hurt control late game as their hands always have cards.
Either that or a straight up 2 color Ziggurat. Only usuable to cast creature spells. Allied and enemy color pairs. (Only problem here is Spellstutter Sprite which is essentially a counterspell.) Maybe tack on creature spells WITHOUT Flash.
Pauper then needs a true man-land.
Pauper then needs a land that when tapped makes the creature spell uncounterable.
I've had it played against a Dark Ritual which I would have cast 2 spells off of on turn one. I've had it played off a Burning-Tree Emissary in which I would have chained another BTE into a third creature on turn two on the play. It can hose Elves from chaining turn one, It can hose Affinity from chaining turn one. It hits these aggro decks so hard that the tempo loss from that point may be hard to come back from on turn one or two!
I'm with you on Gush being worse. Snap is up there too. I don't mind blue having tools to deal with aggro but SO many tools with SO many fog effects and SO many cheap 1/3 card draw creatures and SO many cheap 0/4 walls, and SO much removal just makes it a hostile environment for creature aggro.
The entire purpose of a game is to enjoy it, therefore the only metric of any value that's relevant for balancing the game is how fun certain things are.
Maybe this one wasn't aimed at me but I want to address it. I hope it doesn't sound too aggressive but here it goes.
Maybe it can be fun to you. But if it is unfun for 99 other people your happiness does not overrule their annoyance. They quit and you are sitting there with cards and no one to play with.
Your fun isn't necessarily someone elses fun. I understand the "fun factor". Its fun if you win more than you lose in general or even if you can win 50% of the time. Losing to unfun/unfair/broken cards strategies game after game isn't fun. Balance is needed. Balance makes the game more fun. At least maybe we can agree that some cards in the format need to go. That WILL bring balance. I will look on the bright side.
What cards would you like to see banned? How about top 4 bans?
Here is what I propose for a start: One ban from each color.
I'm gonna put a few in the board to try this tonight. My LGS has seen a rise in Azorius control because the StarCity you tubes told all the spikes this is what they need to play....
Not a lot of diversity here at all. And other than a single Bogles list and a single Elves, NO creature based decks whatsoever. What a boring environment.
Basically Boros control, Burn or UBX Delver control. Others need not apply.
Oh and another non-diverse list from the week before...
Yeah, I'm not for banning a million cards, just ones that are obviously constricting what's playable and what's not.
- Delver is way too large for its cost, and it's also in a color which is naturally good against things that shut down creatures strats.
- Angler's simply too big for how easy it is to get him into play, and slots effortlessly into just about any deck, but particularly into ones which are inherently strong.
Those two don't break the rules of the game, but they do break rules of design by with the vast majority of everything else abides. They're vanilla, but just plain too strong, and this has quite an impact in the vanilla heavy world of pauper.
- Moment's Peace and Prismatic Strands are easy to chain, completely shut down 99% of the creature based plans in puaper, they're rather abusable with both loops and card filtering (Cantrip Time Walk!) etc. etc. These two are about as guilty for Blue being so popular in the last year, if not moreso, than anything blue actually does. They're also a large part of why Burn is so strong (I can attest from multiple paper tourneys in my meta lately - Burn won 2 out of the three last ones, and placed 2nd two days ago).
- Ghostly Flicker and that other one enable Fog loops. Availability of those reduces incentive for playing creature based strats, apart from the select few that can deal with a fog loop. They've also been key players in degenerate strats in the past. Chaining too many quality fogs is strong enough that ti warrants a ban or two to the more busted ones, but the ability of multi-flickers to loop anything will still let players break fogs and probably loop other things that weren't meant to be looped.
- Gush is a card draw spell which costs nothing apart from bouncing one tapped island and effectively untapping another one. It's pretty much as if Rite of Flame or Lotus Petal also said "Draw two cards" in its textbox. It's not hard to see why this is excessive and unnecessary. I don't think alternate-casting cost spells are a problem by default, but Gush is an anomaly even among them.
- Fireblast gives too much reach to Burn, and lets Burn clock people out way faster than is necessary. Burn is popular because it lets you sidestep the problem of having to play non-broken creatures into Delvers and Anglers, while also sidestepping fogs. The fact that it's doing well now isn't a sign that the meta is open, but that the meta is cemented as Burn is one of the niche strats which sidesteps issues. But even if the meta was open, Fireblast would be excessive in the deck.
And that's, off the top of my head, all that's really degenerate and tangibly constricting the format that could use a ban. I'm not sure there's an objective defense for any of those, or that the game would in any way be hurt by saying "Alright, we've had our fun, let's play with less insane cards now." Blue would have a slower clock, still fine, no Angler would mean 4/4's for 0-1-2 would actually mean something on the board again, pure win for the metagame, no busted fogs or fog-loops would mean that way more creature strats would actually be viable and that there'd be way less pressure to be blue if you want to play dudes, Gush ban would mean even decks with Islands need to invest something into carddraw instead of getting a mana boost out of it (and Fathom Seer would easily find it's way into decks which play it for the land bounce), and banning Fireblast would take away some speed from a largely non-interactive deck that's too full of legacy staples as-is and half a turn to fast for everyone's good.
Well said and I agree with every point you've made.
Just more anecdotal evidence I played a UBX control deck today that stabilized at 1 life against my mono G creature based deck and with the Ghostly Flicker/Archaeomancer Loop did not have to worry about a creature attack from that point on. I just conceded.
And excellent point on Burn, it dodges a lot of the control/removal problems so why not play it? It will become more prevalent and the meta will become less diverse.
Lastly, every and I mean every deck I played against today (6 opponents) was a control deck with all but one not playing blue.
I do run 2 copies of Bone Saw as copies 5 & 6 of Bonesplitter. Leads to some even quicker starts at times. I drop down to 2 Frogmite for them. I like it better than the Chiss Goria stuff as those aren't always "free" and Bone Saw is.
I run Ornithopter as well. Again, free and you can can play the bounce shenanigans all day with them and the Bone Saws.
It can flop at times and if you don't win (or threaten lethal) by turn 5 or 6 you may not be able to finish against certain decks. But again, its fun, it is pure gas at times and best of all its aggro.
Maybe. But it could eat a ban if it was too easily abusable.
I'm for this in Pauper. Although it may make certain control decks more consistent. Maybe with a concurrent ban of a couple of cards there as well.
Anyone expecting prices to go down has another thing coming. At best, MSRP memory will keep prices near the current mark. Expect prices to climb.
Raise prices.
Echoing Ruin is interesting but a bit too narrow.
Getting beat by a Flung Atog isn't fun and is way to easy for some decks. And unless you are in black or blue (or maybe white) you are going to get beat on the spot.
How about a new card for 3 cmc in red that hits 3 artifacts instead?
Besides it is double red, 4 cmc and sorcery speed. Affinity and Boros decks get their mountain of artifacts up and its basically lights out after turn 5 or 6. A nice artifact boardwipe could give creature decks some late game. I'd also be for a downgrade of Pyroclasm and/or Shattering Spree but that is a different question.
Shatterstorm
Quoted for truth!!!
Played another game today and got fogged out by Tron, knocked them down to one point, winning 20 to 1 with lethal on turn 6. Locked out by Moment's Peace with my aggro creature deck. Get that crap crutch of a card out of the meta, as well as Prismatic Strands another playing-not-to-lose crutch of a card. Get rid of this fog lock nonsense and all of a sudden Delver becomes less prevalent due to its game vs. fog-crutch strategies.
Then blue won't need that many bans as I suggested, maybe just one or two.
At this point if either of those 2 cards would be banned I'd weep with joy.
Land
As an additional cost to play this card, exile a card from your hand.
t Add X or Y
Hurts any deck trying to play it early, regardless of strategy. Doesn't aid graveyard strategies, doesn't aid landfall as it can't come into play without exiling a land. Lategame could be bad for aggro decks that are empty handed. Wouldn't hurt control late game as their hands always have cards.
Either that or a straight up 2 color Ziggurat. Only usuable to cast creature spells. Allied and enemy color pairs. (Only problem here is Spellstutter Sprite which is essentially a counterspell.) Maybe tack on creature spells WITHOUT Flash.
Pauper then needs a true man-land.
Pauper then needs a land that when tapped makes the creature spell uncounterable.
I've had it played against a Dark Ritual which I would have cast 2 spells off of on turn one. I've had it played off a Burning-Tree Emissary in which I would have chained another BTE into a third creature on turn two on the play. It can hose Elves from chaining turn one, It can hose Affinity from chaining turn one. It hits these aggro decks so hard that the tempo loss from that point may be hard to come back from on turn one or two!
I'm with you on Gush being worse. Snap is up there too. I don't mind blue having tools to deal with aggro but SO many tools with SO many fog effects and SO many cheap 1/3 card draw creatures and SO many cheap 0/4 walls, and SO much removal just makes it a hostile environment for creature aggro.
Maybe this one wasn't aimed at me but I want to address it. I hope it doesn't sound too aggressive but here it goes.
Maybe it can be fun to you. But if it is unfun for 99 other people your happiness does not overrule their annoyance. They quit and you are sitting there with cards and no one to play with.
Your fun isn't necessarily someone elses fun. I understand the "fun factor". Its fun if you win more than you lose in general or even if you can win 50% of the time. Losing to unfun/unfair/broken cards strategies game after game isn't fun. Balance is needed. Balance makes the game more fun. At least maybe we can agree that some cards in the format need to go. That WILL bring balance. I will look on the bright side.
What cards would you like to see banned? How about top 4 bans?
Here is what I propose for a start: One ban from each color.
Prismatic Strands
Delver of Secrets
Gurmag Angler
Firebolt or Fireblast
Moment's Peace
Good luck. Let us know what happens.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/pauper-challenge-11787272#paper
Not a lot of diversity here at all. And other than a single Bogles list and a single Elves, NO creature based decks whatsoever. What a boring environment.
Basically Boros control, Burn or UBX Delver control. Others need not apply.
Oh and another non-diverse list from the week before...
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/tournament/pauper-challenge-11780208#paper
8 of the top 10 cards played were blue. Who woulda thunk?
Well said and I agree with every point you've made.
Just more anecdotal evidence I played a UBX control deck today that stabilized at 1 life against my mono G creature based deck and with the Ghostly Flicker/Archaeomancer Loop did not have to worry about a creature attack from that point on. I just conceded.
And excellent point on Burn, it dodges a lot of the control/removal problems so why not play it? It will become more prevalent and the meta will become less diverse.
Lastly, every and I mean every deck I played against today (6 opponents) was a control deck with all but one not playing blue.