[Free Article] Survival: The Experts, The Engine, and Legacy's Future

[GGoober]

Without MT, only with aggressive mulliganing can Flash remain consistent

This is definitely true, but there are other options to fetch Flash e.g. Merchant Scrolls (UNRESTRICTED/UNBANNED in Legacy). You're fundamentally slower by a turn, but you don't lose a card, and the deck is still broken in terms of protection and speed. Any deck that can boast running 8 pacts and not lose does not deserve to be unbanned in the format. Even with all the recent tools Legacy 'combo' decks have, I doubt they can still beat a combo deck as resilient as Flash, without hating it to do so.

Survival is going through the same era: hate is ever growing, but unlike Flash, you need quite a lot more things to go off: Survival in play and possibly pass the turn, tons of GGGGGG mana out, creature cards in hand to pitch to Survival, while maintaining protection/disruption to push it through. Just compare that to Flash aka fetchable by Merchant Scrolls, win on the spot, no combat phase, win at instant speed, 8 pacts, 8 FoWs + more protection...

[Gheizen64]

LDV is a fair tutor, Flash will kill fairly on turn 2-3 with it. I agree with you that the deck is a mere 2-card combo, so is ANT: mana cards (1/3 of the deck) + 1 of either IT, or IGG, or AdN.

Without MT, only with aggressive mulliganing can Flash remain consistent. My argument here is not Flash is weak right now and needs to be unbanned immediately. But, with Mystical banned and Wotc unbanning more cards from the list, this may eventually lead to a more diverse and calm format than ANT=Reanimator>Survival>others.

AnT a 2 card combo is like calling door to nothingness a 1 card combo. AnT need you to build the whole deck around it, flash can be run in a normal control shell with 6-7 cards. And Flash is slightly faster (and a ton more consistent) than AnT even in an heavy control shell. Have fun.