Least fun deck to play against?

I think we can appreciate that everyone has a different idea of what's fun. According to the DCI, and probably for many people, playing against fast combo decks such as Reanimator and ANT are not fun. For others, getting locked out by Countertop or Dragon Stompy ruins there day. Still others hate getting their face bashed in by Zoo.

(begins rant)

I'm surprised I haven't heard much mention of Lands yet. I haven't played against it much, and although I've been 50-50, so far I've hated the experience. When I play ANT, it's just about the closest thing to goldfishing. When I play Zoo, I hope I topdeck one of my Price of Progresses. If so, the game ends quickly and mercifully.

Otherwise, I need to win a drawn-out 50 minute game (which I did once by decking the opponent naturally), or scoop quickly and hope for a match draw. Even when I'm not playing against Lands, inevitably, the matchup that ends up going overtime involves one of the Lands decks, with permanents on both sides of the board spilling over their allotted space, ending up in a 1-1 or even 0-0 after an hour of wasted time.

For the love of God, Lands players, please include a Mindslaver recursion condition with a Tolaria West search package so that the game can end mercifully

Edit: I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the deck when a successful play strategy includes taking as long as possible to win game 1 so that game 2 ends in a draw after extra turns.

A deck packing 12 spheres effect maindeck, 4 lodestone, 4 thorn, 4 sphere of resistance, 4 Chalices and 4 Trinispheres i just played with. Hope that Wizards, in its great Wisdom, has not created another idiot deck unbanning Grim Monolith, because I don't want to end like Vintage, even with the given proportions.

A special mention goes to Countertop, of course, and to Aggro Loam. Staying there to see the dude taking over and over the same card and making trick with it for 20 minutes is really boring. At least Ichorid is fast, and dredges more per turn.

Of course, also Ad Nauseam Storm was really boring to play against , i guess, if you weren't packing CB+Top or 32 counters post side. Reanimator was fun because you saw them making card disadvantage after card disadvantage to cheat a fatty into play, and then having the other putting Karakas on the table.

I guess, in general, lot of the format was becoming too boring to someone playing slow non-blue control deck, or monocolored Timmy decks.

That's easy: Stasis.

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Originally Posted by Piceli89

A special mention goes to Countertop, of course, and to Aggro Loam. Staying there to see the dude taking over and over the same card and making trick with it for 20 minutes is really boring. At least Ichorid is fast, and dredges more per turn.

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I have to agree on Aggro Loam. I joined the Legacy side event in Grand Prix: Manila (127 players) and this Aggro Loam player kept me in a standstill, I am playing thresh with 2 Tarmogoyfs in play while he had a big Knight of the Reliquary and Countryside Crusher. He was in control, but it was absurd how long the stare down took, turn-after-turn of Loaming and cycling and he can't kill me.

The game was thrilling at the start but totally bored me when he was loaming and nothing new is happening for more than 10 turns. We were called for time. In Game 2.

Dredge is not fun if their deck manages to pull off insane dredge flips. Any form of Stax is not fun. I'd rather play with ANT in all rounds of a tournament rather than facing Stax packing Tangle Wires and Sphere effects.

I don't like playing against Dragon Stompy.

ANT is fine... I like the high stakes and fast games. Same with Reanimator.
Dredge is almost fun to play against because of how fragile but super-powerful it is.
Countertop is alright... a little annoying only in the unoriginality.

Dragon Stompy though... the moon effects are killer for the types of decks I play. Topdecking a fetch is horrible. If I had the stompy base cards though I would totally build it.

Stax decks are annoying. It's virtually impossible to come back from having all your lands nuked with Armageddon and them having a Smokestack on the board (with Trinisphere as well..)

With CounterTop decks, the lockdown usually doesn't happen until after you've established some board position, so I don't think they are as unfun to play against.

I am glad that Reanimator and ANT are nerfed now, I mean the decks won quickly, but it really doesn't feel fun losing on turn 3.

I hate playing against Merfolk. I'd much rather play a whole tournament against Stax than one round against the blue men.

I would say Quinn....

Quinn has this effect of false hope whoever is playing against it. To make things worse, it tries to be a crappy version of Landstill and all those SDT activation. You think Top>Fetch>Top was annoying? Try Top>Scrying Sheets>Top>>Tutor>Top>Scrying Sheets. Runed Halo on your Goyf. Pithing Needle on your Mishra's Factory. Its total BS. Only to have a draw at the end of the round.

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Originally Posted by (nameless one)

I would say Quinn....

Quinn has this effect of false hope whoever is playing against it. To make things worse, it tries to be a crappy version of Landstill and all those SDT activation. You think Top>Fetch>Top was annoying? Try Top>Scrying Sheets>Top>>Tutor>Top>Scrying Sheets. Runed Halo on your Goyf. Pithing Needle on your Mishra's Factory. Its total BS. Only to have a draw at the end of the round.

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Granted, I've never been on the other side of the Quinn matchup, and while it's frustrating, I can't see it being worse than Lands. The Painter/Stone combo at least mercifully ends games while the sun is still up. On the other hand, beating with Mishra's Factory after slowly establishing board control (with whatever mechanism, recurring Engineered Explosives or Tabernacle + recurring Wasteland) is like beating someone with Eternal Dragon under a Humility. God forbid you end up decking your opponent because you managed to use recur an artifact with Academy Ruins for 53 turns. In a matchup against lands, regardless of whether who drops the match, both players lose.

To me it is not even close: Belcher when you are not playing blue. How can a full game of magic be less frustrating than this:
Opponent wins the roll, elects to go first and keeps his hand. Land Grant, Lion's Eye, Rite of Flame, Manamorphose, Dark Ritual, Belcher, Activate. Oh great, I don't get a turn... and unless I have Force of Will there is a 0% chance I win that game.

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Originally Posted by pingveno

To me it is not even close: Belcher when you are not playing blue. How can a full game of magic be less frustrating than this:
Opponent wins the roll, elects to go first and keeps his hand. Land Grant, Lion's Eye, Rite of Flame, Manamorphose, Dark Ritual, Belcher, Activate. Oh great, I don't get a turn... and unless I have Force of Will there is a 0% chance I win that game.

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At least its over quick?

I hate zoo after pridemage.

If Shaharzad was still around, it would be a quick choice.

Past that, I think Stasis takes it.

I get really annoyed at Counterbalance decks though. The ten million top activations while all the while you know you're about to get hit by that counterbalance on whatever you are trying to cast is doubly annoying. It's actually annoying to me to play Counterbalance myself.

I would say either Stasis or Solidarity. Playing against either one is like being molested. All they do is play with themselves, while you are sitting there crying, forced to watch them masturbate.

EDIT:
Also, I hate playing against Ashnod's Coupon.dec. I always wind up buying my opponent a beer.

Lands is the least fun deck to play against if it wins because it does more or less nothing but playing lands and keeping some engines going.

I mostly play zoo, the matchups I enjoy playing are ANT as long as they dont go off on turn 1 or 2 on play... Like the goblin matchup and some counterbalance but without progenitus. I truethully hate the insably slow games against Landstill, lands, stax and such.

lands and stax get my vote.

I'm surprised nobody said Enchantress. I hate the painful sensation when they drop a lock piece after another while still giving you a small (false) hope to manage to break the lock (well, if I bounce the grove, then the karmic justice, then I can play explosives...).

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

I get really annoyed at Counterbalance decks though. The ten million top activations while all the while you know you're about to get hit by that counterbalance on whatever you are trying to cast is doubly annoying.

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This. That's why I play Dredge =)

I hate to play against zoo, annoying broken creatures that can win with the dumpest pilot alive. It represents the wrong direction magic is going since they changed the new card design.

I hate burn.

I can manage to play against and watch ANT, Dredge, Belcher, and CounterTop because they are all skill intensive and tier in their own rights. I can probably tolerate burn decks more than ELVES COMBO!!!!

For the love of Christ, enough with tapping those little green creatures already! That's right replicate a gazillion tokens, yeah that's uber cool!

Belcher. I wanna play Magic, not gamble.

That aside most decks have some unfun Matchups, genereally the ones with few interactions.

I like control and original decks. Aggro isn't too bad either.
Playing combo is a bit lame though.

Counterbalance, Aggroloam, Ichorid g1, Enchantress, Quinn

Landstill. I mean, I love playing against it in tournaments because my record is literally something like 18-3 with combo (all kinds of lists) but I just cant stand watching that boring ass deck play. I think playing against Belcher is more like playing Magic than playing against Landstill, because at least Belcher plays THEIR deck, this pile of shit just reacts to everything and has no unique plan of its own, just counter and stall, attack with lands ... how fucking mindless and robotic. You can usually tell the kinds of people who play it as well, they are people who are quite unoriginal and content with mediocrity. I just can't even begin to understand what kind of idiot doesn't even want to play their deck and only react to their opponents spells it just so damn boring and lacks anything that even resembles entertainment. I also have never seen a pilot play this who looked even remotely happy to be playing the deck. To each their own I guess but I will always despise this deck. I love playing against it because I rarely lose but, it just takes so fucking long (someone ALWAYS goes to time at least once), and has the most unoriginal gameplan in Magic. At least Burn is slightly exciting to play, especially when ur about to enter topdeck mode against fast aggro. You are actually playing your deck, which is really all that matter to me in Magic. I could give a fuck less what my opponent wants to do, I just want to play a bunch of spells and cast Tendrils :)

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Originally Posted by Heresy

I hate burn.

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QFT. I loathe playing against burn with the passion of a thousand firey suns. It's not uncommon to have eight cards in my sideboard that come in against burn if it's even a mildly troubling match up. I have burn BUILT so I can test against it. Ugh.

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Originally Posted by SpoCk0nd0pe

I hate to play against zoo, annoying broken creatures that can win with the dumpest pilot alive. It represents the wrong direction magic is going since they changed the new card design.

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Agreed! Legacy's version of Fires. Sadly it'll probably remain forever viable now.

Lands and dredge is also there, but not because I hate playing against it as I find the matches quite interesting with alot of interaction and mindgames, but because it just doesn't feel like Magic as it was intended... Yay for clever designers being "too clever". Meh.

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Originally Posted by Heresy

I hate burn.

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I think even the Burn players hate Burn. Because they are playing it and it sucks. :P

Zoo, because you know exactly what is going to happen theres rarely ever a tricky draw or real choices they just smash with dudes and burn your face. I always hate playing against creature decks where disruption is classified as "Burn your head", and at least to me, goyf is far more broken than mystical tutor.

One I would be most afraid to face post banning however would be something like lands or UWb Landstill, lands just gained a ton of power by ANT dieing, and entomb going the way of dredge, and landstill no longer has to spend 4-7 board cards to make the combo matchup 50/50

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Originally Posted by Vacrix

I think even the Burn players hate Burn. Because they are playing it and it sucks. :P

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I migrate my Didgeridoo.deck to Burn after Fireblast was printed, and win a lot of tournaments :D

Burn is a combo deck, you need to connect 6-7 spells before your opponent kill you. xD

My vote goes to... Any Prison deck. Stasis, Stax, etc... If they don't let you to play is not fun.

Enchantress is no fun to play with, i mean confinement is just nuts!

Stax- turn 1 trinisphere is not playing magic anymore

Anything lockdown or stall-control. Stax, Landstill, Counterbalance, Stasis, etc. I've played against Winter Orb + Relic Barrier.

I don't mind combo at all, even when im not playing it. As long as it's not lockdown combo. We don't pay thirty or so dollars to twiddle our thumbs while you twiddle your thumbs and then we go to time 30 seconds into game two so you can win the match 1-0. At least with ANT, Belcher, even Painter-Stone the match maybe lasts twenty minutes.

I played ANT against Belcher once. 5 turns was our entire match. Quick rounds are good. 45 minute game ones are not.

This thread is a bit old, but I was inspired to post again after reading coverage of the round 9 feature match at SCG DC.

I've never played against Enchantress before, but after reading excerpts of the mirror match, I hope I never do: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...l_Pozsgay.html

Some of the highlights of the match:

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The first game would be an awkward dance, with both players packing a ton of dead cards, but the sideboarded games would change considerably.

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“Is it possible that we just draw game 1?” Paul wondered, and Mike nodded. “Yep.”

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Now, pretty much neither player could win, but they could be decked; with the Halo in play, once the Angels were all dead the Words of War could no longer be activated, as neither player was a legal target. Then it would be whoever could maintain a Solitary Confinement the longest in order to avoid being decked, unless one player had access to some piece of removal that the other did not. Basically, whoever ran out of cards actually would die, and Paul had the smaller library.

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Paul drew, discarded, and passed the turn. Mike would lose his own Confinement after killing the remaining Angels, but that was irrelevant. He had plenty of cards left in his library, and he sent the final turn to Paul. Paul had just enough cards to force a draw on time, but would certainly have lost if the game had continued two more turns. Rather than draw them both out of Top 8, he conceded to Mike.

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Not much really comes to mind, but perhaps maybe decks packing Smokestacks and Trinispheres. Or playing against a control deck that I am unable to resolve or find anything to take care of a resolved Jace 2. As him/her just sitting there building up the ultimate. That and I simply dislike it when people has half their sideboard devoted against mine.

Decks that trick you into having a chance while you actually don't, and win slowly. The one I hate the most is Enchantress, but Lands and to some extent Stax and CB+Top can fall into this category and create that game state. These are the type of decks that when you are an inch from winning play something that prevents you from doing that, but if you just could find your answer you would be ok. And then you find your answer, but while digging for it they played something else that keeps you from winning. But that's ok, if you just find the answer and then you find it and... so it goes. I hate that so much.

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Originally Posted by Eksem

Decks that trick you into having a chance while you actually don't, and win slowly. The one I hate the most is Enchantress, but Lands and to some extent Stax and CB+Top can fall into this category and create that game state. These are the type of decks that when you are an inch from winning play something that prevents you from doing that, but if you just could find your answer you would be ok. And then you find your answer, but while digging for it they played something else that keeps you from winning. But that's ok, if you just find the answer and then you find it and... so it goes. I hate that so much.

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You made Enchantress and CounterTop sound like a malignant cancer.

Anyway, I'd say it depends on the deck you're playing. Though Stax wins the first prize for the most annyoing artifacts ever printed put in a single deck.

Basically any deck, which does not interact with you (except if you have FoW):

Dredge (most boring deck to play against)
Burn
Belcher
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Prison and Lands are still ok because there is at least some combat going on and you can play more than 4 rounds. Although, if you know you can't win from the beginning on, it is boring, too.

Any deck that wins after resolving a single spell (Sneak and Show is the first in my list).
It just has the "win/loose out of nowhere" feeling in every game with or against that deck.

Storm or Dredge are not in the list 'cause it's interesting to watch people do neat stuff (yeah, I like to play against High Tide).