Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Honoluluicecaps
Its important to note that Taco brought up a good point regarding Show and Tell that hasn't really been addressed: the restrictions that the prominence of a deck like Sneak and Show places on the format. Saying that the deck is beatable (in general) doesn't really address the point; its existence in the format hinders the number of playable decks, because you can't really play a deck that beats both it and RUG delver (the most popular deck) consistently (50+% of the time) unless you're playing something like Dredge. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it has shown itself to be relatively true over the last few months.
Furthermore, I would argue that Griselbrand makes Sneak and Show even better, and despite some people advocating Dream Halls as a new standard in combo decks, Reanimator has basically stopped making showings... arguably because Sneak and Show just uses Griselbrand better. In general I'm not one to advocate for the banning of cards, I find that for the most part the format has a way of working itself out. But I also believe that cards like Griselbrand are going to allow Sneak and Show to surpass OTHER Show and Tell decks (i.e. Dream Halls, Hive Mind, even reanimator), and the only way to reliably counter it is by playing RUG Delver. The question becomes, is such a format healthy?
Griselbrand may be the most egregiously powerful addition to the Sneak-Show archetype in a while, but it's not the problem here. It's that the answers to the Sneak Attack plan and the answers to the Show and Tell plan don't necessarily overlap very much. Karakas answers the legendaries, but only up to a point; Sneak Attack can put multiple creatures into play per turn, mitigating its effect. Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker stop Sneak Attack but don't really touch the SnT plan. Similarly, red Blasts will stop SnT and the counters but not Sneak Attack, while discard can be dodged with cantrips, Griselbrand, and counterspells.
In short, there aren't many good ways to answer Sneak-Show without going overboard on counterspells like RUG Delver does.
Personally, if any card from the deck should be banned, it should be SnT. The card pushes a lot of power boundaries and is only likely to get better with time (something we've already seen since the printing of Hive Mind and Emrakul). I think the format can handle a Sneak Attack deck without SnT pretty easily, although that probably just entails the format settling back into the Maverick / RUG / Stoneblade > Everything Else holding pattern it's been in for a while.
I don't think Brainstorm should be banned for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the likely formatpocalypse that would ensue.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Aggro_zombies
Griselbrand may be the most egregiously powerful addition to the Sneak-Show archetype in a while, but it's not the problem here. It's that the answers to the Sneak Attack plan and the answers to the Show and Tell plan don't necessarily overlap very much. Karakas answers the legendaries, but only up to a point; Sneak Attack can put multiple creatures into play per turn, mitigating its effect. Pithing Needle and Phyrexian Revoker stop Sneak Attack but don't really touch the SnT plan. Similarly, red Blasts will stop SnT and the counters but not Sneak Attack, while discard can be dodged with cantrips, Griselbrand, and counterspells.
In short, there aren't many good ways to answer Sneak-Show without going overboard on counterspells like RUG Delver does.
Personally, if any card from the deck should be banned, it should be SnT. The card pushes a lot of power boundaries and is only likely to get better with time (something we've already seen since the printing of Hive Mind and Emrakul). I think the format can handle a Sneak Attack deck without SnT pretty easily, although that probably just entails the format settling back into the Maverick / RUG / Stoneblade > Everything Else holding pattern it's been in for a while.
I don't think Brainstorm should be banned for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the likely formatpocalypse that would ensue.
Humility and Ensnaring Bridge stop both plans. The deck is far from unbeatable and without Show and Tell there are not a lot of combo decks in the format right now. Nothing needs to be banned people just need to realize they need to change what they play when the meta changes.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TooCloseToTheSun
Humility and
Ensnaring Bridge stop both plans. The deck is far from unbeatable and without Show and Tell there are not a lot of combo decks in the format right now. Nothing needs to be banned people just need to realize they need to change what they play when the meta changes.
I don't exactly consider ETutor UW control to be competitive against the metagame. Believe me, I've tried. :(
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Koby
I don't exactly consider ETutor UW control to be competitive against the metagame. Believe me, I've tried. :(
This. Also, I'm not advocating the banning of anything right now, I'm just saying that if Sneak-Show is a concern then the most best way to deal with it is to ban Show and Tell.
Also, the format is inherently inflexible because of the high monetary costs associated with switching decks. If prices for important cards were lower I think you'd see more metagaming.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
@Aggro_zombies Don't get me wrong, I wasn't arguing that Griselbrand should get the ax (although after rereading my post I realize that can be inferred). Rather it's that the addition of Griselbrand is, in my opinion, a sort of tipping point for the Sneak and Show archetype. The problem card is indeed Show and Tell, and if there were to be a banning it would be the focus of it.
I hope that SnT advocates don't interpret my argument as an overreaction to a recent SCG top 8 (a la the call for Green Sun's Zenith's banning following the 7 maverick deck top 8)... to understand whether a card is unhealthy for the format requires more analysis than that. But teamed with Sneak Attack, and with the addition of Griselbrand (and the flying spaghetti monster), you have seen the development of a deck that can polarize the format. Despite this fact, I don't really think Show and Tell will get banned, at least in June.
Oh yeah, and I say leave Brainstorm alone, and I don't even play blue.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Honoluluicecaps
@Aggro_zombies Don't get me wrong, I wasn't arguing that Griselbrand should get the ax (although after rereading my post I realize that can be inferred). Rather it's that the addition of Griselbrand is, in my opinion, a sort of tipping point for the Sneak and Show archetype. The problem card is indeed Show and Tell, and if there were to be a banning it would be the focus of it.
I hope that SnT advocates don't interpret my argument as an overreaction to a recent SCG top 8 (a la the call for Green Sun's Zenith's banning following the 7 maverick deck top 8)... to understand whether a card is unhealthy for the format requires more analysis than that. But teamed with Sneak Attack, and with the addition of Griselbrand (and the flying spaghetti monster), you have seen the development of a deck that can polarize the format. Despite this fact, I don't really think Show and Tell will get banned, at least in June.
Oh yeah, and I say leave Brainstorm alone, and I don't even play blue.
It really is a vicious cycle. When Mav was topping, eveyrone called for a ban of GSZ. Now its show and tell's turn.
WHen show and tell keeps topping, we will see a re-emergence of Control decks, then Merfolk decks will come back and then maverick will come back in the meta.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Koby
I don't exactly consider ETutor UW control to be competitive against the metagame. Believe me, I've tried. :(
It's not that hard to put 2 Etutors and some targets into the Stoneblade sideboard. You don't really need to build a whole deck around it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Aggro_zombies
Also, the format is inherently inflexible because of the high monetary costs associated with switching decks. If prices for important cards were lower I think you'd see more metagaming.
I know it sucks that you can't play the same deck until the end of time, but it is true. If you want to win you have to be able/willing to switch decks.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TooCloseToTheSun
It's not that hard to put 2 Etutors and some targets into the Stoneblade sideboard. You don't really need to build a whole deck around it.
The point is not that. The point is rather, it's easy to build a deck to beat a specific other deck. It's hard to build a deck that has a good matchup vs say Sneak Show while at the same time beating RUG and Maverick too.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Koby
I don't exactly consider ETutor UW control to be competitive against the metagame. Believe me, I've tried. :(
I do. In fact, I've pulled off the "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun." of answering SnT with Humility.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Koby
The point is not that. The point is rather, it's easy to build a deck to beat a specific other deck. It's hard to build a deck that has a good matchup vs say Sneak Show while at the same time beating RUG and Maverick too.
Well you can't have a hundred percent against everything, that's just impossible. What you can do is focus on beating the decks you expect to play the most at whatever event you are going to. I think they call that meta-gaming.
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Originally Posted by
Ozymandias
I do. In fact, I've pulled off the "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun." of answering SnT with Humility.
Ha, Humility still wins me games too. Last weekend I got to swords an Inkwell Leviathan because of it. I love playing counter-top thopters.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TooCloseToTheSun
I know it sucks that you can't play the same deck until the end of time, but it is true. If you want to win you have to be able/willing to switch decks.
This argument carries less weight when put into the context of the reality of the format. While ardent defenders of the Reserved List tend not to care about people of more limited means and thus don't see a problem (or even celebrate) high prices, the truth is that these prices not only impose a barrier to entry, they impose format inflexibility. This has less to do with nostalgia for playing a certain deck, although there will be people who will play the same deck for years because of personal preference. It has to do with the fact that most of the top-tier competitive decks cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to build; investing in, say, Maverick does not make switching to RUG significantly cheaper, while building RUG may make it somewhat easier to build Stoneblade but only up to a point because of the high cost of blue duals.
The reality is that the the majority of round one players at a given Legacy tournament will be people with few to no options when it comes to deck choice, whether because of local card availability, monetary issues, or a desire to not drop insane amounts of money on a hobby. This not only colors the final results of the tournament, it means that the players who can metagame will be fighting through an unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio early in the tournament. You can't metagame too hard to beat the top tier decks, for example, because you open yourself up to getting destroyed in the early rounds by random Tier 2 or Tier 3 decks. This allows the most inherently powerful decks to continue unchecked from tournament to tournament because there's only so much room to fight them while still giving yourself the best chances against the field at large.
It would be nice if people could metagame more, but it's simply not possible given the way things are right now. Therefore, if a deck becomes a problem, more solutions than "The scrubs need to play the right deck to beat it" need to be considered.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
@TooClosetotheSun: I don't think you're really addressing the point. Saying "you can't be 100% against everything" isn't an argument. It's not about being 100% against every deck in the format, it's about a polarization of the metagame. The current meta has not evolved a deck that consistently matches up well with Sneak and Show and RUG. Don't get me wrong, it still CAN, but when people are calling for SnT's banning it's not just because they're all lazy or love their pet decks too much or don't know how to sideboard Humility.
Show and Tell restricts deck design. We can argue about whether that merits banning, but to argue that a strategy can be countered or a deck is beatable are not the only definitions by which we (as a community) debate whether a card should be removed from the format. There's much more to it.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Take Brainstorm out of Show and Tell decks and they will struggle to assemble a hand of Man -> Sneak Method -> Countermagic backup.
Take Brainstorm out of RUG delver and they will struggle to play absurd 18 land / 3 color / 4 wasteland manabases.
Take Brainstorm out of TES or tendrils and you slow it down a turn or two, spot discard can impact them, no more on the play one land brainstorm keeps.
Take Brainstorm out of U/w control and discard might actually matter in the early game against them.
Brainstorm is the enabler. Hence why there are 48 Brainstorms in the top 16 of these things every week.
If you don't want to ban brainstorm (or as I suggest ... unban a bunch of cards), at least just say it's because you like the card or enjoy it or have a bunch of jap foil ones. It's clearly way above the power level of many cards currently residing on the banned list. It enables the degenerate strategies and absurd mana bases in the top 2-3 decks.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Aggro_zombies
This argument carries less weight when put into the context of the reality of the format. While ardent defenders of the Reserved List tend not to care about people of more limited means and thus don't see a problem (or even celebrate) high prices, the truth is that these prices not only impose a barrier to entry, they impose format inflexibility. This has less to do with nostalgia for playing a certain deck, although there will be people who will play the same deck for years because of personal preference. It has to do with the fact that most of the top-tier competitive decks cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to build; investing in, say, Maverick does not make switching to RUG significantly cheaper, while building RUG may make it somewhat easier to build Stoneblade but only up to a point because of the high cost of blue duals.
I understand why people don't switch decks, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't. I don't really understand why this makes my argument carry less weight. Tier decks cost lots of money that is true, but once you have one built, it is easier to use those cards to get a different deck when you want to switch than it was to build that deck from scratch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Aggro_zombies
The reality is that the the majority of round one players at a given Legacy tournament will be people with few to no options when it comes to deck choice, whether because of local card availability, monetary issues, or a desire to not drop insane amounts of money on a hobby. This not only colors the final results of the tournament, it means that the players who can metagame will be fighting through an unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio early in the tournament. You can't metagame too hard to beat the top tier decks, for example, because you open yourself up to getting destroyed in the early rounds by random Tier 2 or Tier 3 decks. This allows the most inherently powerful decks to continue unchecked from tournament to tournament because there's only so much room to fight them while still giving yourself the best chances against the field at large.
This really depends on the type of tournament and the location. Sure at your local legacy event you can't really expect everyone in round one to be playing something tier. That being said, that kind of proves what I am saying. I don't play decks I play at local events at big events (unless I am testing). If I want to win a local event I am more likely to play the most powerful deck I can, but if I am in a big tournament I value consistency over power (well at least I should).
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Aggro_zombies
It would be nice if people could metagame more, but it's simply not possible given the way things are right now. Therefore, if a deck becomes a problem, more solutions than "The scrubs need to play the right deck to beat it" need to be considered.
If you don't think there are people who already change what decks they play because of what they expect people to play, you are wrong. The "scrubs" as you call them really can't affect the meta game of the large tournament scene, if a deck becomes a problem they won't be able to do anything about it except to call for more bannings.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Show and Tell just needs to be banned. Period. The card is fundamentally broken, and it's only going to get worse as time goes on.
All I hear when I bitch about Show and Tell is Humility and Ensnaring Bridge. I'm now going to list the problems I have with this.
1. There are three Show and Tell decks in Legacy. Sneaky Show is the big one you see, and the one that gets all the blame, but it's not the only one. Hive Mind exists. Dream Halls exists. Therefore, it's very very very hard to just say "I'm going to hate out Show and Tell." Very few strategies do it. RUG Delver's single clock with maximum dig and disruption can. Meddling Mage can. Discard can sometimes, but not always. And running a shit-ton of REB/Pyro can, but then sometimes you just lose to Sneak Attack. Because of this, let's tackle the two cards in question, starting with Ensnaring Bridge.
2. Ensnaring Bridge does nothing to stop Hive Mind, and Dream Halls can get around it.
3. Unless you're going to maindeck Ensnaring Bridge, Sneaky Show runs Woodfall Primus in the sideboard. So either they're going to drop Woodfall Primus, or they might drop Griselbrand, draw into what they need, and THEN drop Woodfall Primus.
So in subconclusion,
4. Ensnaring Bridge is trash unless you're running it to stop some other deck first and SnT second.
Humility's a little different.
5. Humility does nothing to stop Hive Mind, and Dream Halls can get around it.
6. Humility generally doesn't come out as fast as Sneak Attack.
However,
7. Humility is so good against Show and Tell + Any Guy that it's literally worth playing in Maverick's sideboard from an Enlightened Tutor package. Which is kind of stupid, when it's worth playing Humility in a deck full of dudes.
(EDIT: If you're against the card's banning because you want to cheat dudes into play, Eursneaka w/ Orcish Lumberjack is a thing.)
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tacosnape
Show and Tell just needs to be banned. Period. The card is fundamentally broken, and it's only going to get worse as time goes on.
All I hear when I bitch about Show and Tell is Humility and Ensnaring Bridge. I'm now going to list the problems I have with this.
1. There are three Show and Tell decks in Legacy. Sneaky Show is the big one you see, and the one that gets all the blame, but it's not the only one. Hive Mind exists. Dream Halls exists. Therefore, it's very very very hard to just say "I'm going to hate out Show and Tell." Very few strategies do it. RUG Delver's single clock with maximum dig and disruption can. Meddling Mage can. Discard can sometimes, but not always. And running a shit-ton of REB/Pyro can, but then sometimes you just lose to Sneak Attack. Because of this, let's tackle the two cards in question, starting with Ensnaring Bridge.
2. Ensnaring Bridge does nothing to stop Hive Mind, and Dream Halls can get around it.
3. Unless you're going to maindeck Ensnaring Bridge, Sneaky Show runs Woodfall Primus in the sideboard. So either they're going to drop Woodfall Primus, or they might drop Griselbrand, draw into what they need, and THEN drop Woodfall Primus.
So in subconclusion,
4. Ensnaring Bridge is trash unless you're running it to stop some other deck first and SnT second.
Humility's a little different.
5. Humility does nothing to stop Hive Mind, and Dream Halls can get around it.
6. Humility generally doesn't come out as fast as Sneak Attack.
However,
7. Humility is so good against Show and Tell + Any Guy that it's literally worth playing in Maverick's sideboard from an Enlightened Tutor package. Which is kind of stupid, when it's worth playing Humility in a deck full of dudes.
(EDIT: If you're against the card's banning because you want to cheat dudes into play, Eursneaka w/ Orcish Lumberjack is a thing.)
If you expect to play against only Show and Tell decks play Humility and Angel's Grace in your sideboard. You can have more cards in your deck than Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, and lands. Stop claiming that because you can't beat these decks with the tools we have that no one can.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TooCloseToTheSun
Angel's Grace
This is when we have a problem with the metagame.
Re: All B/R update speculation.
How is Angel's Grace good against Show and Tell anyway?
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TooCloseToTheSun
If you expect to play against only Show and Tell decks play Humility and Angel's Grace in your sideboard. You can have more cards in your deck than Humility, Ensnaring Bridge, and lands. Stop claiming that because you can't beat these decks with the tools we have that no one can.
So you're saying run 8 white cards in your deck that only beats one card? And what if they land sneak attack? I suppose 4 pithing needles. So 12 cards to beat one deck. Sounds like a plan.
What if you don't play white?
And regarding humility: What if you play a deck that actually uses creatures yourself? I guess you can't do that unless it's RUG, right?
Re: All B/R update speculation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Xero
How is Angel's Grace good against Show and Tell anyway?
It stops the non-creature win conditions.
