[SCD] Survival of the fittest decklist challenge

[nedleeds]

Look, I love value Show and Tell lists as much as the next guy. But they aren't why Show and Tell is banned.

Show and Tell was banned because of lists like Gerry's. Combo lists where a resolved Show and Tell meant game over. And judging by a lot of the comments in this thread, people don't seem to understand that.

Abrupt Decay is not an answer to Show and Tell. The Show and Tell player will laugh at you and maybe die of a burst spleen and you'd win by default.

Who cares if a deck can generate GGGGG and resolve SotF and "win", on the ground, or with a disruptable graveyard combo. Elves wins just as fast, show and tell is far more absurd, tougher to disrupt and resilient. If I'm going to fight a stack war over SotF and have it resolve and still have some number of G available and a creature in hand, I'm just playing a pet deck. I could have done the same thing with Show and Tell, not worried about having mana left over to start a chain and just shit on your face with any of the laughable childmind creatures WotC has graced us with.

If I'm not fighting over my "instant win" SotF on the stack I'm jamming it best case on turn 2 with a dork to activate it once. Again would I rather see an Elves player resolve Glimpse? A show and tell nimrod resolve his name sake? Be locked under top / cb? It's just not that impressive anymore. We have routine turn 1 reanimations, why bother with a slower shell that has less means to put back excess Viashino Sandstalkers and do nothing 6 mana mud pies.

The cards that make SotF more tame since it's banning aren't really even the hate pieces like

- Cage
- Revoker
- Abrupt Decay
- Surgical
- Priest

it's the similar cards that are just faster

- GSZ
- Natural Order now just ends the game via Derphoof

I have no doubt SotF would be competitive but you have to cut something. Going all in on the combo version weakens the deck to existing hate.

[Julian23]

The moxt explosive Survival lists would attack you with 3-4 Vengvines on turn2. They used LED to activate Survival and Basking Rootwalla and 0 mana creatures to trigger the Vengevines.

[Phoenix Ignition]

The moxt explosive Survival lists would attack you with 3-4 Vengvines on turn2. They used LED to activate Survival and Basking Rootwalla and 0 mana creatures to trigger the Vengevines.

I don't get it, did they do this?

Turn 1: land, mana dork
Turn 2: land, SotF, LED, pay green with mana dork -> discard card + crack LED with this on the stack -> have GGG in mana pool and card (Vengevine?) in hand, use SotF to pitch Vengevine to grab 2nd vengevine, repeat to grab rootwalla, repeat to grab 0 mana creature and play it?

I would find it extremely unlikely they'd be playing Lotus Petals or any other non-creature based acceleration.

If so, that requires 2 lands, 1 mana dork, 1 SotF, 1 LED, and 1 creature in your hand (6 of 8 cards need to be these things), and nothing of yours to be countered or Thoughtseized. Even then all you can guarantee with this 6/8 perfect hand is that on turn 2 you're attacking with 2 vengevines and have a rootwalla + 0 mana creature in play. So let's pretend you get magical christmasland hand and have 8/8 perfect hand with 2 Vengevines you discarded to LED, you still aren't even attacking for lethal on turn 2.

You know what magical christmasland 8/8 card hands by turn 2 look like in other decks?

What am I missing?

[Julian23]

You're missing that instead of grabbing the Rootwalla with Survival, you just have it in your opening hand and discard it to LED. That way you can attack with 3 Vengevines.

I don't know why you are so confused though. That's just how the all-in versions worked. In fact, I think it wouldn't be too crazy to at least try it out in today's meta.

[Sharpened]

The explosiveness of Survival decks was never the problem. In fact, fast combo was pretty much the only thing that was good against Survival (in any of it's forms). Decks like Storm were Survival's worst matchup.

So if your goal is to make the most broken goldfish, you won't succeed and you are missing the strength of the card.

There was no 1 Survival deck, even at it's peak - (over the course of 5 SCG legacy opens, 50% of the top 4 decks ran Survival.)

Comparing Green Sun's Zenith to Survival is laughable.
Natural Order was around (even in the sideboard of winning Survival decks), and Craterhoof alone doesn't change how much better an engine is to a single card.

Elves is a decent comparison, but Survival was better at presenting multiple routes of attack and much more resilient.

Think about it - How do you hate out an engine, which can immediately tutor for an answer to whatever specific hate you have?

Look, I honestly have no idea if Survival of the Fittest should remain banned or not.

But Reanimator and Sneak and Show were a thing back when it was format dominant. Survival was able to power through control at that time, and I don't know what Miracles has that makes you think it won't be able to again. While the various multi-color delver tempo decks are better than the tempo decks of that time, I don't know that they would be favored against Survival.

[Phoenix Ignition]

You're missing that instead of grabbing the Rootwalla with Survival, you just have it in your opening hand and discard it to LED. That way you can attack with 3 Vengevines.

I don't know why you are so confused though. That's just how the all-in versions worked. In fact, I think it wouldn't be too crazy to at least try it out in today's meta.

But that's what I said except the "1 creature in hand" now necessarily has to be a Rootwalla or Vengevine. That's 6/8 cards you need to be exactly those things, and the payout is still only lethal on turn 3 assuming they didn't just FoW or discard your Survival (which you can't hope to protect with 6/8 cards already being things and you having to play a mana dork on turn 1).

I mean, I don't really care if they unban it or not, it's just comical what people are saying an "explosive" Survival list can do.

[Julian23]

I mean, I don't really care if they unban it or not, it's just comical what people are saying an "explosive" Survival list can do.

That start still easily beat turn2 Progenitus. Back then we didn't do this whole Lifelinking, Anihilating thing.

[Phoenix Ignition]

That start still easily beat turn2 Progenitus. Back then we didn't do this whole Lifelinking, Anihilating thing.

Ohh okay, we're talking about how good it used to be. Now I get it. Yeah, back then it was insane. Now, though, I don't think it would be a Deck to Beat. I do think it'd be a fun pet deck since there are so many options with it but by no means would it be a menace.

[Megadeus]

Turn two show and tell griselbrand. Nice survival deck. Turn one reanimate sire or griselbrand. How can people possibly think survival is over powered but are cool with show and chimp and reanimator? And various survival decks existing is a problem? Why is it a problem when survival fuels a few strategies, but when brainstorm does it and is 87.5% of the top 32 of a GP it's fine?

[mistercakes]

It would just be a matter of time before it forced all fair decks out of the meta.

Many of the survival decks ran force and daze. The deck was very strong and it could protect itself quite fine.

Just because some decks run show and tell doesn't mean that there should be another deck at that power level. It's not really a valid argument to unban survival as much of a legit argument to ban show and tell.

[Gheizen64]

The explosiveness of Survival decks was never the problem. In fact, fast combo was pretty much the only thing that was good against Survival (in any of it's forms). Decks like Storm were Survival's worst matchup.

So if your goal is to make the most broken goldfish, you won't succeed and you are missing the strength of the card.

There was no 1 Survival deck, even at it's peak - (over the course of 5 SCG legacy opens, 50% of the top 4 decks ran Survival.)

Comparing Green Sun's Zenith to Survival is laughable.
Natural Order was around (even in the sideboard of winning Survival decks), and Craterhoof alone doesn't change how much better an engine is to a single card.

Elves is a decent comparison, but Survival was better at presenting multiple routes of attack and much more resilient.

Think about it - How do you hate out an engine, which can immediately tutor for an answer to whatever specific hate you have?

Look, I honestly have no idea if Survival of the Fittest should remain banned or not.

But Reanimator and Sneak and Show were a thing back when it was format dominant. Survival was able to power through control at that time, and I don't know what Miracles has that makes you think it won't be able to again. While the various multi-color delver tempo decks are better than the tempo decks of that time, I don't know that they would be favored against Survival.

Reanimator and Sneak and show didn't have Griselbrand back then. Try those decks without griselbrand and tell me how good they are. They are BAD. Nowadays Show and tell can play Griselbrand and Omniscience, back then you had only Emrakul and Dream Halls i guess (or was it still banned?).

Combo versions of Survival are bad combo decks and aggro lists with survival are probably better than some of today's midrangey lists (mostly shardless, but nic fit too) but they still are decks with 25+ creatures with little prison elements because of how survival want your deck to be built. Saying survival can fetch an answer to a bad situation is meaningless because in most cases it's the survival deck that has to react since it's slow. What's even worse is that, with a lot of decks playing AD main, survival is a huge mana (and sometimes cards) investment that can get broken by simply AD it.

Something that happened a lot of times in my testing against BG based decks (4c delver or BUG shardless):
Dream hand of T2 survival with open mana by going mana dork T1. Opponent play land, pass. You Survival discard a creature to pick a vengevine from your deck and you get AD in response. You just spent two turns (1GG) and 2 cards to tutor up a 4/3 haste for 4 mana that you may not even have the third land to pay for. Even if you don't tutor up and wait the next turn to have GGG and respond to decay with another activation, you are assuming you have a second creature to discard chain (which you miss in about 20% of cases with 25 creatures in your deck) and even if you don't fetch you still can get AD'd EoT.
Combo decks more or less are widely favored against survival lists, as a matter of design, since the deck is just too slow in most cases barring some things like LEDvival which is terribly inconsistent (the best survival lists back then were more maverick-ish with combo finishes or just several infinite card advantage engines and i'm pretty sure the same is still true).
Control (AKA miracle) is the only deck where survival pose an issue to them that's harder to solve than most. If you don't counter the survival, you can face up to 3 Vengevines on T3 (T1 dork-> T2 sotf + land one activation, T3 land into 4 activations). Terminus slow them down significantly, but if they have a creature in hand, they just can restart the cycle the next turn and present 3 vengevines in two turns. How Miracle win is either by countering survival early, or by finding 2+ swords with snapcaster mage, or by countering whatever alternate combo the deck has (retainer or ooze). It's no surprise that miracle may struggle a bit here, because playing lot of cards that can end the game unanswered and are harder to answer for miracle (Planeswalkers or Enchantments like SotF) is what you do if you want to win vs miracle in the first place (i suspect that in an hypotetical SotF world, miracle would start maindecking artifact/enchantment removal since you'd have almost every deck with a target, from shardless, to D&T, survival, and miracle mirrors).

In short:
- combo is still favorable vs survival and nothing changed here (UG infect, Reanimator, Sneak and show, Omnitell, storm)
- other aggro or midrangey lists in BG (4c delver, shardless) are good against it and survival isn't a clear replacement for anything in those decks (shardless for example would still exist because it would immune to grave hate and care much less about AD in general and wouldn't want survival in it, and delver decks don't want survival because they play 20+ spells). A big reason for this change in dynamics is AD first and DRS second imho.
- miracle would probably be unfavored against it just like it struggle against decks which have permanents they can only answer via counters and/or have varied CMCs that get around counterbalance.

Deck i haven't tested at all against:
D&T: i suspect the deck could have some issues since survival tend to play 6+ mana dorks which make mana denial less strong against it. Even then, D&T still has lots of options in particular the swords and revokers, making the survival deck slow down enough for D&T to do its thing.
Eldrazi and other stompy lists: those are probably terrible against Survival lists. Playing "fair" magic and casting chalices is terrible when your opponent can cast infinites flying vengevines and can discard his one drops to more vengevines. Moon chalice decks probably fair a bit better, but still sucks. If survival were to become an actual meta presence, those chalice decks would probably be predated out of the meta, at which point storm became much better again, and survival is a dog to storm, and then chalice decks are good vs lot of storms and no survivals etc...

Possible future complications:
One thing that i read often is that SotF would become more broken as time pass. The card actually just got worse (relative to the format obviously) since its ban, and vengevines are still the best thing to do with it. If any absurd creature could break it, it would break reanimator and SnT first at this point, so that's not an issue. The only possibility is something that recur itself from the graveyard like vengevine, but better than vengevine. Like literally a 8/8 vengevine, or some creature that say if you control 4 of this in your graveyard you win the game (at which point you'd have to ban buried alive too).
Before WotC print cards like those, i think it's far more probable that something stupid that doesn't work nicely with survival get printed, like Monastery mentor/pyromancer, Snapcaster Mage, Delver of Secrets, Monastery Swiftspear, The eldrazi "ineedcolorlessmana" bros, DRS, AD, Omniscience, Terminus all the various graveyard hate cards etc...
Hell, i see as more probable that WotC print a new, better engine for aggro decks like a super-good PW for creatures (DRS was to an extent) than survival become broken again at this point.

Also, i still haven't seen or played a single survival list that would push anything outside of the meta, except for chalice deck, that's not worse than nic fit. Seriously. Having a deck rely so much on a permanent that get answered by the most common answer card in the format (AD) and that play a pile of bad cards whenever survival didn't work is not a recipe for a good meta deck. Other "fair" decks would still exist and thrive by virtue of not playing bad cards to go alongside their engine and not being overly vulnerable to AD or incidental grave hate. I mean, i've been trying to find it, cause i'd love for a new meta deck to be created by a possible unban, but the more i play with it, the more i get uninmpressed by Survival and how many incidental flaws the card has in today's format.
I'll still keep brewing though cause it's the thing i like the most of this money sinkhole of a game.

[Lemnear]

Come on. Can we stop talking Survival in context of some wierd pseudo-EDH lists, throwing stuff right into enemies DRS or playing it right into Decay without significant mana to use it or your own discard at all?

[CptHaddock]

Come on. Can we stop talking Survival in context of some wierd pseudo-EDH lists, throwing stuff right into enemies DRS or playing it right into Decay without significant mana to use it or your own discard at all?

Aren't the pseudo-edh lists like RGBSA? I don't know why you would bother throwing 4/3s with haste at people when you can just kill them. Shoutout to IBA's list from a few years back in the same topic.

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Taiga
3 Bayou
1 Badlands
1 Forest
1 Swamp
2 Dryad Arbor

4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Green Sun's Zenith

4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Fauna Shaman
1 Quirion Ranger

1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Anger
1 Genesis
1 Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary

1 Tin Street Hooligan
1 Withered Wretch
1 Fire Imp
1 Flametongue Kavu
1 Big Game Hunter
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
1 Keeper of the Dead
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Eternal Witness

1 Dosan the Falling Leaf
1 Sylvan Safekeeper

1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Viscera Seer
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Murderous Redcap

1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Deathbringer Thoctar

1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Zealous Conscripts

[Jonathan Alexander]

Can we stop talking Survival in context of some wierd pseudo-EDH lists [...]?

Seriously. I haven't gone through the entire thread, but every list I've seen does things it shouldn't bother doing. Where are the streamlined, cohesive decklists?

[Julian23]

People are posting a lot of RGBSA and similar lists that were already outdated years(!) before when Survival got banned. With continous streamlining of the format, one of the rules of Survival became that your deck should even be good if you didn't draw Survival. Before Vengvine hit the scene, Bant Survival was by far the best archetype. One could make a case for NicFit precursor RGB Survival (aka "Wuascht Survival"), but Bant was putting up way better numbers. I think something like it should be the starting point for any current version of it.

Here's a list of mine from an old 2008 article on PlanetMTG:

1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
2 Qasali Pridemage
2 Vendilion Clique
3 Rhox War Monk
3 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Tarmogoyf

3 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Survival of the Fittest

1 Plains
2 Forest
2 Island
2 Savannah
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
4 Windswept Heath

SB:
1 Faerie Macabre
2 Gaddock Teeg
1 Genesis
3 Krosan Grip
1 Meddling Mage
1 Path to Exile
1 Rhox War Monk
3 Spell Pierce
2 Tormod's Crypt

The required very little ressources to get a turn3 Iona while also capable of playing a very aggressive game with strong lategame power. Needless to say, Squee is probably a SB card at best these days with DRS around.

[mistercakes]

no testing, but i would try to go with this route. could be weak without removal, might try to fit in a 1 of with that guy from conspiracy that makes you the monarch.

3 deathrite shaman
4 noble hierarch
4 brainstorm
4 force of will
4 survival of the fittest
4 daze
3 ponder
2 basking rootwalla
4 vengevine
2 true-name nemesis
2 meddling mage
1 vendilion clique
1 leovold, emissary of trest
1 sanctum prelate
1 containment priest

4 tropical island
2 savannah
1 tundra
1 bayou
1 forest
1 island
4 misty rainforest
4 windswept heath

[Megadeus]

Containment Priest in your Vengevine deck seems poor at best. All of these decks seem powerful. But too powerful for the format? This is legacy, where everyone wants to play powerful things. Where storm kills you on turn 2. You make a Griselbrand on turn 2. I still fail to see how survival is too powerful for the format. Delver pushed out other tempo decks. Miracles pushed out other control decks.

[Purple Blood]

Julian23 was pretty spot on regarding how to build with this card.

I'd like to see this in a variety of Nic Fit variants particularly in Nyx Fit. It would create a much needed angle of attack for that deck to bring out a powerful creature early as turn three while still having plenty of backup plans if SotF were to be destroyed or not drawn.

I really don't see the aggressive and glass-canon-ish Vengevine strategy working too well when everyone and their mother is playing AD and DRS. How does that deck win if SotF is not resolved or is immediately decayed?

[Megadeus]

Julian23 was pretty spot on regarding how to build with this card.

I'd like to see this in a variety of Nic Fit variants particularly in Nyx Fit. It would create a much needed angle of attack for that deck to bring out a powerful creature early as turn three while still having plenty of backup plans if SotF were to be destroyed or not drawn.

I really don't see the aggressive and glass-canon-ish Vengevine strategy working too well when everyone and their mother is playing AD and DRS. How does that deck win if SotF is not resolved or is immediately decayed?

You beat down with shitty 4/3's that get Moated by Tarmogoyf. Obviously.

[Purple Blood]

You beat down with shitty 4/3's that get Moated by Tarmogoyf. Obviously.

That's the silly part. You're going through all these complicated steps to bring out a creature that's outclassed by Delver and Goyf in the first place.

To me you're either going the Meren route to have a value engine or you're trying to spring a much bigger threat in the late-early game. That's the only things that make sense.