Survival's versatility as an engine never cease to amaze me, ever since it's printing, variations of the deck kept dominating, uncrippled by Recurring Nightmare's banning. I agree with what has been said regarding this format, it's the number and variety of decks that abuse it is what's truly scary.
As for the existing hate cards, they are all underestimations and laughable from a Survival pilot's standpoint. A single hate card that stops Survival cannot stop the whole deck from eventually winning. The way the meta should adapt is by playing with faster clocks or dedicated control.
And the only card WotC will ban is Survival of the Fittest, and only when the meta swings into full Survival/anti-Survival mode.
Originally Posted by GoblinSettler
Actually we are talking about the combo of Survival with Vengevines, Survival has been around for a long time and though powerful it hasn't had any thing near the success it has had lately with the printing of Vengevine. As others have stated, before you would need cards like squee/anger and others to make the combo work. Now all you need is 3/4 green mana on turn 3 to do 8/12 damage and win the game next turn.
There are no SB tradegies that nobody knows of, the cards haven't changed. If you hate the graveyard they will just use survival to pitch their shitty creatures to get better ones. Now with the GW version they just have big fatties. I was testing and my opp was pitching Knights to get Vengevines. You need to stop survival, seems simple but it isn't and a resovled survival is gg with vengevines. I agree that the survival/vengevine combo is broken
I was just saying if you don't know how the card works, I find it difficult to understand how you can play/test sb strategies against it.
Last edited by SlopeeJ; 10-21-2010 at 03:24 AM.
For reference: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l..._Fight_It.html
When in doubt, mumble.
When in trouble, delegate.
Nice article. I agree with you 100% that people should not attack the graveyard. I don't board in gravehate vs vengevival at all. You listed the following hate cards: Pithing needle, krosan grip, perish, spell snare, counterspells.... They're all legacy staples IMO, especially pithing needle. These answers are not narrow and can be found in most sideboards. Pithing needle is colorless, costs 1 mana and has dozens of applications outside fighting survival. Cast needle, protect it and win. Even if they eventually kill the needle, it slows down survival enough for you to stabilize and find even more answers.
Yes. Eldrazi Green does it with frightening consistency.
Again. Just because half of you are incapable of your own deck design and can't come up with ways to beat whatever the new thing is, doesn't mean it's overpowered.
People have already begun adjusting. Peacekeeper is a prime example.
You can hate the yard, but you have to do it with Leyline of the Void or Extirpate for maximum effectiveness. Or you can just stop the Survival. With Spell Snare, Spell Pierce, Pithing Needle, Nature's Claim, Qasali Pridemage, Revoke Existence, Krosan Grip, Meddling Mage, Thoughtseize, Duress, Cabal Therapy, etc. Or you can just negate the strategy with things like Peacekeeper. Or something bizarre like Ritual/Sadistic Sacrament. There's plenty of ways to deal with this.
Seriously, though. How many Pithing Needles did you see in Nashville? How much maindecked artifact/enchantment hate? People haven't adjusted yet. Goblins could, for example, start maindecking 3-4 Nature's Claims to deal with a metagame packed with Jittes, Survivals, and the occasional Moat, and the Claims wouldn't be dead in very many matchups. I imagine the occasional killing of a Belcher or Vial in the mirror could prove beneficial as well.
In our tournament tonight, the Survival deck went 1-3. It's a tier 1 deck. But it's not broken. I don't even think it's the format's best deck at the moment. And it's easy to prepare for.
Alter your deck slightly, quit your bitching, and move on.
+1
That's it. Stop moaning and listen to Taco plz.
If you know that many Survival decks are going to be at a tournament please play some hate MD.
Remember Nassif's list? He played Krosan Grip MD for some reason. Well, now the meta has changed, but it's an example of cards that people just play in the SB because they are narrow. Change your lists and you will start to win. Thnks
Team Stimato
He told you a foil from Time Spiral was Summer?
This man must be a Jedi.
this!
very good article. I think the meta would be quite ok if the people start playing spell snare as a 4 off and needles in the sideboard again.
Signed a thousand times! Couldnīt have said it better!
Hopefully this totally redundant discussion will come to an end now.
Dude, please don't! I <3 you way too much!!1!
The following decks have a 50% or better match vs Madness Survival. Stop whining and play one of them.
Storm
Tempo Blue (Team America, Horizons, Canadian Thresh)
Merfolk
Eva Green/Deadguy
Dredge
Calls for banning are almost always the scrubs way out. Real men view a challenge as something to overcome, a puzzle to solve, an opportunity to be had, and the source of evolution.
I know the conversation was dead, and people stopped QQ'ing about the ban, but I have to disagree with the hole "adjust and play hate maindeck" argument.
Basically, deck design now runs towards being able to hate SotF while still able to play against other decks, mostly decks that are also able to fight SotF.
There's a thin difference between Legacy ability to adjust, as for "Fight Lackey with 1cc creatures MD", and legacy being able to fight a tech with more hate. Of course legacy can hate, IT'S LEGACY. It got endless ways to hate everything. But, IF a deck (or a combo of cards, since it's the case) is anoying enough for you to add so specific hates at every deck, then it has a pretty good reason to be concerned as possible ban already.
(Notice how it can be different from counterbalance: you don't need to hate counterbalance to prevent their win, you can play around it and win even if it is online and working with several decks. Decks don't add 4-of K-grips to fight CB thinking "if I don't do this, I lose", although they may add K-grip MD thinking "I could increase my chances").
The other counter-argument for "Legacy adaptation" is that, clearly, SotF + Vengevine will adapt into fighting its hates, as it is happening already, with B versions to discard Krosan/Extirpate (seems to be MVPs). The combo is so light-weight in amount of cards, and such an auto-win against so many decks, that it can run Black for discard, and yet run accelerators and get Progenitus(or something else) via NO, and then all the anti-SotF stuff you boarded and maindecked will be as good as useless.
Well, not stating that it should be banned due to these reasons, but MAYBE these arguments are not strong enough to prevent the ban. People defending not banning either Vvine or SotF are basically stating that people defending the ban is Crying since you can stockpile hate against the combo, while people defending the ban, so far, got pretty good argumentation on that. Looks a lot like trolling to me.
TL;DR version: If a card (or combo) demands more hate than it should, although still counterable, it's Imbalanced.
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
Looks like I may hold off on buying a playset of Survival of the Fittest if it's just going to get banned.
Counterbalance/top? It seems that particular combo had more impact on this format than VV/Survival.
"Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"
Because Evan Erwin is good for anything else but selling Mythic Rares and hyping bad cards for WoTC. :X
I believe Tacosnape is dead on.
This thread is silly.
Same here.
I guess I can use NO-Genitus combo on my elves instead.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
Well, you'll have to read the hole post then.
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
IMHO, one of the biggest problems with WotC and Banning cards is not having a formula to determine whether or not a card should be banned.
This problem is proliferated when WotC gives unspecified and poorly justified reasons for banning a card. Mystical Tutor is the most obvious example of this. While it is true that Survival decks have been dominate as of late, it would be extremely hypocritical of WotC to ban Survival of the Fittest when its allowed decks like Jund to dominate a format for over a year. As has been already noted, Legacy marco level meta games take longer to adjust because there are fewer events and because fewer top level players dedicate a lot of time to innovating the format.
The problems of calling for banning are further compounded when people who WotC is likely to listen to IE "The Magic Show" call for the card to be banned without reasonable justification. I'll start up front saying I like the Magic Show and have watched it for years (and own the playmat!). However, if someone is going to call for a card to be banned and they're a well respected person in the Magic community, they have an ethical responsibility to provide some compelling reasons to support such a claim. I've watched the most recent episode and there is not a lot of justification for calling for a banning. I believe two top 16 lists where cited. However, Merfolk, Goblins, Zoo Counterbalance and Aggro Loam have all had strong showings of a similar level in the past and that hasn't been justification for banning. I'm fine with authors calling for cards to be banned, but I think there needs to be some level of explanation given beyond citing a few 16 results. Even pro level players ought to at least explain their thought process rather than just name drop.
There is a story from a our local meta game I'd like to share as it relates to some of the problems associated with this card. We have a relativity young player at our shop who was loosing to Survival for the previous two weeks. He was playing NO CounterTop and was getting beat with a great deal of consistency. We asked him what he was boarding in and he told us Krosan Grip. While Grip is a great card, in many ways its not necessarily effective against Survival decks. For example, If I'm playing against the Survival Player and I keep a hand that has three lands, 3 business spells and a Grip, I'll decide to keep. The turns play out like this
T1 (Survival Player): Land, Noble Heirarch, Pass
T1 (NO Bant Player): Land, Top, Pass
T2 (Survival Player): Land, Survival of the Fittest (NO attempts to Force of Will, which Survival Player counters with FoW), pass
T2 (NO Bant Player): Land, Counterbalance, pass
T3 (Survival Player): Land, activate Survival four times, bring back 2-3 Vengevines (Depending on the build) and swing for 8-12
T3 (NO Bant Player): Krosan Grip?
Grip is a fine card against a lot of problematic enchantments and artifacts in Legacy. Its also not terrible against Survival, but as the above example illustrates, its not that effective at being an answer to Survival. One of the most basic elements in designing a deck is understanding the roles of the cards in your Sideboard. Grip has long been a staple in Legacy sideboards, but it is not an answer to Survival the way it is to Counterbalance. Sure, Grip isn't terrible, but its also not good. Cards like Pithing Needle are a fantastic answer to Survival. Most of Survival's ways to answer Needle are slow and vulnerable to just about anything. Survival decks also have the quality of being terrible without Survival active as they are usually just inferior or average beatdown down decks.
I'm with a lot of people here that Survival should not be banned. A recent good showing for a "new" deck is not justification for banning it. As several people have pointed out, its new and shiny so a lot of people are playing it. Its also the first time that Survival is getting any mainstream attention and success which is also adding to its popularity and desire for people to pick up and play the deck. Plus, Survival is not the true problem here. The problem is the interaction with Survival and Vengevine. Survival decks have not historically been successful in Legacy. Its only since the interactions with Vengevine in recent results that Survival has been so successful.
As an aside, we've been testing and so far, these are some cards we've found to be successful in combating Survival:
Needle, Nature's Claim, Duress, Thoughtseize, Extirpate, Perish (kind of), Peacekeeper, Leon Arbiter, Trinisphere, Spell Snare and Spell Pierce.
Last edited by Fossil4182; 10-22-2010 at 11:00 AM. Reason: Revision of Statements
Not that I don't agree with Grip being worse than other answers to Survival, but your example is one of those, "Best possible draw," Kind of examples I hate to see in threads like this about how good a given card or decktype is. I mean, that is really the dream draw for them and it's going to happen maybe once or twice a tournament if that.
Survival has been successful in Legacy before. In fact it was a deck to beat for the first several years of the format and has popped up again a couple of times since then. The UGW list has had a fair amount of success in the past year, it was 3rd in Nashville and even before Vengevine came out it won several large events. Again, that doesn't mean it's too strong, just that we have been here before.
big links in sigs are obnoxious -PR
Don't disrespect my dojo dude...
Sweep the leg!
It's the first time I'm packing dedicated hate for Survival of the Fittest, instead of hate for enchantments/graveyard in general that happens to work against Survival as well. There's a big difference there.
About UG Madness there's quite a bit more to it.
1. The deck doesn't mulligan well at all
2. Because of the lack of library manipulation and the relatively low land count it's entirely possible to landscrew them
3. Starts without Survival aren't even that hot, Mongrel into Vengevine and Rootwalla is beatable by many decks
4. Getting Vengevines back isn't as easy as it sounds without survival
5. Because of their blue count they can't really consistently counter things without having mana up
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