[Article] Eternal Europe: Hybrids - The Future, Today?

[Mon,Goblin Chief]

This time I talk about the recent trend of hybridization: my suspicions as to its origins, how it will develop judging by past experience and what that means for the future metagame. Interested? Check it out:

http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...ure_Today.html

[Admiral_Arzar]

Great read, as always. The parallels to 2003 vintage were nice to shed light on something I wasn't familiar with (as I had just started playing magic at that time). In b4 "zomg Carsten you're supposed to talk about legacy not vintage n00b."

[Gui]

Interesting read, but talking about Hybrids without mentioning who's the beatdown seems criminal =P

[GexxX]

Very interesting. I liked the part were you pointed out that Control adapts a combo-kill to beat fast aggro. I remember my first Vintage deck being R/G Beatz (pretty much like Zoo) and it performed quite okay, just because It was straight forward beatdown with 8 Blasts in the board. :)

A question to everyone: Do you guys think fast Combo can actually achieve the rank it used to have in Vintage? I doubt it can be as powerful as Meandeck Tendrils or similar lists just because it lacks some key spells and/or strategies - Yawgh's Win and his Bargain, Necropotence, Desire
The other major point is propably FoW. Combo does not play Force due to LED. It's obviosly not good, but I think having a real hardcounter for virtually zero is what makes a turn 1-3 kill as deadly as it can be. That's - if you ask me - the major point why Legacy Storm is not dominating right now. Storm might not be the only fast Combodeck out there, but I think it's one people are fascinated by and therefor try to improve lists all the time, which might be one of the keys to it's survival.
Then again winning in the first three turns is so powerful that it doesn't need any backup strategy since you usually play an "all in"-type of game.

Time will tell, but I'll follow your articles just because I like how you sneak in personal experiences and stories of old times. (They - too - are informative and nice to think about ofc!) ;)

keep up the great work

[Koby]

I agree that Hybridization makes Eternal both fun in the deck construction, as well as the surprise factor in tournaments. One of my favorite examples of this was Two Card Monte from Vintage, fueled by Workshop. Ultimately, the strategy requires a high level of digging and searching to become effective however. My own take on Hybrid was Helm/Line/Doomsday for Classic.

Great article, and thanks for bringing up the Hybrid topic as it's an important one to keep in mind when the Format changes.

[Fossil4182]

Very interesting. I liked the part were you pointed out that Control adapts a combo-kill to beat fast aggro. I remember my first Vintage deck being R/G Beatz (pretty much like Zoo) and it performed quite okay, just because It was straight forward beatdown with 8 Blasts in the board. :)

A question to everyone: Do you guys think fast Combo can actually achieve the rank it used to have in Vintage? I doubt it can be as powerful as Meandeck Tendrils or similar lists just because it lacks some key spells and/or strategies - Yawgh's Win and his Bargain, Necropotence, Desire
The other major point is propably FoW. Combo does not play Force due to LED. It's obviosly not good, but I think having a real hardcounter for virtually zero is what makes a turn 1-3 kill as deadly as it can be. That's - if you ask me - the major point why Legacy Storm is not dominating right now. Storm might not be the only fast Combodeck out there, but I think it's one people are fascinated by and therefor try to improve lists all the time, which might be one of the keys to it's survival.
Then again winning in the first three turns is so powerful that it doesn't need any backup strategy since you usually play an "all in"-type of game.

Time will tell, but I'll follow your articles just because I like how you sneak in personal experiences and stories of old times. (They - too - are informative and nice to think about ofc!) ;)

keep up the great work

In response to your question, an additional difference may be the speed of Legacy. While the average fundamental turn in Vintage approximates that of Legacy's, Vintage is actually a slower format than Legacy relative to what you're asking. The storm combo decks have the capacity to kill on turn one but, as you mention, many play cards like Force of Will in addition to Dark Confidant, Vault/Key and even Jace the Mind Sculptor maindeck. Vintage decks usually does not have decks that present a fast clock outside of some nutty MUD draws (I mean fast by what we think of as "Fast" decks in Legacy). For example in Legacy, Goblins, Zoo, Burn and Affinity can Goldfish kill on turn three. Legacy combo also has to worry about Stoneforge Mystic and Batterskull putting the game out of reach quickly. Vintage combo and control decks do not have to take those kinds of pressure into consideration when being designed.

Combo does not play Force of Will because its card disadvantage, especially when it would have to pitch cantrips which are extremely valuable in the deck. Furthermore, the only Storm deck that runs more than twelve Blue cards right now is some variants of UB Tendrils which run Probe. Not to mention Legacy storm decks rely on resolving Ad Nauseam more frequently than their Vintage counterparts. Having at least six cards at four mana or more is terrible (Ill-Gotten Gains, Tendrils and four Force of Will at a minimum). If combo wanted a hard counter, it could already play Pact of Negation maindeck if it wanted to. There are a lot of people who "improve" their Storm decks, but at least in America, Storm decks represent a very small fraction of the metagame. After reading over the last couple of articles by the Hatefields, Storm (TES, and ANT variants) represented less than 5% of the field in their best showing at a given event. Hivemind has represented a larger portion of the combo in the field at every event.

In response to your last point, taking away from the deck is always going to be a bad idea. Combo decks attempt to be as linear in nature as possible so detracting from that takes away our speed which you identify as being one of the best reasons to play these types of decks.