[Article] Unlocking Legacy: Fit To Survive

[troopatroop]

Anger builds are BETTER at controlling the board because they do it a whole shit ton faster. Give ATS 2 turns with an Active survival and 3 lands and they WILL have you locked out of the game. Thats better than anything outside of blue can offer. Anger is really there for Rofellos, and without it I wouldn't want to play survival, period.

[Di]

1) Survival needs some way to get into the midgame faster than normal. It can do this with walls, counters, disruption, or a combination of these.

-> Therapy, Swords, STE, Walls

Wow, cards that a whole lot of other Survival decks run. Original thinking there chief. The Survival build that placed 10th at the GAGG was RGwb, and had a combination of those Therapy, StP, and Walls. But it had Anger, so it provided those outlets yet was still faster than your proposed deck.

2) Survival works best when it is used to create inevitability through recursion or Genesis.

-> Genesis, Recurring Nightmare

Again, something a handful of other decks do. Recurring Nightmare not as often seen, but it's a variety of Survival decks.

3) Survival needs a plan to win without Survival on the board.

-> Control the board with Therapy, Swords, Deed, Witness, Hierarch, dig through your deck with Top & E-Tutors

The only card in that entire stack that isn't seen in another Survival build is Deed. You get Pernicious Deed. You also potentially blow up your own board with it as well. I'm not going to say it's the wrong play or a bad choice, but hindering your own board position can be risky.

Also, Heirarch is not board control. He is a single 4/4 creature. Every single deck in the format can deal with it. Unless there's multiples of him or something else to hold the fort, that won't pull it on it's own.

4) Survival is a card used for board control.

-> check. Survival fetches the answers to stay in control.

Check. What every Survival deck in the history of the world (sans FEB) has used the card for.


So basically...you provide arguments for a deck that has features from nearly every other Survival deck. You win the prize, seriously. The ONLY card that gives you a different game is Pernicious Deed. It's hot against Goblins and aggro, I'll give you that. But you sacrifice an incredible amount of speed for a board sweeper that can't be active until turn 4. By then, it can be Needled, Krosan Grip'd, etc. Not to mention it's awful to draw after Survival.

Then again, I'm aware you and the rest of the foreign crew have been pitching the anti-red Survival builds for a long time now, so I don't believe anything I or anyone else says will knock sense into to.

[hi-val]

It also should be noted that Pernicious Deed has Channel/Stream of Life synergy with Aether Vial, which is a ridic card.

[MattH]

Your arguments seem to be entirely based on the premise that Baloth etc. can "2 for 1" other decks. I am not seeing this borne out in reality. Consider that against goblins you really need to 3-for-1 or better to beat them.

Your deck looks well positioned to take on threshold but almost nothing else. I do not know why you think Chalice is so devastating unless you also are able to back it up with Survival most of the time. If you toss it for 0 then Tendrils can use a Ritual plan. If you toss it for 1 it can use LEDs, although X=1 hurts their setup. If for X=2 you hurt their IT-based combo and sort of affect Cabal Ritual but that is both slow and not that great really.

And it's not like they don't run tutors needed to get their "one hate card," not to mention their own backup plans - for example, a quick 5 storm ETW on turn 1 or 2. In my experience, you really need a "Chalice and ___" play to win, but you have precious little to fill in that blank with. Settlers? Another Chalice?

This is what black is for. Therapy is so insane.

[Bongo]

Diablos, stop your condescending tone or this discussion is over.
I'm giving reasonable arguments why I think GBW is better, no need to start a flame war here. Discussions are here to gain new insights, but if you're not even willing to listen, this makes no sense.

I playtested the ATS, RGBSA, and a lot of other builds. I haven't heard a lot of rational arguments for Anger builds. "OMG Anger makes everything faster" is inaccurate, since you don't need that speed as a control deck (as I explained before). You need a way to deal with the speed.
You don't have to knock sense into me, solid playtesting results and good arguments are enough to convince me. So far, I've seen neither.


Why do I favor the GBW version? Because it gave me the better results than the Anger builds.

The only card in that entire stack that isn't seen in another Survival build is Deed. You get Pernicious Deed. You also potentially blow up your own board with it as well. I'm not going to say it's the wrong play or a bad choice, but hindering your own board position can be risky.

So basically...you provide arguments for a deck that has features from nearly every other Survival deck. You win the prize, seriously. The ONLY card that gives you a different game is Pernicious Deed. It's hot against Goblins and aggro, I'll give you that. But you sacrifice an incredible amount of speed for a board sweeper that can't be active until turn 4. By then, it can be Needled, Krosan Grip'd, etc. Not to mention it's awful to draw after Survival.

Deed is crucial, because it allows you to control the board like no other card. Solidarity is about the only deck in Legacy unaffected by it.
This card is not symmetrical, and good players can get a lot of mileage out of the card. You don't hinder your board position if you construct your deck properly. Even in a worst case scenario where you blow up the entire board, Witness/Genesis allows you to recover quickly.

And just because Deed can be answered by Needle and Krosan Grip doesn't mean it's not good. Are Goblins bad because there is Pyroclasm?

Deed is also not awful after Survival. What do you Needle now, Survival or Deed? Having both on the board allows you to fetch Witness in case you clear the board and drop Survival again, this time on an empty table.

Deed gives you so much strategic options and allows you to control the game far better. You're also less reliant on Survival. Drawing Anger sucks, drawing Deed does not.

Affinity, Angel Stompy, Zoo, basically all aggro matchups improve significantly with Deed. Threshold also has major problems with Deed. 3-colors also give you better manabase stability than a GRBW version against Goblins, which is crucial to consistently power out Plagues and get your engine going.
Swords, STE, Walls, Therapy buy you enough time in the early game to deploy Deed in the midgame. Hierarch IS control against any form of aggro, recouping life and providing a threat that must be answered.


I'll be gladly reverting back to the Anger builds if you can show me better playtesting & matchup results. Did you even test GBW? Your dismissal was rather quick.

[Di]

Diablos, stop your condescending tone or this discussion is over.
I'm giving reasonable arguments why I think GBW is better, no need to start a flame war here. Discussions are here to gain new insights, but if you're not even willing to listen, this makes no sense.

I am in no way starting a flame war here. I am, however, disbelieving in your logic and think your arguments don't really justify anything that provides reasonable proof why your build is better. And I'm not the only one against you, but I'm pretty sure everyone else in this thread is in agreement with the Anger philosophy.

Diablos, stop your condescending tone or this discussion is over.
I'm giving reasonable arguments why I think GBW is better, no need to start a flame war here. Discussions are here to gain new insights, but if you're not even willing to listen, this makes no sense.

I playtested the ATS, RGBSA, and a lot of other builds. I haven't heard a lot of rational arguments for Anger builds. "OMG Anger makes everything faster" is inaccurate, since you don't need that speed as a control deck (as I explained before). You need a way to deal with the speed.
You don't have to knock sense into me, solid playtesting results and good arguments are enough to convince me. So far, I've seen neither.

Have you ever thought of fighting fire with fire? Answering speed with your own speed will allow you to equally matchup with them at the same level, but with your speed you can easily send multiple 2-for-1s in a turn. Seeing a deck like ATS or RGBSA play multiple FTKs in one turn, as early as turn 4 or 5 isn't all that uncommon. Your philosophy is skewed, however. You attempt to slow the game down and bring their game to your level. That gameplan is fine if it works, but it's also incredibly risky against a deck that is almost twice as fast as you. By the time you play Pernicious Deed (turn 3), they can kill you turn 4. Let's not forget Goblins also runs Wasteland and Rishadan Port, so they can just stall you from casting Pernicious Deed until possibly turn 4, and just gain an advantage on you tapping out. With faster builds featuring more acceleration, you have a better chance of fighting their disruption package and staying in the game, and with Anger their Survival becomes incredibly more potent because they have immediate answers and the ability to drop more threats over the course of the next few turns. Without Pernicious Deed, what you going to do against a Goblins player that just cast a Ringleader and is sending multiple Piledrivers and a horde? You can block them with your Wall of Blossoms, and play a single Loxodon Heirarch next turn, but they should still be able to run over you. You can add StP in the mix, but half the format runs StP and Goblins still runs over them. It helps, but basically I see your deck folding without Pernicious Deed. Post-board I don't know, because I don't know your sideboard. If you have Engineered Plagues it's different, but still, I feel your gameplan is just too slow to deal with their fast-paced attack.

Or, we could just get an experienced Goblins player in here and ask them what would fear more. A deck who's sole acceleration is in STE and primary means to killing Goblins is Pernicious Deed all the while being hit with disruption, or the other deck who can fight the disruption better and trade quicker against them.

And just because Deed can be answered by Needle and Krosan Grip doesn't mean it's not good. Are Goblins bad because there is Pyroclasm?

That isn't what I meant. I'm saying you place a heavy amount of reliance on Pernicious Deed as a defensive weapon, and should that be dealt with I only see you struggled against a deck like Goblins. Goblins can easily fight through something like Pyroclasm because they play Matron, Ringleader, and SGC, and just laugh through it.

Affinity, Angel Stompy, Zoo, basically all aggro matchups improve significantly with Deed. Threshold also has major problems with Deed. 3-colors also give you better manabase stability than a GRBW version against Goblins, which is crucial to consistently power out Plagues and get your engine going.

I will give you Affinity in this regard. Affinity can be a problematic matchup because of their quickness and ability to win outside of the attack step. However, Zoo, Angel Stompy, and Threshold aren't bad matchups at all. Pernicious Deed is certainly insane in these matchups, but you can't dismiss speed in these matchups. For instance take the Angel Stompy matchup. An Anger build would tutor up Rofellos and start going nuts with men and overpower AS with more threats.

I'll be gladly reverting back to the Anger builds if you can show me better playtesting & matchup results. Did you even test GBW? Your dismissal was rather quick.

I will admit that I did not test this deck, and I did dismiss it rather quickly. For this I will apologize to you because I am basing a lot of my theory on speculation, but I personally can't imagine running a Survival deck without red. I think this is perhaps because we have a greatly different view of Survival. Now that I think, pretty much both of our arguments are entirely void at this point, because we are basically discussing two entirely different decks. You look at ATS and RGBSA, they are aggro-control decks. Emphasis on aggro. Anger is an aggro card. Your GBW build is purely control. Without the aggro aspect of the deck, I suppose I can understand why Anger is unnecessary (although I don't like that logic, I see your point). Regardless, it's showing innovation for Survival from all sides, which is a good thing.

[Bane of the Living]

Im curious why you didnt list Welder Survival at all or even mention him in the playable red cards. You list crap like Kiki Jiki combo over it... Welder Survival is imho the only survival deck really worth playing because of its combo nature and "opps i win" hands. I have no idea why it fell out of favor.

[Lego]

Diablos, stop your condescending tone or this discussion is over.

I like how people read tone of voice into online posts.

[xsockmonkeyx]

Welder Survival is imho the only survival deck really worth playing because of its combo nature and "opps i win" hands. I have no idea why it fell out of favor.

Wait, what?

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

I like how people read tone of voice into online posts.

You mean excersise reading comprehension?

Or are you legitimately claiming thst "Wow, cards that a whole lot of other Survival decks run. Original thinking there chief" isn't condescension?

[Lego]

You mean excersise reading comprehension?

Or are you legitimately claiming thst "Wow, cards that a whole lot of other Survival decks run. Original thinking there chief" isn't condescension?

Touché.

[Bongo]

Nice to see that the tone of the discussion calmed down.

Also, thanks Spatula.

On to the interesting stuff:

Have you ever thought of fighting fire with fire? Answering speed with your own speed will allow you to equally matchup with them at the same level, but with your speed you can easily send multiple 2-for-1s in a turn.
Your philosophy is skewed, however. You attempt to slow the game down and bring their game to your level. It helps, but basically I see your deck folding without Pernicious Deed. Post-board I don't know, because I don't know your sideboard. If you have Engineered Plagues it's different, but still, I feel your gameplan is just too slow to deal with their fast-paced attack.

Actually, this thought led me to GBW. Answering fire with fire is not the way to go because Survival itself is not an aggro or speed card, like hi-val wrote in his article. You will always be inherently "behind" if you choose the speed route because of this.
Like Flores said: misassignement of role = game loss, and the proper role here is control, especially against Goblins.

Those multiple 2-for-1s mentioned above only happen if you draw Survival and if you get an active Rofellos. Those conditions aren't always easily met, and Pithing Needle is a big obstacle to this plan (which GBW has a much easier time handling due to Deed).
GBW also doesn't fold without Deed, as playtesting has shown. Just slam down Survival and go from there.

Also, Engineered Plague in the sideboard combined with a stable manabase, STE, Wall of Roots and Sensei's Top to search for multiples turn the Goblin matchup after boarding in your favor.

A deck who's sole acceleration is in STE and primary means to killing Goblins is Pernicious Deed all the while being hit with disruption, or the other deck who can fight the disruption better and trade quicker against them. .

I'm running 4 Wall of Roots in conjunction with 4 STE, so that gives me a pretty good chance to land a Deed on turn 3, even when facing a Port or a Wasteland. Turn 3 Hierarch is also nice.

I will give you Affinity in this regard. Affinity can be a problematic matchup because of their quickness and ability to win outside of the attack step. However, Zoo, Angel Stompy, and Threshold aren't bad matchups at all. Pernicious Deed is certainly insane in these matchups, but you can't dismiss speed in these matchups. For instance take the Angel Stompy matchup. An Anger build would tutor up Rofellos and start going nuts with men and overpower AS with more threats.

I'm really surprised that Affinity isn't played in numbers yet, because it constantly puts up good numbers across the field in my testing. Null Rod, Kataki, Ancient Grudge and Serenity are rare sights, and if things stay that way, Affinity will do very well at GP Columbus. Deed comes in very handy here.

Let's look a little closer at the Angel Stompy matchup. Your strategy of "going nuts with men" has a fundamental problem, and I'm not referring to the gayness-factor here.
Parallax Wave or Cataclysm offset all your multiple 2-for-1s you managed before. Sideboarded games are even worse, because Pithing Needle and/or Armageddon shut off Survival & Mana, which is the basis of your multiple 2-for-1s. Once Jitte gets counters or they start digging with Mask of Memory, things get even more difficult.
In my testing with old Survival variants, Angel Stompy was more problematic than it appeared to be on paper. RGBSA for instance had a lot of problems if it didn't run Masticore maindeck because of the Pro-Red dudes.

The GBW version with Deed has a higher win percentage, because you can take out the threats themselves instead of overpowering them and simultaneously remove the equipment, all at instant speed. Exalted Angels make nice targets for Swords.
Also, Deed dramatically increased the win percentage against Thresh and all forms of Zoo.

You look at ATS and RGBSA, they are aggro-control decks. Emphasis on aggro. Anger is an aggro card.

Maybe EATS, but the old ATS and RGBSA certainly didn't emphasize the aggro aspect. They were control-aggro, in that you switched into beatdown mode when you had control of the game. The TradewindSurvival builds where ATS evolved from were strongly control-oriented.
Rofellos+Anger just made the "switching" a lot more quicker. To start the beatdown, you need at least 1GGGGG (1G Survival, G to fetch Anger, G to fetch Rofellos, GG to play), which already indicates that Survival is not an early game card (which it needs to be if you say that it's aggro).

Again, going the aggro route is wrong here, because Survival is inherently a control card, not an aggro card, which hi-val nicely illustrated in his article.

[Zilla]

And it's not like they don't run tutors needed to get their "one hate card," not to mention their own backup plans - for example, a quick 5 storm ETW on turn 1 or 2. In my experience, you really need a "Chalice and ___" play to win, but you have precious little to fill in that blank with. Settlers? Another Chalice?

This is what black is for. Therapy is so insane.

Chalice + Therapy = not such good synergy, being that you're going to want to set Chalice to one the majority of the time, I would think.

[Mirrislegend]

I thought the article was well written, and would have been persuasive if it didnt fold to one idiom that I thought has become very common in reference to Survival: Dont have half of your deck made of techy one-ofs. If you do, and for any reason are denied the full use of SotF, then you will lose.

Is the fault with the idiom? Because it seems more than reasonable to me...

[Mulletus]

I wish I had the patience to read all of the replies... but I might as well post one. I play survival.... so I guess I have to defend it. I change it up all the time, mainly meta stuff. I lose to combo a lot and goblins half the time. I beat everything else. So I am currently changing my main deck to handle goblins a little more often, and I am wasting as many sideboard slots for anti-combo as dead cards there are in the main. So yes I have 8... chalice and pillar. For some reason it works. I think I need to play more though. I have the ability to mulligan very agressivly... mainly cuz my top deck is so good. Almost everything in the deck is two for one in one way or another.
I've ridden this deck to 30th at GP Philly, and a pretty high rating ... 1866 -good for #2 in the cuse, and #11 in New York. I know I'll get bashed for this part, but I didnt want new folks to think I was a random talkin jive.

[Di]

Again, going the aggro route is wrong here, because Survival is inherently a control card, not an aggro card, which hi-val nicely illustrated in his article.

Answering fire with fire is not the way to go because Survival itself is not an aggro or speed card, like hi-val wrote in his article.

I'm not calling anyone out here or anything, but I just find it odd that the list he posted was a more aggro-oriented deck after comments like that.

Like Flores said: misassignement of role = game loss, and the proper role here is control, especially against Goblins.

There is no missassignment of role in my or RGBSA's game plan. This depends on how you design the deck. You state that Survival is a control card, and in theory it is, but that does not mean it can't take a different route if you design the deck a completely different way. Against Goblins, you are always the control deck. Always. Just because I assume my deck to be aggro focused does not mean I have an aggro gameplan against every deck.

Those multiple 2-for-1s mentioned above only happen if you draw Survival and if you get an active Rofellos. Those conditions aren't always easily met, and Pithing Needle is a big obstacle to this plan (which GBW has a much easier time handling due to Deed).
GBW also doesn't fold without Deed, as playtesting has shown. Just slam down Survival and go from there.

That isn't true. Outside of Survival you do have Dark Confidant and Brainstorm to find your 2-for-1s, and if you stick Tradewind Rider it's a permanent answer. Obviously it's tougher without Survival, but the way you state is you believe the deck is too weak without Survival, which is far from the truth.

Also note, I honestly doubt I'll be seeing a Pithing Needle coming out of Goblins sideboard anytime soon. They have a lot more things to worry about over a Survival of the Fittest, so they shouldn't even have room in their sideboard for it.

I'm running 4 Wall of Roots in conjunction with 4 STE, so that gives me a pretty good chance to land a Deed on turn 3, even when facing a Port or a Wasteland. Turn 3 Hierarch is also nice.

I was not aware of this. You need to at least post the decklist, so everyone else can get a better idea of your argument.

Let's look a little closer at the Angel Stompy matchup. Your strategy of "going nuts with men" has a fundamental problem, and I'm not referring to the gayness-factor here.
Parallax Wave or Cataclysm offset all your multiple 2-for-1s you managed before. Sideboarded games are even worse, because Pithing Needle and/or Armageddon shut off Survival & Mana, which is the basis of your multiple 2-for-1s. Once Jitte gets counters or they start digging with Mask of Memory, things get even more difficult.

They offset the 2-for-1s managed before, as you've stated. Not after. When Parallax Wave comes down, I'm assuming there are more removal spells left in my deck. I run 6 of them, afterall.

And on Cataclysm, I will gladly take on an opponent casting it in the face of a Survival. If they believe a Cataclysm will win them the game when I still tutor up mana accelerants and 4/4 Werebears for the rest of the game, let them. The only time, only time I would honestly fear the Cataclysm would if I was without Survival facing a creature with Umezawa's Jitte on it. That can certainly happen, but the odds of it happening are worse than me drawing a Survival.

Also, Deed dramatically increased the win percentage against Thresh and all forms of Zoo.

This statement is irrelevant because Threshold is nearly a 70% win percentage for basically every Survival variant, and Zoo is an incredibly weak (not to mention underplayed) archtype. They play small men, like 2/2s or 2/3s or maybe some 3/2. I'm unsure where the idea came that a Survival deck wasn't able to deal with a weenie deck like Zoo, because it's basically designed to deal with aggro, and that is one that is 10x worse than Goblins.

To start the beatdown, you need at least 1GGGGG (1G Survival, G to fetch Anger, G to fetch Rofellos, GG to play), which already indicates that Survival is not an early game card (which it needs to be if you say that it's aggro).

The aggro archtype is not defined by the time it starts attacking. It is defined by the nature of the deck. The nature of the deck is to act very aggressively, hence the aggro. Are you saying Suicide Black wouldn't be aggro if it cut Dark Ritual and just waited until turn 3 to play all it's creatures and then attack until turn 4? Just because I'm not attacking until turn 4 or so doesn't mean the deck isn't aggro. It will take a small amount of time to set up, and then by turn 4-5 when you send 10+ damage at their face I'm pretty sure I could define that as aggro.

Actually, I think I'm just not going to respond to this thread anymore. It's fucking pointless. Just absorb those thoughts above and just let it fucking be, because I can't even comprehend how retarded this argument is. I, along with the rest of the website, will keep those Anger sentiments out, because your perspective is so, I don't want to say wrong because it'll only offend you, but "different", so different that I can't even justify a reason to keep talking. If anyone else here wants to take a stab at it, please go ahead. But you'll be wasting your time.

[MattH]

Chalice + Therapy = not such good synergy, being that you're going to want to set Chalice to one the majority of the time, I would think.

Give me a little credit, I was advocating dropping chalices and adding Therapies in their place, with more juice (Duress, Persecute?) in the sideboard.

[Finn]

Im curious why you didnt list Welder Survival at all or even mention him in the playable red cards. You list crap like Kiki Jiki combo over it... Welder Survival is imho the only survival deck really worth playing because of its combo nature and "opps i win" hands. I have no idea why it fell out of favor.

I asked this as well.
I have been wondering if he would let us know why.

[Zilla]

Give me a little credit, I was advocating dropping chalices and adding Therapies in their place, with more juice (Duress, Persecute?) in the sideboard.

Credit given, of course. It's just that you got done saying you need Chalcie and something else, and then proceeded to mention Therapies, which obviously doesn't solve the problem. And honestly, I don't think Therapy is the correct choice here, even backed by Duress. Even with 4 of each in the deck, they're quick uneffective against combo unless they're backed by a fast clock, which most Survival decks are lacking.

Personally, I'd rather have Chalice in the main because it answers both combo and Thresh and Burn and all sorts of randomness. I'd back it with Pyrostatic Pillar from the board, thus giving you 8 outs to combo. Then I'd back it with something more, because even 8 permanent-based combo hate cards probably aren't going to be enough to consistently win you that matchup.

I asked this as well.
I have been wondering if he would let us know why.

My guess is that it wasn't mentioned mainly due to space constraints. SCG is a bit strict about article length. And frankly, while Welder Survival is a nice explosive deck, it barely registers as a blip on the historical radar for Legacy. It's been played and developed some, but there was never any real consensus on an optimal decklist, or even what colors it should be. Nor did it ever place at any really meaningful tournaments. It was likely not mentioned simply because it's one of the the least relevant Survival variants, from a historical standpoint.

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

OMG I g3t teh l4st w0rd dis argument is st00pid immnot gonna argu n0 mo0re!11!!

Real mature.

If you don't want to argue a point, you let it drop. You don't sneak in your own diatribe and THEN declare the fight over.

I agree with Bongo in that automatically making any assumptions about any deck is indicitave that you don't know what you're doing, and you're just repeating what you've seen/done before. Anger is obviously very synergistic with the deck, but if you've never even thought about dropping it from the deck, you're probably doing something wrong.

Also, it's asinine to say that a control deck that uses Survival as a mid-to-late-game engine *needs* Anger. It doesn't *need* all the dead slots that most people assume are essential to any deck running Survival. That includes Squee, Anger, possibly Genesis, and probably 4 copies of Survival. This is both a matter of tempo and card advantage; if I'm running a lot of cards that are weak without Survival, when I don't drop Survival turn 2, my gameplan is considerably set back. Either way I have to invest two turns to dropping and setting up Survival, and I have to run a fair chunk of the deck soley dedicated to the engine. And if I don't draw/keep a mountain, my gameplan is setback further. I doubt any of the critics have actually tested a more controlish build without red, that doesn't rely on Survival as their first and only gameplan other than bad beats.