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And they'll likely to be in the next seventy to eighty pages within the infinite framework of this thread. So I'm entitled to share my thoughts without the restriction of reading a trove of speculation like everyone else is, thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by MorphBerlin
Before Miracles, hard blue control decks were disappearing from Legacy altogether.Quote:
Originally Posted by Barook
Either way, there is all of zero grounds on which to say another hard control deck would emerge to fill the hole that Miracles would leave (should it be banned out). Nothing but baseless speculation!
I guess it depends on what you mean by 'hard' control. many people don't want to acknowledge that Miracles (Ponder or legends builds) are significantly less aggressive than other "control" decks like Thieves, Stone-Blade, Thopter Factory, Stiffle-Naught, etc. Those decks can muster a lot more pressure than Miracles a lot sooner and more easily.
While it's certainly possible that a control deck with ThopterSword is more aggressive than Miracles, it's such a mana intensive, clunky combo that I'd imagine the deck would likely have a similarly hard time taking a beatdown role.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
That being said, the only reasonable arguments against nerfing Miracles are that this is the first time in almost two years that the meta looks settled and there's nothing egregiously wrong with the format (ignoring the longstanding Brainstorm controversy) so WotC should give people more time to adapt before banning something, and that it stops the format from being overrun by Delver variants. One thing that shouldn't matter is how its games play out. If the deck is too good, it's too good regardless of whether it does something unusual or not, or even whether people enjoy it; the Caw Blade mirror is widely regarded as a highly enjoyable matchup to play, but that doesn't mean the deck wasn't completely dominant in Standard.
My current feeling is that Miracles is right on the line of being too good and too hard to answer to go through this update untouched. Which side of the line I ultimately come down on varies moment to moment.
Unban gush and balance. Watch it all burn
I agree with this, along with franticQuote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
While we're making those kinds of posts, Fastbond too?
Holy fuck I'd kill for a fastbond or 4 in enchantressQuote:
Originally Posted by Zombie
Do you have data on hard blue control disappearing before miracles (dates and what decks were replacing them)? Is this a reference to the printing of Delver of Secrets?Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
The second statement is fairly broad; are you insinuating that you can't have hard blue control without the ability to counter spells without loss of cards from hand? We've discussed that earlier, but it's odd to effectively say without the card Counterbalance there can be no control. Moreover Tundra is a blue dual; of course decks will emerge that would utilize it...and these decks can't really be tempo/aggro (StP lifegain) nor combo (because white cards), which kind of automatically qualifies them as control. I guess we can take a moment to say that TinFins and Doomsday run Tundra for Mentor plan B, and that there are pretty poorly performing Tundra Delver decks.
The other control decks listed there (which aren't what miracles directly replaces i.e Blade variants) have poor miracles matchups. Then they have to contend with what miracles did to the meta where you're looking at only ~20% combo...so now they get to play vs an overabundance of fair decks who are overloaded with Decay or control mirrors they can't really win. If there's a control list with a great (not good, since decks with 'good' miracles m/u's seem to win <50% of the time); the closest thing I can come up with is maindeck Bosejus in R/G lands and that's not exactly a healthy way to deal with Counterbalance being in the format. If you're an optimist, I guess we can also maybe throw Tezz in the mix, but that one is having cost issues atm (Tomb, City, Nether Void, The Abyss, and Transmute all being hit by RL buyouts).
I mean it's mostly that a control deck in the past used like Standstill as an advantage and turn 1 Delvers and Deathrites really make that a piss poor plan. It's better when your card average engine is counter balance and top and you get cheap instant speed wraths. I do think if miracles were banned (Top or maybe Terminus ban) that there likely wouldn't be a top tier control deck. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Aggro isn't a thing right now.
For the year of 2013 (just before Miracles took over) Blade Control or Patriot Blade was a DTB 9 out of the 12 months that year.
And those decks didn't run SDT.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
That's what people seem to gloss over; most people get that grixis Delver is better than RUG Delver and Shardless BUG is better than jund - but these decks are better b/c the other ones are somewhere between significantly less good and generally poorly performing. People don't assess Blade decks vs the format, they note that miracles is better leading to: because miracles is better it must be that Blade decks are 'bad' like jund or RUG Delver.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
The comparison of Blade decks to miracles is more akin to comparing today's grixis Delver vs the DTT-using grixis Pyro; of course you'd overwhelmingly choose the broken one. It's not that Blade decks cannot possibly be outdated/unable to compete in a future meta without miracles, just that people seem to want to skip over making and defending that point.
I still don't think that the fact that Miracles has proven to be the only playable UW decks currently is an argument and nor is the fate of UWx Blade decks, but the SHEER NUMBER of archetypes total, which diminished during Miracles 4-year rise. Canadian T.Hold, UR Delver, Maverick, Jund, Junk, Blade, NicFit, burn and many more decks became unplayable due to being unable to fight back Counterbalance, repeating instant Boardwipes or the cardadvantage of Snapcaster/Jace/Terminus/Counterbalance
It's not about bringing back more Delver Variants or Blade or any certain deck, but about the natural Predators of these Tempo decks, because atm you play an average of 5 out of 7 rounds in a big tournament against Miracles or a BGx deck with Decays
So...Quote:
Originally Posted by Fox
Deathblade, Bant Midramge, are both not midrange decks, and Patriot Delver is not a Tempo deck?
Nether of which are hard control decks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Dice_Box
For healthy Diversity, we don't just need a lrge number of archetypes - we need these teir archetypes to be as distinct as possible. eg - a 15% meta-share for 4-Clolour Delver is probably fine if that's the only tempo deck in the format. But if Thresh, team America, and R/U Devler are 7-8%. it's too much tempo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
That's the argument. Trading our one and only true control deck will hurt diversity even if we get three or four good-stuff midrange decks back in exchange.
I don't recall Nic Fit ever being popular but and I don't think Burn is unplayable now (Exquisite Firecraft is really good) but I think that your point of those other decks being replaced by BGx decks is pretty spot on though I think it makes case for how great Decay + Deathrite are. Zooming in a bit, Canadian Threshold has a harder time beating decks like Miracles (solid manabase) and is worse than other Delver variants, no idea about UR Delver because I haven't paid much attention to it, Maverick is a worse disruptive deck than D&T and a worse KotR deck than Aggro Loam, the midrange decks weren't as good as other options like Shardless or Aggro Loam. Of course those aren't the only reasons but those are the big ones of why they aren't seeing play, in my opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Like aggro not being a thing for years before Eldrazi gave the format the aggro archetype back? Aggro being weak to combo is part of the holy trinity, but also being weak against T2 instant speed Super Wraths that are extremely hard to deal with is just dumb. E.g. I played T1 Mimic, T2 TKS, my opponent brainstorms in response to protect his key cards and setting up a T2 Terminus, followed up by SDT. :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
I remember the time when Maverick was so dominant, people in this thread talked about banning GSZ. But then Miracles came along and degraded Maverick into a T2 deck in record time. Sure, RtR with DRS, AD and RiP being three strikes against KotR was the deathblow to the deck, but being dogshit vs Miracles played a signicant part of Maverick's downfall.Quote:
Originally Posted by Amon Amarth
Food for thought: What people forget to mention is that Miracles was not only the top dog of the format for several years now, but also being able to keep up with or surpass decks powered by banned cards in terms of performance. Miracles is always the top deck of month or a very close second, even during the Delve era.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amon Amarth
Mind that I am unable to track every archeype in the last 5 years and what the exact causes were for each one to diminish, but we can track metagame shifts by expansion and name causalities of these shifts like the vanishing of GSZ in the format outside of Elves, which I link to the downfall of Maverick, NicFit and similar midrange aggro subtypes, who seem to be unplayable with the meta pretty much split up between Storm, S&T, Miracles, Chalice.dec and BGx.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
We can continue detailed analysis, but I however think its enough to look at the plain data showing that the Miracles slice jumped from 2012-2016 from 7,5% of the metagame (indicator Counterbalance & Entreat) to 18,5% and the BGx decks from 12,1% (indicator Bayou) to 26,5%.
Its factor 2.46 for Miracles and 2,19 for BGx in the last 4 years with a whooping 45% of the Metagame being on either Miracles or BGx (11% of it being Shardless), 6,8% Eldrazi, 4% Storm, 11,7% Grixis Delver, 5,7% Lands.dec, 6% D&T and 4,8% S&T, resulting into 84% of the whole Legacy metagame playing one of these archeypes
Let that sink in.
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Edit: This means that Counterbalance, Abrupt Decay, Chalice and FoW are the cornerstones of the format, which you have to play/beat or stay at home #4PillarsOfTheFormat
There is no rule that says there must be one in the format.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
There's no requirement that a deck like that has to be in Legacy when there are so many other decks that don't exist. If you need near creatureless decks with permission to be a thing that's fine, but don't pretend legacy suddenly dies without it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Crimhead
The assertion that this kind of deck can't exist isn't even true. It may not be the only deck with a two-digit percentage representative in the metagame but it can exist without Top, Terminus or Counterbalance.
I also think the assertion that Miracles doesn't present threats early in the game is untrue as well, or at least subjective. T1 Top, T2 CB might as well be a Progenitus against some decks. An early Clique backed with enough permission can win the game out of nowhere. And both Mentor and Entreat arrive and end the game really quickly -- as someone said, they're not waiting to drop an Air Elemental.
Lemnear makes the correct point. You show up to a tournament and you either play against Miracles or Abrupt Decay. You build a deck and you splash for Decay. Decay was honestly probably the wrong way to solve a problem that should've just been a Counterbalance ban because it pushes out other grindy control cards like the Thopter combo and hammers most non-blue answers to combo, thus pushing people more towards Counterbalance-Top and away from other strategies, DESPITE the fact that Decay exists, because there are so many ways for the Miracles player to beat it.
Anyway. Interesting to see what will happen on Monday.