Every single time my opponent is ensured to win the game and i can turn the game around to leave them completely bamboozled, thats my kind of victory.
Feels like you cheated the universe , a glitch in the matrix , without ACTUALLY cheating that is.
That happened to me twice this week. It's somewhat better when the individual is a real jack*** about the game.
Last FNM, I was down to 5 life with a single Archway Angel facing off against two 2/2 knights and a History of Benalia about to pop. After Benalia pops, he casts Ixalan's Binding on my Angel then swings in for lethal. I didn't get the chance to do anything with the stack, he just did it in all one go. I quietly asked him to rewind to the point that Binding is on the stack (a judge is called at this point). I cast Justiciar's Portal on my Angel with 12 Gates in play. As he tried to figure out the card and understand what I did, his entire demeaned changed. He got a lot more aggressive with his plays and his general attitude towards me.
He swings in for 8. I let it go through and I'm now at 21. I top deck Quasiduplicate, cast it on the Angel, and I go to 45. I discard my last card (a basic land) to Jump-Start Quasiduplicate on the same turn and clone my Angel again. I go to 69. I swing for a meager 3. He holds back an attack to preserve his knights and casts another Benalia. On my turn I see he still has just enough colors for both Settle the Wreckage and a Counterspell of some type for the two remaining cards in his hand. I put down the Banefire I just top decked for lethal. He throws down Wizard's Retort with a loud, "suck my ****s." I look around and realize a lot of people are watching the game. Everyone is silent as it dawns on my opponent he just lost.
The other happened today at a casual game. My opponent stabilized the board with creatures and a card draw engine and I'm on a clock from 40-something life down to 25 with no obvious out. I have 7 lands, five or so lifegain vampires and Epicure of Blood in play. I have Champion of Dusk, Settle the Wreckage and a random angel in hand. I decided to cast Champion to find a swamp and a Skymarch Bloodletter. He wasn't acting like a jerk like the guy above. He just wasn't very happy I won. I don't blame him really.
Nothing is worse than sore losers. I know way too many people who just shutdown whenever they lose, or they get upset and start trying to insult who beat them.
1- it's a cookie cutter deck, down to the exact configuration. If you use this deck, congratulations! You copied someone else's idea! 90% of the skill involved is deck construction, you just completely took that out of the equation, because you have no soul, no originality, and no creativity.
Welcome to competitive standard!
2- the deck is a completely brain dead, one dimensional powerhouse. It can kill you by turn 3 or 4, kill all of your early creatures, and by the time you get bigger ones you're already dead.
It is easy to play but does take some skill to master. There are a lot of decisions to make playing this deck, and that decision you made to shock someone 5 turns ago in the face, as opposed to holding that shock in your hand, could cause you to lose the game. But really, thats the same for any deck.
3- no amount of life gain or creature control will stop the train. Red should not have better and faster card draw than blue. Risk factor is broken. Sure you can eat 4 damage, but the problem is that you're already taking a lot of direct damage anyway and most of the time can't afford the damage. So red basically gets a 3 mana-3 card draw with jump start. cheaper and more card draw than chemister's insight, one of blues best card draws. With so much cheap direct damage combined with awesome card draw, this deck is unstoppable. Or that red creature that gets +1's for casting red spells, and then dumping the counters for mana, for more cheap burn and card draw.
Even a moderate amount of lifegain can stop mono red as long as you have the damage/pressure/control to back it up. It just depends on what else you are doing, if all you are doing is gaining life and not applying pressure or controlling the situation, then ya, life gain wont help.
4- I have not come up with a single deck idea that can beat this. Nothing can weather the early storm, nothing, nada. Believe me when I tell you that I have dumped a ton of money into MTG arena and have over 10 different decks full of rares and mythics. Nothing can beat it. It's just flat out too fast.
I think it has good and bad matchups. Try the deck with hydroid krasis, jadelight ranger, wildgrowth walker, etc.
5- 50% (at least) of the players I play online use this deck, to a tee. Need I say more? This deck is completely taking all the fun out, to the point where I will concede on turn 1 if I realize that they're playing this deck. What's the point in even trying? It's just a waste of time.
There are always going to be good decks that everyone plays. The good news is that this will eventually rotate out.
6-Red needs nerfs. Red didn't used to have so many cheap burn cards as they do now. I'm an old school magic player
Just be glad they dont have Hazoret or Chandra anymore. Look at mono red during the amonkhet days.
I feel you, I know it sucks to play against the same deck over and over again, and it sucks to know that everyone just net decks and doesnt use originality when coming up with a deck. But now that Arena is a popular thing, and people are trying to grind to mythic to get invites to the big championships, they are going to use what wins the most, is the most efficient, and the fastest. Maybe if you just play casual games instead of ranked games, you will see less mono red, at least, that is my experience.
This too will pass. (literally, because it will rotate)
Plus, I will play against mono red over control decks any day. If I am going to lose, it may as well be quick and not take 45 minutes. The red deck at least has a wincon, the win con of most control decks seems to be to bore the opponent to death and make them concede.
You can have a 3.99 price point, or you can have reprints of expensive modern staples. You're not getting both, forget that.
Why? We’ve had supplemental sets like both Conspiracies and Battlebond that have done just that. The Selesnya guild-kits had a wanted card worth the price of the box. WotC makes none of the extra money hoarders charge for holding old product, so why support them?
None of those products had the same level of reprints for Modern as any of the modern masters sets.
I guarantee if they put a Tarmagoft in the Selesnya guild kit it wouldn't sell for MSRP.
Maybe at walmart where you can still get 3 packs of UMA for 32 bucks...
It really depends on a lot of cards. If you look at some BGS graded cards that are signed, they can be 9.5 or 10 or 8, or whatever. The Signature (as long as it is real) does not really affect the grade to my knowledge. They also usually have a separate grade for the signature.
But alot of people look at signed cards as damaged, it is really just personal preference. Some people may pay more for a signed card, some may pay less. Depends on the buyer and their connection to the card and/or artist.
But, you were not buying a card that was signed and graded. You were buying a card at LP condition that did not mention it is signed. The card itself may very well be LP, but if it is signed, I think the vendor needs to notate that somehow.
This is just my opinion and what I found from my research.
The thing I hate most against playing against control decks on arena is the people that play them. Many times I play against UW or Jeskai control deck, they seem to let the time meter run almost all the way out almost everything they have the opportunity to. So many times, I am waiting for them to respond, and they seem to just wait until the time meter runs out and then they play their spell. Doing that now and again I get it, but it happens seemingly all the time.
It seems like one of controls win cons on Arena is to try to get you to quite out of boredom.
But, it is what it is, some people like playing control, who am I to say they should not be allowed to? Different strokes for different folks. I am sure the control folks hate playing against mono red as much as I hate playing against them.
If there's a card that shouldn't exist and sums up the "press X to win the game" extreme pushing of recent Magic cards it's Banefire. Man oh man is that card an absolute joke. It's like some guys 10 year old got to design a card and said "cant I just automatically win the game with a card?"
Banefire? Are you and I thinking of the same card? The one that costs 20R to "win the game outright"?
Because that's not a viable win condition without an infinite mana combo.
It is if they are at 5 life and you have 6 mana, or 6 life with 7 mana. But I dont think its broken...
I really appreciate everyone's input on the topic. Thanks. I am slightly perplexed as to how I got a flame/troll warning for my commentary, however.
It is not hard to do.
Honestly, I dont have a problem with Teferi. I dont even see him lately in my local meta. The Nexus deck was hot for a second, but it has faded. We will probably see Teferi return in the form of Jeskai control, however.
When Teferi was hot, there were always answers. The one thing that made it tricky is that they could tap out for Teferi, and then his ability puts 2 mana back up so it could Negate (both the actual card and as a general term) spells that would otherwise kill it.
Teferi is strong, but I dont think overpowered. When you base a deck on Teferi, you open yourself up to a lot of vulnerabilities, in my opinion.
There are plenty of ways to beat Teferi- I think the reason people hate him now is because Nexus of Fate decks are just miserable to play against. They are beatable, and we have the tools to do it, but when they do work, they are miserable, and I feel like the whole object of that deck is to go to time every round and force a draw.
These are exceptionally contradictory. For what other profession would this be an acceptable response? "You forgot to put extra pickles on my burger. It is a small thing, but I will have your job for this!" I mean, come on.
Someone made that decision and its such a terrible one that you cannot be in that position to make MORE of these decisions.
Ignore it and keep that person and expect more of that garbage to come to light.
Also, there is no "person" who made this decision. They have an entire group (or groups) dedicated to coming up with different aspects of each set. I would be surprised if Play Design and Development didn't both have a part in this and multiple people signed off on it because it was what they felt the set needed or what was best for limited.
If you know how they work, they change cards on the fly because 1 random dude did the change ; read the articles how they design, someone writes it in their internal chat/forum and especially the "last minute" changes turn out to be the biggest mistakes of them all.
At some point you simply dont have enough control of what is happening at all and if everyone can do whatever without anyone checking what they are doing, thats the kind of results you get. Its as unprofessional as it gets, and thats how WotC operates in a lot of spaces (which is a big issue pretty much overall in the company).
And, in the end, who cares? Are you going to swear of Magic forever because this card could have been that sweet Prodigious Growth you really wanted? Or now you missed out on your copy of Infernal Reckoning you just had to have for your limited deck? Or you were really hoping to open that cool Spit Flame?
I dont think you really understand what a "feel bad moment" really is.
Ofcourse not everyone likes every card.
But literally nobody likes rares that are former uncommons and absolutely worthless by default, they literally have not even a remote chance to have any value, as there are already so many of them that nobody wants and you shift the card to a higher rarity, as something that people "should" be at least a little bit excited about.
So cards are designed with some specific players in mind. Reprints of cards that are already not high on the list is an issue you can and should avoid if you design a set and its not hard to understand that at all, unless the people in charge simply didnt give a crap about there work (which is a real problem and you dont want these people in your workplace, these people are a sickness you have to get rid of as early as possible, before it spreads).
If you are happy with ignoring everything unless its literally a nuclear bomb that explodes in your own basement, then fine.
Others look at the small issues and try to stop the bigger ones by making sure you dont even the small crap isnt simply ignored.
Especially the small issues can be very easily identified and avoided.
Have 10 persons look at the spoiler and literally 9 out of 10 (that actually know the game) will ask you "Why is Pelakka Wurm a rare ?". And i absolutely expect more of designers to get that.
And especially Maro should get it, as he is one of the biggest defenders of the "avoid feel bad moments" out of booster packs, and this plays directly into that issue and produces these moments that nobody wants EVER.
I get that it is disappointing in the sense that it was at uncommon in the past and, based on that, it might seem worthless to open in a pack. But every set has worthless rares (and Mythics) that this is not anything new. To be honest, I would fully expect that a brand new player opening their first pack of Magic ever and opening this card as their rare would be ecstatic. To a newer player (and maybe some veterans) a 7/7 Trampler that gains you 7 life and draws you a card when it dies is not exactly bad.
A new card is always a NEW card , bad or not, its NEW and people are guaranteed to not have them.
If a reprint is just garbage, you have to question why its reprinted at all.
Its neither needed nor do players enjoy to see the card, its just terrible in every way imaginable.
And someone made that choice, and that person needs to be fired, for the sake of being incompetent in that jobs position, and nobody should accept incompetent people in these positions (as there are plenty of people that would like to work in that place and actually could do a good job).
And, to the OP's point of not printing it at all, I could see that being an option. It is not like this has to be in the set as they probably could have found something else. But its presence in the set does not diminish the set or the card, especially since it is a Core set. It is a big, beefy creature in green and seems like it fits perfectly for the needs of this set.
Not printing it would have been exactly the right call.
If the card needs to be upgraded in rarity, its a bad fit for the set and you can simply design a card to fill that rare-slot.
The existence of the card is a feel bad moment, and you dont want them.
Every time WotC does something like this the first question you have to ask yourself is ; "Would you mind MORE of that?" , and if they keep doing rarity upshifts of worthless cards its a terrible trend that can be avoided asap and not later when the damage is done.
----
Talking the issue down is a pretty fundamental problem.
If WotC simply makes sure to not ever upshift a card to rare they avoid this pitfall.
Its as easy as that.
Never ever upshift a card in rarity, go down if needed.
If you want a rare, make a new card, designing cards is your job, making sure people have as little feel bad moments as possible is your job and anything that actively works against that is a issue that has to be avoided.
----
TLDR:
If the card would be almost the same, new name, not a reprint, nobody would mind.
As a reprint, upshifted to rare, THATS the issue and no matter how small, its something that could have been easily avoided, if they spend 5 minutes thinking about the decision.
"But literally nobody likes rares that are former uncommons" Aether Vial
I hope i'm in the right subforum here Let's talk removal for a second.
Top decks in pro level competitive play have gone down in copies of Vraska's Contempt as the threats have moved away from Gods and all that.
Though on FNM level play with no knowledge of what to expect in terms of meta, would people still prefer Vraska's Contempt over any other destroy target creature/planeswalker effect? If so, why?
At the moment, i'm trying to descide if an extra copy of Vraska's Contempt main is worth it over damage based removal spell. 3/3 in favour of 4/2.
Edit: FWIW, i'm a brewer and i have a fairly competitive brew, though i dont play standard on FNM level at all.
I run 4 copies of Vrasksa's contempt in the main board at all times for my local meta. It is expensive, but it has saved my bacon a lot. I play mono black so I run 4x VC, 4x Fatal Push, and then 4x Cast Down. Plus, Ifnir Deadlands.
Damage wins games, but good removal prevents losses.
There are a lot of PW's, Hazoret, Rekindling Phoenix, and other good targets for VC in my local meta.
Agreed, it would have been cool if the art styles sort of matched up with the first ones.
Nothing is worse than sore losers. I know way too many people who just shutdown whenever they lose, or they get upset and start trying to insult who beat them.
Wins against those people are always satisfying.
When I played mono red, I was quite afraid of Gates deck.
That stupid Angel, gaining all the life back that I burned away...
Welcome to competitive standard!
2- the deck is a completely brain dead, one dimensional powerhouse. It can kill you by turn 3 or 4, kill all of your early creatures, and by the time you get bigger ones you're already dead.
It is easy to play but does take some skill to master. There are a lot of decisions to make playing this deck, and that decision you made to shock someone 5 turns ago in the face, as opposed to holding that shock in your hand, could cause you to lose the game. But really, thats the same for any deck.
3- no amount of life gain or creature control will stop the train. Red should not have better and faster card draw than blue. Risk factor is broken. Sure you can eat 4 damage, but the problem is that you're already taking a lot of direct damage anyway and most of the time can't afford the damage. So red basically gets a 3 mana-3 card draw with jump start. cheaper and more card draw than chemister's insight, one of blues best card draws. With so much cheap direct damage combined with awesome card draw, this deck is unstoppable. Or that red creature that gets +1's for casting red spells, and then dumping the counters for mana, for more cheap burn and card draw.
Even a moderate amount of lifegain can stop mono red as long as you have the damage/pressure/control to back it up. It just depends on what else you are doing, if all you are doing is gaining life and not applying pressure or controlling the situation, then ya, life gain wont help.
4- I have not come up with a single deck idea that can beat this. Nothing can weather the early storm, nothing, nada. Believe me when I tell you that I have dumped a ton of money into MTG arena and have over 10 different decks full of rares and mythics. Nothing can beat it. It's just flat out too fast.
I think it has good and bad matchups. Try the deck with hydroid krasis, jadelight ranger, wildgrowth walker, etc.
5- 50% (at least) of the players I play online use this deck, to a tee. Need I say more? This deck is completely taking all the fun out, to the point where I will concede on turn 1 if I realize that they're playing this deck. What's the point in even trying? It's just a waste of time.
There are always going to be good decks that everyone plays. The good news is that this will eventually rotate out.
6-Red needs nerfs. Red didn't used to have so many cheap burn cards as they do now. I'm an old school magic player
Just be glad they dont have Hazoret or Chandra anymore. Look at mono red during the amonkhet days.
I feel you, I know it sucks to play against the same deck over and over again, and it sucks to know that everyone just net decks and doesnt use originality when coming up with a deck. But now that Arena is a popular thing, and people are trying to grind to mythic to get invites to the big championships, they are going to use what wins the most, is the most efficient, and the fastest. Maybe if you just play casual games instead of ranked games, you will see less mono red, at least, that is my experience.
This too will pass. (literally, because it will rotate)
Plus, I will play against mono red over control decks any day. If I am going to lose, it may as well be quick and not take 45 minutes. The red deck at least has a wincon, the win con of most control decks seems to be to bore the opponent to death and make them concede.
We all have decks we hate playing against.
Maybe at walmart where you can still get 3 packs of UMA for 32 bucks...
But alot of people look at signed cards as damaged, it is really just personal preference. Some people may pay more for a signed card, some may pay less. Depends on the buyer and their connection to the card and/or artist.
But, you were not buying a card that was signed and graded. You were buying a card at LP condition that did not mention it is signed. The card itself may very well be LP, but if it is signed, I think the vendor needs to notate that somehow.
This is just my opinion and what I found from my research.
This is not a deck I have seen anywhere yet, I dont see a wincon.
Throw in some Demonlord Belzenlok or Doom Whisperer, maybe...
It seems like one of controls win cons on Arena is to try to get you to quite out of boredom.
But, it is what it is, some people like playing control, who am I to say they should not be allowed to? Different strokes for different folks. I am sure the control folks hate playing against mono red as much as I hate playing against them.
It is if they are at 5 life and you have 6 mana, or 6 life with 7 mana. But I dont think its broken...
It is not hard to do.
Honestly, I dont have a problem with Teferi. I dont even see him lately in my local meta. The Nexus deck was hot for a second, but it has faded. We will probably see Teferi return in the form of Jeskai control, however.
When Teferi was hot, there were always answers. The one thing that made it tricky is that they could tap out for Teferi, and then his ability puts 2 mana back up so it could Negate (both the actual card and as a general term) spells that would otherwise kill it.
Teferi is strong, but I dont think overpowered. When you base a deck on Teferi, you open yourself up to a lot of vulnerabilities, in my opinion.
There are plenty of ways to beat Teferi- I think the reason people hate him now is because Nexus of Fate decks are just miserable to play against. They are beatable, and we have the tools to do it, but when they do work, they are miserable, and I feel like the whole object of that deck is to go to time every round and force a draw.
YMMV
"But literally nobody likes rares that are former uncommons" Aether Vial
I know I only quoted part of the sentence
At least the card is good and useful in limited.
I run 4 copies of Vrasksa's contempt in the main board at all times for my local meta. It is expensive, but it has saved my bacon a lot. I play mono black so I run 4x VC, 4x Fatal Push, and then 4x Cast Down. Plus, Ifnir Deadlands.
Damage wins games, but good removal prevents losses.
There are a lot of PW's, Hazoret, Rekindling Phoenix, and other good targets for VC in my local meta.