Yes, personally, efficient removals in Modern warps my deck building. "Does it pass the PTE test"? Has it done its job before getting killed i.e. creatures who has ETB abilities? Is the strength of the creature good enough to be worth a risk e.g. Dark Confidant, Tarmogoyf? Is the creature expendable to make the 1 land worth the trade e.g. tokens, Squadron Hawk?
In this format, I feel any deck that can't generate consistent card advantage are bad. That's why Zoo is on the decline, and has to rely on Snapcaster Mage to generate some form of card advantage. BBE is what makes Jund tick. Pod isn't a bad deck but after playtesting, it feels way too 'fair' when my opponent is doing unfair things.
The only way to combat removals is to choose your creature base wisely. Find some creatures which pass the above mentioned tests and make your opponent regret, or at least frown, as he is forced to use PTE on a simple dork like a Squadron Hawk, when another is on its way.
Ok, so your opponent pays 2 mana instead of 1 to kill your guy. You still get no value unless you had a guy that had some sort of ETB ability anyway.
Also, yes. You are correct. Card advantage is indeed good.
except that strategy will lead to the format growing stale. Jund or twin will just be the best deck then we will have one deck ruling the format. Think affinity, jund, faeries, caw-blade. Honestly modern feels more like standard than an older format...
Well this deck does not exist anymore, but one of the 60 different decks in old extedned to make a few top 8s was aggroshift. It was essentially a zooish deck that ran scapeshift+valakut. One of my favorite turn dudes sideways decks because if your opponent had not see it they would **** themselves when you busted out the combo. True Aggro-combo hybrids are quite rare, but they do exist.
This is my point. This is what I have been saying all along lol. Most aggro players are not happy unless they can run 40 creature decks, or tribal aggro decks. Those aren't going to be good in modern. Combo is still powerful enough to prevent that, not to mention that tribal kinda blows when you don't have busted cards.(piledriver, lackey)
Maybe the OP should just play boros. Red based aggro is where its at in modern. You could even try running a boros+x just to see what it is like.
Zoo is mostly rare in this format atm. jund is the new super-beast. However the best 3 decks in the format are creature based.
Just gotta throw this out there, but aggro shift was awful. It never comboed out with normal scapeshift, and the landfall aggro combo was worse than just simply playing an already terrible card like overrun. It basically combined the inconsistency of a landfall aggro deck, with the further inconsistency of a non combo scapeshift deck that almost never won via the combo itself. Seriously, the deck was terrible. That being said, some aggro combo decks do exist. Junk depths, aggro vamps ( if you count kalastria +ghast as combo) and polymorph tokens are oegit combo or aggro decks with alternative win conditions.
And fwiw, as ive been saying forever, tempo and jund are really good. It just took players a small incentive to try non nacatyl strategies to realize zoo was good, yet a bit overhyped in the format.
The fact that the removal is oppressive only shifts the balance of the game toward the amazing, efficient creatures like Dark Confidant and Tarmagoyf. It's not like people can win without creatures, God knows I've tried. Hardest hit was really the fatties that are great in current Standard.
The removal makes the format "cheaper." I suppose if super-powered 1-3 drops weren't in abundance the OP would have a point. As it is, aggro is the place to be; 12-15 cheap creatures, 23 land, and a pile of disruption.
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Ok, so your opponent pays 2 mana instead of 1 to kill your guy. You still get no value unless you had a guy that had some sort of ETB ability anyway.
Also, yes. You are correct. Card advantage is indeed good.
Just gotta throw this out there, but aggro shift was awful. It never comboed out with normal scapeshift, and the landfall aggro combo was worse than just simply playing an already terrible card like overrun. It basically combined the inconsistency of a landfall aggro deck, with the further inconsistency of a non combo scapeshift deck that almost never won via the combo itself. Seriously, the deck was terrible. That being said, some aggro combo decks do exist. Junk depths, aggro vamps ( if you count kalastria +ghast as combo) and polymorph tokens are oegit combo or aggro decks with alternative win conditions.
And fwiw, as ive been saying forever, tempo and jund are really good. It just took players a small incentive to try non nacatyl strategies to realize zoo was good, yet a bit overhyped in the format.
The removal makes the format "cheaper." I suppose if super-powered 1-3 drops weren't in abundance the OP would have a point. As it is, aggro is the place to be; 12-15 cheap creatures, 23 land, and a pile of disruption.