Quote from cfusionpm »Quote from gkourou »Quote from mtgnorin »Semifinals shadow vs. Shadow...great metagame, lol
7-1 or better decks at the Invitational:
Eldrazi Tron - 3
Grixis Shadow - 2
Ponza - 1
Jund - 1
Lantern - 1
Abzan - 1
Esper Shadow - 1
BG Midrange - 1
Affinity - 1
Living End - 1
RG Breach - 1
11 different decks out of the 14 total
I agree with you. It is a great metagame.
I look at the list and see:
3 Eldrazi Tron
3 Shadow
3 BGx
4 linear/combo/aggro
I don't understand how people see lists like this and think of the words "healthy" or "diverse."
I don't understand how people see a list like that and group Affinity, Lantern Control, Living End, and RG Breach all as the same kind of deck.
If you're going to group combo, control, and aggro as 1 category why not throw in midrange and ramp and say it's just 14 combo/control/aggro/midrange/ramp decks! There's no diversity!
2
You're barking up the wrong tree. I've played a variety of decks, some with great Scapeshift match-ups and others not. I don't want to see it banned or neutered. It really is as simple as believing that threats should at least have sideboard-able answers in a couple colors. That becomes even more important when a deck exploits an unfamiliar axis of attack (e.g. Dredge or Affinity).
That was an original argument, not necessarily mine. I'm not going to carry the torch for @idSurge, but his suggestions for "answer it or lose" are hardly overpowered analogues. Again, Choke or Boil don't see play and Stony Silence can definitely be played through. Click back a couple pages --
several people responded that nothing else is needed because there is plenty of existing land hate which is a frankly baffling belief.
Let me rephrase -- there is no way to interact with the ETron or Scapeshift lands at anything close to parity or without gearing your entire deck to fight them. Other decks that exploit an unfamiliar axis of attack (Dredge, Affinity) have hate cards that can be sideboarded. Why? Because threats need answers, otherwise they inevitably lead to excessive power creep and then bannings. Re-read my first paragraph you're responding to. There are several reasons to encourage answers even before a strategy becomes "dominating"; it's called proactively managing the format.
Lantern is quite possibly the worst example you could bring up. It's quite possibly my least favorite deck to play against it but there is plenty of sideboard hate, basically everything that hits Affinity. There is absolutely no argument to be made that it needs more answers. You're missing my point here; my arguments here have nothing to do with whether I think any particular strategy is frustrating. The problem is that these land-based strategies in particular are already immune to the existing sideboard options. Ceremonious Rejection isn't any more an answer to ETron than Celestial Purge is to Dredge, Spreading Seas/Ensnaring Bridge require building an entire strategy around, etc.
3
3
1
This is an astonishingly bad take; you're confusing several things. If we're evaluating the impact of skill, repeated finishes in the top 1% of the field over a longer tournament supports that. It does not matter how much it pays nor how a given pro feels about it when we're solely discussing skill. The Atlanta Falcons (or take your pick from sports, say Tottenham Hotspur or Cleveland Cavaliers) are most certainly disappointed in finishing second and receive significantly less money, but that doesn't mean their final spot isn't an indicator of their skill.
Imagine a hypothetical where every month every person on earth played in a winner-take-all chess tournament. If one person finishes in the 50-100 range for an entire year, they'll be incredibly disappointed and have no winnings to show for it. But that doesn't mean that we can't assume that they have a lot of skill to consistently finish in such a high percentile.