Originally Posted by
wonderPreaux
At that point, I think the question becomes: is having such a heavy hitter against Miracles worth the fact that it does little to other deck types and is that marginal value that much better than our current options.
Between Wear/Tear, Venser, and Council's Judgment, I don't think City of Solitude quite qualifies as exempt from removal, it's just less easily/often removed than other permanents like Xantid Swarm, and Young Pyromancer. Further, City of Solitude feels awkward to me for a number of reasons. The first is the mana cost, you already mentioned the vulnerability to countermagic that is presented there, but unlike something like Dark Confidant or Young Pyromancer you also have no ability to gainfully accelerate that City of Solitude into play. Using something like Lotus Petal for Confidant and Pyromancer would give you an extra 2 dmg from 1 turn of attacks, and an extra turn to accrue advantage, virtually "cycling" the Petal. With City, you can accelerate into it with Petals, or use Dark Ritual for City + Therapy/Duress, but then you have to sit there and rebuild the resources you used up, not really doing much other than forcing the opponent to have countermagic at a smaller window of time.
Moving from there, City of Solitude feels a lot like Pithing Needle, where it disables/hinders stuff, but requires you to likely have some other method of dealing with Counterbalance, since it can still get left on 1 or 2 and if your hand doesnt match up well you'd be outta luck. At that point you're still siding a high number of cards, which somewhat defeats the purpose of running high-power sidedeck cards. As your sb cards get more powerful, youd think youd get away with running only a few of them, like how 2-3 GY hate cards can be enough to keep Dredge in check because all the sb cards are silver bullets. But with City, I see myself still being in the position of siding 5-7 cards at which point it would be really painful to have some of them be so narrow.
Extending on that, I'm wondering if cards like Xantid Swarm or additional storm spells are so much less powerful that there usefulness in other matchups doesn't keep their overall value ahead of City of Solitude. For example, my list for ANT is stock 15 lands, 7 business, 16 accelerators, 7 discard, 12 cantrips, and then I play Grim Tutor and 2 SDT instead of Preordains (so, 8 business total). My boarding plan is as follows:
+ 3 Abrupt Decay
+ 1 Tendrils of Agony
+ 1 Empty the Warrens
- 2 Lotus Petal
- 1 Cabal Ritual
- 1 Cabal Therapy
- 1 Ponder
Depending on what I've seen, I'd also swap more Cabal Therapies out for 2 Xantid Swarms, or leave the Empty the Warrens in the side. At that plan, which, if any, of those cards I'm bringing in is contributing less, in all of the matchups its relevant in, than City of Solitude is contributing in Miracles, the sole matchup its found to be relevant in?
Now, there is one last thing to say, something I love about this card. City of Solitude carries our main gameplan, which is something that Pyromancer/Talrand don't do. Dude-generators detract from actually storming in exchange for giving us a back-door win-con of "fair-ish" play. I don't actually like that, Kotter mentioned this too in an earlier post, but detracting from the main plan just puts you, usually, "all-in" on something your deck is fundamentally not as good achieving. A parallel is Reanimator maining/siding Show and Tell: Reanimator isn't as good at being a Show-and-Tell deck, but it sure beats biting it to bullet hate cards. Aside from the rare Ethersworn Canonist, or SDT+Flusterstorm, though, Miracles doesn't really have a true "silver-bullet" that we're cold to, even the maniacs siding Leylines against Burn/Storm can still bite it to EtW. Miracles, in a somewhat exaggerated form, stillreally only has counters+hate permanents, like Stoneblade but slower in exchanged for more intense forms of countering, filtering, and disruptive permanents. There's nothing there that truly stops the Tendrils or Goblins, and City of Solitude doesn't make me pretend I'm another deck when my main plan is still valid, City of Solitude is probably the closest thing to a "hate card for hate" that isn't Storm spells themselves.
