MTG Salvation

I'm curious. What are your least favorite decks to play against and why?

For me it's gotta be Storm decks/Eggs decks/Taking Turns decks. No matter what deck I'm playing against, my least favorite thing in the world is just sitting there waiting for 10 minutes to see if my opponent properly executes their combo or not. I don't ever really play reactive control, so whenever I play these decks I'm usually not waiting to see if I can interrupt the combo, i'm just waiting for them to finish their annoyingly long combo turns.

A lot of people are gonna say latern, but honestly, lantern isn't that bad to me.
Its not the best, but it far and away beats decks like bogles or dredge that basically say "Only 5% of the cards in your deck interact with me, and if you see enough of them and they are impactful enough, you win. Otherwise, you lose" is easily the least fun for me.
I like to play back and forth games, where both players are making difficult decisions that impact the end result. With those types of decks, the only meaningful decisions people really make are deciding on the 75 and deciding on mulligans.

Quote from Cody_X »

A lot of people are gonna say latern, but honestly, lantern isn't that bad to me.
Its not the best, but it far and away beats decks like bogles or dredge that basically say "Only 5% of the cards in your deck interact with me, and if you see enough of them and they are impactful enough, you win. Otherwise, you lose" is easily the least fun for me.
I like to play back and forth games, where both players are making difficult decisions that impact the end result. With those types of decks, the only meaningful decisions people really make are deciding on the 75 and deciding on mulligans.

Its true. People don't like me.


I like playing dredge, but I'm well aware people hate playing against it. Sorta same boat as lantern. They both take a lot of thought, since theres always a ton of play lines open to them, but playing against them is miserable.

I actually hate playing against eggs more than anything. Its just a lot of looping, unlike splinter twin or something where it was like "combo complete. Cool? Game 2." And by technical rules, since its looping, they still "could fizzle" so you sorta have to let them play it out. Storm is way less bad, because you can just watch them a bit and eventually they got it. Less triggers to keep track of too.

I think second to that would be 8 rack. Same reason as eggs. They race to lock you out of the game, but it still takes forever for them to win. Its just not clean. And winning against that deck isnt really fun either. Usually you stick a threat down, and they can't really do anything, keep shredding your hand meanwhile your like, "swing with my goyf? Take 5. Swing? Swing, swing, swing. Sorry you didnt have a push."

My least favorite deck is Bant Eldrazi. I mostly play Jund so it's not a good matchup to begin with, but I also feel it's just doing things that no other deck in Modern is allowed to do. At FNMs I've been known to just sign the paper and leave once someone slaps down an Eldrazi Temple, regardless of what deck I'm on that night (and I have many to choose from).

Any deck where it feels like someone didn't get to play magic, partly because I like to play magic and partly because I feel kind of bad when one card shuts off my opponents entire deck, e.g. Dredge. I really dislike Tron and Burn but that probably has more to do with every deck I have ever played having a dodgy Tron and Burn match-up.

Bant Eldrazi.
That is because it's my worst MUs obviously (playing RUG Eternal Command mostly) but it's just so hard to do anything against that deck. Land Destruction doesn't actually do much unless they brick on land drops and Cavern of Souls turns off counterspells which should be good against a deck full of big spells.
Against other bad MUs I need to play tight and get a little lucky with my draws/mulligans. Against Bant Eldrazi even my best hands can't do anything if their hand is semi-good. It just feels aweful to have such a lopsided MU because I mainly play Eternal Command because it has a chance against pretty much any other deck in the meta (and it's hella fun).
I'd really wish Ceremonious Rejection would exile instead of counter...

Infect and Dredge.... I have NEVER beaten either of these decks at my shop even with a great board and good decision making. I win 1 of the first 2 games and they always have the nut in game 3. So glad Troll is banned.

Tron for sure. Just seems idiotic to me that you can hit 3 land drops and put out something that invalidates multiple decks.

Midrange and Control decks. I hate playing against decks that try to interact.

I really loathe Taking Turns and tend to not play against it unless I really have to. I tell people on cockatrice "no thanks" once I see a dictate of Kruphix and Ive even just given someone the match at fnm because I didnt want to face the deck that evening.

And of course I dislike dredge like basically everyone else because rolling the dice for gravehate is very enticing

My absolute least favorite is Tron. I'm a control player at heart, which means I don't stand much of a chance against Tron. I tend to try and keep a broken combo deck on me for when I go into a Tron infested/unknown meta so that I don't just lose games where my opponent windmill slams threat after threat after having 7 mana on turn 3.

After Tron comes Burn which I just find to be boring. Its a redundant pile of spells/creatures (and a whole separate discussion on consistency) that just go to the face as fast as possible. Not exactly my idea of a fun game of Magic but hey, to each his own. I know some people don't enjoy playing against control/broken combo decks.

I'd honestly rather play against Storm, Lantern, Dredge, and Infect in an FNM than ever run into Tron/Burn.

Only deck i hate playing against is turn1utopiasprawl.dec and this is only because of how rampant this style of deck is on modo. It gets worse because every one of them is a different deck, all you know for sure when they turn 1 utopia sprawl is that your in for a boring match of them casting ramp and bombs and you trying to kill them before they get to do that.

Have only played against eggs once, and found that Hilariously fun. They were playing some brew that used KCI to cast emrakul, and i was on twin at the time. I just tapped down their emmy, forcing them to combo again, then tapped it down again, and they timed out on their third loop through their deck. Was hilarious, but i could see not liking this if i went againt it like 3-4 more times.

Storm is dreadful to play against in modern. Its nothing like the legacy variant with interesting lines of play, it plays out much more like eggs in this format than like a storm deck. But, i dont hate playing against it, and i enjoy watching them combo off as storm is one of my favorite archetypes in the game

As an Affinity-only player, Abzan Company is probably my least-favorite deck to play against. Affinity's weakness is interaction (which is what keeps us "fair" to some extent), but what makes Abzan Company a step ahead of the rest is simply the ability to tutor out hate/answers with the likes of Chord of Calling (and the less stable Collected Company). Affinity usually relies on speed (and a rather good dose of luck that the opponent doesn't draw into wave after wave of hate) and Abzan Company's tutoring capabilities just make it more difficult for us (which means even more emphasis on speed, but at that point it basically means we need the classic "Affinity Crazy Starting Hand/Draws". Combine that with the typical Abzan ability to delay us effectively (Lingering Souls) and access to the two most deadly sideboard cards (Stony Silence and Kataki, War's Wage) and the matchup is incredibly uphill post-sideboard.

I typically don't like Midrange matchups (for obvious reasons of interaction weakness), but Abzan Midrange at least doesn't tutor that effectively. Jund doesn't either and doesn't even have access to the White cards I mentioned above. Burn turns partially Midrange against us, but it's perfectly reasonable considering our speed differences (Affinity tends to have the advantage) and potency of artifact-hate in their colors. While Control isn't strong now, even in the hypothetical concept where they are, their plan is to draw a lot of cards to compensate for tutoring, it's both still luck-dependent and slower than the typical Midrange deck that it isn't a problem (if I'm playing that slow I probably deserved to be hated out by then). So yeah, Abzan Company is a perfect composition of precision and speed that makes it my least-liked matchup.

Lantern. My list of decks that I allow myself to be annoyed about starts and ends with Lantern. I don`t mind Turns, 8-rack, Storm, Eggs, no problem. If you lose against those decks, you can just lean back and let them go at it. Lantern forces you to actively participate in losing (milling one card at a time) for 20 minutes, which just gets under my skin.

Quote from rcwraspy »

My least favorite deck is Bant Eldrazi. I mostly play Jund so it's not a good matchup to begin with, but I also feel it's just doing things that no other deck in Modern is allowed to do. At FNMs I've been known to just sign the paper and leave once someone slaps down an Eldrazi Temple, regardless of what deck I'm on that night (and I have many to choose from).

What do you mean? They only get to play the only Sol land in the format, the best cantrip in the format, the best mana dork, the best removal spell, uncounterable creatures and Thoughtseize stapled onto a creature. How could that possibly feel unfair?

Quote from RXSnomercy »

1 Tron

2 Tron

3 Tron brews/nonsense

Because it can't be hated properly.I only play midrange and control which leads me to believe I should give some nasty and broken combo deck a try.

Gotta agree, Tron is the most annoying. I at least feel like I have a chance against Scapeshift. I don't know many decks that beat a turn 3 Karn.

I think the better question is what decks you like to play against since that list would be easier and smaller to write out. However, if I must compile a short list for the sake of this topic.

1. Tron
2. Eldrazi
3. Infect
4. Burn
5. Delver

Tron as anyhing that is not super fast aggro.
When I do play aggro, I feel happy to easily own them. Into the dirt, since this is where every tron player should be :D.

Eggs and Taking Turns. I don't care about how easy or hard they are to interact with, but the mechanical aspect to their win con can take waaayyyyy too long to execute. I'd rather play against lantern.

See...I always knew you all hated Taking Turns...I'll be over here crying into a Gifts deck...

Quote from Ravy »

Really hate Lantern/Storm/Eggs and Tron. Its just not fun to play against decks that do not let you play magic

I've never quite understood statements like this. You are very literally playing a game of Magic. You both have Magic cards in hand and are both playing by the rules. I understand the whole "I didn't get to do what my deck was designed to do" feel bads, but you still played a game of Magic. That's what's so great about this game - such a huge variety of play styles and things to choose from.

Never been a fan of big mana decks, particularly Tron and Eldrazi. They're relatively uninteractive the first three turns then put on such intense pressure turn four that it just makes for a not-fun game. Most interactions with them end up being "do you have the answer and do they not have follow-up" which isn't terribly fun. I don't mind the existence of those decks at all nor do I mind when people play them, I just think playing against them is rarely rewarding.

The common theme here seems to be decks in which the interaction consists of "Do I have hate?" and no = gg and yes = gg, if played quick enough.

In modern, big mana decks are my bane. We just don't have adequate non basic hate for all colors. Not asking for Wasteland, as that would be crazy, but something between Ghost Quarter and Wasteland would be a nice change. Or something like Back to Basics would make me quite happy.

I can deal with combo with well placed discard and spot removal, and can accept their nut draws, as it's what they are built to do. Aggro, Midrange and Control are all pretty fair most of the times, and can be interacted with as if you are playing normal magic, so no problems there.

Tron. No deck in Modern bothers me more than Tron. When they natural Tron it feels like were playing decks meant for different formats.

Holy ***** do I hate that deck.

Control stuff. Nothing is more boring then watching your opponent not letting you play the game for 20 turns and still having no way to kill you.