Survival of the Fittest

[majikal]

Edit: Nope, I couldn't find it so far, maybe someone else knows more about that. But I'm sure there was a statement from wizards where they said that Worldgorger Dragon was banned because of rules complications or something. Not as if Humility was way more complicated.
The rules complication is that the Dragon player can endlessly draw games until time runs out, effectively only needing to win once. Losing this game? Shit, better make it a draw. Damn, got me again - Draw! Looks like I'm dead next turn - Draw! You get the idea.

[Lemnear]

I remember the draw-loop ... Maybe that's the reason ... It's to similar to sheherazard in stalling Games to Death

[Phoenix Ignition]

Never before have people been calling for a ban of Survival of the Fittest, even when Loyal Retainers was used. The issue is
gonna be the addition of Vengevine, and I don't really see Survival as broken without that card, since it was strictly tier 1.5.
Give me a break though, how often have we called for bannings just because a deck is doing well? There are many things that
you can do to fight all of the new vengvival decks, and most of them do not require that you change your deck enough to give
up other matchup percentages. Running cards maindeck that fight graveyards is a decent start. Just a few years ago I could
never beat Aggro Loam with my Merfolk deck. Solution? Maindeck Relic of Progenitus. The solutions aren't pretty, but they're
gonna help you against more than one deck.

Let me emphasize this point more, just because you're switching a few slots in your deck does not mean that a card is broken.
You always have to metagame against specific decks -- it's just what magic is all about. Your win percentages might even go
down in other matchups a bit, but that's always the price you pay in competitive magic. Legacy players have pet decks and
never want to change them, but you can still play your pet deck against the best decks if you change some things around. I am
gonna make some other suggestions you can do in your deck that will help you win games that aren't just because of a good
run of luck. Cards like extirpate are the obvious solution, but maindeck relic of progenitus or withered wretch aren't bad main.
Around turn 3 though, after they get out the Vengevines, you can always use cards like Propaganda, ghostly prison, Tabernacle
and other control effects that go well maindeck against many decks. The Vengevival deck is very mana hungry, so you can
desert them with Vengevines in their graveyard if you deny them mana for 2 creatures.

You have to realize how stupid trying to ban every good card is though. I'm sick of it.

EDIT: Neva gonna give! Neva gonna give!

[jrw1985]

EXTIRPATE !!!

PITHING NEEDLE !!!

I played in a tourney yesterday and faced UG Survival/Vengevine twice with my B/R Goblins. Here's that segment from my tournament report that I posted under the Goblins board----

Round 2 - UG Survival/Vengevine
Game 1
He never drew a Survival, and I just played out a horde and ran him over. I don't recall if he hit a Jitte, but I took this one fairly easy. That's what happens when you play a more consistent aggro deck.

I sided in 3 Needles, 3 Extirpates, Tinkerer and Sharpshooter for 4 Vials (too slow this MU) 3 Piledrivers (just gonna get chumped) and a Stingscourger (because the deck is based around discarding creatures, duh).

Game 2
He had a fast start and a Survival. I soon ate a facefull of Vengevine. Dead me.

Game 3
I played a Needle on Survival, and another Needle on Survival after he played Trygon Predator. He started attacking with the Trygon and killed my Needles. I Gempalmed his Trygon. He went to activate his Survivals and I Extirpated his Vengevines. I then had to play through a Jitte and took a close game.

Round 4 - UG Survival/Vengevine
Game 1
This one was cool. I was on the draw. He played a Forest. I played a Mountain, Vial. He played Forest, Wild Mongrel. I played Badlands, Weirding. He played Tropical Island, Trygon Predator. I Wasted the Tropical and Vialed in a Stingscourger, bouncing the Trygon. He didn't hit another land, and I Vialed in a Warchief, cast a Chieftain, and soon thereafter Vialed in a Seige-Gang Commander. Win.

Sided same as before.

Game 2
I had the Extirpate in my opening hand, but I got greedy and cast a Warren Instigator which locked out my Badland. He didn't have a Survival in play at the time, so I thought it was safe. Mistake. He took advantage of the situation and blew up on me with a couple Vengevines off an Aquamoeba. Punted.

Game 3
I fetched and kept a Swamp open as I developed my board. He resolved Survival and filled his GY with Vengevines over the end of my turn and the main of his. He knew full well that he was walking into an Extirpate, but there was nothing he could do about it. Survival can't NOT try to go off every time someone keeps one black open against them. Anyway, in response to the 2nd Rootwalla I Extirpated his Vines, cleaned the last one out of his deck, and beat him down.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY-

Extirpate eats Vengevines. The end. Those saying GY hate is wrong for battling Survival cannot deny the potency of Extirpate. Until Survival starts siding in Ground Seals on the regular, Extirpate will tear the heart out of their deck. It's a beautiful thing. Survival needs to commit 2 turns to going off (Usually throwing a few Vines in the GY at their opponent's end step, then getting the remainder and some Rootwallas in their 1st Main phase), so the Extirpate messes up their tempo and prevents them from playing relevant spells for that turn. And once the Vines are outta there it's just a lousy beatdown deck.

Needle is still good for stalling them, and sometimes all you need is the stall to draw into Extirpate or overwhelm them with board position.

Needle gets 3 out of 5 stars, because it's effective and versatile but easily destroyed or countered. Extirpate gets 4 out of 5 because it's extremely effective and damn near impossible for this MU to stop, but outside of this MU it is not especially versatile .

Play Needle to stall them. Play Extirpate to ruin their day.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Thank you. Extirpate is just awesome against Vengevine Survival when backed up with a relevant clock. You slow them down like two or three turns. Games in Legacy sometimes don't even last that long. Plus thank you for proving that U/G Survival is even quite bad with an active Survival without Vengevines. It doesn't have access to all the tricks typical Survival builds have and without Vengevines it's just a mediocre (if not bad) aggro deck with a few counters. I really don't see why people are so afraid of the deck, it often just looses to itself 'cause it's trying to do many things at the same time: it wants to be an aggro-control deck with a combo finish. But in fact it's a slow combo deck with an aggro finish and a few counters. G/W Survival on the other hand is way more intimidating, since it's a pretty consistent aggro deck with Survivals and Vengevines in it. But as long as it's trying to win via Survival + Vengevine, you can slow it down considerably with Extirpate. If the deck doesn't go for Survival + Vengevine, it's slower than real aggro decks but has a few tricks like G/W Maverick. Still, it's nothing you can't race. Plus it looses to combo.
By the way, jrw1985 I read your report over at the Goblins-thread, congrats on your finish! And again, thank you for sharing actual torunament results. I didn't get to play against the deck in a tournament myself, but in testing it never felt that overpowered.

[Nidd]

Play Needles, dudes.

I'm wondering why no one plays them. We have Deed, SDT and Planeswalkers running around. There's no reason to not to play such a versatile card.

[JamieW89]

Needles, Extirpates and Canonists are all decent sideboard cards in the current meta and hit vengevival (not sure how good Canonist is, depends on the build I guess). Spell Snare is also great in the meta and against survival. I play all of these and some cards that aren't bad against survival such as vindicate and 5 plows.
Depending on your colors there is hate available, and Peedle is available for everyone. And as stated above it is very versatile.

[CalebD]

jrw1985, pithing needle and extirpate are indeed great cards. However, it sounds like your opponents need more experience with the deck. The "never draws survival" phenomenon is almost always a sign of a newer player, as you can't keep a hand without Survival or other brokenness with this deck. It mulligans more than any other deck in the format, but it also wins off those mulligans. I win with five card hands just as often as I win with seven, as Survival makes up for any number of mulls. In legacy, it isn't having more cards that counts, it's having the right cards.

Oh, and I've had three mull to fours within the past week, and won all of them. One against Enchantress, one Gobbos, and one Belcher.

[f|i[p]]

Survival is a very very good card, but it seems that people refuse to adjust to it. It was never a tier 1 deck with Iona retainers and people never called for a ban. With vengvine on the loose people are starting to call for it to be banned. A lot of people don't understand the deck or don't even want to try to understand it at all.

Gw is a lot slower than madness but tries to force through with larger creatures. Madness is nuts as survival is not its only engine. Intuition is such a pain as well. Madness is quite fast because it can simply drop a mongrel and start witha vengevine or 2. However, regarding both decks, if you prepare accordingly , madness survival is much easier to hate. Ofcourse people don't want to side in black just for extirpates, so you can look at other colors for answers. If people would just prepare then it wouldn't be such a problem. If you prepare for combo as much as you prepare for survival I think you'll be doing fairly well against this deck.

[jazzykat]

Mandatory weigh in:

1. Survival was a containable and very fun archetype before Vengevine.
2. Vengevine took survival to a whole new level.
3. MDing hate for Vengevival is like what people were doing for storm decks and reanimator before the banning of MT.


I would find it very amusing if wizards continues to allow Vengevival to savagelly rape the format while we take time to figure out answers when just a few months ago they play a few test games with a combo deck in the casual room on MWS and decided to ban MT even while Reanimator was already on the decline.

I will admit that I am strongly biased, I played last night with Ubr Dreadstill vs. a guy who drafts and borrowed a Vengevival deck. I had 4 Spellsnare + 3 relic of progenitus MD plus a ton of other hate in the board. He raped me 0-2. Do I suck, maybe? Was I unlucky, maybe? I never got blown out so bad since I played vs. a storm combo deck and his had creatures.

I hope wizards unbans more cards. Maybe even Oath of Druids. I mean hey there are answers right? There are a million counterspells (Including Spellsnare and Spell Pierce) you can play to stop it and it only kills with a creature. You got Grip right? You only win after the attack step right? ... It dies to a sadistic sacrament...

[Pippin]

I will admit that I am strongly biased, I played last night with Ubr Dreadstill vs. a guy who drafts and borrowed a Vengevival deck. I had 4 Spellsnare + 3 relic of progenitus MD plus a ton of other hate in the board. He raped me 0-2. Do I suck, maybe? Was I unlucky, maybe? I never got blown out so bad since I played vs. a storm combo deck and his had creatures.


Yeah, you do seem biased. I mean, you lost with counterbalance.deck (UBr Dreadstill) against UG madness. Who knew UG madness was a terrible matchup to counterbalance decks (fast vines, vines costing 4c)... except that it was already shown in data few pages ago. Maybe time to change deck and adapt to metagame in that way?

Would it be nonsense if I as a Merfolk player (theoretically) would complain about goblins and demand lackey/piledriver bannings?
UBr Dreadstill has insane matchup vs combo. Combo has good matchup vs UG madness. <<continue logical thought>>

[Odd Mutation]

Panic claims for banning yet again? :rolleyes:

This is actually getting absurd to me.

1. Vengevine gets printed in RoE
2. Someone here points out interaction between Vengevine and Survival of the Fittest
3. Guy who suggested Vengevine gets laughed at, and its pointed out how Vengevine is too slow, and that Retainers + Iona combo is just better
4. Nothing happens for almost a year*, then Caleb brings Survival madness to GP and makes top8
5. Suddenly everyone is playing Survival and Vengevines, and its "most powerfull deck" out there and people start to claim for bans

When people start playing goblins again, putting Siege Gangs turn 2 into play, and make a GP Top 8 performance I predict shouts for lackey banning all over again.

* edit - uh oh, it felt like a year, turns out to be way less sicne RoE was released

Exactly!

Robrecht

[jazzykat]

Yeah, you do seem biased. I mean, you lost with counterbalance.deck (UBr Dreadstill) against UG madness. Who knew UG madness was a terrible matchup to counterbalance decks (fast vines, vines costing 4c)... except that it was already shown in data few pages ago. Maybe time to change deck and adapt to metagame in that way?

Would it be nonsense if I as a Merfolk player (theoretically) would complain about goblins and demand lackey/piledriver bannings?
UBr Dreadstill has insane matchup vs combo. Combo has good matchup vs UG madness. <<continue logical thought>>

Yes I am biased and you missed my point. I think they should unban more cards. Mystical Tutor should be brought back, maybe even Oath.

BTW everyone and their brother says that Vengvival has a tough time vs. combo. I'll be thoroughly testing their claims through the next few weeks.

[(nameless one)]

I think they should unban more cards. Mystical Tutor should be brought back, maybe even Oath.



This. I also want to see Land Tax unbanned. we need to slow down the format.

[Beware]

It's no secret how I feel about Erwin and I'm here to tell you he MASSIVELY overreacted. Survival decks have been around for years! Vengevine is excellent for the deck and people just can't deal with it yet. It's the flavor of the month and Erwin just appealed to the butt-hurt masses who refused to adjust to a changing meta. People fear change, you see.

[Catitas]

In coupe de france there were 3 survivals in top8 and 2 big zoos (those zoos just rape survival, give it a try), check they're sides and you'll find meta adjustment, so instead of complain about a survival just adapt to a diferent meta, most people done that to adjust against reanimator and Ant, true that dci banned mystical, but i dont belive they ban survival...

http://www.magic-ville.com/fr/decks/decklists?event=498&format=T1.5

[St3B]

I like those decklists and like Catitas said most decks have have adapted to the meta 7 decks play 2 or more Faerie Macabre in their SB.

[Purgatory]

It's no secret how I feel about Erwin and I'm here to tell you he MASSIVELY overreacted. Survival decks have been around for years! Vengevine is excellent for the deck and people just can't deal with it yet. It's the flavor of the month and Erwin just appealed to the butt-hurt masses who refused to adjust to a changing meta. People fear change, you see.

I'm sorry, I have no idea what your opinion on Evan Erwin is (nor do I know other people with five posts' opinions on him either), but I do think he has a point. Sure, Survival builds have (in various forms, but at least here Bant and RBGSA has been seen for some time) been a staple in the metagame for years, though not a tier 1 deck. However, now it is putting up a frightful amount of T16 placements, as Erwin himself says; 5/16 in Nasshville, 5/16 in Baltimore and 5/16 in Minneapolis.

Granted, the metagame will shift and adapt to this new contender, but for now it is doing really, really well, better than what I have seen from a single Survival build ever before.

I don't really agree with his ranting on the Ooze Survival build, however. The results are thanks to Vengevine, and not Necrotic Ooze.

[Beware]

I will concede that the point that he has made about a very popular deck being very popular is correct. That is the only correct assessment he has made about the situation. People haven't adjusted and his hyperbole slinging has only made the situation worse. Now people are talking about when/if Survival will get banned or how every deck folds to it as opposed to card choices to deal with an ever shifting meta. Change is part of the game, people think because they play an Eternal format they never have to worry about the meta and keep playing 3 year old builds to great success.

[GGoober]

I'm sorry, I have no idea what your opinion on Evan Erwin is (nor do I know other people with five posts' opinions on him either), but I do think he has a point. Sure, Survival builds have (in various forms, but at least here Bant and RBGSA has been seen for some time) been a staple in the metagame for years, though not a tier 1 deck. However, now it is putting up a frightful amount of T16 placements, as Erwin himself says; 5/16 in Nasshville, 5/16 in Baltimore and 5/16 in Minneapolis.

Granted, the metagame will shift and adapt to this new contender, but for now it is doing really, really well, better than what I have seen from a single Survival build ever before.

I don't really agree with his ranting on the Ooze Survival build, however. The results are thanks to Vengevine, and not Necrotic Ooze.

Uhm, what about Jund in Standard? And Faeries in Standard when those decks were hot? Doesn't Standard put out more frightening results? The meta adapted and people convinced Jund was broken were proved wrong, then Jund adapted again to become stronger after evolution, yet Jund still exists unbanned (Bloodbraid could well have been banned but since it was format defining, it was left alone and the meta was fine despite complaints). Counterbalance, FOW, Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, AdN, Goyf, StP, alll these are format-defining cards. Survival is just getting its taste. Erwin screaming at this ban seems unjustified. Sure 5/16 in 3 big events is ugly, but let's just take that back to the most 'popular' format Standard before we scream shall we? And it pisses me off that these people with the bigger 'voice' in the MTG scene are the ones that will most impact WotC's decision if they banning principles are influenced at all to begin with. Banning principles should never be a gut feeling, it should be an observation of the meta itself.

[Shabbaman]

I'm sorry, I have no idea what your opinion on Evan Erwin is (nor do I know other people with five posts' opinions on him either), but I do think he has a point. Sure, Survival builds have (in various forms, but at least here Bant and RBGSA has been seen for some time) been a staple in the metagame for years, though not a tier 1 deck. However, now it is putting up a frightful amount of T16 placements, as Erwin himself says; 5/16 in Nasshville, 5/16 in Baltimore and 5/16 in Minneapolis.

Granted, the metagame will shift and adapt to this new contender, but for now it is doing really, really well, better than what I have seen from a single Survival build ever before.

I don't really agree with his ranting on the Ooze Survival build, however. The results are thanks to Vengevine, and not Necrotic Ooze.

So basically it's just VV that's stupid good, no Survival. Survival has always been a format defining card, but not a broken one. I couldn't imagine Legacy without it. Evan Erwin paints a picture of Survival that's far from the truth, if you look at past performance. Survival always needed other broken cards to win anything. Better nix cards like Retainers, cards that have interactions in Legacy that just shouldn't exist. But besides that: wizards is probably happy that a deck with creatures wins, especially with a mythic rare currently in standard.

[Koby]

So basically it's just VV that's stupid good, no Survival. Survival has always been a format defining card, but not a broken one. I couldn't imagine Legacy without it. Evan Erwin paints a picture of Survival that's far from the truth, if you look at past performance. Survival always needed other broken cards to win anything. Better nix cards like Retainers, cards that have interactions in Legacy that just shouldn't exist. But besides that: wizards is probably happy that a deck with creatures wins, especially with a mythic rare currently in standard.

Exactly this. Survival and VV are specifically creature based strategies which WotC states they are inclined to keep around. Mystical Tutor was a problem because it fueled very consistent combo decks.

[Patrunkenphat7]

I would like to point out that 5 of 16 decks in top 16's running Survival is not broken in any way. Yes, Survival decks have been posting great win percentages, but the meta will adjust. How many decks in top 16's play Force of Will? Wasteland? Tarmogoyf? Lord of Atlantis? Sensei's Diving Top? There will always be cards that are prevalent in top 16's for some amount of time, but this will fluctuate. It is not very convincing of Mr. Erwin to cite 5/16 as his main argument, when 6 decks ran Force of Will and 8 (EIGHT! 50% of top 16) decks ran Tarmogoyf. Even a Tendrils deck ran Tarmogoyf in the SB! Is Survival very good right now? Yes. Is it better or even more common than any other card in Legacy? No.

[JACO]

My take on the issue:
Focus on Legacy - Combating Survival (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?19160-[Article]-Focus-on-Legacy-Combating-Survival)

Enjoy.

[GGoober]

I think Jaco wraps it up nicely.



[/thread]

[jrw1985]

I built a copy of UG Vinal (nice, right?) at tappedout.net and have been playtesting it all morning, just to see what the deck mulls like and how it plays. That's the key to understanding your adversary. Here's how the deck usually runs:

Mull to Survival. Hands without Survival just don't get there.
Miss a T1 drop (there are only 4 Noble Heirarches in the deck after all).
T2 play Survival.
T3 Activate Survival to put 2 Vines in GY, pitch and play Rootwalla into Memnite, recur Vines. This only works when there is GGG available. Or, just fill GY with Vines.
T4 Combo out all the Vines

This deck is much slower than people have been giving it credit for. The deck's shaky manabase (only 21 lands, 20 in the GW build that won Nashville) does not help it accrue the Green mana it needs to go off. Mana denial can really hamstring the deck, especially since people seem dead set on running builds with Wasteland as a 4 of.

So hitting a Tropical with a Wasteland can really slow down the draw engine. Also, any time the deck Dazes off Tropical it denies itself another Vine. Being able to out-aggro the deck is entirely possible.

Why has this deck been so successful?

My person belief is that people just aren't used to how it plays yet. The deck isn't overly fast (the best-case scenario for 4 Vines off of Survival is turn 3), it isn't incredibly flexible (without Vines it's basically an Odessey block beatdown deck), and the disruption package isn't anything special. I'm not saying that it's a bad deck by any means, but I do think it's just a little bit trendy at the moment. People need to tune their SBs to beat Vengevine (extirpate) and Survival (Needle), and the Survival deck just doesn't have answers.

[Mana Drain]

Mull to Survival. Hands without Survival just don't get there

You need to play with the deck more. 2 Land, Discard Outlet, Vine, Rootwalla + whatever gets there all the time. And those hands are 35-40%. With 4 Force, 3-4 Daze, and 3-4 Spell Pierce, Madness laughs at your answers.

Honestly, I've been playing the deck for almost 2 months now and the hardest decision is by far "Mull, or not to Mull?". The only time you don't ask that is when you got the "T2 Vine: You scooping yet?" hands. Otherwise, mull like crazy. I've played against decent CB pilots and mulled to 4 for the win. The deck just does what it does if you're not prepared for it.

To anyone having problems with Madness, here's the answer: Play Peacekeeper, Play Pithing Needle, Play Firespout, Play a Tier 1 deck. Seriously, every top deck has a bunch of different ways to beat Survival. Just because you think you can avoid playing it doesn't mean that you shouldn't side 5-6 VERSATILE cards in against it.

Also, don't side in GY hate unless it's Extirpate. We don't care if you remove 1-2 Vines. We have 2 more for a reason.

[jrw1985]

You need to play with the deck more. 2 Land, Discard Outlet, Vine, Rootwalla + whatever gets there all the time. And those hands are 35-40%. With 4 Force, 3-4 Daze, and 3-4 Spell Pierce, Madness laughs at your answers.

A starting hand of 2 lands, 1 8/7-of (discard outlet), 1 4-of (Vine), 1 5/4-of (Rootwalla or Memnite), 2 9-of (disruption) is hardly happening 35-40% of the time. And when it does happen, playing out your entire hand for a 1/1 pump, a 2/2 discard pump, and a 4/3 haste isn't exactly game over for your opponent.

For UG builds the disruption package has been 4 Force, 2 Daze, 3 Stifle. This has been the standard since Caleb's deck in Columbus. It isn't exactly a control deck.

Just for shits and giggles let's look at opening hands and the subsequent mulls for 10 games using the following decklist from 1st place at a Magic-League tournament (http://www.magic-league.com/deck/64820/legacy_t15.html):

Land (21)
1x Flooded Strand
3x Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Tropical Island
1x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wasteland
2x Windswept Heath

Creature (24)
4x Aquamoeba
4x Basking Rootwalla
1x Memnite
4x Noble Hierarch
3x Trygon Predator
4x Vengevine
3x Wild Mongrel
1x Wonder

Instant (9)
2x Daze
4x Force of Will
3x Stifle

Enchantment (4)
4x Survival of the Fittest

Artifact (2)
2x Umezawa's Jitte

Game 1

Vine
Vine
Trygon
Rootwalla
Heirarche
Tropical Island
Misty Rainforest - Mull

Survival
Survival
Heirarche
Stifle
Forest
Gaea's Cradle - Keepable? Survival is only castable off of Heirarche since Cradle won't produce mana without Heirarche in play. Lets look at the next 3 turns draws.
Wasteland
Daze
Tropical Island - Maybe in a situation like this we just should have mulled, so let's.

Trygon
Trygon
Misty Rainforet
Flooded Strand
Wasteland - Mull

Survival
Rootwalla
Flooded Strand
Tropical ISland - Finally a Survival and gas. Let's see the next draws
Wonder
Land - Now the Survival engine can get going, but any counterspell, mana denial, enchantment destruction or discard would have ended the deck's run.

Game 2

heirarche
Trygon
Daze
Force
Misty Rainforest
Flooded Strand
Wasteland - Mull

Survival
Survival
Vine
Vine
Mongrel
Heirarch - No lands, gotta mull. There are only 15 green mana sources in the lands of the deck (Cradle doesn't count in this case), so don't get greedy.

Vine
Mongrel
Forest
Tropical
Misty - Mull, unless you like the idea of playing a slow hand with no disruption that will play itsself out.

Mongrel
Stifle
Cradle
Forest - Mull

Wasteland
Wasteland
Rootwalla - Mull?

Clearly none of the above hands were good starting hands. They all required drawing into something else to get rolling. This game would be lost on Mullagining (which happens all the time in Magic, so let's not freak out).

Game 3

Heirarch
Heirarch
Aquamoeba
Aquamoeba
Rootwalla
Windswept Heath
Island - Mull

Aquamoeba
Aquamoeba
Trygon
Vine
Misty
Wasteland - Mull

Heirarch
Survival
Forest
Forest
Tropical - Once again a hand without disruption that can't even accelerate its mana because it needs the Heirarch to feed Survival. This hand cannot go off until turn 4.

Game 4

Survival
Aquamoeba
Island
Tropical
Tropical
Windswept
Misty - Like before, it has 0 disruption and cannot go off until turn 4, but because it has the Survival I guess it's a keeper.

Game 5

Heirarch
Mongrel
Mongrel
Aquamoeba
Force
Tropical
Windswept - Mull

Rootwalla
Trygon
Mongrel
Stifle
Misty
Misty - Mull

Aquamoeba
Rootwalla
island
Forest
Verdant catacombs - Mull

Trygon
Stifle
Forest
Waste - Mull

Gaea's Cradle
Survival
Rootwalla - Finally a Survival and our only land produces 0 mana. Cool.

Game 6

Vine
Rootwalla
Rootwalla
Trygon
Force
Island
Misty - Mull

Survival
Survival
Mongrel
Island
Forest
Windswept - Can't go off until turn 4, no disruption, but it has Survival and gas so must be a keeper.

Game 7

Heirarch
Force
Daze
Flooded
Windswept
Tropical
Wasteland - Mull

Survival
Mongrel
Memnite
Force
Forest
Flooded Strand - Survival and gas, but Force is dead in hand and you can't go off until turn 4.

Game 8

Survival
Survival
Aqamoeba
Rootwalla
Stifle
Stifle
Tropical - Keep? Lets see the next three cards (Tropical, Forest, Mongrel). Finally a decent hand, but not a wise one to keep.

Game 9

Survival
Vine
heirarch
Force
Wonder
Tropical
Misty - There it is!

Game 10

Survival
Rootwalla
Rootwalla
Heirarch
Force
Stifle
Jitte - Great hand, no land. Is it considered Good Magic to keep this and hope for the ~28% chance of hitting a green land on the next draw? Probably not - Mull

Vine
Cradle
misty
Flooded
Tropical
Windswept - Mull

Stifle
Windswept
Windswept
catacombs
Forest - Mull

Vine
Flooded
Misty
Forest - Mull

Heirarch
Aquamoeba
Waste - Yup...

So there you go. Only 1 game in 10 (#9) that actually had a good opening hand. Game #8 got lucky. The rest mulled into Survival and nothing. I know 10 games is not statistically significant, but it isn't encouraging. Also, the mythical hand of Discard outlet, Vine, Rootwalla, 2 lands didn't occur once. So does the deck only win through getting lucky, or do people just not know how to play against it, or was I mulling completely incorrectly?

Your thoughts?

[GGoober]

Dont' forget that the turn 2 VV discard Rootwalla hands die to an StP :) Well they still get a mongrel and rootwalla I guess after dumping their entire hand, then a Goyf comes up and starts blocking.

But when they don't have the StP, you are happy :)

[Lemnear]

Lol you mull always into Survival and think that proves the Deck is decent. Game 1 Hand 2 and Game 2 Hand 1 are keepable Not Auto-mulls. You have Force, daze, wasteland and an turn 2 trygon that's solid unless you Play vs. Burn. Keeping Game 4 is bullshit, a 5-Lander without any threat only to have survival. Any Pierce, daze, Force, snare, disenchant or shit face-rape you.

Maybe it's wiser to Test this deck against other Decks instead of goldfishing into Survival. That will serve more detailed Information which Hands are acceptable.

But you prove some points, Hands without Survival mostly result in a decent/Bad Aggro grip which scoops to every aggro; protection is critical since you Need 3 mana in Hand, a creature and a survival to Be very good that leaves 2 Slots 4 protection (stifle is Bad iMO, I Never wanna have it with hierarch in Hand); gw is just better, it's more resistent to hate due to their Aggro potential (goofy, Knight) As Plan B which is also good then it comes to mulligans.

I still prefer the unholy Alliance of Fauna shaman, Survival and Natural Order maindeck. Most of the Time if Survival is countered/Not drawn shaman gets you unbeatable Aggro and NO is a nice draw in this deck and IMO better than packing stoneforge mystics and Equipment (and cheaper to Cast too)

[VsTheWorld]

For what it's worth, Survival took 5 of the top 8 spots in today's SCG Open again, including UG beating GW in the finals. No, I don't think it's too good. Yes, the format needs to adapt and people need to play things like Spell Snare or Needle. Yes, I'm definitely worried that the DCI might take action in December. Everyone else playing in Boston this coming weekend, do your part to beat Survival decks. You can't win if you can't beat Survival.

[Crysthorn]

Survival took 5 of the top 8 spots in today's SCG Open again, including UG beating GW in the finals
Also worth noting that it went up from 5 (Minneapolis, Baltimore and Nashville) to 7 (Charlotte) decks in Top 16.


Yes, the format needs to adapt and people need to play things like Spell Snare or Needle.
From what I've seen in the GGsLive coverage, people already played Needles, Spell Snares, various grave hate and especially a lot of Extirpates. Apparently it wasn't enough.

[Mana Drain]

Some pretty weird (but successful) builds. More power to those guys for thinking outside the box.

Also, glad to see Brittle Effigy put to good use.

[Koby]

I was wondering when Fauna Shaman would catch on in VV lists.

This card alone scares all my opponents into killing it asap. That's a positive sign of how powerful the card is; even tho it's not Survival.

[HSCK]

Is it true Nick S. is changing his name to Trinket Mage? That was a nice package though, especially into LED.

[Tacosnape]

Well, I officially reverse my stance. Vengevine's getting banned. Short of the Flash debacle, which I pretend never happened, Vengevine's got such a huge grasp on this format it's stupid.

Survival itself was never a problem before Vengevine. And with the Ooze combo and Fauna Shaman and Loyal Retainers/Iona shenanigans, I'd be very sad if they banned the enchantment, given that it's the wrong choice. All of the above would be playable but not unstoppable without Vengevine involved.

[DragoFireheart]

Well, I officially reverse my stance. Vengevine's getting banned. Short of the Flash debacle, which I pretend never happened, Vengevine's got such a huge grasp on this format it's stupid.

Survival itself was never a problem before Vengevine. And with the Ooze combo and Fauna Shaman and Loyal Retainers/Iona shenanigans, I'd be very sad if they banned the enchantment, given that it's the wrong choice. All of the above would be playable but not unstoppable without Vengevine involved.


WoTC won't ban the creature in this scenario. The enchantment is far more abusable than some 4/3 hasty dude that comes back.

[Tinefol]

Tacosnape
What specifically made you change your opinion of Vengevines? Much like you previous approach, it has to be explained.

[whienot]

They discussed Vengevine at one point in the coverage yesterday and I was glad to hear that (almost unanimously) Phillps, Sullivan and friends believe that Survival is fair and that free things tend to be broken. Vengevine is free. Casting it is a backup plan. Of course, then they discuss how Gush is probably fine for legacy...

Unfortunately, Vengevine is pretty harmless in legacy without Survival crapping them out.

[death]

Sure the meta can and will adapt. Just let Zoo, Merfolk and Counterbalance die down for a while. This is the "Survival era" folks where the weakest decks don't belong and if you can't survive in the meta just quit. Yes people are boarding Needles and Extirpates, but still only a few are playing Storm to beat it. Also, I dunno why in some BG lists only a singleton Pernicious Deed is played, it can take down Survival too ya know. Perish and Damnation would also be really good in their Jank decks.

Rock>Scissors>Paper? How about Storm>Survival>Counterbalance. Seems like a balanced meta to me.


Peace.

[Cabal_chan]

Vengevine Survival is approaching the threshold, but I don't think it's quite at the banning point. It's meta presence is comparable to Merfolk if you look at the past three months(excluding the rush-end-of-the-month that was Charlotte).

But seeing how WotC mishandled Mystical Tutor, it's likely SotF will get the hammer in December. If they axed two decks that barely had the same presence as Zoo at the time, I think they'll definitely hit SotF.

[alderon666]

What makes me a bit scared is that everybody knew Survival was gonna be hot and all the hate/metagaming proved useless.

But what if people play storm? Storm beats Survival and Survival beats everything else? LOL

[death]

What I am worried about is not a lot are really proficient at playing Storm and that might skew the outcome because Storm was misrepresented.

[Tacosnape]

They discussed Vengevine at one point in the coverage yesterday and I was glad to hear that (almost unanimously) Phillps, Sullivan and friends believe that Survival is fair and that free things tend to be broken. Vengevine is free. Casting it is a backup plan. Of course, then they discuss how Gush is probably fine for legacy...

Unfortunately, Vengevine is pretty harmless in legacy without Survival crapping them out.

I dunno. I first started playing BG Vengevine Survival, and won my first two matches after turn 2 wins on game one without a Survival (Turn one Putrid Imp, Double Vengevine, Basking Rootwalla, swing for 8, next turn pump, swing for 12.) Granted, this won't happen all that often, but there you go.

On the whole, I don't think either Vengevine or Survival are anywhere close to broken without the other. My gut feeling is that they'll keep the card that allows hundreds of mid-tier Legacy decks to exist, rather than the one that pretty much won't see play. Banning either one solves the problem. Banning Vengevine leaves tons of creativity for other Survival decks. Banning Survival will relegate Vengevine to Standard.

[(nameless one)]

Why cant Merfolk beat U/G Madness? Isn't Merfolk supposed to have a good matchup against that deck?

That said, I was going to buy a couple of Survival of the Fittest but now im thinking twice because I don't want to buy something that will get banned next month.

And no, I am not making a Madness deck, rather I wanna make a Combo-Elves (courtesy of ruckus's MTGO list)

[derpp]

Seeing the stereotypical hate cards "in action" at the 5k has cemented my opinion that some part of the survival/vengevine combo has to go.

For the record I saw spell snare, extirpate, pithing needle, thoughtseize, seal of primordium, pernicious deed, and krosan grip, all of which did nothing or were just a speed bump against the survival player. The deck is just too threat diverse, especially with the "new tech" of fauna shamen + quirion ranger being about as powerful as an actual survival. The g/w builds are also extremely resilient to grave hate. Even if you get rid of all the vines, they just turn every creature they draw into a kotor or a goyf.

[Koby]

Vengevine Survival is approaching the threshold, but I don't think it's quite at the banning point. It's meta presence is comparable to Merfolk if you look at the past three months(excluding the rush-end-of-the-month that was Charlotte).

This!

At the last tournament I played 50% of Top 8 was Merfolk. Why don't we just ban Island and stop complaining? </sarcasm>

[DragoFireheart]

I dunno. I first started playing BG Vengevine Survival, and won my first two matches after turn 2 wins on game one without a Survival (Turn one Putrid Imp, Double Vengevine, Basking Rootwalla, swing for 8, next turn pump, swing for 12.) Granted, this won't happen all that often, but there you go.

On the whole, I don't think either Vengevine or Survival are anywhere close to broken without the other. My gut feeling is that they'll keep the card that allows hundreds of mid-tier Legacy decks to exist, rather than the one that pretty much won't see play. Banning either one solves the problem. Banning Vengevine leaves tons of creativity for other Survival decks. Banning Survival will relegate Vengevine to Standard.

The fact that Survival lets you tutor Gofys or Kotor as a back up plan should tell you which is more likely to be banned. Vengivine, while nifty, is just a beater that requires some bad cards (Mongrel and Aquamobea for example) to enable properly. WoTC has shown that tutor effects are not welcome. I see SoTF being banned if the arch-type continues to dominate as much as it is through hate. Removing SoTF still leaves us with the toned down version ala Fauna Shaman. It's not nearly as good but can still allow the survival arch type to live with vengivine while having other fun combos like Iona-Retainers.

Also, survival does not allow "hundreds" of decks. Dozens maybe, but not hundreds.

[Cabal_chan]

Also, survival does not allow "hundreds" of decks. Dozens maybe, but not hundreds.

As of the moment, Survival gives you the following decks...

Traditional Silver Bullet (tricky to classify as any one deck or type other than all sharing the 'silver bullet' approach. Take that as you will).

Silverbullet VV (the love child of silver bullet SotF and VV. Basically Silverbullet with 4x VV).
Mono G VV
Ooze VV
UG VV
UGw VV
GW VV.

Depending on how you count 'silver bullet', the actual number of decks enabled varies. Personally, I lump silverbullet together as a general deck/archetype for ease of collecting meta data.

[Julian23]

As of the moment, Survival gives you the following decks...


No love for Wuascht Survival?

[GGoober]

Sigh.

It's no doubt that if the deck keeps putting result, WotC will take action. If they banned Survival, I think I will be quite disappointed. MTutor ban wasn't really needed but the card itself was almost as powerful as a Vampiric Tutor (which decks would run VTutor? It would be decks that mostly wanted to tutor instants/sorceries, aka why MTutor was potentially powerful).

Survival may have the same problem, and perhaps with WotC's banning policy, it's better to ban the enabler than other future cards that can be printed. So WotC would most likely ban Survival, but I think those who play or play against the deck, can all agree that the true culprit isn't Survival, it's Vengevine. I think this becomes a touchy issue when banning, since Survival has been perfectly fair, even with broken Iona/Retainers, and it's the spawn of diversity in green decks. It's only with the printing of Vengevine that the ONLY performing Survival decks are the ones WITH Vengevines. As much as it sounds dumb to ban Vengevine because in the future, future cards may make Survival + Future card broken again, the main culprit is Vengevine, but from a banning principle, Survival would most likely get the axe.

I just hope this won't be the case. If Survival is banned, Legacy would be quite dull, the card was strong and was supposed to be represented, but was never popular. Vengevines aroused interest and got everyone wild on the card, so it's getting its "hype", apparently the deck itself is strong (my playgroup still hates and thinks its a weak deck when you answer it, which is true). I'm against banning Survival or Vengevine, but if WotC were to ban, they probably ban Survival, even though Survival is really just the scapegoat of the true convict: Vengevine.

[Koby]

It's fair to say that whenever WotC prints cards that cheat mana costs, problem arise in multiple formats.

This is true for Saga Untappers.
This is true for Storm mechanic.
This is true for Cascade (ala Extended Seismic Assault Lands deck).
This is also true for Vengevine.

Argument for Not Banning Survival:
It would be a terrible mistake to ban Survival of the Fittest. Not only because it doesn't answer the "free spell", but it removes a ton of diversity in the format that existed at equilibrium prior to the offending card. It would still be a problem with other cards as well (imagine Buried Alive, Fauna Shaman, etc).

Argument for Not Banning Vengevinel:
It would be very disappointing to also see WotC ban a recently printed Mythic creature - this would not bode well for the credibility of Mythics in all aspects. I can only imagine the backlash from this move would stir up more controversy than touching Survival.

Consideration (placing decks from SCG 5K since RoE released)
Philadelphia (June 6th) - 0 placings
Seattle (June 13th) - 1 Survival, 0 Vengevine
St Louis (June 27th) - 0 placings
Denver (Aug 22rd) - 1 Survival + VV
Minneapolis (Aug 29th) - 5 Survival + VV
Baltimore (Sept 19th) - 5 Surviva,l 4 Vengevine

The results clearly point to VV being abused with Survival (duh!), but do not back the argument that Survival alone is overpowered.

[troopatroop]

You know, I think people like playing this deck. That's why everyone's crying for no bans, because people enjoy winning. When 1 deck is clearly monkey stomping the rest, I think it's time for a change. I wouldn't mind it if they banned Survival, apart from the nostalgia

[Shabbaman]

You know, I think people like playing this deck. That's why everyone's crying for no bans, because people enjoy winning. When 1 deck is clearly monkey stomping the rest, I think it's time for a change. I wouldn't mind it if they banned Survival, apart from the nostalgia

But then again,isn't Legacy about nostalgia? I think ruckus got to the point of it: wizards screws up free spells.

[Blitzbold]

People should stop complaining and learn how to adapt. Use Pithing Needle (great in this meta), use Extirpate if you're in black or change to another deck if your beloved petdeck can't compete with this. Vengevival is very strong, but it's far from unbeatable, folks. Use your brain and fight back.

[DragoFireheart]

People should stop complaining and learn how to adapt. Use Pithing Needle (great in this meta), use Extirpate if you're in black or change to another deck if your beloved petdeck can't compete with this. Vengevival is very strong, but it's far from unbeatable, folks. Use your brain and fight back.

That's not the argument. The issue is even with hate, the deck is still powerful (or so I'm told). I personally have not played it or against it yet, so I'm relatively indifferent to the deck. If WoTC doesn't ban SotF come Dec, I may put the deck together but until then I'll play Bant Aggro.

[Cabal_chan]

People should stop complaining and learn how to adapt. Use Pithing Needle (great in this meta), use Extirpate if you're in black or change to another deck if your beloved petdeck can't compete with this. Vengevival is very strong, but it's far from unbeatable, folks. Use your brain and fight back.

The Goblins and 'Junk/Dark Bant' (Rock??? What is with these naming schemes they have), and Merfolk splash B did have three or so SB hate cards. Extirpate for the first two types, and various 'artifact removes the grave yard' cards. I hardly think Goblins, Rock, and Merfolk fall in the pet deck category.

[jardach]

Deck is powerful for sure...we know that already...what does it so strong? Tutoring by Survival and Vengevine´s abillity....don´t we forget for something? If we need to speed up this combo,we need to cast 2 creatures...what are we using? Basking Rootwalla....how good would be the combo without Rootwala? I think it would be much slower and more vulnerable....ban Basking Rootwala and it will be the right compromise...

[menace13]

Sigh.

It's no doubt that if the deck keeps putting result, WotC will take action. If they banned Survival, I think I will be quite disappointed. MTutor ban wasn't really needed but the card itself was almost as powerful as a Vampiric Tutor (which decks would run VTutor? It would be decks that mostly wanted to tutor instants/sorceries, aka why MTutor was potentially powerful).

Survival may have the same problem, and perhaps with WotC's banning policy, it's better to ban the enabler than other future cards that can be printed. So WotC would most likely ban Survival, but I think those who play or play against the deck, can all agree that the true culprit isn't Survival, it's Vengevine. I think this becomes a touchy issue when banning, since Survival has been perfectly fair, even with broken Iona/Retainers, and it's the spawn of diversity in green decks. It's only with the printing of Vengevine that the ONLY performing Survival decks are the ones WITH Vengevines. As much as it sounds dumb to ban Vengevine because in the future, future cards may make Survival + Future card broken again, the main culprit is Vengevine, but from a banning principle, Survival would most likely get the axe.

I just hope this won't be the case. If Survival is banned, Legacy would be quite dull, the card was strong and was supposed to be represented, but was never popular. Vengevines aroused interest and got everyone wild on the card, so it's getting its "hype", apparently the deck itself is strong (my playgroup still hates and thinks its a weak deck when you answer it, which is true). I'm against banning Survival or Vengevine, but if WotC were to ban, they probably ban Survival, even though Survival is really just the scapegoat of the true convict: Vengevine.

Every deck ever(almost, you would need a really good reason not to run 4 Vamps) would run Vamp Tuts and not just Sorcery/Instant decks. Singelton sideboards are no longer singelton allowing all hate cards to be played from artifacts,enchantments to lands. Also it changes the way decks are built since you now just need only 1 of in the deck. Mystical pushed out a lot of decks from being played because they could not ever beat Reanimator or ANT.

Clearly Vines are the abused card, but i do not like where this is headed every time a deck is good WotC bans a card. If Surv gets it then this will be the second card banned in 6 months for Legacy. Banning Rootwala or Survival would be wrong because without Vines ,Rootwalas are terrible madness creatures and Surv goes back to being, well, just Surv.

The 5k results are really alarming, tbh, but i think it has to do with more people playing SurvVine than more playing what beats it. Less people should be playing "their" decks and move to something that abuses Surv mus. Doesnt Merf and Gobs lose to Surv? Why are people still playing decks that lose to the most popular deck?
23 out of 80 in the top 16 inthe last 5 SCGs 5ks were Survival variants.

Does any one know how many SurvVine lists were there in total at all 5 SCGs 5ks and out of how many other decks?

[Koby]

I agree with menace13 here. We would need more data to look at what is actually happening at these tournaments.

[Cabal_chan]

Deck is powerful for sure...we know that already...what does it so strong? Tutoring by Survival and Vengevine´s abillity....don´t we forget for something? If we need to speed up this combo,we need to cast 2 creatures...what are we using? Basking Rootwalla....how good would be the combo without Rootwala? I think it would be much slower and more vulnerable....ban Basking Rootwala and it will be the right compromise...

WotC would never ban Rootwalla. Not with their policy to go after enablers as opposed to bombs(Flash vs. Protean Hulk, Mystical Tutor vs. Tendrils of Agony).

[Jonathan Alexander]

WotC would never ban Rootwalla. Not with their policy to go after enablers as opposed to bombs(Flash vs. Protean Hulk, Mystical Tutor vs. Tendrils of Agony).

I agree that they would never ban Basking Rootwalla (which sounds even worse than banning Wild Nacatl) but Basking Rootwalla is in fact one of the enablers. Vengevine obviously is the bomb, and it's a pretty good bomb in that you don't even need to draw it, because Survival Of The Fittest (which is the real enabler) will just find it.
Anyway, I still don't think that the deck is too good. Maybe it just didn't smash me enough.

[majikal]

Just got back from Charlotte, where 5 of us were playing Survival in the Top8 (and 7!!!! in the top 16). As sad as I am to admit it, I think something is going to get banned. I don't think it should be Survival, since it's just such a cool card with lots of flavor, but I think something will, unfortunately.

The part that makes me think this is how ridiculously easy it was to fight through all the hate, even the dedicated hate decks that showed up en masse (so-called "Dark Horizons"). I even played against Storm combo, which is supposed to be a trump to the strategy, but my sideboard into G/W hate + Null Rods made easy work of it in games 2 and 3.

Sell em while you can, boys. I think this is it.

[Tacosnape]

The fact that Survival lets you tutor Gofys or Kotor as a back up plan should tell you which is more likely to be banned.

It's always done this. Nobody's been breaking formats with it before. Besides, it tutors at a cost. A card per shot. Or running Squee. Take your pick.


Vengivine, while nifty, is just a beater that requires some bad cards (Mongrel and Aquamobea for example) to enable properly.

Seriously? Pay attention. Some of the top Survival builds aren't running either one of these. And Vengevine's so powerful in Survival that it's pushing Tarmogoyf out of builds. Nothing in mono green should be pushing the format's second most powerful creature out.


Also, survival does not allow "hundreds" of decks. Dozens maybe, but not hundreds.

Introduction time! Drago, this is Hyperbole. Hyperbole, Drago.

[arebennian]

Seriously? Pay attention. Some of the top Survival builds aren't running either one of these. And Vengevine's so powerful in Survival that it's pushing Tarmogoyf out of builds. Nothing in mono green should be pushing the format's second most powerful creature out.



Hang on...
What is the most powerful creature then? Vengevine?

[TOGITwill]

Hang on...
What is the most powerful creature then? Vengevine?

Valid arguments could be made for Goblin Lackey, and more likely, Dark Confidant.

[Lemnear]

I predict, it will happen again: An archtype Zoo can't beat is gettin' the axe because of that fact.

I mean I've talked to a meerfolk Pilot lately and that guy claimed survival to Be unfair cause He can't Beat it with his 3 spell pierce, 3 daze, 4 FOW main and 4 sb slots. Respect Sir for your meta prediction! If that's enough reason to eliminate an archetype so cast-creature-attack is a to-Beat strategy again? Yeah, if it's Tom LaPille that'll try to explain that. Maybe He plays a few rounds MTG:O against Type 2 ramp first ;@p

I don't think vengevine was created without testing it's interaction with Survival. The printing of Fauna shaman is (to me) an indicator of that desired interaction and not a windfall. Vengevine can kill turn 5 and seriously, that's nothing overpowered. Every tribal Deck can do that, easily.

If it really happens that they kill this archtype by banning that Legacy staple out of tournament existance (much to weak in vintage especially compared to oath) just 'cause some people won't change their pet decks I'll go with Survival (tournament Data proves that more than enough people still play decks that have a Bad Survival matchups). If nacatl and vial are the Holy grails of this format I'll no longer be it's crusader, dood!

[Tacosnape]

Hang on...
What is the most powerful creature then? Vengevine?

Er. Actually. That sentence was typed under the influence of lots of cold medicine and I meant to say Tarmogoyf was the most powerful, not second.

Though while I'm at it, I'd say there could be decent arguments that Knight of the Reliquary is flat out a better creature, though far less played due to the double color requirement. I'd still go with Tarmogoyf, though.

[Amon Amarth]

I think I may just start playing TES instead as a trump. The G/W versions are byes and you only really have to worry about FoW in the G/U versions. Or maybe I'll play something with Humility instead. Decisions, decisions...

[DragoFireheart]

It's always done this. Nobody's been breaking formats with it before. Besides, it tutors at a cost. A card per shot. Or running Squee. Take your pick.


A tutoris a tutor is a tutor, and we know how WotC feels about those.



Seriously? Pay attention. Some of the top Survival builds aren't running either one of these. And Vengevine's so powerful in Survival that it's pushing Tarmogoyf out of builds. Nothing in mono green should be pushing the format's second most powerful creature out.


Serioulsy? I used those two as examples and you pretend they are the only creatures.



Introduction time! Drago, this is Hyperbole. Hyperbole, Drago.

I doubt that is what you meant.

[Crysthorn]

I think I may just start playing TES instead as a trump. The G/W versions are byes and you only really have to worry about FoW in the G/U versions.
All these (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35498) Canonists, Teegs and Rods would like to have a word with you.


Or maybe I'll play something with Humility instead.
Because obviously nobody plays Krosan Grips, tutorable Qasali Pridemages or Seals of Primordium in GW Survival decks. Oh wait...

[Phoenix Ignition]

A tutoris a tutor is a tutor, and we know how WotC feels about those.


They only ban like 3 total out of over 20?

If they ban rootwalla I'll be pissed, he's been my favorite creature since UG madness days. Getting rid of survival would hurt the game's flavor from a card pool standpoint but I'm sick of seeing survival decks so the lack of them would make up flavor in the metagame standpoint (unless people can make a deck that is good and actually beats all the survival variants, which I haven't seen yet).

[menace13]

All these (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=35498)Canonists, Teegs and Rods would like to have a word with you.


Because obviously nobody plays Krosan Grips, tutorable Qasali Pridemages or Seals of Primordium in GW Survival decks. Oh wait...

You are pretty dim if you think Humility loses to Prides? And only person i have ever seen play Seals is Jesse hatfield. Good luck beating Storm without staxx pieces or Stifle/Daze/FoW.. Hatebear.deck isn't enough to beat storm or Rock would be fine with combo.

[jrw1985]

Legacy players are not Standard players.

I'm not saying there is no cross-over, but I am saying that we look at the format differently. Because the format is not always forced to evolve (like Standard) Legacy players don't see deckbuilding as a Metagame choice. they generally leave the metagame to their sideboards. Yes, Legacy is a format for "Pet Decks", in that people don't change what they're playing or experiment nearly enough. The archetypes are generally well defined, and by turn 3 you can name 80% of the cards in your opponent's deck (from a pool of 11,000!). So people keep playing their favorite deck, get to know and understand it very well, and when something new and better comes along they generally find some piece of SB tech to synch-up the MU, but they don't abandon their original stategy.

What many people are asserting is that old decks need to be abandoned so that new decks that can beat Survine can emerge. Isn't that the very definition of a single deck defining the format? In Legacy, where change is supposed to be slow and gradual, the sudden appearance and dominance of a new and innovative achetype throws the balance of power for a loop.

Is that a problem? Is an increase in the speed of innovation in a format a bad thing?

I say No. Survine is beatable, and old decks don't need to disappear, they just need to retune themselves to improve their Survine matchup.

I am a Goblins player at heart (my Pet Deck). I love the deck and how it plays, and the arrival of Survine doesn't upset me. It's a winnable matchup across the line. Goblins wins game 1 when Survine doesn't mull to Survival. Period. It's just a better aggro deck when the Survival engine doesn't go online. And since most decks are still just running 4 Survival it's not unreasonable to expect to win game 1. Post sideboard it gets even easier. I side in 3 Pithing Needle and 3 Extirpate. Extirpate absolutely ruins Survine. Ruins it!

I've proven to myself that I can beat Survine with a classic deck. All it required was a change in my sideboard and an understanding of what I need to mull to. Where before I'd been running Tormod's Crypt and Faerie Macabre I recognized that Extirpate was much stronger against this new achetype. So I switched. No big deal. I started running more Needles in the SB also. They're still incredibly useful against a wide range of decks.

I don't want to see Survival or Vengevine banned. Legacy players are just slow to adapt, and tend to think of deckbuilding and sideboards in broad rather than narrow terms (AKA Play Leyline of the Void of graveyard hate because it is clearly the most disruptive against the widest range of GY recursion decks). They're need to adapt more narrow answers that can mess up Survine and then learn how to adapt their play accordingly. It will just take time. Casual Legacy players will keep losing to Survine, but people who take the time to understand what they're up against will realize that it is an archetype as beatable as any other. It just requires a little more hate and a tighter game plan.

[Amon Amarth]

You are pretty dim if you think Humility loses to Prides? And only person i have ever seen play Seals is Jesse hatfield. Good luck beating Storm without staxx pieces or Stifle/Daze/FoW.. Hatebear.deck isn't enough to beat storm or Rock would be fine with combo.

This. Hatebears arent enough for Zoo and that deck goldfishes faster. Ditto on Seals.

[FieryBalrog]

Valid arguments could be made for Goblin Lackey, and more likely, Dark Confidant.

What valid arguments?

[majikal]

Hatebear.deck isn't enough to beat storm or Rock would be fine with combo.
I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I also played Null Rod. Last time I checked, shutting off 12+ cards in an opponent's deck was a pretty good way to win, and it certainly payed off.

Without Mystical Tutor, it's a lot harder for Storm combo to fight through that much hate. I honestly didn't feel any pressure to hurry up and win once Null Rod hit the table. I was able to just bide my time by swinging with a guy or two and tutoring up another piece of hate.

And for the record my Storm opponent wasn't some scrub, it was the same guy that won the Atlanta 5K.

[Cabal_chan]

@jrw1985: Very nice post! It's a good way of looking at the issue, and one I hadn't thought of before.

However, sadly, I doubt many people or WotC will see it the same way. The tendency seems to be 'ban it!' when it comes to too great or fast a change.

[alderon666]

Null Rod is pretty good. Once it hits, Ad Nauseam becomes pretty bad IF the opponent doesn't have extra mana. With extra mana you can either flip a bunch of rituals into Tendrils or just get a Chain of Vapor.

Unlike other hatebears the storm can win through the Null Rod, so you either need more hate or pressure on top of it.

But, more often than not storm player is just gonna kill himself... LOL

[godryk]

I found it interesting to read this piece (http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/td/114&dcmp=ilc-mtgrss#71580) from Mike Flores on Wizards webpage. It doesn't say anything we don't know, but I like the message.


I rarely pay close attention to the Star City Legacy results because Legacy only has Grand Prix or other Premier Event support a couple of times per year, but this time I just couldn't help myself. In this Top 8 there were four Survival of the Fittest decks. All different ... and some of them colossally cool!

Ok, that was before Charlotte this weekend and I know it doesn't mean anything, but I like reading this kind of article as I'm a fan of the card.

[frogboy]

I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I also played Null Rod. Last time I checked, shutting off 12+ cards in an opponent's deck was a pretty good way to win, and it certainly payed off.

So your plan is to board a two-mana answers against the deck that has 6+ Duress/Thoughtseize, a few copies of Chain of Vapor, Burning Wish to kill your Null Rod, the ability to kill you before you even play your hate card (particularly in game three) all so that you can resolve a card that might not even do anything if their hand is all Rituals?

[majikal]

So your plan is to board a two-mana answers against the deck that has 6+ Duress/Thoughtseize, a few copies of Chain of Vapor, Burning Wish to kill your Null Rod, the ability to kill you before you even play your hate card (particularly in game three) all so that you can resolve a card that might not even do anything if their hand is all Rituals?
No, the plan is to board in eight 2-mana answers, half of which keep them from actually casting their kill condition while the other half disrupts their mana. If I get turn 2'ed after a Duress, then so be it. Not even Mindbreak Trap stops that, and I feel it is a weaker answer than Null Rod since Chant stops it from even being cast. I'm not saying simply including Null Rod makes Tendrils an auto-win, as I have to actually resolve it, but once I do, the onus is on the combo player to remove it ASAP, or I will continue to drop multiple pieces of hate while simultaneously applying pressure until they can't recover.

Also, if their hand is all rituals, they still need to, you know, get to lethal storm count.

[Fuzzy]

Also, if their hand is all rituals, they still need to, you know, get to lethal storm count.

Or dump lots of Goblins instead.

[majikal]

You're right, there's just no way I can beat combo. I must have just played against a poor opponent, because good Storm players always win through every piece of hate, which is why it's dominating all the major tournaments right now.

You sure showed me.

[Tacosnape]

You're right, there's just no way I can beat combo. I must have just played against a poor opponent, because good Storm players always win through every piece of hate, which is why it's dominating all the major tournaments right now.

You sure showed me.

This might be my new favorite quote in the history of The Source. Sigged.

[Blitzbold]

This might be my new favorite quote in the history of The Source. Sigged.

Tempting, indeed... Nice one, majikal! :D

[menace13]

I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I also played Null Rod. Last time I checked, shutting off 12+ cards in an opponent's deck was a pretty good way to win, and it certainly payed off.

Without Mystical Tutor, it's a lot harder for Storm combo to fight through that much hate. I honestly didn't feel any pressure to hurry up and win once Null Rod hit the table. I was able to just bide my time by swinging with a guy or two and tutoring up another piece of hate.

And for the record my Storm opponent wasn't some scrub, it was the same guy that won the Atlanta 5K.

8 cards for storm seem good, but what is up with the past 2 ANT lists running a transformational sb into a 15 creature beatdown deck? When am i going to sb out IT,LED,Tendril,Iggy to bring in a bunch of 2cc creatures and some cliques? So, basically the deck transfroms into the bad half of Team America. I am just going to guess that that plan doesnt outrace SurvVine.
The TES lists are much better positioned to battle through the hate cards especially when , you know, they actually have cards that do things in the sideboard.

[frogboy]

No, the plan is to board in eight 2-mana answers, half of which keep them from actually casting their kill condition while the other half disrupts their mana. If I get turn 2'ed after a Duress, then so be it. Not even Mindbreak Trap stops that, and I feel it is a weaker answer than Null Rod since Chant stops it from even being cast. I'm not saying simply including Null Rod makes Tendrils an auto-win, as I have to actually resolve it, but once I do, the onus is on the combo player to remove it ASAP, or I will continue to drop multiple pieces of hate while simultaneously applying pressure until they can't recover.

Also, if their hand is all rituals, they still need to, you know, get to lethal storm count.

We're assuming you lost game one, right? So if your infinite hate bear plan worked on in game two, they don't need a Duress or anything to kill you on turn two of game three?

If their hand is all Rituals, they can still cast Ad Nauseam and then cast all of their zero-mana artifacts to jack storm count.


because good Storm players always win through every piece of hate, which is why it's dominating all the major tournaments right now.

You sure showed me.

A good step one towards being able to beat hate cards might consist of not having a sideboard composed of a bunch of shitty creatures.

[Amon Amarth]

@majikal: not trying to take away from your accomplishment but, on the whole, I'd much rather be behind any Storm based deck.
@ANT SB: I think it was a throwback to when Combo decks used to SB in Phyrexian Negator in the Control matchups because they could often crap him out on turn 1 and present a serious clock. Those type of old scool-ish Control decks aren't well represented in any Legacy tournament afaik...

I don't like to waste 15 sideboard slots, but when I do, I put a bunch of shitty creatures in there.

[menace13]

I don't like to waste 15 sideboard slots, but when I do, I put a bunch of shitty creatures in there.

LOLS.
Stay thirsty, my friends.

http://harryallen.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/screen11.jpg

[dontbiteitholmes]

I would agree Survival has been around before and its even been a DTB before. However, its never been in the discussion of the best deck in the format. Nor has it even been so "dominating" that it has drawn out calls for banning it or has it needed dedicated Sideboard hate.
Yes it was and yes it has. Just because you weren't playing Legacy yet doesn't mean it didn't happen. People were all about banning Survival and they had a much better excuse at the time since Pithing Needle and Krosan Grip didn't exist yet.

Survival decks will continue to pop up from time to time, they all have the same weaknesses though. If Survival gets dealt with before you get a chance to use it you are just playing a subpar creature deck, Vengevine or not.

[ivanpei]

Just a side note for all those who are having trouble beating survival. Please play the deck that absolutely monster bashes it, UWGB/ UBG Landstill. Us guys on the landstill thread are having a ball against survival, our BEST possible matchup. Nothing better than playing a pure control deck that wrecks a midrange deck like survival.

[(nameless one)]

Ive also been testing Quinn against U/G Madness and G/W Survival and so far, I am happy with the results.

[frenchy-man]

It is funny because many people (and I was one of them) want survival/VV to be banned because it is dominating tournaments. It is just a matter of time before decks and metagame adapts to it.
Remember two months ago it was merfolk that was THE dtb. I am quite happy with this change of dtb.

btw, any ideas about the price of a japan mint survival ??

[Amon Amarth]

It is funny because many people (and I was one of them) want survival/VV to be banned because it is dominating tournaments. It is just a matter of time before decks and metagame adapts to it.
Remember two months ago it was merfolk that was THE dtb. I am quite happy with this change of dtb.

I'd like to remind everyone, as has been said before me, this has happened before numerous times in Legacy. This is not new. The format as a whole is very slow to change, part of which is due to low incentive. I think people aren't used to seeing lots of Survival decks in the Top 8's of tournaments but people would never bat an eye if that were Brainstorm or Force of Will. This much Green is pretty new to most Magic players... unless of course you've been paying a little attention to Standard in the past few years. Heh. I wish I could remember the article were Mike Flore (I think?) was talking of Jund's dominance but otherwise lack of degeneracy. I think it's applicable to Legacy right now.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the DCI banned Survival of the Fittest. They've done it to far better cards. *coughmysticaltutorcough.

[dontbiteitholmes]

If we banned a card everytime one card/decktype looked dominating for a month or two we would have banned Survival 5 years ago, Counterbalance, Tarmogoyf, Force of Will, Brainstrorm, Lord of Atlantis, Goblin Lackey, Brainfreeze, Standstill, and who knows what else.

[GGoober]

Island, I would imagine.

[mossivo1986]

Island, I would imagine.

I second that motion for basic island to be banned.

[DragoFireheart]

I second that motion for basic island to be banned.

I'll third that notion.

[Kuma]

I just sent this to Tom LaPille at Wizards of the Coast. I suggest all who feel likewise do the same.

Dear Tom LaPille,

I'm sure it has come to your attention, and the attentions of all others who work on the B/R lists, that UGx Vengevine Survival decks have been dominating the recent StarCity Games Legacy opens. These decks have put between one and five people in the top eight of each event since the deck premiered at GP Columbus. You've probably had several conversations on what, if anything, should be done about the Survival of the Fittest + Vengevine combo. There has been much discussion on www.mtgthesource.com about what should be done about this new combo. Mine, and the majority's opinion is that if anything is to be done that Vengevine be banned and not Survival of the Fittest.

"Free" cards have always been problematic, and Vengevine is the latest in a string of "free" cards that are too powerful for the Legacy format. Swinging with three or four hasty Vengevines on turn three has proven too strong for the format, as is evidenced by the growing number of top-eight placements. Efforts to hate it out of the format have as yet proven unfruitful. While there is still time before the December B/R announcement, the format can't seem to adapt.

Survival of the Fittest is a powerful tutor engine, and we know how you guys like to ban enablers, but without Vengevine the card is fair in Legacy. There are numerous fun, fair, decks that use Survival of the Fittest. There's a UGW deck that plays like Bant Aggro with a backup plan of Loyal Retainers/Iona, Shield of Emeria. There's a GB Survival deck that wins by putting Necrotic Ooze and some fatal combination of creatures in the graveyard. There's classic GRb Survival advantage, Elf Survival, and Gw Survival too. I would hate to see these decks suffer for Vengevine's sins.

Survival is one of the most beloved cards in Magic history. Without Vengevine, it had been placing but not dominating Legacy tournaments. It would make me and a great deal of Legacy players sad to see Survival decks leave the format entirely.

Preserve Legacy's diversity --- ban Vengevine not Survival of the Fittest.

[Amon Amarth]

Damn I gotta stop drunk posting because I don't remember saying anything about wanting to ban a damn thing.

[alderon666]

Funny thing is that when they banned Mystical Tutor out of freaking nowhere a bunch of people came here to say that they were right because Storm/Reanimator was dominating the metagame. The problem is that IT WASN'T!!!!!1111

Now that Survival IS beating everything and their dogs people just keep saying it's fine and that the metagame will adapt.

Agreeing with WOTC is so easy isn't it?

[menace13]

Why does it always have to be a ban? Why don't they unban Mystical or a few other cards(the list has a few: Land Tax, Eartcraft) instead of banning everything where no other format will play it?

[Sevryn]

Why does it always have to be a ban? Why don't they unban Mystical or a few other cards(the list has a few: Land Tax, Eartcraft) instead of banning everything where no other format will play it?

Nothing should be banned this go round. If survival is still dominating in 6 months, then WotC should consider banning vengevine. There just hasn't been enough time to make such a judgement, and doing something like this would discourage innovation in the format because if a new concept is good it will just be banned in the near future. It would be a poor precedent, IMO.

[codegeass]

ok so i am trying to figure out if i should sell my 4xSurvival of the Fittest and 4xvengevines if they do end up banning Survival of the Fittest it will i will lose a lot of money right now i have an offer for $250 on the 4xSurvival of the Fittest and 4xvengevines should i take it of just hope they do not ban anything

[codegeass]

Ok so i am trying to figure out if i should sell my 4xSurvival of the Fittest and 4xvengevines. If they do end up banning Survival of the Fittest it will i will lose a lot of money. Right now i have an offer for $250 on the 4xSurvival of the Fittest and 4xvengevines should i take it of just hope they do not ban anything?

[scrumdogg]

That will depend on several factors including how much you enjoy playing Survival, how much you need the money (or need to get your money back out of the cards...), and whether you can still use them for the month then sell them before the December announcement :)

[ivanpei]

Aren't survivals 40 ea and venges about 35 ea? Thats like $300 easy. $250 is not that great of a price IMO. Survivals will always have a place in EDH. If venge gets banned neither venge or survival will drop. Survival still has many other broken interactions and venge is still played in standard. If Survival gets banned, we'd probably see a fairly steep drop, probably to the 20+ range. Say it stabilizes at 25. You'd lose $60, so your playsets are worth $240. That's not that much difference compared to $250. If you sold it now and nothing gets banned, good luck finding survival for under $50, it's gonna be tough. I'd hold on to em.

[frogboy]

If Survival gets banned it will be maybe $10. Vengevine was $50 the weekend of Regionals before Survival-Vengevine was even a thing. It would probably drop to $30 as Legacy players liquidated and probably be about $40 by the middle of the next Standard season.

($250 is a medium embarrassing offer. Survivals and Vengevine both retail at about $40.)

[majikal]

($250 is a medium embarrassing offer. Survivals and Vengevine both retail at about $40.)
Survival has actually jumped to around $50 baseline on eBay, with some retailers charging as much as $60! Ridiculous. o_O

[GGoober]

Yeah it's truly insane, ever since Legacy's popularity (thanks to a lot for SCG's support), card prices are moving a lot. You really see how popular the format is when card prices respond aka demand/supply in action.

This is a clear example. I'm tempted to move my Survivals, but noticing that the eternal staples usually stabilize despite not being overly played e.g. Retainers, Karakas are not as relevant as they used to but the values are still high and dipped just a little, I think that Survival won't dip too much if it gets unpopular/unbanned. Simply because it has received more spotlight: previously in the past, only certain number of people knew/played Survival but with its popularity now, people are more aware of the card, and even if it becomes unpopular/banned, I don't ever see it falling back to $10 as it once was.

I remembered trading a Savannah for Chalice + Survival a few months ago, I thought I did a bad trade, but damn things change when they're popular lol.

[luckme10]

They should just unban flash again, that should take care of this survival problem.

[GGoober]

Actually the Flash scenario is what I'm worried about with this situation, not that Survival is anywhere close to Flash brokeness (being an instant is just not cool).

Flash instead of Hulk was banned.

So the similar trend is Survival instead of VV will be banned. But I think the power-level is far different, if WotC adheres to the earlier banning principles (MTutor was different in principle since 2 decks played it majorly AdN and Reanimator), then Survival might get axed, but the power-level of flash and Survival is still very large, mainly because Flash involved 2 cards and no additional mana/turns and being an instant, compared to an enchantment that requires GGG... to setup and needing a creature card in hand as well, and finally resolving the tutored creature.

I think we can all agree that as much as banning VV is dumb, he's the real culprit, look at all the top performing Survival decks, which ones did not have VV? Very few. When did all this hype start? With Caleb's UG Madness deck, why was it successful? VV.

[Mark Sun]

I think we can all agree that as much as banning VV is dumb, he's the real culprit,

Agreed. I originally thought that SotF was the problem, but this was not the case. Having Vengevines allows you to win games/matches that you have no business winning. I played my GW list at my weekly local tonight, taking 1st place at a pretty small crowd, but not against matchups that I would consider pushovers. I beat a Sneak Attack deck by killing him g1 before he had his combo in place, and when he did, I had so many guys on the battlefield that even an attack from a snuck in Emrakul would have left me with lethal on board. I beat a Dream Halls deck that needed to draw one more blue card to go off after resolving Show and Tell, but instead I just put a Knight of the Reliquary into play, found a Gaea's Cradle on my turn, and put an additional 16 power in play to end the game.

[lordofthepit]

Motivation behind banning cards

I believe that the DCI should err on the side of caution when banning cards from Legacy, because a large part of the appeal and the defining essence of Legacy is that you should be able to play with all the cards in the history of Magic. However, at times, it is necessary to ban a card that becomes format-warping and reduces the diversity of the format.

In my opinion, just because the card is nearly ubiquitous in Legacy (Wasteland, Force of Will, Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Tarmogoyf) doesn't mean that it's format warping. In fact, because those cards in played in so many different archetypes, I believe they improve the diversity of the format, even though they technically discourage a Legacy player from playing weaker cards like Tectonic Edge, Foil, Serum Visions, Unmake, and Grizzly Bears.

I'm not entirely advocating for the removal of Survival of the Fittest from the Legacy format, because I believe the banhammer should be used very conservatively and judiciously, and I haven't definitively made up my mind yet on the case of Survival of the Fittest; but on the other hand, I believe it is by far the most ban-worthy card in the format and that it deserves to be on the list even more so than many of the cards on the current banned list.

Here are some data from recent SCG tournaments:

Data from SCG tournaments

Richmond (2/28/10)

Reanimator
- 12 decks (5.08% of field)
- 42-29-1 (59.03%) against the field (no mirror, no IDs)
- 2 out of top 16 (4th and 5th)
ANT
- 9 decks (3.81%)
- 20-23-1 (46.59%) against the field
- 0 out of top 16

Indianapolis (3/14/10)

Reanimator
- 21 decks (7.34%)
- 47-52-4 (47.57%) against the field
- 2 out of top 16 (7th and 13th)
ANT
- 16 decks (5.59%)
- 32-47-0 (40.51%) against the field
- 0 out of top 16

Orlando (3/28/10)

Reanimator
- 5 decks (4.10%)
- 14-15-3 (48.44%) against the field
- 1 out of top 16 (7th)
ANT
- 6 decks (4.92%)
- 20-14-0 (58.82%) against the field
- 0 out of top 16

Atlanta (5/2/10)

Reanimator
- 23 decks (11.50%)
- 58-53-4 (52.17%) against the field
- 4 out of top 16 (2nd, 6th, 8th, 12th)
ANT
- 11 decks (5.50%)
- 22-27-1 (45.00%) against the field
- 1 out of top 16 (1st)

Philadelphia (6/6/10)

Reanimator
- 22 decks (9.32%)
- 58-55-4 (51.28%) against the field
- 0 out of top 16
ANT
- 18 decks (7.63%)
- 45-41-3 (52.25%) against the field
- 1 out of top 16 (6th)

Seattle (6/13/10)

Reanimator
- 25 decks (13.23%)
- 56-59-2 (48.72%) against the field
- 2 out of top 16 (5th, 12th)
ANT
- 15 decks (7.94%)
- 38-36-0 (51.35%) against the field
- 1 out of top 16 (15th)

St. Louis (6/27/10)

Reanimator
- 22 decks (11.40%)
- 54-59-1 (47.81%) against the field
- 0 out of top 16
ANT
- 6 decks (3.11%)
- 22-18-0 (55.00%) against the field
- 0 out of top 16

So in these 7 tournaments, Reanimator posted a cumulative record of 329-322-19 (50.52%). It made up 8.89% of the overall field and 9.82% of the top 16, so its penetration into the top 16 was slightly better than that of an average deck (by about 10%), which is to be expected for a Tier 1 deck.

ANT posted a 199-206-5 record (49.15%), so pilots had pretty dismal results. Granted, some have contended (including the DCI) that ANT is a difficult deck to pilot, but that in the hands of a pro, it was absolutely degenerate. So if this were true, we would expect significant top 16 penetration where the best pilots start to separate themselves from everyone else, but ANT decks--which made up 5.54% of the field--made up only 2.68% of top 16; in other words, it was less than half as likely as an average deck to place in the top 16!

Contrast that with the performance of Survival decks

Denver (8/22/10)
- 10 Survival decks (8.00%)
- 34-24-4 against the field (58.06%); U/G Madness, 28-16-3 (62.77%)
- 1 out of top 16 (8th place)

Minneapolis (8/29/10)
- 16 Survival decks (9.47%)
- 67-32-5 against the field (66.83%); U/G Madness, 58-28-0 (67.44%)
- 5 out of top 16 (3rd, 8th, 12th, 13th, 15th place)

Baltimore (9/19/10)
- 25 Survival decks (10.73%)
- 102-60-8 against the field (62.35%); U/G Madness, 65-38-5 (62.50%)
- 5 out of top 16 (2nd, 4th, 5th, 12th, 15th place)

Nashvile (10/17/10)
- Complete data currently unavailable
- 5 out of top 16 (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 12th place)

I don't think people fully realize how dominating Survival decks--and in particular, Madness--have been in the metagame. Ever since the deck debuted at Columbus, the deck has posted stellar results, boasting over 62.50% wins in each of the three SCG tournaments for which data are available, with excellent top 16 penetration. For the three tournaments available, 51 Survival decks (comprising 9.68% of the format) made up almost one quarter of the top 16 spots in those three tournaments!

Moreover, some have suggested that the metagame would adapt to Madness as it had to Reanimator. But what they may not realize is that it only took one tournament for Reanimator to fall from a top performer (59.03%) to a sub-50% deck (47.57% in Indianapolis, 48.44% in Orlando). The notion that the format also needed to "adjust" to ANT is ridiculous, as it put up only 3 top 16 slots in 7 tournaments, compared to the 5 that Survival decks now routinely put up every tournament. But in any case, whereas the format was fast to adjust to Madness and never allowed ANT to be a serious contender in significant quantities (which isn't to say that it isn't a threat to win in the hands of a great pilot), it's allowed Survival to put up unprecedented performances for four straight tournaments, despite being the deck that everyone is gunning for.

More discouragingly (for the diversity of the format, but not for a Survival pilot), the deck apparently has a positive matchup against every single major archetype in the format. The following includes all the data I found from Jared Sylva's articles:

- 27-22-5 (54.63%) against Merfolk
- 36-14-3 (70.75%) against Countertop
- 16-8-0 (66.67%) against Goblins
- 14-12-1 (53.70%) against Zoo
- 3-3-0 (50.00%) against Ad Nauseam
- 7-3-1 (68.18%) against Dredge
- 4-0-0 (100.00%) against Enchantress
- 9-1-0 (90.00%) against Charbelcher

I'm not sure why Sylva chose to include the likes of Enchantress and Charbelcher in his data as significant archetypes, but hopefully, that dispels the notion that a fringe deck like Enchantress is capable of "hating out" Survival decks.

Some counterpoints

I saw a lot of counterpoints being raised throughout the thread, and I can't remember exactly who posed each issue, but here's the argument against Survival

Is it necessary to ban a key card everytime a deck becomes successful? After all, Merfolk posted 5 out of the top 16 spots at SCG Baltimore, but no one is asking for the banning of Lord of Atlantis.

It should be noted that even though the tournament was considered a vindication of the Merfolk deck, it was rather Survival decks that performed much better. Consider that Survival decks made up only 25 of the 233 decks in the format, compared to Merfolk's 34, but still achieved 5 of the top 16 slots. Moreover, Merfolk only won 55.53% of its non-mirror matchups, compared to 62.35% for Survival decks. And Merfolk, despite being lauded as a foil to Madness, still only went 50% against Survival decks (15-15-2), at its best performance ever! In other words, even in a remarkable weekend for the fish that had everyone flipping out, Merfolk still did worse than Survival on an average weekend.

The deck isn't that broken/fast. Storm combo can kill on turn 1-2 with a good hand, whereas most non-LED Madness builds cannot kill before turn 3 (with Wild Mongrel) or even turn 4 (with Survival).

This is true, but storm combo is also more susceptible to hate. Furthermore, if you prevent the Survival engine, you may only have to deal with one Vengevine; if you prevent all discard outlets or supplement with graveyard hate, you may not have to deal with any, and U/G Madness decks (but not G/W) become bad aggro decks. But a bad aggro deck is still more threatening than a goldfish, which is what the likes of Storm combo and Reanimator are if you can prevent them from comboing out.

You can just hate the deck with cards anti-Survival measures or anti-Graveyard hate.

To some extent, this is true, but a threat is always better than an answer because you may not draw into your hate card (or the right type of hate) when you need it, and in the meantime, you are diluting the potency of your own deck by playing so much hate, often to the point that you can get beaten down by bad creatures backed by an Umezawa's Jitte. Mono-green madness decks or G/W can just go straight beatdown with much more powerful creatures, and the Survival player can also opt for a Natural Order plan out of the sideboard to bypass your hate entirely.

The metagame can adapt to this presence.

I believe that Legacy is a large enough format that metagame forces are capable of policing itself to some extent, and I have little doubt that one can construct a deck that has a positive matchup against Survival builds. However, that deck must also be strong enough to compete with the rest of the format, and so far, there is no presence that prevents Survival from rampaging over the format to the tune of a 63% win percentage. The format may not necessarily degenerate into something ridiculous like 1/3 Survival, 1/3 Storm, and 1/3 bad prison decks as a result of Survival, but if prison strategies and storm combos are some of the strategies necessary to keep Survival in check (as has been postulated in this thread), then Survival is clearly a format-warping presence that makes the format less fun. At that point, whatever benefits there are to keeping Survival legal are outweighed by its disadvantages, and I would have no qualms about banning it. I hope this doesn't become the case.

Other "shells" like Force of Will/Brainstorm/Duals/Fetches are even more commonly played too, but no one is calling for their banning.

The fundamental difference is that those shells enable a variety of decks, all of which might hope to win 50-55% of its games. Survival of the Fittest/Vengevine enables only a relatively small number of decks, but all of which are looking at 60-65 or 70%.

Other cards can be deemed format-warping too.

In my opinion, the only card in recent memory that I would deem format warping is Counterbalance in combination with Sensei's Divining Top, and even then, those decks didn't post the results as stunning as Survival. Moreover, Counterbalance is a combo only with Sensei's Divining Top; Survival combos with any of 20+ creatures in the deck. Counterbalance is also relatively slow, getting dropped on turn 2 at the earliest, and possibly locking you out on turn 3 only with a good Top. Even then, you have many turns to answer the lock with something like Krosan Grip. On the other hand, Survival takes far less investment and means you will likely take lethal damage within two turns, and even if answered before then, you are probably looking at serious card disadvantage under the gun of several hasty, recurring 4/3s and various Rootwallas.

I do not believe other combo decks are format warping. Certainly, if you are not playing blue, you are severely undermanned in that matchup, but at least you can rely on blue decks, prison strategies, and black disruption keeping conventional combo in check. Nothing exists right now to keep Survival in check.

Vengevine should be banned instead.

Perhaps, but other Survival of the Fittest strategies that don't use Vengevine are also performing exceedingly well (and possibly Necrotic Ooze-based decks). But more fundamentally, a cheap, recurrable tutor like Survival is much more repugnant to the DCI than a normal creature (although it is true that Vengevine breaks all sorts of normal rules too).

Conclusion

As with any card, the DCI should think carefully before banning Survival of the Fittest, because there is an inherent benefit to keeping as many cards as possible legal in the Legacy format, and it is possible that metagame forces will eventually counteract Survival so that it isn't so broken anymore. But this is a much more potent deck than the likes of Reanimator and ANT, both in terms of overall performance and penetration by top players, and it's one that is much more difficult to hate and is much more resilient, so parallels to the format adjusting to those decks are limited in utility.

After considering the results of SCG Charlotte (7 Survival decks in the top 16), I'm going to amend my previous post by saying that I am unfortunately jumping on the "ban wagon"; that is, something in the Survival decks needs to be banned. However, whereas previously I thought that if anything needed to be banned, Survival was certainly it, I am now open to the possibility of banning Vengevine.

In many ways I would prefer that, because as powerful as Survival is, it has a very beautiful and elegant design that transcends Magic expansions. It is also one of the iconic cards that I grew up with, and one with which I have a lot of fun playing casually. Vengevine makes no sense to me whatsoever from a design perspective and represents blatant power creep without introducing anything interesting in terms of flavor or mechanics; although I immediately recognized the card's power in competitive Magic, I hated it the moment it was spoiled. (Why does an angry plant have haste? Why does it recur? Why on the second creature cast? How did they come up with that P/T? How did they come up with that casting cost? And of course, why Mythic, from purely a flavor perspective excluding all financial considerations?) But that being said, as much as I prefer Survival as a card to Vengevine, the former seems to be the more likely candidate for banning given all the precedents the DCI has made in its previous decisions.

I have become convinced that something needs banning because the deck is still dominating the format in unprecedented ways, despite the fact that it has been recognized for quite some time as the top deck. This suggests that the metagame is unable to adapt to the deck, and in principle, the solution has been to ban the broken card causing the format to become unhealthy. In other words, Survival of the Fittest is destined to die because it is too powerful, which is bitterly ironic in the Darwinian sense!

Of course, there have been many objections made as to why the card shouldn't be banned, but I'll address some new issues and attempt to clarify some old ones.

Legacy players need to adapt to this new top deck by playing some hate cards, and let metagame forces regulate the format internally.

I think it is very naive to suggest that Legacy players playing at an SCG tournament are not aware that they need to prepare for Survival decks. In fact, recent decklists show that non-Survival players are adapting their decks (or their choice of decks) for just that, but to no avail. To me, this suggests a combination of two things: 1) that the strategy is too strong to be overcome by hate and 2) that the strategy is very adaptable in a way that renders it extremely resilient to hate. But it's far too simplistic to say "play more Pithing Needle, Extirpate, and Krosan Grips lulz". It clearly isn't working.

Note that the mere existence of hate cards isn't sufficient to balance the strategy. You have to draw the right type of hate at the right time, and you risk diluting your strategy if your opponent doesn't draw into what you're hating (and this isn't unique to Survival). Moreover, if you're holding a card like Extirpate or Krosan Grip, you need to keep mana open at all times. And finally, your opponent can just ignore your hate with a beatdown plan against a diluted deck, or just overrun you with a 10/10 pro-everything Hydra Avatar.

Cards like Tormod's Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, Chalice of the Void, etc. would serve as "hate" for Yawgmoth's Will, if it were ever unbanned, and every deck certainly would have access to them, but hopefully no one would argue that Will is safe for the format.

Survival of the Fittest is not necessarily too fast for a format that is capable of Turn 1 wins.

I don't think the brokeness of a card is best measured by how fast you can kill someone with it, but rather, by how frequently resolving the card leads to victory. Although I may certainly be off with this estimate, I would say that at least 80-90% of the time, when a Survival of the Fittest resolves early, the Survival player wins the game; much higher than say, a Tarmogoyf, Lackey, or an Aether Vial, which may lead to victory perhaps 60% of the time. That's probably on par with a resolved Ad Nauseam, except Survival is a 2-mana enchantment rather than a 5-mana instant that requires all kinds of deck constraints (which inherently prevents you from running it as a 4-of), which gets exponentially weaker in the late game as your life total diminishes, and which requires you to often go "all-in" into countermagic.

No one complained when Deck X (Reanimator, Ad Nauseam, Merfolk, etc.) was broken.

I've already addressed Reanimator and Ad Nauseam in extensive detail in my last post. Some have argued that as recently as 3 months ago, Merfolk was the clear deck to beat, but there were no cries for banning any cards central to that strategy.

In the SCG tournaments since GP Columbus, when Saito won with U/B Merfolk (the only Merfolk deck in the top 8), here's how Merfolk decks have fared:

Denver (8/22/10)
- 19 Merfolk decks (15.20%)
- 45-47-6 against the field (48.98%)
- 2 out of top 16 (1st and 13th place)

Minneapolis (8/29/10)
- 19 Merfolk decks (11.24%)
- 47-55-3 against the field (46.19%)
- 2 out of top 16 (9th and 16th place)

Baltimore (9/19/10)
- 34 Merfolk decks (14.59%)
- 107-85-7 against the field (55.53%)
- 5 out of top 16 (1st, 6th, 7th, 10th, and 11th place)

Nashville (10/17/10)
- Complete data currently unavailable
- 0 out of top 16

Charlotte (10/31/10)
- Complete data currently unavailable
- 2 out of top 16 (13th and 16th)

The performance of the two decks are not comparable at all. In fact, some have attributed the high numbers of Survival decks in the Top 16's to the number of players piloting those decks, but in fact, there were many more Merfolk decks in Denver, Minneapolis, and Baltimore than Survival decks (and in fact, more at each tournament)--they just didn't fare nearly as well, despite claims that Merfolk was "dominating". Although data is still unavailable for Nashville and Charlotte, I highly doubt this trend has changed much.

I'll check all of Sylva's data (beginning from December 2009) if I ever get a chance, but from what I recall, no archetype consistently puts up more than 55% over the course of several tournaments in statistically significant sample sizes, because other decks are gunning for it. So the fact that Survival has put up about 63% over the course of three tournaments (probably five once data from Nashville and Charlotte come in) is alarming.

Most of the players interviewed at SCG Charlotte claimed that Survival did not need to be banned.

That is indeed true, and their responses sounded much like this: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/events.aspx?x=mtgevent/gpcol07/welcome

Just replace SCG Charlotte with GP Columbus '07 and Survival of the Fittest with Flash.

Metagame forces will eventually keep Survival in check. Players should start playing Decks X, Y, and Z, which stomp Survival.

If metagame forces are capable of keeping Survival in check, I agree that it should not be banned, and I hope that this can be demonstrated to be the case by December 20. But so far, there is no evidence that metagame forces are restoring balance to the format, but rather, it seems that Survival is becoming even more dominant.

People have recommended many decks which should stomp Survival (Ad Nauseam, Merfolk, etc.), but as far as metagame data show, that is not the case. Survival currently represents a metagame problem, whereas your personal experiences with decks X, Y, and Z--whatever they may be--constitute anecdotal evidence inconsistent with metagame-wide evidence drawn from SCG data.

Once again, I have no doubt that in a vacuum, you could construct a list of 75 cards that beats Survival consistently, but it must be viable in a real tournament setting. Sadly enough, the only deck I currently recall that has an advantage on Survival (albeit on very small sample size) is Legacy Allies. I'm only half joking, and I seriously hope that this isn't anyone's idea of "evolving" the format.

Other cards exist that are more played than Survival of the Fittest (Island, Brainstorm, Wasteland, Force of Will, Tarmogoyf, etc.)

This is something I've mentioned before, but which bears repeating: just because a card is widely played doesn't mean it is format-warping. In fact, in most cases, their ubiquity is good because they lend to the diversity of the format; most of those cards above are played in dozens of distinct competitive decks, none of which are overly powerful in the format. Moreover, cards like Brainstorm and Force of Will help make the format less "swingy" by smoothening out draws or preventing broken early plays, diminishing the impact of luck and allowing skill to become more of a factor.

Survival of the Fittest may be able to contribute in a healthy way to the diversity of the format and by opening up decision trees for the pilot if it weren't so dominating in the format, and it certainly did back in the days of Angry Tradewind Survival. But that is no longer the case, as it is dominant in a way that cripples the diversity of the format, and rather than forcing the pilot to think through the many decision trees possible with a creature-based toolbox, is a "bomb" that wins the game while running largely on autopilot.

[DragoFireheart]

Link to the recent 5k SCG in Charlotte for anyone wondering:

SCG 5k Charlotte (http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=leg&start_date=2010-10-31&end_date=2010-10-31&event_type=SCLO)

I think Vengevival may have gotten too good, but the fact that it can't kill on turn1-2 along with the fact that the tutor effect of SotF is not anywhere near the power level of Mystical Tutor in Reanimator/ANT decks leads me to believe it may not be banned.

Then again, the way that Fauna Shaman was printed leads me to believe that WoTC acknowledges that SotF could be too powerful. Maybe Vengevival is the final straw.

[hismastersvoice]

I think Vengevival may have gotten too good, but the fact that it can't kill on turn1-2 along with the fact that the tutor effect of SotF is not anywhere near the power level of Mystical Tutor in Reanimator/ANT decks leads me to believe it may not be banned.

I don't understand the constant comparisons between MT and SotF. MT's job has alway been to increase the consistency of your engine, whereas SotF is, in itself, a single card engine. If you want to compare MT to anything in the Survival decks it should be Moeba or Mongrel, because these are the tools Survival uses to increase it's consistency (some would say increase it beyond a certain acceptable level).

As an aside, I believe the banning of MT is indirectly responsible for the Survival problem. That's what you get for tinkering with a healthy format.

[Equinozio]

I think the problem may come with lists like Hatfield that package Enlightened tutor to make a bigger consistence of the deck ( or the engine ). But ET is not as powerfull as MT is i think.

[(nameless one)]

I think Mystical Tutor is active while Enlightened Tutor is more reactive. Whatever you tutor for via MT can be casted at the same time the tutor was done while for cards that are tutored by ET, there is that waiting time (and since all of it would be sorcery speed).

Having Brainstorm and to some extent, Sensei's Divining Top, couldn't help MT's case of getting unbanned.

Well back to Survival of the Fittest. I personally think that the meta will evolve. Everyone was frustrated too when CounterTop first started ripping the top8s and locking folks out of the game.

Hopefully at the end of all this, whatever decision is made, the format will be better.

[Cabal_chan]

Wait...

...wasn't Show and Tell the card people were complaining about before this(not that it was ever as prevalent, but still)?

[Doomsday]

Does "playerbase refuses to adapt" count as a legitimate reason to ban a card in WotC's eyes? Hopefully not.

[Tacosnape]

Speaking of the Hatfieldish Enlightened Tutor versions, I just piloted a variation of said deck, went a commanding 4-0 last night in my local tournament, taking down Belcher, BG Hexmage Depths, Landstill, and Sligh. After the tournament, I really further believe Vengevine needs the axe. Regardless of what incarnation of this deck I play, be it sellout aggro with LED's, the GW Goyf/Knight versions, UG Madness version, or even BG with Putrid Imp and discard, the deck just -feels- too powerful.

Against Belcher, his turn one on the play involved dropping a Belcher on the board, but not being able to activate it. Turn two I rail him for 16 with Vengevines. Turn three he topdecks LED and hits his Taiga as the 9th card, I kill him at 1. I lose game 2 after we both mull to 5 and he somehow still gets 14 ETW tokens on turn one. Game 3 I have too much hate and aggro his face off.

Against Hexmage Depths, game one he's dead by turn three, game 2 I fight through, not kidding, a Leyline of the Void, a Pernicious Deed, and two Pithing Needles, put him up to 55 after STP'ing two Marit Lages, and still managed to end up winning on like turn thirty with a Jitte-carrying Rootwalla and a hardcast Vengevine.

Landstill was my easiest match of the night. Turn one Survival drew a Force. Turn two Survival stuck. EE at 2 came, but I managed to get three Vengevines in the yard before it blew, recurred them, and won. Game two involved Survival, Choke, more Vengevines.

Burn involved me crushing him game one with an Arrogant Wurm + Jitte, Game 2 involved me dying to 5 1-for-3's and a Fireblast in 3 turns, and game 3 involved me swinging for 16 on turn 2 again.

FWIW, this is the list I was playing:

4 Windswept Heath
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Savannah
6 Forest
1 Plains
1 Tree of Tales

4 Noble Hierarch
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Vengevine
3 Arrogant Wurm
1 Loaming Shaman
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Shield Sphere
4 Elvish Spirit Guide

4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
1 Seal of Primordium
2 Umezawa's Jitte

SB:
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Mindbreak Trap
1 Choke
1 Defense Grid
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Ground Seal (Funny against Extirpate and Faerie Macabre)
2 Pithing Needle (I'd cut this down to 1 for a Ratchet Bomb next time, as E-tutor for Ratchet Bomb would have saved me game 2 against Belcher)
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Ethersworn Canonist

So yeah, I'm now 12-0 in sanctioned matches with three different versions of Vengevine Survival, beating the aforementioned decks, Dredge, The Rock, Goblins, Countertop, and a few others that escape me at the moment. And I've powered my way through Leylines, Extirpates, Needles, Snares, Forces, or what have you. I ordinarily keep 4-5 decks assembled so when people start to hate the holy hell out of one of my decks, I can switch. With Vengevine Survival, I don't care. I just go in and win anyway.

I really think Vengevine may have crossed the line. Or maybe it's just going to take a ridiculous renovation of the metagame, annihilation of several old archetypes and reshaping of others.

[Koby]

I did some testing last nite with Arrogant Wurm in a non-blue build with LED. I can confirm how ridiculous some of the plays were. We tested against Pox, and Pox was too slow to handle it pre-board.

Example:

LED, pop- discarding 2 Vengevine, Basking Rootwalla, Arrogant Wurm. Cast both with madness, attack for 8 turn 1. Untap, attack for 13 turn 2.

IMO, Vengevine needs to go.

[DragoFireheart]

I did some testing last nite with Arrogant Wurm in a non-blue build with LED. I can confirm how ridiculous some of the plays were. We tested against Pox, and Pox was too slow to handle it pre-board.

Example:

LED, pop- discarding 2 Vengevine, Basking Rootwalla, Arrogant Wurm. Cast both with madness, attack for 8 turn 1. Untap, attack for 13 turn 2.

IMO, Vengevine needs to go.

And Storm/Belcher decks can go off turn 2 or 1. What's your point?

[GGoober]

The point is the deck can still do well even with hate, whereas Belcher can't do so. If Survival decks did not have VVs, then it cannot simply dump the VV in the yard and use it as a 12-16 power backup plan. I think it is with this very reason that the deck is strong. If your opponents don't deal with Survival you lose, if you dealt with Survivals, setting up VV in the yard and triggering them with small drops will still spell death, especially against control decks (there's only 4 StP against 4 VV that all come out within 1-2 turns).

The deck can be hated, but it involves more than 4-6 cards, which IMO is a little silly since Dredge, a deck notorious for being 'broken' unless you hated it, only required about 4 slots to hate it effectively. VV Survival requires both hate for the engine (Survival) and a way to deal with the inevitability of VV (i.e. you have to remove them in play or in the yard with StP/Path or Crypt/Extirpate). Chances are it seems that even though the meta is adjusting to the deck, drawing one of the two types of hate is not better than drawing the threat i.e. you can have the wrong hate against Survival at the wrong time.

However, this brings a strong re-evaluation of hate-cards. Krosan Grip is NOT effective against Survival with vengevines. It is often too slow and 1-2 VV in the yard would cause some problems. The best way to hate Vengevival is really GY hate because it deals with the card that caused the problem in the first place: VV. However, this is not 100% effective as compared to Dredge since hating the GY means that they can just go fetch Goyfs and big beats instead of chaining VV. The 2-modes of attack depending on which hate-cards you drew makes the deck pretty resilient (and carefully thinking again, I would say Extirpate is the best card against Vengevival because it doesn't give information that you're hating the yard i.e. you don't reveal it until you cast it, so you can catch the VV if they opt for that road, or hold it to destroy Survival and then pate it away). Every other form of hate is either: 1) revealling information e.g. Crypt/Leyline so that they can opt for a beatdown mode or 2) not effective e.g. Grip because they will just chain VV and get 4-12 free power for later.

I think that most decks can deal with Survival (refer to past performances and variations of successful Survival iterations), but VV hits the Legacy scene new, i.e. even without Survival say a deck running Buried Alive/Intuition, the meta hasn't seen how to effectively deal with Vengevine. Obviously now we notice that GY hate is the way to deal with VV, but when VV is coupled with an engine that has tremendous synergy and speed, it becomes hard to hate either piece to the win strategy. But I think the single most important hate against Vengevival is GY hate. As much as Survival will end up being broken, decks in Legacy simply cannot deal with 12-16 free power swinging in that comes back even after board sweeping. It's inevitable that Survival will out-advantage a deck if not answered but I think the main threat here is not really Survival, it's the VV that comes out too fast for most decks to handle, without running the relevant hate cards in game 1.

I believe that's the strategy of the deck:
- Kill if Survival is unanswered and win
- Try to get VV in the yard with Fauna, some activations of Survival/LED etc if Survival is answered, then beat face with a potential 8-12 power in the yard a turn. And since I know that the format is dominated by only StP that can deal with VV game 1, I'm going to win because I have recurring 2-3 VV against your 1 StP and attempts to topdeck StP, any other spell is irrelevant against VV at this point.
- SB games: you hate my Survival I think I'm cool, I'll just try to dump VV. If you have GY-hate, that's a little tricky for me, but I'll still slow-roll and force you to Crypt early unless you have Extirpate. And knowing you brought in 8 SB cards against me, I think I won't dilute my aggro plan and just smash your face since your MD is weaker now.

I think this is why I think the deck is strong, and wouldn't be possible without VV. However, I'm still positive even with VV it's dealable, i.e. I think I build my decks so that I won't get steam-rolled but it won't be too favorable a matchup. The issue will really become if the deck becomes as powerful as Dredge game 1, and is much harder to hate in games 2/3, then it would begin to warp the format into: VV Survival v.s. 10+SB card v.s. VV Survival or a MD that is anti VV-Survival (e.g. MD relics etc). If that day comes, it would be similar to Flash Hulk metas i.e. either Flash or anti-Flash decks in the meta.

But it is obvious who's the main culprit. Seemingly broken Survival decks e.g. Iona/Retainers, Emrakul/Retainers, Bant Survival, EPIC Elf/NOgenitus had their spotlights for a few weeks-months, but they were never this successful. Are these Survival decks no longer viable? Are they entirely outclassed by Vengevival? I think so, just as many people claim to ban Survival, I think the claim isn't justified because the card has existed forever and the previously mentioned decks are all tier 1-2 decks that do well in tournaments, but if you look back at the anomaly Survival penetration, you notice that all of them had VV. Whether its UG, GW, GB, LED builds etc. All of them played VV. All of them played Survival too, but the Survival decks in the past without VV were not as successful as this. I think we know who's the murderer here, let's see if WotC agrees that VV is the problem. Banning Survival implies that WotC is willing to ignore history, the history of Survival decks, its diversity, its failures and successes, and that they are willing to accept that future printings of cards that do not take too much of the eternal format in mind e.g. Vengevine will yet to be printed again, and the same will happen again. Who knows? Maybe in the future there will be a card that has tremendous synergy with Standstill (e.g. a card that forced an opponent to cast a spell and lets you return an enchantment back into play herp derp, just raising an example), would that mean that Standstill be banned? Because cards like Standstill/Survival are known to be good in the format, yet criticized because they weren't tier 1. Now we have a new card printed that broke the deck, so we're going back to ban the old card when clearly the new card is at fault? I would imagine if such a Standstill 'enabler' was printed, everyone would be playing with Standstill.dec, would Standstill be at fault?

I would prefer nothing get banned, but I hope my point is clear: if there is a need for a ban, it's VV not Survival. By banning Survival, WotC decides that they feel that the engine itself is broken but what they really show is their inability to make decisions when this-said engine has existed in the meta for years untouched and they have no consideration for newer cards that impact the format. Although really, non of us saw Leyline/Helm, Survival/Vengevine until creative minds discovered them. That's the beauty of this format, and it's why I play it, so please be prudent on the bannings if there ever is one.

[DragoFireheart]

When will WotC perform the bannings, if any?

[DragoFireheart]

I would prefer nothing get banned, but I hope my point is clear: if there is a need for a ban, it's VV not Survival. By banning Survival, WotC decides that they feel that the engine itself is broken but what they really show is their inability to make decisions when this-said engine has existed in the meta for years untouched and they have no consideration for newer cards that impact the format. Although really, non of us saw Leyline/Helm, Survival/Vengevine until creative minds discovered them. That's the beauty of this format, and it's why I play it, so please be prudent on the bannings if there ever is one.

I keep hearing that BUG Jacestill decks hose the hell out of Vengevival decks. Not all is lost. We should give this deck another month and see what happens. See if other niche yet competitive decks can grow in a new meta.

Worse comes to worse, something gets banned.

[Nonex]

I've been a Survival player for some years, and I still remember the two main points they gave me while building a version of mine:

- A good Survival deck should manage to win without Survival
- Assuming no disruption from your opponent (because his/her deck can't disrupt you or you are just playing against the wall), a resolved Survival should win you the game in 2-3 turns

Nothing has actually changed to me, except that the Vengevine plan has caught most decks unprepared. Diversity is key to Survival decks, those that aren't die easily to hate, that explains why specific hate doesn't completely make the cut against the most successful versions. Vengevine is the most common of their strategies, but it's not the only one. This is why I think it's a matter of thinking in more general terms. For example, possible plans would be:

All builds rely on creatures = Shut down all creatures (e.g. Humility)
Most builds abuse activated abilities from Vial, Survival, Fauna Shaman, Knight of the Reliquary, etc. = Shut down all activated abilities (e.g. Suppression Field)
Most versions win through combat damage = Shut down their combat phase (e.g. Ensnaring Bridge)

And so on.

[keys]

And Storm/Belcher decks can go off turn 2 or 1. What's your point?

Because aggro decks aren't supposed to have a turn 2 clock. You could compare it to Dredge, but it is significantly more consistent and can fight through hate much easier.

Traditionally it has been Aggro > Control > Combo > Aggro. These checks/balances ensure that the format stays diverse and different strategies are viable. Vengevine breaks this balance because it has the same clock as a combo deck and destroys all other aggro decks in addition to control.

Just look at the results from SCG Charlotte, you'll see that the format is already warping into Survival decks vs Anti-Survival decks (e.g. The Rock).

[DragoFireheart]

Because aggro decks aren't supposed to have a turn 2 clock. You could compare it to Dredge, but it is significantly more consistent and can fight through hate much easier.



So Vengevival is a combo/aggro deck. BUG Jacestill decks are stomping the crap out of Venggie decks.: they run enough disruption to stop the combo while also running mass removal to stop the creature swarms.


Just look at the results from SCG Charlotte, you'll see that the format is already warping into Survival decks vs Anti-Survival decks (e.g. The Rock).

First, I don't see any rock decks. Second, I do see a lot of Dark Horizon Decks. Finally, I do see a variety of decks. It's simply that Vengevival is the flavor of the month at the moment.

[keys]

First, I don't see any rock decks. Second, I do see a lot of Dark Horizon Decks.

lol? Rock = "Dark Horizons" = Junk

[Tinefol]

So Vengevival is a combo/aggro deck. BUG Jacestill decks are stomping the crap out of Venggie decks.: they run enough disruption to stop the combo while also running mass removal to stop the creature swarms.

Where are these decks? Show me a few recent top8 of a big tournaments with UBG Landstills, and without Vengvines.

[menace13]

Unban Oath and Bazaar!

[Tao]

Fun Fact: If you have a Vengevine in your top 15 cards (or resolve a Survival) you beat UGB Jacestill ~100% of the time in game 1 (unless they play Extirpate maindeck). What will they do? Counter? Deed? Innocent Blood? Bounce with Jace? They have no answer to Vengevine so I am surprised to see UGB Jacestill of all decks in this thread.

Against UG Madness Jacestill might have a slim chance if they a) keep Survival of the table b) don't die to the initial assault and c) get lucky with Fatesealing away the creatures. I haven't tested that matchup so UGB might have a chance, I don't know. What I tested is UGB Jacestill against GW Survival. Overall the matchup is about 85%-90% for GW in G1. G2 gets a bit tougher because of Extirpate but with a safe 1-0 lead I am really comfortable with that matchup.

[frenchy-man]

When will WotC perform the bannings, if any?

+1

Just adapt to the new metagame. Play less merfolks and more tempo oriented decks or combo, or just smallpox, or CB.decks.
Btw an emrakul turn two is not fair too. Nor is a turn two Iona.

Legacy is a powerful format but it is good to see changes (I don't want to see those merfolks for years...).

[St3B]

Fun Fact: If you have a Vengevine in your top 15 cards (or resolve a Survival) you beat UGB Jacestill ~100% of the time in game 1 (unless they play Extirpate maindeck). What will they do? Counter? Deed? Innocent Blood? Bounce with Jace? They have no answer to Vengevine so I am surprised to see UGB Jacestill of all decks in this thread.

Against UG Madness Jacestill might have a slim chance if they a) keep Survival of the table b) don't die to the initial assault and c) get lucky with Fatesealing away the creatures. I haven't tested that matchup so UGB might have a chance, I don't know. What I tested is UGB Jacestill against GW Survival. Overall the matchup is about 85%-90% for GW in G1. G2 gets a bit tougher because of Extirpate but with a safe 1-0 lead I am really comfortable with that matchup.

I came to the same conclusion.

[majikal]

or just smallpox
This. Smallpox is terrifying, at least for GW Survival.

[Cthuloo]

This. Smallpox is terrifying, at least for GW Survival.

Smallpox is terrifying for more than 50% of the format. The card is definitely underplayed.

[Nidd]

lol? Rock = "Dark Horizons" = Junk
Wait, wasn't Junk some sort of Pikula splash Green?
And The Rock GB disruptive Aggro?

[Koby]

PT Junk is an old PTQ circuit deck featuring:

green creature
black discard
white removal

This isn't too far off from The Rock.

[DragoFireheart]

Where are these decks? Show me a few recent top8 of a big tournaments with UBG Landstills, and without Vengvines.

They simply have not been used yet. Merfolks pushed them out recently.

[technogeek5000]

Humility says "Om-nom". If I didnt just build a new deck, I would shell out for U/W JaceStill with bridge and humility.

[SlopeeJ]

Those decks get blown out by Krosan Grip

[technogeek5000]

Those decks get blown out by Krosan Grip

Decks dont lose solely on the basis of anti hate. Especially one with a variety of solutions, protection, and draw power like the deck I suggested.

[ivanpei]

I came to the same conclusion.

BUG Lists do not do well against Survival-vengevine, their removal is lacklustre and suboptimal. UWBG lists however do bash survival. Test it. My list on the thread with 4 swords and 2 paths deals with Venges very well. There's alot of action going on that thread right now and everyone running UWBG has very positive results against survival-venge (especially the players who don't play cute tricks and just streamline their decks).

[Tacosnape]

Humility says "Om-nom". If I didnt just build a new deck, I would shell out for U/W JaceStill with bridge and humility.

Not as scary as you think. Bridge at zero is circumventable by Noble Hierarchs (+Jitte for an extra four a turn), or by just killing the thing with Qasali Pridemage. Humility is fought by recurring four 1/1 Vengevines with four 1/1 Rootwallas, which is still a decent chunk of swinging to deal with. Or, if you're UG Madness, you just counter them. Not to mention that, you know, these decks tend to pack green. Green has lots of neat boardy tricks to eat Bridge and Humility.

Oh, also, to the world? Vengevine Survival doesn't get reamed by Jacestill. I don't care what your colors are.

[ivanpei]

Survival venge is not flash. It does have bad mu's. UWBg landstill is a bad mu. I am not the only one making this claim. Most of the guys on the thread are having success in this matchup especially after extirpates postboard. Of course I will continue to be wrong until t8s show landstill to back up for my claim. Until then I will continue advertising the deck because UWBg landstill is the best deck to play if you want to beat survival.

[Tacosnape]

Survival venge is not flash. It does have bad mu's. UWBg landstill is a bad mu. I am not the only one making this claim. Most of the guys on the thread are having success in this matchup especially after extirpates postboard. Of course I will continue to be wrong until t8s show landstill to back up for my claim. Until then I will continue advertising the deck because UWBg landstill is the best deck to play if you want to beat survival.

Perhaps it's build related, then. Maybe the matchup's way better against other builds. In the 4 Enlightened Tutor version, I am having absolutely no trouble with this matchup. If I go first and stick a turn one Survival when they have no Force, it's over. If I can get two Survivals, they need a Force, a Snare, and a third blue card, or else two Forces. If I drop Mongrel/Vengevine/Rootwalla and the Vengevine gets STP'd, I've found that I can still wreak a fair amount of havoc with 2-3 mid power green creatures on the board. And I've destroyed Pernicious Deed either by fetching Seal of Primordium, Qasali Pridemage, or by flipping out an Arrogant Wurm at the right moment.

And Extirpate doesn't really frighten me. I pack Choke, Needle, and Oblivion Ring, and both Defense Grid and City of Solitude can keep Counters/Extirpate off me. Plus, if you Extirpate my Vengevines and I can stick a Survival, I can rail out quad Rootwallas and refresh them with Loaming Shaman if they get taken down. And I can just churn out 4/4 Arrogant Wurms one at a time.

EDIT: Oddly, the only matchup I've found thus far that's just a complete nightmare for me is U/G Survival Madness w/ Spell Pierce, as they tend to edge me out in the battle of making Survivals stick and win the green guy-vs-green guy battle with Wonder. Oh, and Dredge is pretty tough too.

[ivanpei]

I will not go pound for pound on the mu analysis here. We will see what happens in the coming weeks. It maybe a matter of builds, it may be a matter of pilots. I respect your thoughts and your build. I've played the mu and it works for me. Cheers.

[HAVE HEART]

Or you two could get on MWS and play. All this matchup talk is irrelevant anyway. Legacy comes down to whether or not you can outplay your opponent. If you lost to someone who made a play mistake, then chances are you misplayed somewhere in that game.

[FieryBalrog]

Wait, wasn't Junk some sort of Pikula splash Green?
And The Rock GB disruptive Aggro?

Rock is often GBW in Legacy, Dark Horizons is the standard GBW disruptive midrange deck running undercosted fat.

[alderon666]

Or you two could get on MWS and play. All this matchup talk is irrelevant anyway. Legacy comes down to whether or not you can outplay your opponent. If you lost to someone who made a play mistake, then chances are you misplayed somewhere in that game.

Because if two top players play a game without making a single mistake, then the games ends in a draw.
:rolleyes:


Has someone heard about something on Aaron Foresythe Twitter about infinite tutors?

[majikal]

Has someone heard about something on Aaron Foresythe Twitter about infinite tutors?

I have a love-hate relationship with toolbox decks. The one-of's make for some interesting opening hands, but then tutor-n-shuffle kicks in.

about 10 hours ago via web

Aaron's Random Card Comment of the Day #29, 11/4/10
(http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=23234)

The structure of this card is based on that of the oft-reprinted original card advantage machine Jayemdae Tome. Replace the 4’s with 6’s and change “draw” to “tutor” and there you have it.

As I designer, I like this card about a tenth as much as I like Jayemdae Tome. As designers, we strive to make sure the game has the right amount of variance in it; variance leads to replayability and it keeps the outcomes of individual games in doubt longer. Players, at least those whose primary goal is winning, strive to reduce the variance in the game as much as possible. Things like tutors, scry, and card drawing are used to make sure the same spells come up in essentially the same order--or at the very least at close to the right time--game after game. If a deck can consistently assemble a game-winning combo on turn two, players will do that over and over and over. Games like that get really boring really fast, so we need to fight back against that. The mystery of the draw is a vital part of the game.

Tutoring every single turn has the potential to remove all the variance from at least one player’s part of the game. Once Planar Portal is up and running, assuming its controller isn’t under significant pressure, the outcome of the game is a foregone conclusion.

Not only does Planar Portal eliminate variance, it adds shuffling, which is another way to make a game consistently less fun.

The only thing that makes the card printable are the high costs associated with using it; you have to spend 12 mana to get the first benefit out of it. The mere act of surviving long enough to activate it is a feat in itself. It’s okay for us to print cards like this that do powerful-but-bad things at high costs once in a while, but personally I’d rather focus our efforts on powerful-and-fun.

[HAVE HEART]

Because if two top players play a game without making a single mistake, then the games ends in a draw.
:rolleyes:


Has someone heard about something on Aaron Foresythe Twitter about infinite tutors?

... and every top player plays blue, which means that if someone lost, then there was definitely a line of play that should have gone differently in order to change the outcome of the game.

[Dark Ritual]

GW survivine would like a word with the top players. The deck lacks blue except it sometimes 'splashes' blue for just wonder in the form of one tropical island. It is also noted that it has been putting up a ton of results lately notably in the SCG 5k's.

I have had games where I make absolutely zero mistakes and still lost. Mana flooded without a brainstorm + fetch? Good job, you just lost most likely if you're playing any type of typical blue aggro control deck.

[HAVE HEART]

GW survivine would like a word with the top players. The deck lacks blue except it sometimes 'splashes' blue for just wonder in the form of one tropical island. It is also noted that it has been putting up a ton of results lately notably in the SCG 5k's.

I have had games where I make absolutely zero mistakes and still lost. Mana flooded without a brainstorm + fetch? Good job, you just lost most likely if you're playing any type of typical blue aggro control deck.

How can you say this? Unless you had your game reviewed by multiple professionals, then it is hard to believe your self-review. You could have built your deck incorrectly, mulliganed incorrectly, sideboarded incorrectly or mismanaged your role.

[Amon Amarth]

How can you say this? Unless you had your game reviewed by multiple professionals, then it is hard to believe your self-review. You could have built your deck incorrectly, mulliganed incorrectly, sideboarded incorrectly or mismanaged your role.

Um, strategic superiority? Play any Storm Combo deck perfectly against any Aggro deck perfectly and the Combo deck will win the lion's share of the games. You know, because the Aggro deck can't interact in any meaningful way.

[lordofthepit]

Seven more Top 16's at SCG Boston, including the top 2 spots: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/deckshow.php?&t[C1]=leg&start_date=2010-11-07&end_date=2010-11-07&event_type=SCLO

[death]

Survival once again swept Boston, claiming 1-2 finish and basically half of the top 16.

Ninja'd :tongue:

[SlopeeJ]

What's up with all the noobs at Starcity, all they need to do is adapt and run some needles and spell snare for the win....... :rolleyes:

[[PMP]Krevvy]

Looking at the sideboards of the decks it seems people are starting to hate survival more then the past few tournaments.

Dread still deck had 2 Pithing Needle, 2 Tormod's Crypt, 3 Hibernation, maybe 1 Firespout to fight them. Though the reason for no jace 2.0 seems strange.

Dark Horizons was using 4 Aven Mindcensor, 3 Extirpate for the match up i would think.

Goblins already have a good match up against survival as far as i am aware.

Sneak attack/show and Tell deck packed 1 Pithing Needle, 3 Meddling Mage, 3 Extirpate, and maybe 2 Perish possibly against the GW ones.

BWG coutnertop was using 1 Pithing Needle, 1 Relic of Progenitus, 3 Peacekeeper,3 Krosan Grip, 3 Path to Exile and probably went into a jace win mode.

Storm has a good match up.

So the sideboards are still general hate cards but some things seem a bit more focused such as the extirpates to take out vengvines or survivals if one is destroyed. Hibernation just stops survival normally. Peacekeeper has already begun to make a impact and is on the rise still with all these aggressive decks around. And more people are playing Spell Snare MD.

In a few more weeks survival may no longer be as dominate as it is and maybe still be one of the best decks but not the deck to only play.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Survival once again swept Boston, claiming 1-2 finish and basically half of the top 16.

Ninja'd :tongue:

Haha, but at the same time my favorite thing ever happened. They decktech'd obviously shitty decks that then went on to finish super bottom tier. I love it when SCG does that. The best was when they did it with that guy playing Legacy Jund in Minneapolis and he went on to finish dead last place.

Anyways, yeah obviously a good showing for Survival yet again. Once again though we need to see full stats before we go jumping to conclusions. Also once again we can see the format evolving. 2 Reanimators and 3 Dark Horizons in the top 16. Not decks we are used to seeing in top 16s and it just goes to show that the format is still in motion. Just remember Vine Survival bandwagon is in full swing, it likely made up the largest % of the metagame, not likely 43% but still enough to explain it being that % of the top 8.

[ivanpei]

I feel sad that a banning is most probably going to happen now though it isn't necessary. It will most probably be survival but I pray it doesn't happen. Maybe wizards likes creatures (goblins pre tarmogoyf) and will be pleased with the variety and innovation survival provides. One can be hopeful lol.

[2Rach]

2 Reanimators and 3 Dark Horizons in the top 16.
There was 1 Reanimator in there, the other was a Sneak Attack deck. You don't check? This is just another in a long shitty line of naming screwups. Last SCG they messed up, calling Junk Junk and Dark Horizons in the same top 16.

As a side note, anyone else amused at SCG trying to push their own lexicon?

[Cabal_chan]

There was 1 Reanimator in there, the other was a Sneak Attack deck. You don't check? This is just another in a long shitty line of naming screwups. Last SCG they messed up, calling Junk Junk and Dark Horizons in the same top 16.

As a side note, anyone else amused at SCG trying to push their own lexicon?

If by pushing, you mean showing how ignorant they are, then yes :P. Their lexicon and naming scheme is just about as bad as their coverage(if you exclude the ggslive chat box).

[Mark Sun]

There was 1 Reanimator in there, the other was a Sneak Attack deck. You don't check? This is just another in a long shitty line of naming screwups. Last SCG they messed up, calling Junk Junk and Dark Horizons in the same top 16.

As a side note, anyone else amused at SCG trying to push their own lexicon?

No surprise here, anything they can do to push a deck or its parts, they'll do. Decktechs were even worse than the ones I remember seeing before this time. Anyone know the reason for the outage, btw?

[Scordata]

Having just recovered from the Boston 5k, I can give you guys a little info on the meta.

Lots o' Survival
Lots o' Rock
Some TES/ANT variants.

I brought a tempo deck, which was a REAAAllly bad idea.

The meta is shifting boys and girls, buckle up and enjoy the ride.

[Master Shake]

Why won't these people metagame on a higher level than this?

I talk about this extensively in other place, but the answers are obvious and no one seems to want to accept that they may need to make shifts in the main deck to more competently combat Survival strategies. The wining deck played an Aven Mindscensor in the sideboard and the rock deck played four... That's a start. How about Spell snare now, guys?

Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus are just not answers for these decks and its frustrating that no one realizes it. I'll just put this out there for everyone:

Ooze Combo can still win under Crypt, Relic, Planar Void, Nihil Spellbomb, Withered Wretch and Phyrexian Furnace at the same time. Part of the reason for this is the fact that after sideboarding, decks tend to be way slower.

Dredge and most other graveyard strategies are just moot points now, it's time to really play cards that hurt survival, not cards that you can get the most mileage out of.

Concerning the idea of banning Survival, I'm against it, I ant to give it at least three more months. Perhaps in an additional three months people will realize that playing Affinity still doesn't beat anything and will start looking at how you combat the three blends of Survival decks.

However, I feel that Wizards is going to run the same experiment they did to see if Mystical Tutor was too good, if this happens then one of the format's trademark card is gone forever and we can all go back to watching people try to figure out how to optimize Affinity, they've been doing it this whole time, and that is why this problem has happened.

The Star City series is such a poor example of the Legacy metagame, it's frustrating to think that it may be the only source of tournament data that Wizard's pays attention to.

[Sims]

Why won't these people metagame on a higher level than this?

I talk about this extensively in other place, but the answers are obvious and no one seems to want to accept that they may need to make shifts in the main deck to more competently combat Survival strategies. The wining deck played an Aven Mindscensor in the sideboard and the rock deck played four... That's a start. How about Spell snare now, guys?

Tormod's Crypt and Relic of Progenitus are just not answers for these decks and its frustrating that no one realizes it. I'll just put this out there for everyone:

Ooze Combo can still win under Crypt, Relic, Planar Void, Nihil Spellbomb, Withered Wretch and Phyrexian Furnace at the same time. Part of the reason for this is the fact that after sideboarding, decks tend to be way slower.

Dredge and most other graveyard strategies are just moot points now, it's time to really play cards that hurt survival, not cards that you can get the most mileage out of.

Concerning the idea of banning Survival, I'm against it, I ant to give it at least three more months. Perhaps in an additional three months people will realize that playing Affinity still doesn't beat anything and will start looking at how you combat the three blends of Survival decks.

However, I feel that Wizards is going to run the same experiment they did to see if Mystical Tutor was too good, if this happens then one of the format's trademark card is gone forever and we can all go back to watching people try to figure out how to optimize Affinity, they've been doing it this whole time, and that is why this problem has happened.

The Star City series is such a poor example of the Legacy metagame, it's frustrating to think that it may be the only source of tournament data that Wizard's pays attention to.

This. This man speaks so much truth it hurts.

[Michael Keller]

The Star City series is such a poor example of the Legacy metagame, it's frustrating to think that it may be the only source of tournament data that Wizard's pays attention to.

+10.

[Rune]

+11

I actually think I would prefer that WotC make their decision based on Tom LaPille's testing in the MODO practice room rather than the SCG 5K results.

[Tacosnape]

I absolutely love how half of you people are basically the reincarnations of the "Flash isn't overpowered" people.

Look, if you don't get it by now, Vengevine Survival fights through any normal amount of hate. Yes, you can beat the deck, if you metagame like 12-20 hate cards between maindeck and sideboard. But it took a lot less to beat Reanimator.

Vengevine is sweeping the format. Constantly. You can keep screaming your "People refuse to adapt" line forever, but you're ridiculous. The results continue to back me up. The deck just wins.

Take the following card.

Turn Two Win
:2:
Artifact
You can't play Turn Two Win on your first turn.
Sacrifice Turn Two Win: You win the game.

I mean, clearly this card's not all that good. It's antisynergistic with mana acceleration, for crying out loud. If anyone wins a game with it, it's the metagame's fault for not adapting. Goblins should have been packing maindeck Pithing Needle and Artifact Blast, or splashing Blue for Stifle, Annul, Spell Snare, and Commandeer like all the other blue decks. It's completely vulnerable to Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, Duress, AND Cabal Therapy. Green has Rust, if you can afford to shell out $45 apiece for them since they're the answer to this card in Standard as well (They HAD to reprint it, after all.) And for all the people complaining that people cast this with Daze backup when you only have one land draw? You should have been packing Spirit Guides, Moxes, Petals, and more importantly, you should have been winning the die roll. Learn to roll better, you burden on society you.

OR, we can realize that after a point, things can actually be broken. We can realize that when something continues to dominate tournament after tournament and flies in the face of the unsubstantiated playtesting data of a few individuals with skewed opinions to begin with, that Vengevine >> Legacy. This is coming from the guy who originally posted that A: Vengevine was utter crap and unplayable in Legacy, and B: That it wasn't "That" scary and wasn't going to overpower the format. Learn to admit you're wrong like me.

PS: Good performance from Jacestill at Starcity, guys.

[JamieW89]

I absolutely love how half of you people are basically the reincarnations of the "Flash isn't overpowered" people.

Look, if you don't get it by now, Vengevine Survival fights through any normal amount of hate. Yes, you can beat the deck, if you metagame like 12-20 hate cards between maindeck and sideboard. But it took a lot less to beat Reanimator.

Vengevine is sweeping the format. Constantly. You can keep screaming your "People refuse to adapt" line forever, but you're ridiculous. The results continue to back me up. The deck just wins.

Take the following card.

Turn Two Win
:2:
Artifact
You can't play Turn Two Win on your first turn.
Sacrifice Turn Two Win: You win the game.

I mean, clearly this card's not all that good. It's antisynergistic with mana acceleration, for crying out loud. If anyone wins a game with it, it's the metagame's fault for not adapting. Goblins should have been packing maindeck Pithing Needle and Artifact Blast, or splashing Blue for Stifle, Annul, Spell Snare, and Commandeer like all the other blue decks. It's completely vulnerable to Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek, Duress, AND Cabal Therapy. Green has Rust, if you can afford to shell out $45 apiece for them since they're the answer to this card in Standard as well (They HAD to reprint it, after all.) And for all the people complaining that people cast this with Daze backup when you only have one land draw? You should have been packing Spirit Guides, Moxes, Petals, and more importantly, you should have been winning the die roll. Learn to roll better, you burden on society you.

OR, we can realize that after a point, things can actually be broken. We can realize that when something continues to dominate tournament after tournament and flies in the face of the unsubstantiated playtesting data of a few individuals with skewed opinions to begin with, that Vengevine >> Legacy. This is coming from the guy who originally posted that A: Vengevine was utter crap and unplayable in Legacy, and B: That it wasn't "That" scary and wasn't going to overpower the format. Learn to admit you're wrong like me.

PS: Good performance from Jacestill at Starcity, guys.

+1

[Tinefol]

Yeah, I've totally seen a bunch of Jacestill decks preying on Survival. Too bad they made nowhere near the top16.

[DragoFireheart]

I absolutely love how half of you people are basically the reincarnations of the "Flash isn't overpowered" people.

Look, if you don't get it by now, Vengevine Survival fights through any normal amount of hate. Yes, you can beat the deck, if you metagame like 12-20 hate cards between maindeck and sideboard. But it took a lot less to beat Reanimator.


Or play combo, which is faster than Veggies. Or the new Jacestills, which prey on Veggies.

All you have is anedoctal evidence. It's a self-fulling prophecy in which Survival decks are going to be "dominating" the format since a lot of people are playing it. It was the same way with CounterTop, Zoo and Merfolk. I also love how you make even the most sublte comparison between this deck and Flash Hulk. Just because Veggies are good against the current meta doesn't mean that Legacy is entering Flash Hulk 2.0.

I hear Enchantress decks are good against Veggies. Maybe try new decks instead of concluding that a ban is needed?

[KindGrind]

What doesn't help the deck right now is the sheer number of players using it, which is in part why it shows so many great results. I'd be sad if Survival were axed, as it's very fun to play with and against.

Q: When is the next date for the DCI bans? Dec 2010 or March 2011?

[(nameless one)]

The next DCI updates would be on Dec 2010.

I think you make a good point when it comes to the popularity of Survival Decks.

Players by the boatload are playing Survival Decks, then you have players playing their petdecks that just got outdated with the current meta shift.

I think Tempo decks had their time, so are CounterTop.

[Sims]

December is the next scheduled update.

Look, I was crying for Flash to be banned the moment the lists were hitting the internet. I know vengevine is a busted card, free things normally are, and I hope that if they do ban anything that it's the Vine and not Survival. Though as i said before I have little faith in the DCI making that desicion competently.

However, in my, albeit personal and anecdotal, experience.... The deck is beatable. Combo generally beats it, i've not had much trouble with it with dragon stompy in testing, i've beaten it with LED-less dredge (i know i already mentioned combo)... The deck isn't God. It's very strong, but it's not infallable, and I think if the meta shifts enough the deck will start to fall.

If it doesn't, which is entirely possible for a variety of reasons: Playskill, metagaming, peoples refusal to adapt, people sayign "fuck it, if you can't beat it join it," etc.... Then I think they should ban Vengevine and leave survival. I'd rather be playing GW Survival with retainer/iona and Ooze combo than Vines, but as I said, i doubt that's going to happen.

[Xero]

I think there was more than a reasonable amount of hate for Survival decks in the last Starcity tournament:

4x Aven Mindcesor, 3x Extirpate and tons of discard; 4x Spell Snare MD with 3x Spell Pierce, 2x Pithing Needle, and 3x Hibernation SB; MB Pithing Needle with Peacekeeper and Spell Pierce in the SB; etc.

Survival still took the top two spots and dominated the top 16. People are adapting to the deck, and its still performing better than a reasonable deck should.

[frenchy-man]

Re: Survival of the Fittest

Originally Posted by Master Shake
The Star City series is such a poor example of the Legacy metagame, it's frustrating to think that it may be the only source of tournament data that Wizard's pays attention to.
+10.

+100

[DragoFireheart]

The Star City series is such a poor example of the Legacy metagame, it's frustrating to think that it may be the only source of tournament data that Wizard's pays attention to.

Is there another source they should be paying attention to? Which ones?

[TossUsToLions]

Survival of the Fittest was such a cool, fun card back in the day. It's Wizards own fault that it is so broken now, though. When you had to discard a creature to search for another creature, the card was fair. It wasn't until Wizards began printing cards that made it beneficial to discard creatures into the GY (see Vengevine, Necrotic Ooze). Even if Vengevine is banned, people will find other ways to abuse Survival (possibly using the Loyal Retainers/Iona/Emrakul or Necrotic Ooze combos) or Wizards will screw up again and just continue to print more creatures that allow Survival to go bonkers. I love the card, but I think that Survival itself is the card that needs to be banned.

[PanderAlexander]

I absolutely love how half of you people are basically the reincarnations of the "Flash isn't overpowered" people.

Look, if you don't get it by now, Vengevine Survival fights through any normal amount of hate. Yes, you can beat the deck, if you metagame like 12-20 hate cards between maindeck and sideboard. But it took a lot less to beat Reanimator.

Vengevine is sweeping the format. Constantly. You can keep screaming your "People refuse to adapt" line forever, but you're ridiculous. The results continue to back me up. The deck just wins.



Survival of the Fittest was such a cool, fun card back in the day. It's Wizards own fault that it is so broken now, though......... Wizards will screw up again and just continue to print more creatures that allow Survival to go bonkers. I love the card, but I think that Survival itself is the card that needs to be banned.

Yup, survival was one of my favorite decks back in 1998 and I've always liked the card, but I completely agree with what Tacosnape has been saying over and over, that after people have prepared and SB for vengevine survival that it still crushes tournaments. Wizards has stated numerous times that they'd ban the enabler than anything else so there isn't any limitations of future prints.

[piZZero]

Is there another source they should be paying attention to? Which ones?

On the other side of the ocean, the last couple of LCL tournaments (100+ players) were clearly dominated by Survival too. The metagame here in Barcelona is quite similar to what's been seen in Boston/Charlotte SCG $5K's.

[Barook]

Wizards has stated numerous times that they'd ban the enabler than anything else so there isn't any limitations of future prints.
They have also already printed a shitty replacement in form of Fauna Shaman that gets them money.

[Rood]

I absolutely love how half of you people are basically the reincarnations of the "Flash isn't overpowered" people.

Look, if you don't get it by now, Vengevine Survival fights through any normal amount of hate. Yes, you can beat the deck, if you metagame like 12-20 hate cards between maindeck and sideboard. But it took a lot less to beat Reanimator.

Vengevine is sweeping the format. Constantly. You can keep screaming your "People refuse to adapt" line forever, but you're ridiculous. The results continue to back me up. The deck just wins.

I completely support this statement. Results speak for themselves.

[Gui]

Wizards has stated numerous times that they'd ban the enabler than anything else so there isn't any limitations of future prints.
This doesn't necessarily mean that Survival will get banned. Both cards are needed for the combo to work, and survival has been OK in legacy for a long time, so we can assume that banning Vengevine will make Survival safe again. Vengevine is a "free spell", with the help of Survival it gets boosted, but we have no data to prove that without Survival it will be safe either (although I reckon it will be way less strong).
Not only tutors get banned. Afaik, the most powerful spell I know is a :0: accelerator.

[PanderAlexander]

This doesn't necessarily mean that Survival will get banned. Both cards are needed for the combo to work, and survival has been OK in legacy for a long time, so we can assume that banning Vengevine will make Survival safe again. Vengevine is a "free spell", with the help of Survival it gets boosted, but we have no data to prove that without Survival it will be safe either (although I reckon it will be way less strong).
Not only tutors get banned. Afaik, the most powerful spell I know is a :0: accelerator.

That's not the point, read what I said, or better yet you dont' have to and just look at what they have banned before. Just like when they banned mystical tutor for their own reason of future instants and sorcery prints, "if" they were to ban a card it would be Survival because that card "would put restrictions" on what creature cards they print in the future, they may make a mistake and print a too powerful creature that has synergery with Survival. Once again who knows if they will ban a card this coming December, it maybe 50/50, but if they were to ban one the obvious one is Survival.

[Equinozio]

I'm ok with you point PanderAlexander but they been making horredouns creatures like, eldrazis and progenitus and at the same time they designed very carefullly to not be cheated into play with reanimator spells or come into play abilities.

I think that magic involve creatures and survival involve beating the oponent with creatures. Is what they like.

[godryk]

On the other side of the ocean, the last couple of LCL tournaments (100+ players) were clearly dominated by Survival too. The metagame here in Barcelona is quite similar to what's been seen in Boston/Charlotte SCG $5K's.

Though I might be wrong (I wasn't there), I've never heard that. Considering top 8 data:

LCL September (105 players)
Top8 (http://factoriademishra.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2888)
1. TES
2. GWu Madness Survival
3. Merfolk
4. Big Zoo
5. Pox
6. Welder Survival - no veggies
7. Ichorid
8. TES
Metagame breakdown (http://zasca-team.blogspot.com/2010/10/posible-metagame-para-la-10-lcl3-y.html)

LCL October (100 players)
Top 8 (http://www.factoriademishra.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3167)
1. Bant Countertop
2. ProBant Countertop
3. Welder Survival - no veggies
4. Merfolks
5. Rebels (lol)
6. R/G Goblins
7. Gw Survival
8. Ooze Survival
No betagame breakdown available at the moment.

And look at those Countertop Bant with MD Pithing Needle and SB Aven Mindcensor... All sarcasm aside, I wasn't there and, again, I might be wrong, but as far as Top 8 data goes and considering what other catalan players say, I don't have the impression that Survival is clearly dominating that metagame.

And maybe we europeans are dumb (not denying it) but I see plenty of top 8 results that differ from what we see in the SCG Open series. For example:

Landfall 2 (Italy) (http://www.dragonsleague.it/risultati_torneo.php?id_torneo=39) - 10/03/10 - 121 players - 2 Vengevine decks out of 8
Eternal Weekend (Spain) (http://noticias.magicevolution.com/2010/10/20/eternal-weekend-2010-legacy-main-event-deck-breakdown-y-top-8-decklists/) - 10/10/10 - 293 players - 2 out of 8 - Metagame breakdown available - Spring Tide sucks.
Open Last Chance CDF Legacy (France) (http://www.legacy-france.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=4809&view=findpost&p=83855) - 16/10/10 - 178 players - 0 out of 8 (1 out of 16) - Anyways, not decklists as far as I know and Berserk Stompy sucks too.

The SCG results have always been different, less diverse than every other tournament, I don't know why, maybe the people playing in the SCG Opens are the best Legacy players in the world, probably, but I haven't feel that dominance in other metagames.

This post doesn't try to uphold the idea that VV is not that powerful, I can't tell, I just say that I don't feel that dominace we currently see in the SCG Open series happens everywhere. If we had had SCG Opens back in 2009, everybody in the top 16 would have played Nassif Countertop and maindecked Grips so that Top should have been banned or something.

[ryO!]

France. from september to november

52 men September

1-Burn with lynx
2-Countertop UGR
3-Merfolk U
4-Merfolk U
5-HiveMind
6-TES
7-CanadianThresh
8-Merfolk Ub

178 men October

1-Supreme Blue
2-Reanimator
3-Berseck Stompy
4-Painter
5-Ichorid
6-Landstill
7-Zoo
8-Ichorid

80 men October

1-Survival UG
2-Big Zoo
3-Bant
4-Big Zoo
5-Survival Gr
6-Elfeball
7-GW Aggro
8-Survival Gbw

44 men October

1-Ghast Dredge
2-Burn with lynx
3-Rock BGW
4-PainterNought
5-HiveMind
6-JaceStill
7-Merfolk
8-Merfolk


84men october

1-GWB Rock
2-Elball
3-Ooze Combo
4-CTop URg
5-
6-TES
7-ProBant
8-GW Survival

48 men november

1-UWg JaceStill
2-Ant
3-SnT emrakul
4-Rock BGW
5-HiveMind
6-Dredge
7-
8-Enchantress

yeah "ouh la la" Survival has taken down the equilibrium of the meta.

[Nelis]

Maybe its a cultural difference between the US and Europe?

It seems to me that Americans in general are quicker to pick up a deck that has proven to be strong. You know, that winners mentality Americans are known for. More people pick Survival up and as a result those decks are featured more in top 8ths in the US than in Europe. I think the same was true a while back when Zoo was so dominant in the US metagame and not so much over here.

I'm not sure why it is different in Europe. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the European countries have different metagames because of their cultural differences?

[piZZero]

Though I might be wrong (I wasn't there), I've never heard that. Considering top 8 data:

LCL September (105 players)
Top8 (http://factoriademishra.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2888)
1. TES
2. GWu Madness Survival
3. Merfolk
4. Big Zoo
5. Pox
6. Welder Survival - no veggies
7. Ichorid
8. TES
Metagame breakdown (http://zasca-team.blogspot.com/2010/10/posible-metagame-para-la-10-lcl3-y.html)

LCL October (100 players)
Top 8 (http://www.factoriademishra.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3167)
1. Bant Countertop
2. ProBant Countertop
3. Welder Survival - no veggies
4. Merfolks
5. Rebels (lol)
6. R/G Goblins
7. Gw Survival
8. Ooze Survival
No betagame breakdown available at the moment.

And look at those Countertop Bant with MD Pithing Needle and SB Aven Mindcensor... All sarcasm aside, I wasn't there and, again, I might be wrong, but as far as Top 8 data goes and considering what other catalan players say, I don't have the impression that Survival is clearly dominating that metagame.

And maybe we europeans are dumb (not denying it) but I see plenty of top 8 results that differ from what we see in the SCG Open series. For example:

Landfall 2 (Italy) (http://www.dragonsleague.it/risultati_torneo.php?id_torneo=39) - 10/03/10 - 121 players - 2 Vengevine decks out of 8
Eternal Weekend (Spain) (http://noticias.magicevolution.com/2010/10/20/eternal-weekend-2010-legacy-main-event-deck-breakdown-y-top-8-decklists/) - 10/10/10 - 293 players - 2 out of 8 - Metagame breakdown available - Spring Tide sucks.
Open Last Chance CDF Legacy (France) (http://www.legacy-france.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=4809&view=findpost&p=83855) - 16/10/10 - 178 players - 0 out of 8 (1 out of 16) - Anyways, not decklists as far as I know and Berserk Stompy sucks too.

The SCG results have always been different, less diverse than every other tournament, I don't know why, maybe the people playing in the SCG Opens are the best Legacy players in the world, probably, but I haven't feel that dominance in other metagames.

This post doesn't try to uphold the idea that VV is not that powerful, I can't tell, I just say that I don't feel that dominace we currently see in the SCG Open series happens everywhere. If we had had SCG Opens back in 2009, everybody in the top 16 would have played Nassif Countertop and maindecked Grips so that Top should have been banned or something.

So you are confirming my point, right? In those 2 last tournaments Survival was clearly dominant. And I speak about Survival (which I think it's the problem) and not Vengevine. September, 2 out of 8 top8 decks where Survival based. If you take a closer look to the metagame, there were 8 survival decks (7.61% of the metagame, 25% of the Top8), being the archetype with the most decks on the field (in second position there's Goblins with a 4.76%).

October, 3 out of 8 top8 decks where Survival based (37.5% of the Top8), and trust me, Survival was played massively in the October tournament. If there weren't more Survival decks in the top8, is basically because good players choosed to play other decks. That simple.

[Gui]

Anyways, not decklists as far as I know and Berserk Stompy sucks too.

Not fair, we put a lot of effort on Berserk Stompy =(

/spam

[Nelis]

So you are confirming my point, right? In those 2 last tournaments Survival was clearly dominant. And I speak about Survival (which I think it's the problem) and not Vengevine. September, 2 out of 8 top8 decks where Survival based. If you take a closer look to the metagame, there were 8 survival decks (7.61% of the metagame, 25% of the Top8), being the archetype with the most decks on the field (in second position there's Goblins with a 4.76%).

October, 3 out of 8 top8 decks where Survival based (37.5% of the Top8), and trust me, Survival was played massively in the October tournament. If there weren't more Survival decks in the top8, is basically because good players choosed to play other decks. That simple.

So you call 1 or 2 top 8 places for an archetype dominant? I don't. And even if a deck is a bit more dominant than other decks that's no problem as long as its not overly dominant. In fact when I look at those top 8s I see a very healthy metagame.

If the good players chose to play other decks they probably did so because they thought it would be good vs (VV) Survival and also good enough to fight other decks. To me (if what you're saying is true) that would be an indication that the metagame is still evolving and that a banning would come too early and probably isn´t even necessary (yet).

[Gui]

To be totally honest, and I simply don't care whether they get or not banned although I like the speculation and the motivation for it, being a dominant Deck/Archetype is not enough reason for ban, and certainly not the main reason. UGr Threshold was a dominant deck for at least 2 years and got nothing banned by then.

The fact that more players use the deck won't change anything. Mystical Tutor was banned due to unfair results from ANT against a field of control decks (CB+Tops, which were dominant). ANT was not dominant, and yet WotC had enough data to say it was imbalanced. Tarmogoyf has been here for long time now, and won't get banned either. After all these years playing magic, if you really believe that WotC decide what to ban based on format shows rather than using Statistics and playtests, then why whould we spend our money with cards to play this game anyways?

[godryk]

So you are confirming my point, right? In those 2 last tournaments Survival was clearly dominant. And I speak about Survival (which I think it's the problem) and not Vengevine. September, 2 out of 8 top8 decks where Survival based. If you take a closer look to the metagame, there were 8 survival decks (7.61% of the metagame, 25% of the Top8), being the archetype with the most decks on the field (in second position there's Goblins with a 4.76%).

October, 3 out of 8 top8 decks where Survival based (37.5% of the Top8), and trust me, Survival was played massively in the October tournament. If there weren't more Survival decks in the top8, is basically because good players choosed to play other decks. That simple.

I don't know piZZero. :tongue:

I don't see anything wrong with Survival Welder making it to the top 8. I don't see why we should consider all the Survival decks (Bant Survival, Welder Survival, Survival Elves, Madness, "Survival" and so on), an archetype at the same level as Goblins and claim it was the most played. We can talk about Jace decks, Counterbalance decks, Bant Decks and create many archetypes to make them the most played. Last summer I saw plenty of tournament results incluiding 5 "Jace decks" out of the first 8. I claim that Survival Bant (before VV) and Pro Bant are more similar than Survival Welder and Survival Elves. Most of people agree that the problem started when Vengevine was printed (more exactly after GP Columbus), even though people might argue about which card deserves the axe. The only thing I see with that metagame breakdown is that Survival is a fun card that enables a lot of different decks.

I can't speak about October LCL, you were there and we have no data yet. But I will stop all the math fun to say that I just don't think we can compare the situation to what we see in the SCG Open series.


Maybe its a cultural difference between the US and Europe?

It seems to me that Americans in general are quicker to pick up a deck that has proven to be strong. You know, that winners mentality Americans are known for. More people pick Survival up and as a result those decks are featured more in top 8ths in the US than in Europe. I think the same was true a while back when Zoo was so dominant in the US metagame and not so much over here.

I'm not sure why it is different in Europe. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the European countries have different metagames because of their cultural differences?

I don't know. We can say that success in a tournament involves a combination of picking the right deck (the most suited for a given metagame or simple the best one), experience with the deck (testing), playskill (being a good player) and a certain amount of luck. After four years reading The Source, players here seem more concerned about finding that "best deck" and play it or bitch about it. Goblins, Counterbalance, ANT, Merfolk, Reanimator, Zoo and, for a briefly lapse of time, Flash, have been considered format-warping for many people over here. Among these, only Flash and, arguably, Reanimator, were format wrapping enough to motivate some bannings. Is Vengevine strong enough? I guess it's similar to Reanimater but not close to Flash. However, it seems that Wizards is more friendly towards creature-based aberration, specially if they're based in something out of a new set (profit motive and shit).


Not fair, we put a lot of effort on Berserk Stompy =(

/spam

Just kidding about bad decks winning tounaments.

[dirtyapes]

I think the problem with using statistics of just Survival in a deck can be misleading on whether it should be banned. There are so many decks that use it like godryk said. None of these decks were considered overpowered and format warping until Vengevine was printed. Since then , Survival decks have spiked in popularity because they are resilient and can be explosive. It's like saying Aether Vial should be banned because it shows up in Goblins and Merfolk which have similar numbers of top 8s and 16s as Survival does in whatever form.

Wizards hates banning creatures because they want every game to be decided on turning your cards 90 degrees rather than winning any other way but this seems to be a time when a creature is "warping" the format. I'm not even really sure that Vengevine should be banned because the deck isn't that hard to beat when you know its coming. Every color has multiple ways of dealing with it and they are all cards that decks or SBs already have in them.

[piZZero]

To me the problem is that WotC keeps printing good creatures, making Survival of the Fittest lot better than what it was few years ago. Now you can use Survival to put Vengevines, Ionas, Emrakuls, Necrotic Ooze, Wurmcoil Engine, Sphinx of the Steel wind, and a super long etc. The "let's make better creatures" began in Future Sight with the printing of Tarmogoyf, and I can't foresee any change on that WotC policy.

So yes, I do think Survival is overpowered not because of the enchantment itself, but for the creatures that are being printed.

[Tacosnape]

You really think Survival's going to take 50% of the top 8 spots in the SCG Open if Vengevine is banned? I think you might see it hit one top 8 per two tournaments, if that. Ooze Survival's all fun and good, but it takes two more mana on average to set up the Ooze combo, and Faerie Macabre wrecks it unless they play multiple copies of Triskelion and Devourer, and the more copies they play of it, the worse the deck becomes if they don't have the Survival.

Vengevine's so amazing because it doesn't require you run anything bad in your deck to abuse the combo. No Squee. No Devourer. No Triskelion. And Rootwalla's actually been pretty good in Survival this whole time. The worst card it makes you run is actually Vengevine, who often is a 5/4 hasted green beater on turn three off a Noble Hierarch. Not too bad for the worst card in the deck. In otherwords, that whole argument about Survival being bad if you don't get a Survival? Vengevine solved it.

[GGoober]

France. from september to november

52 men September

1-Burn with lynx
2-Countertop UGR
3-Merfolk U
4-Merfolk U
5-HiveMind
6-TES
7-CanadianThresh
8-Merfolk Ub

178 men October

1-Supreme Blue
2-Reanimator
3-Berseck Stompy
4-Painter
5-Ichorid
6-Landstill
7-Zoo
8-Ichorid

80 men October

1-Survival UG
2-Big Zoo
3-Bant
4-Big Zoo
5-Survival Gr
6-Elfeball
7-GW Aggro
8-Survival Gbw

44 men October

1-Ghast Dredge
2-Burn with lynx
3-Rock BGW
4-PainterNought
5-HiveMind
6-JaceStill
7-Merfolk
8-Merfolk


84men october

1-GWB Rock
2-Elball
3-Ooze Combo
4-CTop URg
5-
6-TES
7-ProBant
8-GW Survival

48 men november

1-UWg JaceStill
2-Ant
3-SnT emrakul
4-Rock BGW
5-HiveMind
6-Dredge
7-
8-Enchantress

yeah "ouh la la" Survival has taken down the equilibrium of the meta.

Wished I was in EU, metagame there looks much more diverse than our Standard Legacy meta of Rock + Survival decks currently...

[Koby]

France. from september to november

Decklists

yeah "ouh la la" Survival has taken down the equilibrium of the meta.

My question to you, which of these decks also packed Vengevine? Which decks did not? Are these Survival decks overlapping with Vengevine decks?

[nedleeds]

You really think Survival's going to take 50% of the top 8 spots in the SCG Open if Vengevine is banned?

I think <insert anything> is going to take 50% of the top 8 spots in the <insert tourney> if 75% of the field and 90% of the better players are copying it off the internet and playing it.

Give me a break. Week to week at local legacy tourneys the many varients of survival are just one of many powerful fast decks, less explosive then TES / Belcher but less susceptible to control. No less or more powerful then Belcher vs. a field of man based decks.

Can we start a pithing needle / krosan grip / extirpate / planar void / propaganda / ghostly prison / hibernation or Wheel of Sun and Moon fund for these poor souls?

[PanderAlexander]

I'm ok with you point PanderAlexander but they been making horredouns creatures like, eldrazis and progenitus and at the same time they designed very carefullly to not be cheated into play with reanimator spells or come into play abilities.

I think that magic involve creatures and survival involve beating the oponent with creatures. Is what they like.

What I said was:


"they may make a mistake and print a too powerful creature that has synergery with Survival."
Why are you pointing out big creatures like Progentus, while you're at it why don't you point out Tarmogoyf and Knight of Reliquary, they all are also irrelevent to what we're discussing. Even the Eldrazi you meantioned has synergy with Emrakul and Loyal but that's hardly played and not so good. I'm talking about creatures that even just recent was printed like Vengevine and Necrotic Ooze, who's power level is okay but combined with Survival they do completey crazy things that the design team didn't mean for or expect. Say they do ban Vengevine like you said, then 1-2 years later they accidently print a creature that by itself is pretty cool but is broken with Survival what should they do, ban that creature too? And once again to clarify for you, I'm not talking about just really big and powerful creatures by themselves, I'm talking about creatures that have completely synergy with Survival of the Fittest. I'm not for or against any bans, but I'm just saying if they do ban something they'll probably choose Survival over Vengevine.

[bleuisforwhimps]

I see people complaining about being hit for 20 on turn 4 by VV and random creature. To them I say if you play against zoo, goblins,dredge,combo,burn,.... without disruption or blockers you also die turn 4 sometimes, so quit being amazed.


I think <insert anything> is going to take 50% of the top 8 spots in the <insert tourney> if 75% of the field and 90% of the better players are copying it off the internet and playing it.

Give me a break. Week to week at local legacy tourneys the many varients of survival are just one of many powerful fast decks, less explosive then TES / Belcher but less susceptible to control. No less or more powerful then Belcher vs. a field of man based decks.

Can we start a pithing needle / krosan grip / extirpate / planar void / propaganda / ghostly prison / hibernation or Wheel of Sun and Moon fund for these poor souls?

QFT

[Tacosnape]

Except that Planar Void and Wheel or Sun and Moon are utter trash against Vengevine Survival because you can just play around the triggers a little slower, and Propaganda and Ghostly Prison don't help much because Survival just goes and gets the answer to it. And Lion's Eye Diamond is basically a 0-mana answer to Hibernation. Which leaves Needle, Grip, and Extirpate as the only actually scary things.

As for Survival being 75% of the field? No. It's not.

As for 90% of the better players playing it? It's probably not, but it shouldn't surprise you if it does. The best players play the best decks, because the most true thing in all of tournament magic is that people overestimate the power of hate. Look at the Hatfields. They ran Reanimator when it was the best deck, hate be damned, and they ran Survival when it was the best deck, hate be damned. And they win a hell of a lot more than they lose.

[dontbiteitholmes]

France. from september to november

52 men September

1-Burn with lynx
2-Countertop UGR
3-Merfolk U
4-Merfolk U
5-HiveMind
6-TES
7-CanadianThresh
8-Merfolk Ub

178 men October

1-Supreme Blue
2-Reanimator
3-Berseck Stompy
4-Painter
5-Ichorid
6-Landstill
7-Zoo
8-Ichorid

80 men October

1-Survival UG
2-Big Zoo
3-Bant
4-Big Zoo
5-Survival Gr
6-Elfeball
7-GW Aggro
8-Survival Gbw

44 men October

1-Ghast Dredge
2-Burn with lynx
3-Rock BGW
4-PainterNought
5-HiveMind
6-JaceStill
7-Merfolk
8-Merfolk


84men october

1-GWB Rock
2-Elball
3-Ooze Combo
4-CTop URg
5-
6-TES
7-ProBant
8-GW Survival

48 men november

1-UWg JaceStill
2-Ant
3-SnT emrakul
4-Rock BGW
5-HiveMind
6-Dredge
7-
8-Enchantress

yeah "ouh la la" Survival has taken down the equilibrium of the meta.

I think the reality of France is that they are as bad at Legacy as everything else. Any meta that puts Hivemind and Elfball consistantly in the top 8 doesn't deserve to be mentioned in a serious conversation.

[ryO!]

I think the reality of France is that they are as bad at Legacy as everything else. Any meta that puts Hivemind and Elfball consistantly in the top 8 doesn't deserve to be mentioned in a serious conversation.

Warning : Do not feed the troll.

[sephorusFR]

or maybe we're less netdecker than average us player :o

[CorpT]

or maybe we're less netdecker than average us player :o

Because Elfball and Hivemind aren't netdecks?

You say netdeck like it's a bad thing. On a site on the net dedicated to building decks...

[Cthuloo]

Warning : Do not feed the troll.


or maybe we're less netdecker than average us player :o


Fail.

[Xiang]

Fact is that beside France in nearly every European country Vv-survival is less popular than in the US (Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal (no info about the UK though)

[bleuisforwhimps]

I think the reality of France is that they are as bad at Legacy as everything else. Any meta that puts Hivemind and Elfball consistantly in the top 8 doesn't deserve to be mentioned in a serious conversation.

Epic fail. In fact why even react to this nonsense....

[SpikeyMikey]

I completely support this statement. Results speak for themselves.

Except they don't. If it were Landstill putting up these numbers, people would be discussing how to beat it, not asking for Standstill and Mishra's Factory to be banned. Saying "people boarded in hate and still lost, the deck must be broken" is stupid. I hate to say it, it's not nice and it's not polite, but if you think you can play whatever 60 cards you want and board in 5 or 6 hate cards to beat a tier one deck, you're completely and utterly retarded. It'd be like me throwing together a blue deck with 20 counters and no removal and then asking for Nacatl and Goyf to be banned. It's just not fair, guys. Even after I board in 4 CoP:Greens I still lose to Zoo...

You need to construct your deck with the field in mind. If you're maining 6 to 8 hate cards (and I use the term loosely since things like Spell Snare and Pridemage could be considered hate) and still losing, then you've got a problem. Then you're Affinity in T2 all over again. But when you stubbornly insist that you can play your favorite deck and just board to beat your bad matchups, you're delusional. If you give game 1 up as a loss, even if you're 70% against a deck post board (which is a tough number to hit), you're STILL <50% on the match. You need to be able to win game 1 to have a reasonable chance of winning a match. And there are decks that can do it. But if you're not playing them in a field that you know is going to be filled with a given deck, you have no one to blame but yourself.

[Cabal_chan]

The Source: Your source for whining about new Tier 1 decks?

Edit: Not you Mikey. Just the general nature of some people in this thread.

[majikal]

This thread makes me sad.

[SpikeyMikey]

Oh, I'm with you Chan. People have been maining creature hate since the dawn of Magic. It's not seen as a sign of a warped metagame when Zoo packs Pridemages main and Grips in board. Even back in the day, 9 land Stompy mained Lyrist and boarded Emerald Charms and WW had Soltari Visionary or Disenchant floating around. But try suggesting to people that they need to run Extirpate or Relic in their 60 and they act like the sky is falling.

If you look at decks like the UG Vengevivals, they rely so heavily on Vine as their first and primary line to victory that a single Extirpate is often enough to win the game by itself. You couldn't beat Countertop with a single card. Is anyone really scared of getting beat down with Wallas and Trinket Mages?

[Tinefol]

How about Goyfs and KoTRs?

[nedleeds]

Oh, I'm with you Chan. People have been maining creature hate since the dawn of Magic. It's not seen as a sign of a warped metagame when Zoo packs Pridemages main and Grips in board. Even back in the day, 9 land Stompy mained Lyrist and boarded Emerald Charms and WW had Soltari Visionary or Disenchant floating around. But try suggesting to people that they need to run Extirpate or Relic in their 60 and they act like the sky is falling.

If you look at decks like the UG Vengevivals, they rely so heavily on Vine as their first and primary line to victory that a single Extirpate is often enough to win the game by itself. You couldn't beat Countertop with a single card. Is anyone really scared of getting beat down with Wallas and Trinket Mages?

If you are really ancient like me you remember when 4x Disenchant was the start of any deck list that intended to contain white. People have gotten away from maindeck Art/Enchant hate. Adjust or die.

As for their dreaded Goyf's and KotR they are spending a card to search these out and a card to perform the search. This at the cost of getting a good man. Surely you can deal with good men? It's legacy.

[Sims]

How about Goyfs and KoTRs?

He also specifically said UG Survival. Most of those lists are madness decks with survival and vines, they don't run goyfs or KOTRs.

[SurFitOfTheVine]

I say ban [insert card name here] only in the US. The deck clearly isn't causing that much trouble in Europe.

[DragoFireheart]

He also specifically said UG Survival. Most of those lists are madness decks with survival and vines, they don't run goyfs or KOTRs.

Some U/G verisons are starting to run Goyfs. A deck or 2 at the Boxburogh event ran Gofys. I'm currently texting a list in U/G with Gofys to see how they work.

[bleuisforwhimps]

A friend of mine tested the mono-green list by Alix Hatfield and goyf seems to be the worst creature in the deck. The deck is strong because of the synergy between the creatures and goyf just is not being synergistic with anything and is just there because there's nothing better apparently.

[caiomarcos]

A friend of mine tested the mono-green list by Alix Hatfield and goyf seems to be the worst creature in the deck. The deck is strong because of the synergy between the creatures and goyf just is not being synergistic with anything and is just there because there's nothing better apparently.

Like I read a while ago, Goyf has great synergy with playing Magic, so no wonder he can't find anything better.

[DragoFireheart]

A friend of mine tested the mono-green list by Alix Hatfield and goyf seems to be the worst creature in the deck. The deck is strong because of the synergy between the creatures and goyf just is not being synergistic with anything and is just there because there's nothing better apparently.

There is nothing better TBQH. The thing about gofy is that he's still the best cheap beater. He may not be able to drop Veggies, but he'll eat removal/counters that could have been used on your veggies or SOTF/Fauna Shaman. You'll have him both pre and post board so your deck doesn't fold to a single Extirpate.

Edit:
I believe the issue is pre-board Goyf may seem bad, but once post board comes around he will shine when you add a backup plan to him (be it a tool box + Squee, Goblin Nabob or Natural Order + Progenitus. Furthermore, if people try to be cute and have main-decked hate for the yard or SoTF, you have a main-decked backup plan.

[frenchy-man]

I think the reality of France is that they are as bad at Legacy as everything else. Any meta that puts Hivemind and Elfball consistantly in the top 8 doesn't deserve to be mentioned in a serious conversation.

Yeah obviously in France we don't know how to play legacy... Btw I would add that Nassif is such a bad french player that he won the gp in the US...

Oh, and tell me why a meta with belcher, gob, quinn or NH would be more serious ?

[FieryBalrog]

I think mostly nostalgia is keeping up the "don't ban survival!" movement. Yell at people to l2p all you want, but unless something changes in the next month (or possibly next 4) I have a feeling survival will get the axe. First of all, it should be abundantly obvious by now that dealing with VV Survival isn't a matter of packing some simple hate cards and rolling with it. This isn't Dredge; its not even ANT, which has clear predators. Yes, eventually sideboards may be twisted and beaten into some monstrous shape that will bring about an acceptable win % vs survival, but that's exactly what shouldn't be happening. Affinity didn't win worlds that year, but did anyone think that maindeck Oxidize was a good sign?

Also they're not going to ban vengevine- they really won't. Not only for purely $-related reasons*, but also for the simple reason that survival is the engine, it's the enabler, it's the problem. Vengevine is amazing but many amazing creatures have been and will continue to be printed. Wizards will never restrict their future design space to accomodate survival if it comes to banning either VV or suvival.

Survival has always been broken, but its been acceptably broken. With new cards the brokenness seems to have increased to unacceptable levels. I guess we'll see.

*Seriously? They're going to ban one of the most expensive recent cards which will keep legacy players busting new packs? over the decades old card that lives in the second hard market alone?

[GGoober]

Yeah obviously in France we don't know how to play legacy... Btw I would add that Nassif is such a bad french player that he won the gp in the US...

Oh, and tell me why a meta with belcher, gob, quinn or NH would be more serious ?

Haha I'm in the US and I would like to add that US players are awesome because we all play the deck that is popular and we refuse to play other decks and just like sticking to what is 'good', it's just like how proxied Vintage tournaments in the US leads to a limited variety of Oath, Workshop, Tezz, Gush decks as opposed to the diversity of EU Vintage metagames which are attributed to non-proxy events. Clearly the US metagame is most superior and representative on what real magic should be.

(Trollin the US somewhat because I'm a little annoyed by our metagame environment which really makes no sense to me. Oh well).

[frenchy-man]

Haha I'm in the US and I would like to add that US players are awesome because we all play the deck that is popular and we refuse to play other decks and just like sticking to what is 'good', it's just like how proxied Vintage tournaments in the US leads to a limited variety of Oath, Workshop, Tezz, Gush decks as opposed to the diversity of EU Vintage metagames which are attributed to non-proxy events. Clearly the US metagame is most superior and representative on what real magic should be.

(Trollin the US somewhat because I'm a little annoyed by our metagame environment which really makes no sense to me. Oh well).

I am not really good in Englis but I think that you are taking my defence.
I would just add that not considering elfball as a good deck is clearly a proof that you dunno what legacy really is.

[ivanpei]

@ Frenchy-man, metalwalker is criticizing his own metagame in the US. He means no offense.

@ Critic, I think we should be more mature here. All metagames are different. I admit elfball is not a Tier 1 deck, its a belcher deck that is vulnerable to STP/Force, Chalice @ 1... the list goes on. But if unprepared, people will laugh it off as Jank elves and then get blown out by turn 2 the nuts. Its not very strong, but neither is it terrible as well.

As for the French, I respect you for playing decks you like and for being different! Culturally I think the US just likes playing the strongest decks and whatever wins. But that isn't exactly a good thing.

[Amon Amarth]

As for the French, I respect you for playing decks you like and for being different! Culturally I think the US just likes playing the strongest decks and whatever wins. But that isn't exactly a good thing.

You seem to be inferring that the French, Europeans, whomever, don't play to win... which seems disingenuous at best.

[pippo84]

You seem to be inferring that the French, Europeans, whomever, don't play to win... which seems disingenuous at best.

Don't know about French, but Italians play to win.

[(nameless one)]

Don't know about French, but Italians play to win.

While were at it, yes Italians play to win. Have you ever played one on MWS?

[Oiolosse]

While were at it, yes Italians play to win. Have you ever played one on MWS?

Low blows fellas, I love this dialog, keep it coming.

[Cthuloo]

While were at it, yes Italians play to win. Have you ever played one on MWS?

I think it's time to reveal the secret. In Italy we call it Idiotic Army Project For Demotivating People On The Magic Work Station And Profit From Their Confusion, in short: IAPFDPOTMWSAPFTC. That's right, we have a group of highly skilled agents whose only purpose is to play as many foreigners as possible on the MWS messing up with the rules, speaking bad english and keeping the most irritating behaviour. This is meant to prevent foreigners from having real playtesting, saturating them instead with false/absurd information, so that they will either:

a) Quit magic in rage
b) Play worse since they couldn't test and are in general nervous and/or anxious
c) Buy more italian pizza (I can't actually tell you how we manage to achieve this, it's still top secret)

The project is performing very well, the Italian Supreme Council For Discouraging Foreigner Magic Players And Force Them To Quit Magic Or Buy More Pizza (in short ISCFDFMPAFTTQMOBMP) is very happy.

[Nelis]

Europeans play like Arsenal FC. Americans (and Italians) play like Inter Milan.

* Hmm, weird, I suddenly feel like eating Pizza tonight.

[godryk]

The Source: your source for euro-american love (and discussing who's giving and who's receiving).

[Pippin]

So topic about potential survival banning turned into lots of nationalist statements... special thanks go to redneck that first started it :rolleyes:

Going back on topic...
Results (or rather inability of meta to adapt) proved wrong my previous statements. At this rate I presume we'll see Survival getting the axe in next B/R list update. A shame

[Gheizen64]

Yeah, as much as i'd love seeing it untouched and some unbanning, i fear WotC will give Survival the axe and say the usual things "enabler, limit future creatures print, we have fauna shaman and you can buy 10th edition packs zzz".

[Tacosnape]

Yeah, as much as i'd love seeing it untouched and some unbanning, i fear WotC will give Survival the axe and say the usual things "enabler, limit future creatures print, we have fauna shaman and you can buy 10th edition packs zzz".

I've had this thought. A terrifying thought, for somebody who has had a Survival deck since one week after the format was created. And should it prove the case, I will immediately go do the following:

1. Go take a massive shit on a Fauna Shaman.
2. Wipe with another Fauna Shaman.
3. Build some kind of UG Intuition Madness deck and still play Vengevine.

The ironic part of this is that if they ban Vengevine, I'll end up playing Fauna Shaman in Survival. I will also bronze my Vengevines and cherish them forever.

[SpikeyMikey]

I sincerely hope they don't end up banning anything. I'm tentatively planning on going to the SCG Open in KC in Jan. but if SotF or VV gets the axe, it will push Rock back into the depths of obscurity and there's no point in driving almost 700 miles to play a deck that's unlikely to T8. Guess we'll wait and see.

[konsultant]

I've had this thought. A terrifying thought, for somebody who has had a Survival deck since one week after the format was created. And should it prove the case, I will immediately go do the following:

1. Go take a massive shit on a Fauna Shaman.
2. Wipe with another Fauna Shaman.
3. Build some kind of UG Intuition Madness deck and still play Vengevine.

The ironic part of this is that if they ban Vengevine, I'll end up playing Fauna Shaman in Survival. I will also bronze my Vengevines and cherish them forever.

I'm never one to post in these hypothetical threads but I admit I will be quite pissed and disgusted at wizards if they banned Survival. It's a fucking creature manipulating engine that has been around for a long time. It's completely stoppable with relevant cards that see play in the format. The high appearence of people running it will fade away once the deck starts to recieve some meta hate that it deserves. Needle, Extirpate, Krosan Grip are all very relevant cards to run. Spellsnare even Spellpierce, Perish, Propaganda, Hibernation there are tons of answers to the deck or here is a crazy idea just print a new card that would be relevant. I'm sure they could come up with some kind of Trap card that triggers of a certain number of creatures coming into play in one turn.

This is Legacy, we have to deal with powerful cards like Natural Order, Moat, Loyal Retainers, Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Tabernacle. All cards that are arguably over powered that are in the format. So what it's ok to ban Survival because its an all Green mana combo that can put a bunch of green men into play quickly and thats over powered yet you can Reliably Show and Tell Emerkul into play by turn 3-4 on slow hands and somehow that's not overpowered? Or good old Stifle Dreadnought, I mean 2 mana gets you a 12/12 trample or 4 Mana for Natural Order gets you a 10/10 protection from everything and thats ok? This deck isn't killing people on turn 1,2,3 or even 4 really. Are they really gonna ban a deck because it's popular?

I would like to think this giant fuss is really just because it's the first highly competitive new deck in the format and not because a card that has been fairly dormant for years has suddenly become unbeatable. I would also hope that if they do determine that something needs to be done that they would just ban Rootwalla as the true enabler; without Rootwalla everything about this deck becomes considerably slower and in my opinion it would disrupt the consistency enough to calm people down about it.

[GGoober]

i would also hope that if they do determine that something needs to be done that they would just ban rootwalla as the true enabler; without rootwalla everything about this deck becomes considerably slower and in my opinion it would disrupt the consistency enough to calm people down about it.

This is MADNESS!!!!

[SurFitOfTheVine]

I've had this thought. A terrifying thought, for somebody who has had a Survival deck since one week after the format was created. And should it prove the case, I will immediately go do the following:

1. Go take a massive shit on a Fauna Shaman.
2. Wipe with another Fauna Shaman.
3. Build some kind of UG Intuition Madness deck and still play Vengevine.

The ironic part of this is that if they ban Vengevine, I'll end up playing Fauna Shaman in Survival. I will also bronze my Vengevines and cherish them forever.

That post made my day! :D


I'm never one to post in these hypothetical threads but I admit I will be quite pissed and disgusted at wizards if they banned Survival. It's a fucking creature manipulating engine that has been around for a long time. It's completely stoppable with relevant cards that see play in the format. The high appearence of people running it will fade away once the deck starts to recieve some meta hate that it deserves. Needle, Extirpate, Krosan Grip are all very relevant cards to run. Spellsnare even Spellpierce, Perish, Propaganda, Hibernation there are tons of answers to the deck or here is a crazy idea just print a new card that would be relevant. I'm sure they could come up with some kind of Trap card that triggers of a certain number of creatures coming into play in one turn.

This is Legacy, we have to deal with powerful cards like Natural Order, Moat, Loyal Retainers, Show and Tell, Sneak Attack, Tabernacle. All cards that are arguably over powered that are in the format. So what it's ok to ban Survival because its an all Green mana combo that can put a bunch of green men into play quickly and thats over powered yet you can Reliably Show and Tell Emerkul into play by turn 3-4 on slow hands and somehow that's not overpowered? Or good old Stifle Dreadnought, I mean 2 mana gets you a 12/12 trample or 4 Mana for Natural Order gets you a 10/10 protection from everything and thats ok? This deck isn't killing people on turn 1,2,3 or even 4 really. Are they really gonna ban a deck because it's popular?

I would like to think this giant fuss is really just because it's the first highly competitive new deck in the format and not because a card that has been fairly dormant for years has suddenly become unbeatable. I would also hope that if they do determine that something needs to be done that they would just ban Rootwalla as the true enabler; without Rootwalla everything about this deck becomes considerably slower and in my opinion it would disrupt the consistency enough to calm people down about it.

I second that. Except the part where you say they should ban Rootwalla instead.

[majikal]

I've had this thought. A terrifying thought, for somebody who has had a Survival deck since one week after the format was created. And should it prove the case, I will immediately go do the following:

1. Go take a massive shit on a Fauna Shaman.
2. Wipe with another Fauna Shaman.
3. Build some kind of UG Intuition Madness deck and still play Vengevine.
Agreed. Vengevine is the stone-cold nutz with or without Survival, honestly.

[samurai_socks]

I had the same thoughts as some of the above posters. If SOTF is banned then you just play 4 Fauna Shaman and 4 Intuition.

-Cheers-

[GGoober]

If SOTF is banned then you just play 4 Fauna Shaman and 4 Intuition.

I really see this happening if SotF gets banned, and we can all continue crying and then shooting ourselves in the feet for thinking Survival is the problem and not VV. To be honest, I don't mind this happening just to get some laughs and cry later that we lost an important yet completely fair card that is only relevant in Legacy and perhaps EDH. People forget that as much as tutoring is powerful, Survival tutoring doesn't end games in 1-2 turns. It never did, only VV builds broke it, and Natural Order, SnT/Emrakul all these end games in 1-2 despite being less tutor-powerful than Survival.

And btw, Needle is only effective against Vengevival when they don't run Fauna Shaman. When you play Fauna AND Survival, Needle gets a little weak against the deck. Although I was testing 4 Survival, 4 Fauna, I must say that as long as a UGB(x) control player controls your early game, Deeds is a huge beating.

CalebD's article on his version of Countertop with 4 StP + 4Path seems pretty good against the deck, once again I would like to point out, the problem is VV, because why would any control deck in the right mind want to remove creatures when better options: Firespout/Perish exists in the format? It shows how much you need to go into to beat the deck. Survival has and always will be a problem, but not as problematic as a new interesting creature that functions quite differently than the creatures we're used to seeing. And in such a deck, VV >>> Goyf, simply because it still has 4 power (usual Goyf 4/5) but is hasty and is free and comes back! Goyf costs mana and has summoning sickness as mentioned earlier lol.

[Rico Suave]

There are a whole slew of extremely faulty lines of thought in this thread. I'm not going to go through each and every one because that would take hours, but there is one in particular that a number of people in this thread seem to cling to that is particularly fascinating to me.

I see people mention all the time that Survival of the Fittest is not a problem card, and their reasoning is that it has been around for a while and has not been a problem before. There was another card that fit a similar description over a decade ago - Necropotence. You see, at the time most people were using Necropotence for a nice 5-6 years and it was fine. They used the skull to cast cards like pump knights or Nekrataal or maybe a Hymn to Tourach. Then suddenly people started using the card not to cast "fair" creatures but to do rather "unfair" things like kill the opponent on turn 3. This was completely overpowered at the time and a ban needed to happen, which of course set people apart because they had differing opinions on what exactly to ban. There were two main parts: the combo engine and the outlet. The combo engine was Necropotence, and the outlet was Illusions/Donate. If you ask people nowadays, they will tell you that Necro must be banned and Illusions/Donate is perfectly fine.

Guess what? The same evolution has now happened to Survival. People have awoken from playing poor versions of Survival and have finally improved to good versions. From this point on, every competitive Survival list will never be the same just like old Necro decks never went back to their pump knights.

Now, the current crop of Survival decks is such that there is a ridiculous combo engine, which is Survival, and then there is the outlet which is either Vengevine or Necrotic Ooze or something equivalent. Yet I see people who have not learned from history and spout off that somehow the outlet is the problem. Do you want to unban Necropotence too? If there is a problem, the clear target to ban is the combo engine in Survival of the Fittest.

For what it's worth, I don't think Survival needs to be banned. I think people are just upset and frustrated.

[Vacrix]

For what it's worth, I don't think Survival needs to be banned. I think people are just upset and frustrated.
Agreed. Thats because they aren't playing Storm combo and castrating the Survival players.

[dahcmai]

In other news I went to our local tournament and ended up getting to the finals with GW Survival. Not exactly a major accomplishment as despite the fact the decks I played were good, they were also woefully unprepared for a Survival deck. Ummm, that's not going to cut it. One vengevine went all the way by himself while a guy sat with Smothers in his hand. I hard casted the thing too. It wasn't exactly fast. People need to stop playing these standardized lists they see and adapt to this stuff.

In the finals, I ran into a deck I built myself that I lent out to a person. It was my own reanimator. The thing trashes Survival. It's no contest. Turn 3 wins ooze reanimator is not something that a survival player wants to see on the other side. If that deck can go through a couple of control decks and another Survival deck to get to the finals, so can other people. I don't get what this craze is all about. It's not that hard to beat. It's good against a lot of the cheaper to build decks. That's half the problem.

As far as I am concerned, it's a great deck like Merfolk or Goblins that can pull wins out of it's ass, not unbeatable craziness. Reanimator won that day in all reality.