How to deal with the metagame right now?

[Sigar]

I want to openly brainstorm about the metagame. I don't have any solutions yet, but I would love to hear some feedback and thoughts. Today I talk a little about Zoo.

The decks I want to beat are:

NO RUG
UW Stoneforge
BUG Control

They all run Brainstorm, Fow, Mental Misstep, Vendilion Clique and some game winning card (Order, Deed or Stoneforge. Maybe Jace as well, but he requires at least an even board state).

Zoo is pretty good against Clique and Fow, because your creatures cost 1 and are bigger/more threatening, and therefor not very appealing to Fow, and Clique doesn't put up much of a fight. Zoo is also able to race the control decks and in many cases, finish them of with burn spells.

The problem is inconsistency (no Brainstorm) and Mental Misstep! Mental Missteps gives the control decks a huge tempo swing. An early Misstep backed up by a spot removal and it's almost game over, since the control decks now have plenty of time to do what they wanna do (reach the mid/late game). This also makes Ancestral Vision a lot stronger, since it's no longer easy to race. Furthermore Misstep protects Stoneforge, so Batterskull can reach play and hose Zoo completely. This almost forces Zoo to run Misstep on its own, but it messes so much with its own game plan of mass threats, and is also a bad top deck later on.

It's unappealing to go BIG, since Misstep also deals with the enablers (Birds, Noble and GSZ). Maybe one could try out Sakura or Explore to enable some very good 4-drops like Bloodbraid Elf and Vengevine, which also dodges Spell Pierce and Daze to some extent. If you go big, you need card advantage like the two 4-drops I just mentioned, or you will get completely destroyed by sweepers (Deed, Wrath, etc.).

The most obvious solution to the problem is to play Mental Misstep, Brainstorm Fow and the likes on your own, but if that's truly the best solution, the format is very degenerate and something has to be done.

I hope I'll find the time to keep adding input to the thread, but in the meantime, share your thoughts and ideas. What do you think is the best strategy to beat those decks right now?

I know Hive Mind is also a big deck right now, but it's easier to hate out than the other decks, and doesn't have much in common with them.

Later!

[dahcmai]

People are really just being severely lazy. There's plenty that beat those three quite handily. Play Dredge if you want to mangle them the worst. They don't handle it very well at all. Learn to deal with the hate and you're pretty golden. It's a boring deck, but it's almost a bye game 1 and still decent game 2.

Imperial Painter is another one that hates on them pretty hard. Having maindeck hate makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Enchantress has the benefit of being good against those and good against aggro.
Anything with Crucible/Loam Waste lock is pretty decent.

People just copy deck lists and build what they see win anymore. Innovation is a lost art anymore. I think we've been complaining about this since the Dojo days and I doubt it's going to change anytime soon.

[Sigar]

This is not a complain thread. It's a "what should I play to crush these decks" thread :)

What Imperial Painter MD hate are you talking about? Red Blast doesn't deal with Order and Stoneforge on its own, so that's barely hate.

[Nonex]

I'm having good success with RG Food Chain. The card itself, the Eldrazi, Bloodbraid Elf, Ancient Tomb, Imperial Recruiter into Phyrexian Metamorph, Summoning Trap MD, Magus of the Moon... the list goes on.

[Hanni]

Until they ban Show and Tell, I'd have to say Hive Mind. SNT Hive Mind is just so broken.

[wcm8]

Black offers options that work quite well against those decks. You have Perish, Ghastly Demise, Dismember, [any black 2cmc removal], DARKBLAST (really hoses the NO Rug decks, as the only things to survive it are Goyf and Progenitus), Hymn to Tourach and Thoughtsieze (on turns 1/2 they can really mess up a control deck's plan). For beatdown you can run either Dark Confidant in a tempo thresh shell or Tombstalker in a Team America-style deck. I know it's ironic to suggest one of the decks you are concerned with beating, but you could take the stock Team America list and modify the main deck slightly to better combat the decks you mentioned. Personally I think 'Dark Thresh', a deck that runs stuff like Nimble Mongoose, Tarmogoyf, and Dark Confidant would do pretty well in this meta game.

[Fossil4182]

A good way to beat these decks that you are mentioning is to examine the disruption packages beyond FoW and Mental Misstep and construct a deck that exploits the gaps in the disruption packages. For example, if most of the counter suites are comprised of Mental Misstep, Spell Snare and Force of Will; the observation here is that these decks only have one true counterspell while the rest are conditional (in this instances, being relative to casting cost). Among the solutions to these issue, one can overload on cards of a specific converted mana cost to run them out of cards. Additionally, one can play decks that sidestep these cards altogether.

Someone has already mentioned several decks on here that work well, but I would echo Aggro Loam strategies. They avoid Mental Misstep and if they are pitching cards to Force of Will, that deck can generate enough card advantage to get way ahead anyway. The Loam engine combined with Dark Confidant allows the deck to generate a ton of card advantage and solves the consistency complaint that you forwarded in your initial post.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Until they ban Show and Tell, I'd have to say Hive Mind. SNT Hive Mind is just so broken.

Are you serious? Have you played Hive Mind against a meta that is 70% UW Mystic, NO RUG, and Team America? None of those matchups are favorable.

[Hanni]

Are you serious? Have you played Hive Mind against a meta that is 70% UW Mystic, NO RUG, and Team America? None of those matchups are favorable.

I was being sarcastic...

But on a very serious note, here is the answer to all your woes:

G/R The Solution 2011

Lands (24)
14 Forest
10 Mountain

Creatures (26)
4 Blurred Mongoose
4 Vexing Shusher
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Simian Spirit Guide
4 Great Sable Stag
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Scragnoth
2 Quagnoth

Spells (10)
4 Sudden Shock
4 Urza's Rage
2 Volcanic Fallout

Sideboard (15)
3 Krosan Grip
2 Wreak Havoc
2 Volcanic Fallout
4 Blood Moon
4 Phyrexian Metamorph

[dahcmai]

lol, that would be such a pain to play against. Unless you have Goblins of course, but playing StoneBlade would be horrible to see that. Nice one.


On that same note, I played last night against a deck while I was playing StoneBlade, he dropped a third turn Terra Stomper and then a 4th turn one right after it. while I was dealing with those two monsters, he dropped an Ulamog, then a Blightsteel. I actually felt better since I could finally use of the two Forces in my hand to counter that Blightsteel. Batterskull and Jitte barely held off that stuff until I drew a Take Possession to seal the deal on that Ulamog.

I had to think to myself that if he had a Lightning greaves instead of the Concordant Crossroads, he would have won. Scary little deck had some serious hate for control in it.