There was a time not too long ago that Eldrazi Stompy occupied a pretty huge share of the metagame. You'd see it everywhere in paper tournaments and it was the #2 or #3 deck in terms of results, only 2nd to Miracles usually, online in Dailies and other MTGO events.
Now, it's not even on the MTGGoldfish list of decks per the Legacy metagame. It's completely fallen off the map online, seemingly.
You still see it occasionally in paper tournaments but no more than 2-3 Eldrazi Stompy pilots usually make it to the later rounds of the tournaments and the top tables.
I'm just kind of curious because it's not really apparent to me as to why it's had this steep decline in playability or results. When it was popular it seemed almost like a pillar of the format - one of the main non-blue decks to actually have a shot at winning tournaments and doing well alongside Lands and Death n Taxes. I thought it would be a staple of the Legacy metagame for as long as all of the cards were legal. But what happened to cause this decline?
- 'Pathy' on MTGO
- Eastern PA player
Some guesses:
- Blue mages (in particular, Delver and old-Miracles pilots) adapted their playstyles and lists to beat it.
- Dragon Stompy replaced it as the best Chalice deck.
- RB Reanimator and Turbo Depths became popular budget options, while some Eldrazi pieces (Chalice and City) spiked, so there’s less likelihood for new/budget players to be drawn to it.
- People got bored of it.
Damn, Stuart nailed each point I was going to make!
I'll add that in addition to Blood Moon Stompy gaining in popularity, several other decks with Chalice have also been competing for that space in the meta.
Plus the fact that most players would rather play with 1 cmc spells than try to keep others from playing with them.
TC says it's still top 8ing
"Good, bad, I'm the guy with the gun." --Ash
Its best match-up got banned. The #1 reason for the success of Eldrazi was that it boasted a somewhat positive match-up versus Miracles which was the clear #1 deck but with no Miracles, Eldrazi just has average and difficult match-ups left. Grixis Pyromancer was always a tad difficult for it as was D&T, Czech Pile poses similar issues if not quite to the same level, Storm and Elves are positive MUs but not a sufficient portion of the metagame to catapult a Stompy-deck to the top. It's very clear when you look at metagame trends; as soon as Miracles left the DTB, so did Eldrazi.
At the very least the streamlined Mono-Void version is having trouble and the deck might have to innovate with colour splashes to better fit the new metagame, which brings about the same problems with consistency that keeps other Stompy-variants from dominating; Dragon Stompy and Faerie Stompy spent a bit of time each over the last 10 years in DTB but this happens very sporadically. And of course, the best lists haven't probably been optimized and spread for that yet. The spreading of tech in Legacy tends to be rather glacial, which also probably contributes.
^What he said.
Also, eldrazi aggro has been evolving. Grim Monoliths are being implemented and more emphasis is put on the mid-game than early game aggro. Players are dropping Mimics and some even Matter Reshapers (which I think is very wrong) in favor of more 6-drops or colored replacements.
The lists without any colorless artifact mana tend to suffer quite much from Blood Moon so the traditional lists should in theory be have meta issues as long as moon stompy has significant meta presence.
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The deck's numbers have waned a bit, but it's still a presence. It made the finals at Eternal Weekend: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=17343&d=307277&f=LE
And it won the Card Kingdom/Mox Boarding House 1K last month: http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=17317&d=307115&f=LE
Those are both current successes.
I'll disagree here who says the format is worse for it then it was, for me when a deck gets the spotlight it is heavily played because of 2 reasons.
Hype: People wanting to test this "new" deck.
Opponents unprepared: When you have a deck that few people played against, people are unprepared to fight it, they usually don't take optimal lines of play because of the inexperience in the MU.
Basically Eldrazi Aggro is as good as it has always been, but its not that the numbers are lower than it should, but when the deck appeared the numbers were higher than what the deck really is. Guess what, it is exactly the same thing that is happening to Czech Pile now, it was like THE most played deck 3 months ago, and now it is the third and slowly going down. Its not that the deck isn't good, its just it isn't the menace people hype for when it starts to see play. So Eldrazi had 9-10% on mtgtop8 on 2016, that did not reflect what the deck really is, the deck is a tier 1.5 to 1, not the tier 0 people were hyping for, now its like 5%, which is MUCH more plausible to what the deck really is, and its number is still high to say that it just "fallen off the map". Yeah, and it is a DTB.
It completely fucked up every format it touched.
"If magic is your crutch, cast it aside and learn to walk without it." —Teferi
Still played and doing well, but not nearly as well as it was doing pre-bannings. We're talking about a matter of scale, not a binary on-off sort of a deal here and Eldrazi, while still present, are a significantly smaller and up until now at least (we'll see if this is a blip or if the new builds manage to gain a permanent position in the top tiers), less successful part of it.
I’m a bit confused. Are we actually discussing why a deck to beat is not popular? Or is there some subterranean nuance that is secretly present in the discussion?
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"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
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Why would you write that? The decks to beat section does not determine which decks are popular. It is a reflection of them. The topic predates the update in DTB by like a day. So any changes in it has been present in the meta for weeks already. And you already know that.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
Is this topic really that egregious? The OP was going off MTGGoldfish (which currently shows Eldrazi at 2% of the meta) and personal experience. I guess he could have dug around on more sites (or waited a day to see this month's updated DTB) before posting, but just working from those, it's a reasonable question to ask.
It's also reasonable to ask the question considering during the whole of Miracle's reign, Eldrazi spent nearly every month in DTB with very solid results. Starting in May? It's been May, June, July, August, September until it hit DTB again. So 5 months not as a DTB and now 1 month as the DTB (1/6 thus far) as opposed to ~9/10 months as DTB since printing until Miracle's banning. Yeah, still a presence, yeah, a solid deck, but certainly not the same presence it used to be. Or who knows, mayhap the meta has taken a shape more favourable for our Noodly Lords again, but for now the question still remains.
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