Irony, noun.
1) a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by android questioning- also call Socratic irony.
2) a: the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b: a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c: an ironic expression of utterance.
3) a1: incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result 2: an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play- also called dramatic irony/ tragic irony
What's actually happened, by the way, is I've supplied arguments and you've avoided them. You haven't yet defended Morphling's use beyond appealing to your own experience. Why is Morphling any better than other clunky, expensive threats that are easily dealt with?
Why wouldn't it be more effective to use Spire Golem and Venser over Morphling?
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
You've answered your own question numerous times throughout this thread.Originally Posted by TheInfamousBearAssassin
Also, if Morphling sucks because he can be countered and Wrathed, but protects itself the majority of the time, why would a creature that can be countered and Wrathed, but can't protect itself be a better win condition? I mean, you're honestly telling me you'd run Spire Golem over Morphling?
Actually, you supplied hypothetical situations (topdeck mode, losing mode, etc) and I addressed all of them. Did I miss a hypothetical?
Over Morphling?
Perhaps. It's much easier to drop Spire Golem and have counters open. It can block at the stage in the game where you most want blockers.
In conjunction with other utility kill conditions, such as Venser, or perhaps Aeon Chronicler? Perhaps. I'd more likely run another utility creature or CtS in that slot, however.
However, I'm not advocating for Spire Golem. What I'm advocating is for you to produce an actual argument for why Morphling should be played. You haven't yet done it.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Why bother?
He is the founder of Team failure. I think the name says it all.
I think someone asked him how to deal with recurring EE for Call of the skybreaker tokens. It is still unanswerd.
IBA, I'm being 100% serious when I say you win. No internet sarcasm, irony, or anything else. You've won this debate/argument. I have no counters to your points (no pun intended). I seriously can't think of a good reason to run Morphling other than sentimental reasons.
You're really trying to mock someone's self-deprecation?
A bold strategy.
But will it work?
To the answer of how I would deal with recurring EE with CtS;
Very poorly.
I'd hope to draw into another kill condition. Or hope I was maindecking either Spell Burst or C. Wish for Spell Burst.
I would take consolation in the fact that it's easier to avoid than non-recurring counter/removal on a Morphling.
But all that isn't a reason to strive for less resilience rather than more. Obviously I would prefer if ITF did not run a maindeck answer to CtS, but we do what we can, yes?
Oh. I'd also high-five myself mentally for G2 B2B. Although if ITF was going to be a large meta consideration for me, I would simply maindeck the B2B, obviously.
Okay. Cool. Forgive my cynicism, it is the internet and all. People very rarely concede that an argument has been deflated.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Morphling is good for the reason that it is the most flexible creature mono-blue control can run in that slot. Sure, it's not a counterspell, creature kill, or a land, but the rest of the deck is composed of those different pieces. Morphling is the raw kill that this deck can play, and most players aren't going to drop it until around turn eight. This leaves plenty of mana open to use Morphling's abilities and hold couterspells to control the opponent.
Morphling represents inevitability in that it will end the game because it is very difficult to deal with. Most opponents won't burn removal spells on Morphling hoping that the player will "forget" to give it shroud. If control decks have to use a Wrath of God to remove just one creature, doesn't that give us the upper hand? Four mana to destroy a creature is pretty bad in this format. You're going to ramp a Pernicious Deed up to five? Please do.
Why do people play Morphling? Because it's a creature that has counterspells built in. Forget having to deal with targetted removal for the rest of the game - and it doesn't even cost a card. That is why he is good.
I've never been sad to rip a Morphling off the top of my deck. And I've never thought, "Oh hell, I wish this was a Mahamoti Djinn." Yes, the creatures you mentioned come out faster, or are bigger, but they don't have the built in fail-safes that Morphling does. I run Razormane Masticore in this deck alongside Morphling and Rainbow Efreet and that package all together is pretty terrifying. Since each creature does different things, most standard removal can't deal with all of them.
You can dismiss Morphling, but this deck plays out slowly and Morphling fits the curve, even if it costs 4UU a turn. I'd rather play 4UU than eat up counterspells protecting my win condition.
Last edited by Baumeister; 12-10-2008 at 08:16 PM. Reason: grammar
IBA, thanks for claryfying your point.
First of all for the use of an utility creature as kill condition (another massively underplayed card in this attempt is Vendilion Clique btw). This is what the Fahar MUC with Sowers of Temptation backed up by Kira tries to do.
This attempt is a different deck then what the Disk MUC tries to do. The Disk MUC will try to run as few Win Conditions as possible to maximize the number of Couterspells, Draw, Lands and Board Control Artifacts. But if you'd start to use cards like Razormane Masticore or Venser in the maindeck to kill your opponent then you'd have to run more of them because the opponent could kill them pretty easily. That thought was the main reason why I was flaming so much against the lists with 2 Morphling, 1 Meloku. It makes absolutely no sense to run 2 kill conditions that are untargetable / immune to spot removal and then one more powerful backup kill condition with the biggest imaginable target on its forehead. How is this a backup? Why not just 2 Morphling? Or why not go the whole way and play 3 Meloku? If their opponent could kill 2 Morphlings how big is the hope that Meloku will survive? The same is true for Razormane Masticore. You run it as a) a Win Condition or b) a control spell. So
a) If you see it as the backup win condition: If for some reason you were not able to protect your CtS then what are your chances to discard 4 cards and swing for 20 with an Artifact creature?
b) and if you run Razormane Masticore as a control spell then why not just run another control spell instead that doesn't serve the function a) if a) will not be relevant at all? This other control spell that can't kill your opponent will have a higher control value because it can't kill your opponent. Example: One random maindeck Propaganda instead of one random Razormane will win you more games against aggro (Gobs, Icho, ETW tokens, Zoo swarm) than the Razormane Masticore and it will kill exactly as many opponents as the Maticore: Zero.
So using one Utility creature as secondary win is bad because it won't win and using more than one is bad in the hardcore control Disk attempt because it is by definition the weaker draw/counter/land/control card.
____
The next is the hard-to-kill pure win condition. Examples like Decree of Justice or Gigapede are irrelevant in this thread because they can't be played in MUC. Wizards has a good reason to print no blue Decree of Justice!
If you don't count cards like Isleback Spawn then we have access to 5 of these so far (correct me if I forgot one): Morphling, Call the Skybreaker, Jace, Tezzeret and Rainbow Efreet. Imo Jace is Sideboard material because he massively sucks against Aggro and can't function as the primary kill condition. The Rainbow Efreet is strictly outclassed by CtS. So we are left with Tezzeret, CtS and Morphling. And now the card quality will come into play: Morphling is the best of these. This is what testing has shown again and again. When I had drawn CtS or Tezzeret a Morphling would usually have been better. He is way faster than the other options (remember our MUC-Solidarity match? Casting CtS there? Impossible). He will dominate the board with his flying vigilance massive P/T. Just for the case that you run into a Deed/ Wrath deck you may want an alternative, and in these cases you can play a CtS or Tezzeret as second win.
I find this statement worryingly unbased in reality.
This phrasing reveals, to me, that your line of thinking is based around justifying Morphling, rather than asking what is the objective best kill condition for MUC.Sure, it's not a counterspell, creature kill, or a land, but the rest of the deck is composed of those different pieces. Morphling is the raw kill that this deck can play,
There are lots of "raw kills" that the deck can run, and lots of utility beats it could run as well. Let's not discard the alternatives pre-emptively. They're real. They exist.
By turn eight, you have access to a shitton of kill conditions. Some of them are much harder to deal with than Morphling; some have a much bigger impact.and most players aren't going to srop it until around turn eight. This leaves plenty of mana open to use Morphling's abilities and hold couterspells to control the opponent.
The position in which it's the late game, and you have lots of mana and counters open is a very easy one to negotiate from. What about more troublesome scenarios?
Less so than a lot of other kill conditions, ones that are difficult or impossible to effectively counter, or destroy, or both. Morphling is very far from being the most resilient kill condition available, so why run it over those that offer more resiliency?Morphling represents inevitability in that it will end the game because it is very difficult to deal with.
No, it doesn't give you the upper hand, because you've made a previously dead card extremely relevant. And you're reduced to looking for another kill; most other control decks have kill conditions that are in turn difficult for you to deal with, such as Decree of Justice, Eternal Dragon, Gigapede. Haunting Echoes, God forbid.Most opponents won't burn removal spells on Morphling hoping that the player will "forget" to give it shroud. If control decks have to use a Wrath of God to remove just one creature, doesn't that give us the upper hand? Four mana to destroy a creature is pretty bad in this format. You're going to ramp a Pernicious Deed up to five? Please do.
This question is comically different when you don't assume that people behave rationally.Why do people play Morphling?
Him and Isleback Spawn.Because it's a creature that has counterspells built in. Forget having to deal with targetted removal for the rest of the game - and it doesn't even cost a card. That is why he is good.
Of course, Spawn is usually bigger.
And why wouldn't CtS, as a larger, removal-proof flyer without a significantly higher price tag, and which may in fact be cheaper in the long run and certainly has more synergy with Fact or Fiction, be better in that package? Hell, it has more synergy with Razormane Masticore too.I've never been sad to rip a Morphling off the top of my deck. And I've never thought, "Oh hell, I wish this was a Mahamoti Djinn." Yes, the creatures you mentioned come out faster, or are bigger, but they don't have the built in fail-safes that Mrophling does. I run Razormane Masticore in this deck alongside Morphling and Rainbow Efreet and that package all together is pretty terrifying. Since each creature does different things, most standard removal can't deal with all of them.
5UU.I'd rather play 4UU than eat up counterspells protecting my win condition.
Call the Skybreaker costs 5UU.
But otherwise, this is indeed correct.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
Relic is actually really, really awesome. I've been playing with Tao's list posted earlier (with 11 Artifacts and 1 Tezzeret) and you really have so much control over everything.
The spot I've been a little bit leery about is the 2 Capsize. I (almost) always treat it as a 6 mana spell - is this appropriate? Tao, could you explain how you use it, and what other cards you tested in those 2 slots?
Actually... "Sarcasm is proverbially said to be the lowest form of wit.[3] It is often associated with the use of irony" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm).
I think that at least 2 bounce spells are nessecary against Needle on Disk and also because they are good anyway. Repeal, Capsize, Echoing Truth and Cryptic Command are the only playable Bounce spells. I don't want to play Command in one deck with Disk and Fact because they all cost 4 but between the others I really can't argue. I use Repeal atm but that might change.
I was refering to the abilities of Morphling in that sentence, but it disturbs me that you would prefer to pay an entire additional mana cost AND discard a land instead of a creature that shrugs off targetted spells.
Let's compare scenarios:
It's turn six and you have a Call the Skybreaker in hand along with some counterspells, lands, and card drawing. Would you play Call the Skybreaker next turn? It depends of course, but let's say you do. It comes down on turn seven. The opponent destroys it with, say, Snuff Out. Next turn you retrace and put another elemental into play. At the cost of two turns and a land, you have put a 5/5 with flying into play on turn eight which can start dealing damage on turn nine. Hell, that's not bad for a control deck.
Let's say I have Morphling in hand instead of Call the Skybreaker and the same counterspells, lands, and card drawing. On turn six, I lay down a Morphling, activating the shroud ability against Snuff Out if necessary. Turn seven, I attack with Morphling, giving it +2/-2, flying, and shroud for 2UU, dealing five damage. This leaves UUU open for card drawing and counterspells (assuming I played a land). The next turn, I repeat.
As the game progresses, you could put more Elementals into play, but would you? Wrath of God becomes more relevant then and you clearly stated that making that card at all relevant is bad news.
So it clearly does come down to preference. As I see it, there is no other way around your accusations of being "nostalgic".
Please provide possible situations where dropping Morphling for another threat would be better. I'm honestly interested in discussing possible creatures with you. What threat base do you run at the moment?
They have another removal spell after Morphling?
You don't have a counter in hand?
You have to deal with Tombstalker?
They have a counter?
They have a non-targeted removal effect?
They cast Hymn to Tourach before you can cast the spell?
I can keep going. You can continue arguing for Morphling, I guess, but it's absurd to pretend that Morphling is anything but vastly more vulnerable to elimination than Call the Skybreaker.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
@ Baumeister
I can definitely agree that Morphling isn't outdated or irrelevant. From testing I also agree that the majority of times Morphling is just straight up better than CtS.
There are matches where CtS is a better choice. CtS creates similar inevitability as Eternal Dragon does for white control decks (although, E-Dragon provides actual card advantage at times). CtS is stronger than Morphling against heavy board control decks. The drop and forget is important, and it basically turns your lands into post-mortem counterspells against removal. They remove a CtS Token, then you make another for the cost of a land in hand. Turning lands into answers to board control is quite relevant. Obviously there is a loss in tempo, but this is a minor point in the late game of a heavy control matchup.
CtS helps you when you are down against heavy board control decks. You don't need card advantage for CtS to be a threat. Conversely, against heavy control decks, you need to have card advantage for Morphling to be fully operational. I drop Morphling carefully, and I don't have to drop CtS carefully.
Additionally, if you eat unanswered Thoughtseizes or you commonly FoF your blue bomb creature into the GY, then having CtS could be better. I run Mishra's Factory though, so I'm not nearly as scared to pitch to FoW or FoF away my creature. Actually, I really don't have nearly as many threat problems.
Anyways, how many people here actually face heavy board control metagames? Probably not many. Most importantly, does MUC really need the inevitability provided by CtS? I love facing other control decks as MUC. It is a match that I'm very likely to win in the first place, and I'm don't need CtS to help me. There are other matches in which I have much more difficult odds to overcome, and it is usually in these matches where Morphling is stronger than CtS.
CtS helps us win matches we should already be winning. It is not as relevant as Morphling (or Factory for that matter) in some of our more difficult matches.
peace,
4eak
CtS is just too slow, and only relevant against control decks.
I swear to God. I don't understand this.
Where did you people that think CtS is too slow as compared to Morphling learn arithmetic?
If you assume you're keeping only one mana open to protect Morphling, which opens you up to double removal, but we'll go with it, that's a whole whopping 14% less expensive than CtS.
Vs. turning all subsequent Islands into threats...
4eak, what control decks are you thinking of in particular? I can think of lots of other control decks I'd be afraid to play against, or where I'd rely very heavily on drawing/resolving B2B, while piloting MUC.
For my confessions, they burned me with fire/
And found I was for endurance made
I'm flabbergasted. Really, I am. How can you say CtS is too slow when Morphling can't even do a damned thing until you've got six mana you can spare every turn?
Plus, when did we start caring about the speed of control, anyways? Control isn't aggro; it doesn't try to win the game in three to five turns. It keeps your opponent's threats under, GASP, control and allows you to win at your own pace. It's a reactive archetype, not a proactive one.
Your argument makes no sense
People always cared about the speed of control, why do control decks play engineered explosives, spell snare, and fact or fiction over oblivion stone, cryptic command, and opportunity? It's because speed matters, you would always rather have your cards become relevant a turn faster. Yes, I know what a control deck is.
You also underestimate the number of times you can play morphling with only 5 lands in play.
And you're complaining about morphling being mana intensive? The whole point why I would rather take morphling is because it is far LESS mana intensive. Think about it, by the time you use CtS twice you've invested 14 mana and a land. That's 9 morphling activations.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that CtS is a much better card turns 15 and on. I just think that at that point you've probably won the game, and morphling would do the job fine as well. Morphling is also obviously worse than CtS against counters and edicts.
@ TheInfamousBearAssassin
-Morphling requires 5 mana to be cast, CtS requires 7.Where did you people that think CtS is too slow as compared to Morphling learn arithmetic?
-Morphling can deal 10 damage by the time CtS is actually cast, and even if a 2nd CtS is cast, Morphling wins the game earlier. And, there will be times that you spend your load, drop Morphling, and try to win on the spot. Morphling's self protection is relevant when you need to win right now.
-Morphling can both block and attack, which means you can prevent yourself from losing and begin winning earlier in damage races.
-CtS almost always eats control cards, which means you lose at least a turn (or two) to cast it again. Given several control cards, like EE/Academy recursion, an opponent can make the game last for many, many more turns than it normally would. In timed rounds, you don't always have the luxury to fight this war of attrition. Playing this card at home or MWS is worlds different than using it to win a match in 50 minutes.
You and I both know that the average MUC w/CtS game goes on for several turns after Morphling would win it. CtS trades tempo and speed for resilience and inevitability. If you want to argue for the use of CtS, then don't do it on account of the cards "speed".
What heavy control decks are you afraid to play against? Tempo.dec is not what I mean by heavy control either.I can think of lots of other control decks I'd be afraid to play against, or where I'd rely very heavily on drawing/resolving B2B, while piloting MUC
By heavy control, I mean Landstill, MWC, MBC, MUC, and to some extent ITF. These are matches that are already positive (some better than others depending on your build of MUC). Do we really need CtS for these decks? Aren't there other decks which are more troublesome, and is CtS really the best choice with regards to those decks?
Additionally, I generally don't want to draw out these control matches too be long. It can be a struggle to win 2 games in 50 minutes. While CtS makes these matches stronger with no time limit, I am not convinced it is the best answer with a time limit.
CtS is a slower win condition. That isn't necessarily bad, but I don't think we've enough reason to use it as a replacement to a card like Morphling. Morphling is just more flexible and quicker in allowing MUC to change from the control to aggro role. CtS slow rolls into inevitability, and I'm not sure that is what this deck needs.
peace,
4eak
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