Sadly I have to agree with this. Miracles was a "control" deck but not nearly as controlling as something like Landstill was, since it used a soft lock and a series of cards that basically invalidated whatever your opponent was doing. Without something like CounterTop, it's simply not sustainable to play a control strategy that's actually good enough to be considered tier one. You cannot claim that decks like Stoneblade are control decks, they are midrange decks with control elements, but they still maintain the ability to have a time bomb on the opponent, something that true control decks don't have. Draw-go control is dead, and that wasn't because of Miracles, it's been dead for quite some time.
We just need WotC to power creep Moat, Tabernacle, Counterspell, Propaganda, Neithervoid, The Abyss, etc.
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The problem with control isn't necessarily mid range creatures though. A pure control deck has a slow clock, which against the efficiency and power level of the formats combo decks means that even if you disrupt them, in the long run they will eventually find what they need unless you kill them or lock them. Miracles had a slow clock, but they had a lock to supplement that. Like was said, Landstill had an abysmal combo match up. I remember control used VClique as disruption plugs a clock for the combo match up. You're gonna have to go back to something like that to make combo a better match up. Blame power creeping creatures if you want, but in a world of 1 mana removal, plus snapcaster, and still a million ways to mass remove creatures, the real issue is, how do you disrupt combo and put pressure on them to win before they kill you?
Remember that draw-go isn't the only form of hard control. Not that the other forms of hard control are Tier 1 now either, but just saying. There are certainly builds of Lands, Enchantress, Stax, Pox, etc. that are control without being blue draw-go.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
I guess. Nether Void and Moat have the 4-mana issue; which is difficult with Stifle + Wasteland + Clock. If the format was a little slower, you could sustain 4CMC a little easier/more reliably, but c'est la vie.
Propaganda is just meh; it's better cousin Ensnaring Bridge sees some play; but so many decks run answers to it because answers got better (Rec Sage, QPM, Decay, Kolaghan's, Flickerwisp, etc.), not to mention DRS, Infect, Burn, Storm, etc. not caring. The mana-strangulation of legacy also make it difficult to get your hand size down without just playing badly.
I think Lands is a true control deck and I don't get why everyone ignores it. How is a deck that stops you from doing everything you attempt to do, lock you out, and whatnot not a control deck? I get that it's a prison deck, but that's the same thing IMO. Even without it, Tezzerator could be a thing at some point and is generally true control: "Stiff arm someone while drawing cards; win big"
Control isn't even about a slow clock. Control in the old days was 5-6 mana flyers with Goyf stats. Say what you will, but that's not that slow. I can understand the want for creature-less control, but a deck running 4 Push, 4 Strix, some Snaps, a couple decay, some Jaces, and whatnot seems like control to me. It's not there to bludgeon you with Goyfs, TNN, Gurmag, Equips, etc.. it's there to grind you into paste behind a wall of answers and obnoxiousness. Hell.. that deck may be good with Bridge.
I'm having giddy flashbacks of Rifter, Truffle Shuffle and Wombat now.
It's not that the format is too fast - it's that those prison cards are too slow. Grizzly becomes Goyf, Flying men becomes Delver, BoP becomes DRS, but poor Humility and co are left to rot.
Prison pieces have gotten "upgrades", but in the form of growing legs (and they mostly hose non-creatures). They are easier to remove but put up a clock - so they tend to go in more aggressive decks.
Ignore Lands? Sir, I demand satisfaction!
I would never ignore Lands. But 4x Depths, 4x Stage, and 8 1-mana tutors makes it as much a combo deck as a control deck.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
It's not so much about the speed of the clock, as when you turn it on.
Old draw-go decks would employ control elements to stop combat from happening for most of the game - or at least hamper it as best they can. They prefer to make the combat step totally irrelevant until they are ready to make a big play to close the game.
"Control" decks like D&T, Blade, and BUG control don't use control to "bypass" combat in the early stages of the game. They want combat. They use control to instead ensure that combat is happening primarily in their favour. Compare this to a deck like Cunning Wake.
Hard control is a distinct style of play, but currently in recession. Much like the best "aggro" decks (Delver) are teaming with disruption, our best "control" decks abound with aggressive elements. Legacy is still a great game, but it's unfortunate it has to move in this direction.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
Why is the speed of clock even relevant to control decks? Yes surviving to the late game is the entire point of a control deck, so obviously you are going to try to remove anything preventing you from doing so seems like a nobrainer. For me the defining factors of a control deck are resource denial, inevitability and card advantage in it's various shapes and forms. It doesn't matter if your opponent is beating you down with a serra angel or a tarmogoyf, if a deck has these characteristics then it's a control deck.
I don't know why people are so obsessed with old school beat you down with 3/3 elephants or serra angels control decks, stronger cards have been printed and it's foolish not to use them. Ya'll need to stop living in 1993.
Exactly while not exactly the backbreakers they were in their haydays landing these cards is still a huge beating to most decks. Nothing needs to be powercreeped, people just need to adapt their decks to fit these cards. You can't just jam a moat in a current blade list and then complain that moat doesn't do anything.
Now that miracles is out of the format there is nothing really stopping people from playtesting to figure out if a control style similar to miracles is viable but I guess that is much harder than waiting for someone to top 8 a large event so you can copy their list.
The difference is:
With threats come down consistently early, there is no need to stall till the late game. There is no incentive to tool your deck towards surviving till late game (not that such tools still exist) because you need only survive till the mid-game. Hence the term mid-ranged.
- Goyf is bigger.
- Goyf comes down much earlier.
- Goyf is typically backed with ove half a dozen "grizzly bears" and or "flying men".
I don't know why this distinction is so elusive, while the difference between a linear aggro deck vs, eg, UR Delver, is so readily accepted.
Personally I love my Lands deck and don't have much budget or time for brewing.
There are always opportunities to brew whatever archetype you want. Still it's nice to have established decks in a variety of play-styles. Maybe ghe new meta will produce a tier one control deck, but maybe it will not.
The cards are a lot harder to land these days. Combo, Tempo, and Midrange decks have sped up quite a lot. Some play-styles can enjoy power creep, others have to suck it up.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
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You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
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Me either. I've been playing URx control decks in paper and UWx control decks online the past couple weeks and the games have been so much more fun and rewarding than playing with/against Miracles ever was. With no one likely to derp off 42 power of angels on your end step or leave you drawing to your 1-2 of Abrupt Decay in order to beat their lock the games are actually interactive and back-and-forth.
It is insane to me that so many people dismiss any deck with a creature of CMC<2 as non-control (though of course none of these people seem to have a problem with Snapcaster Mage which was in every Miracles deck going back to day 1). Baleful Strix? Might as well be Kird Ape because you're TURNING IT SIDEWAYS OMG. It's a two-mana 1/1! If you're upset because creatures do other things now... Nekrataal and Man o War came out in like 1996. It's not all Deathrite Shaman's fault.
All the griping about creatures in muh control decks is just salt at all the top 8s not looking like old school events which tend to have 4-6 slots taken up by The Deck and other 4 Counterspell 4 Power Sink variants.
Yes, Miracles was always a prison deck, nice to see people finally admit that.
Replace CounterTop in this sentence with Chalice of the Void or Nether Void and no one would have considered Miracles control either because they aren't blue cards. Of course a deck that locks out with Chalice and then waits to resolve a threat can't possibly be control. A pox deck that grinds you out and wins with Cursed Scroll, not control.
Miracles' "clock" was the threat of ETA which was not exactly Mahamoti Djinn in mana efficiency or resistance to removal. A resolved ETA was game over in two turns or less most times and always had to be played around considering it could happen on your turn. Compare to Stoneforge fetching Batterskull which loses to creature or artifact removal, or hand disruption, with a 4-5 turn window. Entreat makes Morphling blush as a hard-to-deal-with threat.
And if it had been banned Monastery Mentor was right there to take its place, no one in the "all creatures are midrange dorks" camp seemed to really care about that card either.
This was a Standard deck. It is easy to play the Platonic ideal of a control deck when it's seeded in a smaller format. A creatureless deck won a standard pro tour like three years ago. The speed and texture of Legacy are quite different. The ideal draw-go control finisher these days is something like Vendilion Clique, but that has other weaknesses.
It's not about running creatures. It's about the function of the cards, not their type-lines.
Wall of Fog, BoP, Wall of Blossoms, etc are creatures, but not really capable of aggression. Goyf on the other hand is beat stick.
Creatures like Clique, Thalia, Snappy, Bob, Strix, etc are somewhere in between. The more of these you run (and the more other aggressive creatures (or equipment) you run with them, the less your deck is optimized by pushing for the late game. Aka, the less you play like a control deck, and the more you play like mid-ranged.
I can understand that people might not care; might be just as happy (or more so) if the control decks run a lot midrange elements. I just don't get how some people are denying that "hard control" is a unique style.
Regarding the shell you mentioned - I am hopeful that a Jace or Tezz deck will emerge.
A few Strix and Snappies are cool. But four of both of those plus four Revokers and a Thopter engine and Tezz's minus abilities - it's possible for this sort of deck to be built with a lot of aggression too.
It will be fun to see what lists end up rising to the top.
Supremacy 2020 is the modern era game of nuclear brinksmanship! My blog:
https://fieldmarshalshandbook.wordpress.com
You can play Lands.dec in EDH too! My primer:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/t...lara-lands-dec
I'm not really that surprised. Delver (Grixis or BUG) is just a better anti-combo (as opposed to anti-Storm) deck than Eldrazi and is favored in the head-to-head in my experience. Eldrazi probably isn't even the best Chalice deck right now (that title likely goes to 4c Loam)
I agree with most of what you said, though I find it funny you've replied to my same post in three different posts haha.
If a Thopter Tezz deck that isn't Chalice based emerges and doesn't eat it to combo, you can bet I'll be running it.
I think it needs something like:
* Strix (3+)
* Revoker (3+)
* Thoptersword (3/2)
* Scroll Rack (1-2)
and it may be doable. The main issue comes from getting blue count high enough, artifact count high enough, and not being garbage. It may not be possible to have all the things.. but one day..
EDIT: Maybe 2xEntomb, 3-4 Agent, and 1xLoam could complete the main package.
Not only that, but while Miracles, Delver, BGx (Decay, DRS, Leovold), Elves and WW (Cavern) all got pretty blunt and brutal tools, Landstill did not. It's a fun deck, but it got left behind...hard. It's like Cinderella without a Faerie or a happy end. A step-child in a world full of spoilt brats.
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