2019 Holiday Exchange!
 
A New and Exciting Beginning
 
The End of an Era
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    4

    Oct 19, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from BlueTronFTW »
    And my stance is that that is completely fine. No deck should be viable vs the entire field. When I play storm and see turn one monastery swiftspear, I know odds are against me. I don't resent the format, I don't hate the burn player. It is what it is. If I wanted to play a format with four viable decks to have any chance of even 4-0'ing an FNM, I would play standard.


    I think a lot of people misunderstand his point. Across the full set of match-ups, a deck like Storm or Scapeshift has a number of 65/35s and 35/65s because of the mostly linear nature of the deck. Either the strategy works versus a particular opponent or doesn't. You'll win some of those matches by just getting out of bed in the morning (and likewise lose some). It can still make sense to play one of those decks when you see a net positive across the expected meta.

    Midrange match-ups aren't typically so polarizing; there are much more 55/45s and 45/55s depending on how interaction lines up with an opponent's plan. By the nature of a deck like BGx, there aren't very many "I win" matches. It can still make sense to play one of those decks when you see a net positive across the expected meta. But if you introduce a couple of bad (and popular) 35/65 match-ups without any corresponding 65/35s, suddenly midrange becomes a terrible proposition. I think that's why you hear so many midrange players complaining about a specific match-up where they're significant underdogs. It's not that specific opponent's deck so much as that for midrange to be competitive it needs to have a chance even when it's unfavored. Otherwise you're playing a deck with a large downside risk and little upside. That can kill large swathes of a vast, popular archetype.

    You're free to feel unmoved by their complaints; that's the motivation though. Most reasonable midrange players don't want to be favored in every match-up, they just want it to be mostly even-ish so that midrange remains a competitive choice. At this point, I wouldn't recommend anyone play midrange (like BGx). Either do something broken or play another archetype.

    *Note -- I'm using 'midrange' here to mean 'fair midrange' since we're talking about BGx-like decks. I recognize there are other types within the spectrum.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    1

    Sep 26, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from mtgnorin »
    Why satire? Because eldrazi is not the bogeyman maybe? Because titanshift is not worth using tec edge? Why the hell people cry of this matchups, when they say: "no use for colorless mana"? By the way, it is very good against uw too. Come on guys, take your tec edge main and side, or put your spreading seas and all other sort of landdestruction in your deck if you really think you cannot beat them. I have in each deck in my 75 cards 4 tec edge...never need to cry. Now go on and watch sideboards all of this people crying....what will you see? They dont use this cards even they hate big mana decks! They know about titanshift, uw and eldrazi...but they say: "is this satire? Why should i play them?" 2 tec edge main, 2 side..and winning increase. If you put 2 dismember too, 10%. Try it! But stop talking bannings temple, if you think:" i dont need it". P.S mnesci i like tec edge, because inquisition and counter and thought knot seer. They cannot remove it. Better for my playstyle then other landdestruction


    My favorite part of this is that you edited it and it's still incomprehensible. Tectonic Edge is awful versus Titanshift/Tron variants.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    1

    Sep 26, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Death And Taxes
    Quote from deathandcatmix »
    I have a question! Is this attached photo....good?

    (Sorry! I took this photo in a 1997 vcr).


    Do you always play standing on your head? Because if that explains your success, I'm willing to give it a try.

    Living the dream with Settle the Wreckage there! Seems a very solid sideboard card that might be worth a few points in competitive match-ups (heavy aggro, Elves, Etron, Merfolk).
    Posted in: Aggro & Tempo
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    2

    Sep 26, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from mtgnorin »
    Grixis can easy put away 1-2 push and take tec edge instead, why they dont use it? Because it seems titanshift and eldratron dont warp enough like twin and eldrazi in our eldrazi winter. By the way guys, diamember is great against eldrazi....dont be so greedy for push and path, use them now and stop crying.


    Is this satire? It seems like you're missing a lot here. GDS has almost no use for colorless mana, turn 4 is too slow to really affect Titanshift/Etron, it's not GDS pilots complaining about ramp, etc. It's a fairly even match-up where GDS' best chance is to disrupt with discard then race.

    Quote from gkourou »

    We know that Wizards looks both. And we may have lost half of the 5-0 competitive leagues, but we gained Modern Challenges full top-40 data instead. So, that's not a net negative. From those Modern Challenges, we can deduce Grixis Shadow is not even a big player.


    It's almost certainly is a net negative. Modern Challenges are a less representative data source -- they're limited to players who are available to play X matches in a row starting at a given time. That's a narrower sample than most people realize. A daily randomly chosen 10 is more valuable than a weekly chosen 40 that comes with more limitations on availability.

    That said, I agree with your conclusion. GDS has been falling in popularity (at least on MTGO) for the last month plus. People seem to have moved away from it once the metagame adjusted to its spike in popularity.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    2

    Sep 19, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from h0lydiva »


    The raving ban-mania is completely irrelevant to everything. What we are trying to discuss here is what would happen in the hypothetical scenario I described. The ban-mania is unrelated to the game, it doesn't affect what happens in the games or the health of the format in any way. I can't care less if 3 or 300 or 300 million people want bans or don't want them.

    I care about the format and the games played in it.

    What you describe is the reality that at times bans lead to bans and other times bans don't lead to bans period

    Raving ban-mania is not a problem to me or anything even remotely close to a problem, it's completely irrelevant to what I'm talking about.


    No, no it's not. WoTC reacts to consumer sentiment. It was explicitly mentioned in their rationale for banning Marvel in Standard. If 300 million people want something it will drastically change WoTC's business practices. You should probably care about that.

    I followed your hypothetical (and it's an interesting one). I'm a huge fan of thought experiments. I'd love to hear more people discuss it. It's the tangential comments you threw in that are getting a reaction and you're trying to hand-wave them away . If those points weren't relevant to your main point, don't make them in the first place; otherwise acknowledge that you were off-base and the conversation can gravitate back to your much more interesting topic.

    If I want people to know ice cream shouldn't be eaten by the lactose intolerant but at some point I unnecessarily sneak in a comment that chocolate is the worst flavor... Well, I shouldn't be surprised if people challenge that.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    1

    Sep 19, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from tchntm43 »
    Quote from h0lydiva »

    Second, the bans lead to more bans is just false no matter how you slice it. The last bans in Standard left a format that is fine and doesn't need any more bans.

    In the context of this discussion, "needs bans" is a subjective observation. I believe his point would be better stated as: banning cards leads to further calls to ban more cards by people who support banning cards as a solution.

    As an example, in Modern, when it came to Birthing Pod, there were those who supported banning it and those who did not. In general, you will find correlation among those who supported or did not support the bannings of Birthing Pod and Splinter Twin, and likely among those who will support or not support a future ban as a solution to a perceived problem in the Modern metagame. I'll put it this way. Let's go back in time to when Birthing Pod was still legal. Those who were okay with it might have made an argument similar to gkourou's, which is that we don't need to ban Birthing Pod, and that banning it will just lead to another deck rising to become oppressive in its place, and then another ban. But the views of those players were disregarded and Birthing Pod was banned, and Splinter Twin eventually took up the mantle as the oppressive deck of the format. Then came calls to ban Splinter Twin, and another subset of players (which, I venture, overlap considerably with the previous subset) made the argument that banning it would just be a continuation of the cycle of knocking off the top deck leading to another deck becoming oppressive in its place. Then we had the banning of Summer Bloom to kill the Amulet Bloom deck that became oppressive, then Gitaxian Probe (although that's less to do with a specific oppressive deck), and now you hear new calls for things like Chalice of the Void, Eldrazi Temple, Death's Shadow, Street Wraith, etc...

    Gkourou's position is consistent because he is describing the desires of the group of players who frequently call for bans as a solution, not the actual state of whether or not the ban happens. He, perhaps (I don't want to speak for him), has been opposed to previous bans as well.


    Well put. "Bans inevitably lead to more bans" is really more like shorthand for "using bans as a tool to curate the top decks, inevitably leads to a metagame where further bans are the easiest way to continue curating the top decks". Plus it undermines consumer confidence in their purchases, etc. Better design should be the solution, not artificial rotation through bans. Print cards that "hate" on those decks so that players can more efficiently respond to a metagame like this; then you get more of the rock-paper-scissors dynamic naturally and minimize the continuous cycles of people calling for bans and further bans and further further bans.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    1

    Sep 14, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Jeskai Tempo /Delver/Prowess ("The Jeskai Way" )
    Most UW Control these days is running a max of 3 cards (1-2 Blessed Alliance, 1 Timely Reinforcements) that can gain life and 0 is as common as 3.
    Posted in: Deck Creation (Modern)
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    3

    Sep 14, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from wolffman »
    Quote from gkourou »
    Quote from xxhellfirexx3 »
    why does storm get the pass?


    Modern Banlist:
    {..}
    Gitaxian Probe
    Ponder
    Preordain
    Rite Of Flame
    Seething Song
    {..}


    The list of cards banned from storm is rather interesting. It's like they know this deck is a problem, but just can't bring themselves to ban the actual storm cards and wipe it out of the format. Compared to how they completely removed other decks, it is odd that storm just keeps getting small nerfs. How many times do you have to ban cards from a deck before we admit it is just not healthy for the format?


    Except it is in no way currently unhealthy for the format? By any metric, by any standard. It's not dominant, not warping, can be hated from the sideboard, doesn't consistently break the T4 rule, etc. Very strange to complain about not destroying a deck with bans when that should be considered a success; the failures are the unintentionally scorched earth bans.

    Unrelated -- as someone who has publicly been calling for better answers to land, I have to give credit to WoTC for Field of Ruin. It may end up being too weak, but it shows an attempt to incrementally find the right power level for that kind of answer. I appreciate that.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    1

    Sep 12, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on UW Control
    I'm on MTGO as well; you're definitely right that Storm is always out there. I haven't found it to be a terrible match-up though. I'm boarding in Dispel, Negate, Vendilion Clique, and any graveyard hate I have. From turn 3 onwards I keep mana up and flash in a clock on their EOT (if I can). Then the onus is on them to go off before their life chips away. Also worth remembering the importance of Supreme Verdicts in this match. They essentially blank Empty the Warrens, halving the number of Storm win cons.

    Speaking of decks more popular on MTGO, anyone have tips for playing against Amulet Titan? Ran into it twice in my last competitive league. Saved my Paths for Titan, but not sure if it makes more sense to hit Azusa or their other enabler. To be honest, it felt like a loss either way given our lack of spot removal versus an inevitable hasted Titan (frequently via a Cavern of Souls).
    Posted in: Control
  • Darkest_before_dawn's avatar

    1

    Aug 22, 2017
    Darkest_before_dawn posted a message on Temporary State of the Meta Thread (Rules Update 7/17/17)
    Quote from Stille_Nacht »
    Quote from Darkest_before_dawn »
    Quote from BlueTronFTW »


    Except you can interact with Scapeshift...you can counter everything except the lands coming into play. Again, these complains are mostly midrange players who don't want bad matchups. The meta is not warped around Valakut ramp. Now players, like you, make comments that sound as if you just want a bad game one followed by a devastating hate card. Or, you could just play disruption plus a clock like I did back with Grixis Delver...which was not a massive dog to Scapeshift. Or you can play Burn, or Affinity, or Shadow Zoo.


    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).

    Quote from Stille_Nacht »

    Again, the original argument was requesting a, as defined by the user "answer it or lose" card. We were saying that unless the deck was dominating, it's silly to want something like that. Nobody that I've read is particularly saying there should never be hate, everyone was just pointing out that some reasonable answers do in fact exist. I don't think anyone in the thread is broken up about some new slightly better hate coming out.

    I didn't see anyone actually arguing the point you seem to be making, which is any and all hate for big mana is bad. There are simply pointing out that this discussion needs to be based on some actual goal of making the meta healthier.

    Why is tron uninteractable? Not only does it play creatures you can kill, there ARE ways to interact with it in the sideboard(ceremonious rejection, spreading seas, blood moon, ensnaring bridge). Again, we aren't arguing for an immunity to side-board hate. We're just saying the original idea that lands-based decks require affinity level hate doesn't really seem justified.

    Honestly it doesn't seem like a straw-man. You find a specific strategy "frustrating" because you dont like the side-board cards enough. I could make that claim about literally any deck. I don't think there is a good enough side board card against lantern. I hate that deck. It simply isn't enough to declare something "frustrating", you have to explain why, in the context of the meta, we are making these changes. That is the purpose of the meta discussion thread.

    If you want to argue for tron suppressing a greater variety of midrange that's one thing. But a lot of statements being thrown around seem to presuppose the idea that tron is just automatically something they need to print better hate for just because.


    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.


    How is Ceremonious Rejection not an answer to ETron? UW has a fine matchup due primarily to an improving game after turn 2.

    - Ensnaring Bridge doesnt require you build an entire strategy around it. Affinity, Burn, and a bunch of control variants can play it if desired.
    - Spreading seas does not require your entire strategy be built around it, it requires you play blue. UW does not have any synergy with seas and it mainboards the card.
    - Blood moon fits into every red deck + affinity
    - Tec Edge, Fulminator mage, Leyline, and more interact with land based decks

    Saying there is "no way" to interact with lands is just not true. There is already hate for lands, you just dont think it's good enough. Why is it not good enough? Is there a metagame benefit for better hate? I'd probably agree there. However, let's not pretend the metagame is dominated by big mana. The last 10 or so big tournaments don't really bear that out. Why is it baffling that some prefer the status quo when the meta is relatively healthy?


    The point I'm making with lantern is you need to make an argument towards improving the metagame if you talk about changing the environment. Your previous arguments did not address this at all. Yes there exists hate, but I can simply say "well I don't think its good enough, I find stony silence laughable, they just decay it and it barely changes their clock. " or "Lifegain is laughable against burn i say, they can just skullcrack you, we should make it so Oketra's Last Mercy can't be prevented. It lets more decks deal with burn in the SB!"

    Unless I can make a compelling argument as to whether the meta gets better with the printing of [BetterLanternHateTheCard], saying this doesn't mean much.

    If you want other examples, why isn't there direct hate for: infinite mana, all fast mana, storm cards, creatures with flash, hexproof things, token generators. I'm sure these things don't count as a "familiar axis" (however you define that).

    Basically we need to establish how our theoretical hate card is helping the meta. For example:

    - "I think there should be a blue card which counters all triggers on the stack, so that control can help naturally control big mana."

    - "Green is too soft to eldrazi and it's hurting diversity, we should pring the 1G prismatic moon thing. It's worse than blood moon for most decks, but gives green decks an out"



    Apologies if this comes across as patronizing, but you don't seem very familiar with the recent versions of UW Control. No Ceremonious Rejection in the 75 plus they play some combination of 4 Ghost Quarter/Tectonic Edge mainboard in addition to Spreading Seas which makes mana denial a viable strategy.

    At the risk of becoming a broken record, I think you need to re-read my actual points. I've never said there is no way to interact with land, just that the options are essentially unplayable short of making a significant commitment to mana denial (like UW Control or RG Ponza). In other words, there are basically no sideboard-able cards that are effective against lands such as Valakut, Tron, or Temple. Tectonic Edge/Spreading Seas are too slow on their own, Ghost Quarter is a significant tempo loss, and Fulminator Mage is both. Ensnaring Bridge obviously isn't land hate and it's only playable in the sideboard for Burn. Blood Moon fits in a couple more decks (Affinity, Storm) but I'm willing to say that's one sideboard-able card that one color has access to.

    You're getting lost in the weeds with the rest of your argument because the explanation is remarkably simple -- threats need reasonable answers, for both competitive and balance reasons. There's no need to dig very deep to find recent examples where the absence of answers has caused issues for Modern or Standard. If you want a more pragmatic line of thought then check the share of the metagame that ETron and Scapeshift currently hold; it's significant, albeit not oppressive. Wouldn't some of the other decks play answers in their sideboard if there were actually playable options? It doesn't take a million Monte Carlo simulations on the impact to justify the basic logic.
    Posted in: Modern Archives
  • To post a comment, please or register a new account.
Back to Top