View Poll Results: Would the format be better without Tendrils of Agony?

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Thread: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

  1. #21
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by C.P. View Post
    My answer would be yes it should be banned, seeing there are so many decks that are not viable only because of its bad Tendrils matchup.
    Uh, you realize Zoo is a DTB right now, right? Having a bad combo matchup has never solely pushed a deck out of viability. Combo is such a small part of the meta that its usually perfectly acceptable to give up on the combo matchup if you can get reasonable results against the rest of the field.
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  2. #22
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    I can't get why the hell should Tendrils would be banned. I mean, combo has, in legacy, a reasonable amount of hate.Free Counters,Stifle, Counterbalance,Chant, Discard, Teeg/Mage effects, Chalice and Trini, even Blood Moon and LD hurts it as well. Tendrils, if considered alone, is a weak card; what makes it THE kill con in the majority storm combo decks is the dedicated engine behind it. If that engine goes on having several hate cards against it (most of which are effectively solveable, ok, but still require a lot of time and resources to get rid of them, delaying what an usual build of storm combo aims for, to win within the range of a certain number of turns), then Tendrils is just a mere output of something which is way more complicate than just "RAWR 10 SPELLS TENDRILS YA!". Moreover, even if this may seem as an inconsistent reason, we're playing in an Eternal format, where Storm combo, since its birth, has had and always have an important role among the archetypes this format offers.
    I also don't share the argument " combo has denied some decks to rise or even to be born because of their lack of answers to it". Combo, first of all, isn't the dominant archetype of legacy, for all the cards i quoted above, which are way too common in here, so i get the feeling it's a poor argument to say that decks like GW fatties+enchantments.dec have been smothered by the presence of storm combo, since they'd probably be rolled over by Landstill or other control decks as well; and , if we want to keep this sort of argument, let's apply it to a certain few cards which have really hindered or even murdered the development of certain strategies.
    -White weenie has been killed by Tarmogoyf, and, in laeast measure, Counterbalance.
    -Red Death has been killed completely to Tarmogoyf.
    -ALL the decks that were run into legacy using Blue and Red were slaughtered by that green piece of shit (I remember , for example, UR landstill, yes, that's pretty a crappy example, but i was very displeased with it);
    -Let's be honest, all the aggro decks not packing Tarmogoyf are way penalized, and must deal with it.
    But i don't want to move the discussion to the usual "Tarmogoyf is a shit, it has broken Legacy and now half of the decks function around it" issue. But i want just to make understand that it's extremely less likely that , when someone build a new dec, be it blueless too, he will renounce to it because of the "it loses/has no answers to storm combo" fact. On the contrary, people tend to build a deck keeping in sight very carefully if it can get rid or face a 5/6 cc2, and this seems to happen even more when people tune their decks for a tournament, where I'm noticing that the really broken cards of the current time ( Tarmogoyf and Counterbalance, no one ever tries to deny that they are not unbalanced) are having more and more impact.
    I have tried to be as objective as possible. I am not claiming not to ban Tendrils because i'm a storm combo player, but because it seems that Tendrils.dec is already been handled very well by LOTS of card in the current cardpool, which are NOT only blue. Plus, storm combo has usually randomic problems of inconsistency, since piling 10 spells isn't always that simple as it could seem.
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  3. #23
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Tendrils of Agony is a combo taking the entire deck. If it were just a 1-card combo, as you imply, I might be able to put four copies in any deck packing black and start winning tournaments with it.

    Also, the deck doesn't even appear on the DTB forum, but in any case, here's a list of non-blue cards that I found that can stop the combo:

    white
    • aethersworn canonist
    • orim's chant
    • gilded light
    • solitary confinement
    • true believer
    • children of korlis
    • mana tithe
    • Glowrider
    • order of the sacred torch


    black
    • discard (duress, thoughtseize, etc.)
    • false cure
    • lich
    • simulacrum (lol)
    • word of command (double lol)
    • Thrull wizard (triple lol)


    Green
    • Refreshing Rain (if tendrils is not big enough)
    • Nourishing Shoal (if tendrils is not big enough)
    • Lifeforce


    Red
    • Pyrostatic Pillar (maybe)
    • Ricochet (lol)


    Other than that, Red has to accelerate into the high cost cards that protect against that combo.

    Multicolor
    • Gaddock Teeg


    Artifacts
    • Circle of the Void
    • Sphere of Resistance
    • Trinisphere
    • Thorn of Amethyst


    By reading that list, I can conclude that the best non-blue deck against Tendrils has to be nourishing lich!!

  4. #24
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    The answer to combo has rarely been to ban an engine card. Almost every time a combo deck was neutered, it required the banning of one of the key kill conditions.

    Without Tendrils you'd have a lot of fast mana. Decks like CRET Belcher would be viable, but the vulnerability to non-blue hate is extremely relevant; EE hits CRETBelcher far harder than Blood Moon hits Fetchland Tendrils.

    Saying that cards like Stifle, Daze, Counterbalance, Spell Snare and especially Force of Will hurt Tendrils decks doesn't really address the problem; the problem is that so few non-blue decks have a way to handle the dominant combo strategy in the metagame. The real exceptions are Ancient Tomb decks running Trinisphere and/or Chalice of the void. But that's a very narrow strategy that has had limited success. And it's not the same as in old 1.5, or most Standard formats, where any given combo deck must, by it's nature, allow must other decks to bring in some form of hate which can at least weaken it's chances of winning. Tendrils admits relatively few answers.
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  5. #25

    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Something I've noticed when playing Doomsday is that I can win with Painter/Grindstone just as easily as I can win with Tendrils. While this hasn't been explored in the design of straight Ad Nauseam decks, something along the lines of:

    4 Painter's Servant
    4 Grindstone
    2 Ad Nauseam
    3 Enlightened Tutor
    4 Lion's Eye Diamond
    4 Dark Ritual
    4 Lotus Petal
    3 Chrome Mox
    4 Mystical Tutor
    2 Ad Nauseam
    4 Orim's Chant
    2 Duress
    4 Brainstorm
    4 Sensei's Divining Top
    2 Tundra
    1 Scrubland
    3 Underground Sea
    4 Polluted Delta
    4 Flooded Strand

    This is a rough draft (may not even be 60 cards) that is just as hard to answer as ANT. The broken thing here isn't drawing one million cards off Ad Nauseam, it's Tendrils of Agony right?

    For my next trick, I'll cut 1 Ill-Gotten Gains and cut 1 Tendrils of Agony from my Doomsday list and add 1 Painter and 1 Grindstone. Want to bet on the chances that I still kill opponents by resolving a spell that lets me tutor for 5 cards?

    Tendrils of Agony isn't a problem. Ultra-efficient cantrips, plentiful fast mana, and a ton of protection each derived from magic's history combine to form the problem. The only way you're going to stop this is to ban Ill-Gotten Gains, Ad Nauseam, Diminishing Returns, Doomsday, and Meditate (to stop high tide decks) while following up by not printing anything else that can even be hinted at as a storm engine. No mass draw, no unconditional tutors, no multiple graveyard recursion spells no matter how serious R&D thinks the drawback is in standard. You're going to have to stop printing ritual effects too, because we're dangerously close to making SI a viable deck due to the density of good mana effects (and that deck can play Belcher, ETW, and Tendrils each as viable win conditions).

  6. #26
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    This game was designed to see tough, complex interactions and loads of math getting tossed around like stale potato chips. There are just as many tough rules and interactions in Standard right now then there are in Legacy, and yet there are eons of young kids and newer players still playing it.

    Tendrils, in Legacy right now, is a useful tool that combo players can live without. In Vintage, Tendrils is a very insignificant, but still best available for its role, kill card in a Will/Tinker format that could disappear tomorrow and not even make a large dent.

    I would rather cut into blue's power and leave the combo tricks around, and thus, if I had to cut a combo card, I would rather go for the cards that make the combo deck versatile yet effective - tutors.
    WHAT? No, just no.

  7. #27
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by Piceli89 View Post
    Tendrils, if considered alone, is a weak card
    Worldgorger Dragon is a card that is weak considered alone. Nevertheles, it is banned.
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    The answer to combo has rarely been to ban an engine card. Almost every time a combo deck was neutered, it required the banning of one of the key kill conditions.

    Without Tendrils you'd have a lot of fast mana. Decks like CRET Belcher would be viable, but the vulnerability to non-blue hate is extremely relevant; EE hits CRETBelcher far harder than Blood Moon hits Fetchland Tendrils.

    Saying that cards like Stifle, Daze, Counterbalance, Spell Snare and especially Force of Will hurt Tendrils decks doesn't really address the problem; the problem is that so few non-blue decks have a way to handle the dominant combo strategy in the metagame. The real exceptions are Ancient Tomb decks running Trinisphere and/or Chalice of the void. But that's a very narrow strategy that has had limited success. And it's not the same as in old 1.5, or most Standard formats, where any given combo deck must, by it's nature, allow must other decks to bring in some form of hate which can at least weaken it's chances of winning. Tendrils admits relatively few answers.
    I was under the impression that any deck could play chalice of the void. Against storm you want it for zero or one anyway, so you don't need the two lands. Aggro Loam, another tier 1 deck, has a bad combo matchup game 1, but they board in things like chalices and gaddock teeg (among other things, I'm not up on the sb tech, not that it's relevant). Thus, every deck has the potential to have a solid combo matchup if they try. Give me a color/deck, and I'll find you a sb card to make the matchup better. The problem is not that they don't exist, it's that you don't want to run them.

  9. #29
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by ScatmanX View Post
    Worldgorger Dragon is a card that is weak considered alone. Nevertheles, it is banned.
    Because it tore the metagame apart some years ago. wotC could easiliy reprint it, i guess it could be still stopped.
    Does Storm combo tear the metagame apart these days as much as Dragon did, or Tarmogoyf does?
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  10. #30
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by emidln View Post
    Something I've noticed when playing Doomsday is that I can win with Painter/Grindstone just as easily as I can win with Tendrils.
    I can hose and hate that combo a thousand times easier than a Tendrils one.
    Every other combo kill is useless and not played because Tendrils is much easier to play and so much harder to hate.
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  11. #31
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by emidln View Post
    This is a rough draft (may not even be 60 cards) that is just as hard to answer as ANT. The broken thing here isn't drawing one million cards off Ad Nauseam, it's Tendrils of Agony right?

    For my next trick, I'll cut 1 Ill-Gotten Gains and cut 1 Tendrils of Agony from my Doomsday list and add 1 Painter and 1 Grindstone. Want to bet on the chances that I still kill opponents by resolving a spell that lets me tutor for 5 cards?
    Ad Nauseum is certainly powerful. However, if you go this route, you will lose more often than you would with Tendrils. Significantly more, I should say. It makes having both Orim's Chant and Ad Nauseum and resolving both far more important; it also opens you up to cards as problematic as Gempalm Incinerator, or simply Gaea's Blessing. To pretend that Tendrils isn't an important component of decks that rely on Tendrils to win is simply silly.

    Tendrils of Agony isn't a problem. Ultra-efficient cantrips, plentiful fast mana, and a ton of protection each derived from magic's history combine to form the problem.
    That's odd, because I can promise you that no viable deck looked anything like a Tendrils of Agony deck before Tendrils of Agony was printed.

    Certainly fast mana has been problematic in the history of Magic before, but it wasn't an institutional problem. It relied on certain interactions being viable, many of which were stopped by maindecked cards.

    The only way you're going to stop this is to ban Ill-Gotten Gains, Ad Nauseam, Diminishing Returns, Doomsday, and Meditate (to stop high tide decks) while following up by not printing anything else that can even be hinted at as a storm engine.
    Again, as noted above, since no such thing as Long.dec existed before Tendrils, and since it's thousand descendants have since formed the core of what we call "combo", I'm going to disagree with you. I think banning Tendrils of Agony would do plenty enough to weaken Tendrils decks.
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  12. #32
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    I find playing combo very fun.

    It's definitely very strong, in my opinion when played correct even the strongest archetype. I think Tendrils is the correct choice when trying to weaken combo. Any card alone can be replaced (AdN, LED and Dark Rit would be the next hardest to replace cards in my opinion), but any other card that Tendrils would require more mana, cards or vulnerability.

    Still, I don't think it needs banning. There are not enough players playing it (well) to harm the metagame. Any deck losing to combo can still do well very easily, just because it probably won't face combo much. This could change in the future though, but I guess it won't.

    I also don't think blue's dominance is because of combo, it just isn't relevant enough for that. I think blue is so prominent because players like consistency and options. Brainstorm is the strongest card in the format. It wins many games unnoticed. Any deck without Brainstorm and less so Ponder is way more likely to just flood/screw or have bad draws somewhere along the tournament, which is a very important factor.
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  13. #33

    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    First of all, let's just sit back and evaluate the situation:

    We are talking about the banning of a 4 casting-cost sorcery here that is really only viable in a select few decks. People need to understand that Tendrils of Agony itself is a rather useless card; it does practically nothing. The only thing that makes it effective are the sub-components of Storm-based combo decks. Cards such as:

    Lions Eye Diamond
    Dark Ritual
    Cabal Ritual
    Rite of Flame
    Etc.

    These accelerators provide the necessary ending supply of mana capable of casting this card after having had to play nine spells before it. Tendrils of Agony is a simplistic win condition, nothing more.

    If you are in favor of the end of Storm-based combo decks in Legacy, than look no further than the cancerous threat that lies dormant in each and every game to set up such a win: Accelerators. Without them, these decks are garbage - that's right, garbage - and would be buried with all other meaningless combo decks to fade into obscurity over the years. Combo decks do not maintain a very high land-count, which is why cards like Trinisphere become problematic; they can't cast accelerators for cheap.

    Sure, they may have answers to these defensive weapons. But Tendrils of Agony alone does not warp the format and that was what the original question asked. So, no, it shouldn't be.

  14. #34
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Warping the format is not only when something DOMINATES it. Dominating the format is only one of the ways of warping it. Therefore nobody is saying that Tendrils is overplayed or overpresent in the format, but it still warps it. It is dominant in Combo archetypes, every other reasonable combo does not come close to Tendril Storm, not PS, not Belcher and not Cephalid.

    Again, the problem is not Storm Combo, is Tendrils Storm. Once Grapeshot or Brainfreeze become the Storm kill of choice, Belcher, Cephalid and other non-storm decks will be viable again, and those combo decks will be vulnerable to much more than FoW or CB.

    You can have all the fast mana and draw you want, but if your kill is Fireball, Brainfreeze, Stroke of Genius, Grapeshot or anything besides Tendrils, LED and Ritual is not a problem anymore, is it?

    Saying that Tendrils is ONLY a simple kill condition is understating it. Tendrils is THE kill condition.
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  15. #35

    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

    I understand that storm is a design flaw, but it's not even that bad compared to some of the other stuff in legacy (Counterbalance much?). The existence of good, viable combo decks (particularly ones that aren't overpowered and have bad matchups against some of the popular decks) also acts to keep certain strategies in check, particularly more linear aggro decks like goblins/affinity (well, technically, I guess Tarmogoyf keeps those in check too, but Tarmogoyf is pretty unfair to start with).

    Tendrils make the format more interesting, because without Tendrils, good combo decks wouldn't be represented nearly as much (let's face it, most non-tendril combo decks are pretty bad in these days, and if you just take out Tendrils but nothing else, combo is going to be much, much worse). Having one less archetype would really make the metagame more stale in my opinion.

  16. #36
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    If we aren't willing to ban cards like Brainstorm, Goyf, LED, Vial, etc., then I would say Tendrils makes the format more interesting.

    Interesting format = Format with choices that test skill, both through a high degree of interaction and a metagame with depth and diversity.

    Tendrils of Agony doesn't make the format less interesting by being so broken that it completely warps the metagame (as some combo decks have previously done in so called 'winters'), but its existence certainly modifies the metagame (as any good deck should). Most importantly, Tendrils doesn't muscle out more competition than it creates. Tendrils is fast enough to keep Ichorid (a slightly slower, but fairly non-interactive combo), a few very strong aggro decks, and dedicated board control decks in check.

    Alongside its raw speed, I have no problem with ToA's resistance to many forms of control, in fact, that aspect of the card and archetype is exactly what I think is necessary for the format. I've even had to reverse my opinion on Tendrils enablers like Ad Nauseam, which have effectively lowered the skill requirements to play the deck, allowing Tendrils to have a stronger influence on the format (despite the strength of CB). I want ToA's influence on the format.

    Tendrils makes blue and chalice decks a necessary part of the metagame, and I think that is a good thing for diversity and skill-intensive interaction. The speed and resilience of Tendrils promotes the use of other decks which are designed to interact with the format because it requires the metagame to have a certain amount of Force of Will and other permission.

    Storm combo makes Aggro-Control the best archetype in the format, which basically means: a deck with no dedicated, focused role is the best. When I sit down and think about it, I'm glad Thresh is statistically the best because it doesn't win by enormous margins against every deck in the format, it just has decent or good odds against most decks. Tendrils is just good enough that it makes Aggro-Control the best deck in the format, and I think the general metagame is more open and interesting when people are gunning for aggro-control while weighing the other matchups. Good metagamers should appreciate the ability to reasonably throw the combo match in favor of having much greater odds against other archetypes.

    I also have no problem with the fact that Tendrils obsoletes many other combo decks, by a large margin. None of those decks would be good enough to make the same impact in the metagame and put aggro-control at the top. Tendrils is good for diversity, while the other real combo deck, Ichorid, would not be good for diversity.

    While many decks can't interact with Tendrils, the deck itself forces the metagame to adapt, making the metagame overall more interactive and capable of diversity. Tendrils also keeps in check decks that would otherwise be too powerful. Without a very fast, control-resistant, yet often interactive combo deck in the metagame, dedicated board control archetypes, Ichorid and Goblins would be too influential in Legacy.





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  17. #37
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by caiomarcos View Post
    Once Grapeshot or Brainfreeze become the Storm kill of choice, Belcher, Cephalid and other non-storm decks will be viable again
    Explain, please, why Tendrils makes some of the aforementioned decks (ie, Painter-Grindstone, Breakfast, etc...) not viable.

    Do you mean that Tendrils combo is better than the other combo decks?

    Isn't it the case that, in every format ever, some combo/aggro/control deck is just better than another combo/aggro/control deck?

  18. #38

    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin View Post
    Ad Nauseum is certainly powerful. However, if you go this route, you will lose more often than you would with Tendrils. Significantly more, I should say. It makes having both Orim's Chant and Ad Nauseum and resolving both far more important; it also opens you up to cards as problematic as Gempalm Incinerator, or simply Gaea's Blessing. To pretend that Tendrils isn't an important component of decks that rely on Tendrils to win is simply silly.
    Tendrils isn't important anymore. That list is without storm cards. Grapeshot ignores Gaea's Blessing. Gempalm Incinerator might not even matter after you draw 15 cards because you might just draw and be able to cast multiple Painters. Tendrils is just the most efficient in a growing list of efficient win conditions. In terms of strength, I'd like them something like this:

    Tendrils of Agony
    Grapeshot
    Brain Freeze
    Painter/Grindstone

    somewhere between Brain Freeze and Grapeshot lies ETW, but I don't normally count it because it's not reliable enough.

    That's odd, because I can promise you that no viable deck looked anything like a Tendrils of Agony deck before Tendrils of Agony was printed.

    Certainly fast mana has been problematic in the history of Magic before, but it wasn't an institutional problem. It relied on certain interactions being viable, many of which were stopped by maindecked cards.

    Again, as noted above, since no such thing as Long.dec existed before Tendrils, and since it's thousand descendants have since formed the core of what we call "combo", I'm going to disagree with you. I think banning Tendrils of Agony would do plenty enough to weaken Tendrils decks.
    I don't think that Tendrils is weak enough without Tendrils to not slaughter aggro. Consider this list (with appologies to Bryant)

    // TES (without Tendrils)
    4 City of Brass
    4 Gemstone Mine
    2 Underground Sea
    1 Volcanic Island
    1 Bloodstained Mire
    4 Lotus Petal
    4 Chrome Mox
    4 Dark Ritual
    4 Rite of Flame
    4 Lion's Eye Diamond
    4 Brainstorm
    3 Ponder
    3 Mystical Tutor
    4 Burning Wish
    3 Infernal Tutor
    1 Grapeshot
    1 Ill-Gotten Gains
    2 Ad Nauseam
    4 Orim's Chant
    2 Duress
    1 Chain of Vapor

    // Partial Sideboard
    SB: 1 Grapeshot
    SB: 1 Ill-Gotten Gains
    SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
    SB: 1 Diminishing Returns
    SB: 1 Duress
    SB: 1 Infernal Tutor
    SB: 1 Shattering Spree
    SB: 1 Maelstrom Pulse

    This deck loses almost nothing by only killing with Grapeshot/ETW. If you wanted to, you could increase the number of Grapeshots in the maindeck to more reliably cast double Grapeshot at low storm, but it's not necessary due to Ad Nauseam being busted in this list. Things like Long.dec didn't exist before Tendrils because there were no good win conditions. If you take away Tendrils, Brain Freeze and Grapeshot can work in various modern Tendrils decks. In Fetchland Tendrils, you can actually kill with Painter/Grindstone just as easily as Grapeshot or Brain Freeze because Doomsday leaves you with a lot of design space.

    Despite the fact that the majority of my Doomsday/Tendrils deck existed while people were mucking around with Sutured Ghoul (in early legacy), nobody found it. That doesn't mean the cards didn't exist (for reference, it was missing exactly Ponder (which isn't critical to the deck and is easily replaceable with similar cards) and Krosan Grip (which wasn't necessary as CB wasn't printed and/or played)) just that the necessary time and effort hadn't been spent to come up with the requisite Doomsday piles. My DDFT deck wasn't born out of "let's play Doomsday because it's broken" like those decks (of 2004/2005) were but rather "Ill-Gotten Gains is shitty, is there something cheaper?" That Long.dec has changed the way we think of building combo made it possible for us to incorporate Doomsday into a storm list. The fact that the storm deck is entirely enabled by Doomsday lets lets us play more than just storm with it. Because Long taught us to rethink combo (specifically tutors), Doomsday and TES could survive without Tendrils.

    What Long taught magic wasn't just that fast mana + bombs into Tendrils is good. Long.dec taught us the power of versatile tutors. Banning Tendrils won't take that away, nor will it significantly change combo's power level. Our thinking changed, our win conditions beyond Tendrils improved, and nothing short of banning every win condition or every engine and then not printing more will change that.

  19. #39
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Quote Originally Posted by KrzyMoose View Post
    Explain, please, why Tendrils makes some of the aforementioned decks (ie, Painter-Grindstone, Breakfast, etc...) not viable.

    Do you mean that Tendrils combo is better than the other combo decks?

    Isn't it the case that, in every format ever, some combo/aggro/control deck is just better than another combo/aggro/control deck?
    I think different combo decks can co-exist without one being superior to the others if they are good against different decks in the meta.

  20. #40
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    Re: Would the format be more interesting without Tendrils of Agony?

    Saying that Tendrils does nothing by itself misses the actual history of combo. Prior to Tendrils, we had all the other elements of the same deck; and yet no combo deck in Vintage or 1.5 was set up to function anything like Long.dec. Immediately after Tendrils was printed this became the dominant strategy in Vintage, and the primary strategy in Legacy once the lists were separted and mana acceleration beyond Dark Ritual was either unbanned or printed.

    I compare the effects of Tendrils on Legacy to the effect of Raffinity in Mirrodin Block Constructed. Raffinity was not the dominant deck. The dominant decks were red or green centric and ran cards like Molder Slug, Arc-Slogger, Electrostatic Bolt and Viridian Shaman. They preyed on Raffinity decks and had enough strengths versus the rest of the field that they dominated the metagame. However, these decks were not actually busted in and of themselves. What kept them on top was having a decent game versus the rest of the field and crushing the deck that would knock other archetypes out of the running. This is also similar to the strategy lots of people tried to take with Fish against Hulk-Flash at GP Columbus, with the unfortuante cliff note that Flash was far too powerful for this to work.

    Tendrils is not as powerful as Hulk-Flash was, but it is powerful enough to serve the same role as Raffinity did in Mirrodin Block; although not dominant, it tends to devour anything that's not the foil. to that strategy.

    Lastly, I didn't say I wasn't willing to ban cards like Tarmogoyf and Brainstorm. I would rather take a liberal approach to the Legacy banned list. I think it's been stagnant for entirely too long. However, not everyone agrees with this philosophy. This is an inquiry thread to gauge public opinion about whether or not Tendrils' presence helps or hurts the format.

    It's also possible that Ad Nauseum does render this conversation pointless. Ad Nauseum is certainly the most busted enabler in combo, and a prime target for banning anyway, as we all realized the second it was printed. I'm not sure, then, that that should singlehandedly derail the main topic, since Ad Nauseum is relatively easy to ban (having only been legal a brief time), it's banning wouldn't shock anyone and without it, Storm combo most definitely could not survive the loss of Tendrils without a serious loss in strength, except in the form of a deck like CRET Belcher (unreliable) or Solidarity (slow).
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