seems it was the same for ANT at its time...and this time i'm sure it's gonna piss off more people. Your turn guys!Originally Posted by Pich
(althought I agreed on your whole post)
Each one of the tutors you have listed are situational and do not enable anything construed as "broken" (there is a difference between a strong play and a series of strong plays); you are essentially trying to correlate a degenerative combo-enabling machine to cards that have only a single utility. The activated cost of Survival - factored in that it is a permanent, reusable, instant-speed engine - allows for the said player to effectively search for any creature they need at any given time.
The utility of each of these creatures in Survival-based decks really is what sugar-coats the card itself because the list of tutors (Enlightened, Worldly, Mystical, etc.) each allows you to specifically go for a type of card that has a unique affect on the game. Survival accomplishes each of these tasks by allowing you to develop your deck using cards of a varying degree of utility or simply for an abhorrent surge as it pertains to the attack step. It doesn't necessarily allow you to fetch up Instants or Sorceries, but it still allows for the make-up of degenerative plays.
Vengevine pushed the envelope on this card and exploited it for all of its worth. The card has to and should go. I typically board correctly and adaptively and do relatively well against Survival-based decks. That doesn't mean the next person will, and that is what seems to be the recurring theme here: Survival's ability to, well, survive.
It does if Opalescence is in play.
The best deck of the format was pretty hard to determine before Vengevine Survival was "dicovered" and the meta was more interesting. Now it's pretty clear that you just need to pick up a Survival deck if you want the best chances of winning a tournament. An average win percentage of about 65 against the whole format? Yes, please. To quote Gerry Thompson, "that shit is retarded and needs to be banned" (on ggslive in SCG Boston where he finished 2nd with Ooze Survival).
Playing stupid hate cards that Survival can easily win through isn't the answer. The best answer is playing Survival yourself, or one of the few decks that can race its combo. "Just adapt your deck!!" - such a compelling argument, but I think I will just play Survival myself instead of maindecking relatively narrow cards like Extirpate and Pithing Needle.
Man, I can understand banning Survival of the Fittest. If people are boarding Tormod's Crypt and expecting to get the job done... it ain't gonna' happen. If I read another article that tells people to play ineffective hate cards I will shoot myself.
And next thing you're saying that Swords to plowshares is narrow too, because it only deals with creatures.
Survival is going to be banned because of lazy players like you...too bad.
Can everyone stop jumping to conclusions. It's still possible that WoTC will choose to not ban Survival. I mean at this point it seems like so many people are jumping on it that it's just a forgone conclusion, but until it actually is official can we hold off on the lamentation. I don't consider one fringe writer to be a very reliable source even if it is on the official WoTC website. To tell you the truth I think that guy has just as much a clue what's going to happen as anyone else and he was just speculating.
big links in sigs are obnoxious -PR
Don't disrespect my dojo dude...
Sweep the leg!
The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.
From BDM's article on Worlds. Sounds like a clear indication...
What's lazier, switching your entire deck because one is clearly the best, or simply squeezing 4 hate cards of your choice into your 60 and expecting to win?
And next thing you're saying that Swords to plowshares is narrow too, because it only deals with creatures.
Survival is going to be banned because of lazy players like you...too bad.
Would you please post a link.
"Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk."
"You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?"
"If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from A to B."
I've been maining Extirpate since GP:Chicago because it's nuts. It's stock goes up and down a bit as tje format changes, it's relatively bad against Zoo and Fish, but it's the dead nuts against a lot of decks.
Nice ban survival ! I was so much missing merfolks...
Forgive my bad English...
Nice move, he didn't say explicitly that SotF is going to be banned. "May" is the key word there, and as far as we know, he doesn't know whether it will be banned or not, too.10. The Survival of Legacy
The banned and restricted announcement will go up on December 20 as usual—after Worlds. If any player is going to come up with a strategy to beat the Survival of the Fittest decks that have been dominating the format then the Team Competition may be the last chance that they get to do so before it is defeated through legislation.
If you fail to explain the reason behind your choice, technically, it's the wrong choice.
Zerk Thread -- Really, fun deck! ^^
From BDM's facebook -
Brian David-Marshall I actually have no inside info on this one. Comment was based on players insisting that something needs to happen.
West side
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I've long thought survival of the fittest had an extraordinary power level.
Even when survival decks weren't good, a resolved survival meant you win the game if you have mana.
I'm not much of a deckbuilder, and I always felt that someone else could've put together a deck that runs great without survival, and then put in four copies of survival, just so it reads "1G, win in a few turns". Problem was you needed so much crap, like anger, rofellos, genesis, and squee, so the decks never worked so well. I was scared anyway that someone would figure it out and then my favorite card would get banned.
I still feel like survival with vengevine isn't really any stronger than survival with the old package (genesis + viridean zealot could let you grind out a lot of wins against stax type decks, spore frog lock could hold off certain strategies, etc), but without survival vengevineis way better than all that crap. The deck is obviously extraordinarilly good.
Despite being a suboptimal player it got my eternal rating to ~1830 for a while (still ~1820), because GW is simply that strong.
I feel that the card deserves banning without doubt. The deck is a bunch of extremely efficient creatures, and about even with other decks in quality without survival. Putting those in just gives you a massive trump card. If other decks are forced to try hard to answer it, then they're spending a lot of effort to try and handle only a small part of the deck. Did you know GW survival gives knight of the reliquary just as much support (mom protection vs fow to protect them; both run the utility land package) as new horizons-the kotr deck-does?
Trying hard ot adapt and answer your deck isn't exactly a winning proposition, especially if it weakens those decks against the rest of the field.
Unless by adapt you mean play combo, in which case yes, combo crushes GW.
As a Rock player, G/W is definitely the hardest of the 3 to beat, but it's still not a bad M/U. I wonder, if there is a SotF ban if there would be enough support for an alternate Eternal format similar to Legacy but with a less-restrictive ban list. We've got a lot of old players that have been playing 1.5 since it was still tied to the T1 ban list. I think we could do a better job of managing a banlist than the DCI. Set up our own rating system, come up with a catchy name and go from there...
I remember playing Legacy in the days of Drains, Bazaars and the like in the format. It was a good time at the time, but I think the banlist has moved beyond that. I'm not saying that I don't love playing with Mana Drain and Library of Alexandria, but I think Legacy players that think Library and Drain are going to get unbanned obviously haven't played regular or unrestricted Vintage.
Back to Survival, I'm on the "unban Mystical" bandwagon. I'm not a combo player, nor do I like combo. I'd be fine if the format took a crap until March and Storm/Reanimator raped the format, because then they'd have solid evidence for a reban, and they could say "I told you so" to all the Reanimator players. Mind you, I'd sit in my isolated corner of Legacy while it happened, but my point still stands.
-Matt
There's a reason why StP is a 4-of in many decks (Legacy = mostly creature-based) while Pithing Needle is not an exciting card to maindeck, unless you play Trinket Mage already. I don't know why I even mentioned the card in the first place, because its effectiveness against Survival is very debatable. It does close to nothing if they have the enchantment on the table and G open (tutor for disenchant on a stick). You need to play it preemptively and just cross your fingers they don't have the aggro/Natural Order/Fauna Shaman draw.
And next thing you're saying that Swords to plowshares is narrow too, because it only deals with creatures.
Survival is going to be banned because of lazy players like you...too bad.
Threats >>>> answers. Most sensible people will either just play the format's undisputed best threat (Survival) or play a deck that can consistently outrace it instead of trying to fight an extremely multifaceted deck with some narrow, reactive cards.
When you say lazy, I say smart.
I feel this is greatly more justified than the banning of MT.
HOWEVER, I really think this is also just an overreaction. I really think they should experiment more with unbanning cards to shift the meta rather than just banning whatever deck that makes multiple T8 apparent.
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