Top Deck, I think you argue with me just because you don't like me... not because you actually disagree with me...
@dalkon: i am going to answer this post in reverse so the bickering and side stuff can be spouted out first but the real meat to the arguement will be below. i honestly don't like nor dislike you. i don't know you personally. i don't agree with your point of view on magic and legacy, but i do appreciate it that at least you are trying to help out online and put forth some constructive statements in helping guys into the meta.
i do think that at times you are overstating a lot of stuff that you don't know about or have very little information about and hence you will walk into dubious positions. and i really only have an issue with your occassional ego (ie trash talk) when sometimes it seems very unfounded. now unto the real meat of the subject.
sure, Countertop doesn't nerf Vindicate, but it does nerf just about everything else in the deck... so in otherwords you have to wait until you find one of 4 cards in a 60 card deck... that means you have a 40% chance to draw the card in your opening hand.. but that chance is about the same for every other card that you have 4 of... so it is negligible to say the least.
As for splashing Green, if he does that he might as well stop bothering to run Deadguy Ale, and instead just go straight for the Rock, which is in my opinion infinitely better than Deadguy Ale anyways... Anyways, yeah, Deadguy Ale has some serious flaws, Mono-Black Aggro, and even the Rock doesn't have those flaws as much as Deadguy Ale does.
countertop nerfs everything else in the other decks you are taking about. countertop beats up mono-black decks and it snags the rock decks as well. but magic isn't just a game of rock - paper - scissors. it has a lot to do with a person and how comfortable they are with a particular playstyle. pikula's playstyle isn't apparent. you can't make blind decisions and win with the deck, but the backbone of the deck is dark confidant which provides you enough gas and answers to their problems.
you could say bob is replaceable with arena, but to say that is misinformed. bob = tempo and beater (turn 2 drop). arena is a 3 drop in a crowded 3 space. would you rather vindicate on turn 3 or arena. chances are you want to do something else than cast arena at that point. sure you could turn 1, dark ritual into an arena, or you could turn 1, dark ritual into a bob and a duress/thoughtseize.
again this is going to the playstyle. if this new player rather run bobby go with the more pikula styled decks. if he wants to run tombstalker go with more the pox styled decks.
if we are banning cards because they wreck one specific archetype (i.e. the Vise wrecking Control) then we might as well ban the Rack as well, because that wrecks basically all tempo based decks....
dude that sounds simply silly. if you want to go that then why not ban force of will because it wrecks combo. <--- this is with a huge level of sarcasm here. LOL.
in all seriousness, library only went on the list because it was too expensive at the time for most players ($100+). now that legacy is filled with a bunch of $100+ goodies it shouldn't be an issue anymore.
As I have said before, the problem with Pikula's deck is that it falls flat on its face in matches where Counterbalance and Sensei's Divining Top get played. Sure, Tombstalker has the same problem when people play Akroma, Angel of Wrath (honestly outside of Dredge who plays that?) or Mystic Enforcer (which can be dealt with more or less effectively with a Leyline of the Void or Diabolic Edict or plenty of land destruction) but at the very least, Tombstalker based decks do not fall flat on their face when encountering Countertop, that is one of their strengths.
lovely how we are now talking about meta specific choices. akroma gets played a load in reanimator decks. please dont tell me no one plays reanimator. everyone who goes to a legacy tourney knows that someone new getting into legacy will start off with probably 1) burn 2) white weenie 3) reanimator.
if you can't beat the "lower" tier decks you wont get a chance to beat the upper ones either, and notice tombstalker gets nerfed to plowshares just like everything else.
how does countertop stop vindicate because last i heard most of those decks don't have many 3's. they usually feature a bunch of 0's (lands),1's, 2's, and 5's (force of will). and if countertop is really "that" much of an issue you can always splash green and go for the krosan grip and nab either their counterbalance or sensei's divining top because you have that nice feature called split second there.
consider that the list is before remand was around. just replace the mana leaks with remand (or maybe even negate?) and you got a solid deck or even think about tossing in 1 or 2 counterbalance to make things even more interesting. there are a lot of ways to build the deck and just tons of testing to hammer out the numbers.
I did not know Legacy is different from what was known as Type 1.5 about 5 years ago. I had always assumed the two were simply synonyms, as Type 1 is synonymous with Vintage and Type 1.X is Synonymous with Extended. Granted, I was much more into Type 2 up until about three years ago, so I had not payed much attention to the official isms of the Legacy format. Learn something new every day, heh.
ya those were confusing times. back then when they did ban library they did something about banning cards that were over $100 at the time (so mana drain got the axe as well). of course now that point is moot since there are other cards that have reached the $100 plateau.
What makes you think there's no broken in the current format? There are three tier 1 deck types. Aggro (goblins), Aggro-control (like a million variants), and Combo. Landstill isn't good enough as constructed to be tier one. No control deck is honestly. Maybe LoA makes control a tier 1 viable archetype again.
Also, to everyone saying "four-of" LoA, I don't really see it. Why not just run like one or two and some tutors? Very few, if any, control shells can really support another 4x colorless lands. Intution, Gifts, Crop Rotation, Tolaria West... there's a lot of ways to find it. It's also not that great in multiples since you can't use it without a full grip anyways. I mean, yeah, you could theoretically stack four triggers during your opponents' EOT then start your turn with 11 cards + your draw, but does that really accomplish that much if you're playing a control deck?*
I could see it as a two of in a control shell, but more than that would be pushing it and kind of pointless. I can't stress this enough, Library was first around when the game didn't really start until the 4th or 5th turn. It was stupid in that environment because you could just sit there and use your first three turns to draw extra cards off of it. You can't anymore 'cause you'll be dead by that point nowadays.
*If you're playing combo you should have won by the time you have four lands in play, and four colorless makes it pretty impossible to go off. Not tha bestest times or plan.
quoted for truth. library like black vise should be unrestricted. maybe with vise off the list, burn could be a top tier deck. burn is good, but not tier 1 right now.
Don't we already have a black vise card available to us in Legacy... only um... less broken? Yep, thought so... The Rack
ill just append this to my reply since it is useless to keep replying to you, but the difference between the rack and black vise is that vise comes online turn 1, and the rack comes online later. the vise's strength diminishes with turns while the rack's is pretty much yup the opposite. yes both are 1 drop artifact which can do persist damage, but both affect different archetypes. black vise for instance would be almost useless against a burn deck and the rack is almost useless against landstill. the irony is that the vise is far easier to dodge outside of turn 1 than the rack is (given the state of the meta and the plenty amount of discard played in legacy).
As for who wins the tournaments at our local meta... you do realize Colton is far more likely to.... well let's not go there... suffice to say I am an honest player....
Not to mention when was the last time you played in a competitive (read Sanctioned) Legacy Tournament?
@sheep i am sorry i have to answer this guy.
@dalkon huh? colton is far more likely to win the match. anything else you want to add to that? if you are talking about me playing legacy, ummm why would i want to go to that tourney of 8-10 ppl? i don't even like to play standard and when i do i usually only like to play when it is 40+ players... like the last 3 times at CA when they had 40+ players... i believe i went 2-0 on every match up to the finals and split those.
As for why I don't run Bob. The reason is not because I am a budget player, but rather because the deck I run runs FOUR TOMBSTALKERS!!!! that is 4 cards with a casting cost of EIGHT... that is 4 chances to draw a card that will deal 8 points of damage to me off of Bob. That means a bad day for me if I ever draw said card off of Bob.
tombstalker is similar to bob in that you have to build around it. personally i dont like the guy. sure he's a fairly quick clock but in the world of 1 or 2 turn clock dudes ala dreadnought he's very weak. and in the face of akroma, he's dead without edicts to help out.
again this is the why there is a pikula deck. a pikula type of deck uses a certain design philosophy. it goes way beyond which is the "better" card. a lot of magic players tend to pigeonhole cards into good, bad, and broken attributes without considering an overall design philosophy and strategy. or most players tend to focus in on 2-3 card combos and build around that.
summary: if you are starting out in B/W there are several deck designs out there. the most successful thus far is the line of thought around chris pikula's build back in 2005 as the initial shell. he took it to a second place finish a large legacy GP.
for the guy starting out with BW. you got to decide which strategy you feel comfortable piloting. sticking in random cards wont get you far without considering how you are going to win, when you are going to win, and how are you going to stop your opponents from winning. once you nail those aspects down, it will be more clear as to your card selection. or you could do the 2-card combo route and then ask those questions.
you will notice that B/W isn't as strong however a B/W pikula variant took 8th place recently in an 82 man tourney. here's the link: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=21699
Additionally, how many mono-black decks have you actually played? I have been playing Mono-Black pretty consistently for the past 4 weeks, and guess what? I rarely need Bob, and in fact the life cost alone for Bob type cards is enough of a drawback for me NOT to play them when I draw them... especially in a meta where Aggro decks are prevailant such as ours Top-Deck.
last time i ran monoblack at legacy, guess what? i won the tourney (28 players). last i heard you running monoblack consistantly at legacy guess what? you haven't won or made the final 2. (i heard from the guy who has been winning nearly everyone of them, colton)
you dont run bob because you are a BUDGET player. that has always been your case from day 1. don't argue about not running bob because he isn't good. that's like saying you wont run sinkholes because they aren't good but you want to run rain of tears instead.
you know back in the day when dark confidant first came out, and there was this guy named Rob Moore who told me that it had potential. i was so against it because i was thinking about flipping kokusho... i was flat out WRONG. i admitted to rob in the next 3 months and then i went out and got 4 playsets of dark confidants (16) because friends kept borrowing playset of the stud.
bob keeps the gas going. yes, he can kill you, but you are looking for more consistency over just explosiveness. if you are aiming for more explosiveness might as well toss in priest of gix and go sui-black.
What make s you assume they will be making better black 1 or 2 drops? Most standard cards these days do not cost 1 or 2 drops... and the ones that do cost 1 or 2 drops are pretty craptacular. I think the best 1 or 2 drops we got for standard recently were back in the Ravnica / Time Spiral Standard...
what makes me assume this is i have been playing this game for FAR much longer than you have. i have seen pretty much all of the cycles of the game. the keep printing better and better cards every year. why is that?
two reasons:
1) they have a better understanding of the game now. many of the designers are or were once pro magic players.
2) the average rule text of a whole set of cards goes up tremendously. they are favoring more and more abilities. look at a critter like spirit monger back in the day that thing was out of control and monsterous. today he might be barely played in standard. the power curve on cards overall has gone up.
there was a time when wildfire emessary was a badass because it could dodge plowshares. they reprint the fool in time spiral and he never saw light of day. in fact, the reprinted a lot of great cards from yesteryear in time spiral and yet none of them get played.
in the future if magic is still around there will be stronger black 1 or 2 drops... i guarantee it.
Scornful Aether-Lich UUB
Creature - Zombie Wizard
Rare
Flash
When ~ comes into play, remove target spell from the game and its controller loses life equal to that spells converted mana cost. As long as it remains removed from the game, you may play it without paying its mana cost. (If it has X in its mana cost, X is 0.) 0/2
dude that card sounds broke to me. insane with glimpse the unthinkable. wow and it flashes. so basically if they ever cast an ultimatum or you make them discard it... then they die for a mere UUB?
dude i had this great blazing shoal deck but it ran sneak attack. you want to sneak attack a dragon tyrant into play and then blazing shoal it for the win because that thing is a 6/6 trampling DOUBLE-STRIKER. ie if you pitch another 7 or greater mana cost thing you are doing 20+ damage.
And as was said applying a name to a very basic archetype that has existed across many formats for an awefully long time doesn't really constitute inventing it. The name is his, and he piloted it well, but he didn't come up with anything new. He just brought the archetype back into the public eye, and for it he got his name attached to it.
Now will you both stop the one-upsmanship BS? It's unnecessary and it really doesn't get us anywhere but off-track. Stay on topic and keep that garbage to PM's or outside the site. Its getting really old.
(No intention to backseat Mod... just getting tired of this.)
alrighty sheep, there is no point in discussing WHO invented black/white combination in a deck.
the thing about chris pukula and the other "ying yang" decks is that the focus is completely different. here's an example of the other ying-yang decks around that time frame: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=3722
the difference is clear in the direction of how the deck works. sure chris didnt put "that" much thought into it, but considering he is one of the all time magic GREATS (with his own card nevertheless, meddling mage) he made a lot of intuitive decisions on his build.
first of all there was no one running dark confidant before he was in legacy... wanna know why not? Ravnica came out October 6th. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravnica
that tourney he did well happened november 13th. there were no other major legacy tourneys from the time ravnica was legal for play Oct. 20th til Nov. 13th. people still hadn't figured out how to use bob well in constructed yet much less other formats.
also look at his disruption base. he was putting in main deck engineer plagues (to beat up gobos) and cursed scrolls, and he was running gerrard's verdict. i mean what decks outside his guidance runs verdict?
i just don't see how he suddenly brought back into the public eye a deck type (that really didnt exist before he got there) because again one of the biggest key components (bob) wasn't in print yet.
i am just pointing the arrow back to the creator of the deck and his design philosophy and ratios of cards he used in his deck. he didn't 4 of everything like most newbies go. he had pretty precise numbers which reflected the ratio of certain cards he wanted to have in the deck.
as for helping the new guy into the B/W archetype. it is a good investment to get dark confidants since his value will only improve as they make better 1 or 2 black drops or white drops as time goes on. i would say the deck gasses out a LOT faster without bob. sure it might not be as explosive with him in the lineup, but he makes the deck a lot more consistent.
I was actually pretty happy with the way B/W Zombies was going, with Stillmoon Cavalier, and Tidehollow Sculler. Retains access to everything deadguy has in terms of white removal, but gives you creatures with more synergy, and recursion.
As an aside I have to say Yawg, your avatar gives a whole new meaning to the phrase: "Gotta catch 'em all!"
i think sculler could be an excellent choice. i would prefer to run it over verdict since it costs the same and it can disrupt their tempo. the downside is that you cant use verdict as a way to gain 6 life quickly by targetting yourself.
Does being broken mean "Forcing everyone to play the only deck."?
I'm pretty sure its never been defined as that by Wizards or the players.
Was GP Columbus balanced? Flash wasn't the only deck there, Flash only got 2 spots of the Top 8. Does this make Flash balanced?
i see where you are getting at. basically you are calling it subjective. subjectively you think library is broke. subjectively i don't think it is. i have been playing with library since they came out. to me the card aint broke. would ever control deck run library? well does every blue deck run brainstorm?
Is the point here that testing in decks where the card is relevant is biased?
Should we not test Yawgmoth's Will in Storm, but instead in MWC because its biased testing in Storm?
We can test Entomb in Aluren, obviously testing it in a graveyard deck is biased.
Nope. Nor would Potence give Storm an unfair advantage over Burn. It does give Control decks with it an unfair advantage against other Control, Aggro Control, Midrange Anything that cares whether or not the opponents draw cards.
maybe i was asking what did you test AGAINST? ie did you do control vs. control? do you do control vs. combo? control vs. aggro?
so does library give control decks an UNFAIR advantage over the other achetypes? thus "breaking" the format and forcing the only deck to be control?
please activate tags when making that type of statement. online reading is way too hard to interpret tonality.
but i think you and i agree that library shouldn't be banned is that correct?
@dalkon: i am going to answer this post in reverse so the bickering and side stuff can be spouted out first but the real meat to the arguement will be below. i honestly don't like nor dislike you. i don't know you personally. i don't agree with your point of view on magic and legacy, but i do appreciate it that at least you are trying to help out online and put forth some constructive statements in helping guys into the meta.
i do think that at times you are overstating a lot of stuff that you don't know about or have very little information about and hence you will walk into dubious positions. and i really only have an issue with your occassional ego (ie trash talk) when sometimes it seems very unfounded. now unto the real meat of the subject.
countertop nerfs everything else in the other decks you are taking about. countertop beats up mono-black decks and it snags the rock decks as well. but magic isn't just a game of rock - paper - scissors. it has a lot to do with a person and how comfortable they are with a particular playstyle. pikula's playstyle isn't apparent. you can't make blind decisions and win with the deck, but the backbone of the deck is dark confidant which provides you enough gas and answers to their problems.
you could say bob is replaceable with arena, but to say that is misinformed. bob = tempo and beater (turn 2 drop). arena is a 3 drop in a crowded 3 space. would you rather vindicate on turn 3 or arena. chances are you want to do something else than cast arena at that point. sure you could turn 1, dark ritual into an arena, or you could turn 1, dark ritual into a bob and a duress/thoughtseize.
again this is going to the playstyle. if this new player rather run bobby go with the more pikula styled decks. if he wants to run tombstalker go with more the pox styled decks.
dude that sounds simply silly.
in all seriousness, library only went on the list because it was too expensive at the time for most players ($100+). now that legacy is filled with a bunch of $100+ goodies it shouldn't be an issue anymore.
lovely how we are now talking about meta specific choices. akroma gets played a load in reanimator decks. please dont tell me no one plays reanimator. everyone who goes to a legacy tourney knows that someone new getting into legacy will start off with probably 1) burn 2) white weenie 3) reanimator.
if you can't beat the "lower" tier decks you wont get a chance to beat the upper ones either, and notice tombstalker gets nerfed to plowshares just like everything else.
how does countertop stop vindicate because last i heard most of those decks don't have many 3's. they usually feature a bunch of 0's (lands),1's, 2's, and 5's (force of will). and if countertop is really "that" much of an issue you can always splash green and go for the krosan grip and nab either their counterbalance or sensei's divining top because you have that nice feature called split second there.
consider that the list is before remand was around. just replace the mana leaks with remand (or maybe even negate?) and you got a solid deck or even think about tossing in 1 or 2 counterbalance to make things even more interesting. there are a lot of ways to build the deck and just tons of testing to hammer out the numbers.
ya those were confusing times. back then when they did ban library they did something about banning cards that were over $100 at the time (so mana drain got the axe as well). of course now that point is moot since there are other cards that have reached the $100 plateau.
quoted for truth. library like black vise should be unrestricted. maybe with vise off the list, burn could be a top tier deck. burn is good, but not tier 1 right now.
ill just append this to my reply since it is useless to keep replying to you, but the difference between the rack and black vise is that vise comes online turn 1, and the rack comes online later. the vise's strength diminishes with turns while the rack's is pretty much yup the opposite. yes both are 1 drop artifact which can do persist damage, but both affect different archetypes. black vise for instance would be almost useless against a burn deck and the rack is almost useless against landstill. the irony is that the vise is far easier to dodge outside of turn 1 than the rack is (given the state of the meta and the plenty amount of discard played in legacy).
@sheep i am sorry i have to answer this guy.
@dalkon huh? colton is far more likely to win the match. anything else you want to add to that? if you are talking about me playing legacy, ummm why would i want to go to that tourney of 8-10 ppl? i don't even like to play standard and when i do i usually only like to play when it is 40+ players... like the last 3 times at CA when they had 40+ players... i believe i went 2-0 on every match up to the finals and split those.
tombstalker is similar to bob in that you have to build around it. personally i dont like the guy. sure he's a fairly quick clock but in the world of 1 or 2 turn clock dudes ala dreadnought he's very weak. and in the face of akroma, he's dead without edicts to help out.
again this is the why there is a pikula deck. a pikula type of deck uses a certain design philosophy. it goes way beyond which is the "better" card. a lot of magic players tend to pigeonhole cards into good, bad, and broken attributes without considering an overall design philosophy and strategy. or most players tend to focus in on 2-3 card combos and build around that.
summary: if you are starting out in B/W there are several deck designs out there. the most successful thus far is the line of thought around chris pikula's build back in 2005 as the initial shell. he took it to a second place finish a large legacy GP.
for the guy starting out with BW. you got to decide which strategy you feel comfortable piloting. sticking in random cards wont get you far without considering how you are going to win, when you are going to win, and how are you going to stop your opponents from winning. once you nail those aspects down, it will be more clear as to your card selection. or you could do the 2-card combo route and then ask those questions.
a good starting point to research these builds is consult this link: http://www.deckcheck.net/qsearch.php?query=pikula
you will notice that B/W isn't as strong however a B/W pikula variant took 8th place recently in an 82 man tourney. here's the link:
http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=21699
ironically the first place deck featured dark confidant and ran B/G/W: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=21692
different design philosophy but same draw engine.
i hope those links will be helpful to you.
last time i ran monoblack at legacy, guess what? i won the tourney (28 players). last i heard you running monoblack consistantly at legacy guess what? you haven't won or made the final 2.
you dont run bob because you are a BUDGET player. that has always been your case from day 1. don't argue about not running bob because he isn't good. that's like saying you wont run sinkholes because they aren't good but you want to run rain of tears instead.
you know back in the day when dark confidant first came out, and there was this guy named Rob Moore who told me that it had potential. i was so against it because i was thinking about flipping kokusho... i was flat out WRONG. i admitted to rob in the next 3 months and then i went out and got 4 playsets of dark confidants (16) because friends kept borrowing playset of the stud.
bob keeps the gas going. yes, he can kill you, but you are looking for more consistency over just explosiveness. if you are aiming for more explosiveness might as well toss in priest of gix and go sui-black.
what makes me assume this is i have been playing this game for FAR much longer than you have. i have seen pretty much all of the cycles of the game. the keep printing better and better cards every year. why is that?
two reasons:
1) they have a better understanding of the game now. many of the designers are or were once pro magic players.
2) the average rule text of a whole set of cards goes up tremendously. they are favoring more and more abilities. look at a critter like spirit monger back in the day that thing was out of control and monsterous. today he might be barely played in standard. the power curve on cards overall has gone up.
there was a time when wildfire emessary was a badass because it could dodge plowshares. they reprint the fool in time spiral and he never saw light of day. in fact, the reprinted a lot of great cards from yesteryear in time spiral and yet none of them get played.
in the future if magic is still around there will be stronger black 1 or 2 drops... i guarantee it.
dude that card sounds broke to me. insane with glimpse the unthinkable. wow and it flashes. so basically if they ever cast an ultimatum or you make them discard it... then they die for a mere UUB?
<at least it sounds very fun and abusive>
alrighty sheep, there is no point in discussing WHO invented black/white combination in a deck.
the thing about chris pukula and the other "ying yang" decks is that the focus is completely different. here's an example of the other ying-yang decks around that time frame: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=3722
and this is the one that chris pikula piloted: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=3392
the difference is clear in the direction of how the deck works. sure chris didnt put "that" much thought into it, but considering he is one of the all time magic GREATS (with his own card nevertheless, meddling mage) he made a lot of intuitive decisions on his build.
first of all there was no one running dark confidant before he was in legacy... wanna know why not? Ravnica came out October 6th. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravnica
that tourney he did well happened november 13th. there were no other major legacy tourneys from the time ravnica was legal for play Oct. 20th til Nov. 13th. people still hadn't figured out how to use bob well in constructed yet much less other formats.
also look at his disruption base. he was putting in main deck engineer plagues (to beat up gobos) and cursed scrolls, and he was running gerrard's verdict. i mean what decks outside his guidance runs verdict?
i just don't see how he suddenly brought back into the public eye a deck type (that really didnt exist before he got there) because again one of the biggest key components (bob) wasn't in print yet.
i am just pointing the arrow back to the creator of the deck and his design philosophy and ratios of cards he used in his deck. he didn't 4 of everything like most newbies go. he had pretty precise numbers which reflected the ratio of certain cards he wanted to have in the deck.
as for helping the new guy into the B/W archetype. it is a good investment to get dark confidants since his value will only improve as they make better 1 or 2 black drops or white drops as time goes on. i would say the deck gasses out a LOT faster without bob. sure it might not be as explosive with him in the lineup, but he makes the deck a lot more consistent.
i think sculler could be an excellent choice. i would prefer to run it over verdict since it costs the same and it can disrupt their tempo. the downside is that you cant use verdict as a way to gain 6 life quickly by targetting yourself.
i see where you are getting at. basically you are calling it subjective. subjectively you think library is broke. subjectively i don't think it is. i have been playing with library since they came out. to me the card aint broke. would ever control deck run library? well does every blue deck run brainstorm?
maybe i was asking what did you test AGAINST? ie did you do control vs. control? do you do control vs. combo? control vs. aggro?
so does library give control decks an UNFAIR advantage over the other achetypes? thus "breaking" the format and forcing the only deck to be control?
YES / NO
says a boy who's Location: Making love with his Ego
but getting back on topic. would library give a control deck an UNFAIR advantage against every other archetype in the format?
or is library on the same calibre of say flash? where upon an unbanning of such a card would degenerate a format into flash.decks?
yes or no. deal or no deal.