I got into competitive Magic around May of last year. I would have liked to play Standard (after it rotated because it was too close to rotation then), but as someone who likes to play combo, I noticed that since Zendikar/Scars (Valakut and Splinter Twin), combo decks in Standard have been a lot less playable. Why is this?
There are a few reasons.
1) Wotc shrank set sizes at Alara. There was not room for the pieces of the combo, or the hate for the combo in single sets. Splinter twin and Valakut was spread out over a block. Competitive constructed was limited to a handful of decks.
2) Wotc actively changed their design process to be better for limited.
There has been fringe combos since the time you are talking but the player base argues if they are 'true' combos.
Combo should always exist in every format. It is healthy for the game, and if one looks at the game in it's entirety I think you could see that. This is Magic, a game where every strategy should be playable. I think it's best if players learn to adjust and play Magic, and learn to build decks and create sideboards instead of always complaining. Adjust, learn, play strategically and stop whining because things don't go your way, or get upset because "X" deck can't beat "Y" deck. Learn to be a better player, please.
If combo is your thing then I'm sure winning with it is very thrilling but sitting across from you waiting 15 minutes for you to win on your combo turn is hardly the most engaging thing for your opponent. As a whole for there flagship format it is better to keep such things out.
In the end combo is like sex. Playing with yourself is good but playing with a friend is soo much better.
More nonsense? Do you know what the word subjective means? Maybe go check that in a dictionary.
I've seen new players awestruck when they have have an almost certain win get swept away by a 10+ piece combo in a turn. very few combos go 15 minutes either. Exaggerate much?
And whats with this misconception of interaction? You can interact with a combo!!!! Conterspells, Instants, Flash creatures, Activated abilities!!! If there is no interaction its your own fault.
How is it interactive if you play creatures and swing turn after turn while I don't cast creatures myself?
Yep. Only the deck formerly known as "Eggs" in Modern pre-Second Sunrise banning and High Tide in Legacy take more than 10 minutes to go off. Also, if your opponent is taking 2 minute turns the whole match while you are taking 10 sec. turns, then you take 4-5 min. on 1 turn, that is more than fair. I think of the time as the total time taken by each player in the match; not just 1 particular turn. I'm pretty sure Control takes longer average turns anyway.
I agree with a lot of your points, but I think that it is not just scrubs (I don't know if you were aiming at a targeted audience) who don't like Combo. Most Aggro players will have an Anti-Combo feeling because Combo usually wins at 2-5 life before the Aggro player can beat them. However, Combo makes Control much stronger, since it usually beats Combo (too much disruption). This is good for Aggro. Without Combo or Control, we devolve into a meta of Midrange destroying all of the Aggro decks. I know for sure reading here on MTGS that many don't mind this, but I for one
honestly would quit if the meta was Midrange, Midrange, Midrange, you get the point.
The things that people don't understand about Combo is that it is fine if there are hate cards. People are forced to play these cards instead of
simply sideboarding MORE creatures. It keeps people honest. Just look at other formats where no one deck can SB against everything. So, they leave less for Dredge and they lose to it when matched against it randomly (and rightfully so because they didn't prepare). Decks like Prison and Land Destruction kept the meta honest because some decks simply beat these. Others didn't and needed to resort to specific cards to combat them. There's nothing wrong with this, although I could see something wrong if a Combo had 0 ways to stop it in a meta. I don't think this has ever happened in Magic. If I am wrong, someone can correct me. (Maybe the Academy deck?)
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
If combo is your thing then I'm sure winning with it is very thrilling but sitting across from you waiting 15 minutes for you to win on your combo turn is hardly the most engaging thing for your opponent. As a whole for there flagship format it is better to keep such things out.
In the end combo is like sex. Playing with yourself is good but playing with a friend is soo much better.
More nonsense? Do you know what the word subjective means? Maybe go check that in a dictionary.
I've seen new players awestruck when they have have an almost certain win get swept away by a 10+ piece combo in a turn. very few combos go 15 minutes either. Exaggerate much?
And whats with this misconception of interaction? You can interact with a combo!!!! Conterspells, Instants, Flash creatures, Activated abilities!!! If there is no interaction its your own fault.
How is it interactive if you play creatures and swing turn after turn while I don't cast creatures myself?
I sure do not like your aggressive tone much kid. Have you seen a game of second sunrise combo? They do take forever to go off.
I go off in five. Hell, waiting at the end of my turn for control players takes longer.
Besides, "Storm" is the archetypical combo deck, and that takes maybe a minute?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Lycanthropy Awareness Day.
Hoping for a cure, or at least an outbreak.
This thread makes me sad. You've got people complaining because combo takes too long (you cannot use one deck at the extreme end of things, a deck that got banned because it took too long to play out and slowed down entire tournaments, and apply that to every comp deck across the board), people complaining that combo is too fast (same thing), people complaining that combo decks are uninteractive, etc. I think it's safe to say that anyone making these points has had little to no actual experience playing against combo decks. Combo is part of the deck archetype trinity along with control and aggro, and is just as varied as the other two. If someone tried to convince everyone that Wolf Run Ramp was the same deck as White Weenie and Mono Blue Devotion, they would get laughed at. Yet every time combo comes up, people do this exact thing. My TES deck has exactly zero cards in common with Combo Elves, Dark Depths Combo, Scapeshift, Melira Pod, Enchantress, one card in common with Imperial Painter, 2 nonland cards in common with Reanimator, and so on. Each of these decks plays out completely differently, wins different ways, and has various backup plans. Elves will happily aggro you to death without caring one bit about the fact that you made them discard all their combo pieces. Ad Nauseam Tendrils will spend 4 turns ripping your hand apart before going for the combo kill, and Sneak and Show will counter every spell you try to play before doing the same. Some decks win via the combat step, some mill you to death, some make infinite creatures, others kill you with a million Storm triggers, and some just drop Emrakul, Progenitus, or Craterhoof and swing. Every combo deck has strong matchups and weak matchups, is resistant to certain hate and folds to certain hate.
For everyone saying that the game is better off with combo gone, try looking at it a different way. Imagine (however unlikely this is) that Wizards decides that aggressive aggro decks aren't what they want to have in Magic, and stop printing any creatures that cost less than 5 mana. Ignore your personal likes and dislikes for a moment, and just try to think about what that would do to the variety of deck types in Magic. Imagine how boring the game would be for you if that entire archetype just no longer existed. Then imagine new players coming in to the game and saying that Magic is better off because every aggro deck just dropped all their guys turn one and swung for lethal turn two, were uninteractive and unstoppable, and you're a terrible person for ever having played one of those decks.
I really think most people in this thread need to go out and get some more experience with different deck types before voicing their opinions.
Probably I have missed something but this thread was never about that Combo decks shouldnt exist at all. The thread title specifically mentions Standard and there are more than enough reason why Wizards doesnt want them there.
Every Combo players has more than enough to play with in Legacy, Vintage and Modern.
It's simple because Combo is not how the game should be played. A game of Magic represents two Wizards/Planeswalkers battling each other with spells and creatures.
How does Combo fit in there? It doesnt.
I can definitely see why they dont want combo anymore.
It doesnt interact with the opponent so that player is actually playing Solitaire.
It's hard to balance right and unpredictable. Miss something and that combo could basically explode and make for a really unfun Standard for people who dont want to play counter or discard spells.
It goes against what the is actually about like I already said.
These are three good reasons to keep Combo out of Standard. If players want to play it then they have the eternal formats for that which are littered with Combo decks.
Wizards has shown time and time again that they don't care about flavor if it inteferes with gameplay (see Slivers, equipment, and the Planeswalekr/Legend rule).
Combo can be very interactive. Most combo decks play answers to other decks which is a lot more interactive than pure aggro.
Wizards has balanced it right many times. All that they nneed to do is actually test the combo enough. Also, people not wanting to play counterspells and discard (which is their fault, not Wizards's fault) is not stoppied Wizards from making creature-based combos that die to removal.
People should be able to play every major archetype in every format. They can do it in Modern and Legacy. Why should Standard be less diverse?
Basically, they think that combo feels too unfair and as a result it's unfriendly to new players. Because their focus has been on new players for a long time now, they want to keep things out of standard that aren't new player friendly.
While this makes sense, if new players want a format like that, they can play casual. New players often don't like control either, but that hasn't stopped Wizards from printing cards like Sphinx's Revelation, Detention Sphere, and Supreme Verdict.
It's a planeswalker battling with spells. It really is that simple.
I mean, I can play a deck with nothing but burn spells, and that's presumably an "acceptable" way to play with no creatures (since it's possible in Standard, even if it's not particularly good), but the moment everything's concentrated into one turn instead of spread out across the game, it becomes "unacceptable," even when the fundamental turn is the same? That's a downright nonsensical notion.
No it's not.
Combo is, for the most part, something that never could be a part of any movie or book, unlike non-combo plays, because it completely breaks any and all immersion into the "planeswalker versus planeswalker" concept.
Infinite mana cannot exist in the Magic universe, for obvious reasons.
The same applies to all infinite combos, and most silly game winning combos, and even revival (based on creatures that actually never died).
So an entire archetype should be removed from Standard forever because it isn't flavorful? The health of the game comes before flavor, otherwise there would be complicated rules about how you cannot equip Colossal Whale with Swiftfoot Boots and the legend/planeswalker rule would be completely different.
If combo is your thing then I'm sure winning with it is very thrilling but sitting across from you waiting 15 minutes for you to win on your combo turn is hardly the most engaging thing for your opponent. As a whole for there flagship format it is better to keep such things out.
In the end combo is like sex. Playing with yourself is good but playing with a friend is soo much better.
Combo almost never takes that long. It usually instantly wins or is very close to it when the pieces are assembled. Look at former Standarrd decks like Valakut and Splinter Twin. They did not take long to combo out at all.
I got into competitive Magic around May of last year. I would have liked to play Standard (after it rotated because it was too close to rotation then), but as someone who likes to play combo, I noticed that since Zendikar/Scars (Valakut and Splinter Twin), combo decks in Standard have been a lot less playable. Why is this?
There are a few reasons.
1) Wotc shrank set sizes at Alara. There was not room for the pieces of the combo, or the hate for the combo in single sets. Splinter twin and Valakut was spread out over a block. Competitive constructed was limited to a handful of decks.
2) Wotc actively changed their design process to be better for limited.
There has been fringe combos since the time you are talking but the player base argues if they are 'true' combos.
1. I am fine with there not being combos in single sets. But the idea that there aren't competitive combo decks at all in Standard is just ridiculous. They existed in Standard right up until Innistrad. Why can't we see more of them?
2. How does limited affect whether a card that combos with a card from another set/block is printed?
Innistrad did have a competitive combo deck for a while it just was prone to being hated out in the environment. Meanwhile the combos in Zen/Scars were much more prone to dodging that hate.
In the link below is a combo deck period, and anyone that says otherwise doesn't understand what a combo deck is.
Innistrad did have a competitive combo deck for a while it just was prone to being hated out in the environment. Meanwhile the combos in Zen/Scars were much more prone to dodging that hate.
In the link below is a combo deck period, and anyone that says otherwise doesn't understand what a combo deck is.
Competitive combo still exists in standard, it's just unless a pro brings a combo deck to a tournament, you won't hear about it.
Nobody innovates at all, they just play other peoples decks and call themselves competitive. If you want to be good, you have to build your own decks.
I've built several combo decks with this standard and you people can cry scrub or non-competitive all you want, but saying theres no combo is wrong. People just either don't look for them, or dismiss them immediately without testing because they don't have any imagination.
Look, if a pro brought a combo deck today to a PT and it won, I'd guarantee everybody would be playing that instead, and wondering why aggro sucks.
TL;DR: If you want to see combo in standard, build your own deck and become a better player, rather than following the herd and believing you know everything there is to know.
Keep in mind that the ideal idea of standard is a format that changes, and then changes back. Combo being removed is just to allow other methods to replace it, and I have no doubt that it will return in some form, perhaps even emphasized, in the future. How long in the future is the real question.
However, if you love combo, come try Modern. Lots to choose from!
People in this thread are forgetting about the green Nykthos decks early after Theros came out. Turn 2 and 3 Garruk, Caller of Beasts was a real thing for a while. Once Thoughtseize became the defining card of the format, those comboish Nykthos decks died out, but if Standard didn't have the best single target discard spell ever printed, Nykthos combo could easily be the best deck in the format.
I got into competitive Magic around May of last year. I would have liked to play Standard (after it rotated because it was too close to rotation then), but as someone who likes to play combo, I noticed that since Zendikar/Scars (Valakut and Splinter Twin), combo decks in Standard have been a lot less playable. Why is this?
WotC has the philosophy that combo decks should be a one trick pony that do well at one tournament and then do all kinds of nothing forevermore. They think standard should be aggro, a little control, and crappy homebrew combo. If you want to see how WotC views combo look at the modern banned list. Some combo enablers and such that shouldn't be on the modern banned list are namely seething song. WotC dislikes combo quite a bit. Storm as a mechanic isn't coming back ever as each time WotC tried it it blew up in their faces due to how powerful the mechanic is.
Strawman. The ideal meta is something like:
control > combo > midrange > aggro > control
But then you get aggro-control and control-combo and aggro-combo, which makes it complicated.
Combo beats midrange and to an ideally lesser extent aggro due to sheer power.
Midrange beats aggro because a 3/3 blocking a 1/1 kills the 1/1.
Aggro beats control because aggro has too many threats for control to answer.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
Keep in mind that the ideal idea of standard is a format that changes, and then changes back. Combo being removed is just to allow other methods to replace it, and I have no doubt that it will return in some form, perhaps even emphasized, in the future. How long in the future is the real question.
However, if you love combo, come try Modern. Lots to choose from!
I play Modern. I just wish that I could play Standard as well, which I can't do because my 2 favorite archetypes (Tempo and Combo) don't exist in Standard anymore. I would have faith that combo will return, but it hasn't be tier 1 since Splinter Twin and Valakut. That was 2 and a half years ago. It makes me worried that it won't come back.
Competitive combo still exists in standard, it's just unless a pro brings a combo deck to a tournament, you won't hear about it.
Nobody innovates at all, they just play other peoples decks and call themselves competitive. If you want to be good, you have to build your own decks.
I've built several combo decks with this standard and you people can cry scrub or non-competitive all you want, but saying theres no combo is wrong. People just either don't look for them, or dismiss them immediately without testing because they don't have any imagination.
Look, if a pro brought a combo deck today to a PT and it won, I'd guarantee everybody would be playing that instead, and wondering why aggro sucks.
TL;DR: If you want to see combo in standard, build your own deck and become a better player, rather than following the herd and believing you know everything there is to know.
So for 2 and a half years, no one has thought of good combo decks because people are stupid and that is why combo isn't in Standard. Isn't it simpler to assume that people did look for the combos and they weren't competitive? Also, if you have combo decks that you think are good, please post them.
Innistrad did have a competitive combo deck for a while it just was prone to being hated out in the environment. Meanwhile the combos in Zen/Scars were much more prone to dodging that hate.
In the link below is a combo deck period, and anyone that says otherwise doesn't understand what a combo deck is.
While this is true, as you said it got hated out so much that it wasn't Tier 1. I am talking about combo decks that were as competitive as the ones before Innistrad.
Part of the problem of the disappearance of combo is, well, the disappearance of counters and discards.
Since apparently counters and discard are, apparently, "unfun and prevent you from playing", there is nothing left to stop combo.
So, players don't like counters, removal, discard, combo, and mana denial. All we have left is... creatures bashing at each other.
You do realize that Thoughtseize is Standard legal, right? There are also several decent removal spells, playable counterspells, and even hate cards like Rest in Peace and Slaughter Games. This Standard seems like it would be safe to have a combo deck in, but Wizards isn't even trying.
People in this thread are forgetting about the green Nykthos decks early after Theros came out. Turn 2 and 3 Garruk, Caller of Beasts was a real thing for a while. Once Thoughtseize became the defining card of the format, those comboish Nykthos decks died out, but if Standard didn't have the best single target discard spell ever printed, Nykthos combo could easily be the best deck in the format.
That wasn't a combo deck. It was not dedicated to finding a card or a specific combination of cards to win or gain an immense advantage. The deck played Nytkthos, but if I remember correctly, it wasn't dedicated to finding Nykthos and playing it.
People in this thread are forgetting about the green Nykthos decks early after Theros came out. Turn 2 and 3 Garruk, Caller of Beasts was a real thing for a while. Once Thoughtseize became the defining card of the format, those comboish Nykthos decks died out, but if Standard didn't have the best single target discard spell ever printed, Nykthos combo could easily be the best deck in the format.
UW Control wrecked that deck too. Sure make a bunch over mana and drop your hand. Makes Supreme Verdict much more delicious.
The fact that the deck is probably one of the most incosistent decks ever didn't really help. Every game that you played was basically Roulette. Get a nut draw, crush your opponent. Dont get it, lose so hard that you would love to pick up your deck and throw it in the garbage. There was nothing in between.
Believe me I played the deck after Makuhita Mihara played it at Pro Tour Dublin. Even without Thoughtseize the deck would have died out. Too inconsistent for high-level play aka 10+ round tournaments.
It's all pretty simple.
A very vocal minority of Magic players are scrubs. They are what you would call poor or unskilled or maybe do not know any better. Many of these scrubs are here posting on this topic and posting regularly on this forum. You can recognise the scrubs when you read what they have to say on any given topic. On the topic of "combos" they repeat the scrub mantra of "unfun" "unfair" and "not how the game is supposed to be played"
You see the scrub, rather than improve their play and get better, instead of puttin a decent sideboard package together, instead of understanding how the rock/scissor/paper flow of strategies works, will just complain vociferously.
And the problem is, WOTC thinks it is the masses that are complaining and restless. And WOTC make these bad decisions.
Time and time again the logical and level headed common sense will be said that all archetypes should be represented, so, you know, more people can play what they want.
I disagree with various parts of your analysis. In particular, if WOTC thinks that lots of players dislike combo, they're probably right. They're more likely to be right than you are, given that they have access to large amounts of market research and sales data, whereas you have, I dunno, a gut feeling after talking to several dozen people at the most?
Furthermore, WOTC is in the business of making Magic successful, which means making players happy. If the kind of players who play Standard don't like combo decks, and thus fewer of them play Standard when there are combo decks around, then why shouldn't WOTC give them what they want? It's not like there's some objective ethical standard by which we can measure the, I dunno, "worthiness" of Magic, and it's getting lower on that scale.
If combo is your thing then I'm sure winning with it is very thrilling but sitting across from you waiting 15 minutes for you to win on your combo turn is hardly the most engaging thing for your opponent. As a whole for there flagship format it is better to keep such things out.
In the end combo is like sex. Playing with yourself is good but playing with a friend is soo much better.
More nonsense? Do you know what the word subjective means? Maybe go check that in a dictionary.
I've seen new players awestruck when they have have an almost certain win get swept away by a 10+ piece combo in a turn. very few combos go 15 minutes either. Exaggerate much?
And whats with this misconception of interaction? You can interact with a combo!!!! Conterspells, Instants, Flash creatures, Activated abilities!!! If there is no interaction its your own fault.
How is it interactive if you play creatures and swing turn after turn while I don't cast creatures myself?
I sure do not like your aggressive tone much kid. Have you seen a game of second sunrise combo? They do take forever to go off.
That's why they banned Second Sunrise. And Eggs isn't really an example, it's an exception. Combo decks don't usually take 15 minutes to go off.
I apparently enjoy combo since I have played a number of them... I like the race, I like the pressure to hit the combo to fight through the hate and what I enjoy the most is that the combo decks are so cheap, nice $1000 deck you have there let me empty some warrens and bushwhack you. There is such joy in winning against the odds. OH so I am dead on board huh... hmm..here goes nothing.. manamorphose into the past in flames I needed... BAM! 20 mana draw my deck and kill you. I am not sure how that is not worthy of a movie.
I began playing Magic during Time Spiral, in which I made Pickles: A control deck with a combo finish, which used Rune Snag, Delay and, later, Cryptic Command to counter spells, Damnation to wipe fields, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir to halt other control decks and make Delay not terrible, but ultimately finished with Brine Elemental and Vesuvan Shapeshifter. It was my very first Standard deck, and I enjoyed playing it greatly... until Morningtide came out and Reveillark became a thing, so I made UW Reveillark combo and played that all through Shards (I made UB Faeries, too, since I also love control, but I didn't play Fae exclusively until Venser, Shaper Savant and Riftwing Cloudskate rotated out of Standard, which were what I used to 'finish' with the combo). Hell, I still use my Reveillark deck to introduce new players to the stack, which what's most interesting is that a lot of newer players I've run into, in the neighborhood of 20 since I began doing Thursday game nights last year) don't actually know how the stack functions because it never needs to come up in their Standard games. They don't need to know that countering a Demigod of Revenge with its trigger on the stack will just bring it back to play, or casting a Tarfire on a Tarmogoyf only for it to survive due to state based effects and its toughness being higher when SBEs are checked versus when Tarfire was initially cast. Probably just nostalgia talking, but current Standard interactions seem a lot more simple outside of obfuscated rules text on cards than in previous Standards.
Anyway, Combo decks made up some of my best Standard memories and it and control decks are what I play every Standard until rotation; none of these decks took 15 minutes to win in one turn, as someone claimed combo does, and neither were they too fast. They sat pretty well in their respective metas (well, at least I think so) and they weren't the only combo decks during those Standard years, either, as Dragonstorm was pretty big when I began playing Pickles, there was Perilous Storm, Project X, that kooky Wild Pair deck that was 1 part control and 1 part combo, Sanity Grinding as a combo-control deck, etc., and control was almost always accounted for in some fashion as was aggro (Gruul, Gargadon, Elves, Elementals, etc). I don't really get this general consensus that the majority of Magic players dislike combo. I began playing with and against all kinds of combos and was never bothered by it, and the four other people who began playing with me just kind of accepted it as part of the game and the race was part of the fun. Are we assuming that Wizards believes that most players don't like combo, are we assuming players don't like combo? Given some of the evidence in this thread, it seems a fair number of players don't even know what combo is, thinking it to be some slow monstrosity as the norm, like Eggs or Four Horsemen, that take 5-15 minutes for a winning turn, or that all combo pops on the first turn somehow, both lines of thinking exuding a sheer hyperbolic ignorance that constitutes a real shame. Magic is about trying new things; no reason why people shouldn't have the opportunity to play with and against more than aggro, control and midrange.
That wasn't a combo deck. It was not dedicated to finding a card or a specific combination of cards to win or gain an immense advantage. The deck played Nytkthos, but if I remember correctly, it wasn't dedicated to finding Nykthos and playing it.
Yes it was. It was dedicated to landing Polukranos, making him stupid huge, shooting all of your guys and making you immediately dead. Having a combo strapped to the back of a few creatures doesn't make it not a combo.
Maybe this is the reason why I enjoyed it so much. I never thought about it as "true Combo" though, being a Combo "purist" from way
back.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Look, there is a good reason why there is no combo in Standard (maybe not "good," but clear and logical):
Wizards wants new players to get into Magic. Wizards has long since stopped marketing beginner sets like Portal. Standard, which is compromised of all current product, needs to be able to be readily accessible and stable enough for new players to learn the game. New players would be turned off by a barrage of Standard combo decks, it would be hard for new players to safely learn the game well enough. Combo is allowed in formats like Modern because Modern is arguably a more advanced format, drawing from a larger card pool and not being as directly influenced by specific interconnected mechanics of Standard.
In short: Combo doesn't exist in current Standard because Standard needs to be accessible to players at all ages and experience.
I actually think combo is okay as long as it doesn't go off too quickly. Combos like protean hulk combo isn't fun, but combo decks like dragonstorm during the time spiral era were fun to play against. With that said, if combo exists, control should have a healthy presence in the format as well. The classic rock paper scissors goes combo/control/aggro except aggro should be supper aggro because midrange can't surive with the classic triad. Now wizards has essentially replaced combo with "midrange" making it a midrange/control/super aggro in the standard format.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
There are a few reasons.
1) Wotc shrank set sizes at Alara. There was not room for the pieces of the combo, or the hate for the combo in single sets. Splinter twin and Valakut was spread out over a block. Competitive constructed was limited to a handful of decks.
2) Wotc actively changed their design process to be better for limited.
There has been fringe combos since the time you are talking but the player base argues if they are 'true' combos.
Yep. Only the deck formerly known as "Eggs" in Modern pre-Second Sunrise banning and High Tide in Legacy take more than 10 minutes to go off. Also, if your opponent is taking 2 minute turns the whole match while you are taking 10 sec. turns, then you take 4-5 min. on 1 turn, that is more than fair. I think of the time as the total time taken by each player in the match; not just 1 particular turn. I'm pretty sure Control takes longer average turns anyway.
I agree with a lot of your points, but I think that it is not just scrubs (I don't know if you were aiming at a targeted audience) who don't like Combo. Most Aggro players will have an Anti-Combo feeling because Combo usually wins at 2-5 life before the Aggro player can beat them. However, Combo makes Control much stronger, since it usually beats Combo (too much disruption). This is good for Aggro. Without Combo or Control, we devolve into a meta of Midrange destroying all of the Aggro decks. I know for sure reading here on MTGS that many don't mind this, but I for one
honestly would quit if the meta was Midrange, Midrange, Midrange, you get the point.
The things that people don't understand about Combo is that it is fine if there are hate cards. People are forced to play these cards instead of
simply sideboarding MORE creatures. It keeps people honest. Just look at other formats where no one deck can SB against everything. So, they leave less for Dredge and they lose to it when matched against it randomly (and rightfully so because they didn't prepare). Decks like Prison and Land Destruction kept the meta honest because some decks simply beat these. Others didn't and needed to resort to specific cards to combat them. There's nothing wrong with this, although I could see something wrong if a Combo had 0 ways to stop it in a meta. I don't think this has ever happened in Magic. If I am wrong, someone can correct me. (Maybe the Academy deck?)
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
I go off in five. Hell, waiting at the end of my turn for control players takes longer.
Besides, "Storm" is the archetypical combo deck, and that takes maybe a minute?
Hoping for a cure, or at least an outbreak.
Level 1 Judge (yay)
For everyone saying that the game is better off with combo gone, try looking at it a different way. Imagine (however unlikely this is) that Wizards decides that aggressive aggro decks aren't what they want to have in Magic, and stop printing any creatures that cost less than 5 mana. Ignore your personal likes and dislikes for a moment, and just try to think about what that would do to the variety of deck types in Magic. Imagine how boring the game would be for you if that entire archetype just no longer existed. Then imagine new players coming in to the game and saying that Magic is better off because every aggro deck just dropped all their guys turn one and swung for lethal turn two, were uninteractive and unstoppable, and you're a terrible person for ever having played one of those decks.
I really think most people in this thread need to go out and get some more experience with different deck types before voicing their opinions.
Every Combo players has more than enough to play with in Legacy, Vintage and Modern.
Wizards has shown time and time again that they don't care about flavor if it inteferes with gameplay (see Slivers, equipment, and the Planeswalekr/Legend rule).
Combo can be very interactive. Most combo decks play answers to other decks which is a lot more interactive than pure aggro.
Wizards has balanced it right many times. All that they nneed to do is actually test the combo enough. Also, people not wanting to play counterspells and discard (which is their fault, not Wizards's fault) is not stoppied Wizards from making creature-based combos that die to removal.
People should be able to play every major archetype in every format. They can do it in Modern and Legacy. Why should Standard be less diverse?
While this makes sense, if new players want a format like that, they can play casual. New players often don't like control either, but that hasn't stopped Wizards from printing cards like Sphinx's Revelation, Detention Sphere, and Supreme Verdict.
So an entire archetype should be removed from Standard forever because it isn't flavorful? The health of the game comes before flavor, otherwise there would be complicated rules about how you cannot equip Colossal Whale with Swiftfoot Boots and the legend/planeswalker rule would be completely different.
Combo almost never takes that long. It usually instantly wins or is very close to it when the pieces are assembled. Look at former Standarrd decks like Valakut and Splinter Twin. They did not take long to combo out at all.
1. I am fine with there not being combos in single sets. But the idea that there aren't competitive combo decks at all in Standard is just ridiculous. They existed in Standard right up until Innistrad. Why can't we see more of them?
2. How does limited affect whether a card that combos with a card from another set/block is printed?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
In the link below is a combo deck period, and anyone that says otherwise doesn't understand what a combo deck is.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=52786
Feel free to bid on my cards here!
Since apparently counters and discard are, apparently, "unfun and prevent you from playing", there is nothing left to stop combo.
So, players don't like counters, removal, discard, combo, and mana denial. All we have left is... creatures bashing at each other.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Yes that kinda was a combo deck but unfortunately it was in the same Standard as Junk Rites so it was victim of the splash damage.
People just shouldn't get their hopes up that there will be a simple combo like Deceiver Exarch + Splinter Twin in Standard in the near future.
Nobody innovates at all, they just play other peoples decks and call themselves competitive. If you want to be good, you have to build your own decks.
I've built several combo decks with this standard and you people can cry scrub or non-competitive all you want, but saying theres no combo is wrong. People just either don't look for them, or dismiss them immediately without testing because they don't have any imagination.
Look, if a pro brought a combo deck today to a PT and it won, I'd guarantee everybody would be playing that instead, and wondering why aggro sucks.
TL;DR: If you want to see combo in standard, build your own deck and become a better player, rather than following the herd and believing you know everything there is to know.
However, if you love combo, come try Modern. Lots to choose from!
How To Keep Your FOIL Cards From Curling: http://youtu.be/QTmubrS8VnI
The Best Deck Boxes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEwgLph_Pjk
The Best Binders: http://youtu.be/H5IauASYWjk
You forgot infect in Scars. You can actually get a turn 3 win with Blighted Agent, Assault Strobe, and your choice of Vines of Vastwood or Titanic Growth. Scars also gave us Inexorable Tide, which is like a storm that doesn't care about what turn it is once opp has a poison counter. (Also on the pseudo-storm list, Shrine of Burning Rage, which can turn Galvanic Blast or Volt Charge into a really cheap Lava Axe.)
When most people think 'combo', it's those fast wins. The fastest (e.g., Black Lotus, Channel, Fireball) can win on turn 1. Of course, a Gut Shot or a Force of Will can kill that combo today, and if you go first, you can kill Channel/Fireball with Lightning Bolt or even Healing Salve.
For those of us with a control-combo bent, Scars also had Liquimetal Coating. Let me enjoy my Vindicate ogre, sometimes with infect, or my one-mana Bramblecrush. M13 even gave us one-mana Vindicate as a going-away present for Coating.
Strawman. The ideal meta is something like:
control > combo > midrange > aggro > control
But then you get aggro-control and control-combo and aggro-combo, which makes it complicated.
To explain:
Control beats combo because...combo only has a small number of ways it can win. Fairly simple. Counter that Fireball, cast Lightning Bolt next turn, GG. Hit opp with 10 poison or just play Torpor Orb, his Felidar Sovereign soul sisters win becomes irrelevant. One bolt is an end for Melira, Sylvok Outcast. Doom Blade that Blighted Agent, dead. Rule of Law kills storm. You're playing reanimator? Now you're not. Oh, you're playing mill? Adorable.
Combo beats midrange and to an ideally lesser extent aggro due to sheer power.
Midrange beats aggro because a 3/3 blocking a 1/1 kills the 1/1.
Aggro beats control because aggro has too many threats for control to answer.
On phasing:
I play Modern. I just wish that I could play Standard as well, which I can't do because my 2 favorite archetypes (Tempo and Combo) don't exist in Standard anymore. I would have faith that combo will return, but it hasn't be tier 1 since Splinter Twin and Valakut. That was 2 and a half years ago. It makes me worried that it won't come back.
So for 2 and a half years, no one has thought of good combo decks because people are stupid and that is why combo isn't in Standard. Isn't it simpler to assume that people did look for the combos and they weren't competitive? Also, if you have combo decks that you think are good, please post them.
While this is true, as you said it got hated out so much that it wasn't Tier 1. I am talking about combo decks that were as competitive as the ones before Innistrad.
You do realize that Thoughtseize is Standard legal, right? There are also several decent removal spells, playable counterspells, and even hate cards like Rest in Peace and Slaughter Games. This Standard seems like it would be safe to have a combo deck in, but Wizards isn't even trying.
That wasn't a combo deck. It was not dedicated to finding a card or a specific combination of cards to win or gain an immense advantage. The deck played Nytkthos, but if I remember correctly, it wasn't dedicated to finding Nykthos and playing it.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
UW Control wrecked that deck too. Sure make a bunch over mana and drop your hand. Makes Supreme Verdict much more delicious.
The fact that the deck is probably one of the most incosistent decks ever didn't really help. Every game that you played was basically Roulette. Get a nut draw, crush your opponent. Dont get it, lose so hard that you would love to pick up your deck and throw it in the garbage. There was nothing in between.
Believe me I played the deck after Makuhita Mihara played it at Pro Tour Dublin. Even without Thoughtseize the deck would have died out. Too inconsistent for high-level play aka 10+ round tournaments.
I disagree with various parts of your analysis. In particular, if WOTC thinks that lots of players dislike combo, they're probably right. They're more likely to be right than you are, given that they have access to large amounts of market research and sales data, whereas you have, I dunno, a gut feeling after talking to several dozen people at the most?
Furthermore, WOTC is in the business of making Magic successful, which means making players happy. If the kind of players who play Standard don't like combo decks, and thus fewer of them play Standard when there are combo decks around, then why shouldn't WOTC give them what they want? It's not like there's some objective ethical standard by which we can measure the, I dunno, "worthiness" of Magic, and it's getting lower on that scale.
That's why they banned Second Sunrise. And Eggs isn't really an example, it's an exception. Combo decks don't usually take 15 minutes to go off.
Angel of glory's rise + fiend hunter + sac outlet (cartel aristocrat) + any number of things.
1. Infinite creatures Huntsmaster of the fells/Attended Knight.. then give haste with zealous conscripts or kill with goldnight commander.
2. Infinite mill Burning tree emissary + underworld informant
3. Infinite damage Blood artist or Kessig Malcontents.
Normally played with self mill and unburial rites.
Its is a 5 card combo... and it was for a time fast enough to see standard play... but there was too much grave hate by the end of the format.
OH I also played Beck//call + Young pyromancer + battle hymn.. into Burn at the stake, such a sweet deck that just didn't have much time in existants before it was taken away from me :(.
I apparently enjoy combo since I have played a number of them... I like the race, I like the pressure to hit the combo to fight through the hate and what I enjoy the most is that the combo decks are so cheap, nice $1000 deck you have there let me empty some warrens and bushwhack you. There is such joy in winning against the odds. OH so I am dead on board huh... hmm..here goes nothing.. manamorphose into the past in flames I needed... BAM! 20 mana draw my deck and kill you. I am not sure how that is not worthy of a movie.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Anyway, Combo decks made up some of my best Standard memories and it and control decks are what I play every Standard until rotation; none of these decks took 15 minutes to win in one turn, as someone claimed combo does, and neither were they too fast. They sat pretty well in their respective metas (well, at least I think so) and they weren't the only combo decks during those Standard years, either, as Dragonstorm was pretty big when I began playing Pickles, there was Perilous Storm, Project X, that kooky Wild Pair deck that was 1 part control and 1 part combo, Sanity Grinding as a combo-control deck, etc., and control was almost always accounted for in some fashion as was aggro (Gruul, Gargadon, Elves, Elementals, etc). I don't really get this general consensus that the majority of Magic players dislike combo. I began playing with and against all kinds of combos and was never bothered by it, and the four other people who began playing with me just kind of accepted it as part of the game and the race was part of the fun. Are we assuming that Wizards believes that most players don't like combo, are we assuming players don't like combo? Given some of the evidence in this thread, it seems a fair number of players don't even know what combo is, thinking it to be some slow monstrosity as the norm, like Eggs or Four Horsemen, that take 5-15 minutes for a winning turn, or that all combo pops on the first turn somehow, both lines of thinking exuding a sheer hyperbolic ignorance that constitutes a real shame. Magic is about trying new things; no reason why people shouldn't have the opportunity to play with and against more than aggro, control and midrange.
Sig and Avatar drawn by me.
Yes it was. It was dedicated to landing Polukranos, making him stupid huge, shooting all of your guys and making you immediately dead. Having a combo strapped to the back of a few creatures doesn't make it not a combo.
back.
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Wizards wants new players to get into Magic. Wizards has long since stopped marketing beginner sets like Portal. Standard, which is compromised of all current product, needs to be able to be readily accessible and stable enough for new players to learn the game. New players would be turned off by a barrage of Standard combo decks, it would be hard for new players to safely learn the game well enough. Combo is allowed in formats like Modern because Modern is arguably a more advanced format, drawing from a larger card pool and not being as directly influenced by specific interconnected mechanics of Standard.
In short: Combo doesn't exist in current Standard because Standard needs to be accessible to players at all ages and experience.
GWUBRDraft my Old Border Nostalgia Cube! and/or The Little Pauper Cube That Could!RBUWG
Modern:WDeath & TaxesW | RUGRUG DelverRUG