Survival of the Fittest

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Originally Posted by Shabbaman

Well, if you look at today's statistical analysis over at SCG you see that people keep playing goblins and merfolk in an attempt to beat Survival. That fact is more disconcerting than the fact that Survival managed to win again.

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Like I said in the B/R topic, the current meta is Vengevival vs Pet decks. Once people drop their mid-range decks and start using faster decks, things will even out.

I actually remember a few months back around the time before MT was banned on this site there was an excessive amount of whining when Vial Goblins was removed from the DTB thread. People are becoming attached to their pet decks and don't want to change, hence they will whine for Survival to be banned.

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Originally Posted by DragoFireheart

I actually remember a few months back around the time before MT was banned on this site there was an excessive amount of whining when Vial Goblins was removed from the DTB thread. People are becoming attached to their pet decks and don't want to change, hence they will whine for Survival to be banned.

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This. But in fairness, I think we all get attach to our pet decks because of the cost of buying new cards.

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Originally Posted by Chiba by the Dozen article on WotC

10. The Survival of Legacy

The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.

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Defeated through legislation? Sounds like a ban is coming after all.

Fuckin great. They'll probably ban everything until Rebels are good, and then ban Lin Sivvi. :\

So its sort of "official" now...

Bye survival, was nice knowing you :eyebrow:

Great, yust friggin great.

Somewhere Evan Irwin and all other whiners/people not willing to adapt are doing a victory dance...

I, for one, plan to continue savaging people with Vengevines even after this nonsense, unless they pre-emptively ban Intuition as well.

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Originally Posted by majikal

I, for one, plan to continue savaging people with Vengevines even after this nonsense, unless they pre-emptively ban Intuition as well.

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what if... they actually ban Vengevine and NOT survival of the fittest for some odd reason?

That said, it likely is going to be Survival of the Fittest that gets the Hammer since it is the older of the two problem children. However this will be interesting to watch unfold over the next few weeks. Apparently Star City Games has yet to notice the article though, Survival of the Fittests still cost 60 bucks >.<

The article isn't an official declaration and it has a "may" clause, so stop being prematurely pissed off for god's sake. Why bother shitting your pants beforehand and then look stupid (but relieved) when no bannings happen? And if something will get banned, it will happen in fixed schedule, not when you people here are crying out the loudest.

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Originally Posted by Hopo

The article isn't an official declaration and it has a "may" clause, so stop being prematurely pissed off for god's sake. Why bother shitting your pants beforehand and then look stupid (but relieved) when no bannings happen? And if something will get banned, it will happen in fixed schedule, not when you people here are crying out the loudest.

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okay 2 things:

1.) it was posted on the Wizards of the Coast website. While he may not work for Wizards of the Coast himself, and while it may have a "may" clause built into it. He would look really stupid if he wrote that and then it didn't happen, especially if he wrote that on the Wizards of the Coast website and then it didn't happen. Did you even stop to think about the kind of publicity that posting this kind of statement on the Wizards of the Coast Website causes even if you don't work for them outside of the capacity of an article author and Pro-Tour Historian?

2.) While it may not be guaranteed, the fact is that Survival of the Fittest is EXACTLY the kind of card that Wizards of the Coast has long attested to despising in all regards. It is worse in many ways than Mystical Tutor (which itself was recently banned). So while this statement carries the "may" clause, it also has the AIR of truth to it. And that is the important thing I think.

You truly cannot say anything about it, yet people behave like it was a fact. I call this kind of thinking bullshit.
People are just guessing, nothing more. I think dozens of topics and articles like this one having more than 30 pages is enough of guessing already. People haven't said anything new since the first page. And you claim that the guy writing the Chiba article wouldn't want to look stupid, hence survival will be banned? Are you serious?

Survival is basically a card making creatures relevant in modern legacy against control and combo. I have always thought that wizards supports the attack phase and creatures, so I'm not buying your speculation and reasoning.

Why cannot you just wait the official announcement and see if nothing actually happens? How many pages more do you want to speculate with this thing?

You can also try to justify your claims by reasoning: they just printed Fauna Shaman. Does it tell you that wizards is fine with survival-effects, or that they have been thinking of banning survival and are just softening the impact and giving us a lousy replacement?

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Originally Posted by Hopo

You truly cannot say anything about it, yet people behave like it was a fact. I call this kind of thinking bullshit.
People are just guessing, nothing more. I think dozens of topics and articles like this one having more than 30 pages is enough of guessing already. People haven't said anything new since the first page. And you claim that the guy writing the Chiba article wouldn't want to look stupid, hence survival will be banned? Are you serious?

Survival is basically a card making creatures relevant in modern legacy against control and combo. I have always thought that wizards supports the attack phase and creatures, so I'm not buying your speculation and reasoning.

Why cannot you just wait the official announcement and see if nothing actually happens? How many pages more do you want to speculate with this thing?

You can also try to justify your claims by reasoning: they just printed Fauna Shaman. Does it tell you that wizards is fine with survival-effects, or that they have been thinking of banning survival and are just softening the impact and giving us a lousy replacement?

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No I didn't say that he didn't want to look stupid... I wrote that he WOULD look stupid given who he wrote the article for and what he said in it.

And no, Survival isn't a card making creatures relevant in modern legacy against control and combo... it is a combo engine itself. If you want a card that makes creatures relevant against Control, you want Æther Vial. I am not sure there IS a card that makes Creatures viable against Combo (it certainly isn't Survival of the Fittest as Combo happens to be Survival's worst match up).

The official announcement is what? 17 days away. And yet we have an author writing on the FREAKING MOTHERSHIP that he thinks Survival (or some component of the deck) will be banned and he is writing it NOW. I think that warrants speculation at the very least.

Survival is very different from Fauna Shaman. For one thing, Survival can be used multiple times in a single turn, without the aid of Quirion Ranger or Scryb Ranger, Fauna Shaman cannot. Further Survival is an Enchantment, which is much harder to get rid of than a Creature, where as Fauna Shaman is a creature. So yes I can justify it by saying that removing Survival of the Fittest is possibly going to happen and that Fauna Shaman is a lousy attempt at a replacement.

@Hopo

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Originally Posted by Wizards

10. The Survival of Legacy
The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.

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This is sounds pretty straightforward to me...

Robrecht

Don't forget that Survival of the Fittest doesn't have summoning sickness.

Damn, yea, SURVIVAL IS GOOD ? SO ** what ? I'm not playing it, i'm sticking to Merfolk and i do fine against Vengevivals-type decks. Stop crying because there's a new good deck guys.. i MEAN.. DUDE.. It's called META-GAMING, just customize your Sideboard to beat it..

Yixilid Jailer
Hibernation
Extirpate
Krosan Grip
Pithing Needle
Peacekeeper
Countermagic
Maindeck 4x Spell Snare
Playing COMBO.

DANG, just ADAPT and stop pissing off people that bought survivals for 60 $ (I didn't.)

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Originally Posted by Pich

Damn, yea, SURVIVAL IS GOOD ? SO ** what ? I'm not playing it, i'm sticking to Merfolk and i do fine against Vengevivals-type decks. Stop crying because there's a new good deck guys.. i MEAN.. DUDE.. It's called META-GAMING, just customize your Sideboard to beat it..

Yixilid Jailer
Hibernation
Extirpate
Krosan Grip
Pithing Needle
Peacekeeper
Countermagic
Maindeck 4x Spell Snare
Playing COMBO.

planar void
leyline of the void
dueling grounds
aven mindsoncer
more stp + pte
Humility
perish

DANG, just ADAPT and stop pissing off people that bought survivals for 60 $ (I didn't.)

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Also, the rise of vengivine makes some other decks viable again.

Merfolk
D&T
The rock (4 stp, 2 pte and witnesses spells doom for vines and SB dueling Grounds.)
Wombat variants.
Combo
Zoo( more mindsencors more pte and stp les lightning helix)
Show & Tell decks
Dreadstill
Landstill

Who cares about what is/not banned anymore. The official quote from the Mothership once again confirms that WotC enjoys listening to wildfire rumors and look at data within the states and continue to show their dis-support to non-USA metas (which argubly non-USA people take MTG just as seriously if not even more competitively than their US counterparts).

Although, at the very least, I am glad they are giving till after Worlds to make a decision. Good news is meta are shifting to start adapting against Survival. Bad news is with this fucking post from the mothership, EVERYONE will want to play Survival just to have one-last shot with the deck, which happens to be a good deck.

Self-fulfilling prophecies!

There's quite a lot of things to ban then from what I see:
- Entomb
- Intuition
- Burning Wish/Cunning Wish
- Enlightened Tutor

Because they all have potential to be broken cause they are TUTORs. I just find it highly annoying they are viewing the state of Legacy like it's Standard or something. There's an inherent dislike for tutors and combo from WotC, but this is fucking eternal. I'll be more and more disinterested if the format evolves to tap creatures sideways with some tighter turn 1-3 plays. It'll be like playing Standard with FoW and Daze. I don't want that. If Survival gets banned, I'll be sad, because I don't get to play all the cool decks that I've designed (Welderstone Survival, Rock Survival, Goblin Survival, Sliver Survival). I guess I won't have to waste time tweaking those crappy decks because they're probably overpowered as hell since they play Survival! (except they aren't, it's really just Vengevine that made it dumb).

Do people really not know how to use a sideboard? I suppose after this Aether Vial will get banned. Along with Wasteland, Tarmogoyf, Sword to Plowshares, and Force of Will.

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Originally Posted by LegacyDan

Do people really not know how to use a sideboard? I suppose after this Aether Vial will get banned. Along with Wasteland, Tarmogoyf, Sword to Plowshares, and Force of Will.

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Also SDT, Jace, NO and S&T. Ban EVERYTHING!!111!!one!!

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Originally Posted by SurFitOfTheVine

Also SDT, Jace, NO and S&T. Ban EVERYTHING!!111!!one!!

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Originally Posted by LegacyDan

Do people really not know how to use a sideboard? I suppose after this Aether Vial will get banned. Along with Wasteland, Tarmogoyf, Sword to Plowshares, and Force of Will.

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Yeah, ban everything except goyf and Vial.

Wizards want's us to have a meta full of zoo, goblins and merfolk. nothing else.

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Originally Posted by Pich

Damn, yea, SURVIVAL IS GOOD ? SO ** what ? I'm not playing it, i'm sticking to Merfolk and i do fine against

DANG, just ADAPT and stop pissing off people that bought (survivals) Mystical Tutor for 60 $ (I didn't.)

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seems it was the same for ANT at its time...and this time i'm sure it's gonna piss off more people. Your turn guys!
(althought I agreed on your whole post)

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Originally Posted by Metalwalker

Who cares about what is/not banned anymore. The official quote from the Mothership once again confirms that WotC enjoys listening to wildfire rumors and look at data within the states and continue to show their dis-support to non-USA metas (which argubly non-USA people take MTG just as seriously if not even more competitively than their US counterparts).

Although, at the very least, I am glad they are giving till after Worlds to make a decision. Good news is meta are shifting to start adapting against Survival. Bad news is with this fucking post from the mothership, EVERYONE will want to play Survival just to have one-last shot with the deck, which happens to be a good deck.

Self-fulfilling prophecies!

There's quite a lot of things to ban then from what I see:
- Entomb
- Intuition
- Burning Wish/Cunning Wish
- Enlightened Tutor

Because they all have potential to be broken cause they are TUTORs. I just find it highly annoying they are viewing the state of Legacy like it's Standard or something. There's an inherent dislike for tutors and combo from WotC, but this is fucking eternal. I'll be more and more disinterested if the format evolves to tap creatures sideways with some tighter turn 1-3 plays. It'll be like playing Standard with FoW and Daze. I don't want that. If Survival gets banned, I'll be sad, because I don't get to play all the cool decks that I've designed (Welderstone Survival, Rock Survival, Goblin Survival, Sliver Survival). I guess I won't have to waste time tweaking those crappy decks because they're probably overpowered as hell since they play Survival! (except they aren't, it's really just Vengevine that made it dumb).

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Each one of the tutors you have listed are situational and do not enable anything construed as "broken" (there is a difference between a strong play and a series of strong plays); you are essentially trying to correlate a degenerative combo-enabling machine to cards that have only a single utility. The activated cost of Survival - factored in that it is a permanent, reusable, instant-speed engine - allows for the said player to effectively search for any creature they need at any given time.

The utility of each of these creatures in Survival-based decks really is what sugar-coats the card itself because the list of tutors (Enlightened, Worldly, Mystical, etc.) each allows you to specifically go for a type of card that has a unique affect on the game. Survival accomplishes each of these tasks by allowing you to develop your deck using cards of a varying degree of utility or simply for an abhorrent surge as it pertains to the attack step. It doesn't necessarily allow you to fetch up Instants or Sorceries, but it still allows for the make-up of degenerative plays.

Vengevine pushed the envelope on this card and exploited it for all of its worth. The card has to and should go. I typically board correctly and adaptively and do relatively well against Survival-based decks. That doesn't mean the next person will, and that is what seems to be the recurring theme here: Survival's ability to, well, survive.

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Originally Posted by (nameless one)

Don't forget that Survival of the Fittest doesn't have summoning sickness.

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It does if Opalescence is in play.

The best deck of the format was pretty hard to determine before Vengevine Survival was "dicovered" and the meta was more interesting. Now it's pretty clear that you just need to pick up a Survival deck if you want the best chances of winning a tournament. An average win percentage of about 65 against the whole format? Yes, please. To quote Gerry Thompson, "that shit is retarded and needs to be banned" (on ggslive in SCG Boston where he finished 2nd with Ooze Survival).

Playing stupid hate cards that Survival can easily win through isn't the answer. The best answer is playing Survival yourself, or one of the few decks that can race its combo. "Just adapt your deck!!" - such a compelling argument, but I think I will just play Survival myself instead of maindecking relatively narrow cards like Extirpate and Pithing Needle.

Man, I can understand banning Survival of the Fittest. If people are boarding Tormod's Crypt and expecting to get the job done... it ain't gonna' happen. If I read another article that tells people to play ineffective hate cards I will shoot myself.

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Originally Posted by kikoo

"Just adapt your deck!!" - such a compelling argument, but I think I will just play Survival myself instead of maindecking relatively narrow cards like Extirpate and Pithing Needle.

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:eek:

And next thing you're saying that Swords to plowshares is narrow too, because it only deals with creatures.

Survival is going to be banned because of lazy players like you...too bad.

Can everyone stop jumping to conclusions. It's still possible that WoTC will choose to not ban Survival. I mean at this point it seems like so many people are jumping on it that it's just a forgone conclusion, but until it actually is official can we hold off on the lamentation. I don't consider one fringe writer to be a very reliable source even if it is on the official WoTC website. To tell you the truth I think that guy has just as much a clue what's going to happen as anyone else and he was just speculating.

The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.



From BDM's article on Worlds. Sounds like a clear indication...

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Originally Posted by Lorgalis

:eek:

And next thing you're saying that Swords to plowshares is narrow too, because it only deals with creatures.

Survival is going to be banned because of lazy players like you...too bad.

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What's lazier, switching your entire deck because one is clearly the best, or simply squeezing 4 hate cards of your choice into your 60 and expecting to win?

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Originally Posted by SpikeyMikey

The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.



From BDM's article on Worlds. Sounds like a clear indication...

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Would you please post a link.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...daily/twtw/119

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Originally Posted by keys

What's lazier, switching your entire deck because one is clearly the best, or simply squeezing 4 hate cards of your choice into your 60 and expecting to win?

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I've been maining Extirpate since GP:Chicago because it's nuts. It's stock goes up and down a bit as tje format changes, it's relatively bad against Zoo and Fish, but it's the dead nuts against a lot of decks.

Nice ban survival ! I was so much missing merfolks...

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10. The Survival of Legacy
The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.

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Nice move, he didn't say explicitly that SotF is going to be banned. "May" is the key word there, and as far as we know, he doesn't know whether it will be banned or not, too.

From BDM's facebook -

Brian David-Marshall I actually have no inside info on this one. Comment was based on players insisting that something needs to happen.

I've long thought survival of the fittest had an extraordinary power level.
Even when survival decks weren't good, a resolved survival meant you win the game if you have mana.
I'm not much of a deckbuilder, and I always felt that someone else could've put together a deck that runs great without survival, and then put in four copies of survival, just so it reads "1G, win in a few turns". Problem was you needed so much crap, like anger, rofellos, genesis, and squee, so the decks never worked so well. I was scared anyway that someone would figure it out and then my favorite card would get banned.
I still feel like survival with vengevine isn't really any stronger than survival with the old package (genesis + viridean zealot could let you grind out a lot of wins against stax type decks, spore frog lock could hold off certain strategies, etc), but without survival vengevineis way better than all that crap. The deck is obviously extraordinarilly good.
Despite being a suboptimal player it got my eternal rating to ~1830 for a while (still ~1820), because GW is simply that strong.

I feel that the card deserves banning without doubt. The deck is a bunch of extremely efficient creatures, and about even with other decks in quality without survival. Putting those in just gives you a massive trump card. If other decks are forced to try hard to answer it, then they're spending a lot of effort to try and handle only a small part of the deck. Did you know GW survival gives knight of the reliquary just as much support (mom protection vs fow to protect them; both run the utility land package) as new horizons-the kotr deck-does?

Trying hard ot adapt and answer your deck isn't exactly a winning proposition, especially if it weakens those decks against the rest of the field.
Unless by adapt you mean play combo, in which case yes, combo crushes GW.

As a Rock player, G/W is definitely the hardest of the 3 to beat, but it's still not a bad M/U. I wonder, if there is a SotF ban if there would be enough support for an alternate Eternal format similar to Legacy but with a less-restrictive ban list. We've got a lot of old players that have been playing 1.5 since it was still tied to the T1 ban list. I think we could do a better job of managing a banlist than the DCI. Set up our own rating system, come up with a catchy name and go from there...

I remember playing Legacy in the days of Drains, Bazaars and the like in the format. It was a good time at the time, but I think the banlist has moved beyond that. I'm not saying that I don't love playing with Mana Drain and Library of Alexandria, but I think Legacy players that think Library and Drain are going to get unbanned obviously haven't played regular or unrestricted Vintage.

Back to Survival, I'm on the "unban Mystical" bandwagon. I'm not a combo player, nor do I like combo. I'd be fine if the format took a crap until March and Storm/Reanimator raped the format, because then they'd have solid evidence for a reban, and they could say "I told you so" to all the Reanimator players. Mind you, I'd sit in my isolated corner of Legacy while it happened, but my point still stands.

-Matt

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Originally Posted by Lorgalis

:eek:

And next thing you're saying that Swords to plowshares is narrow too, because it only deals with creatures.

Survival is going to be banned because of lazy players like you...too bad.

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There's a reason why StP is a 4-of in many decks (Legacy = mostly creature-based) while Pithing Needle is not an exciting card to maindeck, unless you play Trinket Mage already. I don't know why I even mentioned the card in the first place, because its effectiveness against Survival is very debatable. It does close to nothing if they have the enchantment on the table and G open (tutor for disenchant on a stick). You need to play it preemptively and just cross your fingers they don't have the aggro/Natural Order/Fauna Shaman draw.

Threats >>>> answers. Most sensible people will either just play the format's undisputed best threat (Survival) or play a deck that can consistently outrace it instead of trying to fight an extremely multifaceted deck with some narrow, reactive cards.

When you say lazy, I say smart.

I feel this is greatly more justified than the banning of MT.

HOWEVER, I really think this is also just an overreaction. I really think they should experiment more with unbanning cards to shift the meta rather than just banning whatever deck that makes multiple T8 apparent.