Of course, how haven't we thought of adapting our decks to etron?! We are such noobs, guys.
We could have won eldrazi winter PT if we had known of that! Oh well.
Had Eye of Ugin not been banned, there would have been more and more decks emerge with a good Eldrazi matchup. That just never happened because Eye was banned so quickly
The deck had the speed of an aggro deck with creatures as bulky as most BGx midrange decks. Most decks that would attempt to attack the mana base couldn't last long enough to do so, going bigger than them was nearly impossible, and as far as I know Affinity was the only deck that could go wide enough in a small time frame to deal with it. I'm curious as to what kind of decks you think would have emerged that could possible deal with Eldrazi when Eye was legal
That being said though, Nyzzeh's original analogy just fall flats because it's painfully obvious that EldraTron =/= Eldrazi with Eye, and using people's inability to adapt to Eldrazi with Eye as an argument against being able to adapt a deck to the current meta is pointless
Using Legacy's reason for the Mental Misstep ban is already pretty questionable when Wizards has stated in the past that they look at each format in a vacuum when deciding to ban a card. Otherwise Gitaxian Probe would be banned in Legacy since they limited it in Vintage and banned it in Modern.
That being said, I don't see unbanning MM as a good way to police 1 CMC cards when literally every deck can run 4. It just seems like the most likely scenario is that those same low curve decks will be running around, only now they have a way to to prevent other, arguably more important policing cards like Thoughtseize and Path to Exile from doing their jobs. This is on top of giving all-in combo decks a free counter to discard spells and removal.
They actually tested a 7-7-stop style before and found that it led to bigger blowouts, and a 7-7-7-stop style would likely lead to too many mulligans, which goes against their second stated goal.
They just did a double ban in Vintage because of the duopoly of that format. But there Mentor and Workshops were what? 80% combined? Here Eldrazi and GDS is what? Just over 30% according to TheMoonShield's data? Maybe 35% across a few variants? What have other decks been at that have previously gotten the Banhammer? I think it's a good idea to think about percentage of the field, but even 15% doesn't exactly come off as oppressive. Especially if there's a bit of variations on a theme as opposed to a specific build. Maybe that's the risk of the PT? Some of the variants fall away as players coalesce around a clear favorite.
EDIT: What's the appropriate target meta-game share for top-tier decks? How many should there be? Probably 1 or 2 per archetype? What about the combined Tier 1 percentage of the field?
Sadly, when Twin was banned, the combined meta game percentages of all the URx Twin builds only came out to about 11.5%, which (as far as I know) has been the lowest meta share of any deck banned for being too good in Wizards's eyes. Hopefully since then they've decided that 10-11% is a reasonable meta share, but I'd imagine that 10-11% is the soft cap for any deck, and that if a deck's meta share consistently stays at or beyond 12% for too long Wizards will start eyeing the ban hammer.
This is just speculation though since the only deck I know of that was nerfed after hitting 15% (Miracles) relied on SDT, and I could only imagine that WotC was looking for any reason to ban SDT just for logistical reasons. I'd be surprised if they knew a deck had steadily risen to 15% and they didn't hit something out of it
so the majority of player dislike shakeup bans but what about shakeup unbans that happen right before the pro tour to make it more interesting
Not sure if you know this, but when the term "shake up ban" is used, it's used almost exclusively to refer to the situation you just described. To answer your question, I can't speak for everyone but I sure as heck don't want any deck I play hit just to make things "more interesting" nor would I wish that onto other people. If the deck I'm playing is unhealthy for the meta (too much meta presence, T4 rule violator, etc.) fine, but if I wanted top decks to get nerfed just for the sake of artificially changing the meta to make things interesting I'd still be playing Yu-Gi-Oh.
EDIT: So yeah I can't read apparently. Yeah unbans are fine so long as it's not anything that's been proven to be broken
To be frank, calling two decks Tier 0 with only 11% of the meta split between the two is a huge exaggeration, and anyone can tell you that in practice neither deck is so unbeatable as to be called tier 0. 11% is a pretty mild number, especially when we've had other decks take up as much as 18% (and way more than during Eldrazi Winter),
Jund DS and Jund Midrange shouldn't be considered the same deck. Same for Abzan DS and Abzan Midrange. They just have too many differences in the cards they run and their overall pace to be considered the same deck. I know that you didn't combine their usage in the spread sheet, but you brought it up in your second post, so I thought I should say something.
For your score calculations, are you taking into account how many rounds of Swiss are being played before the Top 8 cutoffs? I wasn't sure based on your OP, and it would be an important factor since fewer rounds before top 8 = more variance. I'm no statistics major, so I couldn't tell you how much of a factor it should be, but I don't think it should be ignored
Other than that, it seems like a good project to start early. Keep up the good work
Hasn't the argument against GSZ always been that it would just slot into Jund/Junk, thereby making two Tier 1 decks far more consistent and powerful?
Correct me if I'm wrong, I have no opinion on GSZ either way.
I'm pretty sure the argument against GSZ is that it is functionally copies 5-8 of any given green creature in your deck and its live every turn of the game. Essentially just way to good at what it does. If it didn't shuffle back into your deck or if it cost xGG it wouldn't be busted but at its current cost its a pretty clear example of poor design.
Is gsz any more broken than turn 3 karn, turn 3 or 4 storm kills, mox opal, eldrazi temple or anything else currently in modern. It's also not like the green creature decks are good at the moment
First off I don't think the argument of X,Y, and Z are broken hence we should unban known broken card A is a valid argument. Second I think its more banned for the same kind of reasons that Ponder and Preordained are banned it makes the decks it is played in to consistent. It seems that people are quick to forget just how powerful a card like GSZ, I would think that Green decks would need to be in terrible shape for prolonged period before even considering unbanninga card such as GSZ after all it wasn't but a few weeks back that CoCo decks where sitting at T1 and we don't have any real expectations for what the long term trends in the meta-game will look like and it could just be that dropping out of T1 to T2 and back again might be the new norm for such decks.
Why do you not think it's a valid argument? If your argument against it is that it makes decks too consistent how do you feel about grixis death shadow, it is the most consistent deck in modern and plays 12 cantrips. Modern has changed so much since the days of counter cat and it has become much more powerful. If eldrazi tron is going to be one of the most popular decks in the format it's hard to see green sun zenith doing much harm. It's not even a lock to be played in the company decks as it's another non creature spell and it's arguably worse than chord in those decks
Honestly, the issue with your initial argument is that you named a bunch of strong plays and reduced them to being "powerful plays" as an argument to bring GSZ back, but most of the plays you mentioned are very different from what GSZ brings to the table. At that point, you're just comparing apples to oranges; we can't agree or disagree that T3 Karn >= GSZ because there's no way to meaningfully compare them. The closest comparison you've brought up is the consistency of Grixis Death's Shadow decks, but a lot of that consistency lies in the redundancy of those cantrips. At the end of the day, being able to tutor exactly what you want is inherently much more powerful than what Serum Visions can bring to the table, so I'm not a huge fan of the "This deck is consistent because of 12 cantrips, so it's OK to unban something inherently more powerful than cantrips" argument either.
I haven't seen a good argument for a GSZ unban ever, but FoodChainGoblins is probably right. I think it would see play in Elves for sure, and it would create some new archetypes, such as the aforementioned GW Midrange deck. The card opens up a lot of possibilities, and that's what I want to see in an unban.
Just playing Devil's advocate for a bit, Chord does have the benefit of searching any creature while GSZ can only grab Green creatures, so at the very least it's not an auto-replace in Kiki-Chord, one of the few well-known Chord decks. It also can't search Vizier in Abzan CoCo, though that being said, the fact that it's able to search for either Devoted Druid or Recruiter while also enabling other plays such as searching for a T1 Dryad Arbor or T2 mana dork if they need acceleration is more than enough for me to be extremely wary of it being unbanned.
Can we seriously just get 24 hours where we don't talk about Twin at all? It's not even about format health anymore, it's mostly about a small group of people's collective grudge towards Wizards because either they feel that they can't play their pet decks or they're still angry after Wizards had the audacity to not ban a deck out of existence after the wake of the Twin ban outrage nor have they banned decks for having the same meta numbers for a few months that Twin held for a year. I don't even want Twin to stay banned and I'm getting sick of it because it's no longer a discussion, it's two sides shouting an opinion at each other, and at this point anyone with a remote interest in unbanning Twin will now be labeled as a radical member of the TDF because of what I don't even think is 3 posters. The worse part is the fact that people are trying to have meaningful discussion about other things in the meta, but they can't go more than a few posts without the Twin topic drowning out the discussion for like the third day in a row now. I know it's unlikely that the mods will infringe that much on our freedom to talk about what we want, but we shouldn't need mods to tell us what should be blatantly apparent to get us to drop the subject, move on, and just ignore someone if they say something you think is incorrect for at least a day.
So I'd like to get some other opinions on what kind of card would be the most beneficial new print for the meta?
For a long time the lack of a decent 1 mana black removal spell was probably the most requested single print. But that's fixed, so what broad category would people like to see enter the card pool?
Personally I would like a better white midrange finisher. Brimaz was so close. Others see sfm as too good. Maybe something in between.
I'd like to see Mother of Runes, Counterspell, Flametongue Kavu, Nimble Mongoose, and innocent blood get reprinted.
I do think it'd be interesting to see Nimble Mongoose to give Green tempo decks a new tool to play with. I think Flametongue Kavu would be too slow, but I think it'd be interesting to see a 3-cost 3/1 version that did 3 damage to a creature. It would make for a nice blinkable threat in UWR Flash/Midrange decks. Actually, I think I just want more 2-3 cost creatures with spells attached to them that could be used in UWR decks (and I'm sure someone wants me shot for having said that I want more creatures with spells tacked on). Bonus points would be added if they were 2-cost creatures to give me an excuse to try and make Ojutai's Command work in Modern
He goes a lot into linear strategies both in their construction and how to beat them, but here's the quote where he defines linear strategies, which I think is the best description:
To employ a linear strategy means that you're entirely focused on one goal or theme. Every card contributes to that goal, and you have little interest in deviating from that plan. Worrying about what your opponent is doing is largely just a distraction. In short, linear strategies follow a "straight line" from point A to point B.
In the context of Twin, the line gets weird because the primary win con was indeed a combo that ignored the board state of the game, which would fall under the definition of a linear strategy, but the deck was able to devote a decent amount of resources to a back-up tempo plan, which was a non-linear strategy since tempo strategies rely on disrupting the opponent at precise plays.
So whether or not Twin was linear would likely depend heavily on how you viewed the deck. I'd say that a deck that was primarily a combo deck with a back-up tempo plan, that'd fall more under being linear than non-linear, but I'm sure there are those who'd disagree with me, and I don't believe there's a right answer.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone ever played around with the idea of a Grixis DS Twin deck if Twin ever came off the list? I know that no one ran it when Twin was legal, but then again when Twin was banned, literally every card that's now used in Grixis DS would have been legal except for Fatal Push, and back then you could have just dropped it for Lightning Bolt and it would have been fine. It lets you drop Thought Scour for Wraith, so it would have been about the same number of cantrips, plus then you'd have a good reason to run Thoughtseize and IoK. Of course I'm a terrible brewer, so I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be a terrible idea
I don't see how banning a card from a deck taking up less than 10% of the meta game that doesn't break the T4 rule could ever be healthy because it basically sets up the worst precedence ever: that it's okay for any T1 deck to eat a nerf at any time for no other reason than because other people's decks deserve to be T1 but yours doesn't. You say that Temple is "toxic and warping", but using bans to adjust the meta to be more favorable to BGx is a far worse case of a deck warping the format because it's 100% artificial. Yeah E-Tron has a lot of pushed cards, but at least no one decided to nerf other decks solely to give it its T1 status.
And the runner up.
Just to clarify, that precedent was already set in January of 2016.
… of an instant speed infinite combo that wins on the spot. How does that compare to tapping for 2 mana to play a narrow band of cards (albeit a few strong ones)?
I thought we were talking about a deck that didn't break turn 4 rules and didn't hold an oppressive share of the meta. Because that's what I quoted and specifically what I bolded. So yes, I do believe it's a travesty and a bad precedence to ban a deck that does not break the turn 4 rule and does not hold an oppressive meta share. I think it is especially unhealthy to ban a deck like that, especially one that promotes interactive gameplay and helps keep fast linear decks in check. It's a shame that Eldrazi can't claim those last two though... :/
There is a very specific reason why I gave a percentage instead of simply saying "oppressive" meta shares. E-Tron has fewer meta shares right now than URx Twin decks did at the time of their banning. That's fact. Moreover, while WotC said that Twin was also banned for supplanting other decks, they very specifically mentioned decks that use a URx shell, implying that Twin was homogenizing URx shells and cannibalizing their shares like Grixis DS did for Grixis Delver and control. That's very different from banning Temple so that decks that were naturally pushed out of the meta by a new predator can be tier 1
I'm not a huge fan of the Twin ban (it was my first Modern deck) and having it nuked out of existence sucked, but you can't even compare the banning of Twin to the banning of Temple in the context of this meta. The banning of Temple would in fact set the bar even lower than Twin's banning did
I don't get why people suddenly feel justified in requesting a temple ban. The guy who wrote that article did say that tron is warping the meta, but he also said that he believes modern has the tools to fight back. And suddenly everyone is like ''I knew it! Ban temple!''
I actually hate the Eldrazi, because I think they are horrible from a design perspective. But this seems like another case of people wanting to ban a card because they hate it.
Also people are still asking for SFM and Jace unbans? When U/W control reached tier 1 for the first time since forever. Really?
Modern is great. I don't think Wotc should mess with things right now.
Did you not listen to any comments in the last page?
People want it gone or dislike it because it's actually toxic and warping.
And UW control without temple could fall in tiers. Yes an SFM unban is unlikely atm.
But a temple ban would be healthy Imo.
I don't see how banning a card from a deck taking up less than 10% of the meta game that doesn't break the T4 rule could ever be healthy because it basically sets up the worst precedence ever: that it's okay for any T1 deck to eat a nerf at any time for no other reason than because other people's decks deserve to be T1 but yours doesn't. You say that Temple is "toxic and warping", but using bans to adjust the meta to be more favorable to BGx is a far worse case of a deck warping the format because it's 100% artificial. Yeah E-Tron has a lot of pushed cards, but at least no one decided to nerf other decks solely to give it its T1 status.
Of course, as idSurge said, discussing Standard is fine so long as you tie it back to Modern, and the big reason for people constantly pointing out Standard's mishaps is because many people in this thread (myself included) are fairly sure that they've been holding off on potential unbans because the last thing they could risk is another extremely popular format burning down alongside Standard due to an unban.
They tried to limit the information to such a small amount it would become much less useful so to slow the solving of the meta. People ran with the limited data and created a community enforced feedback loop which made the standard meta worse than it really should have been so the limited data turned out to be damaging, instead of almost useless (uselessness being their intention.) Now they've made it clear that these numbers don't accurately reflect performance and we shouldn't even try, it's not something they want us to know.
I know the counter-point will be that if we had all the info then standard wouldn't have seemed so bad and everything would be fine. If we had all the info this would only create a different problem: standard metas becoming solved at a much faster rate, making for environments with a small number of playable decks because even the best, most wonderfully well designed meta will be solved and become less innovative and diverse given time. WotC is trying to maximize the time it takes for that to happen to make for longer periods of instability and innovation a.k.a. fun for spikes AND non-spikes, more enjoyment, more sales, more money, more magic, LESS BANS
Ideally their standard meta would have enough diverse strategies designed into the set (and winrate information limited enough upon release) that it would never be fully solved before new cards enter the pool.
The last standard became solved because there was no way for the other decks to consistently deal with the decks that were being pushed. BG Delirium had 0 yard hate to postpone Emrakul, there were almost no efficient answers to Copter, Cat Combo had almost no outs after it was done smacking you around with a 4C Super Friends shell and Aetherworks Marvel forced the entire meta to try and race it or do everything in their power to stop it from resolving on top of dealing with what turned out to be a T1 shell even without Marvel. Standard being solved as quickly as it has recently has less to do with too much data being available and almost everything to do with pushing threat after threat without pushing efficient means to deal with them. Standard in theory should be the easiest format to keep diverse because of the fact that sets frequently rotate in and out, which means that even if it did become solved, it should only be solved for a month or two before new tools for new decks come out.
It's as you say: Ideally, Standard should have enough strategies designed into the set that by the time it was solved or became close to being solved, the new set comes in to shake up the meta. Eliminating meta share data does nothing to fix the fundamental issues that plagued Standard for so many months, something that we can only hope will be solved in upcoming sets, and because of this players have lost an important tool for brewing new decks and need to now rely more heavily on first-hand experience to figure out what the meta might look like, something that for many of us primarily comes from LGS tournaments that in turn may not even be that useful when you decide to go to larger tourneys depending on who attends your LGS tourneys.
As for those of us in Modern, I think just about everything that could be said has been so I don't want to keep banging the same drums, but I do have one question: how many people care if Modern or Legacy become solved? I can only speak for myself, but I love the fact that I can buy into a solid deck and (assuming it's not broken) ride that same deck into every tournament for years to come. A meta that is constantly unsolved is a meta that's constantly shifting, and when the primary goal of new sets is to create new Standard environments, not eternal format environments, this to me comes off as a conflicting goal. I really don't care if Modern is nearly solved if I can comfortably buy into a deck that I know will be good for at least a few years, and if it does become bad, I want it to be because it was naturally power-creeped or became too due to new cards. I do not want to invest in a format where I have to worry about WotC axing my deck because it decided that the meta's been the same for too long and they're bored of it
Your OP seems to be asking two questions: "How can you define fair or unfair?", and "How can you define fun or unfun?".
For first question, "How can you define fair or unfair", generally speaking, if you aren't "cheating" on mana costs by casting free spells or spells with heavily reduced mana costs and if you aren't using loops or combos to instantly win, you are considered to be playing a "fair" deck. For example, if you are running an Atraxa deck loaded with Planeswalkers, that would be considered a "fair" deck despite how well Atraxa works with Planeswalkers
The second question, "How can you define fun or unfun?", the short answers is that you really can't. More specifically, because "fun" and "unfun" are subjective terms and can't really be measured during the deck building process. You can take the same deck to different play groups, and different play groups will give different answers. If I was pressured into giving a way to measure how "fun" a deck is, however, the only metrics I could give are "do you like playing the deck?" and "can your playgroup win games against your deck without taking extreme measures?". If the answer to both questions is "yes", then I would consider the deck fun if I were in your play group.
That being said though, Nyzzeh's original analogy just fall flats because it's painfully obvious that EldraTron =/= Eldrazi with Eye, and using people's inability to adapt to Eldrazi with Eye as an argument against being able to adapt a deck to the current meta is pointless
That being said, I don't see unbanning MM as a good way to police 1 CMC cards when literally every deck can run 4. It just seems like the most likely scenario is that those same low curve decks will be running around, only now they have a way to to prevent other, arguably more important policing cards like Thoughtseize and Path to Exile from doing their jobs. This is on top of giving all-in combo decks a free counter to discard spells and removal.
They actually tested a 7-7-stop style before and found that it led to bigger blowouts, and a 7-7-7-stop style would likely lead to too many mulligans, which goes against their second stated goal.
This is just speculation though since the only deck I know of that was nerfed after hitting 15% (Miracles) relied on SDT, and I could only imagine that WotC was looking for any reason to ban SDT just for logistical reasons. I'd be surprised if they knew a deck had steadily risen to 15% and they didn't hit something out of it
Not sure if you know this, but when the term "shake up ban" is used, it's used almost exclusively to refer to the situation you just described. To answer your question, I can't speak for everyone but I sure as heck don't want any deck I play hit just to make things "more interesting" nor would I wish that onto other people. If the deck I'm playing is unhealthy for the meta (too much meta presence, T4 rule violator, etc.) fine, but if I wanted top decks to get nerfed just for the sake of artificially changing the meta to make things interesting I'd still be playing Yu-Gi-Oh.EDIT: So yeah I can't read apparently. Yeah unbans are fine so long as it's not anything that's been proven to be broken
Other than that, it seems like a good project to start early. Keep up the good work
Just playing Devil's advocate for a bit, Chord does have the benefit of searching any creature while GSZ can only grab Green creatures, so at the very least it's not an auto-replace in Kiki-Chord, one of the few well-known Chord decks. It also can't search Vizier in Abzan CoCo, though that being said, the fact that it's able to search for either Devoted Druid or Recruiter while also enabling other plays such as searching for a T1 Dryad Arbor or T2 mana dork if they need acceleration is more than enough for me to be extremely wary of it being unbanned.
Going back to a more interesting topic,
I do think it'd be interesting to see Nimble Mongoose to give Green tempo decks a new tool to play with. I think Flametongue Kavu would be too slow, but I think it'd be interesting to see a 3-cost 3/1 version that did 3 damage to a creature. It would make for a nice blinkable threat in UWR Flash/Midrange decks. Actually, I think I just want more 2-3 cost creatures with spells attached to them that could be used in UWR decks (and I'm sure someone wants me shot for having said that I want more creatures with spells tacked on). Bonus points would be added if they were 2-cost creatures to give me an excuse to try and make Ojutai's Command work in Modern
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/level-one/linear-strategies-2014-12-29
He goes a lot into linear strategies both in their construction and how to beat them, but here's the quote where he defines linear strategies, which I think is the best description:
In the context of Twin, the line gets weird because the primary win con was indeed a combo that ignored the board state of the game, which would fall under the definition of a linear strategy, but the deck was able to devote a decent amount of resources to a back-up tempo plan, which was a non-linear strategy since tempo strategies rely on disrupting the opponent at precise plays.
So whether or not Twin was linear would likely depend heavily on how you viewed the deck. I'd say that a deck that was primarily a combo deck with a back-up tempo plan, that'd fall more under being linear than non-linear, but I'm sure there are those who'd disagree with me, and I don't believe there's a right answer.
I'm not a huge fan of the Twin ban (it was my first Modern deck) and having it nuked out of existence sucked, but you can't even compare the banning of Twin to the banning of Temple in the context of this meta. The banning of Temple would in fact set the bar even lower than Twin's banning did
I don't see how banning a card from a deck taking up less than 10% of the meta game that doesn't break the T4 rule could ever be healthy because it basically sets up the worst precedence ever: that it's okay for any T1 deck to eat a nerf at any time for no other reason than because other people's decks deserve to be T1 but yours doesn't. You say that Temple is "toxic and warping", but using bans to adjust the meta to be more favorable to BGx is a far worse case of a deck warping the format because it's 100% artificial. Yeah E-Tron has a lot of pushed cards, but at least no one decided to nerf other decks solely to give it its T1 status.
Of course, as idSurge said, discussing Standard is fine so long as you tie it back to Modern, and the big reason for people constantly pointing out Standard's mishaps is because many people in this thread (myself included) are fairly sure that they've been holding off on potential unbans because the last thing they could risk is another extremely popular format burning down alongside Standard due to an unban.
It's as you say: Ideally, Standard should have enough strategies designed into the set that by the time it was solved or became close to being solved, the new set comes in to shake up the meta. Eliminating meta share data does nothing to fix the fundamental issues that plagued Standard for so many months, something that we can only hope will be solved in upcoming sets, and because of this players have lost an important tool for brewing new decks and need to now rely more heavily on first-hand experience to figure out what the meta might look like, something that for many of us primarily comes from LGS tournaments that in turn may not even be that useful when you decide to go to larger tourneys depending on who attends your LGS tourneys.
As for those of us in Modern, I think just about everything that could be said has been so I don't want to keep banging the same drums, but I do have one question: how many people care if Modern or Legacy become solved? I can only speak for myself, but I love the fact that I can buy into a solid deck and (assuming it's not broken) ride that same deck into every tournament for years to come. A meta that is constantly unsolved is a meta that's constantly shifting, and when the primary goal of new sets is to create new Standard environments, not eternal format environments, this to me comes off as a conflicting goal. I really don't care if Modern is nearly solved if I can comfortably buy into a deck that I know will be good for at least a few years, and if it does become bad, I want it to be because it was naturally power-creeped or became too due to new cards. I do not want to invest in a format where I have to worry about WotC axing my deck because it decided that the meta's been the same for too long and they're bored of it
For first question, "How can you define fair or unfair", generally speaking, if you aren't "cheating" on mana costs by casting free spells or spells with heavily reduced mana costs and if you aren't using loops or combos to instantly win, you are considered to be playing a "fair" deck. For example, if you are running an Atraxa deck loaded with Planeswalkers, that would be considered a "fair" deck despite how well Atraxa works with Planeswalkers
The second question, "How can you define fun or unfun?", the short answers is that you really can't. More specifically, because "fun" and "unfun" are subjective terms and can't really be measured during the deck building process. You can take the same deck to different play groups, and different play groups will give different answers. If I was pressured into giving a way to measure how "fun" a deck is, however, the only metrics I could give are "do you like playing the deck?" and "can your playgroup win games against your deck without taking extreme measures?". If the answer to both questions is "yes", then I would consider the deck fun if I were in your play group.