Now they make effective hate..... Like Sorcerer's Scope? Come on... with the release of Ixalon, they should unban all those standard bans, because we're finally seeing proper hate coming. Play two Scopes and you can effectively get what you need most of the time, just as it is for me in modern with pithing needle or phyrexian revoker. I'd prefer those, but this is nice with the added peek to a player's hand.
Course, I quit playing standard sometime after ugin's fate because I saw where the removal of core sets would lead. They'd no longer have a place to say where cards like blood moon, back to basics, or other good nonbasic land hate could go. They no longer would have good places to put all the pithing needles, path to exiles, ghost quarters, and the like....
Like it or not, there needs to be a balance between power and hate. Too many good things without proper hate leads to the need for standard bans.
It wasn't Copy Cat that made the deck too powerful, it was what the deck was built around with copy cat and no good answers. Printing Protection of the Hekma is a nice concept, but unplayable at 5 mana. Make it 3 mana and then we should talk.
Little things like this is why I think standard is stupid, because I still don't like Splinter Twin being banned and I never even played with the deck.
Anyways, on to another rant.... Marvel...
Another card completely unplayable outside of standard is banned. And why is it banned? Oh, wait, that's right..... No hate. And I would have expected Emrakul to be unbanned with Marvel being banned because she's completely fair in a game where she can be cast for 7-9 mana on average..........................................................................................................................
To be honest with everyone, I just wish WotC would stop constantly banning cards like they are. I haven't seen this many bans since the days of Mirrodin and even then Mirrodin had proper hate but the bans were because the cards were utterly broken like Skullclamp and Chrome Mox. Not like it is now when Stony Silence can shut down all artifacts effectively neutralizing a third of the decks in the field and pithing needle effectively targeting another percentage of the field...
*sighs*
WotC is painting themselves into a corner, where people expect a ban every time a card becomes popular. And hitting things like Top in Legacy which hurt every deck except for Miracles was BS. Miracles a problem? The new ruling about split card CMCs and a ban to counterbalance would have done the trick. Instead, they went after a card that had made other decks able to stand up to the big boys.
Banning Git Probe made Death's Shadow and Storm better and effectively killed Infect from Modern.
Banning Marvel and Cat in standard.... Eh............................... Piss off. That's all I have to say about it. People moan about decks and styles of play... They cry when WotC printed good hate. And so WotC does the opposite and not print hate. They don't print Rest In Peace, Stony Silence, etc.... And we get a broken environment. And so they have no choice but to apply the ban hammer often because they kept refusing to make people feel bad for making cards that can apply pressure to decks like Marvel and Cats. Sorry guys, you did it to yourselves. Just as Frontier, a format I like the concept of, is doomed because people who play it don't want their perfect mana base disrupted by silly concepts like blood moon or ghost quarters. Or they don't like Stony Silence or Rest in Peace....
Until WotC prints the good hate to balance out the powerful abilities, I'll stay away from Standard. And yes, I like powerful cards. I love powerful combos. But even I understand that there needs to be a proper balance.
A: Play cards that they do not regularly see. B: Play slower and more turns/game. C: Have a diverse meta with a lot of synergies.
Why don't they just play regular highlander, or Modern highlander?
I don't know about highlander, but EDH is the most boring format I have ever played. Very few viable decks and tons of "most have" cards.
Eh.... Only if you think in terms of cEDH, which a social casual format it is not. I have my hyper decks, but I have some decks that's at most 100 dollars and very fun to play and at a casual level where nobody is trying for an infinite combo by turn 3 it becomes really fun. Almost as fun as pauper EDH... Only format I find boring is standard, but that's just my thoughts on the matter.
A: Play cards that they do not regularly see. B: Play slower and more turns/game. C: Have a diverse meta with a lot of synergies.
Why don't they just play regular highlander, or Modern highlander?
Eh....
Here's the deal, Frontier isn't very diverse at all. Whatever was best in standard because of no answers is good in Frontier. I've had enough of seeing/hearing CopyCats, CoCo, 4 color rally, and Jace for my fill thank you very much. Quite frankly, I'll just pass. It isn't diverse, there's a high percentage of overpowered/broken cards like Dig, Cruise, and a perfect manabase with no proper hate...
Yes, I'm agreeing with you here.
Highlander slow? Feh... It's vintage lite. Least here people don't care if you play gold bordered and proxied and CE cards.
Never seen the pull to modern highlander either....
With all that said, Frontier is an intriguing format. Played it a bit, and immediately left because I really didn't want to deal with the stupid combos and decks that got me bored with standard in the first place involved in the format.
Far as EDH goes, I have over a dozen different decks, and I was lucky to have things from a massive collection over the years to have crypts, duals, and such for the majority of them. 5 decks are full of proxies here and there because of overlap. I run a legacy elves deck so my cradles in my EDH decks are mostly proxies.
I play a bit of vintage, and my timetwister is graded and I have a beaten to hell twister (when I started playing, I didn't know what sleeves were back then) that is now just proxied because I cannot risk further degrading the beat up twister....
So... Yeah, I have 4 hyper competitive EDH decks, 4 competitive decks, 4 casual decks, and a few kitchen table under 100 dollar budget decks.
There's been times I had around 30 EDH decks, sold half of them, gave away a few others to people for birthdays or even as a wedding gift. Giving someone a karador deck with a lot of flash was cool because the wife really loved that deck and I was bored of it anyway.
Then I have around 20 pauper EDH decks, along with a few modern decks, but nothing in standard.....
So yeah, is all good...
It's only too much when you're spending more than you can afford to or if you say it's too much. I know I have a lot of money in my collection, but I paid prices like 20 bucks for a beta timetwister, 30 for a cradle, 50 for a black lotus, and such....................... the days when mana crypt was a 5 dollar card you got out of a book.
wish soldier of fortune were modern legal. Course casting surgical extraction, extirpate, and others... is hilarious. 4 ghost quarters with the probe...
Legitimate question time... How does one handle a deck that runs close to 30 counterspells and removal to wait and pull off its own win? Earlier, I had some people snerk at me because I ran such a deck and it's pretty powerful. But how does one attack the deck from which angle? And How do you counter the attacks?
Such as... I built an Edric deck that plays very differently from the traditional lists and the way it's designed it can end up controlling an entire table until I am ready to win outright. My boyfriend hates it, some others think it's BS, but I think it's very powerful because of the quality and card considerations I have put into the creation of the deck.
To people who felt Top should go......why not CB and/or Terminus?
Does anyone really have an issue with Nic Fit, Painter, Mono B pox etc. Rare decks that are the underdogs in the format, the whole point of Miracles getting the ban is to increase diversity, not to nerf lower tier decks that increase it.
To those celebrating like a teenager who has just got a first date, saying 'now I can play Legacy again.....' you probably are not the sort of player your local Legacy scene needs, try EDH or Modern, if you have not already quit because someone Lanterned you.
And yes, I have fir a long time favoured a ban, just not Top.
I feel that the Top was banned for one reason alone, time consumption. Too many players would take too long resolving top over and over... And it sometimes felt like a certain specific player here would slow play just to annoy people. I've played against good miracles players, but I've also played against bad miracles players who would literally take forever to play a top.. I know what the loss of top does to the meta, but in some ways I feel that it was a good ban. Why?
It was a linchpin for so many decks and now my 10 post deck has lot one of its best matchups. However, my deck has lost one of the cards that made 10 post so good in top as well....
One of the biggest things is that 4c Saheeli still works just fine.It no longer has access to that particular infinite combo but does it really need it to win? No.... Especially since the deck can go into a grindy midrange 4c walker deck with so much value it can stomp a lot of other decks.....
The deck has no reason to be four colors, or to run Saheeli. Therefore it would pretty much just be Temur Midrange, which would need a new win condition. It doesn't really 'work just fine', it's a different deck.
As long as Gideon is in the format, there is no reason not to run him.
The way the deck changes is it looks for more pure value, be it displacer to blink spell quellers or whirlers... Saheeli for the constant CA and burn every turn with the occasional, which may be game ending (in the case of copying a green hulk), the deck goes for the long game in mind. Heck, it might even decide to run Panharmonicon in place of the felidar guardians. The deck's still viable, just in a different way.
One of the biggest things is that 4c Saheeli still works just fine.It no longer has access to that particular infinite combo but does it really need it to win? No.... Especially since the deck can go into a grindy midrange 4c walker deck with so much value it can stomp a lot of other decks.....
Short synopsis, this deck is brutal. It has personally won me more games than any other and its power is to wreck my opponents and shut them down as soon as possible.
It has more than enough control to stop my opponents from doing pretty much anything with the most powerful spells in my arsenal...
However, I think there's room for improvement on it, so comments are more than welcome.
More in depth as I explain some of the choices and stipulations here...
a beta demo tutor is up for grabs, along with a mirror universe for second, and so forth.... I'm in second place.
A reasoning for my card choices, is to bash in 4 players in particular, trying to force them to play a different deck. If I focus on a single player, I can effectively neutralize them from playing. I hated combo so much I put together the deck to break combo decks to pieces.
Plus this deck is also built in mind to beating certain decks in a specific type of rules structure while abusing many of the multiplayer legal cards while also seeming to be a duel commander gunslinger style.
I do know how powerful creature swarm edric can be. But this isn't that style. It's tempo control.
The original version (creature swarm) can't win without resorting to an infinite win. This one gains a board state that's oppressive and there's times I'm holding 5 counterspells...
Below:
The Gauntlet Commander tournament is designed to test your skills in various formats of Commander using the same deck. It is a point based system with standings at the end to be decided based on your final score. There are three rounds with each being a different format.
Round 1
The first round is a free-for-all multiplayer game. Pods will be created at random and regular multiplayer rules apply. Points will be awarded based on two things. One point is awarded for each player you eliminate from the game, as well as an extra point to the last person standing.
NOTE 1: No points are awarded for eliminating a player using an infinite combo in this round. Yes you can wipe out the table using an infinite combo but that’ll only net you 1 point for being the pod winner. The three things that are looked out for are Infinite Mana, Infinite Damage, and Infinite Turns. (Making infinite creatures counts as infinite damage).
NOTE 2: Players are not allowed to attempt to eliminate themselves unless the end result would net them at least 1 point. This is to prevent players from commiting suicide to deny someone a point they earned. On a similar note, conceeding during round 1 will result in you being dropped from the tournament.
NOTE 3: In the event that the round goes to time, each remaining player will be awarded 1 point.
Round 2
Based on point standings in round 1 each player will be paired with another player for a 2v2 multiplayer match. This is not two-headed giant! Each player has their own life total and their own turns. Players on the same team will be seated across from each other and will work together to eliminate the other team. Winning this round will net both players on your team 3 points if you’re both standing, or 2 points if your team wins and you’re down to 1 player. Also, if your team loses this round but eliminated an opponent, the players on your team will be awarded 1 point.
Round 3
The final round of the Gauntlet event will be 1v1 best of 3. This will proceed the same as a round of our regular Sunday Commander events. Winning this round in two games will net you 3 points. Winning it in three games will earn you 2 points, and the loser will score 1 point.
Seems like a monopoly, now there won't be any competition and price gouging will continue. CFB has always been on the higher end of GP prices. I could see GP's being $100 by the end of 2018.
Well, that's because SCG pretty much spat upon everyone on the west coast a couple years ago and then there was the huge leak last year where several judges were suspended or banned from hosting DCI events.
Then the blatant cheating during sealed GPs where by the time people go to register their decks they resemble standard decks.
Course, I quit playing standard sometime after ugin's fate because I saw where the removal of core sets would lead. They'd no longer have a place to say where cards like blood moon, back to basics, or other good nonbasic land hate could go. They no longer would have good places to put all the pithing needles, path to exiles, ghost quarters, and the like....
Like it or not, there needs to be a balance between power and hate. Too many good things without proper hate leads to the need for standard bans.
It wasn't Copy Cat that made the deck too powerful, it was what the deck was built around with copy cat and no good answers. Printing Protection of the Hekma is a nice concept, but unplayable at 5 mana. Make it 3 mana and then we should talk.
Little things like this is why I think standard is stupid, because I still don't like Splinter Twin being banned and I never even played with the deck.
Anyways, on to another rant.... Marvel...
Another card completely unplayable outside of standard is banned. And why is it banned? Oh, wait, that's right..... No hate. And I would have expected Emrakul to be unbanned with Marvel being banned because she's completely fair in a game where she can be cast for 7-9 mana on average..........................................................................................................................
To be honest with everyone, I just wish WotC would stop constantly banning cards like they are. I haven't seen this many bans since the days of Mirrodin and even then Mirrodin had proper hate but the bans were because the cards were utterly broken like Skullclamp and Chrome Mox. Not like it is now when Stony Silence can shut down all artifacts effectively neutralizing a third of the decks in the field and pithing needle effectively targeting another percentage of the field...
*sighs*
WotC is painting themselves into a corner, where people expect a ban every time a card becomes popular. And hitting things like Top in Legacy which hurt every deck except for Miracles was BS. Miracles a problem? The new ruling about split card CMCs and a ban to counterbalance would have done the trick. Instead, they went after a card that had made other decks able to stand up to the big boys.
Banning Git Probe made Death's Shadow and Storm better and effectively killed Infect from Modern.
Banning Marvel and Cat in standard.... Eh............................... Piss off. That's all I have to say about it. People moan about decks and styles of play... They cry when WotC printed good hate. And so WotC does the opposite and not print hate. They don't print Rest In Peace, Stony Silence, etc.... And we get a broken environment. And so they have no choice but to apply the ban hammer often because they kept refusing to make people feel bad for making cards that can apply pressure to decks like Marvel and Cats. Sorry guys, you did it to yourselves. Just as Frontier, a format I like the concept of, is doomed because people who play it don't want their perfect mana base disrupted by silly concepts like blood moon or ghost quarters. Or they don't like Stony Silence or Rest in Peace....
Until WotC prints the good hate to balance out the powerful abilities, I'll stay away from Standard. And yes, I like powerful cards. I love powerful combos. But even I understand that there needs to be a proper balance.
Just my two credits,
Kaiyla
Eh.... Only if you think in terms of cEDH, which a social casual format it is not. I have my hyper decks, but I have some decks that's at most 100 dollars and very fun to play and at a casual level where nobody is trying for an infinite combo by turn 3 it becomes really fun. Almost as fun as pauper EDH... Only format I find boring is standard, but that's just my thoughts on the matter.
Eh....
Here's the deal, Frontier isn't very diverse at all. Whatever was best in standard because of no answers is good in Frontier. I've had enough of seeing/hearing CopyCats, CoCo, 4 color rally, and Jace for my fill thank you very much. Quite frankly, I'll just pass. It isn't diverse, there's a high percentage of overpowered/broken cards like Dig, Cruise, and a perfect manabase with no proper hate...
Yes, I'm agreeing with you here.
Highlander slow? Feh... It's vintage lite.
Never seen the pull to modern highlander either....
With all that said, Frontier is an intriguing format. Played it a bit, and immediately left because I really didn't want to deal with the stupid combos and decks that got me bored with standard in the first place involved in the format.
I play a bit of vintage, and my timetwister is graded and I have a beaten to hell twister (when I started playing, I didn't know what sleeves were back then) that is now just proxied because I cannot risk further degrading the beat up twister....
So... Yeah, I have 4 hyper competitive EDH decks, 4 competitive decks, 4 casual decks, and a few kitchen table under 100 dollar budget decks.
There's been times I had around 30 EDH decks, sold half of them, gave away a few others to people for birthdays or even as a wedding gift. Giving someone a karador deck with a lot of flash was cool because the wife really loved that deck and I was bored of it anyway.
Then I have around 20 pauper EDH decks, along with a few modern decks, but nothing in standard.....
So yeah, is all good...
It's only too much when you're spending more than you can afford to or if you say it's too much. I know I have a lot of money in my collection, but I paid prices like 20 bucks for a beta timetwister, 30 for a cradle, 50 for a black lotus, and such....................... the days when mana crypt was a 5 dollar card you got out of a book.
wish soldier of fortune were modern legal. Course casting surgical extraction, extirpate, and others... is hilarious. 4 ghost quarters with the probe...
Such as... I built an Edric deck that plays very differently from the traditional lists and the way it's designed it can end up controlling an entire table until I am ready to win outright. My boyfriend hates it, some others think it's BS, but I think it's very powerful because of the quality and card considerations I have put into the creation of the deck.
I feel that the Top was banned for one reason alone, time consumption. Too many players would take too long resolving top over and over... And it sometimes felt like a certain specific player here would slow play just to annoy people. I've played against good miracles players, but I've also played against bad miracles players who would literally take forever to play a top.. I know what the loss of top does to the meta, but in some ways I feel that it was a good ban. Why?
It was a linchpin for so many decks and now my 10 post deck has lot one of its best matchups. However, my deck has lost one of the cards that made 10 post so good in top as well....
Eh................................................
I think top was one of the cards used so much in so many decks that inevitably it had to go.
As long as Gideon is in the format, there is no reason not to run him.
The way the deck changes is it looks for more pure value, be it displacer to blink spell quellers or whirlers... Saheeli for the constant CA and burn every turn with the occasional, which may be game ending (in the case of copying a green hulk), the deck goes for the long game in mind. Heck, it might even decide to run Panharmonicon in place of the felidar guardians. The deck's still viable, just in a different way.
It has more than enough control to stop my opponents from doing pretty much anything with the most powerful spells in my arsenal...
However, I think there's room for improvement on it, so comments are more than welcome.
Have fun
1x Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Instant (30)
1x Arcane Denial
1x Beast Within
1x Capsize
1x Chord of Calling
1x Counterspell
1x Crop Rotation
1x Cryptic Command
1x Cyclonic Rift
1x Delay
1x Deprive
1x Disallow
1x Dissipate
1x Faerie Trickery
1x Familiar's Ruse
1x Forbid
1x Force of Will
1x Hinder
1x Mana Drain
1x Mindbreak Trap
1x Misdirection
1x Mystical Tutor
1x Negate
1x Remand
1x Spell Crumple
1x Summary Dismissal
1x Swan Song
1x Unsubstantiate
1x Void Shatter
1x Voidslime
1x Worldly Tutor
1x Druids' Repository
1x Earthcraft
1x Exploration
1x Opposition
1x Sylvan Library
Creature (24)
1x Arbor Elf
1x Baral, Chief of Compliance
1x Birds of Paradise
1x Cloud of Faeries
1x Craterhoof Behemoth
1x Deadeye Navigator
1x Elvish Mystic
1x Eternal Witness
1x Faerie Impostor
1x Fyndhorn Elves
1x Glen Elendra Archmage
1x Llanowar Elves
1x Mystic Snake
1x Nullmage Shepherd
1x Peregrine Drake
1x Phantasmal Image
1x Priest of Titania
1x Reclamation Sage
1x Riptide Pilferer
1x Seedborn Muse
1x Snapcaster Mage
1x Spellstutter Sprite
1x Vendilion Clique
1x Venser, Shaper Savant
Sorcery (6)
1x Green Sun's Zenith
1x Notorious Throng
1x Regrowth
1x Temporal Manipulation
1x Temporal Mastery
1x Time Warp
1x Crucible of Worlds
1x Isochron Scepter
1x Null Rod
1x Winter Orb
Land (30)
1x Alchemist's Refuge
1x Botanical Sanctum
1x Breeding Pool
1x Cavern of Souls
1x Command Tower
1x Dryad Arbor
1x Flooded Strand
4x Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Hinterland Harbor
4x Island
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Polluted Delta
1x Reliquary Tower
1x Rishadan Port
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Strip Mine
1x Tropical Island
1x Verdant Catacombs
1x Wasteland
1x Windswept Heath
1x Wooded Foothills
1x Yavimaya Coast
More in depth as I explain some of the choices and stipulations here...
a beta demo tutor is up for grabs, along with a mirror universe for second, and so forth.... I'm in second place.
A reasoning for my card choices, is to bash in 4 players in particular, trying to force them to play a different deck. If I focus on a single player, I can effectively neutralize them from playing. I hated combo so much I put together the deck to break combo decks to pieces.
Plus this deck is also built in mind to beating certain decks in a specific type of rules structure while abusing many of the multiplayer legal cards while also seeming to be a duel commander gunslinger style.
I do know how powerful creature swarm edric can be. But this isn't that style. It's tempo control.
The original version (creature swarm) can't win without resorting to an infinite win. This one gains a board state that's oppressive and there's times I'm holding 5 counterspells...
Below:
The Gauntlet Commander tournament is designed to test your skills in various formats of Commander using the same deck. It is a point based system with standings at the end to be decided based on your final score. There are three rounds with each being a different format.
Round 1
The first round is a free-for-all multiplayer game. Pods will be created at random and regular multiplayer rules apply. Points will be awarded based on two things. One point is awarded for each player you eliminate from the game, as well as an extra point to the last person standing.
NOTE 1: No points are awarded for eliminating a player using an infinite combo in this round. Yes you can wipe out the table using an infinite combo but that’ll only net you 1 point for being the pod winner. The three things that are looked out for are Infinite Mana, Infinite Damage, and Infinite Turns. (Making infinite creatures counts as infinite damage).
NOTE 2: Players are not allowed to attempt to eliminate themselves unless the end result would net them at least 1 point. This is to prevent players from commiting suicide to deny someone a point they earned. On a similar note, conceeding during round 1 will result in you being dropped from the tournament.
NOTE 3: In the event that the round goes to time, each remaining player will be awarded 1 point.
Round 2
Based on point standings in round 1 each player will be paired with another player for a 2v2 multiplayer match. This is not two-headed giant! Each player has their own life total and their own turns. Players on the same team will be seated across from each other and will work together to eliminate the other team. Winning this round will net both players on your team 3 points if you’re both standing, or 2 points if your team wins and you’re down to 1 player. Also, if your team loses this round but eliminated an opponent, the players on your team will be awarded 1 point.
Round 3
The final round of the Gauntlet event will be 1v1 best of 3. This will proceed the same as a round of our regular Sunday Commander events. Winning this round in two games will net you 3 points. Winning it in three games will earn you 2 points, and the loser will score 1 point.
Yeah, FNM promos are garbage and the current blocks are very unfun and full of cards that's breaking standard to pieces.
Well, that's because SCG pretty much spat upon everyone on the west coast a couple years ago and then there was the huge leak last year where several judges were suspended or banned from hosting DCI events.
Then the blatant cheating during sealed GPs where by the time people go to register their decks they resemble standard decks.