Survival of the Fittest

[Vacrix]

Sure but they play minimal protection because they have a demanding maindeck when you consider that they have to pack a decent number of creatures and sometimes a toolbox to make Survival a more lucrative business spell. I've seen builds that drop the countermagic to as low as 7. Do you really think you are protecting a Survival consistently? The deck cannot do that. It simply lacks the slots.

Survival is certainly 'doing' something in the first few turns of the game but the scope of 'doing' is completely different when you look at what storm combo can do in three turns.

[SurFitOfTheVine]

If you seriously think that Survival decks are doing nothing until turn 3, you should either play with more competent opponents or watch more videos. Turn 1 Noble Hierarch (which is a common thing in all versions of Survival) usually demands immediate answer and depending on the build, they also have Daze/Spell Pierce/FoW, StP and/or Thoughtseize, which allow them to succesfully resolve their engine.

That's like saying that you can't beat Jacestill because pretty much all the cards are either counters/removal which allows it to win with Jace without any problems.

[Rico Suave]

Rico:

I think LED is a good comparison. But for different reasons. What you said parrots what I heard from a lot of T1 players over the years. Even read an article on SCG about it 4 or 5 years ago. The thought runs something like this:

"Man, those old school T1 players were idiots. Playing bad things like Morphling and Lightning Bolt when they should've been playing with Workshop and Burning Wish. Those cards are so fundamentally broken!"

Ecept they weren't. It's not that LED was a junk rare and Burning Wish was Cunning Wish's poor cousin because people were too stupid to break them, it's because they couldn't be broken until the storm mechanic. Imagine if storm was part of the resolution instead of a trigger upon casting. LED would still be a junk rare and Burning. Wish would still be a vaguely unplayable limited tutor.

Until Mirrodin came out, Stax was a tier 2 deck at best, and that's being generous.

It's not a new way of using it that is propelling SotF forward, it's Vengevine, pure and simple. Is anyone HONESTLY going to tell me that they'd be scared of a Survival deck that used Rootwallas to put Nether Shadows and Bloodghasts into play??

The difference is that you can't ban en entire mechanic. So storm doesn't go, LED does. But Vengevine is 1 card, and it's not the mechanic that breaks it, it's the size. Leaving Survival in the format does little to limit design space. And of the two, Survival is more fun. It's a vaguely playable engine that has never dominated the format but always been at the fringes. Oh, it was overrepresented at the birth of the format, but the first couple of Worlds at Gen Con showed that it wasn't broken.

If they printed a card that broke the fuck out of Lifeline, would you call for it to be banned as an enabler? What about Recycle? Both of those cards could be overpowered if the right card was printed. But sometimes the enabler is more fair than the cards being abused with it.

The storm mechanic was in T1 for about 8-9 months before LED and B.Wish were restricted. It wasn't the introduction of storm that made LED and B.Wish good, it was the point where someone realized they could find Yawgmoth's Will way too early with way too much mana. Who cares what the win condition is at that point?

If you ban Vengevine, people will still have the same combo potential with Survival. Instead of paying 6 to set up Vengevine attacks for 16, we'll just see people play a Necrotic Ooze combo or something for the same amount of mana and deal 20. The point is - who cares what the win condition is when you resolve Survival with tons of mana to spare?

Pandora's Box has been opened, and there is no closing it and undoing what has been released. Vengevine is just the beginning.

[majikal]

If you ban Vengevine, people will still have the same combo potential with Survival. Instead of paying 6 to set up Vengevine attacks for 16, we'll just see people play a Necrotic Ooze combo or something for the same amount of mana and deal 20. The point is - who cares what the win condition is when you resolve Survival with tons of mana to spare?

So instead of using Survival like they normally would and getting free, hasty 4/3's for doing so, they have to spend 3GGGGBB and actually resolve a creature? THAT'S SO BROKEN!

Pandora's Box has been opened, and there is no closing it and undoing what has been released. Vengevine is just the beginning.

THE SKY IS FALLING!

[SurFitOfTheVine]

So instead of using Survival like they normally would and getting free, hasty 4/3's for doing so, they have to spend 3GGGGBB and actually resolve a creature? THAT'S SO BROKEN!


THE SKY IS FALLING!

True. Vengevine would be the card to ban, not Survival. They won't ban Vengevine though, it's bad for business.

[practical joke]

They won't ban survival: both decks aren't broken.

Vengevival's usual hands are like this:

forest, force, survival, goyf, vengevine, vengevine, rootwalla:

Even brainstorm can't fix the clunkyness of this deck.


And the deck hardly works without survival anyways.

It won't be banned, because it's far from broken.

[Phoenix Ignition]

So instead of using Survival like they normally would and getting free, hasty 4/3's for doing so, they have to spend 3GGGGBB and actually resolve a creature? THAT'S SO BROKEN!

Not to mention Vengevine at least beats for a decent amount without Survival putting him out there. If you get an opening hand with Ooze you're not very likely to be excited. None of the cards needed for the Ooze combo are worth having in a deck by themselves, whereas Vengevine still synergizes with Wild Mongrel and Intuition, making it not a dead card (like pretty much every combo creature in any other survival build).

[Marske]

I played Ooze Survival at the Dutch Legacy Championship yesterday to a 5-0-3 Finish (I was standing 5-0-1 at one point) and although the deck is totally unfair at certain points it's nowhere near "broken" enough to warrant any bannings. Historically the DCI has always banned the Engine instead of the Kill condition (In this case Survival instead of Vengevine) but I don't think either should be handled at this point. Giving the format some time to adjust is probably all that's needed. It's not like Vengevine didn't make a similar splash in T2 a while back, untill they figured out how to deal with it.

[Nessaja]

Yesterday at the Dutch National Championships, Vengevine Survival was pretty much fixed by combo and landstil (control)l. Even though it was dominant, it was mostly found at the lower tables. For reference, top 8:

1) ANT
2) TES
3/4) Sneaky Show
3/4) 43 Land
5/6/7/8) Ooze survival
5/6/7/8) Goblins
5/6/7/8) Dark Tempo Thresh
5/6/7/8) BGW New Horizons

[Marske]

Even though it was dominant, it was mostly found at the lower tables.

This doesn't make any sense at all. unless "dominant" by your criteria is "X % of the meta" in which case I'd say it was the most played deck which doesn't make it dominant at all (not even sure if this was true). Domination would be if the top 8 where 7 Survival decks and 1 lucky bastard, which obviously wasn't the case here.

[SpikeyMikey]

Oh man, and the ridiculous hyperbole flies. Demonic Tutor? If Survival is that busted, why didn't it make T8s before Vengevine?

And Intuition is infinitely slower? It costs 5 mana to put two vines in yard with SotF, unless you've got a vine in your hand already, then it's 4. And it's 1GGGG. Or Intuition does it for 2U. And brings the deck's blue count to 19 which means they can more consistently use FoW. The difference is that it's not recursive. But banning SotF won't kill the deck, not by a long shot.

It's becoming obvious that nothing productive is coming out of this thread. The lines are drawn and tempers are running high. I'm out.

[Nessaja]

This doesn't make any sense at all. unless "dominant" by your criteria is "X % of the meta" in which case I'd say it was the most played deck which doesn't make it dominant at all (not even sure if this was true).

Dominant in numbers? You already answered your own question. Dominance doesn't neccesarily refer to domination and you can certainly make that up out of the context. Less complaining, more discussion.

[kkoie]

Seems to me the fundamental arguement in this thread when it comes to the for and against crowd on the "to ban or not to ban" debate is the definition of Dominance. What defines a dominant deck? Does it have to pull shenanigans like Flash did at the Columbus Grand Prix? Or is it something else?

I guess the first step to determening that is to fire a question at the crowd that is against the idea of a ban. At what point, minimally, does Surviving Veggies have to dominate, to warrent the Ban hammer?

[Rico Suave]

So instead of using Survival like they normally would and getting free, hasty 4/3's for doing so, they have to spend 3GGGGBB and actually resolve a creature? THAT'S SO BROKEN!


THE SKY IS FALLING!

I'm sorry if you feel that caps lock and missing the point is going to provide a productive conversation. I thought this thread was going to be full of idiots and a waste of time, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. You, however, have completely removed that doubt and replaced it with certainty.

Vengevine makes Survival better.

Survival makes Vengevine playable.

When you learn the difference, then we can talk some more.

[majikal]

I'm sorry if you feel that caps lock and missing the point is going to provide a productive conversation. I thought this thread was going to be full of idiots and a waste of time, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. You, however, have completely removed that doubt and replaced it with certainty.

Well I thought we were a bit more mature than resulting to ad hominem attacks, but I suppose when your argument doesn't hold water you have to draw attention away from that fact. Fair play, I guess.

Vengevine makes Survival better.

Survival makes Vengevine playable.

When you learn the difference, then we can talk some more.

Nobody is denying that Vengevine makes Survival better. However, I posit that Vengevine will still be playable (and a problem) even without Survival. All it requires is a way to put it in the graveyard.

It's not so much a clear-cut case of Engine vs Outlet - Vengevine combined with any number of discard effects creates an engine. It's just that with Survival you get a double engine. In this case, we have one card quality engine (Survival) which traditionally requires a lot of mana and cards, and then we have a free recursion engine on top of that engine (Vengevine + dudes) that rewards you for simply doing what Survival of the Fittest does best (discarding creatures), while simultaneously synergizing on a very high level with the entirety of the rest of the deck (Wild Mongrel, Fauna Shaman, Intuition, LED, etc).

Not such a simple decision, although IF (big if) anything needs to banned, I am a proponent of cutting out the free, uncounterable part of the engine, which is Vengevine, as history shows us that Survival of the Fittest plays fair when it actually has to resolve spells in order to win.

On the flip side, should Survival get the axe, I'm 100% certain that decks sporting Intuition as a replacement for Survival will still wreck up tournaments with angry plants and Fauna Shamans. Free, huge dudes are free, huge dudes, no matter what you use to make them, and as long as they exist, people will find a way to abuse them.

[Marske]

Dominant in numbers? You already answered your own question. Dominance doesn't neccesarily refer to domination and you can certainly make that up out of the context. Less complaining, more discussion.

Well It wasn't a complaint, it was an observation. A deck can be totally dominant in numbers (going by your definition) and not warrant any bannings because everybody beats it... My Red Flag jumps up when a deck is Dominating (by the standards I explained in my earlier post)... the fact that a lot of people choose to play a certain deck should never warrant any bannings, the fact that the deck rakes up all top 8 slots should.

To add another 0.02 to this discussion.

As long as people willing to beat Survival decks (with non survival decks) are able to do so with some adjustments I don't see any reason to ban anything. During the Dutch Legacy Championship the Survival decks where kept "in check" by people having adjusted their SB for it (running needles, yard hate, peacekeeper and what not) or running combo decks (TES, ANT) and as a result Survival decks didn't top 8 all that much (only 1 made it out of 200+ players with plenty Survival decks present). Until we get to the point that not playing Survival is just plain wrong or people that include tons of hate maindeck lose a huge amount of the time this entire discussion is kinda of pointless imho.

So you need to adjust to the new deck that takes you by surprise, so you need to rework sideboarding maybe even include a maindeck answer or switch to a totally new deck that's Magic folks, that's how the game works. Survival decks are "unfair" at certain points I won't disagree there, but they are totally fair in the fact that when you want to beat them, you can without giving away a lot against other matchups. For this reason, I don't believe the DCI will take any action regarding Survival or Vengevine as it's well within their comfort zone as Forsythe once defined it (interview can be found here).

People not taking it into account or not using the correct cards fighting it are going to be beaten, people that do include the right cards and / or strategy are perfectly capable of beating it.

[Rico Suave]

People not taking it into account or not using the correct cards fighting it are going to be beaten, people that do include the right cards and / or strategy are perfectly capable of beating it.

More to the point, it wasn't just that people could beat Survival. People could beat Academy when it was unbanned too.

The real point is that there were a variety of strategies and decks which were beating Survival as demonstrated by that tournament, and they didn't have to jump through hoops to do so. If only one deck could beat Survival and it had to warp itself so much that it lost to every other deck, then clearly Survival would need to go. But that is not the case here.

[Marske]

@Rico_Suave,
Once again you get the entire point of my argument ;)

[Rune]

Some interesting stats from Magic-League. Since GP Columbus, every trial or master tournament has had a Vengevine Survival deck of some kind in the finals. I think these results are more interesting than those from MTGO because there are a lot more people playing in them, and there are no monetary constraints to prevent people from playing the deck they believe has the best chance of winning.



Nov 12 - 1st Ooze Survival beats Team America in finals

Nov 4 - 2nd UG Survival loses to Aggro Loam in finals

Oct 24 (Master) - 2nd UG Survival loses to Dredge in finals. 4 Vengevine Survival decks in top8

Oct 21 - 1st UG Survival beats Merfolk in finals

Oct 14 - 1st Bant Survival with Vengevines beats ANT in finals

Oct 7 - 1st GW Survival beats Goblins in finals

Sep 29 - 1st GW Survival beats NO Elves in finals

Sep 22 - 1st GW Survival beats UG Survival in finals

Sep 15 - 1st UG Survival beats Hive Mind in finals

Sep 8 - 1st GW Survival beats Merfolk in finals

Sep 5 - 2nd UG Survival loses in finals (somehow?) to Belcher

Aug 25 - 1st UG Survival beats UWb Landstill in finals

Aug 18 - 1st GW Survival beats Uw Merfolk in finals

Aug 11 - 2nd UG Survival loses to Goblins in finals

Aug 1 - Saito wins GP Columbus, UG Madness/Vengevine Survival becomes publicly known

Jul 28 - No Survival decks

Jul 26 - 1st GW Survival beats Merfolk in finals

Jul 22 - No Survival decks

Jul 18 - No Survival decks

Jul 14 - 2nd GW Survival loses to Aeon Bridge in finals

[ryO!]

# MLL 3 - Cerro Maggiore (Italy) - T1.5 106 players
07/11/2010
1 - One Faerie
2 - Survival GW (4vv & 4sotf)
3 - DreadStill
4 - Survival (no vv & 4 sotf)
5 - Doomsday
6 - Big Zoo
7 - Landstil
8 - Countertop
(http://www.magic-ville.com/fr/decks/decklists?event=546 list are on the left corner the 8 links)
seems like an healthy format to me

# France - T1.5 52 players
13/11/2010
1-Ant
2-Rock Junk Dark Horizon W/E
3-Cunning Ant
4-Maverick
5-LandStill
6-(was not a survival deck just can't remember)
7-Ant
8-(was not a survival deck just can't remember)


So anyway when you drasticaly fail to adapt or to leave your pet deck please do not call for a ban. Is Survival VV is strong ? yes ! is it broken ? not even close. Don't blame the card just blame yourself. Thanks to VV & Sotf the format evolved.