Survival of the Fittest

[Pippin]

I will admit that I am strongly biased, I played last night with Ubr Dreadstill vs. a guy who drafts and borrowed a Vengevival deck. I had 4 Spellsnare + 3 relic of progenitus MD plus a ton of other hate in the board. He raped me 0-2. Do I suck, maybe? Was I unlucky, maybe? I never got blown out so bad since I played vs. a storm combo deck and his had creatures.

Yeah, you do seem biased. I mean, you lost with counterbalance.deck (UBr Dreadstill) against UG madness. Who knew UG madness was a terrible matchup to counterbalance decks (fast vines, vines costing 4c)... except that it was already shown in data few pages ago. Maybe time to change deck and adapt to metagame in that way?

Would it be nonsense if I as a Merfolk player (theoretically) would complain about goblins and demand lackey/piledriver bannings?
UBr Dreadstill has insane matchup vs combo. Combo has good matchup vs UG madness. <<continue logical thought>>

[Odd Mutation]

Panic claims for banning yet again?

This is actually getting absurd to me.

1. Vengevine gets printed in RoE
2. Someone here points out interaction between Vengevine and Survival of the Fittest
3. Guy who suggested Vengevine gets laughed at, and its pointed out how Vengevine is too slow, and that Retainers + Iona combo is just better
4. Nothing happens for almost a year*, then Caleb brings Survival madness to GP and makes top8
5. Suddenly everyone is playing Survival and Vengevines, and its "most powerfull deck" out there and people start to claim for bans

When people start playing goblins again, putting Siege Gangs turn 2 into play, and make a GP Top 8 performance I predict shouts for lackey banning all over again.

* edit - uh oh, it felt like a year, turns out to be way less sicne RoE was released

Exactly!

Robrecht

[jazzykat]

Yeah, you do seem biased. I mean, you lost with counterbalance.deck (UBr Dreadstill) against UG madness. Who knew UG madness was a terrible matchup to counterbalance decks (fast vines, vines costing 4c)... except that it was already shown in data few pages ago. Maybe time to change deck and adapt to metagame in that way?

Would it be nonsense if I as a Merfolk player (theoretically) would complain about goblins and demand lackey/piledriver bannings?
UBr Dreadstill has insane matchup vs combo. Combo has good matchup vs UG madness. <<continue logical thought>>

Yes I am biased and you missed my point. I think they should unban more cards. Mystical Tutor should be brought back, maybe even Oath.

BTW everyone and their brother says that Vengvival has a tough time vs. combo. I'll be thoroughly testing their claims through the next few weeks.

[(nameless one)]

I think they should unban more cards. Mystical Tutor should be brought back, maybe even Oath.

This. I also want to see Land Tax unbanned. we need to slow down the format.

[Beware]

It's no secret how I feel about Erwin and I'm here to tell you he MASSIVELY overreacted. Survival decks have been around for years! Vengevine is excellent for the deck and people just can't deal with it yet. It's the flavor of the month and Erwin just appealed to the butt-hurt masses who refused to adjust to a changing meta. People fear change, you see.

[Catitas]

In coupe de france there were 3 survivals in top8 and 2 big zoos (those zoos just rape survival, give it a try), check they're sides and you'll find meta adjustment, so instead of complain about a survival just adapt to a diferent meta, most people done that to adjust against reanimator and Ant, true that dci banned mystical, but i dont belive they ban survival...

http://www.magic-ville.com/fr/decks/...98&format=T1.5

[St3B]

I like those decklists and like Catitas said most decks have have adapted to the meta 7 decks play 2 or more Faerie Macabre in their SB.

[Purgatory]

It's no secret how I feel about Erwin and I'm here to tell you he MASSIVELY overreacted. Survival decks have been around for years! Vengevine is excellent for the deck and people just can't deal with it yet. It's the flavor of the month and Erwin just appealed to the butt-hurt masses who refused to adjust to a changing meta. People fear change, you see.

I'm sorry, I have no idea what your opinion on Evan Erwin is (nor do I know other people with five posts' opinions on him either), but I do think he has a point. Sure, Survival builds have (in various forms, but at least here Bant and RBGSA has been seen for some time) been a staple in the metagame for years, though not a tier 1 deck. However, now it is putting up a frightful amount of T16 placements, as Erwin himself says; 5/16 in Nasshville, 5/16 in Baltimore and 5/16 in Minneapolis.

Granted, the metagame will shift and adapt to this new contender, but for now it is doing really, really well, better than what I have seen from a single Survival build ever before.

I don't really agree with his ranting on the Ooze Survival build, however. The results are thanks to Vengevine, and not Necrotic Ooze.

[Beware]

I will concede that the point that he has made about a very popular deck being very popular is correct. That is the only correct assessment he has made about the situation. People haven't adjusted and his hyperbole slinging has only made the situation worse. Now people are talking about when/if Survival will get banned or how every deck folds to it as opposed to card choices to deal with an ever shifting meta. Change is part of the game, people think because they play an Eternal format they never have to worry about the meta and keep playing 3 year old builds to great success.

[GGoober]

I'm sorry, I have no idea what your opinion on Evan Erwin is (nor do I know other people with five posts' opinions on him either), but I do think he has a point. Sure, Survival builds have (in various forms, but at least here Bant and RBGSA has been seen for some time) been a staple in the metagame for years, though not a tier 1 deck. However, now it is putting up a frightful amount of T16 placements, as Erwin himself says; 5/16 in Nasshville, 5/16 in Baltimore and 5/16 in Minneapolis.

Granted, the metagame will shift and adapt to this new contender, but for now it is doing really, really well, better than what I have seen from a single Survival build ever before.

I don't really agree with his ranting on the Ooze Survival build, however. The results are thanks to Vengevine, and not Necrotic Ooze.

Uhm, what about Jund in Standard? And Faeries in Standard when those decks were hot? Doesn't Standard put out more frightening results? The meta adapted and people convinced Jund was broken were proved wrong, then Jund adapted again to become stronger after evolution, yet Jund still exists unbanned (Bloodbraid could well have been banned but since it was format defining, it was left alone and the meta was fine despite complaints). Counterbalance, FOW, Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, AdN, Goyf, StP, alll these are format-defining cards. Survival is just getting its taste. Erwin screaming at this ban seems unjustified. Sure 5/16 in 3 big events is ugly, but let's just take that back to the most 'popular' format Standard before we scream shall we? And it pisses me off that these people with the bigger 'voice' in the MTG scene are the ones that will most impact WotC's decision if they banning principles are influenced at all to begin with. Banning principles should never be a gut feeling, it should be an observation of the meta itself.

[Shabbaman]

I'm sorry, I have no idea what your opinion on Evan Erwin is (nor do I know other people with five posts' opinions on him either), but I do think he has a point. Sure, Survival builds have (in various forms, but at least here Bant and RBGSA has been seen for some time) been a staple in the metagame for years, though not a tier 1 deck. However, now it is putting up a frightful amount of T16 placements, as Erwin himself says; 5/16 in Nasshville, 5/16 in Baltimore and 5/16 in Minneapolis.

Granted, the metagame will shift and adapt to this new contender, but for now it is doing really, really well, better than what I have seen from a single Survival build ever before.

I don't really agree with his ranting on the Ooze Survival build, however. The results are thanks to Vengevine, and not Necrotic Ooze.

So basically it's just VV that's stupid good, no Survival. Survival has always been a format defining card, but not a broken one. I couldn't imagine Legacy without it. Evan Erwin paints a picture of Survival that's far from the truth, if you look at past performance. Survival always needed other broken cards to win anything. Better nix cards like Retainers, cards that have interactions in Legacy that just shouldn't exist. But besides that: wizards is probably happy that a deck with creatures wins, especially with a mythic rare currently in standard.

[Koby]

So basically it's just VV that's stupid good, no Survival. Survival has always been a format defining card, but not a broken one. I couldn't imagine Legacy without it. Evan Erwin paints a picture of Survival that's far from the truth, if you look at past performance. Survival always needed other broken cards to win anything. Better nix cards like Retainers, cards that have interactions in Legacy that just shouldn't exist. But besides that: wizards is probably happy that a deck with creatures wins, especially with a mythic rare currently in standard.

Exactly this. Survival and VV are specifically creature based strategies which WotC states they are inclined to keep around. Mystical Tutor was a problem because it fueled very consistent combo decks.

[Patrunkenphat7]

I would like to point out that 5 of 16 decks in top 16's running Survival is not broken in any way. Yes, Survival decks have been posting great win percentages, but the meta will adjust. How many decks in top 16's play Force of Will? Wasteland? Tarmogoyf? Lord of Atlantis? Sensei's Diving Top? There will always be cards that are prevalent in top 16's for some amount of time, but this will fluctuate. It is not very convincing of Mr. Erwin to cite 5/16 as his main argument, when 6 decks ran Force of Will and 8 (EIGHT! 50% of top 16) decks ran Tarmogoyf. Even a Tendrils deck ran Tarmogoyf in the SB! Is Survival very good right now? Yes. Is it better or even more common than any other card in Legacy? No.

[JACO]

My take on the issue:
Focus on Legacy - Combating Survival

Enjoy.

[GGoober]

I think Jaco wraps it up nicely.



[/thread]

[jrw1985]

I built a copy of UG Vinal (nice, right?) at tappedout.net and have been playtesting it all morning, just to see what the deck mulls like and how it plays. That's the key to understanding your adversary. Here's how the deck usually runs:

Mull to Survival. Hands without Survival just don't get there.
Miss a T1 drop (there are only 4 Noble Heirarches in the deck after all).
T2 play Survival.
T3 Activate Survival to put 2 Vines in GY, pitch and play Rootwalla into Memnite, recur Vines. This only works when there is GGG available. Or, just fill GY with Vines.
T4 Combo out all the Vines

This deck is much slower than people have been giving it credit for. The deck's shaky manabase (only 21 lands, 20 in the GW build that won Nashville) does not help it accrue the Green mana it needs to go off. Mana denial can really hamstring the deck, especially since people seem dead set on running builds with Wasteland as a 4 of.

So hitting a Tropical with a Wasteland can really slow down the draw engine. Also, any time the deck Dazes off Tropical it denies itself another Vine. Being able to out-aggro the deck is entirely possible.

Why has this deck been so successful?

My person belief is that people just aren't used to how it plays yet. The deck isn't overly fast (the best-case scenario for 4 Vines off of Survival is turn 3), it isn't incredibly flexible (without Vines it's basically an Odessey block beatdown deck), and the disruption package isn't anything special. I'm not saying that it's a bad deck by any means, but I do think it's just a little bit trendy at the moment. People need to tune their SBs to beat Vengevine (extirpate) and Survival (Needle), and the Survival deck just doesn't have answers.

[Mana Drain]

Mull to Survival. Hands without Survival just don't get there

You need to play with the deck more. 2 Land, Discard Outlet, Vine, Rootwalla + whatever gets there all the time. And those hands are 35-40%. With 4 Force, 3-4 Daze, and 3-4 Spell Pierce, Madness laughs at your answers.

Honestly, I've been playing the deck for almost 2 months now and the hardest decision is by far "Mull, or not to Mull?". The only time you don't ask that is when you got the "T2 Vine: You scooping yet?" hands. Otherwise, mull like crazy. I've played against decent CB pilots and mulled to 4 for the win. The deck just does what it does if you're not prepared for it.

To anyone having problems with Madness, here's the answer: Play Peacekeeper, Play Pithing Needle, Play Firespout, Play a Tier 1 deck. Seriously, every top deck has a bunch of different ways to beat Survival. Just because you think you can avoid playing it doesn't mean that you shouldn't side 5-6 VERSATILE cards in against it.

Also, don't side in GY hate unless it's Extirpate. We don't care if you remove 1-2 Vines. We have 2 more for a reason.

[jrw1985]

You need to play with the deck more. 2 Land, Discard Outlet, Vine, Rootwalla + whatever gets there all the time. And those hands are 35-40%. With 4 Force, 3-4 Daze, and 3-4 Spell Pierce, Madness laughs at your answers.

A starting hand of 2 lands, 1 8/7-of (discard outlet), 1 4-of (Vine), 1 5/4-of (Rootwalla or Memnite), 2 9-of (disruption) is hardly happening 35-40% of the time. And when it does happen, playing out your entire hand for a 1/1 pump, a 2/2 discard pump, and a 4/3 haste isn't exactly game over for your opponent.

For UG builds the disruption package has been 4 Force, 2 Daze, 3 Stifle. This has been the standard since Caleb's deck in Columbus. It isn't exactly a control deck.

Just for shits and giggles let's look at opening hands and the subsequent mulls for 10 games using the following decklist from 1st place at a Magic-League tournament (http://www.magic-league.com/deck/648...acy_t15.html):

Land (21)
1x Flooded Strand
3x Forest
1x Gaea's Cradle
1x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Tropical Island
1x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wasteland
2x Windswept Heath

Creature (24)
4x Aquamoeba
4x Basking Rootwalla
1x Memnite
4x Noble Hierarch
3x Trygon Predator
4x Vengevine
3x Wild Mongrel
1x Wonder

Instant (9)
2x Daze
4x Force of Will
3x Stifle

Enchantment (4)
4x Survival of the Fittest

Artifact (2)
2x Umezawa's Jitte

Game 1

Vine
Vine
Trygon
Rootwalla
Heirarche
Tropical Island
Misty Rainforest - Mull

Survival
Survival
Heirarche
Stifle
Forest
Gaea's Cradle - Keepable? Survival is only castable off of Heirarche since Cradle won't produce mana without Heirarche in play. Lets look at the next 3 turns draws.
Wasteland
Daze
Tropical Island - Maybe in a situation like this we just should have mulled, so let's.

Trygon
Trygon
Misty Rainforet
Flooded Strand
Wasteland - Mull

Survival
Rootwalla
Flooded Strand
Tropical ISland - Finally a Survival and gas. Let's see the next draws
Wonder
Land - Now the Survival engine can get going, but any counterspell, mana denial, enchantment destruction or discard would have ended the deck's run.

Game 2

heirarche
Trygon
Daze
Force
Misty Rainforest
Flooded Strand
Wasteland - Mull

Survival
Survival
Vine
Vine
Mongrel
Heirarch - No lands, gotta mull. There are only 15 green mana sources in the lands of the deck (Cradle doesn't count in this case), so don't get greedy.

Vine
Mongrel
Forest
Tropical
Misty - Mull, unless you like the idea of playing a slow hand with no disruption that will play itsself out.

Mongrel
Stifle
Cradle
Forest - Mull

Wasteland
Wasteland
Rootwalla - Mull?

Clearly none of the above hands were good starting hands. They all required drawing into something else to get rolling. This game would be lost on Mullagining (which happens all the time in Magic, so let's not freak out).

Game 3

Heirarch
Heirarch
Aquamoeba
Aquamoeba
Rootwalla
Windswept Heath
Island - Mull

Aquamoeba
Aquamoeba
Trygon
Vine
Misty
Wasteland - Mull

Heirarch
Survival
Forest
Forest
Tropical - Once again a hand without disruption that can't even accelerate its mana because it needs the Heirarch to feed Survival. This hand cannot go off until turn 4.

Game 4

Survival
Aquamoeba
Island
Tropical
Tropical
Windswept
Misty - Like before, it has 0 disruption and cannot go off until turn 4, but because it has the Survival I guess it's a keeper.

Game 5

Heirarch
Mongrel
Mongrel
Aquamoeba
Force
Tropical
Windswept - Mull

Rootwalla
Trygon
Mongrel
Stifle
Misty
Misty - Mull

Aquamoeba
Rootwalla
island
Forest
Verdant catacombs - Mull

Trygon
Stifle
Forest
Waste - Mull

Gaea's Cradle
Survival
Rootwalla - Finally a Survival and our only land produces 0 mana. Cool.

Game 6

Vine
Rootwalla
Rootwalla
Trygon
Force
Island
Misty - Mull

Survival
Survival
Mongrel
Island
Forest
Windswept - Can't go off until turn 4, no disruption, but it has Survival and gas so must be a keeper.

Game 7

Heirarch
Force
Daze
Flooded
Windswept
Tropical
Wasteland - Mull

Survival
Mongrel
Memnite
Force
Forest
Flooded Strand - Survival and gas, but Force is dead in hand and you can't go off until turn 4.

Game 8

Survival
Survival
Aqamoeba
Rootwalla
Stifle
Stifle
Tropical - Keep? Lets see the next three cards (Tropical, Forest, Mongrel). Finally a decent hand, but not a wise one to keep.

Game 9

Survival
Vine
heirarch
Force
Wonder
Tropical
Misty - There it is!

Game 10

Survival
Rootwalla
Rootwalla
Heirarch
Force
Stifle
Jitte - Great hand, no land. Is it considered Good Magic to keep this and hope for the ~28% chance of hitting a green land on the next draw? Probably not - Mull

Vine
Cradle
misty
Flooded
Tropical
Windswept - Mull

Stifle
Windswept
Windswept
catacombs
Forest - Mull

Vine
Flooded
Misty
Forest - Mull

Heirarch
Aquamoeba
Waste - Yup...

So there you go. Only 1 game in 10 (#9) that actually had a good opening hand. Game #8 got lucky. The rest mulled into Survival and nothing. I know 10 games is not statistically significant, but it isn't encouraging. Also, the mythical hand of Discard outlet, Vine, Rootwalla, 2 lands didn't occur once. So does the deck only win through getting lucky, or do people just not know how to play against it, or was I mulling completely incorrectly?

Your thoughts?

[GGoober]

Dont' forget that the turn 2 VV discard Rootwalla hands die to an StP :) Well they still get a mongrel and rootwalla I guess after dumping their entire hand, then a Goyf comes up and starts blocking.

But when they don't have the StP, you are happy :)

[Lemnear]

Lol you mull always into Survival and think that proves the Deck is decent. Game 1 Hand 2 and Game 2 Hand 1 are keepable Not Auto-mulls. You have Force, daze, wasteland and an turn 2 trygon that's solid unless you Play vs. Burn. Keeping Game 4 is bullshit, a 5-Lander without any threat only to have survival. Any Pierce, daze, Force, snare, disenchant or shit face-rape you.

Maybe it's wiser to Test this deck against other Decks instead of goldfishing into Survival. That will serve more detailed Information which Hands are acceptable.

But you prove some points, Hands without Survival mostly result in a decent/Bad Aggro grip which scoops to every aggro; protection is critical since you Need 3 mana in Hand, a creature and a survival to Be very good that leaves 2 Slots 4 protection (stifle is Bad iMO, I Never wanna have it with hierarch in Hand); gw is just better, it's more resistent to hate due to their Aggro potential (goofy, Knight) As Plan B which is also good then it comes to mulligans.

I still prefer the unholy Alliance of Fauna shaman, Survival and Natural Order maindeck. Most of the Time if Survival is countered/Not drawn shaman gets you unbeatable Aggro and NO is a nice draw in this deck and IMO better than packing stoneforge mystics and Equipment (and cheaper to Cast too)