Is Survival safe to unban now?

[Megadeus]

IIRC, everyone was up in arms about how this deck was dominating and no one bothered to play any answers to it (Extirpate, Pithing Needle, etc). AFAIK, those answers didn't matter and everyone was just netdecking it over and over in large amounts.

So lazy net deck players caused a stale and slanted meta?

[Dzra]

Why not just cast green sun zenith instead of wasting time with survival on your example?

Survival is essentially a 2 mana enchantment that turns every creature drawn into a GSZ as long as Survival remains in play. This is exceptionally good; however, it doesn't become breakable until you realize that with Vengevine you can add 18 power to the board at the end of your opponents turn by spending 1 creature card and 6 (sometimes 5) green mana. This can usually be achieved between turns 3 and 6, meaning you'll likely kill on turns 4 through 7 after attacking.

Is this good? Obviously.

Is it faster than Show and Tell or ANT? No.

Is it more consistent, with a better backup plan? Yes.*

Does every fair tier 1 deck have a main deck way to combat Survival? Yes. GBx has Deathrite, Hymns, Thoughtseize, and Abrupt Decay. Miracles has Counterbalance, Detention Sphere, RiP, and Terminus. Deathblade has Deathrite, Thoughtseize, and Batterskull. In addition, every deck can board into Surgical Extraction and Pithing Needle. Green decks can board Scavenging Ooze. Most Blue decks will be running FoW and Spell Pierce.

Am I convinced that Survival is healthy and good for the format? No.
Has the format changed enough that I'd be curious to experiment and see how it reacts to the current meta? Yeah definitely.


*Total tangent, but that new Show and Tell list from the Bazaar of Moxen looks crazy scary.

So lazy net deck players caused a stale and slanted meta?

From what I understand, Survival happened right at the time when Legacy was starting to blow up because of the SCG circuit. As such, I imagine that netdecking was at a peak whereas actual understanding of the format was at a pretty big low. I started playing Legacy (Mighty Quinn was my first Legacy deck actually ) about a year or so before Survival was broken, so my understanding of the timing of events might be a bit off.

From what I can remember, the meta that Survival stepped into was mostly Supreme Blue (UGr Countertop), ANT, Fish, and Goblins. Just prior to that, I believe Mystical Tutor had been banned from a meta full of Reanimator, ANT, Fish, and Countertop.

[Sloshthedark]

Have never been dangerous enough to ban in first place... unusually playable gy interaction cards has been printed since ban+AD, people are just afraid of thinking and powerful interactions, SotF is the most fun card ever, the game turns to stupid =/ ... and I want mystical back... add gush and I'd love the game again

[Dzra]

Have never been dangerous enough to ban in first place... unusually playable gy interaction cards has been printed since ban+AD, people are just afraid of thinking and powerful interactions, SotF is the most fun card ever, the game turns to stupid =/ ... and I want mystical back... add gush and I'd love the game again

I can see why Mystical and Mental Misstep are banned. I never played with Gush, but I can see how that might push decks like RUG over the edge (... although RUG has been on the ropes lately). Unlike those three though, Survival can be hated on, and a lot more easily than Show and Tell.

Note that I'm not for a Show and Tell banning either... in fact, I think that the only reason Show and Tell hasn't been banned yet is because Legacy as a format has developed to such an extent that skill and coverage are enough to keep broken strategies under check. Just thinking out loud, but I bet that if Griselbrand had been printed during Rise of the Eldrazi and Vengvine had been printed in Avacyn Restored, I'm fairly certain that we'd have Show and Tell or Sneak Attack on the ban list instead of Survival. Possibly for no other reason than the format is in the spotlight enough now not to get stagnated by a couple broken strategies, although the new cards could skew that quite a bit.

[jamis]

IIRC, everyone was up in arms about how this deck was dominating and no one bothered to play any answers to it (Extirpate, Pithing Needle, etc). AFAIK, those answers didn't matter and everyone was just netdecking it over and over in large amounts.

IMO, the problem was that the decks that were best able to combat SotF were other SotF decks. For instance, Chris McCord's list from Richmond ran a maindeck singleton Faerie Macabre and 3 Qasali Pridemage. Add in the maindeck Gaddock Teeg, Dauntless Escort, 4 Mother of Runes, and Wonder which helped against the other decks in the format. Sideboard into Aven Mindcensor, and more Macabres and Teegs to further hurt opposing survival decks. Non-SotF would have had to sideboard into a whole mess of cards to be able to fight SotF in the same way, but SotF allowed them to take up minimal space and tutor for the perfect card for just 1 green mana.

And I don't think non-SotF decks not playing answers is really an accurate statement. David Gleicher's 14th place Team America list from the same event was running 1 Tormod's Crypt, 2 Extirpate, 2 Krosan Grip, and a whole bunch of counterspells, discard, and removal. Josh Hendricks' 11th place Merfolk had 1 crypt, 1 relic, 4 extirpate, 2 hibernation and 2 submerge. Even James Miller's Aggro loam ended up losing to Chris' survival list in the top 4 with 4 Leyline, 3 extirpate, and 3 Krosan Grip along with maindeck CotV, E.E and pulse.

[Aggro_zombies]

So lazy net deck players caused a stale and slanted meta?

That's basically all they ever do.

When there's an obviously powerful deck, the choice is between playing a different deck and jamming some answers in, hoping to draw them in the right amounts at the right times, or playing the deck with a proven track record of winning and sucking up the fact that sometimes the opponent will just get you with their glass cannon deck/well-timed sideboard cards. The latter choice seems more reasonable to me most of the time, and it seems that it's that way for a lot of people considering that once a deck comes out as being clearly ahead, people jump on that bandwagon in droves.

[(nameless one)]

Funny how I loved the Survival/Vengevine era. I was running my Quinn deck and somehow had a positive matchup with that deck. That was the time when I won a lot of my money cards.

[FTW]

Wow I'm losing on turn 5. Sounds way better than Tinfins or Omni-Derp.

Oh noes, RUG Delver wins on turn 5? So bad.

If I wanted to race Tinfins I would just play Belcher or SI :p. The correct versions of the deck did not play to race. They played aggro-control/midrange with disruptive elements. Bant lists ran 4 Force of Wills. Junk lists ran Thoughtseize. Etc. Resilient and fast combo existed back then too, and survival beat combo. Survival is not a goldfish-combo barf out all your cards deck. It's an engine. People are talking about the combo finishes, but that wasn't the whole deck. Survival is an engine that enables a controlling creature-based toolbox deck with a combo finish "I Win" button.

That's also why banning Vengevine won't fix it. If survival was only about Vengevine, how were Legacy decks losing to a linear combo that kills turn 4-5 and scoops to Extirpate? OMG so slow. Why weren't Belcher and Burn cleaning up tournaments?

Thanks nedleeds, you just made the best argument why Survival should not be unbanned and why banning Vengevine won't help.

[FTW]

IMO, the problem was that the decks that were best able to combat SotF were other SotF decks. For instance, Chris McCord's list from Richmond ran a maindeck singleton Faerie Macabre and 3 Qasali Pridemage. Add in the maindeck Gaddock Teeg, Dauntless Escort, 4 Mother of Runes, and Wonder which helped against the other decks in the format. Sideboard into Aven Mindcensor, and more Macabres and Teegs to further hurt opposing survival decks. Non-SotF would have had to sideboard into a whole mess of cards to be able to fight SotF in the same way, but SotF allowed them to take up minimal space and tutor for the perfect card for just 1 green mana.

And I don't think non-SotF decks not playing answers is really an accurate statement. David Gleicher's 14th place Team America list from the same event was running 1 Tormod's Crypt, 2 Extirpate, 2 Krosan Grip, and a whole bunch of counterspells, discard, and removal. Josh Hendricks' 11th place Merfolk had 1 crypt, 1 relic, 4 extirpate, 2 hibernation and 2 submerge. Even James Miller's Aggro loam ended up losing to Chris' survival list in the top 4 with 4 Leyline, 3 extirpate, and 3 Krosan Grip along with maindeck CotV, E.E and pulse.

This. Good players adapted and learned to win through hate. Survival is so versatile because it enables you to run a whole wide range of tools a lot more cheaply than your opponents. So people would just play Survival instead of something else.

Remember when the deck first used to go Vengevine->Vengevine->Vengevine->Rootwalla->Rootwalla->creature and then players started using Ethersworn Canonist to prevent the second Rootwalla from being cast to nerf Vengevine? Survival just adapted and ran a 1-of Memnite. Rootwalla into Memnite takes one less survival activation too. Bonus!

Survival let's you run 1-of answer cards that you can find more easily than the opponent can find hate.

[LOurs]

Survival let's you run 1-of answer cards that you can find more easily than the opponent can find hate.

This is absolutly correct to me.
And this argument makes often the difference between someone who actualy tested/played the deck compared to people who never (or very few) played it and thinks about it with the theory only. SotF is far to be safe in my opinion, for exactly the same reasons you mentioned.

[ReAnimator]

It's staggering how many people think graveyard hate did anything to stop survival decks, this isn't dredge, survival had a plan B and plan C to work around graveyard hate.

I saw a million games that ended with people just hard casting random creatures and VVines and swinging in backed up by counterspells or other disruption, nice Relic you got there, shame if i just bashed you with a ton of creatures. Not to mention if you didn't have the hate, then you just got combo'd out, if you over boarded you lost to beat down, Survival was way more consistent then the hate.

Also you can't pretend that it was only GU survival, there were a ton of different builds and they all put up numbers.

[twndomn]

The argument to unban is horrendous on this thread. A card that is repeatable tutor over turns and multiple tutors in the same turn all-in-one is ban-worthy, so much that survival got the axe at the first place. This is before you bring up the graveyard tricks or Vengevine(s).

Show and Tell is a powerful combo card, but it's for different reasons. Try to bring that card into this discussion is a lame attempt, apple vs orange, totally irrelevant. Show and Tell not getting banned is Wizard's way of punishing people who don't run counter magic. This is the same for GSZ. Both SnT and GSZ are not repeatable over turns (GSZ has slim luck), not multiple in the same turn from the same card.

Survival ban is to recognize its consistency, that consistency and resiliency have became a threat to degenerate the format.

[FTW]

I saw a million games that ended with people just hard casting random creatures and VVines and swinging in backed up by counterspells or other disruption, nice Relic you got there, shame if i just bashed you with a ton of creatures. Not to mention if you didn't have the hate, then you just got combo'd out, if you over boarded you lost to beat down, Survival was way more consistent then the hate.

This. I hear hardcasting Tarmogoyf, Knight of the Reliquary and Pridemages can win games.

The 1st place GW version linked above is essentially Maverick with the GSZ slot replaced by an abusive repeatable tutor engine and the Vengevine combo squeezed in. Like you said, there are very different lists too. Elves even ran Survival for consistency to find Priest of Titania, Regal Force and other stuff. Survival just squeezes into any creature-based strategy with Forests and gives you a ton of consistency and resilience.

Imagine Survival around with newer creatures like Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and [card]Grand Abolisher[/card]!! Being able to only run 1-2 copies of Thalia, Gaddock Teeg and Abolisher and being able to tutor them up immediately gives the average Legacy deck a much tougher time disrupting you while you do other broken stuff. Or you can just slow down combo decks with Thalia, Scavenging Ooze and friends.

Deathrite Shaman slides in pretty smoothly too. The first one gives you extra mana for survival activations. Subsequent ones morph into whatever creature you want, making DRS way more efficient in your deck than in an opponents where they may draw unwanted multiples. That's exactly what Survival used to do for Goyfs. Oh, graveyards are small and Goyf looks bad? Ok, I'll replace it with a situationally better creature. Meanwhile the non-Survival opponent would be stuck with the weaker Goyf.

For creature-based strategies, it's like you're playing with an Avatar that reads "G: replace any garbage card in your hand with any card in your deck. activate this ability as often as you like". That's pretty freaking amazing just for hand sculpting. The fact that you can actually use the cards you dump (or make opponent afraid you will combo with them and force him to overcommit) is just plain abusive and card advantage.

Oh, let's not forget the trick many Loyal Retainers-Iona players used to save their combo from targeted graveyard hate.
-activate Retainers targetting Iona in GY
-opponent uses surprise GY hate like Surgical Extraction/Coffin Purge/Faerie Macabre, or opponent activates Crypt or Relic
-in response, G, pitch a creature: find Emrakul
-G, pitch Emrakul: survival ability on the stack
-Emrakul triggers, reshuffling graveyard and countering the GY hate
-survival ability resolves, finding Iona or Retainers

Short of Stifle, that can't even be countered. Rinse and repeat next turn. Meanwhile, while you're slowing down to keep mana and hate open to stop Iona, there are these annoying critters turning sideways at your face.






Also you can't pretend that it was only GU survival, there were a ton of different builds and they all put up numbers.[/QUOTE]

[(nameless one)]

God how I love SotF!

FTW's above scenario just gave me a SotF boner!

[nedleeds]

So people with access to a resolved SotF and GGGG and a dude in hand were winning games of Legacy on the 4th or 5th turn ...

Question: WHO FUCKING CARES. PEOPLE ARE REANIMATING GRISELBRAND ON TURN 1 AND DRAWING 21 CARDS.

[nedleeds]

How does GSZ tutor up 4 Rootwallas put them into play and then find you a Craterhoof? Also with survival and cradles i can break up the mana over multiple turns and not just have to spend a bunch of cards in my hand and 9 mana all at once. Were you being serious?
Like this isn't even remotely like what elves does, and this is just a compact plan A package of things you want to probably run anyway, plan b is your entire tool box and whatever disruption you want and any other combo you have space for.

It doesn't tutor 4 shitty 1/1's, it doesn't have to play shitty cards like Loyal Retainers / Rootwalla / Iona that are dog shit without the 4 of SotF that it has no way to tutor for or find ... elves plays free creatures like visionary and can pump out far more bad 1/1's than SotF could ever hope to and you aren't stuck with double fucking rootwalla no SotF in your opener. It doesn't have to waste tempo playing 1G thing that doesn't attack. Either way if your doomsday scenario is a craterhoof, which by the way doesn't give the rootwalla's haste ... then just GSZ him out there. Don't mix cradle in, because the change to cradle will do as much to boost elves as it would any deck that might dick around with activating SotF. Survival has never existed in an era with

- Revoker
- The myriad of graveyard hate
- Most important, GSZ

When SotF was 'Dominating' is was because the lazy netdeckers that were ruling the SCG circuit were all getting BYE'ed and leveled and scooped recursively into the top 8's week after week. Nobody so much as even bothered to play Spell Snare. SotF isn't close to the power level of some of things that are legal in legacy, it just isn't. If we were talking about a landscape with SnT, Brainstorm, Griselbrand and Lion's Eye Diamond all banned then there might be some merit. Fact is that legacy has many more powerful, fast strategies than SotF. Survival would once again be a great card, but it would compete heavily for deck space with GSZ.

Those opining about scenarios were you only run 1 Thalia and think you're so fucking brilliant fail to understand where Thalia is most valuable which is slammed down on the second fucking turn. Not on turn 3 or 4 after resolving (?) a 2 mana non-creature which interacts poorly when you happen to be staring down a fucking Thalia.

[FTW]

So people with access to a resolved SotF and GGGG and a dude in hand were winning games of Legacy on the 4th or 5th turn ...

Question: WHO FUCKING CARES. PEOPLE ARE REANIMATING GRISELBRAND ON TURN 1 AND DRAWING 21 CARDS.

People are trying to do cute things with Griselbrand against a field of graveyard hate when 0-land Belcher can just kill you on turn 1 without using the graveyard? Oh noes, how are other decks ever winning any games? Clearly the only determinant of whether a deck can win is whether it can win on turn 1!!

However do BG/x decks and Miracles and RUG ever win any games when PEOPLE ARE REANIMATING GRISELBRAND ON TURN 1. These decks lake longer than 5 turns to win? OMG why does anyone ever play them?

[HPB_Eggo]

I'm really not getting why everyone is thinking of Survival as a combo card...

Survival generates 100% card quality in a deck running the right creatures. This is fundamentally what it does, and it's very good at it. There isn't anything else in the game that generates that amount of card quality with such a small drawback.

That alone doesn't make it an unhealthy card for Legacy. It has three problems that prevent it from being reintroduced to the format...

1) It doesn't just generate card quality. It also generates card advantage, can create huge tempo swings, and can combo out into

2) If one isn't enough - which it isn't, at least IMO - you have to consider that Survival decks are largely built so they can run without Survival. Survival would be great to have, but there are maybe 10 dead cards in the whole deck without Survival, and you can win without finding or resolving Survival. Compare that to another 'combo' deck, a la Sneak Show, where the entire deck revolves around getting to 1-2 cards and resolving them with some other cards in hand. Survival's consistency is way up there in comparison.

3) One and two might sell you - again, doesn't work for me, but they might - but this should: Wizards wants to keep printing better and better creatures so they can push the boundaries of what they can do with them without breaking the game. Any of those cards could be potentially very broken with one or more aspects of Survival, and checking every creature against all possible interactions with Survival is obviously prohibitive when it comes to design, particularly when they want to consistently print things that are better than what has come before.

Want proof? Just look at Vengevine and you have it.

[sdematt]

Man, I just want Survival back so I can play RGBSA again as a deck.

4 Survival of the Fittest
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Thoughtseize
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Recurring Nightmare

4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Anger
1 Eternal Witness
1 Big Game Hunter
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
1 Magus of the Moon
1 Genesis
2 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Flametongue Kavu
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary
1 Shriekmaw

4 Bayou
4 Taiga
8 Fetchlands
4 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Mountain

Is this really too good for Legacy? Why can't you let me have nice things?

-Matt

[ReAnimator]

@Nedleeds

I don't know if you are trolling or being ridiculously thick and revisionist. None of what you are saying is really making any sense what so ever.