Combo in legacy is not that simple. I do not know where the myth of FoW or lose vs combo is coming from but it seriously needs to stop. Sure it sucks when SnT goes t1 Tomb into Petal into SnT into Griz. But you know what? You should be expecting this kind of garbage to happen in legacy. Dont play FoW? Play Karakas, Thalia, SB some O rings. Play another combo deck that lols at SnT like ANT and SI who go off on t1 sometimes. My point is Wotc is breeding a wave of players who do not play the same game of magic others play. What they want is so narrow and simplistic and with all my experience I can not fathom why anyone would play standard while legacy and even modern exists. Its like playing magic with training wheels, even at the highest level. It is what it is.
That's the core of the problem. Don't want to play FoW? Then play X, Y or Z. Even better: if you EXPECT deck X, then play deck Y that has a good matchup against deck X... but royally sucks against deck Z. That's what I mean when I say that you are unable to execute your strategy. Legacy has since long become a format where against certain decks (but this is valid even for some non-strictly combo ones) it doesn't matter much what you want to do with your deck: sometimes you already won or lost before the match even starts, due to a bad match-up (especially in g1), sometimes you win or lose by having or missing the hoser you need (g2 and 3).
That's not to say skill is not required: you must obviously know when and how to play the hoser and your threats, and I'm sure mastering such a complex metagame takes skill AND practice: that doesn't change the fact that most of the things I need to win take place before the match starts.
Which is obviously why legacy has a clear "best deck" and the make ups of top 8's don't vary wildly. In actuality, there is no such deck, and your match up, does not determine victory.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Combo in legacy is not that simple. I do not know where the myth of FoW or lose vs combo is coming from but it seriously needs to stop. Sure it sucks when SnT goes t1 Tomb into Petal into SnT into Griz. But you know what? You should be expecting this kind of garbage to happen in legacy. Dont play FoW? Play Karakas, Thalia, SB some O rings. Play another combo deck that lols at SnT like ANT and SI who go off on t1 sometimes. My point is Wotc is breeding a wave of players who do not play the same game of magic others play. What they want is so narrow and simplistic and with all my experience I can not fathom why anyone would play standard while legacy and even modern exists. Its like playing magic with training wheels, even at the highest level. It is what it is.
That's the core of the problem. Don't want to play FoW? Then play X, Y or Z. Even better: if you EXPECT deck X, then play deck Y that has a good matchup against deck X... but royally sucks against deck Z. That's what I mean when I say that you are unable to execute your strategy. Legacy has since long become a format where against certain decks (but this is valid even for some non-strictly combo ones) it doesn't matter much what you want to do with your deck: sometimes you already won or lost before the match even starts, due to a bad match-up (especially in g1), sometimes you win or lose by having or missing the hoser you need (g2 and 3).
That's not to say skill is not required: you must obviously know when and how to play the hoser and your threats, and I'm sure mastering such a complex metagame takes skill AND practice: that doesn't change the fact that most of the things I need to win take place before the match starts.
In the past couple months Death and Taxes has been putting up numbers. Death and Taxes is non blue and non combo. It's sort of like an aggro deck, sort of like a control deck. But it 'a not blue, and in a format where 'you can just lose to deck X' to take your words, Death and Taxes has been doing well in a meta where Show and Tell, a combo deck, is probably what's considered the 'best' deck. Show and Tell should trounce death and taxes, but in order to top 8, D&T has probably had to beat SnT twice.
Without playing the format or knowing what decks are what, it 'a kind of hard to decide whether someone can 'just win before the game starts', because this is magic and luck IS a factor, and so is skill.
DnT has the most important aspect of competitive magic down to nearly perfection. Consistency. Belcher is terribly luck sack and absolutely can not deal with a T2 thalia pre board, to my knowledge, and even scoops to a t1 thoughtseize if the hand is not rock solid. Decks like Belcher, ANT and SI do not win tournaments often because they are not as consistent as every other fair deck in legacy. Not to mention ANT and Hightide are terribly difficult to pilot for multiple rounds compared to deckslike Thresh and DnT.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
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?
Makihito Mihara insisted that his G/R that he Top 8ed the Pro-Tour with was a combo deck and I think you could certainly make a compelling argument to that effect. It might not look or behave exactly like the combo decks you see in Legacy or in Modern but it certainly has some of the characteristics and tropes that define combo decks.
So I guess my answer would be that they haven't completely.
Did the deck try to find a specific card? I don't think so.
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?
Makihito Mihara insisted that his G/R that he Top 8ed the Pro-Tour with was a combo deck and I think you could certainly make a compelling argument to that effect. It might not look or behave exactly like the combo decks you see in Legacy or in Modern but it certainly has some of the characteristics and tropes that define combo decks.
So I guess my answer would be that they haven't completely.
Did the deck try to find a specific card? I don't think so.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and expensive payout card like Garruk, Caller of Beasts.
It's garbage without one of those.
You can argue that is not "Combo" but the fact remains that is has lot of elements that are similar.
Combo isn't always about finding a specific card. Take ANT in legacy for example. It isn't always about finding infernal tutor. I have won games where the only 'engines' I used were cantrips on the combo turn to ramp up storm into a naturally drawn tendrils of agony. Drawing past in flames + tendrils has also happened to me despite them being 1 ofs if you draw both you typically win once you get 2 rituals to flashback with PiF or more. Naturally drawing tendrils when your opponent deals themselves a lot of damage via griselbrand or something is also insanely powerful as an opponent at 10 life when you have tendrils in hand is very likely going to lose the game. Storm is one of the if not the most complex archetype in all of magic. I've been playing storm combo for 4 years. I'm STILL learning more about the ins and outs of storm as well as learning more about doomsday (you can never know too much when it comes to doomsday. When doomsday resolves you have thousands of lines of play available to you short of an opponent having aven mindcensor in play or something constricting of that nature and even then there are still a lot of lines to consider.
If you think a match of legacy is over before it has started, you REALLY don't know anything about legacy or magic in general for that matter. I've seen 90/10 matchups played out and the deck that has the 10% shot at winning has won. That's why magic is great. You don't know what's going to happen until you play out the game. This isn't chess. There are a lot of variables involved. The game isn't over until someone hits zero life, concedes, or has attempted to draw a card from an empty library.
As for having to pack answers to certain cards, it's called metagaming and sideboarding. Let's say that you KNOW a tournament is going to have 50% of the field on belcher. You decide to bring nic fit. You lose a lot of matches to belcher with your fair B/G(x) deck. What did you learn? That you should metagame and play force of will in that metagame. Say you know that a quarter of the field is on sneak and show. Bring all the karakases you can as well as other hosers for such decks.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
So you're saying decks have good matchups and bad matchups. Wow. You really opened my eyes. If a deck has a positive matchup across the field it typically gets the banhammer treatment (caw blade is a prime example of this.) As for combo in legacy, combo is far less represented in terms of numbers in comparison to fair decks like UWR delver and such. You're quite unlikely to face ANT more than once a tournament if at all (same with other combo decks.) As for cost of cards, that is a different discussion altogether. As for knowing the metagame before hand, you can make predictions but there is no way you will KNOW completely the metagame breakdown unless it's something like caw blade where it's utterly dominating the format/you can expect to face it the vast majority of the time. As for people not liking legacy, legacy would be the #2 format behind draft/sealed if it wasn't bottlenecked by supply issues stemming from the RL/it was the same price as standard. It's just that most people can't afford it.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
Combo isn't always about finding a specific card. Take ANT in legacy for example. It isn't always about finding infernal tutor. I have won games where the only 'engines' I used were cantrips on the combo turn to ramp up storm into a naturally drawn tendrils of agony. Drawing past in flames + tendrils has also happened to me despite them being 1 ofs if you draw both you typically win once you get 2 rituals to flashback with PiF or more. Naturally drawing tendrils when your opponent deals themselves a lot of damage via griselbrand or something is also insanely powerful as an opponent at 10 life when you have tendrils in hand is very likely going to lose the game. Storm is one of the if not the most complex archetype in all of magic. I've been playing storm combo for 4 years. I'm STILL learning more about the ins and outs of storm as well as learning more about doomsday (you can never know too much when it comes to doomsday. When doomsday resolves you have thousands of lines of play available to you short of an opponent having aven mindcensor in play or something constricting of that nature and even then there are still a lot of lines to consider.
Those combo decks are still playing stuff like Brainstorm to find the combo pieces.
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?
Makihito Mihara insisted that his G/R that he Top 8ed the Pro-Tour with was a combo deck and I think you could certainly make a compelling argument to that effect. It might not look or behave exactly like the combo decks you see in Legacy or in Modern but it certainly has some of the characteristics and tropes that define combo decks.
So I guess my answer would be that they haven't completely.
Did the deck try to find a specific card? I don't think so.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and expensive payout card like Garruk, Caller of Beasts.
It's garbage without one of those.
You can argue that is not "Combo" but the fact remains that is has lot of elements that are similar.
A deck needing 1 of 2 cards to win that puts no effort into finding those cards does not count as a combo deck. Also, there is no specific interaction involved. There is no combo in that deck.
I think the only reason Wizards isn't designing combo into the game is that intentionally designing a combo generally results in a heavy-handed and linear set of cards. Splinter Twin plus Deceiver Exarch isn't clever or elegant or even all that fancy a combo. Do you really think Wizards wants to spend the time and effort it would take to design a four-card combo that is both balanced in game terms and not entirely obvious to anyone looking at the card set that those four cards are meant to combo together? I would personally be a little tired of the "Which two cards in THIS Standard are the T4-kill this time?" game. (Aggro decks aren't the same, because they need a set of creatures that dodge the format's ever-evolving answer set effectively; the meta-game of threats and answers means that each and every tournament has a new "best set" of creatures in Aggro. Exarch-Twin never varied those cards; Village Bell-Ringer just never cut it.)
Combo decks like Eggs, or Pyromancer's Ascension, or ANT, so on and so forth, are generally assembled by knowledgeable players looking over several decades' worth of cards and a strong desire to do so. Wizards isn't going to try and design combos like that. It would take far too much R&D effort. Instead, they'll print oddball enablers (think Infernal Tutor, or Bridge from Below) that don't do anything weird in the Standard meta they're in, but combined with cards not in their format, they become powerful combo pieces.
Now, I'd rather see Wizards print a few more enablers in Standard to give players a shot at assembling combos. Just like Standard should usually have playable kill spells and playable creatures and so forth, somewhere in the rotation there should also be playable tutors and playable cantrips that encourage a deck type that digs for a specific win condition consisting of a specific combination of cards. Scars-Innistrad almost had that; I remember Grand Architect builds that were very "combo" using tons of artifact mana, artifact tutoring, proliferate and a single point of Infect damage early on. I personally played a Titan-enabled Primal Surge/Pod deck where the singleton Primal Surge was the only non-permanent in the deck; the win condition was to ramp, tutor the Surge with a Rune-Scarred Demon and force it through and win off the back of a Laboratory Maniac (the rest other 58 cards were pure artistry in their ability to handle any combination of board states and hand contents only Primal Surge flipped your library into play. In fact, it was strong enough that I would've put it at tier 1.5 in that Standard). I remember Pyromancer Ascension builds in Zendikar.
Combos recently are at a low ebb, but I'm fairly certain combo decks will come back once the extremely aggro Ravnica block rotates out.
Which is obviously why legacy has a clear "best deck" and the make ups of top 8's don't vary wildly. In actuality, there is no such deck, and your match up, does not determine victory.
Quite the opposite. There's indeed variety among decks in Legacy, and I hear that the balance of the format is remarkable: tens of decks, all with a good chance of overcoming multiple kind of threats. That's not the issue. The problem stems from the sheer power and resilience of most of those strategies (again, this is a specific problem of traditional combo, but is not limited to that archetype). For example, to do something against a strategy that employs Show and Tell - which, from what I know, isn't even the fastest of the lot - you have basically 2 choices: be faster, or hose it. As such, there will never be a situation against S&T in which both players build up their strategy, trying to overcome the other until one prevails. In the best case, it will all amount to a counter war sporting FoW or some other trick: intense, skillful, challenging as much as you want, but still a single big showoff; in the worst, either the hoser will prevent the S&T player from doing its one and only thing - since the whole deck is centered on S&T and SA - or S&T/SA will seal the game almost instantly.
That was a sarcastic reply to what he said, hence why it was ended with "In actuality, that isn't true"
As well, you seem to think that there's a difference between "overcoming one another in their strategies" and "Overcoming the other person's strategy"
S&T runs multiple copies of S&T, and can survive to try again, besides it may be the front runner as a deck, but it loses quite often, because of how Legacy works.
STATISTICS.
All of these "Let's eliminate bad cards" crusades are simply ignorant. And when they start to devolve into "WotC is conspiring to give us crappy cards," they just become embarrassing. MATH is conspiring to give you crappy cards.
Combos usually came about as interactions between cards that were far apart, as other posters suggested with some exceptions like Exarch/Twin. Combo is usually disfavored as non-interactive in Standard as newer players tend to dislike this style of gameplay. It is more of a perception than a reality.
The problem with combos is that they win the game, even with the opponent at 20 life and 0 poison counters.
Most often, they're highly "unrealistic" -- in that the combos never would have happened in a mage versus mage battle, anywhere, any time in any book or movie or even roleplaying game;
They're based on design mistakes rather than interesting interactions.
Storm may be an exception, but it'd only ever be done a B-movie.
Splinter Twin is definitely not an exception, but might appear in parodies and slapstick comedies.
Creatureless burn is what the "I don't want to play creatures" should be playing.
The problem with combos is that they win the game, even with the opponent at 20 life and 0 poison counters.
Most often, they're highly "unrealistic" -- in that the combos never would have happened in a mage versus mage battle, anywhere, any time in any book or movie or even roleplaying game;
They're based on design mistakes rather than interesting interactions.
Storm may be an exception, but it'd only ever be done a B-movie.
Splinter Twin is definitely not an exception, but might appear in parodies and slapstick comedies.
Creatureless burn is what the "I don't want to play creatures" should be playing.
Infinite life exists in literature all of the time in the form of immortality. Infinite damage can easily be a superweapon capable of destroying the universe.
The problem with combos is that they win the game, even with the opponent at 20 life and 0 poison counters.
Most often, they're highly "unrealistic" -- in that the combos never would have happened in a mage versus mage battle, anywhere, any time in any book or movie or even roleplaying game;
They're based on design mistakes rather than interesting interactions.
Storm may be an exception, but it'd only ever be done a B-movie.
Splinter Twin is definitely not an exception, but might appear in parodies and slapstick comedies.
Creatureless burn is what the "I don't want to play creatures" should be playing.
What? Why should the only creatureless deck be burm? What sense does that make and how at all is that interactive? Furthermore, have you ever played a good burn deck? Burn is very dificult to pilot effectively when the other player has lifegain or flat out hosers like COP Red. Furthermore, you saying the only dudeless deck should be a burn deck says that you have no idea wtf you are even talking about.
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By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Mhjames: mtgsalvation: I DON'T SEE HOW THIS CARD IS GOOD. I KNOW PATRICK CHAPIN USED IT AND WENT 8-0, BUT THAT WAS A SMALL TOURNAMENT. THE CARD IS TOO SLOW. YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THE OPPONENT HAS A SPELL IN THE GRAVEYARD
If we want more combo, we need more stack interaction for the other colors to interact with combo. Otherwise, the format has a risk of becoming Blue combo (Because combo likes digging) vs Blue anti-combo. Since Wizards of the Coast won't make good stack interaction for non-Blue colors, they just removed it rather than risking powerful combos centralizing standard. Pretty sad.
This one seems to have gotten passed over, which is too bad. Interaction with the stack is almost exclusively given to a single color, and combo can only reliably be stopped when that interaction is present. Unless Wizards is going to give us Split Second back, I don't see them giving us powerful combo-based strategies.
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Cards are game pieces, and should be treated as such, easily replaceable.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
If we want more combo, we need more stack interaction for the other colors to interact with combo. Otherwise, the format has a risk of becoming Blue combo (Because combo likes digging) vs Blue anti-combo. Since Wizards of the Coast won't make good stack interaction for non-Blue colors, they just removed it rather than risking powerful combos centralizing standard. Pretty sad.
This one seems to have gotten passed over, which is too bad. Interaction with the stack is almost exclusively given to a single color, and combo can only reliably be stopped when that interaction is present. Unless Wizards is going to give us Split Second back, I don't see them giving us powerful combo-based strategies.
Or, they could make creature-based combos that die to removal or print more hate and discard (which both exist in this Standard, so I don't see why Combo would be a problem).
If we want more combo, we need more stack interaction for the other colors to interact with combo. Otherwise, the format has a risk of becoming Blue combo (Because combo likes digging) vs Blue anti-combo. Since Wizards of the Coast won't make good stack interaction for non-Blue colors, they just removed it rather than risking powerful combos centralizing standard. Pretty sad.
This one seems to have gotten passed over, which is too bad. Interaction with the stack is almost exclusively given to a single color, and combo can only reliably be stopped when that interaction is present. Unless Wizards is going to give us Split Second back, I don't see them giving us powerful combo-based strategies.
Well, White gets combo-killing restriction cards (Linvala, Rule of Law, the new 3/1 Spirit), and probably should've had Teferi's opponent-restricting ability. (Honestly, Teferi did not feel like a Blue card to me at all. He felt WG all the way)
I think the problem is that there's only so much card space and NWO keeps card complexity at common down. I think perhaps Wizards could be a bit braver with the commons and print random commons that do good utility work for deck archetypes but don't necessarily play with the set's themes. Cards like Cursecatcher; while it was valuable as a Merfolk and randomly did good work in Standard, it's really valuable in Legacy Merfolk. Suppose the Satyr that sacs itself for RRR instead sac'd to counter target triggered ability (I'm envisioning trigger-interaction to be RG). It wouldn't be doing tons in Standard, though it might have a few sideboard spots in RG aggro decks, but it would probably be pretty valuable in older formats. Or imagine a normal-efficiency (3 for 1R) Red direct damage spell that has a rider "Exile all but four other spells or abilities on the stack when this resolves." Most of the time in Standard, it deals 3. But it provides an automatic safety valve if Wizards accidentally designs a degenerate combo, which means they can push combo-enablers a little.
Right now, R&D is trying to ensure that every set it designs is perfectly balanced out the door, which is a noble goal, and they've done extremely well designing sets under this philosophy, but the problem is they aren't allowing themselves safety valves on cards in the name of cohesive flavour. Cutting out random semi-relevant riders on cards that pre-emptively provide insurance on certain strategies have made them timid about those strategies.
The problem with combos is that they win the game, even with the opponent at 20 life and 0 poison counters.
Most often, they're highly "unrealistic" -- in that the combos never would have happened in a mage versus mage battle, anywhere, any time in any book or movie or even roleplaying game;
They're based on design mistakes rather than interesting interactions.
Storm may be an exception, but it'd only ever be done a B-movie.
Splinter Twin is definitely not an exception, but might appear in parodies and slapstick comedies.
Creatureless burn is what the "I don't want to play creatures" should be playing.
This isn't even close to a coherent argument. Combos are bad because they make the other player lose? So cards like Blightsteel and all pump spells should go away forever too? And realistic? there are flavor fails everywhere in magic, like equipping just about any piece of equipment to the 50% of creatures that don't have hands. And you honestly think that block development should be based on what looks good in movies? Really? You actually typed that out, re-read it, and thought it was good enough of an argument to hit "Post Reply"?
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.
I don't have any problem with combo personally, but I find stuff like this awfully hypocritical.
On the one hand, people that want to play combo rag on the people who don't find it fun playing against it, say they should just adapt to it, and pick on them for taking their ball and going home instead of doing so.
Then, on the flip side, you completely quit the format (taking your ball and going home to the greatest extent) just because you can't play one specific archetype instead of just taking your own advice and adapting to what's available in the format.
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.
I don't have any problem with combo personally, but I find stuff like this awfully hypocritical.
On the one hand, people that want to play combo rag on the people who don't find it fun playing against it, say they should just adapt to it, and pick on them for taking their ball and going home instead of doing so.
Then, on the flip side, you completely quit the format (taking your ball and going home to the greatest extent) just because you can't play one specific archetype instead of just taking your own advice and adapting to what's available in the format.
Actually, I never played the format. I went directly from Casual to Modern because it was near the end of the Standard season when I started playing competitively and Standard didn't seem very fun because of the lack of combo and tempo.
Many combo decks in modern and legacy use cards that never existed in the same standard season. Cards like Dark Depths were junk 50 cent rares until cards like vampire hexmage and thespian stage came along and turned it into a viable combo. R & D make johnnie cards in standard all the time,it's just that many combos use cards that were never designed with each other in mind from across magic's history and standard of course doesn't have this option. Also, I'd imagine that WOTC are reluctant to design a standard set with a particular 2 card combo in mind because if they are slightly off in judging how powerful the combo is then it could become too degenerate and damage standard. Furthermore, part of the design philosophy of MtG is exploring new sets, building decks and being creative. if R&D designed a standard season with a particular 2 card combo in mind, it could be seen as restricting this creativity because combo players wouldn't have to be imaginative and create a unique deck, they could just look for the two cards that insta-win you the game and put them in a deck.
There have been several cards from recent years (post NWO) that have been used to enable combo's in eternal formats. Thespian stage, Splinter twin, birthing pod, Progenitus, Emrakul, grislebrand, valakut, cascade cards from shards block like violent outburst, past in flames, melira, faith's reward, phyrexian unlife, ad nauseam, goblin electromancerpyromancer ascension have all seen play in a variety of modern and legacy combo decks. They, just didn't have the right pieces to break their respective standard format. So WOTC is printing Johnny cards, combo cards, combo enablers and cards for combo decks; they just tend to require cards from older sets to become part of a viable combo.
That is my point. Combo no longer exists as a Tier 1 archetype in Standard. Also, combo decks are rarely degenerate in Standard and combo decks can be very creative.
Many combo decks in modern and legacy use cards that never existed in the same standard season. Cards like Dark Depths were junk 50 cent rares until cards like vampire hexmage and thespian stage came along and turned it into a viable combo. R & D make johnnie cards in standard all the time,it's just that many combos use cards that were never designed with each other in mind from across magic's history and standard of course doesn't have this option. Also, I'd imagine that WOTC are reluctant to design a standard set with a particular 2 card combo in mind because if they are slightly off in judging how powerful the combo is then it could become too degenerate and damage standard. Furthermore, part of the design philosophy of MtG is exploring new sets, building decks and being creative. if R&D designed a standard season with a particular 2 card combo in mind, it could be seen as restricting this creativity because combo players wouldn't have to be imaginative and create a unique deck, they could just look for the two cards that insta-win you the game and put them in a deck.
There have been several cards from recent years (post NWO) that have been used to enable combo's in eternal formats. Thespian stage, Splinter twin, birthing pod, Progenitus, Emrakul, grislebrand, valakut, cascade cards from shards block like violent outburst, past in flames, melira, faith's reward, phyrexian unlife, ad nauseam, goblin electromancerpyromancer ascension have all seen play in a variety of modern and legacy combo decks. They, just didn't have the right pieces to break their respective standard format. So WOTC is printing Johnny cards, combo cards, combo enablers and cards for combo decks; they just tend to require cards from older sets to become part of a viable combo.
That is my point. Combo no longer exists as a Tier 1 archetype in Standard. Also, combo decks are rarely degenerate in Standard and combo decks can be very creative.
But I think the larger point is that Wizards can't deliberately design oddball combos into Standard, either. They end up looking linear and uncreative when they're deliberately created (Splinter Twin - Exarch).
And I do mean "can't". The combo players want and miss is totally the province of cards printed with years of development time in between them, resulting in unexpected synergies. No combo players miss combo winter; but I can't see decks like ANT making into Standard. Every time Wizards messes with Storm or something similar, they get burned. I think that combo is one of those things that's just too hard to deliberately design and balance in a small card pool like Standard.
Many combo decks in modern and legacy use cards that never existed in the same standard season. Cards like Dark Depths were junk 50 cent rares until cards like vampire hexmage and thespian stage came along and turned it into a viable combo. R & D make johnnie cards in standard all the time,it's just that many combos use cards that were never designed with each other in mind from across magic's history and standard of course doesn't have this option. Also, I'd imagine that WOTC are reluctant to design a standard set with a particular 2 card combo in mind because if they are slightly off in judging how powerful the combo is then it could become too degenerate and damage standard. Furthermore, part of the design philosophy of MtG is exploring new sets, building decks and being creative. if R&D designed a standard season with a particular 2 card combo in mind, it could be seen as restricting this creativity because combo players wouldn't have to be imaginative and create a unique deck, they could just look for the two cards that insta-win you the game and put them in a deck.
There have been several cards from recent years (post NWO) that have been used to enable combo's in eternal formats. Thespian stage, Splinter twin, birthing pod, Progenitus, Emrakul, grislebrand, valakut, cascade cards from shards block like violent outburst, past in flames, melira, faith's reward, phyrexian unlife, ad nauseam, goblin electromancerpyromancer ascension have all seen play in a variety of modern and legacy combo decks. They, just didn't have the right pieces to break their respective standard format. So WOTC is printing Johnny cards, combo cards, combo enablers and cards for combo decks; they just tend to require cards from older sets to become part of a viable combo.
That is my point. Combo no longer exists as a Tier 1 archetype in Standard. Also, combo decks are rarely degenerate in Standard and combo decks can be very creative.
But I think the larger point is that Wizards can't deliberately design oddball combos into Standard, either. They end up looking linear and uncreative when they're deliberately created (Splinter Twin - Exarch).
And I do mean "can't". The combo players want and miss is totally the province of cards printed with years of development time in between them, resulting in unexpected synergies. No combo players miss combo winter; but I can't see decks like ANT making into Standard. Every time Wizards messes with Storm or something similar, they get burned. I think that combo is one of those things that's just too hard to deliberately design and balance in a small card pool like Standard.
Also Splinter Twin + Deceiver Exarch was not created by Wizards intentionally. They just overlooked that interaction.
Many combo decks in modern and legacy use cards that never existed in the same standard season. Cards like Dark Depths were junk 50 cent rares until cards like vampire hexmage and thespian stage came along and turned it into a viable combo. R & D make johnnie cards in standard all the time,it's just that many combos use cards that were never designed with each other in mind from across magic's history and standard of course doesn't have this option. Also, I'd imagine that WOTC are reluctant to design a standard set with a particular 2 card combo in mind because if they are slightly off in judging how powerful the combo is then it could become too degenerate and damage standard. Furthermore, part of the design philosophy of MtG is exploring new sets, building decks and being creative. if R&D designed a standard season with a particular 2 card combo in mind, it could be seen as restricting this creativity because combo players wouldn't have to be imaginative and create a unique deck, they could just look for the two cards that insta-win you the game and put them in a deck.
There have been several cards from recent years (post NWO) that have been used to enable combo's in eternal formats. Thespian stage, Splinter twin, birthing pod, Progenitus, Emrakul, grislebrand, valakut, cascade cards from shards block like violent outburst, past in flames, melira, faith's reward, phyrexian unlife, ad nauseam, goblin electromancerpyromancer ascension have all seen play in a variety of modern and legacy combo decks. They, just didn't have the right pieces to break their respective standard format. So WOTC is printing Johnny cards, combo cards, combo enablers and cards for combo decks; they just tend to require cards from older sets to become part of a viable combo.
That is my point. Combo no longer exists as a Tier 1 archetype in Standard. Also, combo decks are rarely degenerate in Standard and combo decks can be very creative.
But I think the larger point is that Wizards can't deliberately design oddball combos into Standard, either. They end up looking linear and uncreative when they're deliberately created (Splinter Twin - Exarch).
And I do mean "can't". The combo players want and miss is totally the province of cards printed with years of development time in between them, resulting in unexpected synergies. No combo players miss combo winter; but I can't see decks like ANT making into Standard. Every time Wizards messes with Storm or something similar, they get burned. I think that combo is one of those things that's just too hard to deliberately design and balance in a small card pool like Standard.
They've designed interesting Standard combos before. They can do it again.
Which is obviously why legacy has a clear "best deck" and the make ups of top 8's don't vary wildly. In actuality, there is no such deck, and your match up, does not determine victory.
In the past couple months Death and Taxes has been putting up numbers. Death and Taxes is non blue and non combo. It's sort of like an aggro deck, sort of like a control deck. But it 'a not blue, and in a format where 'you can just lose to deck X' to take your words, Death and Taxes has been doing well in a meta where Show and Tell, a combo deck, is probably what's considered the 'best' deck. Show and Tell should trounce death and taxes, but in order to top 8, D&T has probably had to beat SnT twice.
Without playing the format or knowing what decks are what, it 'a kind of hard to decide whether someone can 'just win before the game starts', because this is magic and luck IS a factor, and so is skill.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
Did the deck try to find a specific card? I don't think so.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx and expensive payout card like Garruk, Caller of Beasts.
It's garbage without one of those.
You can argue that is not "Combo" but the fact remains that is has lot of elements that are similar.
If you think a match of legacy is over before it has started, you REALLY don't know anything about legacy or magic in general for that matter. I've seen 90/10 matchups played out and the deck that has the 10% shot at winning has won. That's why magic is great. You don't know what's going to happen until you play out the game. This isn't chess. There are a lot of variables involved. The game isn't over until someone hits zero life, concedes, or has attempted to draw a card from an empty library.
As for having to pack answers to certain cards, it's called metagaming and sideboarding. Let's say that you KNOW a tournament is going to have 50% of the field on belcher. You decide to bring nic fit. You lose a lot of matches to belcher with your fair B/G(x) deck. What did you learn? That you should metagame and play force of will in that metagame. Say you know that a quarter of the field is on sneak and show. Bring all the karakases you can as well as other hosers for such decks.
Currently Playing:
Retired
Currently Playing:
Retired
Those combo decks are still playing stuff like Brainstorm to find the combo pieces.
A deck needing 1 of 2 cards to win that puts no effort into finding those cards does not count as a combo deck. Also, there is no specific interaction involved. There is no combo in that deck.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Combo decks like Eggs, or Pyromancer's Ascension, or ANT, so on and so forth, are generally assembled by knowledgeable players looking over several decades' worth of cards and a strong desire to do so. Wizards isn't going to try and design combos like that. It would take far too much R&D effort. Instead, they'll print oddball enablers (think Infernal Tutor, or Bridge from Below) that don't do anything weird in the Standard meta they're in, but combined with cards not in their format, they become powerful combo pieces.
Now, I'd rather see Wizards print a few more enablers in Standard to give players a shot at assembling combos. Just like Standard should usually have playable kill spells and playable creatures and so forth, somewhere in the rotation there should also be playable tutors and playable cantrips that encourage a deck type that digs for a specific win condition consisting of a specific combination of cards. Scars-Innistrad almost had that; I remember Grand Architect builds that were very "combo" using tons of artifact mana, artifact tutoring, proliferate and a single point of Infect damage early on. I personally played a Titan-enabled Primal Surge/Pod deck where the singleton Primal Surge was the only non-permanent in the deck; the win condition was to ramp, tutor the Surge with a Rune-Scarred Demon and force it through and win off the back of a Laboratory Maniac (the rest other 58 cards were pure artistry in their ability to handle any combination of board states and hand contents only Primal Surge flipped your library into play. In fact, it was strong enough that I would've put it at tier 1.5 in that Standard). I remember Pyromancer Ascension builds in Zendikar.
Combos recently are at a low ebb, but I'm fairly certain combo decks will come back once the extremely aggro Ravnica block rotates out.
That was a sarcastic reply to what he said, hence why it was ended with "In actuality, that isn't true"
As well, you seem to think that there's a difference between "overcoming one another in their strategies" and "Overcoming the other person's strategy"
S&T runs multiple copies of S&T, and can survive to try again, besides it may be the front runner as a deck, but it loses quite often, because of how Legacy works.
Big Thanks to Xeno for sig art <3.
Most often, they're highly "unrealistic" -- in that the combos never would have happened in a mage versus mage battle, anywhere, any time in any book or movie or even roleplaying game;
They're based on design mistakes rather than interesting interactions.
Storm may be an exception, but it'd only ever be done a B-movie.
Splinter Twin is definitely not an exception, but might appear in parodies and slapstick comedies.
Creatureless burn is what the "I don't want to play creatures" should be playing.
Infinite life exists in literature all of the time in the form of immortality. Infinite damage can easily be a superweapon capable of destroying the universe.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
What? Why should the only creatureless deck be burm? What sense does that make and how at all is that interactive? Furthermore, have you ever played a good burn deck? Burn is very dificult to pilot effectively when the other player has lifegain or flat out hosers like COP Red. Furthermore, you saying the only dudeless deck should be a burn deck says that you have no idea wtf you are even talking about.
By: ol MISAKA lo
Cockatrice: Infallible
This one seems to have gotten passed over, which is too bad. Interaction with the stack is almost exclusively given to a single color, and combo can only reliably be stopped when that interaction is present. Unless Wizards is going to give us Split Second back, I don't see them giving us powerful combo-based strategies.
Cards are not money, investments, or a retirement fund, and should never have been treated as such.
Wizards made a mistake caving to speculators once, and we still pay for that mistake 2 decades later.
"Entitled:" the entire ad hominem fallacy condensed into a single word. It doesn't strengthen your argument to attack motivations, it just makes you look like you don't understand the argument.
Or, they could make creature-based combos that die to removal or print more hate and discard (which both exist in this Standard, so I don't see why Combo would be a problem).
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Well, White gets combo-killing restriction cards (Linvala, Rule of Law, the new 3/1 Spirit), and probably should've had Teferi's opponent-restricting ability. (Honestly, Teferi did not feel like a Blue card to me at all. He felt WG all the way)
I think the problem is that there's only so much card space and NWO keeps card complexity at common down. I think perhaps Wizards could be a bit braver with the commons and print random commons that do good utility work for deck archetypes but don't necessarily play with the set's themes. Cards like Cursecatcher; while it was valuable as a Merfolk and randomly did good work in Standard, it's really valuable in Legacy Merfolk. Suppose the Satyr that sacs itself for RRR instead sac'd to counter target triggered ability (I'm envisioning trigger-interaction to be RG). It wouldn't be doing tons in Standard, though it might have a few sideboard spots in RG aggro decks, but it would probably be pretty valuable in older formats. Or imagine a normal-efficiency (3 for 1R) Red direct damage spell that has a rider "Exile all but four other spells or abilities on the stack when this resolves." Most of the time in Standard, it deals 3. But it provides an automatic safety valve if Wizards accidentally designs a degenerate combo, which means they can push combo-enablers a little.
Right now, R&D is trying to ensure that every set it designs is perfectly balanced out the door, which is a noble goal, and they've done extremely well designing sets under this philosophy, but the problem is they aren't allowing themselves safety valves on cards in the name of cohesive flavour. Cutting out random semi-relevant riders on cards that pre-emptively provide insurance on certain strategies have made them timid about those strategies.
This isn't even close to a coherent argument. Combos are bad because they make the other player lose? So cards like Blightsteel and all pump spells should go away forever too? And realistic? there are flavor fails everywhere in magic, like equipping just about any piece of equipment to the 50% of creatures that don't have hands. And you honestly think that block development should be based on what looks good in movies? Really? You actually typed that out, re-read it, and thought it was good enough of an argument to hit "Post Reply"?
I don't have any problem with combo personally, but I find stuff like this awfully hypocritical.
On the one hand, people that want to play combo rag on the people who don't find it fun playing against it, say they should just adapt to it, and pick on them for taking their ball and going home instead of doing so.
Then, on the flip side, you completely quit the format (taking your ball and going home to the greatest extent) just because you can't play one specific archetype instead of just taking your own advice and adapting to what's available in the format.
Big Thanks to Xeno for sig art <3.
Actually, I never played the format. I went directly from Casual to Modern because it was near the end of the Standard season when I started playing competitively and Standard didn't seem very fun because of the lack of combo and tempo.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
That is my point. Combo no longer exists as a Tier 1 archetype in Standard. Also, combo decks are rarely degenerate in Standard and combo decks can be very creative.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
But I think the larger point is that Wizards can't deliberately design oddball combos into Standard, either. They end up looking linear and uncreative when they're deliberately created (Splinter Twin - Exarch).
And I do mean "can't". The combo players want and miss is totally the province of cards printed with years of development time in between them, resulting in unexpected synergies. No combo players miss combo winter; but I can't see decks like ANT making into Standard. Every time Wizards messes with Storm or something similar, they get burned. I think that combo is one of those things that's just too hard to deliberately design and balance in a small card pool like Standard.
Also Splinter Twin + Deceiver Exarch was not created by Wizards intentionally. They just overlooked that interaction.
They've designed interesting Standard combos before. They can do it again.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.