Quote Originally Posted by Nestalim View Post
and RUG delver with punish you so hard to play this cluncky pile..
By that logic RUG Delver will punish every single non-combo Abrupt Decay pile of any variety...or is this where someone says Maverick, which might play 2 creatures without ability to clock (Birds/Hierarch + Mother of Runes) into threat into 3-for-1 Terminus, is somehow a more solid deck theory? The only thing that really separates Shardless from any other BUG deck going forward is an uncounterable turn 1 special action and Shardless Agent itself. Turn 1 Hierarch/Birds opener could be used to cobble together a replacement for DRS, but I think the looming threat of "I'm going to threaten a draw 3 in on turn 5, and send discard and fetchlands after Stifle in-hand in the interim" is a stronger strategy than play a mana dork that can't cast a turn 2 Hymn through Wasteland [mutually assured destruction of Hierarch exalting Goyfs and enabling better free attacks with Strix makes me doubt BUG decks are going to run Birds]. DRS might be banned, but Shardless was never dead on principle to RUG Delver when they didn't have a DRS opener previously. Not having DRS simply makes RUG Delver more likely to win a game it probably deserved to anyways, without really cutting into how massively favored Shardless became if it went late. If getting mana off the floor is that hard for Shardless, they can just turn Wastelands to basics.

Strix is still good against Delver, Goyf is still good against Goyf/Goose, and LotV is still good against TNN/Goose. Not seeing how all these going over-the-top, effective strategies will suddenly be abandoned as if DRS was the only thing that allowed them to work. The real holdouts are going to be the ones trying to play Snapcaster Mage without CB (or the significant fixing demands of SCM with 3-4 Decay); it's ok-ish in Blade but still miserable against miracles. Suppose we should take a moment and remember that despite Blade pilots touting their "good" miracles matchup, they got run out of the tier 1 conversation by it. Now if your point is that AggroLoam is going to be better positioned than Shardless, then I don't disagree - I just don't think people are going to stop playing Strix, and this is still the deck for it.