Quote from Makaro »Quote from Shodai »Could someone inform me what Twisted Image is for in this deck? Is it really just there to be a cantrip and fill the graveyard for Cruise? Is there some sort of interaction I'm missing that makes it main deck material? I can only think of how it kills Spellskite, otherwise we are literally just play Reach Through Mists which doesn't seem like a card I want in my deck when I could Thought Scour.
kills Spellskite/Hierarch/Birds, does "damage" to creatures w/ higher power than toughness (getting Restoration Angel in to bolt range for example), sometimes protects your guys from removal, gives your Swiftspear 2 more power while drawing a card
There's also this really great interaction when someone flashes in Clique to block your flipped Delver and you make there Clique a 1/3.
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I understand what a "Sol land" implies I was simply pointing out that the only other to my knowledge in the format is a land that literally see's no play and just find it odd that you bring up that it plays more than any other deck as though non-Eldrazi decks are running any similar type of land.
I disagree that it Temple is what enables the deck to be so successful in the Meta. I think it is that it essentially just plays alot of really good cards that even at "full cost" are great play's. Sure TKS on T2/3 is ideal but a T4 TKS is not bad by any measure, Reality Smasher is still fine on T5 etc.... This is not as True for Classic Tron decks Karn is strong at seven but the deck does little to nothing between the beginning of the game and Karn so if you are hard casting it with out Tron assembled you are very likely in a very bad spot, this isn't true for E-Tron every thing they play is reasonable even if you have to cast it for full cost.
While you might run more top end cards like Ulamog that is not the norm for E-Tron, most lists top out at Karn/all is dust split in the main. I think its the quality threat heavy aspect of the deck that really makes it so good, it just runs playsets of awesome Mid-Range creatures and can accelerate them out 1/2 turns ahead depending on their draw, but is not contingent on that to be a solid deck, T2 chalice, T3 Matter Reshaper, T4 TSK etc.... are all still very powerful plays which are only made better with Temple or a Mind Stone or assembling Tron.
I think the difference between a Ramp deck and a Big Mana deck are what are your intentions with the ramping. Pretty much every "big mana" deck is a Ramp deck but not every Ramp deck is looking to play 7,8,9,10 drops etc.... Valukut is a Ramp deck but its most expensive card is 6c.c. its not really looking to Spend big mana its looking to enable its combo kill. Classic Tron is a big mana deck, it is looking to play very expensive things early always it is the classic mid-range Ramp/Control deck essentially looking to do the kinds of things that a traditional draw-go control deck would do but ramping them out 2-3 turns earlier than a traditional control deck can. I think the major difference is that Ramp is a design guideline while "big mana" is the strategy for exploiting the early mana, E-Tron Titainshift are both perfectly fine only netting -1 turn on the c.c. of their business spells TKS on 3, Reality of 4 Titan on 5 etc... Tron on the other hand is having a terrible match up if all they gained was Karn on 6.
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right sure you didn't interject into it at all... it was me telling you what you think sure....
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First off cards like Dismember essentially always sucked against Twin which runs peek and MD dispel to combat/play around any removal that isn't Abrupt Decay.
Second I don't think that the race to your death type decks like Affinty or Dredge would be inclined to play anymore interaction, more likely it would favor attempting to run the fastest possible MD configuration and hope to race the combo game one. When Pod was banned and Twin was still legal both Burn and Infect rose to T1 simply because they could easily race the combo and the actual deck that policed them was gone.
Twin wasn't a real police deck it was a instant win button for a deck that otherwise isn't able to actually compete, it was far better against other fair decks and simply provided means for beating non-interactive decks with the possibility of T4 instant win. When you play against decks that are looking to mindlessly race the best plan was to dig for the combo and kill them before they kill you, Remand, Cryptic and crew are just as bad now as they had been then in those types of match ups.
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You fail to point out that WotC gave Twin years and multiple direct hate cards printed with no headway made against the deck. If in 2-3 years XDS decks are still putting up the same kind of results then I think it would be worth considering it in the same way that they did Twin.
I personally doubt that DS will sit on top for as long as Twin given that it isn't a fundamentally broken instant win combo, it is far more fair and we will likely see other fair decks that can hinder it.
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I don't see including SFM in a Jeskai Twin list any different than Grixis "warping" the deck to include Kcommand and Tas, this is always the nature of the game if a more powerful option becomes available it will find its way into a previously established list. You seem to be arguing that innovation will not occur and that decks would remain static.
For CoCo decks I think it would be far easier as they can run a much smaller number of SFM and targets because they can cords it up.
Jeskai Twin could easily find space, cutting back on far less proactive things like Wall of Omens and such. SFM would actually be a great improvement for the deck IMO as SFM would improve the quality of redundant combo creatures when you have get to draw your Splinter Twin as Pestermite/Exarch both carry equipment well enough and SFM's instant speed placement of the equipment allows the deck to maintain its EOT play style. Possibly drop the much more easily disrupted Kiki/Angel side of the deck and instead up the Twin count from 3 to 4 and probably shave some Walls as those tend to be the clunkiest parts of the deck that don't do much.
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GDS is not a mid-range deck, its a aggro-control deck. It isn't looking to win in the mid-range of the game its looking to aggro the opponent out while protecting its threats with discard and denial. Can it win in the mid to late game yes, but so can Burn. Jund is a mid-range deck that has the potential to have more aggro-ish hands but it is looking to deploy its game winning threats in the mid-range of the game. Has mid-range become a hippish not just a phase of the game but a state of mind?
GDS is much closer to a traditional Sligh deck that favors discard over burn than a Jund style mid-range deck.
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Because decks never change to accommodate new more powerful options. This is the same things people said about LotH, about Grim Flayer, about Baral, etc....
I'm not saying that SFM couldn't come off the list, I'm saying that this argument really has no founding in Magic. Newer more powerful options will always find room in a deck at the expense of the less powerful current options that is just a fundamental truth of Mtg. You seem to be advocating a position of non-deck building where lists are set in stone instead of reevaluated consistently and potentially consisting of very different counts and potentially cards included. Is it crazy to say that SFM would make CoCo decks T0? yes, but it isn't crazy to assume a card on the power level of SFM wouldn't find its way into almost every deck with access to W.
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Don't have a axe to grind, it was the deck I was on from the start of the format till the day it was banned. Do I think it was to good yes, overall it was simply the best Combo deck in the format unless a T4 violator deck would pop up like Bloom. What I don't like is people acting like it was something that it clearly wasn't it was a combo deck, if a combo deck can be a police deck than we should simply accept any broken combo that comes along and invalidates swaths of decks because it is simply policing those decks at that point.
I'm a UR mage, anyone who has ever played me on MTGO would have to say I was on a URx deck of some type, Twin was my deck for a long time I just don't delude myself into thinking I was playing something other than the best Combo deck in the format.
I agree that linear strategies are going to be continually problematic in the format but the argument that other will make is functionally that Twin was the lesser of 2 evils and that this combo deck should have a reserved protected status in the format, I disagree. I much prefer Grixis DS to Twin as a deck to stifle unfair strategies than Twin which was a unfair deck its self which just happened to be more well liked by others and myself. If it was unbanned I would be right back on the Twin train, but I wouldn't be and wasn't surprised if it ate a ban.
I would love for straight up counterspell to be printed again but I don't think it would actually do much for the format outside of improve some slower match ups but as it stands counterspells of nearly all stripes are very poorly positioned currently Denial is the exception because its most often a 1 mana Negate to protect your proactive threat. Cryptic will always be playable in a deck that ensure it can get to the point in the game which you can actually cast it but it is bounce, tap, cantrip spell in addition to offering a counter.
I even tried to play Twin when it was standard legal.
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That seems like a super slow thing to get online for what seems like very little pay off.