Maindeck hate

[Octopusman]

Hello,

Despite the perception of a more diverse meta, I was wondering what your (collective) thoughts are regarding maindeck hate.

I'm seeing (and wanting to explore) a lot of discussion surrounding cards like Ethersworn Canonist, Surgical Extraction, and blasts right now.

Would you ever run "narrow" hate main deck? If so, why? If not, why?
Many decks already run cards that may be dead in the main (i.e. Swords to Plowshares versus control).

What are your thoughts on the aforementioned cards? Would blasts (pyro/red) ever be justifiable main in a post missstep meta or any meta (aside from vintage where I run it in TMWA/Christmas Beatings)?

What are some other hate cards that might be applicable versus the top decks that are not currently being utilized?

A strong 60 is desired, obviously, to have as good a chance as possible to win game one. Post board is generally where you improve your match ups by removing dead cards or less effective cards for hateful bombs like leyline of the void, canonist, etc.

Most main decks try to be as solid as possible while ignoring narrow hate since it may be a dead card. I feel that if I asked if it would ever be acceptable to run hate maindeck in anticipation of encountering certain dominant strategies in a given meta (or format?), some of you may just reply "no". That's fine, but I'm interested in your thoughts.

If I had a few dead cards versus my opponents, I may be willing to accept that fact if my maindeck hate cards are strong enough to steal a game one and then improve upon this even further post board. For example, having 4 blasts main against non-blue decks would all be dead (like STP vs control) but if my Surgical Extractions make their life hell by removing loam, etc then I may be pleased.

This is a cost/benefit argument at its core. Most of these discussions usually end in "do whatever works in your meta". Would you ever consider main deck hate for something like a SCG event where you anticipate a lot of players netdecking?

I would argue that less obvious cards that are format staples are main deck hate but may have a broader application. Wasteland, for example. It still taps for :1: versus mono-colored decks.

Thanks for your consideration. This is just a brainstorming session. I just notice that stonger and stronger hate is being printed (extraction/extirpate in tendem with snapcaster, etc) and, if abusable, can crush some of the dominant strategies at least for a little while until the meta shifts as needed.

Best wishes,

[Nessaja]

For my current deck I run enchantment removal, artifact removal, land removal and creature removal as an aggro deck. Alongside ~12 tutors that can find them.

It depends on the deck, if your deck loses a preboard against a single card (like.. Glacial Chasm or Moat) it's certainly worthwhile to spend some spots for that.

When it comes to combo hate, something like a Teeg maindeck with tutors is fine, but running Thorn of the Amethyst main is taking it a little too far. It needs to have applications in many matchups to run something maindeck.

[BWM]

I'll never consider running maindeck hate in a deck without brainstorm...

In a deck with brainstorm, I might consider it, but haven't done so yet...

[Esper3k]

Why was "netdecking" bolded?

[(nameless one)]

So what is getting suggested is to run a passive control deck? A good example would be Quinn.

[TheShaun]

I did exactly this last weekend at the Jupiter Games tournament. I am playing aggro loam, which I know to be weak against Reanimator. I predicted there to be a large amount of Reanimator, plus a good chunk of Snapcaster decks and Dredge decks. I maindecked 3 Extirpates and loved them. I had some opponents pretty pissed about it, but I just saw it as tweaking my deck for the expected metagame. I don't think it's always the right answer to run something so narrow, but when you expect it to be effective against a large portion of the metagame (especially if your deck is a long shot against one or more of them), then I see no problem with it. Just be prepared to have the judge called during game 1's (like I did 3 times).

[Poxrocks]

Just be prepared to have the judge called during game 1's (like I did 3 times).

This is awesome. Pissing players off by taking a risk and running maindeck Extirpates sounds like a fun way of dealing with douchebags.

[Kich867]

I did exactly this last weekend at the Jupiter Games tournament. I am playing aggro loam, which I know to be weak against Reanimator. I predicted there to be a large amount of Reanimator, plus a good chunk of Snapcaster decks and Dredge decks. I maindecked 3 Extirpates and loved them. I had some opponents pretty pissed about it, but I just saw it as tweaking my deck for the expected metagame. I don't think it's always the right answer to run something so narrow, but when you expect it to be effective against a large portion of the metagame (especially if your deck is a long shot against one or more of them), then I see no problem with it. Just be prepared to have the judge called during game 1's (like I did 3 times).

I don't particularly see Extirpates as being a narrow hate card, it has valid applications against every deck. Any of the deck's win conditions being removed (and in Legacy, those win conditions are usually quite narrow, reliant on a specific few cards; Stoneforge Mystic, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Loam, dredge stuff, lion's eye diamonds, glimpse of nature, high tide, lord of atlantis, brainstorm, etc. are all good targets) severely hinders the deck's performance.

I feel like in legacy, something like Sadistic Sacrament is a lot stronger than it is in standard since Legacy decks are incredibly refined and designed to win in certain ways. So in regards to "remove X card from someone's hand/library/graveyard from the game", I honestly think they have a maindeck spot for black centric control decks in legacy. I know if someone turn 1 Duress > Surgical Extraction'd my glimpse of nature, I'd have a seriously, seriously uphill battle ahead of me. Same with my team italia deck, removing Stoneforge Mystic from the deck is a steep hill to climb and it only cost them a card slot. It's not like milling where you don't know what you'll hit, you're removing a key component to how the deck functions without really hurting your gameplan at all.

The key part however, is having enough knowledge of the decks to know what to hit and when game 1. Or, alternatively, just hit useful things. No more brainstorm! Many games are decided on a brainstorm...

[Kich867]

I did exactly this last weekend at the Jupiter Games tournament. I am playing aggro loam, which I know to be weak against Reanimator. I predicted there to be a large amount of Reanimator, plus a good chunk of Snapcaster decks and Dredge decks. I maindecked 3 Extirpates and loved them. I had some opponents pretty pissed about it, but I just saw it as tweaking my deck for the expected metagame. I don't think it's always the right answer to run something so narrow, but when you expect it to be effective against a large portion of the metagame (especially if your deck is a long shot against one or more of them), then I see no problem with it. Just be prepared to have the judge called during game 1's (like I did 3 times).

I don't particularly see Extirpates as being a narrow hate card, it has valid applications against every deck. Any of the deck's win conditions being removed (and in Legacy, those win conditions are usually quite narrow, reliant on a specific few cards; Stoneforge Mystic, Jace the Mind Sculptor, Loam, dredge stuff, lion's eye diamonds, glimpse of nature, high tide, lord of atlantis, brainstorm, etc. are all good targets) severely hinders the deck's performance.

I feel like in legacy, something like Sadistic Sacrament is a lot stronger than it is in standard since Legacy decks are incredibly refined and designed to win in certain ways. So in regards to "remove X card from someone's hand/library/graveyard from the game", I honestly think they have a maindeck spot for black centric control decks in legacy. I know if someone turn 1 Duress > Surgical Extraction'd my glimpse of nature, I'd have a seriously, seriously uphill battle ahead of me. Same with my team italia deck, removing Stoneforge Mystic from the deck is a steep hill to climb and it only cost them a card slot. It's not like milling where you don't know what you'll hit, you're removing a key component to how the deck functions without really hurting your gameplan at all.

The key part however, is having enough knowledge of the decks to know what to hit and when game 1. Or, alternatively, just hit useful things. No more brainstorm! Many games are decided on a brainstorm...

[BWM]

I'll never consider running maindeck hate in a deck without brainstorm...

In a deck with brainstorm, I might consider it, but haven't done so yet...

I made a mistake yesterday, I play about 20 narrow hate-cards maindeck in Battle of Wits...

Stole a match against Elf Combo on the shoulders of maindeck Perish when Mystical Tutor was still legal...

[John Cox]

I'll never consider running maindeck hate in a deck without brainstorm...

In a deck with brainstorm, I might consider it, but haven't done so yet...

You don't need brainstorm to run maindeck hate, just have a way of the hate having some synergy with the rest of the deck. Faerie macabre in dredge works well (it feeds ichorid), and Manriki-Gusari is worth while in stone forge decks if you see a lot of batterskull/ equipment in the meta.
The only time a narrow hate card is bad is if it's so narrow it's effectively a blank and a dead card.

[hjalte]

Why wouldn't you run maindeck hate if you expect to see a given deck a lot during the tournament?
You often run maindeck creature hate (Swords). I know a lot of decks play creatures, but most combo decks don't, so it's essentially a dead card against combo.
So if you expect to see a lot of decks abusing the graveyard, play gravehate maindeck. Relic of Progenitus is increadibly good maindeck as it cycles, it costs 2, but is not a completely dead card, and people wont expect it.
The same is true for all other decks, so it might be very useful to maindeck enchantment or artifact hate also.

[dahcmai]

I will if I have a tutor for it. Ie. Enlightened, Zenith, etc. Almost always.

On a rare occasion, I have main decked a Pyroblast to mess with people since blue is typically pretty prominent.

My reanimator has a main deck Tower of the Magistrate in it. It doesn't hurt to have an extra land over what the deck requires. Batterskull can occasionally race a fattie out of reanimator so it wasn't a bad pick considering how much Stoneblade is played.

Extirpate strikes me as a card I would run if I had a severe weakness to a deck. Aggro Loam being a pretty good pick for it. I did the same thing in Lands since it was my only shot at pulling off an accidental win against Storm. Especially, when they had Mysticals or tried the win via IGG. Amazing how much that threw off the math.

I really like doing that trick if it's with a card people just haven't seen in ages. COP green is a favorite since Projo is around and it nabs Tarmogoyf and Knight also.

[SpikeyMikey]

Why wouldn't you run maindeck hate if you expect to see a given deck a lot during the tournament?
You often run maindeck creature hate (Swords).

This. People get so caught up in what they're used to running that they forget that what they run is just as arbitarary as what they don't run. When Survival was big, people refused to main Extirpate. The deck was everywhere and even in matches where your opponent doesn't drop a SotF on you, Extirpate is still good. I was maining it in Rock in 2008 when everyone and their mother was playing Counterbalance. Do you have any idea how badly a turn 2 Wasteland on their Tropical Island backed by an Extirpate hurt that deck?

Or my Bant deck that ran 4 Cold-Eyed Selkies main (prior to GSZ) because I figured half my opponents would be playing blue anyway and Selkie is some good with pump.

I play cards that let me win. I don't care if they're broad or narrow. I don't care if people classify them as "hate" or "maindeckable". If it's going to win me games, I'm going to play it, no matter how ugly, no matter how inelegant, no matter how unconventional.

[Finn]

I don't particularly see Extirpates as being a narrow hate card, it has valid applications against every deck. Boy are you wrong.

Your Glimpse of nature deck is combo. Team Italia is just a bad deck that is unnecessarily easy to disrupt for aggro-control. Most people are unable to analyze stuff like this for Legacy because it does not feel natural that you could be playing the format for six months and not have seen most of it by then. They get a narrow view of what actually lies out there and mistake it for typical. Extirpate is nearly dead against plenty. This gets at the OP.

Wasteland is a card that has just wrecked a number of top decks in Legacy since its inception if you happen to have two in your opening hand or if you have one and an Aether Vial or a Hierarch. More than any other card, I see people who are playing a popular deck of three colors get upset at their "bad luck" for seeing insufficient lands despite Brainstorm and Ponder. I Waste and Port them out of the game with my "underpowered" monocolor deck because they were farting around looking for land while shuffling away the business cards. Wasteland hurts not just decks with lots of colors, but the ubiquitous and powerful Brainstorm by curtailing the inherent advantages you get when a good designer includes Brainstorm in a deck.

Overreaching strategies like Tempo Threshold and 4-color Landstill are the worst offenders, but are accompanied by a great chunk of the format. Wasteland is my number one hate in the main for you, Octopusman

[Rizso]

Could easy see some hate go main decks. Like Relic of Progenitus if meta is filled with Snapcaster, reanimator and dreadge with combination of them. Relic Can always be cantriped also affects Goyfs and KotR.

[SpikeyMikey]

Extirpate is nearly dead against plenty.


I disagree. Most decks have a few spells that are very threatening and a lot of spells that are either defensive in nature or serve as flex slots. My favorite example, since it's the easiest to demarcate the various spells' functions, is MM-era NO RUG. The deck has two paths to victory - Natural Order and Tarmogoyf. Tarmogoyf is further buttressed by Green Sun's Zenith. But if you Extirpate a Tarmogoyf, you've now relegated the deck to a single win-condition. Extirpate both Tarmogoyf and Natural Order and the deck can't win. I mean, technically, they can GSZ into Hierarchs and try and win with exalted Lavamancers, but the upshot is that a single Extirpate on the right card gives the deck fits and a double Extirpate shuts it down to the point where it has to jump through ridiculous hoops in order to stay relevant.

The only matchups where I would say that Extirpate is "nearly" dead would be decks like Belcher or SI, which don't care about it because they don't need resources beyond what they started with anyway or decks like Fish which run heavy redundancies of all their pieces and stick to 1 or 2 categories of cards. Against anything midrange or slower, Extirpate is usually solid if not exceptional and even against Zoo, it can be good in multiples because you can use it to cut off their reach (burn) and force them to play a 1-dimensional game (red zone only)

[Finn]

Mikey, I have a friend whom I play Legacy with on most Saturdays. A few years ago he fell in love with Extirpate. I know it to be weaksauce so I challenged him to beat me with it so that he would eventually learn. In the (literally) hundreds of games we have played since then I have faced it maybe 60 times. I have lost to it exactly once and I have had to alter my gameplan two times due to the threat of it. I know these last numbers because he gleefully reminds me all the time.

The card is an outright killer in some matchups - to be sure. However, most people who sing the praises of Extirpate haven't got the experience or the analytical skills to determine how useless it generally is. (Even my friend is cognizant of how laughable the card usually is in our games - though he will not openly admit it.) I know you to be neither of those things. So I will just respectfully disagree with you.

[SpikeyMikey]

Mikey, I have a friend whom I play Legacy with on most Saturdays. A few years ago he fell in love with Extirpate. I know it to be weaksauce so I challenged him to beat me with it so that he would eventually learn. In the (literally) hundreds of games we have played since then I have faced it maybe 60 times. I have lost to it exactly once and I have had to alter my gameplan two times due to the threat of it. I know these last numbers because he gleefully reminds me all the time.

The card is an outright killer in some matchups - to be sure. However, most people who sing the praises of Extirpate haven't got the experience or the analytical skills to determine how useless it generally is. (Even my friend is cognizant of how laughable the card usually is in our games - though he will not openly admit it.) I know you to be neither of those things. So I will just respectfully disagree with you.

I love you too Finn :)

[catmint]

While you TRY to extirpate goyfs and natural order (first need to counter or discard one), you will get beat down by an exhalted vendilion clique.

There are some decks where you can extirpate wincos, but NO is probably the worst example. V-clique, Jace, NO, Goyf,...

When I design decks many very good cards are fighting for spots and there is no space for something narrow as extirpate.

[SpikeyMikey]

While you TRY to extirpate goyfs and natural order (first need to counter or discard one), you will get beat down by an exhalted vendilion clique.

There are some decks where you can extirpate wincos, but NO is probably the worst example. V-clique, Jace, NO, Goyf,...

When I design decks many very good cards are fighting for spots and there is no space for something narrow as extirpate.

Well, if you're playing Extirpate main, you're either BUG Still or Rock. So generally, you're not going to have a hard time putting one in the yard. You're either packing 8+ counters or 8+ discard. And in both cases you've got non-Plow removal.

I'm not currently running Extirpate in either, to be clear. But I have run it main in both in the past, depending on the meta and how I need to allocate my flex slots.

[joemauer]

Extirpate is a bad maindeck card. Nice versus Reanimator and Lands, close to dead versus other decks. A extirpate won't stop a good dredge player, need multiple to stop dredge. And Multiple exitrpates in your hands sucks big balls versus every blue deck. Really when do you want a hand full of exitrpates + a gofy or something?

Ethersworn Canonist however is great in affinity, couldn't think of another deck it could fit in.

Pyroblasts are nice when you have Painter's Servant:)

Does that answer your question on the OP.

[dahcmai]

I did see an interesting deck lately using 4 of them and 4 of Surgicals also. All the deck did was remove things and extirpate them. It sounded stupid until you saw Snapcasters do it again, then of all things crap like Splinter, Eradicate, and Memoricide started popping out. It's all the deck did was kill something, then remove it. It was truly annoying as hell. I won't say it was good since it was slow as shit, but it made you think how it could accidentally destroy some decks since they play only a few win cons. He could beat Team America all day long oddly enough even with that 3 color monstrosity with overly high cc cards.

[TsumiBand]

Yeah, library exiling is one of those "almost good" mechanics like milling. Generally the dedicated non-combo mill decks are Doing It Weird, although I have randomly lost to stuff with maindeck Hedron Crabs and Sanity Grinding. In old Standard formats. Milling is much closer to independently playable than extirpating though, and it's rarely successful outside of combo.

Consider that probably the hallmark of extirpating is Haunting Echoes, and for all its ability to just devastate an opponent's deck it doesn't ever get played. It depends too much on dealing with multiple threats; Mutilate/Echoes was a hell of a way to wreck a noob. How you supposed to get enough relevant stuff in the graveyard to make extirpating a good wincon? Oh wait, I know, milling :P

At any rate, back OT - how narrow does it have to be to be considered narrow hate? I mean, strictly speaking Swords to Plowshares is pretty 'narrow' next to say Vindicate. It just so happens that lots of permanents are also creatures, and lots of decks play them. With a "no bad threats" mentality, the right hate isn't narrow.

It'd be interesting to run a comparison in a given metagame to see, for example, how often 4x StP is truly dead vs. how often 4x REB is.

[sir]

ya'll some haters

[Admiral_Arzar]

I'm actually thinking about packing Leyline of the Void in the main at this point, because there are very few decks that aren't hurt by it in the current meta (and it completely neutralizes ReAnimator and Snapcaster bullshit).