[B&R] Vengevival vs GP NJ

[Gheizen64]

Since discussion is nice, but data is better, i've decided to test how would an oppressive (well an about 50% of the meta card, just look how T8 looked back then http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=118&iddeck=255) deck would fare in a modern legacy world. Card that were printed since Vengevine: Delver, Terminus, Entreat the angels, Deathrite shaman, RiP in pepperoni, TC, DTT, abrupt decay, GSZ, Emrakul, Griselbrand etc...

So i've tested some lists, sadly i don't remember which GW list i used for this testing, but it's probably similar to this: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=118&iddeck=60


Matchup 1 GW Survival vs Miracle:

G1 GW survival draw a shitty hand and mull to 6, Miracle don't have a brilliant hand but has Top so keep. Island top into Savannah Hierarch. T2 blind top by Miracle, into survival by GW. Miracle spin and pass, GW turn 3 has 4 mana, discard 2 vengevines into 2 rootwallas, Miracle sword one Vengevine. A turn later, Miracle has to flashback Swords to survive the three vengevines that are attacking him, but die nevertheless on the following turn.

GW 1-0

G2.GW survival keep : Fauna shaman, Rootwalla, Qasali, swords, lands. Which is probably not something you'd keep vs miracle but whatever. Miracle has T1 island into top. Survival draw path to exile, play Rootwalla, pass. GW play Fauna, which get promptly removed by swords the turn after. GW try to play another creature but Miracle has Snapcaster for sword, another sword in hand, and Terminus on top. GW get locked by stream of removals and Jace for Entreat shortly later.

Miracle 1-1

G3: GW mull a 1 lander into 4-land + vengevine+qasali, mull into 3 lands + qasali + swords. Miracle has T1 top. GW can't get back from the mull.

Miracle 2-1

G4: again a no-survival slow hand from GW, hat mull into a no-survival but not as slow hand and keep for T1 hierarch, but miracle has the T1 swords. A t3 KotR get snapcaster-sworded. then Vengevine get countered and Miracle get an active Jace. Game is over soon.

Miracle 3-1

G5. T1 hierarch get sworded, and T3 kotr get flashback sworded. Then a quick entreat the angel for 3 with an active jace kill anything coming from GW that without a survival just cna't do anything.

Miracle 4-1

G6. A survival starting 7 but only 2 wastes as mana mull into a no-survival slow hand. I'm not even playing this and concede instantly. Miracle had 2 lands , brainstorm ponders and hwatever.

Miracle 5-1

G7. A survival hand but with no mana accells. Miracle has Terminus and Brainstorm in hand. T2 survival resolve and pass. Miracle play top with Terminus on top of library. Survival discard 1 vengevine for another, then vengevine for Rootwalla then walla for Memnite, 2 vengevines into play and Miracle terminus the board. Survival however just do it again on T4, and this time miracle can only sword one and take 4. Next turn snapcaster for another vine, but Survival has still 1 on board and 3 wallas. Miracle spin and has a terminus on top, which is forced to use because else walla pump and kill him next turn. Survival has still 1 creature in hand, meaning he can activate Surv, play again 2 vines, 2 walla. Miracle Brainstorm into Terminus, and GW has no cards in hand. Replay top, pass. GW draw blank, pass. Miracle spin, draw land, play Jace, fateseal. GW draw land, pass. Miracle fateseal, pass. GW draw jitte pass. Game is over shortly after.

Miracle 6-1

Tbh i wanted to try 10 games (pre-boarded because it's just an experiment), but i GW felt just too inconsistent as a deck to win against miracle. With no Survival T2, deck simply can't win because it play expensive, slow creatures and tons of junk like wallas, memnites and wonders.

So i'm switching deck to a UG survival list: http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=118&iddeck=387

Kreaturen [18]
1 Memnite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Wonder
3 Basking Rootwalla
3 Wild Mongrel
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Vengevine

Spontanzauber [19]
2 Daze
2 Intuition
3 Spell Pierce
4 Brainstorm
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares


Verzauberunge [4]
4 Survival of the Fittest

L�nder [19]
1 Bayou
2 Forest
2 Horizon Canopy
2 Savannah
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Tropical Island
4 Windswept Heath

No SB, again. This list feel much more optimized and consistent even if it was less common to see UG than GW back then.

This time i'll test first against Patriot:

G1. UG draw a one lander with no Survival but has Hierarch, and double force. No cantrips means i mull. Mulls into shitty 5 card hand but with a BS. Meanwhile Patriot has Gitaxian , SFM, Batterskull, TNN 2 lands, pyroblast. Game's over soon for Patriot.

Patriot 1-0

G2. UG has no survival but intuition, hierarch T1. Patriot bolt it. T2 SFM from patriot, but UG force and has drawn survival meanwhile. T3 UG Brainstorm, find a land, play land, play survival, but no mana open and pass. Pyro from Patriot, one mana open. UG has three mana, discard mongrel for Vengevine, discard venge for Rootwalla, discard walla for Memnite. No creatures in hand anymore for UG, and Patriot swords the Vengevine next turn, then TC. Survival draw no relevant while patriot has tons of cards from TC, play jitte the subsequential turn and clear board. Survival sacrifice a Horizon and draw walla, but has only 3 mana and no Memnite anymore, meaning it can play only a single vengevine. Patriot has an active jitte, and UG can't race with a single Vengevine.

Patriot 2-0.

G3. Patriot has a 1-lander with BS, while UG has a decent hand but no survival. Patriot try BS, but get dazed. 1 turn later, patriot try BS again, resolve, and play land. UG then play mongrel, he has vengevine but not another creature in hand. Patriot sword it, UG discard vengevine in response. Patriot play TNN, and UG try EoT Intuition but get forced (pitch fow). Ug then play Hierarch and Qasali, reanimating Vengevine that however can't attack into TNN. Game stall a bit, but UG has more cards and try another intuition which get forced again (hardcasted) and forced back by UG. Intuition find wonder, and 2x Vengevine. Wonder goes to hand and get played. UG has no cards, patriot still has 1 in hand. Patriot draw BS, play it. draw 2 lands + swords, swords Vengevine and pass. Wonder attack for 4 pass. Patriot draw SFM, find jitte, cast and equip. With 1 counter remove noble 1 to gain 2 life, and pridemage get sacced to remove it. UG draw removal, Patriot draw a second TNN and now has a faster clock. No relevant card is found and patriot win by TNN swings.

Patriot 3-0.

G4. UG has a good hand but no Survival (Venge, hierarch, land, bs, wonder, memnite, mongrel), lead with hierarch, which get bolted. Brainstorm from UG can't find the second land and suddendly this hand sucks. Meanwhile patriot has 3 lands, play Pyro, then Ponder, and another YP. Game is quickly over with tons of tokens.

Patriot 4-0

G5. UG has no survival again, but hierarch, intuition, 2 lands, mongrel and force, keep. Lead with hierarch. Patriot mull to 6. Bolt hierarch then probe. UG try T3 Intuition, but get Pyroblasted, UG try force, but get forced back. UG untap and play mongrel and both players have chaff in hand. Patriot draw SFM that find Jitte (batterskull in hand already). SFM get stp. UG untap, draw venge and play it, Patriot is at 7, and has 1 turn left because of mongrel pump. However patriot find his fifth land, and play batterskull. Batterskull then block Vengevine to gain more time (UG has 2 cards and can kill the token even if it block mongrel). Patriot play jitte and pass. UG try BS but get pyroblasted, which get then dazed so Patriot can't bounce Batterskull this turn. Patriot then draw Ponder, into Tnn, which get played and equipped. UG draw Survival but has no creature in hand and can't attack into TNN anymore. The next turn TNN equip batterskull and the game's over.

Patriot 5-0.

Let's try against UR delver, GPNJ list.

G1. Survival mull to 6 for Walla, intuition, BS, spell pierce, 2 lands. UR leads with Monastery into probe and has daze in hand. UG BS eot, find mongrel. Try to play mongrel but get dazed. UR untap, play bolt, attack, UG is at 11. Survival sword the Monastery, and UR play Pyro next turn. UG try another sword, but get dazed then forced. Pyro survive and get 2 tokens. UR cruise, attack with 1 million tokens and Surv can't get back in the game.

UR 1-0

G2. Survival lead with Hierarch, which get forked. UG don't have survival and get steamrolled by T2 pyro with counter backup and burn.

UR 2-0

G3. Survival has the namesake card and 2 lands, but no hierarch. UR has to mull to 5, but get a delver + probe + BS hand. Survival however has the daze for the second delver, and then use 2 mana to discard mongrel, get vengevine, discard vengevine get another venge and pass. UR cast BS then try TC, but get forced. The next turn Survival discard Venge for Walla, Walla for Memnite and play 2 VV from grave. UR is at 8 becasue of probes. UR draw pyro and has probe which hardcast after Pyro, and get bolt. Probe see Wonder in Survival's hand, so can't attack even with bolt in hand because of Walla pump. Next turn, board trades and UR get to 5 with only a pyro in play. Then survival do its thing and 4 vengevines finish the game.

Survival 1-2

G4. UG has survival and hierarch, but hierarch get bolted T1. T2 sword on Pyro get forced, then Hierarch get forked. T3 Survival get a Daze. Survival still resolve but no UG has no more mana and no creature in hand so pass. UR meanwhile has 3 tokens and a fast clock. UG is at 9 when he untap but draw memnite. However, at 3 mana it has no way to actually play anything with a starting memnite in hand, so it can only fill the grave with vengevines. UR eot bolt face, untap with 4 tokens and UG is dead.

UR 3-1

G5. UG lead with Hierarch and has survival in hand. UR has no bolts only a lot of filters so pass. T2 survival resolve but UG hand is another survival, 2lands, 1 sword and 1 brainstorm. eot brainstorm by UR get UG to brainstorm in resp, which get dazed. UG draw land and pass. UG try sword on Pyro eot, but get forced. Next turn however, UG draw hierarch, and with 5 mana can play 3 VV, walla and memnite. The turn after, wonder make VV fly, and UR die.

Survival 2-3

G6. Survival has again hierarch and survival, but hierarch get dazed and UR started with Monastery. T2 BS to find lands, and T3 Survival + discard one. Meanwhile UR has pyro and UG is at 13 already. Next turn Survival can play 4 VV, but UR has 2 tokens so it's not lethal. Survival attack with 3 vengevines and 1 get blocked. Next turn however delver flip and UR is at 6. Ponder, into TC, into forked bolt to remove 2 blockers and game's over.

UR 4-2.

My time's limited so i stopped there.

So basically what i've drawn from this is that old Vengevine lists are simply too inconsistent. If you don't draw survival, the other enablers are really slow for what you try to get (fauna shaman for 4 vengevines? really wat). Batterskull, bolts and swords being played a lot more than before, plus fast clocks with Delvers means that the alternate slow plan don't work at all.
However, those lists are absurdly unrefined for the current metagame. For example, i'm pretty sure a UGw Survival variant with some lifegain creatures would have a positive MU vs UR delver/burns variants. Another approach would be a full-on-combo deck with 4 Enlightned tutors to cast that T2 survival, because honestly that's what survival is, a combo deck with a secondary aggro alternative approach, like elves. However, unlike elves, it can't go off as fast, and the aggro plan is considerably worse imho, since it play fat slow creatures and little way to refuel the plan. It's probably however harder to hate out because you can fetch silver bullets more easily. I'm not sure if TC would fit in there, because you fill the grave fast, but a lot of those cards in the grave are essential for your gameplan.
I don't think the deck would dominate, it would be strong but probably just force people to play more needles and maybe a little more grave removal but not much beyond that, now that we have decay, DRS, batterskulls etc...
Without Survival, and with so many cards you dedicate to it to make the Vengevines work, a simple needle on Survival get all the time you need to end the game while survival search for answers. We now have Delvers and Pyromancer with absurdly fast clocks even in straight races, Elves! as a faster combo, even if Survival would probably play Orzhov Pontiff, and SnT still don't care about Vengevines.

On the other hand, Survival would allow me to play something like this:

TnT!
1 Sundering Titan
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
2 Life from the Loam
1 Platinum Emperion
1 Anger
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Goblin Welder
3 Daretti, Scrap Savant
4 Talisman of Impulse
1 Gruul Signet
3 Wurmcoil Engine
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Tangle Wire
3 Punishing Fire

4 Grove of the Burnwillows
4 Ancient Tomb
2 City of Traitors
2 Gruul Turf
4 Taiga
3 Wooded Foothills
3 Cavern of Souls
3 Wasteland


So WotC, do the right thing and unban survival! Feel free to post some refined Survival list which would beat current decks , i've used very old lists which aren't indicative of the power level of the card at all.

[Higgs]

Here you go:
http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/the-banned-series-survival-of-the-fittest-and-mind-twist/

[Lemnear]

Did this need a seperate thread? The whole testing (no matter how it was done) is pointless as SotF wasn't banned because of it's performance, but because of being a repeatable Creature tutor which is critical if WotC prints power creep mainly within the creature-type. That is also the reason Vengevine was not banned instead. Stuff like Emrakul + Loyal Retainer or KotR + Tarmogoyf would have taken it's spot. Today it would be paired with DRS and Delver, but you decided to test a 4-year old, never updated list against todays archetypes, trying to prove a point. This is like testing a 2003 Vintage Gro-A-Tog against Legacy UWR Blade and coming to the conclusion that Fastbond + Gush is safe

[Gheizen64]

Here you go:
http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/the-banned-series-survival-of-the-fittest-and-mind-twist/

Uh i totally forgot about those series and haven't watched them, gonna watch them asap.

[JanoschEausH]

Your methodology is so flawed. I wouldn't even dare to call this an experiment. For example: You need a much bigger sample size, just to account for the whole lot of variance, which is playing magic (drawing good, drawing bad, draw the right thing at the right moment etc.) You also need to test against someone, who is equally competent (how would you even measure this?!). You need to account for die-roll. And in the end you need to account for the possibility of sideboarding which makes this extremely complicated. I would argue that it's impossible to even measure, the impact an unbanning of SotF would have, in a decent way.

[Gheizen64]

Here you go:
http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/the-banned-series-survival-of-the-fittest-and-mind-twist/

Uh i totally forgot about those series and haven't watched them, gonna watch them asap. Too bad he's playing against a pretty different meta from the current one since KtK got printed.

EDIT: as far as i saw, there are nowhere as many bolts as there are currently and that's a big deal against all his mana producers. SnT brutalized him with burns spells and T2-3 emrakuls.



Did this need a seperate thread? The whole testing (no matter how it was done) is pointless as SotF wasn't banned because of it's performance, but because of being a repeatable Creature tutor which is critical if WotC prints power creep mainly within the creature-type. That is also the reason Vengevine was not banned instead. Stuff like Emrakul + Loyal Retainer or KotR + Tarmogoyf would have taken it's spot. Today it would be paired with DRS and Delver, but you decided to test a 4-year old, never updated list against todays archetypes, trying to prove a point. This is like testing a 2003 Vintage Gro-A-Tog against Legacy UWR Blade and coming to the conclusion that Fastbond + Gush is safe

So what? BS is a repeatable card tutor that filter and only get better as more cards get printed. With the difference that apparently it's so it's fine while SotF is green so it ain't? Or wait, what about SnT that is a mana cheat for creatures that only get better with power creep etc... but apparently that's fine too because it's blue ok.
The point of what i did is showing that old "busted" interactions aren't actually as busted as we remember because of how much stronger the rest of the pool as gotten in the meanwhile. It's just a memory refreshing exercise, sorry if you had to waste your time bitching about my post.

[Gheizen64]

Your methodology is so flawed. I wouldn't even dare to call this an experiment. For example: You need a much bigger sample size, just to account for the whole lot of variance, which is playing magic (drawing good, drawing bad, draw the right thing at the right moment etc.) You also need to test against someone, who is equally competent (how would you even measure this?!). You need to account for die-roll. And in the end you need to account for the possibility of sideboarding which makes this extremely complicated. I would argue that it's impossible to even measure, the impact an unbanning of SotF would have, in a decent way.

Only that this wasn't about proving anything, it was meant as a starting point for discussion and to bring something to the table. For what it's worth, my impressions are that the card enables combo decks that aren't better or as good as already existing combo decks.

[JanoschEausH]

Only that this wasn't about proving anything, it was meant as a starting point for discussion and to bring something to the table. For what it's worth, my impressions are that the deck enables combo decks that aren't better or as good as already existing combo decks.

Okay no offense, but your impressions are not relevant, because you derived them from something which could all be variance. I could do the same testing and get the opposite results, which would lead to completely different impressions. This is no good fodder for discussion, because your results are highly speculative and they mislead people. When you make an experiment: Do it the right way, or let it be. We don't need an extra thread for this, because all you said has been discussed over and over again in the B&R thread. If you can't contribute something new (and reliable) you are better off, posting this in the B&R thread.

Sorry if this sounds rude, but methodology is my bread and butter, and i just can't keep quiet if ppl draw conclusions from totally flawed data.

[Gheizen64]

Ok so i will try CD lists vs GPNJ lists, 3 Bo3 matches each with sb.

[bruizar]

Your methodology is so flawed. I wouldn't even dare to call this an experiment. For example: You need a much bigger sample size, just to account for the whole lot of variance, which is playing magic (drawing good, drawing bad, draw the right thing at the right moment etc.) You also need to test against someone, who is equally competent (how would you even measure this?!). You need to account for die-roll. And in the end you need to account for the possibility of sideboarding which makes this extremely complicated. I would argue that it's impossible to even measure, the impact an unbanning of SotF would have, in a decent way.

You can always criticize methodologies. What Gheizen provided was a starting point to, more meaningfully, discuss and evaluate the power of Survival of the Fittest in a legacy era Survival never got a chance to experience.

In my opinion, Patrick Chapin's list was the most powerful survival deck and it did not run Vengevine. I would expect your testing results to be better especially given that Terminus beats Vengevine very easily. Here is a deck tech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcG_AxYT10s

It uses Loyal Retainers, Anger and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to win in instantaneously.

[bakofried]

Go easy on the guy. Even if his conclusions are flawed, his experiences are valuable. Let's actually try to use the data instead of jumping on his thoughts.

[bruizar]

Go easy on the guy. Even if his conclusions are flawed, his experiences are valuable. Let's actually try to use the data instead of jumping on his thoughts.

Exactly, QUALITATIVE findings are just as valuable as QUANTITATIVE findings. Qualitative findings provide context to empirical results.

[nedleeds]

Since discussion is nice, but data is better, i've decided to test how would an oppressive (well an about 50% of the meta card, just look how T8 looked back then http://www.tcdecks.net/deck.php?id=118&iddeck=255) deck would fare in a modern legacy world. Card that were printed since Vengevine: Delver, Terminus, Entreat the angels, Deathrite shaman, RiP, TC, DTT, abrupt decay, GSZ, Emrakul, Griselbrand etc...

Phyrexian Revoker
Grafdigger's Cage
Containment Priest
Surgical (LOL) Extraction
Snapcaster Mage

[JanoschEausH]

As i said before: I think it's impossible to produce reliable data in MTG, because there are just so many confounding variables - you can't control them all. But having a greater sample size would be the first step. I would propably make 15 games OTD, then 15 games OTP. Then 15 games OTD + 15 OTP after sideboarding. Do this with every DTB matchup. In reality you would possibly make more games after sideboarding, since in a natural environment you play more games in sideboard mode than pre-sideboard.

But in the end, the result stays the same: The important part about magic are the pilots, not their decks. There are so many intrapersonal factors here, which are impossible to measure.

EDIT: Okay guys, especially Gheizen64, my apologies for beeing that harsh. My reaction was way over the top. I see that MTG is no science and this is no science journal, but a discussion forum. I acknowledge the work Gheizen64 put into this and especially his good will to provide information.

[Lemnear]

So what? BS is a repeatable card tutor that filter and only get better as more cards get printed. With the difference that apparently it's so it's fine while SotF is green so it ain't?

No, it's not a repeatable tutor and it has noting to do with the color, or do you see anyone arguing to unban Demonic Tutor (which isn't repeatable either)?


Or wait, what about SnT that is a mana cheat for creatures that only get better with power creep etc... but apparently that's fine too because it's blue ok.

S&T has a similar issue as Survival and I (personally) neither think the card is fine. The only thing that makes a difference here is, that S&T is not repeatable and needs to build around. You can throw SotF in any deck with 16+ creatures and call it an improvement.

It would be helpful if you stop dicking around with "but blue!". The GREEN Tinker is legal in Legacy while the blue one is banned. The GREEN Tolarian Academy is legal in Legacy while the blue one is banned. Do you hear anyone complaining about that fact?


The point of what i did is showing that old "busted" interactions aren't actually as busted as we remember because of how much stronger the rest of the pool as gotten in the meanwhile. It's just a memory refreshing exercise, sorry if you had to waste your time bitching about my post.

The only thing you showed is, that you choose to ignore that Survival decks also got new tools to work with since the card was banned. I'm not a big fan of Calebs Banned-Series because he drew conclusions based on bad, limited deckbuilding, close to zero experience with certain archetypes & resulting horrible misplays and questionable testing setups (including his testing partners), but you put zero efford into looking at if/how SotF would have gotten stronger in the meanwhile and still dare to make a statement about SotFs strengh today.

It would have been relevant to look at the card with Elves, Liliana, TNN, DRS, Delver, Dryad Arbor, Griselbrand and more in mind rather than making a point with Wild Mongrel

[nedleeds]

Did this need a seperate thread? The whole testing (no matter how it was done) is pointless as Show and Tell wasn't banned because of it's performance, but because of being a 15 mana dark ritual which is critical if WotC prints power creep mainly within the creature-type.

LOL. WotC failed and people are still defending this garbage. SotF is a fantastic card but wouldn't be any more oppressive than the current crop of absurd cards. Elves wouldn't even want to play it. They have 8 Tinkers right now.

[bruizar]

textl

No experiment is perfect; there's always the risk of biases. Social science is always an abstraction of reality. That's why you box your experiment and try to control for as much as you can. Janosch said that there are too many confounding variables, I completely disagree. Especially since this is his 'bread and butter' I'm interested in hearing his opinion about this. My opinion is that just because it's hard doesn't make it impossible.

Imperfect models are how companies like Google and Facebook became big. Recommendation engines, behavioral targeting, etcetera is not perfect but they still provide value! (Quiet literally for big companies like Google and Facebook). Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it does not provide insights! That's why we have a limitations section in research...

[Lemnear]

LOL. WotC failed and people are still defending this garbage. SotF is a fantastic card but wouldn't be any more oppressive than the current crop of absurd cards. Elves wouldn't even want to play it. They have 8 Tinkers right now.

Who is defending S&T? I wrote that it feasts on the same ridiculous Power creep focus like Survival and that I don't see any difference between S&T and Survival other than the factor of being repeatable

Edit:

No experiment is perfect; there's always the risk of biases. Social science is always an abstraction of reality. That's why you box your experiment and try to control for as much as you can. Janosch said that there are too many confounding variables, I completely disagree. Especially since this is his 'bread and butter' I'm interested in hearing his opinion about this. My opinion is that just because it's hard doesn't make it impossible.

Imperfect models are how companies like Google and Facebook became big. Recommendation engines, behavioral targeting, etcetera is not perfect but they still provide value! (Quiet literally for big companies like Google and Facebook). Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it does not provide insights! That's why we have a limitations section in research...

My dear friend, I have the problem of not seeing an "imperfect model" here or dared to expect one, because it is near impossible. My issue is that the whole base for this testing is blatantly misinforming the reader into believing,the card SotF would be fine and fair today by simply ignoring more than 4 years of prints and their effect on SotF.

Evaluating the value of SotF based on Wild Mongrel rather than Delver is as flawed as testing Treasure Cruise in a shell with Werbear and Nimble Mongoose rather than with SFM and Delver or durdle with Terminus & Entreat in a 2004 landstill-shell without SDT, Jace, Ponder. You can't compare decks with a development-gap of several years to draw conclusions about certain cards in one or the other shell.

[JanoschEausH]

Out of curiosity, how would you design the experiment (statistically rigorous and feasible).

Aside of selecting the appropriate decklist (These are both not metagamed to deal with each other) I would probably play with 4 people (two players discuss optimal decisions to control for pilot skill variance). Probably around 30 matches. Then check for significance and add a win percentage for each of these decks. I would then move onto the next matchup, repeat the procedure until I would have win percentages for each matchup. Then I would simulate 20000 tournaments using monte carlo method. I would base the composition for the simulated field on the last three major tournamnets and run the monte carlo for each of them.

Sounds interesting. You would for sure need some sort of computer simulation (like monte carlo) to provide data for possible tournament dominance of the deck. Your idea for controling for pilot skill variance sounds interesting, but I think for better data you would need more people, which is not practicable. I think the best way would be taking two highly renowned players (like BBD and CVM for example), controlling for body condition (like exhaustion, tiredness), and then let them make 15 games OTP and OTD each. Then the same after sideboarding. The both players exchange decks and do the same again. Repeat this for every matchup. Draw win percentages from the data and make a computer simulation based on the last big tournaments. Of course this will never happen, but thats how I would approach it^^

EDIT: And I agree with you bruizar. It's not impossible for sure. No experiment is ever perfect. But in the end magic is such a highly subjective procedure, that there are so many intrapersonal factors (playstyle, preferences, having fun, analytical thinking, intelligence...) which you have a hard time to control.

[btm10]

It's far more reasonable to build of an updated Survival list and test it against current decks than it is to try to build a computer simulation that relies on a lot of potentially bad assumptions. I like the spirit of Durward's Banned Series, if not how it was implemented.

[Gheizen64]

JESUS NO I lost first 2 matches log because i misclicked refresh... I'm writing on paper next time. Well i won with survival against UR delver first match 2-1 with and lost the second 2-0. I am playing the third match , first game right now, and Survival is about to win.

It'd be much faster than writing if i could get someone to test with* me on cockatrice and register it with some video program? I'm not good with those pc things.

EDIT: okay i'm reading about video recording programs, is EZVID good for this?

EDIT2: It has some horrible freeware annoyance, i just want something that's clean and just record zzz

[apple713]

So what? BS is a repeatable card tutor that filter and only get better as more cards get printed. With the difference that apparently it's so it's fine while SotF is green so it ain't? Or wait, what about SnT that is a mana cheat for creatures that only get better with power creep etc... but apparently that's fine too because it's blue ok.
The point of what i did is showing that old "busted" interactions aren't actually as busted as we remember because of how much stronger the rest of the pool as gotten in the meanwhile. It's just a memory refreshing exercise, sorry if you had to waste your time bitching about my post.

TLDR: Although i agree that sotf is probably ok to unban, because it's disrupted by almost everything, pithing needle, abrupt decay, DRS, RIP.... your article was unconvincing


You argument is not something i would expect to see on the source, its more consistent with mtg salvation...the issue you are having in this comparison is that brainstorm is nothing like sotf. the equivalent of a blue sotf would be

Survival of the smartest: 1U
Enchantment
Card Text: Blue, Discard an instant or sorcery card: Search your library for an instant or sorcery card, reveal that card, and put it into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

Other than the fact that brainstorm is absolutely nothing like the above card. Brainstorm is a one time use like S&T.

it would be more convincing to argue that sotf should a higher cmc like sneak attack or birthing pod.

Arguing that sotf is too slow or not powerful enough because the deck you constructed is poor is also not a good argument. The power level of the card is absurd. It only continues to grow with every creature that is printed. In time S&T will probably get banned if permanents become so significant that it is 100% assured victory upon resolution. Griselbrand comes dangerously close to achieving this result.

sotf is 1 card engine for 2 mana. it requires only itself to be successful. cards similar to this are oath of druids, hermit druid, and have been banned with good reason.

[btm10]

sotf is 1 card engine for 2 mana. it requires only itself to be successful. cards similar to this are oath of druids, hermit druid, and have been banned with good reason.

The comparison to Oath is deeply misleading. While Oath places more stringent restrictions on deckbuilding, it's still a one-card combo in a way that SotF and Show and Tell aren't. Hermit Druid is a bit closer, but is significantly more broken because he lets you flip your deck immediately for G, rather than going one card at a time, and Druid requires no condition (like a creature in hand) to start a tutor chain the way Survival does.

I think that the major hindrance to testing decks like this is that the decks against which you're playing the Survival deck are the "week 1" decks - Survival gets unbanned and people either make few-to-no adjustments to their existing decks or radically overcompensate for it, and the metagame a month or two after unbanning could look very different than the metagame a week after unbanning, and the degree and kind of change we see due to unbanned Survival is what determines if it's a safe unban, not whether it can dominate (or be dominated by) a deck that's done well in the current meta where playing against Survival isn't something that people are building toward.

[Gheizen64]

Ok can we skip the part about why SotF is broken and other cards aren't and :

if i could get someone to test with* me on cockatrice and register it with some video program?

EDIT: okay i'm reading about video recording programs, is EZVID good for this?

EDIT2: It has some horrible freeware annoyance, i'd rather have something that's clean and just record

This could be much more productive than just spamming post in the Banned and REstricted discussion topic.

[Gheizen64]

The comparison to Oath is deeply misleading. While Oath places more stringent restrictions on deckbuilding, it's still a one-card combo in a way that SotF and Show and Tell aren't. Hermit Druid is a bit closer, but is significantly more broken because he lets you flip your deck immediately for G, rather than going one card at a time, and Druid requires no condition (like a creature in hand) to start a tutor chain the way Survival does.

I think that the major hindrance to testing decks like this is that the decks against which you're playing the Survival deck are the "week 1" decks - Survival gets unbanned and people either make few-to-no adjustments to their existing decks or radically overcompensate for it, and the metagame a month or two after unbanning could look very different than the metagame a week after unbanning, and the degree and kind of change we see due to unbanned Survival is what determines if it's a safe unban, not whether it can dominate (or be dominated by) a deck that's done well in the current meta where playing against Survival isn't something that people are building toward.

It's a trade you have to do. Actually the only one since you won't get a dedicated playtest team spending weeks on developing a non-existing meta.
You can test non-optimal survival lists vs current legacy decks, and it can be an indicator. If you start to *fix* decks for an hypotetical survival meta, you should then also play an optimized survival list but that'd take a lot of time if it's not downright impossible.
Bad data is still better than speculation. If an untuned survival list don't win against decks that don't consider it into the metagame, it probably mean that even a better designed survival deck wouldn't be that much better against a tuned list that consider Survival in the metgame. Also consider that survival isn't really splashable because this is the Surv shell:

4 Survival , 3 VV, 2 Walla, 1 Retainer, 1 Iona, 1 Elesh Norn (or OOze + phyrexian dev. but i think retainer's better)

About 11-12 cards, and you probably have to put shaman in there if you want to be consistent, at which point you get to 14-15 cards, which clearly isn't splashable, even if it can work as a base for many different decks.

[Lord_Mcdonalds]

Ok can we skip the part about why SotF is broken and other cards aren't and :

if i could get someone to test with* me on cockatrice and register it with some video program?

EDIT: okay i'm reading about video recording programs, is EZVID good for this?

EDIT2: It has some horrible freeware annoyance, i'd rather have something that's clean and just record

This could be much more productive than just spamming post in the Banned and REstricted discussion topic.

Obs I believe is what you're looking for

[nedleeds]

Oath? Really? Somebody tried to compare the power level of Survival to Oath? I mean they are both green enchantments? But Jesus, that's absurd. Oath reads "If your opponent is playing creatures you probably win the game". It's a 6-7 card investment and a one card combo. Can we compare Dark Ritual to Black Lotus next? Thanks.

[Gheizen64]

Obs I believe is what you're looking for

Finally this is perfect thx you, i'm ready to record everything boys :cool:

[bruizar]

It's a trade you have to do. Actually the only one since you won't get a dedicated playtest team spending weeks on developing a non-existing meta.
You can test non-optimal survival lists vs current legacy decks, and it can be an indicator. If you start to *fix* decks for an hypotetical survival meta, you should then also play an optimized survival list but that'd take a lot of time if it's not downright impossible.
I think it's perfectly fine to test the Survival lists as they were when they got banned. They got banned because THOSE particular decks were dominating. If those decks don't perform against new decks, just open Survival of the Fittest up again. Let the hive mind see if they can break Survival of the Fittest again, perhaps in a different shell. If SotF is broken yet again, WOTC can always put the genie back in the bottle for a couple of years. There is nothing permanent about unbannings and I believe it is good to test the waters from time to time IF those dominating decks of notoriety are empirically proven to not be dominant anymore.



Bad data is still better than speculation.

Well, if your input is crap, your output will be crap, so you're going a little too far here ^_^. Basing your decisions on misinformation is one of the biggest hurdles in analytics. I would rather go for the gut feeling of specialist than go for the decision that was based on the right interpretation of wrong data (or the wrong interpretation of good data).



My personal opinion is that Survival of the Fittest is still too strong, but I would deem it an improvement if they just tested it by unbanning it. Pithing Needle doesn't stop Survival at all since you just Survival a Reclamation Sage in response to the needle. If Needle comes down before Survival, just Green Sun's Zenith Reclamation Sage/Harmonic Sliver as a backup plan or use Fauna Shaman, drop loyal retainers into Emrakul and annihalator 6 for the win. Abrupt Decay doesn't have split second, so you can get an Eternal Witness in response for example (a bit slow, but it illustrates the point). Krosan Grip was around when survival dominated and that didn't seem to have helped.

[apple713]

I think it's perfectly fine to test the Survival lists as they were when they got banned. They got banned because THOSE particular decks were dominating. If those decks don't perform against new decks, just open Survival of the Fittest up again. Let the hive mind see if they can break Survival of the Fittest again, perhaps in a different shell. If SotF is broken yet again, WOTC can always put the genie back in the bottle for a couple of years. There is nothing permanent about unbannings and I believe it is good to test the waters from time to time IF those dominating decks of notoriety are empirically proven to not be dominant anymore.


My personal opinion is that Survival of the Fittest is still too strong, but I would deem it an improvement if they just tested it by unbanning it. Pithing Needle doesn't stop Survival at all since you just Survival a Reclamation Sage in response to the needle. If Needle comes down before Survival, just Green Sun's Zenith Reclamation Sage/Harmonic Sliver as a backup plan or use Fauna Shaman, drop loyal retainers into Emrakul and annihalator 6 for the win. Abrupt Decay doesn't have split second, so you can get an Eternal Witness in response for example (a bit slow, but it illustrates the point). Krosan Grip was around when survival dominated and that didn't seem to have helped.

survival didn't get banned because survival decks were dominating. By that logic brainstorm should be banned. Survival got banned because when viewing the card independantly it is simply too powerful, at least in their opinion.

[Gheizen64]

Recorded a match vs Grixis control but my opponent had to leave after the 2nd game so we ended 1-1. Also holy shit recorded matches are so slow, i should totally record at 2x because without commentating is way too long. 45 mins for 2 games what is this.

The 2nd game was nice, with him getting a Dack Fayden emblem, and stealing my jitte, which however didn't do much thanks to my Maze and won without ever playing Survival (he played T1 needle and i never drew a decay or Pridemage). And i won from a mull to 5 wow.

[ReAnimator]

I think it's perfectly fine to test the Survival lists as they were when they got banned. They got banned because THOSE particular decks were dominating. If those decks don't perform against new decks, just open Survival of the Fittest up again. Let the hive mind see if they can break Survival of the Fittest again, perhaps in a different shell. If SotF is broken yet again, WOTC can always put the genie back in the bottle for a couple of years. There is nothing permanent about unbannings and I believe it is good to test the waters from time to time IF those dominating decks of notoriety are empirically proven to not be dominant anymore.


This doesn't make any sense to me. If we were testing if Flash was OK we would be using Serum Visions and Lim Dul's Vault over Ponder and Preordain? Why?

Why wouldn't every Survival list start on 4 DRS?

I don't see a reason to needlessly handy cap an experiment like this if you were trying to determine if the card is ok in this environment you should use the best cards in the environment to determine that.

[ReAnimator]

Because the reason was the existence of THAT particular deck. It wasn't banned because of Deathrite Shaman, it was banned because _THAT_ particular composition of cards PROVED to be too much. If you are going to start with hypothetical decks, the discussion goes no where. First the burden of proof is showing that the deck for which it was banned is safe today. After that, you can run other experiments or decide to unban it. What happens if you follow your thought stream? Anyone can counter the argument by debating that your brew is unproven and sucks and therefore it loses. EVEN if DRS is a strict upgrade (Which it is not, otherwise Infect would play it over Noble Hierarch), you must avoid the temptation initially. First prove that Vengevine in its ban-worthy state no longer poses a threat, then brew to your heart's desire.

I see what you are saying but honestly this makes literally no sense to me and seems deeply flawed.

[Tammit67]

I see what you are saying but honestly this makes literally no sense to me and seems deeply flawed.

Yeah, why would I care if a deck that got banned out 2 years ago is still ban worthy now? Wouldn't it make sense to see if the card that got banned would still be ridiculous with today's card pool and meta?

If you really care to see "Is Vengevival still too good for today's meta?", then yeah sure... but that conversation is really just a segway into "Is Survival still banworthy?"

[Tammit67]

It depends on the goal of your analysis. If your goal is to make a case / petition to wotc, you need at the minimum, to be able to show that the banned version isn't still better. If that empircal data is missing, it's all nice and cool that you found that survival of the fittest isn't dominating anymore, but it still means nothing because you didn't actually test vengevival.

H0: Vengevival > format
H1: Vengevival <= format

Testing DRS-Vengevival thus fails to give you information which allows you to reject the null.

The second hypothesis would be:

H0: Updated Vengevival > format
H2: Updated Vengevival <= format

H2 is contingent upon H1 if you are to provide WOTC with a case.

Why is it contingent? If in the process of updating Vengevival you find nothing needs to be changed, that's fine too right?

Wizards isn't going to go, "you right, old version of deck A with broken card X isn't broken in today's meta. It's safe!". Oh, so turns out the Oath of Druids deck that gets verdant force or akroma isn't soo good anymore, oath must be safe right? That's what it feels like you are saying.


In your case, you would test:
H0: Updated Vengevival > format
H1: Updated Vengevival <= format

If you can reject the null, you still haven't proven that Vengevival (upon which the initial ban-decision was made), is <= format.

Yeah, because old "Vengevival (upon which the initial ban-decision was made), is <= format" is irrelevant for banning purposes.

[ReAnimator]

If you want waste your time go ahead but to me it seems completely nonsensical to test a flash deck that was running Serum Visions and not Ponder, just to provide some back work in a spread sheet to WOTC. Likewise a GBW Survival list without DRS or Griselbrand or reclamation sage or if there was a new creature that turned Necrotic ooze (or Proteon Hulk) into a 2 card combo instead of 3. Or if there was a rootwalla that was a 2/1 or something, to not include and test with strict straight upgrades just doesn't make sense to me at all.

Obviously you disagree and that's fine, lets just leave it at that.

[Gheizen64]

Okay i was trying to upload my video but it totally crash my internet so i'll have to do it during the night so i can do other things in the meanwhile, if someone wants to test or brew that survival list hit me a PM.

[Lemnear]

Wizards isn't going to go, "you right, old version of deck A with broken card X isn't broken in today's meta. It's safe!". Oh, so turns out the Oath of Druids deck that gets verdant force or akroma isn't soo good anymore, oath must be safe right? That's what it feels like you are saying.

Matt, that nonsense is exactly why ReAnimator and I are ranting throughout the thread. You can't compare current decks and ones which are outdated for years to gather evidence of how good a certain banned card is in todays Environment. You need 1-2 good deck Designers and 2-3 experienced pilots with the old and/or new archetypes and banned cards to gather evidence through testing in a nutshell.

If you want to invest the time for tests, take the Banned-Series as a starting point, but get better deck Designers and pilots ;P

[Tammit67]

Matt, that nonsense is exactly why ReAnimator and I are ranting throughout the thread. You can't compare current decks and ones which are outdated for years to gather evidence of how good a certain banned card is in todays Environment. You need 1-2 good deck Designers and 2-3 experienced pilots with the old and/or new archetypes and banned cards to gather evidence through testing in a nutshell.

If you want to invest the time for tests, take the Banned-Series as a starting point, but get better deck Designers and pilots ;P

But apparently it isn't his goal to see how good Survival-the-card is in today's meta. His goal is to see how good Survival-the-deck-when-it-got-banned is in today's meta.

Which then leads to how good Survival-the-card is in today's meta? I wasn't able to follow

[Lemnear]

My goal would be to make a petition / build a case to unban the card, not to confirm that the card is still too strong for legacy (waste of time and energy in that case). It's obvious to me that you guys do not have a background in analysis or research design and that's okay. Just stop trolling the thread if you don't understand how to properly design a study.

It's obvious that his results should lead to an unbanning, but he can't even remember the GW list he used, nor gave any ideas about his testing parameters. That leaves too many question marks from the start to qualify as a "proper designed Study". I also don't see that testing a 2010 Layout should qualify as proof that the card is fine in 2014. Its like testing if Wagon Vaults still do their job and call them an excellent because you choose to ignore the last Century of development, with the intent to create a misleading outcome of your testing

[Echelon]

I also wonder how one would like to do a Monte Carlo simulation of any deck, let alone decks that compete with one another. And I say this b/c I have written some rudementary simulation. First off, you have to write an interpretation engine that can figure out which card does what. After that you have to model behavior for the _entire_ game, and to top things off you'll have to write algorythms for how to actually play the game (which you may have to for a number of play styles). At this point, you have a piece of software that can goldfish a deck (which is where I'm at a.t.m.) but in no way a means to simulate 2000 man+ tournaments with competitive play styles and sideboarding algorythms.

Also, don't underestimate the sheer amount of computing power needed to run all those simulations. As we speak, my own program takes ca. 45-60 seconds to play the first 5 turns of the game 50k times using an Elves!-deck (shuffling the deck after each itteration, obviously). And I'm not yet using Nettle Sentinel/Glimpse of Nature/Natural Order/Wirewood Symbiote/Quirion Ranger-shenanigans yet (I still have to model that behavior and figure out an algorythm that can somewhat decently decide when it does or does not want to use certain abilities and stuff).

Another thing you'd have to consider is how big a % of the field would be playing "your" deck and the field's consistency as a whole, but that's a different story entirely.

[Echelon]

And how would one determine a reliable win-% for a hypothetical deck..? By doing it the way you describe, test results (the win-%'s) will be heavily influenced by the skill level of the player piloting the deck.

[JanoschEausH]

And how would one determine a reliable win-% for a hypothetical deck..? By doing it the way you describe, test results (the win-%'s) will be heavily influenced by the skill level of the player piloting the deck.

I strongly advice you to read every post regarding the topic of monte carlo simulation in this thread. We already figured that skill differences are a problem here. What you can do (2 things):

1. Draw a randomized sample of maybe 30 ppl from throughout the MTG (maybe just Legacy) population. Let them perform a series of games OTP, OTD, then the same after sideboarding. They play against every matchup in the DTB. After each completed trial the distribution of decks between those players will occur randomly. Sounds really complicated and far from reality.

2. Choose 2 skilled players, on which most likely everyone could agree, that they are renowned and good with Legacy (for example: BBD and CVM from Starcitygames). One gets the SotF deck, and the other takes one of the DTB. Then they perform aseries of games: 15 OTP, 15 OTD and the same after sideboard. Then both players change decks and do the same again. This whole process will be repeated for each DTB (or if you want for each archetype that made day2 in GPNJ for example). Then you draw win percentages from those games for each matchup and proceed to simulate a lot of tournaments on the basis of the distribution of tested archetypes among GPNJ. Voila: You get an idea about how dominant in terms of tournament wins the SotF-deck could be.

Of course those options are far from perfect, but they are a start and provide more informativeness than some random discussion. In the end there are a lot of unclear variables. Like: What is the best deck for SotF in the first place? If you cannot reliably proof that your decklist would be top notch under todays standards, your whole data would not be taken seriously. Another question: How do we choose against what matchups we test to create win percentages? Are they close to reality in terms of real tournament distrubution? How many people would pick up the deck (with SotF) when it would be unbanned?

If you want to go the qualitative route, you could also make a focus group with a lot of renowned players and draw conclusions from that.

[L-Luck]

The problem with your study is that you are trying to prove/disprove a point which is completely nonsensical. I don't need to test if the updated Vengevine lists are better than the original, unless I am so much worse than the average tournament player that the whole testing makes no sense. If I'm that bad the win percentages I get out of testing have no value. If I found a way to get decent testing results, ie with a group of good players, I can use that group to build an updated version of the deck, which has a high enough probability to be better (in the current meta), because building a better list actually isn't a very hard task with a much larger card pool and knowledge of the meta the deck is built for.

With that in mind, the only valuable result you could get from testing would be that even the old, bad version was better than current decks. The whole "they only banned Survival because that one deck was dominating" argument is at least questionable, given that most of the time cards are banned because of power level (which leads to dominance of decks containing them). There are some exceptions, but they are mostly modern.

[bruizar]

If anyone is interested i will start making econometric / sabermetric models for mtg next year ( when i have more time). For this i need dedicated play testers so if any legacy teams want to work with me to provide data, pm me please.

[Echelon]

If you go about your business that way, at the moment LED Dredge would be on top of the format right now when running mock-up tournaments without any SB's (which is essentially what you're suggesting to do).

The tests you propose wouldn't even be able to correctly predict how todays most prominent deck (UR Delver) would fare in the current meta. Using your methods you'd end up with completely different results, meaning there is no credibility to your other testresults.

[Tammit67]

My goal would be to make a petition / build a case to unban the card, not to confirm that the card is still too strong for legacy (waste of time and energy in that case). It's obvious to me that you guys do not have a background in analysis or research design and that's okay. Just stop trolling the thread if you don't understand how to properly design a study.

I'm not childish enough to troll. If you see my earnest confusion in your goal/methods as trolling, I apologize.

If you want to build a case to unban a card, wouldn't it be prudent to test the best possible case for the card and show that it is not overwhelming in the current meta? You do realize that the original Vengevival list is contained in the space of potential updated lists right?

You mentioned earlier that by updating the list, wizards gets to say "Your list isn't actually optimal so your results are invalid". Can they not do the same thing to your not updated version? Even if the old list proves acceptable, the point is moot for the purposes of showing the card is reasonable simply because you are working with different card pool constraints than actually exist. If my proposed method isn't viable because whatever list I generate isn't optimal, certainly your method is similarly inadequate because it does nothing to consider the expansion of the game since Dec 20th, 2010.


It's obvious to me that you guys do not have a background in analysis
I'm not sure entirely what leads you to believe that. However relevant it is, I have a B.S. in Mathematics From Lehigh University and have passed my P Actuarial Exam (and being lazy on the rest). My current work is risk analysis for pipeline integrity for a small software company, where I am the probability guy.


you never rejected the null-hypothesis that states the banned Vengevival list is significantly better than the format.
But that's not the goal, the real goal is demonstrating Survival is/isn't fit for legacy currently. When you set out to petition to unban the card, all you've done is introduce an extraneous step right? I don't believe it important to test the version of the deck as it was banned and rather place much higher importance on the card in shells that today could support it.

[HSCK]

I really liked Caleb's last list: http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/the-banned-series-survival-of-the-fittest-and-mind-twist/

His Bant Survival should absolutely be the starting point for any discussion of that deck.

[Gheizen64]

I've tested around with that build, but there are some problems i see with it.

Thalia as a silver bullet is useless. Getting a single hatebear on T3-T4 has never stopped combo decks.

Fauna shaman is really bad in this meta. With bolts around everywhere, Fauna rarely stick, and even if it does, it require 3 turns to set up a single vengevine, and 3 turns to set up a retainer combo (2 if you have iona/retainer in hand). Mother of runes is here to protect her, but i don't feel it at all, especially considering you aren't really running a lot of creatures, or they're called vengevine. KotR on the other hand is amazing because work as a beater, and can lock decks out of colored mana + get maze for creatures.

I want to try a deck with a E. Tutor toolbox, something like:


Survivals
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Enlightened Tutor

Creatures 20
3 Noble Hierarch
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Vengevine
1 Basking Rootwalla
1 Memnite
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric

Removal and CA
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Sylvan Library
1 Banishing Light
1 Commune with the Gods

Lands
4 Wasteland
4 Savannah
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
1 Plains
3 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
2 Horizon Canopy


EDIT: seems better than Caleb's list tbh from a quick testing, really consistent T2 Survival, plus E. Tutor can get u a creature to get going with survival in case u don't have one in hand (eidolon double as situational hate and creature to pitch for survival). Double toolbox in E. Tutor and Survival, get removal for whatever annoy you, plus Library for additional manipulation and card advantage. 6 1-mana elves feel good because they double for survival fodder/castable for vengevine, and Memnite + walla feel much better than double walla cause you can get an additional vengevine with a survival cycle.

[Lemnear]

I've tested around with that build, but there are some problems i see with it.

Thalia as a silver bullet is useless. Getting a single hatebear on T3-T4 has never stopped combo decks.

Fauna shaman is really bad in this meta. With bolts around everywhere, Fauna rarely stick, and even if it does, it require 3 turns to set up a single vengevine, and 3 turns to set up a retainer combo (2 if you have iona/retainer in hand). Mother of runes is here to protect her, but i don't feel it at all, especially considering you aren't really running a lot of creatures, or they're called vengevine. KotR on the other hand is amazing because work as a beater, and can lock decks out of colored mana + get maze for creatures.

I want to try a deck with a E. Tutor toolbox, something like:


Survivals
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Enlightened Tutor

Creatures
3 Noble Hierarch
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Vengevine
1 Basking Rootwalla
1 Memnite
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric / Choke / Whatever silver bullet

Removal and CA
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Sylvan Library
1 Banishing Light
1 Commune with the Gods

Lands
4 Wasteland
4 Savannah
3 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
1 Plains
3 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
2 Horizon Canopy


There is far too much focus on survival to scratch the potential, if the whole concept is disabled with a single pithing needle or Phyrexian Revoker. I don't see a reason to not include GSZ as redundant effect for tutoring and for mana acceleration via Dryad Arbor. I see problems if you have your whole offense based on the graveyard in form of KotR, Vengevine and Retainer.

The deck also scoops hard to combo and I think a modern approach to GW(x) survival should root on Dark Maverick with it's two angles of combo hate via Discard and hatebears.

I see much potential in T1 DRS/GSZ, T2 Thoughtseize + SotF, T3 ....

[Cire]

Are we just going to come up with a "what if survival was legal" brew right now? As resident bad deck builder of the format and article discussion section, let me try.

Taking the shell from Gheizen64

4 Survival
3 VV
2 Walla
1 Retainer
1 Iona
1 Elesh Norn

Adding the recent best B/G prints since DRS is a must have.

4 DRS
4 Abrupt Decay

Adding GSZ toolbox, because it is the best thing to run in green that is not elves

4 GSZ
1 Scavenging ooze
3 Tarmogoyf

Adding the Treasure Cruise shell because it's the best.

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Treasure Cruise

Then 20 Lands

And I think that is a rough starting list - obviously you can start adding in FOW/Daze into that, messing with GSZ targets, or with the Survival package.

[bruizar]

Are we just going to come up with a "what if survival was legal" brew right now? As resident bad deck builder of the format and article discussion section, let me try.




There is far too much focus on survival to scratch the potential, if the whole concept is disabled with a single pithing needle or Phyrexian Revoker. I don't see a reason to not include GSZ as redundant effect for tutoring and for mana acceleration via Dryad Arbor. I see problems if you have your whole offense based on the graveyard in form of KotR, Vengevine and Retainer.

The deck also scoops hard to combo and I think a modern approach to GW(x) survival should root on Dark Maverick with it's two angles of combo hate via Discard and hatebears.

I see much potential in T1 DRS/GSZ, T2 Thoughtseize + SotF, T3 ....


This type of discussion was exactly what I was afraid of, and what I proposed an alternative to. If this thread continues to be like this, how is it different from the B&R Speculation Thread? You are basically confirming why I stressed the point to start with the decklists of late 2010 because there is no discussion that those decks were bad. If they were bad, Survival would have never been banned in the first place.

[Ellomdian]

This type of discussion was exactly what I was afraid of, and what I proposed an alternative to. If this thread continues to be like this, how is it different from the B&R Speculation Thread? You are basically confirming why I stressed the point to start with the decklists of late 2010 because there is no discussion that those decks were bad. If they were bad, Survival would have never been banned in the first place.

More importantly, why is this thread still alive? Virtually all of the discussion has either already been covered in the BnR thread, or is so hypothetical that we might as well start a Rumors thread. I'm tempted to start a "Ban Brainstorm because of X" thread just to see how long it survives.

[Gheizen64]

There is far too much focus on survival to scratch the potential, if the whole concept is disabled with a single pithing needle or Phyrexian Revoker. I don't see a reason to not include GSZ as redundant effect for tutoring and for mana acceleration via Dryad Arbor. I see problems if you have your whole offense based on the graveyard in form of KotR, Vengevine and Retainer.

The deck also scoops hard to combo and I think a modern approach to GW(x) survival should root on Dark Maverick with it's two angles of combo hate via Discard and hatebears.

I see much potential in T1 DRS/GSZ, T2 Thoughtseize + SotF, T3 ....

How many decks you see playing Needle T1? Not to say you can easily fetch Explosives with E. Tutor and remove any amount of needle they have. You can also still play survival, and remove the needle afterward. I'm not seeing needle as a big deal. As for combo, being a dog to it is sorta implied when you play WG, and the survival shell is 13-14 cards already, in colors that aren't blue. A singleton SotL is probably a big deal though, since you can Tutor for it.

Another problem is that if u want to test the best possible list vs the current top decks, a more streamlined list that get T2 survival as often as possible is probably the best because there aren't many enchantment removals around aside from wear/tear and needles. A list with more disruption would probably do best in an hypotetical Survival unbanned meta, but not as a playtest vs current decks.

EDIT: also, some testing using GSZ + Survival seems too much toolbox and not enough actual cards. And considering GSZ can't catch Survival, i'd probably rather have E. Tutor there, with SotL and Eidolons of rethoric as potential bullets vs combo. That, or go UG with Intuitions, BS, Wonder, and i'd play frantic there too if it was unbanned.

[ReAnimator]

Do you think approaching this like a research paper will or could sway WOTC?
Do you think that WOTC has ever unbanned or banned anything in the 20 year history of the game using this sort of tactic of rigour and exhaustive research? Is that usually how banning announcements go down? Sorry we banned Card X in Format Y, we know it upsets some of you, but seriously check out this spreadsheet, we did the math, case closed.

When Trinisphere was restricted in T1 it was cause it was perceived as "unfun" by a lot of the player base. There wasn't anything more concrete than that, it wasn't unbalancing the percentages or decks represented in tournaments that much, it was restricted solely on being classified by the nebulous tag of "Unfun".
Likewise when they've unbanned cards, they do it off of what they think and feel, they don't know, they don't test. They don't do it out of any hard conclusions drawn, it's out of feel, intuition, experience and what they think will happen.

Like you stated SoTF probably remains banned not because it would be too good right now necessarily but probably because the potential of something coming along and pushing it over the top again. Like with a lot of engine cards it poses a question to WOTC every time they make a new creature, will this be too good with card x? It can really clamp down their design freedom. Unlike non engine cards where their power is way easier to witness and assess, the engine cards have the biggest potential of any type of card to get put back on the banned list at any time in the future.
WOTC views these things as accidents waiting to happen. While most people would rather see the banned list be a constant work in progress, with things taken on and off more frequently to test the waters and push boundaries, WOTC obviously doesn't see it that way, and would probably think it a bad PR move to un ban something only to put it back on a year or two later. I highly doubt any amount of "proof" will sway them from this position. Unbanning SoTF to try to unseat blue dominance seems like a pretty big gamble considering it was the blue builds of it the first time that got it banned, regardless if those same builds are in any way viable.

That doesn't mean going through the process can't be fun or valuable to yourself but I highly doubt it will be useful for getting a card like this unbanned. Even if you could present them with a thesis and dissertation of irrefutable proof that SoTF is safe to unban I would be surprised if it swayed them in any way.
Something like Caleb's Video Series or the Banned Deck Tournament articles in the past are probably way more influential on their decision making regardless of how flawed they may be.
The banned list isn't a science or a research problem it's based on feelings and intuition way more than anything if history is any indicator. Sometimes they look at percentages of a field and cite dominance, but often it's just "we don't like the way the format looks" or "the play experiences are unpleasant for some" or even just tournament attendance is down so therefore ban hammer.

Like have fun with it and do what you want but I think going this deep into it is sort of tilting at windmills. Sorry if this is overly pessimistic, no offence intended. Maybe this post is better off in the B&R as it is more about the philosophy of how they handle the banned list.

[btm10]

Do you think approaching this like a research paper will or could sway WOTC?
Do you think that WOTC has ever unbanned or banned anything in the 20 year history of the game using this sort of tactic of rigour and exhaustive research? Is that usually how banning announcements go down? Sorry we banned Card X in Format Y, we know it upsets some of you, but seriously check out this spreadsheet, we did the math, case closed.

When Trinisphere was restricted in T1 it was cause it was perceived as "unfun" by a lot of the player base. There wasn't anything more concrete than that, it wasn't unbalancing the percentages or decks represented in tournaments that much, it was restricted solely on being classified by the nebulous tag of "Unfun".
Likewise when they've unbanned cards, they do it off of what they think and feel, they don't know, they don't test. They don't do it out of any hard conclusions drawn, it's out of feel, intuition, experience and what they think will happen.

Like you stated SoTF probably remains banned not because it would be too good right now necessarily but probably because the potential of something coming along and pushing it over the top again. Like with a lot of engine cards it poses a question to WOTC every time they make a new creature, will this be too good with card x? It can really clamp down their design freedom. Unlike non engine cards where their power is way easier to witness and assess, the engine cards have the biggest potential of any type of card to get put back on the banned list at any time in the future.
WOTC views these things as accidents waiting to happen. While most people would rather see the banned list be a constant work in progress, with things taken on and off more frequently to test the waters and push boundaries, WOTC obviously doesn't see it that way, and would probably think it a bad PR move to un ban something only to put it back on a year or two later. I highly doubt any amount of "proof" will sway them from this position. Unbanning SoTF to try to unseat blue dominance seems like a pretty big gamble considering it was the blue builds of it the first time that got it banned, regardless if those same builds are in any way viable.

That doesn't mean going through the process can't be fun or valuable to yourself but I highly doubt it will be useful for getting a card like this unbanned. Even if you could present them with a thesis and dissertation of irrefutable proof that SoTF is safe to unban I would be surprised if it swayed them in any way.
Something like Caleb's Video Series or the Banned Deck Tournament articles in the past are probably way more influential on their decision making regardless of how flawed they may be.
The banned list isn't a science or a research problem it's based on feelings and intuition way more than anything if history is any indicator. Sometimes they look at percentages of a field and cite dominance, but often it's just "we don't like the way the format looks" or "the play experiences are unpleasant for some" or even just tournament attendance is down so therefore ban hammer.

Like have fun with it and do what you want but I think going this deep into it is sort of tilting at windmills. Sorry if this is overly pessimistic, no offence intended. Maybe this post is better off in the B&R as it is more about the philosophy of how they handle the banned list.


This is an interesting and potentially spot-on point. The problem of unbanning and re-banning is compounded in Survival's case because it's on the Reserved List, so a price spike caused by unbanning, then a secondary spike caused by success of a broken list would all be undone if the card were banned again. Survival already commands a surprisingly high price (~$35 tcgplayer median) for a card that isn't widely played in the only format in which it's legal, and it's not out of the question that it overshoots Show and Tell (~$65 tcgplayer median) if it gets unbanned, especially if the deck performs well. I can imagine a lot of unhappy players if people dropped ~$200+ on Survivals only to see them re-banned three months later.

[Gheizen64]

Do you think approaching this like a research paper will or could sway WOTC?
Do you think that WOTC has ever unbanned or banned anything in the 20 year history of the game using this sort of tactic of rigour and exhaustive research? Is that usually how banning announcements go down? Sorry we banned Card X in Format Y, we know it upsets some of you, but seriously check out this spreadsheet, we did the math, case closed.

When Trinisphere was restricted in T1 it was cause it was perceived as "unfun" by a lot of the player base. There wasn't anything more concrete than that, it wasn't unbalancing the percentages or decks represented in tournaments that much, it was restricted solely on being classified by the nebulous tag of "Unfun".
Likewise when they've unbanned cards, they do it off of what they think and feel, they don't know, they don't test. They don't do it out of any hard conclusions drawn, it's out of feel, intuition, experience and what they think will happen.

Like you stated SoTF probably remains banned not because it would be too good right now necessarily but probably because the potential of something coming along and pushing it over the top again. Like with a lot of engine cards it poses a question to WOTC every time they make a new creature, will this be too good with card x? It can really clamp down their design freedom. Unlike non engine cards where their power is way easier to witness and assess, the engine cards have the biggest potential of any type of card to get put back on the banned list at any time in the future.
WOTC views these things as accidents waiting to happen. While most people would rather see the banned list be a constant work in progress, with things taken on and off more frequently to test the waters and push boundaries, WOTC obviously doesn't see it that way, and would probably think it a bad PR move to un ban something only to put it back on a year or two later. I highly doubt any amount of "proof" will sway them from this position. Unbanning SoTF to try to unseat blue dominance seems like a pretty big gamble considering it was the blue builds of it the first time that got it banned, regardless if those same builds are in any way viable.

That doesn't mean going through the process can't be fun or valuable to yourself but I highly doubt it will be useful for getting a card like this unbanned. Even if you could present them with a thesis and dissertation of irrefutable proof that SoTF is safe to unban I would be surprised if it swayed them in any way.
Something like Caleb's Video Series or the Banned Deck Tournament articles in the past are probably way more influential on their decision making regardless of how flawed they may be.
The banned list isn't a science or a research problem it's based on feelings and intuition way more than anything if history is any indicator. Sometimes they look at percentages of a field and cite dominance, but often it's just "we don't like the way the format looks" or "the play experiences are unpleasant for some" or even just tournament attendance is down so therefore ban hammer.

Like have fun with it and do what you want but I think going this deep into it is sort of tilting at windmills. Sorry if this is overly pessimistic, no offence intended. Maybe this post is better off in the B&R as it is more about the philosophy of how they handle the banned list.

There's a big difference between an engine card like survival, and cards like SnT or Tinker or Reanimate. First, it doesn't cheat mana, with the exception of Vengevine and Madness cards. Second, its power don't get better for each good creature that get printed, but for each new creature that do something specific with the discard/graveyard interaction. Third, Survival want your deck to be filled with creatures, ideally at least 15 of them for survival to be a reliable engine (like force, but with creatures).

Those are crucial points.

Because in general, new good creature and spells that are in general better in non-survival decks will vastly outnumber the new creatures that fit in the very narrow subset of "abusable with survival". This mean that on average, survival don't get better, it get worse with time. This was exemplified with Survival history before the printing of Vengevine. When 1.5 was younger, TnT decks, and tradewind survival decks were actual decks, but with time, efficient threats, cheap countermagic, better disruption made so that those strats were no longer as good as before. Getting an answer for G, and hardcasting it, wasn't as good when the opponent deck was either absurdly redundant so that you couldn't get a good answer with SotF, or too fast for SotF to matter.
As such survival got positioned worse with time, at least until Vengevine got printed, at which point a deck that cheated 3 4/3 haste on turn 3.5 on average was too good in the legacy format of that time.

Since Vengevine was printed, other new creatures that got printed abusable with Survival? Legends, if you consider the retainer combo (which is still slow by legacy standards and also Griselbrand isn't good in Survival because you have a deck full of creatures and not of spells you can chain), then what? Reclamation sage is good i guess and SotL is a good hatebear as well. Panglacial Wurm? I honestly can't name a good interaction that wasn't already there or superior to Ooze/Devourer or Retainer /Legend.
On the other hand, many creatures that are really good against and outside Survival got printed:

True-name nemesis, an absurdly strong wall against VV, pratically unbreakable with any equip. Not as good in survival decks because of the mana intensive requirements, and it isn't worth paying 1GG and discard a card to tutor for it.
Containment Priest, a 1W 2/2 flash, that while good vs a lot of the meta, simply exile 3 creatures on cast vs Survival. A good silver bullet for survival decks, but shut off the VV engine, making it really situational.
Delver of Secrets, aka the strongest cheap beater ever printed. On offense, it ignore your vengevines, posing an actual clock when coupled with burn, and on defense it trade with a Vengevine. In Survival decks this is useless because you want to run as many creatures, where delver want a lot of spells, and want to be casted T1, not tutored for.
Young Pyromancer, an almost infinite supplier of token blockers vs non-wonder vengevines variants. Again, this card is bad in survival because it sinergize with spells, not other creatures.
Deathrite Shaman, the strongest mana elf ever printed, and widely played, with the ability to remove your vengevines in response to madness triggers. This is actually good in survival decks, but much moreso against it.
Batterskull with Stoneforge Mystic, allowed for midrangey/control decks like Patriot, to lay down extremely fast 4/4 vigilances lifelink to effectively block Vengevines, especially coupled with the bounce ability. This is also actually good in survival decks, but more against it.
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben , basically made D&T a competitive deck, and combined with any equipment from SFM it can block Vengevines all day long. Again, a card that is good in Survival because it encourage you to play creature, but not as good as in other decks because it slow down your survival if you play it before SotF, or come down usually too late if you tutor for it. This is probably the most debatable creature of this list however.

Ignoring creatures, some really good SB cards that kill survival were printed , like RiP.
The best card drawing spells printed in years, TC and DTT, are nonbos with survival both because they exile cards you usually need, and because they sinergize with decks full of cheap spells, not decks full of creatures.

In contrast, cards like Tinker and SnT surely get better with time because of the accelleration part. That means that the subset of really good and mana intensive creatures/artifacts that get printed over time are usually bigger than those of cards that are good against it, like Containment Priest.
And in fact, Griselbrand, Emrakul, and Inktide Leviathan are all pretty recent printings, and i wouldn't ever bet on those card getting worse over time like i would on survival.


Survival is a card that thrive on very specific conditions: low combo presence to give it enough time to assemble its own combo, and low power-spells in general. The more high-power spells a format has, the less survival is interesting because you want to play as many spells as possible. Creatures get better with time sure, but even creatures, as we saw, have to be in a specific-subset to be relevant in SotF decks, whereas the newest creatures that have seen play in this format have been all of the kind that are actively bad in SotF and good against SotF (Delver, TNN, Containment Priest, YP), or good in survival but better in other decks (DRS, SFM+Batterskull, you could make a case for Thalia too).

With TC and DTT printed, there has never been a time where SotF power level relative to the rest of the format card pool has been lower since it was banned.

[L-Luck]

If it is not dominant, your result says nothing about banworthiness of the card since you never rejected the null-hypothesis that states the banned Vengevival list is significantly better than the format. IFF your improved list beats the current format, then you don't need to test the banned Vengevival list.

I didn't understand your part about pilot skill. Yes pilot skill is a factor, but it's not the only factor. If deck choice was irrelevant, and pilot skills was the only thing that matters, people would be winning with mana clash, orcish orriflamme, Farmstead and chaos lace.

You keep implying that the old Vengevine list has a realistical chance to be good, which is what I don't get. I don't have to test four year old decklists in a format which just gets bigger (and more powerful thanks to powercreep), especially if it's a toolbox deck which needs to be built against an existing meta. I think the null hypothesis "the four year old survival decks would dominate legacy" can be treated as disproven, at least if you have a feel how a deck plays out after seeing it on paper.

My point with player skill is that test results are dependant on pilot skill because some decks are more complex to play than others. Maybe you find that the toolbox deck is bad against burn with you and your opponent being equally bad at magic, while the matchups evens out the better both of you get (this is pretty much how the miracle vs. burn matchup plays out). If I am not able to improve a four year old decklist built to beat a different meta while having access to that decklist, chances are my test results have no value because they are not representative for tournament magic.

PS: Pilot skill is and always was a much more important part in winning than deck choice whenever a format wasn't degenerate.

[Rizso]

Kinda like the BG version with Quirion Ranger and Fauna Shaman that caleb started to play before it got banned. With both Venge Combo and Ooze combo.

[Barook]

Wizards recently gave out free Survival promos on MODO during the community cup.

The upcoming MOCS promo is going to be Vengevine.

Could be a sign of an unban, but it sure is a sign that Mike Turian is a dick when it comes to choosing MOCS promos.

[Echelon]

I lol'd at the "sideboarding works both ways equally"-bit. You really expect people to take you seriously when spouting such nonsense? Have you ever played a deck that relies solely on its graveyard..?

Here is what's wrong with your methods:
You're ignoring an integral part of the game (sideboarding)
You're ignoring a part of the meta (occasional SCG-winners with a rather small attendance)
You have no way to determine what part of the field would play SotF (with a small enough attendance, no single card/deck would pose a problem)

Good luck getting reliable/feasable results, enjoy your little experiment. This is just silly.

[bruizar]

I lol'd at the "sideboarding works both ways equally"-bit.

Nice way to quote things I never said.

Here's what I said


Sideboarding works both ways.

I won't justify the rest of your bashing with a dignified response. Azijnpisser.

[Echelon]

Azijnpisser.

I lol'd, hard.

Won't or can't? If you find letting over 50% of all games have different outcomes, that's fine with me. Fortunately sideboarding has never made games 2 and 3 onesided. In a format where you just play G1 2 or 3 times, I'd be more then happy to run LED Dredge. Without the hate from the SBss T8s'll be seeing a lot more copies of that deck then they do now.

Meh, I don't care anymore. Enjoy.

[Gheizen64]

Can we keep the discussion civil and personal rage and attack off the forums? All i've been trying to do is test some lists to bring some more weight to the idea that Survival should be unbanned and half this topic is about bitching.

[bruizar]

I'm removing the responses I made in this thread as it is clear that it is not appreciated, at least by the vocal minority who would rather bash a modeling approach.

Don't believe in science, keep praying to the sun gods Echelon & Lemnear. Good luck.

[Gheizen64]

I'm removing the responses I made in this thread as it is clear that it is not appreciated, at least by the vocal minority who would rather bash a modeling approach.

Don't believe in science, keep praying to the sun gods Echelon & Lemnear. Good luck.

Thx, if you ever want to tests some survival list just pm me and hit me on cockatrice. Trying to get players from the chat room is a mess. Of the ones i've tried (CalebD GWb, old UG, modernized UG lists etc...) this one feel like the best yet:


4 Survival of the Fittest
3 Enlightened Tutor
3 Noble Hierarch
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Vengevine
1 Basking Rootwalla
1 Memnite
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Sylvan Library
1 Banishing Light
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Commune with the Gods
4 Wasteland
4 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
1 Plains
2 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Bojuka Bog

[Gheizen64]

Trying black instead of white and it feel better. The Cabal therapies combined with your vengevine combo basically mean vengevine combo is extremely hard to deal with.

List:


3 Bayou
2 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs

1 Basking Rootwalla
3 Fauna Shaman
3 Necrotic Ooze
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Triskelion
3 Vengevine
1 Wonder
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
3 Intuition
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Memnite
4 Deathrite Shaman


This is where the deck start to win more often against current top lists, and where i'd really like to have something that's not Pyroblast mains in so many of those top lists lol.

[nedleeds]

Seems soft to needle and revoker, and jitte ... maybe a reclamation sage? I like therapy though ...

[Gheizen64]

Tested the above lists a bit vs UR, Patriot and Miracle.

UR was slightly favorite over it. The fast clock and dazes+fows to stop crucial spells were often too much for all the non-amazing survival hands. Cruise was really good in those games where sotf didn't resolve, but the UR deck had slow hands and/or traded all the board. Survival not playing TC is probably a mistake, but there isn't a lot of slots and i feel FoWs and Dazes are too important to assure your SotF resolves, BS is still a strictly better ancestral recall, and the rest is the SotF shell basically. Maybe could remove a wonder and a therapy.

Patriot was about even. The biggest duds for patriots were the 2 pyroblast and spell pierce that weren't really good against a deck with a lot of threats. Many times Ooze closed games because it could work as a Fauna shaman or DRS that got/removed countered and it really surprised me as a good card. TNN and SFM were good at slowing the vengevines, but unless Patriot had a counterspell for the Ooze, the survival deck could just win a couple of turns later, and Patriot couldn't close games consistently before that could happen, unlike UR delver. Those games came down to how fast could Survival get to the 4th-5th mana and how fast Patriot could kill him before that with a TNN. The hands where SotF had therapies +T2 SotF were usually just scoop for Patriots, facing multiple VV and getting all the answer cards discarded.

Miracle was slightly unfavourable to even. The ability to mass exile vengevines with Swords and Snapcasters, plus the bigger amounts of counters/control, meant that if Survival wasn't resolving T2 or T3 SotF, the game was going to miracle. Sadly, Miracle tendency to be a bit slow the first turns, and the hands where Survival had T2 Survivals or multiple survivals, meant that Miracle got closed out of the game early and often. SotF resolving was often game unless Miracle had a countertop assembled, and Terminus putting Vengevines on bottom was often a big problem for Miracle because Survival could just fetch them again together with the walla +memnite combination, whereas this wouldn't have been true for a normal sweeper.

Those results didn't surprise me at all, because the decks that did worse against survival were the control /midrangey decks designed to counter a UR delver meta. If survival were to be actually unbanned, you could easily tune those decks to have favourable matchups vs Survival pre and post board. For example, Spell pierce and blasts main make sense against a 40% UR meta, but are generally not great cards against survival. Spell snares or even Wear//Tear and Swan song main would all be better against survival. If UR saw less play, a Needle or two maindeck could also make sense vs Countertops, Survivals, and Stoneforges, plus occasional mud decks, and random planeswalkers.

I'll probably test the list some more vs other decks like Maverick and D&T to see how it fare against the current non-blue "fair" decks of the meta.

EDIT: just for fun, i tried testing it vs infect. I think i've never played something closer to a bye than this matchup lol. Having no creature removal and low level of permission, mean this build of survival has literally 0 chance against Infect who always close the game faster. The GW variant with swords is probably better than the UGb variant with dazes, fow and therapies, but it's clearly an extremely unfavourable matchup.

[Gheizen64]

Tested some vs D&T, list was the T8 NJ one, BUG list was the same as two post above:

D&T is slightly favored pre-board, heavy post board i think (i'm not testing PB games). Running 3revokers main, StP, Mirran Crusader + the usual disruptions tricks and mana denial for D&T basically meant that unless Survival could land a T2 survival and D&T didn't have good answers, Survival usually lost. Swords on Vengevines, plus EoT Flickerwisp was often a timewalk when used on SotF (and survival was tapped out), meaning D&T could gain a lot of time. After removing Vengevines with StP and protected flickerwisps or avengers (because of wonder), Wastes+Rishadan keeping off the survival player from the second black mana was often enough time to kill him before he could recover even with a SotF out. You have to keep in mind that the SotF can't combo Vengevines more than once usually since it run only 2 enablers (Walla and memnite), or either you need 2 natural creatures in hand and that's usually hard. The forces and Dazes weren't good in this MU, while therapies, even blind for revokers, were much better.
Revokers aside, D&T had a lot of really good cards this MU, from first striking creatures + equip, to Flickerwisp that could cycle out black mana or SotF on EoT to avoid the survival chain on their turn (so no attack), or block flying Vengevines with help from mom, and Serra avenger that again could trade vengevines all day long with moms, and all the mana denial strat that should be focused on black sources in this MU. Mirran crusader isn't as good as it appear at first because of the fact he couldn't block flying VV, and being only slightly better as a clock than the Avengers and Flickerwisps, without all the utility. SFM similarly is a bit slow usually, but a bit better than in patriot because you can keep them lower on mana with your disruption, gaining enough time for SFM to matter more.
Post board D&T has +1 cage, +2 containment priest, +1 RiP, +1 tutors (catacylsm probably is too slow but if it resolve it's absurd here) and Survival get blown out. You side out i think 1 SoFaI, 1 Thalia, 1 Avenger, 1 SotL, 1 stoneforge? Feel right, maybe 1 more crusader for 1 more tutor.

So after this i thought the list above should be changed for

-4 FoW: against more controllish matchups, fows were good to try and force thru the SotF. However, the pitch card was often a problem, and against other decks with little permission but permanent-based hate like D&T or maverick, those feel underwhelming. As such, i feel targeted discard, paired with Therapies, may be the better choice since you usually know what you need to discard (FoW/pierce vs control, Revoker vs D&T, TC vs UR)

-3 Intuition: the old take 3 Vengevines, plus draw a creature, then play both for 5 mana for 3 vengevines is incredibly clunky now. With so many more answers to Vengevines swarm than before, plus the increased speed of even creature-based decks, this just don't cut it anymore. Ponders and DTT or commune with the gods may go in its place.

Ooze and Fauna shaman: Fauna is really, really slow, but the discard outlet is still crucial so they stay. If Frantic search were legal, i'd probably play that, but it ain't so whatever. Ooze has surprised me as a better card than i thought, but as a 3-of, plus 3 vengevines that's too many cards that cost a lot, so i'd cut back 1 ooze.

So this is the new list:

Creatures:
1 Basking Rootwalla
3 Fauna Shaman
2 Necrotic Ooze
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Quirion Ranger
1 Triskelion
3 Vengevine
1 Wonder
1 Memnite
4 Deathrite Shaman

Survival and Search/Protection:
4 Survival of the Fittest
4 Brainstorm
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Daze
3 Ponder
3 Thoughtseize
2 Dig Through Time

Lands:
3 Bayou
2 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Polluted Delta
2 Tropical Island
2 Underground Sea
4 Verdant Catacombs


As an alternative to Dig which i'm just trying now, i'd consider Commune with the Gods. It's sorcery but it can grab a Survival, a creature, and put vengevines in the graveyard all at once. GSZ wasn't even considered because searching for T1 dryad is nowhere as important as casting a ponder/discard spell to protect your SotF or fauna or whatever else. Later GSZ into fatties isn't possible because of how the Oozes are black, and Vengevines are the only fatties you'd want anyway, at 4 mana. You don't have creatures silver bullets either. Abrupt Decay is certainly a card i'd put in if permanent-based answers were to become too widespread, in place of some discard/search cards, but space is tight.

In general, BUG survival variants have the advantage of added disruptions both as Daze and Discard, but no swords nor E. Tutor, nor KotR as a secondary engine like GW has. ***SEE EDIT*** GW as such has a better game against "fairer" decks like UR delver and Patriots, but suffer more against combo decks. Control depends a lot on the build. More creature-heavy GW lists are probably better than BUG survivals because of how easy it is to recurr Vengevines, while E.Tutor + Sylvan builds are probably better against random decks and fair decks. This is the GW survival list i'm running now:


Creatures:
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Noble Hierarch
3 Deathrite Shaman
3 Vengevine
4 Knight of the Reliquary
1 Basking Rootwalla
1 Memnite
1 Loyal Retainers
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Spirit of the Labyrinth
1 Qasali Pridemage

SotF/search/removal:
4 Survival of the Fittest
3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Sylvan Library
1 Banishing Light

Lands:
4 Wasteland
4 Savannah
4 Windswept Heath
2 Forest
1 Plains
2 Flooded Strand
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Bojuka Bog


Thalia has been going in and out of the deck. As the only out to stopping combo, alongside tutoring for SotL in the maindeck, or KotR Bojuka Bog, it feels a bit useless. No equips are there to make her shine either. As such, i'm really tempted to just play Commune with the Gods in those spots and move her to the side with more anti-combo cards, like Stingerfling Spider for SnT, Faerie Macabre for reanimator/PifT/Dredge, Gaddock Teeg etc...

EDIT: actually, after trying it a bit, GW don't have a better Patriot matchup, because of the low ability to pierce disruption with no discard/countermagic of its own, and the slowness of KotR/Rest of the deck clock whenever SotF don't come online. The same is true against UR delver, basically your creatures get bolted, your SotF get dazed/forced, and then delver/Monastery/Pyro kill you way faster than you can lay down KotRs and Vengevines. So yeah, BUG shell is probably best bet. BS too good boys.
As of now i couldn't find a list that got a good MU vs UR delver. Old lists don't cut it obviously. CalebD newer lists don't cut it either, nor do the new list i've tried, both BUG, nor GW. BUG is even against Patriot and Miracle, but GW is unfavoured. Changing a bit the list (BUG) didn't seems to improve MU significantly. I rest my case that SotF combo is too slow or suffer from too much splash hate to be relevant today. It could spawn good decks, but not dominate the format, unless some new absurdly busted interaction is printed, like a madness 0 Griselbrand or Emrakul.

If someone want to test more lists with me, i'll gladly do so. As far as i'm concerned i've tested more than enough to get the feeling of what the card can or can't do nowadays, what are the deck's problems, and what are its strenght. SotF T2 remain absurdly strong, but it's not as autowin as it was (especially vs D&T or UR with extremely fast draws), and if you don't get it, the deck suffer a lot. Basically, it's inconsistent, play some clunky draws, and all your deck is based on a single spell, but you can't play as much blue as Show and Tell to assure it resolve for example, neither you can play something that's similar in power level and function like Sneak Attack (Fauna is nowhere close, as it is much more slow and easily removable). If your first Vengevine chain don't kill (and that happen with mass swords and bolt around), you can't get a second because you need to have 2 creatures in hand AFTER a SotF chain, and that's hard, plus, Ooze or Retainer combo can be countered unlike Vengevines from the grave. TNN, Delver and Pyromancer all allow your opponent deck to keep a lot of pressure up while casting removals and counters, and your fatties come too late to compensate. D&T is a new, real, deck, that has a good matchup vs it even pre-board, and Infect is absurd like 75% win ratio for the infect player.
As a simple tutor, excluding Vengevines the card quickly felt subpar, requiring 1GG and a discard to tutor your first creature, and then tutoring but always at card parity. If you skip vengevines, it's still 7-8 slots, 3 of which are subpar cards (3 combo creatures), and SotF is more of a lategame card in that case because you are surely not casting it T2 to and using all your third turn to get , and then finally cast on T4, Retainer/Ooze, unless you're totally sure you're playing against a deck that can't do anything about it during those 3 turns, which i feel isn't something you can expect in legacy. Elves can kill you in those three turns, miracle can find counters for your hardcasted creature combo that you spent 1GGGG+ 2BB or 2W to cast (and here it strike me that maybe you could try it in GW human with cavern...), UR Delver can kill you, and Patriot variants are probably your best bet.

After my extensive Black Vise testing that i did couple of year ago, i can safely add SotF and feel it wouldn't become dominant, my unban list is:

Safe, do nothing:
Black Vise
Earthcraft
Mind Twist
Dragon

Safe, possibly even a new T1 deck:
Survival

[Echelon]

So... there is a home for SotF you're overlooking...

Elves! I've tested it.

Take for example the following build:
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Forest
2 Bayou
3 Natural Order
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Survival of the Fittest

This way the deck can easily assemble 2/3 Nettle Sentinels as soon as it starts Glimpsing and you're sure to draw the full 4 Elvish Visionaries and 4 Wirewood Symbiotes every single time to ensure the engine doesn't shut down too early.

Seriously, how could you overlook this..? By bringing back SotF, Elves! doesn't suddenly cease to exist as a deck.

[Gheizen64]

So... there is a home for SotF you're overlooking...

Elves! I've tested it.

Take for example the following build:
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Windswept Heath
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Forest
2 Bayou
3 Natural Order
1 Dryad Arbor
4 Survival of the Fittest

This way the deck can easily assemble 2/3 Nettle Sentinels as soon as it starts Glimpsing and you're sure to draw the full 4 Elvish Visionaries and 4 Wirewood Symbiotes every single time to ensure the engine doesn't shut down too early.

Seriously, how could you overlook this..? By bringing back SotF, Elves! doesn't suddenly cease to exist as a deck.

I didn't overlook it but i didn't test it for three reasons:

- i think elves! is already consistent enough, and Using 1GG to fetch a Nettle seems you'd just slow the deck down a lot compared to normal elves!
- i never played elves! before so testing it from my part would be pretty inconsequential
- old survival elves lists i could use for comparison had elves as an aggro more than a combo deck.

If you're an elves! player we could try and see if it's more consistent/faster than straight elves! because with the amount of redundancy elves! has i'm seeing SotF as just creating clunky openings.

EDIT: Also that list need 4 cradles

EDIT2: it's funny because searching for survival elves you finish on the source obviously, and there are some posts i've found quickly skimming the thread:


In my experience, SotF felt slow. I previously piloted different types of SotF decks and I've always felt that it was 1 or 2 turns to slow to seal the deal, and ofc it's pretty mana hungry. It would ofc be a little faster in a deck packed with elves, but then again, there aren't many elves that in my opinion justifies the inclusion of SotF.
Playing SotF implies that you will run a bunch of silver bullets that will get you out of certain situations or go for the win. Most of the time, it's the first. There are no really good silver bullet elves that can compete in Legacy atm, more than maybe a hand full.

Personally I feel more explosive running the non SotF build even though it has it's pros and cons.
I favor the fast and aggressive playstyle more than to be the reactive one, and the fact that 50% of the decks I'm going up against in my meta involves some sort of thresh/counter/crapness which tends to put the SotF build back hard.
It doesn't hurt the aggressive elf build as much since you drop threat after threat. If they waste their counters on the little pointy-eared men, then they will feel the beat from a NO into Progenitus. If they're holding back counters for NO, then the elves and lords slip through.

That's just my personal opinion. It all comes down to play style and personal references and of course what meta you're in.
Tribal decks tend to have low win percentage against combo decks so packing hate against those decks seem to be a waste of slots.
I've been play testing a series of games against ANT and the only thing you actually can do is to hope that the don't have the nuts draw, hit with a blind therapy on their mana sources/tutors or have a nuts draw yourself and net some of their life before they go bananas.

Either way, I'm feeling more comfortable playing blue decks now that survival's out of the picture in my decklist. It more than often didn't go online and resultet in them timewalking me when they counter it. (Read FoW and Spell Snare). Playing around Daze is easy, but the rest... It's hard to even get it through imo.

This was a post discussing survival actually before the ban, and i tend to agree with this poster here... if not for not the cards he's citing, but in general, elves! is so consistent and fast survival seems just slow for it. I think GSZ is miles better in the deck, and i feel the deck start to have clunky draws if run both GSZ, NO and survival.

The post immediately next:


Well, the way I see it, SotF allows you to play an aggro deck with the possibility to go for a combo finish.

Elves allows you to tutor up Anger on T2, then on T3 tutor a Priest of Titania, Sylvan Messengers and then just start chaining Priests, grab Symbiotes to bounce Messengers and untap your manadorks and finally overwhelm your enemy with a bunch of hasted Elves.

Against Blue decks, you can board this strategy out and pack in some more meat.

I can't really tell whether Survival is win-more or if it really makes me win games I would normally lose.
I mean, it even enables you to recharge by tutoring Messengers after a sweeper - if one lands.

Also, it's extremely annoying to only have Natural Order, draw that Progenitus and then have no way to get him back into my library again.

You see how SotF wasn't considered optimal against blue because it make counterspells a lot better against you and you aren't swarming them of creatures too fast for them to respond. SotF was considered also a combo outlet because it allowed you to tutor anger and go off with mana elves + sylvan messenger. Note that this was before nettle sentinels and heritage druids were used, so elves! didn't have a way to go off all in a single turn like it does now.
Also the Progenitus comment is funny now that Craterhoof behemot exist, truly a huge upgrade.

Obviously there are also pro-surv arguments, and we have to keep in mind that those survival elves lists looked like this back then:

16 land
4x Windswept Heath
4x Wooded Foothills
4x Forest
2x Taiga
2x Savannah

33 Creatures
4x Llanowar Elves
4x Fyndhorn Elves
4x Elvish Spirit Guide
4x Imperious Perfect
4x Elvish Archdruid
3x Priest of Titania
3x Elvish Champion
3x Quirion Ranger
3x Sylvan Messenger
1x Viridian Zealot

Engine
4x Survival of the Fittest
1x Squee
1x Anger

Alternate Win
4x Natural Order
1x Progenitus

Where again, survival was used as a slow-toolbox card engine, and gave elves the ability to go off in a single turn with Anger, mana elves and Sylvan Messenger.
Elves combo was a different deck (similar to the current one) and it did not run survival http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?17168-Deck-Elves-Combo

From the primer:

2.b TUTORING
The main tutor used in most combo elves decks is summoner’s pact, and for good reason. The idea is that you cast it on the same turn you combo off in order to avoid the drawback (upkeep cost). If it’s used this way, it’s essentially a 0 mana tutor. Once the combo is under way, pacts are usually used to fetch creatures which help fuel card draw (visionary, symbiote, regal force). Also note that casting pact adds to storm count and untaps all sentinels.

Usually 4 tutors is not enough for the deck to run smoothly, so there is a small list of acceptable tutors to accompany them. The most common ones are chord of calling, natural order, survival of the fittest and weird harvest, although there might be other options available such as a wishboard. Each of these tutors offer different advantages and disadvantages, which are often reflected in some of the card choices in the decks. For example, natural order can play giant green creatures for cheap (progenitus, regal force), chord of calling can play non-green creatures with birchlore (mirror entity), survival can combo (anger, masked admirers, iona/retainer, etc.) and weird harvest can go crazy if a lot of mana is available.

Summoner's Pact is now GSZ, and the second paragraph would still apply today. The lists in the primer all use NO as the second tutor engine. This was said about Survival!:


survival of the fittest: the engine card already stands on its own merits, and synergizes with elves in a variety of ways. It gives more value to your toolbox creatures, as they can more reliably come to your hand when you need them, its probably the best card to help you recover from sweepers, and it can often support you as you're combo, by fetching creatures you need for additional fuel. And finally, if your board set up is strong enough, you can combo off with survival itself.

Also some funny posts in retrospect (removed the name because hindsight and all that):


I don't like Fauna Shaman because you have to wait a turn to use it and it can only be used once per turn. Elves is a deck that is about speed, and the Shaman is too slow. I would rather play Elvish Visionary (which doesn't make the cut, either) because it nets me an extra card right away. Also, if you want to play the Shaman, what do you take out? I suppose it is better than Wren's Run Vanquisher, but you should not be playing those anyway.

I'm gonna read the Elves combo topic next to see what the reactions were after the survival ban since i have to go now.

[Zombie]

I don't think slotting Survival into an existing Elves shell will do much good. The current deck is already strong, resilient and redundant.
Put survival in while leaving all current spells in and you nerf Glimpse and NO.

The real potential of the card lies in changing the nature of the deck: Ability to incorporate nongreen bullets, to do away with NO and thus make Teeg a realistic option, the ability to shuffle away Progenitus, go back to Mirror Entity shenanigans. An Elf-Vengevival type build or transformative sideboard just as another way to build the deck so you have more options to adjust to the meta (the current skeleton is quite rigid). These types of things would be the stuff I'd look at first. Four spell-based engines in the deck is too much, the change in engine makeup is where the candy is.

[Gheizen64]

I don't think slotting Survival into an existing Elves shell will do much good. The current deck is already strong, resilient and redundant.
Put survival in while leaving all current spells in and you nerf Glimpse and NO.

The real potential of the card lies in changing the nature of the deck: Ability to incorporate nongreen bullets, to do away with NO and thus make Teeg a realistic option, the ability to shuffle away Progenitus, go back to Mirror Entity shenanigans. An Elf-Vengevival type build or transformative sideboard just as another way to build the deck so you have more options to adjust to the meta (the current skeleton is quite rigid). These types of things would be the stuff I'd look at first. Four spell-based engines in the deck is too much, the change in engine makeup is where the candy is.

Yeah, this seems much more reasonable.

Also what's with old decklists links? They're all down and i can't check any of them. Meanwhile TCDecks go only back to 2012 after survival was already banned anyway.
Example:
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5650&iddeck=40878

[Echelon]

I don't think slotting Survival into an existing Elves shell will do much good. The current deck is already strong, resilient and redundant.
Put survival in while leaving all current spells in and you nerf Glimpse and NO.

I've tried, just for giggles. And b/c you absolutely can't lower the creature count, I tossed out the Cradles to create extra slots. Trust me, the full blown combo list works just fine without Cradles. I did find 3 SotF to be optimal, freeing up a slot. The only thing that would nerf Glimpse is to lower the creature count, not swapping spells (Cradle is a spell rather than a land).

Besides, when going the full SotF/Glimpse-route you could opt for a storm-kill in the form of ToA (especially when running 4 Birchlores) rather then Natural Order, freeing up more slots for cheap elves or we can start playing Summoners Pact again.

The shell is more flexible then you give it credit for! You can use it as a nice platform to build upon.

Anywho... I still wouldn't plead to unban SotF.

[say no to scurvy]

Yeah, this seems much more reasonable.

Also what's with old decklists links? They're all down and i can't check any of them. Meanwhile TCDecks go only back to 2012 after survival was already banned anyway.
Example:
http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5650&iddeck=40878

http://www.tcdecks.net/formato.php?format=Legacy%20Archive

[Gheizen64]

http://www.tcdecks.net/formato.php?format=Legacy%20Archive

Oh that's nice thanks. Too bad links don't work and i have to manually search though :P