He's already more than $50 while being in a current, very popular Standard set that drafts triple packs. His price is already unprecedented, and I have a hard time seeing that trend continue to rise until at least it is no longer drafted.
As someone who not uncommonly faces 3 Affinity in a 4-round tournament at his LGS, I'm clueless about how to handle Karn. What do you do when Affinity gets a card that increases their nut-draw density by 50% and is resilient against hate?
You do have a point about the turn 4 rule. I am very much against it being a hard rule, and it should really only be a soft guideline. The way in which the Storm deck works with its decently high turn 3 percentage kills is totally fine (if I had to guess, 30-40% to turn 3 kill goldfishing). The only thing I'd like to see is people to hold the turn 4 rule standard to any deck and not just combo especially now that combo is easier to slow down than aggro in the current meta
It already isn't a hard rule, though. The B&R committee considers the percentage of the time a deck can execute a turn-3 kill and how easy it is to disrupt.
Although you could be saying that you think it should just be looser than it is now, which is valid. Can't quite tell with how you phrased it.
The point about top aggro being slower than top combo right now is pretty much spot-on. I think the reason for this is because Midrange and URx are always waiting in the wings to prey on creature-based decks. The two responses to that are a) go under them, or b) blank their interaction. The latter has proven to be the better strategy now. That lengthens their clock by a few turns, but with the benefit of pushing back hard against the forces that usually keep them in check - either by disrupting the interaction (Humans) or overtaxing it with numerous angles of attack (Hollow One).
4 Mana is already a lot and you want a Mana sink, which is only good for grindy match ups like jund. Everywhere else shalai is slow, picking up one copy is never bad since it's gavony on a creature.
The Ross deck seems like just playtesting the marwyn as a 5th worse archdruid. Boreal druid was already fine because it's another Mana dork that has no drawbacks to it. All in all, I believe the vizier + devoted druid combo carried his games more than the single copy of marwyn.
Thd fact us, shakai is s creature, snd this means se is tutorable in many natchups where hexproof is usrful. It's a better aegis ofg the gods, i wouldn't be durprised in seeing her in the toolbox version
Woooooooooooooooooooow those typos.
But agreed that I'd love to try her out in GW or Abzan toolbox lists.
But in my opinion the main reason that the traditional roles of combo beats aggro etc etc being almost totally reversed in modern is because of the adherence to a 'turn 4 rule'. Combo decks aren't allowed to roam free and so they get pushed/banned up against turn 4. As pointed out aggro decks with their god hands kill on turn 3 in this format, just flipping that one simple thing on it's head means control doesn't pack the counterspells it's got (what I wouldn't give for spell pierce and negate to be maindeckable) and then control has to pack removal for days to try and keep aggro check. But since that isn't its natural role does it kind of badly.
Absolutely. The Turn-4 Rule artificially constraining the speed of decks is a big part of it. Not the whole story though IMO.
I maintain that humans is closer to aggro-control than it is to aggro. It's tricky because its control elements are all on bodies, but the deck runs more control elements than non-control (16 of its creatures are dedicated to board or hand control -- 4 freebooter, 4 thalia, 4 meddling mage, 4 reflector mage). And half (or more) the sideboard is additional disruption.
The most aggro interpretation of it is a Fish deck that sits right on the border of midrange, and you can interpret it as aggro-control.
If you've played the deck a lot, the go-wide thalia's lieutenant kills are the exception. It's more often you're disrupting and chipping and then mantis-bolting for the win.
Combo decks losing to aggro control or fish decks, news at 11
Generally agreed, although I'll reiterate that I think the term "disruptive aggro" is both pretty well accepted and has less baggage than "aggro-control" (which people have picked fights over here before).
Traditional naming conventions fall apart in modern very quickly.
This is only true from an essentialist perspective, i.e. everything must fit cleanly into exactly one category.
From a more organic/hollistic perspective, the model holds up just fine. There's nothing threatening in Twin being tempo-combo, Breach Moon being control-combo, Vizier being midrange-combo, and the Grixis lists of yore being midrange-control.
That those hybrids or blurry lines exist doesn't invalidate the decks that do fit into the categories pretty neatly, or the information we can get from examining how they interact. Like Jeskai (Control), Storm (Combo), Mardu Pyromancer (Midrange), Infect (Creature Combo), Ironworks (Combo), etc.
I think thats why we still see people jamming other decks. Its certainly why I play what I do. There isnt a card in my deck that I dont like casting. On the flip side, running out creature after creature...just doesnt work for me.
Am I at a disadvantage? Almost certainly, but I'm enjoying it more than I would otherwise.
I envy you that. Playing Spreading Seas and Blood Moon feels like the absolute opposite of what I want to be doing when I play Control. Jeskai is a bit more like it (as is Grixis), but so tenuously meta-dependent that it's better for my peace of mind not to rely on it.
Yeah, fully admit its overly simplistic, especially when many decks are working on multiple axis, it just seem weird to me.
No, I think you're spot-on, simplifications and all. Working with shortcuts is necessary to keep the conversation from taking an extra 10 pages of text.
You know what as I type this, the issue is not Aggro losing to Control, shouldnt aggro BEAT control? Isnt the issue here that Midrange loses to aggro, shouldnt Jund be the one picking off all these Aggro decks, or am I wrong on that?
The (incredibly oversimplified) conventional wisdom is that Control beats Combo because permission, Combo beats Aggro because speed, and Aggro beats Control because efficiency. It gets a lot more complicated when you add tempo, ramp/big mana, midrange, disruptive aggro etc. into the picture, but to put it in broad strokes off the top of my head: Control beats up on ramp (counter what they ramp into) and some midrange (you're too big; they're too slow) and adds disruptive aggro to its weak matchups. Granted I'm going off of what I can remember from metagames like 5 years ago.
Modern is weird, because it's defined by a ****-ton of pushed, undercosted creatures that often aren't worth running in eternal formats, near-top-tier creature removal that therefore is a lot less useful, and terrible permission, selection, and (Control/Tempo) threats. That means Control can't police Ramp or Combo, unless it's creature combo, like Bloo or Infect or even the Tempo-Combo-hybrid Twin back in the day. So it has to either cheese out its opponent's mana base like UW/UR, or load up on the one pillar of Control that Modern actually has in spades like Jeskai and kind of Grixis and overload on creature removal.
IMO, this is why we see Control beating aggro, but losing to the solitaire decks that it's supposed to beat - which then need intermittent bans since Control can't police them. It's just that those are the tools Control players have to work with in this format.
Incidentally, this makes for a relatively narrow band that fair decks can walk and succeed. Which is why many fair decks to post up results are doing so by adopting unfair measures - UR with Blood Moons, and Pyro with Faithless Looting/Bedlam Reveler abuse, plus Blood Moon.
Anyone know what spiked Settle the Wreckage and Gideon of the Trials? I'm assuming it's Standard UW Control, but not certain since I haven't followed Standard since Gatecrash.
-4: You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your upkeep, create a 1/1 blue and black Faerie Rogue creature token with flying. Whenever a Faerie dies target opponent discards a card at random. If that opponent has no cards in hand, draw a card instead.
Hard to say where that comes in balance-wise, but it's good in terms of design. However I'd scrap the "at random." Random discard is incredibly powerful, and it's usually a BR thing, not B or UB (at least when talking about modern design). Especially if it's a repeated effect.
Teferi is spiking. If you play Control at all, get em quick.
Question 1: Where are you getting your information? They spiked a week ago. Now they're settled and are actually dropping. You can get them for $30-$31 on eBay Buy It Now, and the auctions are going for around $27-$30. That's $7-$10 less than when it spiked.
Question 2: Are you so certain that he's a Modern staple that "Get them now" during peak demand and minimal supply is bulletproof advice?
Really? Sites I reviewed earlier in the week had him cheap. I know when I got him I was surprised at the price.
Wanna grind that axe a little harder there?
Not quite unprecedented. Jace, the Mind Sculptor was a little either side of $100 for his reign in Standard, and Jace, Vryn's Prodigy maxed around $80.
I guess it's unprecedented for a card that doesn't have the word "Jace" in it though.
It already isn't a hard rule, though. The B&R committee considers the percentage of the time a deck can execute a turn-3 kill and how easy it is to disrupt.
Although you could be saying that you think it should just be looser than it is now, which is valid. Can't quite tell with how you phrased it.
The point about top aggro being slower than top combo right now is pretty much spot-on. I think the reason for this is because Midrange and URx are always waiting in the wings to prey on creature-based decks. The two responses to that are a) go under them, or b) blank their interaction. The latter has proven to be the better strategy now. That lengthens their clock by a few turns, but with the benefit of pushing back hard against the forces that usually keep them in check - either by disrupting the interaction (Humans) or overtaxing it with numerous angles of attack (Hollow One).
Woooooooooooooooooooow those typos.
But agreed that I'd love to try her out in GW or Abzan toolbox lists.
Absolutely. The Turn-4 Rule artificially constraining the speed of decks is a big part of it. Not the whole story though IMO.
I've been jamming 2 in every red sideboard for years; don't see any reason to stop now.
Generally agreed, although I'll reiterate that I think the term "disruptive aggro" is both pretty well accepted and has less baggage than "aggro-control" (which people have picked fights over here before).
This is only true from an essentialist perspective, i.e. everything must fit cleanly into exactly one category.
From a more organic/hollistic perspective, the model holds up just fine. There's nothing threatening in Twin being tempo-combo, Breach Moon being control-combo, Vizier being midrange-combo, and the Grixis lists of yore being midrange-control.
That those hybrids or blurry lines exist doesn't invalidate the decks that do fit into the categories pretty neatly, or the information we can get from examining how they interact. Like Jeskai (Control), Storm (Combo), Mardu Pyromancer (Midrange), Infect (Creature Combo), Ironworks (Combo), etc.
I envy you that. Playing Spreading Seas and Blood Moon feels like the absolute opposite of what I want to be doing when I play Control. Jeskai is a bit more like it (as is Grixis), but so tenuously meta-dependent that it's better for my peace of mind not to rely on it.
No, I think you're spot-on, simplifications and all. Working with shortcuts is necessary to keep the conversation from taking an extra 10 pages of text.
The (incredibly oversimplified) conventional wisdom is that Control beats Combo because permission, Combo beats Aggro because speed, and Aggro beats Control because efficiency. It gets a lot more complicated when you add tempo, ramp/big mana, midrange, disruptive aggro etc. into the picture, but to put it in broad strokes off the top of my head: Control beats up on ramp (counter what they ramp into) and some midrange (you're too big; they're too slow) and adds disruptive aggro to its weak matchups. Granted I'm going off of what I can remember from metagames like 5 years ago.
Modern is weird, because it's defined by a ****-ton of pushed, undercosted creatures that often aren't worth running in eternal formats, near-top-tier creature removal that therefore is a lot less useful, and terrible permission, selection, and (Control/Tempo) threats. That means Control can't police Ramp or Combo, unless it's creature combo, like Bloo or Infect or even the Tempo-Combo-hybrid Twin back in the day. So it has to either cheese out its opponent's mana base like UW/UR, or load up on the one pillar of Control that Modern actually has in spades like Jeskai and kind of Grixis and overload on creature removal.
IMO, this is why we see Control beating aggro, but losing to the solitaire decks that it's supposed to beat - which then need intermittent bans since Control can't police them. It's just that those are the tools Control players have to work with in this format.
Incidentally, this makes for a relatively narrow band that fair decks can walk and succeed. Which is why many fair decks to post up results are doing so by adopting unfair measures - UR with Blood Moons, and Pyro with Faithless Looting/Bedlam Reveler abuse, plus Blood Moon.
Because Volrath flavor text is best flavor text?
Hard to say where that comes in balance-wise, but it's good in terms of design. However I'd scrap the "at random." Random discard is incredibly powerful, and it's usually a BR thing, not B or UB (at least when talking about modern design). Especially if it's a repeated effect.
Yes, he spiked a week ago and is falling. This is very different than "Currently spiking; get them quick."
Just wanted to make sure people aren't making poor decisions on incorrect info.