Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Neither of those can stop T0 combo (with the exception of Mindbreak Trap - sometimes; a card that is completely dead otherwise, unlike FoW).Originally Posted by Lemnear
Pyroblast being run in maindecks is an abomination of the format by itself (just showing how warped the format is now) and Mana Tithe is unplayable (show me a blue deck archetype that runs Force Spike as maindeck staple - no, Daze doesn't count). Sol decks also prefer to go for Chalice + Trinisphere in Legacy, mainly because the acceleration isn't the same without power + Workshops, like in Vintage.
So you don't want to count Pyroblast because it's so damn effective in the current metagame? You don't want to run hate against T1 combo decks because it's not as flexible as FoW? You deny the fact that Imperial Painter does run Thorn of Amethyst to not mess with it's own low-cost spells? You disagree that Thorn is an underplayed tool for creature decks to fight spell-based decks, despite its place in Elves SBs at times? You dismiss the fact that you can run acceleration yourself to get hate online earlier (Starting with Simian Spirit Guide + Pyroblast)?
You can say there is no TAILOR-MADE hate you LIKE TO RUN, but saying there is a SHEER LACK of options in non-blue is false
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The reason SDT isn't played more in non-blue/light blue decks is because Brainstorm is so powerful. SDT is tempo loss, card disadvantage, and mana hungry. If your plan is to use it to select, you need to catch up. That means playing some sort of bomb like Eldrazi, Nic Fit beaters, Painter/Stone. Most Top decks are soft to fast combo and strong denial draws like RUG's nut hand for that reason. If you're just filling your deck with as many textless cards as possible like Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain, you don't need to waste time on Top.
Miracles gets to pair Counterbalance with Top and even has the ability to blind-lock people out of a turn and get even more insanity online, while surviving early turns in a way Top decks without Counterbalance can't. Counterbalance is the reason any deck plays 4 tops, and it's the best thing to be doing with SDT while other SDT strategies are far behind. Therefore, Counterbalance should be banned rather than Top, because it is either unplayable dreck or an asymetrical lock that requires little effort to build around other than "jam SDT+CB into your existing UW control shell of counters, cantrips, plows and finishers"
If Brainstorm, Ponder, and Counterbalance were banned (and I'm not advocating all these bans at once, just a thought experiment), SDT would be played quite heavily, the diversity of "strategies" in legacy would still be so, but there would be more non-blue versions, perhaps even of existing strategies. SDT is a great card when you don't have to spin it 9 times a turn for your Counterbalance, and when it actually competes with other cards for consistency.
I do too, it might be too limiting on its face to do any work in Legacy but then again you have things like Evoke that can be workarounds.
I also agree with this. Zoo isn't coming back unless we do a real Legacy housecleaning, and we should be working to add cards to the format, not remove them.
None of these are even close to as good as FOW. Mana Tithe, really? Thats not even the best solution in white. Dryad Militant is probably better against any potential turn 0/1 combo since it beats cards like Dread Return and Rite of Flame.
Even then, I am fine with having decks that can't beat turn 0/1 combo since blue decks aren't even really locks to beat these decks either. However they should be good against other decks and nonblue decks simply can't keep up.
We're talking about maindeckable (T0) combo hate here, since you seem to mix it up.
- If you run red, yes, you can run Pyroblast. That doesn't mean it's any less stupid. That's like saying running 4 Leyline of the Voids during the Flash era is a good thing.
- There's a difference between FoW and cards that suck. Suggesting that Mana Tithe is appropriate, maindeckable combo hate is ludicrous and you should know better than that.
- Imperial Painter doesn't run Thorn in the maindeck, and looking up the data, it doesn't seem like the most stellar sideboard card either, like you try to make it look like.
- Creature decks that want the Thorn effect maindeck already run Thalia since it's the better card. Creature decks and Sol Lands don't go too well together, either, due to consistency issues.
- Elves don't run Thorn in the maindeck either. Again, looking at the data, it's basically seeing zero play as a SB card, either.
- There's exactly one deck that does the Blast + Guide thing, but Imperial Painter can get away with it because it has an entire strategy build around that, including a fast combo kill. Or are you really suggesting that everybody should now run MD Blasts + SSG to get a crappy FoW equivalent?
Every deck has access to Mindbreak Trap.
Not every deck has access to FoW, which is a significant investment, as it's always a 2-1. It also requires about 17 blue spells (besides FoW) to be consistent.
If Mindbreak Trap is that good, why does it see zero maindeck play and just occasional SB play? Because it's way too narrow and dead in most match-ups, unlike FoW. E.g. A+B combo normally need only one spell (maybe two) a turn to completely ruin you, while Trap sits uncastable in your hand.
And here I am thinking it was because Sylvan Library brings home more bacon.
Because t1 combo aren't dominant, due to the existence of FoW...?
No it's because the card is terrible. Let's say you somehow miraculously get ANT/TES Game 2 with Mindbreak Trap because for some reason they didn't bother playing a spell that looks at your hand. Do you honestly think they're going to run headfirst into it Game 3?
Proof it won't happen
It's no card disadvantage at all. You invest mana and time to significantly increase the quality of your cards and reduce dead daws to zero, which alone is more than just making up for the tempo/mana loss in the early game, it wins games on it's own which you can clearly see everytime Miracles players board out their Counterbalances in certain matchups. If a player with SDT in play untaps more than two times with the artifact in play, their opponent is on their road to ruin.
In addition to my precious example of SDT winning games based on sheer card quality (which people hate brainstorm for also), you can reverse the argument for Terminus & Entreat, calling SDT the reason both Miracles are not just playable, but format defying powerhouses. We hopefully agree that SDT is the anchor to hold together the Card Quality, the Stack control, the board control and the finisher in Miracles.dec.
We discussed this in this thread ... like 4 times before now, thus I make it short:
1) Decks with conditional cards -> dead -> reductiin of viable archetypes
2) DtB = Deck with almost no conditional cards but great redundancy
3) SDT + Preordain >>> every other available tools for card-selection/-quality
4) Everyone is playing SDT + Preordain + SFM + TNN
5) Streamlining of the metagame
You mistook me. The talk was that you have to play blue for early interaction with combo, which is wrong. There was never the talk about quality or versatility or I would have not named cards like Mana Tithe with a sense of sarcasm at all ;)
There was NEVER the talk about being maindeckable till now. In your last post you switched the precious "super-early" to "Turn 0" after I answered your question: I remind you once more: Don't change the questions everytime I give you an answer you don't like.
- You call Pyroblast stupid, but I call it smart running a card MB or SB which can deal with combo (S&T), Control (Counterbalance) and Aggro (Delver, TNN) at the same time. I get that you don't like the answer, but it's an accurate answer to your earlier asked question.
- There was never the talk about GOOD, VERSATILE, MAINDECKABLE, TURN 0 combo hate in your previous posts, but the initial statement that there is a "lack of super-early combo hate in other colors" than blue, which is wrong. You can't be mad at me for bringing up such a card like Mana Tithe just to make a point with a
- Creature decks that want Thorn do not always run Thalia, because it's a colored card which matters at times
- MUD (not Forgemaster variants) is by my definition a "Creature deck" which runs Sol-Lands, Post-Mana and Resistors like Thorns. I'd say Wurmcoil, Batterskull and Londestone go well with such a manabase
- I remember Elves with Thorns, but as they already run Black you can choose to run Discard instead which is another, mentioned, non-blue angle to attack "super-early" combo decks. Quod erat demonstrandum.
- You build around FoW (blue count), AN (cmc), Vial (Creatures, cmc), Counterbalance (cmc), etc. all day, but complain if people build their deck around Painter naming blue for example? If you want to play mono-red in a field full of blue, then yeah, run your Pyroblasts maindeck. It's not my fucking business that most Goblin players never thought about running the trinity of Warren Instigator/Simian Spirit Guide/Pyroblast to deal with the metagame. It's also no my problem if people are to peacocky to run Mindbreak Traps in their Sideboard to bridge the gap between turn 0 and them dropping a Thorn/Thalia/etc.
You are asking for a non-blue card THAT DOES EXACTLY THAT FOW DOES against combo for no opportunity-cost in running ... while we're at it ... can I get a blue Dark Ritual and Infernal tutor as well, because I don't want to have splash black in Storm...
edit:
The idiocy is that some people still think MBT wins them the game. MBT can ONLY close a window in which you are vulnerable, but has to be followed up with more hate
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Dear god please stop encouraging Goblin players to play Warren Instigator. It is such a fucking horrible card, there isn't a single matchup I would want that hunk of shit in. Also playing 4x Simian Spirit Guide and 4x Pyroblast maindeck in Goblins is a way to lose every matchup you actually have a chance in. If you want to beat Combo, Goblins isn't the deck for you.
In that Bryant Cook vs Jim Davis match I posted earlier, it took Piledriver and friends + Thalia + Mindbreak Trap just to win a single game.
It's not "idiocy" it's just ignorance. If someone has never played Storm before, I can see why that person would think that MBT is the be all and end all. I played ANT alot during the Treasure Cruise era and that really opened my eyes as to how it operates and as a result how to attack it.
I can't believe we agree on something. Pigs will be flying tomorrow.
It's not my fault that you misinterpret my post to your own liking and despite the same context from the beginning (T0 = super-early; the context was also the lack of FoW-speed answers in other colors, assuming you read the full post I was refering to in my quote). Hence the clarification.There was NEVER the talk about being maindeckable till now. In your last post you switched the precious "super-early" to "Turn 0" after I answered your question: I remind you once more: Don't change the questions everytime I give you an answer you don't like.
- You call Pyroblast stupid, but I call it smart running a card MB or SB which can deal with combo (S&T), Control (Counterbalance) and Aggro (Delver, TNN) at the same time. I get that you don't like the answer, but it's an accurate answer to your earlier asked question.
- There was never the talk about GOOD, VERSATILE, MAINDECKABLE, TURN 0 combo hate in your previous posts, but the initial statement that there is a "lack of super-early combo hate in other colors" than blue, which is wrong. You can't be mad at me for bringing up such a card like Mana Tithe just to make a point with a
- Creature decks that want Thorn do not always run Thalia, because it's a colored card which matters at times
- MUD (not Forgemaster variants) is by my definition a "Creature deck" which runs Sol-Lands, Post-Mana and Resistors like Thorns. I'd say Wurmcoil, Batterskull and Londestone go well with such a manabase
- I remember Elves with Thorns, but as they already run Black you can choose to run Discard instead which is another, mentioned, non-blue angle to attack "super-early" combo decks. Quod erat demonstrandum.
- You build around FoW (blue count), AN (cmc), Vial (Creatures, cmc), Counterbalance (cmc), etc. all day, but complain if people build their deck around Painter naming blue for example? If you want to play mono-red in a field full of blue, then yeah, run your Pyroblasts maindeck. It's not my fucking business that most Goblin players never thought about running the trinity of Warren Instigator/Simian Spirit Guide/Pyroblast to deal with the metagame. It's also no my problem if people are to peacocky to run Mindbreak Traps in their Sideboard to bridge the gap between turn 0 and them dropping a Thorn/Thalia/etc.
- You call it smart, I call it stupid and a warped format. But you're also fine with a format that has 80+% Brainstorm penetration. Different opinions, I guess.
- Even without your misinterpretation, Mana Tithe is a horrible card.
- But how many creature decks realistically want Thorn? Even Goblins would rather splash white for Thalia maindeck than running Thorn.
- MUD without Forgemasters sounds like an outdated build. It also depends what your definition of a creature deck is. Besides, Batterskull is technically not a creature and gets also taxed by Thorn.
- If Elves cut Thorn for the black splash, maybe it isn't effective enough for the meta?
- Who's complaining about the way Painter is built? SSG + Blasts as a poor-man's FoW is a terrible suggestion for the general meta that only works in Painter due to the way it is built. And Mindbreak Trap still isn't necessarily enough to bridge the gap against combo, especially A+B combo.
I do? Where?
Opportunity cost is an absolute requirement and I would be fine with e.g. another set of pitch cards to do in-color things to punish combo. Such cards without any restrictions would just end up being the second coming of Mental Misstep.
I don't mind Brainstorm at all. It's the hallmark card of Legacy and the single card that gives Legacy its own unique status among all of the formats, as it is only playable in Legacy as a 4-of. Brainstorm is incredibly powerful and tilts the game in blue's favor but I don't mind that. Eternal formats will always be tinted blue and that's fine.
What I do mind is a single control deck with a 1-mana sweeper and a 1+2 mana combo that locks out most decks on the stack. The presence of Miracles powered by SDT locks out a ton of diversity and a ton of archetypes in this format. Brainstorm simply makes most blue strategies more attractive to the advanced player, but it doesn't completely lock out alot of aggro and control archetypes like SDT does.
SDT's presence simply makes tournaments longer, makes matches longer, and crushes the diversity of aggro and control.
SDT is simply a bad card that offers very little fun for the format as a whole. The very mechanics of the Top are cumbersome and clunky. The interaction of Top with the Miracles spells removes all of the "Miracle" flavor from those spells and simply transforms them into dumb, absurdly efficient control tools with little to no intrigue or flavor.
If SDT were to be banned, Brainstorm and Ponder could still set up a Miracle spell, but with reduced certainty, the flavor of a "Miracle" would more often be relevant, and perhaps the deck would never see play again, but I think it would still be good, just not soul-crushingly powerful as it is now.
I just want to point out here that Terminus is in a completely different ballpark compared to every other anti-aggro strategy.
Aggro decks can beat Stoneforge Mystic/Batterskull and TNN by powering out bigger dudes, or playing artifact/creature removal. They can pack hate in the sideboard for Show and Tell. Aggro decks cannot easily beat a Terminus that wipes the board completely clean at instant speed.
An unconditional instant-speed sweeper that puts creatures not in the graveyard but back in the deck that only costs one white mana... gives the control player an answer to everything on the board. It's simply ridiculously powerful. If you had to replace Terminus with more expensive (Wrath of God/Supreme Verdict/Pernicious Deed) or more conditional (Pyroclasm, Rough//Tumble, Firespout) sweepers, the control deck loses a huge chunk of its power and is far more fair.
Here's an idea... build your deck so that the average CMC isn't 0.7 and then you won't have to worry about being locked out the second Counter-Top gets assembled.
Isn't adapting to the metagame part of Magic?
You do realize that there's a 60% chance the opponent doesn't have FoW in their opening hand, right?
Mindbreak trap can be a necessity, if you don't have access to FoW. If you do, and most people do due to Island being the better land than rest, there's no reason to run Trap.
*Just read some of your other posts. Obviously a troll.
So you are telling me we should all just stop playing the best spells in the format? Maybe we should go play Standard instead if we don't want to make use of all the 1cc and 2cc spells available in Legacy.
What you said sounds a lot like "I refuse to change what I'm doing to solve my problems, everyone else should change instead."
This is the same line of thinking that people championed when Survival of the Fittest was in the format - "Just play more answers! Deal with the Vengevival decks! Adapt to the combo!"
There are times to adapt, and then there are times when a single card is just too good for the format and makes a *single* deck too dominating, and most importantly, doesn't add much value to the format to offset this dominance. It was that way with Survival of the Fittest when Vengevine was printed, and it is that way now with the interaction of SDT with the Miracles spells and with Counterbalance.
And guess what? The banning of Survival killed a whole archetype. Did people miss it? Maybe for a little bit, but in the end, the format was far better for it. There was more diversity, and more fun. Banning SDT would have the exact same effect - it would potentially kill the Miracles archetype, but the format would see more diversity in aggro and control decks, less tournament draws, faster tournament matches overall, and would be far better for it.
Miracles is the list that is making Little Bear aggro hopeless unless it's taxing heavily. Even the bear designed to stop people from drawing too many cards does nothing at all against an EoT Terminus off of a top.
It's true that the blue shell's ability to find and promote Tarmogoyf, Delver of Secrets, SFM, DRS, etc hurts creature aggro badly however Terminus is the nail in the coffin.
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