Survival of the Fittest

[menace13]

And Bazaar of Baghdad.

God i love Bazaar and it is exactly what dredge needs to win every event. Best answer i can think of for this Surv format.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Explain to me then why survival is not dominant in Europe. Do you really think that we play maindeck extirpate or needles ?
It is a pity that you guy ask for a ban that is a non sense everywhere else.

Just for the record Frechy that's pretty much in a nutshell what American's were saying about ANT for the past couple years. It put up high numbers in Europe but over here it was getting stomped left and right. For a long time I saw many ANT players at every tournament I went to, seriously I remember seeing an ANT match to my left or right round 1 or 2 at pretty much every tournament I went to and it rarely if ever made top 8. Everyone in Europe swore up and down it was the best deck by far and couldn't imagine why we were not playing it. Thing is, over here it was a crappy deck. The meta here was absolutely full of Countertop tempo decks, and I don't care what anyone says that was never a favorable matchup for ANT. I once played in 2 back to back tournaments and only played vs. two non-Blue decks in both of them put together and 5 of the decks I played were CounterBalance tempo decks (that's out of maybe 12 rounds total). Survival is owning SCG but overall there are many events that have 1-2 Survival decks in the top 8 and those tournaments have attendance levels approaching SCG numbers (but more skilled players overall).

Fact is if you take Survival to a SCG event you are going to get a couple of free wins because it's still a good deck and it stomps unprepared players. So Survival is doing really well in the 6-7 events you have heard of and for the most part putting up the expected results of a normal tier 1 deck in many others. Meanwhile you ride in on your high horse trolling that America lost it's GP and saying France is superior because they don't have top 8's full of Survival. However I see your top 8 results you posted earlier with repeated wins of Elves and Hive Mind and wonder how such terrible decks can do well in any event past maybe one fluke win. I mean if someone wants to tell me that Hive Mind is the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd best combo deck in the format be my guest, but I'm not buying it, so why are the French unable to handle a bit tier combo? Elves are like a bye stateside. Before a tournament I cross my fingers and hope my first opponent is playing Elves and I'm 100% serious. So troll smarter.

[frenchy-man]

However I see your top 8 results you posted earlier with repeated wins of Elves and Hive Mind and wonder how such terrible decks can do well in any event past maybe one fluke win. I mean if someone wants to tell me that Hive Mind is the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd best combo deck in the format be my guest, but I'm not buying it, so why are the French unable to handle a bit tier combo? Elves are like a bye stateside. Before a tournament I cross my fingers and hope my first opponent is playing Elves and I'm 100% serious. So troll smarter.

Yep elfball had been for a while a dtb in France. Exactly. But I must confess that it is hard to play so you won't see many of them... (notice that I did not say that you would not many of them in the US...). Nowadays it not a dtb anymore, but you won't see elball top8ing anymore either.

Btw give Hivemind.deck a try (with MT...) before arguing on it. At least I do speak about decks that I played and tested.

edit : oh, no that it could matter, but I never posted top8s...

[SurFitOfTheVine]

Cards are not an availability issue in Europe, sorry.

It's true that they have always been more expensive here than in the states, but we just grit our teeth and choke up or buy them online. Did you expect our PTQs, nationals and local tournaments to be dominated by junk.dec? If that's the case, I only have one thing to say, "lolz".

1. I never said card availability was the problem. I just said cards in Europe are 3x more expensive than in the US.

2. Junk.dec? No, but if people spend a lot of money on a particular decent deck, they won't ditch it and buy new cards as soon as a new better deck shows up.

[frogboy]

It's more than that. According to Jared Sylva, various Survival builds had 58,33% matchup against Ad Nauseam during the last two months of SCG Opens.

every combo player I know would cheerfully play the Tendrils/Survival matchup for money until the other guy was broke.

[SurFitOfTheVine]

every combo player I know would cheerfully play the Tendrils/Survival matchup for money until the other guy was broke.

"Tendrils/Anything that has blue" too, right?

[Skeggi]

Just for the record Frechy that's pretty much in a nutshell what American's were saying about ANT for the past couple years. It put up high numbers in Europe but over here it was getting stomped left and right. For a long time I saw many ANT players at every tournament I went to, seriously I remember seeing an ANT match to my left or right round 1 or 2 at pretty much every tournament I went to and it rarely if ever made top 8. Everyone in Europe swore up and down it was the best deck by far and couldn't imagine why we were not playing it. Thing is, over here it was a crappy deck. The meta here was absolutely full of Countertop tempo decks, and I don't care what anyone says that was never a favorable matchup for ANT.

1. I never said card availability was the problem. I just said cards in Europe are 3x more expensive than in the US.

The difference between the American meta and the European one isn't card availability, it's not whether one meta is more advanced than the other. The difference seems to be the popularity of CounterTop decks. While CounterTop got their asses handed to them in Europe by Goblins, The Rock and Landstill, in America they still ruled supreme. So naturally ANT was able to become a way bigger threat in Europe than in America. It still is a huge threat. With ANT (and TES too since the banning of MT) being so popular in Europe, Vengevival strugles to reach top8. In the meanwhile, in CounterTop meta known as America, they discover the force of Vengevine. They can counter it, but it just comes back. Vengevival hits the top8 en-masse because it's a popular good deck with a good CounterTop match-up (among other good match-ups). I think that should explain the succes of Vengevival in America. So, now in Europe we're in a twist. If we want to defeat ANT, we'll need more CounterTop in our meta. But that will only open us up to Vengevival.

I think Americans and Europeans should both try harder to see the other side of the story here. If you put it all in perspective, it's not weird Americans are asking for a ban while alot of Europeans ask 'why?'.

With the current ban policy, which basically bans any engine that tends to allow its controller to go nuts, Survival of the Fittest is certainly a card that's up for serious consideration.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yep elfball had been for a while a dtb in France. Exactly. But I must confess that it is hard to play so you won't see many of them... (notice that I did not say that you would not many of them in the US...). Nowadays it not a dtb anymore, but you won't see elball top8ing anymore either.

Btw give Hivemind.deck a try (with MT...) before arguing on it. At least I do speak about decks that I played and tested.

edit : oh, no that it could matter, but I never posted top8s...

My bad it was RyO I just thought it was you because they were French results. Though you did tell me if I didn't think Elfball was a good deck I didn't know Legacy, I thought that was someone else. I fail to see how Elfball is hard to play when compared to most other Legacy decks and if the skill of French players were what was keeping Survival off the top tables I don't think they'd let a little thing like a hard to play deck hold them back. I've played HiveMind before and the results in question were after MT was banned so irrelevant (or more relevant you decide), it's never been nor is it currently one of the best combo decks in the format, this was only more true when MT was still around.

These decks all exist in America but rarely, and I mean very, very rarely put up any results worth talking about. If Elfball and Hive Mind had showed up in the top 8 of a 200+ tournament in America people would have had their minds blown because those decks are pretty much the scrub decks over here that usually are only good for an 0-2 drop. Once again I'm not even trying to troll, it's all true, so I'm just saying if you are going to come in here talking about US is scrubby at Legacy because Survival is 1/2 the top 8 of a handful of tournaments and because the one foreign player that made top 8 at the GP (I believe he was the only one, fact check?) went on to win, maybe you should look at what's been going on in your back yard in the same time frame. People may cut you slack because France has a lot of Legacy players, but I can assure you if someone came in here saying Texas was better at Legacy then someone pulled up the results of the last couple large events there and they all had Berserk Stompy, Hivemind, and Elfball in them it would be an LOL GTFO situation.

[bleuisforwhimps]

Belgian legacy cup, 58 participants;

1: ANT
2: TES
3-4: TES - Dark Horizons
5-8: Merfolks 2x, UBGW Landstill, Slivers

1st survival deck 10place. Banning mystical did nothing for the format, banning survival wouldn't either. This top8 is as boring as those in the SCG-tournaments :s . Maybe a mix of both would be perfect, I don't know.

[Jonathan Alexander]

Thank you, Skeggi. This basically is the whole issue: the metas are different. But it's not really that one meta is more advanced than the other one. There are just different "trends" so to say, and therefore Vengevine is worse here than it is in America. Over here in Europe there's not much Counterbalance decks. I don't even remember facing any in my last 3-4 tournaments. What I indeed faced were Merfolk, combo and tempo decks. Except for Merfolk these aren't exactly the best matchups for Survival and even Merfolk can be tuned to have an acceptable matchup against Survival.
By the way, I wouldn't say that the German meta is adapting more slowly than the American meta. Directly after Mystical Tutor was banned everyone over here played some form of aggro which then resulted in more combo decks over the past few months. Not exactly slow.

[dontbiteitholmes]

The difference between the American meta and the European one isn't card availability, it's not whether one meta is more advanced than the other. The difference seems to be the popularity of CounterTop decks. While CounterTop got their asses handed to them in Europe by Goblins, The Rock and Landstill, in America they still ruled supreme. So naturally ANT was able to become a way bigger threat in Europe than in America. It still is a huge threat. With ANT (and TES too since the banning of MT) being so popular in Europe, Vengevival strugles to reach top8. In the meanwhile, in CounterTop meta known as America, they discover the force of Vengevine. They can counter it, but it just comes back. Vengevival hits the top8 en-masse because it's a popular good deck with a good CounterTop match-up (among other good match-ups). I think that should explain the succes of Vengevival in America. So, now in Europe we're in a twist. If we want to defeat ANT, we'll need more CounterTop in our meta. But that will only open us up to Vengevival.

I think Americans and Europeans should both try harder to see the other side of the story here. If you put it all in perspective, it's not weird Americans are asking for a ban while alot of Europeans ask 'why?'.

Barely anyone is seriously playing Countertop anymore. I just looked at some old TMI's from SCG Opens. Before MT ban it was around 11-12% of the field and Merfolk was another 10-11% and ANT was around 5-7% of the meta. Now a days Countertop seems to be getting just barely over 5% and I'm guessing that figure is on the decline. Before the GP the format was a beast for Goblins over here though, don't forget the short reign of Lands.dec. I'm just saying if we are talking about American meta adapting I think it's shown it has done that. SCG open metagame is a bubble. All the good players bring Survival because it rolls any fool that doesn't know what they are doing, then all the fools bring Survival too or have crappy non-answers for it because SCG noobs get their advice from the SCG crew which is more concerned with screaming BAN SURVIVAL or BUY SURVIVALS than actually giving some good advice on how to beat Survival. I think as much as SCG players not playing ANT is Europeans not playing as much Survival. I mean here for SCG events we have 10% Survival 5% ANT and I'd be willing to guess it's almost the reverse in Europe which obviously is going to mean different results.

I don't think it's right to say Americans are asking for a ban when a poll on this very site showed those against a ban outnumber those for a ban 4 to 1.

Edit- wow bleuisforwhimps posted while I was typing, but that seems to confirm my point at the end of the first paragraph.

[CorpT]

Here's why the European meta is slower:

http://www.magiccardmarket.eu/

Bare in mind that 1.00 EUR = 1.34158 USD

This means that people in the US can buy an expensive deck for 1/3 of it's price here in Europe.

Perhaps the reason Europe doesn't play Survival is because they're bad at math.

From magiccardmarket.eu:

Survival is around 30 EU.

From magiccards.info:

Survival is around 50 US.

50 US = 37.7 EU.

Not only is a European Survival not 3x what a US Survival is, it's actually cheaper.

[Nelis]

Oh, and also, Survival beat ANT in the quarterfinals of SCG Richmond. Not that this matters to you, because clearly all results in the US are null and void on the grounds of us being a country of complete morons incapable of matching wits with your superior cranial prowess. Just saying.

With all due respect but I have seen you null and void European results just as easy. You did it with the banning of MT and you are doing it now.

[Team America]

Europe is finally catching up right before the B/R list:

236 player tournament this past weekend in Paris, France:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post505707

Survival got first place and also 3 out of the top 8.

Also someone probably posted it already but Survival got [first place and 4 out of top 8 in SCG 5k this past weekend also.

[zalachan]

Perhaps the reason Europe doesn't play Survival is because they're bad at math.

From magiccardmarket.eu:

Survival is around 30 EU.

From magiccards.info:

Survival is around 50 US.

50 US = 37.7 EU.

Not only is a European Survival not 3x what a US Survival is, it's actually cheaper.

Nice guess. We're really bad over here, yes, thanks for noticing..
I don't really see the point in comparing the prizes of Survival here and abroad, since people over here clearly don't jump on the bandwagon of "awesome"..
I purchased my 4th copy of SoTF 1 month ago for 16 € and i barely considered it a good catch. Why? Cause i can't really see where am i going to play them. We have this local legacy fan base meta in our country that consists of 10 to 15 people, 40 at best. You cannot call that a meta, it's more like a casual happening. People do play serious decks, but you can't really count on predictions, calculations etc. Besides if i sleeved Survival and tried it there (i would be one of maybe 2 or 3 people), everyone and their mother would curbstomp me, since it's really not that hard to just continue and play decks that have a reasonable MU against Survival and pretty great after SB.
That's why i don't prize my playset of Survivals more than 10 $ each. It doesn't really matter, since it's going to get banned. The good thing is, i can now play it in all of my EDH decks..

[Meekrab]

236 player tournament this past weekend in Paris, France:

http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post505707

Survival got first place and also 3 out of the top 8.

Or, looking a little further down the results... 4 out of the top 24.

Ho hum.

[SurFitOfTheVine]

Perhaps the reason Europe doesn't play Survival is because they're bad at math.

From magiccardmarket.eu:

Survival is around 30 EU.

From magiccards.info:

Survival is around 50 US.

50 US = 37.7 EU.

Not only is a European Survival not 3x what a US Survival is, it's actually cheaper.

50 USD? Man, just check ebay...

Europeans bad at math? Let's not even go into that so we can keep a healthy thread over here :)

[Amon Amarth]

Looking over the Too Much Information article it seems that the meta is still one ripe for Survival to flourish. Afaik Survival trounces pretty much all of those decks, more or less. I'm not sure there are really SB strategies that can really improve the matchup for some of those decks. Let's look at them individually.

Merfolk: Basically loses. Has some game against U/G but only due to Lord of Atlantis. Even then those decks are beginning to splash White for Plow. Not really much to say here. Definitely want to be playing Spell Snare MD to at least have a hard counter against Survival and maybe a couple of Spell Pierce too.

Goblins: Unless you know what you're doing you're probably screwed. Requires tight play and a solid postboard plan. Needle or Extirpate are solid, as well as removal like Pyrokinesis.

PT Junk/Rock: Should be a favorable matchup for Rock, which would explain its sudden popularity as of late.

CBTOP: Eh, depends entirely on your build and the skill of the player. I think the deck can easily be built with SOTF in mind and be tuned to beat it. Loading up on Plows has never been better and Stifle/Nought is one hell of a clock.

After those 4 the next most popular deck is U/G Survival. After looking at it from that viewpoint it's much easier to see why Survival is dominating so hard at these tournaments.

[Vacrix]

Or, looking a little further down the results... 4 out of the top 24.

Ho hum.

+1 Ho hum hum

[Tacosnape]

Or, looking a little further down the results... 4 out of the top 24.

Ho hum.

I did call this to my friends. I said immediately that another strong performance by Survival would only increase the volume of the naysayers.

So, again, because it wins and takes over a third of the top eight in nearly every SCG tournament, it's not a threat? Sick logic, kid.

With all due respect but I have seen you null and void European results just as easy. You did it with the banning of MT and you are doing it now.

I'd love to see a quote here before you go attacking me for things. Because I have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about, or what Frenchy is talking about, or what any of the other European players going "The US is stupid, and they started it" is talking about, because up until about 72 hours ago, I had the same respect for Europe and its players as I did for the US or any other region (Which, admittedly, is not very much, but at least I don't discriminate.) I still do, rather, I'm just making a much longer list of people who I had previously never heard of who have problems with me to exclude.

I honestly have no idea why Survival isn't dominating in Europe. It should be. Your theory is that our entire country is too stupid to adapt. My theory is that Survival wins because it's by far the best deck in Legacy. I don't care what country you live in, what planet you live on, what race of beings you play Magic against, or anything. Legacy is still Legacy. Vengevine Survival is still the best deck in the format.

Survival adapts also, just for the record. And just for the record, since people don't listen to me, I don't speak for the whole archetype when I discuss the combo matchup. I speak for my build. I have a good combo match. I'm not saying all Survival decks do. I'm saying I do. I pack the Mindbreak Traps and the Teegs and the Canonist I can Enlightened Tutor for and the Spirit Guides to drop them out turn one and the Ratchet Bomb to handle ETW tokens and the LED's to frequently go lethal in 2-3 turns. I pay for it in other matchups sometimes, but I generally try to get by on playskill and just hope I avoid the UG mirror, which is hell for me. I sell out with combo hate. Why wouldn't I? People are going to play combo all the time when they think it beats me, or the deck I'm playing. Whether it does or not.