Quote Originally Posted by Sloshthedark View Post
as I'm one of the these people I feel I need to say:

A, I don't see CB or CotV as a problem (for Storm or for legacy), in fact I "like" these cards, CotV is alright as long as it stays where it belongs - in terrible inconsistent decks for people who like to gamble and go against the grain... a minor funpolice to spice things up... CB, I remember when CB was a game over, it's not that long ago, I was fine with back then why would I complain now?

B, MD AD isn't a reaction to CB or CotV, both are way beyond their peak (it seems to me) but because of Leovold or better said with Leovold the threshold where MD AD is a consideration is met for me as almost every deck has a potential "backbreaking" T2 play which makes the overall XP very random, especially since UBG colors can find and defend the Leovold, are widely popular and unpredictable on whether they run it or not
Nearly 50% of the format runs Decay and roughly another 10% run Cavern of Souls according to stats provided in the graphs earlier in the thread - in that environment I should certainly hope CB isn't game over. Earlier @Dice_Box made some good points about why Decay would remain popular in a vacuum, but unless we're trying to cascade into a removal spell more likely to find a target than any other, other diverse options exist (including not splashing for Decay)...however, all these decks are running Decay b/c they can't hope to play magic vs CB if they ran any other card. Without that pressure, you're going to see at least some of those 4 slots reverting to cards with more specialized/streamlined effects.

Now the issue with removal based mindsets is that as long as they can find a removal spell, they won't see a problem. This then morphs into everyone should stop complaining and run removal spells like they do - the issues with this sentiment can be found in my previous posts. Instead I'll pose this question: How prevalent does an answer have to be before the card it is primarily targeted at can be called a problem? We're at ~50%, Misstep for Misstep got to 65%; what's the cut-off? Is there a level of Abrupt Decay meta representation after which you can attribute its selection purely to CB?