Kriggy, 3drinks, Jivanmukta, I assume you three *are* innovating, since you're so upset about this and you have your decks in your signatures.
So what's the deal with your innovations? Are they good but no one is copying them? (would seem to run afoul of your point of everyone just copying each other) Or are they not good? (in which case maybe it's a hard format to innovate in?)
I'm getting consistent top4 in 20+ player weeklies with Karlov. My local meta is multiples of Breaya, Geist, Zurgo, Vial/Kraum, Vial/Tymna, Vial/Reyhan, Reyhan/Bruse, Titania and Jace plust a little group of rogues.
Karlov beats Breya, Mardu Vial, Jund Vial and Titania easily. Can't be beat by Zurgo unless they mull to leyline with at least 2 other spells in hand, and has a fair match vs Grixis Vial. My experience with Geis is whomever wins the coinflip wins the match. My bad matches have been Sidisi and Jace, and I can't beat Queen Marchesa.
This doesn't mean anything to anyone but myself because other tempo players refuse to look away from Geist despite not doing so well against Grixis Vial and Zurgo, or not playing at all untill the evil wrongfun commanders get banned. So I have no feedback to improve on the decklist based on other people's experiences in their own metas.
And what next after Breya and Vial get banned? We ban Geist and Zurgo too? Then Titania and Jace? At what point do we stop whining and start deckbuilding?
Breya loses to Karlov, Zurgo loses to Titania, Geist loses to Sidisi, Vial/X loses to Queen Marchesa.
yeah maybe i can play a t2-3 deck that can defeat Breya but i lose to the rest of the field..... and is not even close.
If everyone thought like this nobody would play anything but Jund in Modern. But new decks keep showing up and it's not always because of banlists or new cards, a lot of the time it's just good metagaming.
The gap is fabricated. Breya loses to Karlov, Zurgo loses to Titania, Geist loses to Sidisi, Vial/X loses to Queen Marchesa.
But nobody is playing those decks because the DC community seems to be half cult of the new, half wannabe Spikes. And there really isn't anywhere to discus deckbuilding. Just look at this very site, everyone is beating the dead horse of improving percentage points on matchups among the solved decks (in a format where percentage points hardly ever matter, we're not getting a GP anytime soon), while completely ignoring every other deck.
We are keeping Breya/Vial/Zurgo on top, not their inherent and imaginary invincibility.
In my opinion "leviathan" is stale, boring and inherently not competitive. And my whole city's community seems to agree because there are 10x more people playing DC now than 6 months ago.
Some people want to play 4cmc funstuff and lose to Breya/Vial/Zurgo, some people want to play 4cmc funstuff and lose to Narset/Geist/Titania. 30lp didn't have more decks showing up in tops because it was actually viable to win with them in serious competition but because competition wasn't actually serious. Now deckbuilding, optimization and metagaming are a real thing you can expect even at FNM at least in my area, and sincerelly that's what I want moving forward for Duel Commander because if I'm driving to the LGS to "not take it so seriously" I'd rather play normal Commander then.
Singleton has evolved, now we have Highlander as our standin to Vintage, DC to Legacy, Leviathan to Frontier, and Commander for getting black out drunk while Johnny finishes his convoluted infinite turns combo that fizzles half the time.
30lp wasn't diverse or fun. It was all Yisan/Marath/Tasigur and then all Maelstrom-Narset/Anafenza/Titania. If you were winning with rogue decks that werent explicitly anti-meta you were not playing in a competitive meta.
Something needs to change because it's now clear that the extreme disparity in C16 commanders vs others was not just a matter of cult of the new but an actual imbalance in power. Then again, ban Vial Smasher and Breya and results will be nothing but Geist/Zurgo/Titania. And banning something from each of those decks would just keep the banlist growing to ridiculous lenghts.
At some point we have to accept that your favorite color/archetype being Tier 1 is not a god given right and build something else while the cards come out for that amazing Aetherborn tribal of our dreams. If you had asked people 3 years ago wether Grixis Tempo, Mono Red Sligh or High Tide could be competitive in Duel Commander they would have laughed at your face.
Locally there's at least 4 Geist in our weekly 20+ people tournaments. When the number of Geist is more like 6-8, Vial/Kraum and Zurgo look more like funbrews than the "opressive" decks people at other metas claim them to be. If I had to ban something to fix my metagame, it'd be Steel of the Godhead.
But my meta doesn't represent every meta. Some people are having massive problems with Breya, some can't beat Vial/Anything, some refuse to play around Zurgo for whatever reason. In my opinion, instead of depending on endless bans we need to learn from Legacy and adapt to metagame fluctuations. Legacy top8's are kept fresh because Legacy players don't just all play "the best deck" Miracles and instead of demanding the deck gets banned to oblivion because we refuse to play anything other than Storm, people start playing stuff that beats it like Dredge, Pox, Goblins, Lands, etc.
Very few color/time/planeshifted cards. I need Funeral Charm soon, before I lose it on a weaselly smartass who calls for a judge like he doesn't know what the purple hourglass means after years of Lord of Atlantis and Gemstone Mine showing up in top8's.
In my city the only people playing 30lp Duel Commander competitively were the three people who actually enjoyed playing Narset and/or Wanderer. Nowadays we're at steady 20's for FNM, which is the best Commander attendance we've ever had in general since casual players don't go to the LGS but coffee shops or their homes instead.
I'm getting consistent top4 in 20+ player weeklies with Karlov. My local meta is multiples of Breaya, Geist, Zurgo, Vial/Kraum, Vial/Tymna, Vial/Reyhan, Reyhan/Bruse, Titania and Jace plust a little group of rogues.
Karlov beats Breya, Mardu Vial, Jund Vial and Titania easily. Can't be beat by Zurgo unless they mull to leyline with at least 2 other spells in hand, and has a fair match vs Grixis Vial. My experience with Geis is whomever wins the coinflip wins the match. My bad matches have been Sidisi and Jace, and I can't beat Queen Marchesa.
This doesn't mean anything to anyone but myself because other tempo players refuse to look away from Geist despite not doing so well against Grixis Vial and Zurgo, or not playing at all untill the evil wrongfun commanders get banned. So I have no feedback to improve on the decklist based on other people's experiences in their own metas.
And what next after Breya and Vial get banned? We ban Geist and Zurgo too? Then Titania and Jace? At what point do we stop whining and start deckbuilding?
If everyone thought like this nobody would play anything but Jund in Modern. But new decks keep showing up and it's not always because of banlists or new cards, a lot of the time it's just good metagaming.
But nobody is playing those decks because the DC community seems to be half cult of the new, half wannabe Spikes. And there really isn't anywhere to discus deckbuilding. Just look at this very site, everyone is beating the dead horse of improving percentage points on matchups among the solved decks (in a format where percentage points hardly ever matter, we're not getting a GP anytime soon), while completely ignoring every other deck.
We are keeping Breya/Vial/Zurgo on top, not their inherent and imaginary invincibility.
Some people want to play 4cmc funstuff and lose to Breya/Vial/Zurgo, some people want to play 4cmc funstuff and lose to Narset/Geist/Titania. 30lp didn't have more decks showing up in tops because it was actually viable to win with them in serious competition but because competition wasn't actually serious. Now deckbuilding, optimization and metagaming are a real thing you can expect even at FNM at least in my area, and sincerelly that's what I want moving forward for Duel Commander because if I'm driving to the LGS to "not take it so seriously" I'd rather play normal Commander then.
Singleton has evolved, now we have Highlander as our standin to Vintage, DC to Legacy, Leviathan to Frontier, and Commander for getting black out drunk while Johnny finishes his convoluted infinite turns combo that fizzles half the time.
Something needs to change because it's now clear that the extreme disparity in C16 commanders vs others was not just a matter of cult of the new but an actual imbalance in power. Then again, ban Vial Smasher and Breya and results will be nothing but Geist/Zurgo/Titania. And banning something from each of those decks would just keep the banlist growing to ridiculous lenghts.
At some point we have to accept that your favorite color/archetype being Tier 1 is not a god given right and build something else while the cards come out for that amazing Aetherborn tribal of our dreams. If you had asked people 3 years ago wether Grixis Tempo, Mono Red Sligh or High Tide could be competitive in Duel Commander they would have laughed at your face.
But my meta doesn't represent every meta. Some people are having massive problems with Breya, some can't beat Vial/Anything, some refuse to play around Zurgo for whatever reason. In my opinion, instead of depending on endless bans we need to learn from Legacy and adapt to metagame fluctuations. Legacy top8's are kept fresh because Legacy players don't just all play "the best deck" Miracles and instead of demanding the deck gets banned to oblivion because we refuse to play anything other than Storm, people start playing stuff that beats it like Dredge, Pox, Goblins, Lands, etc.