All B/R update speculation.

[rufus]

...

Do you guys think that some of these (Desire? Necro? Library? Clamp? Vault?) should be disallowed to make it more fun?

I'm surprised you even have Wheel of Fortune and Windfall on that list.

[emidln]

I'm surprised you even have Wheel of Fortune and Windfall on that list.

I'd probably bad, but I'd play a Wheel of Fortune-enabled version of red Spanish Inquisition for an event. Might go 0-2, but maybe not.

[Sloshthedark]

Is there any interest...?

Count me in!

[Gheizen64]

That is a minority opinion in the recent discussion of this card. It being an absolute diversity killer among fair decks is more the issue.

Except that there's only 2-3 "fair" decks that can play it since most "fair" decks play tons of cantrips and counters. Survival need a significant creature investment else it can get dead extremely fast. You need to have a creature in your hand at all time or run suboptimal recurring strategies (squee) that get hosed by one of the most played card in the format nowadays (DRS). You need to run 25+ creatures , 4 survival, and then whatever else. There's also the fact that the best thing to do with survival is still chaining vengevines or reanimating Iona with retainers (Grizzly isn't as good when you aren't reanimator or sneak attack that can simply win off drawing cards, Iona also protect you against combo whereas grizzly drawing you vengevines don't) which while still good as a secondary win engine, it got significantly worse compared to the rest of the format (friendly reminder that miracle and shardless didn't even exist back then).

The best Survival list would look extremely similar to the old lists because there's not really anything much better to do with them even now. The best recurring/beating strategy is still chaining vengevines, the best silver bullets may be better now (prelate/teeg/thalia etc...) but it doesn't change significantly the dynamic of the deck.

For comparison, this is a slightly modernized Vengevival list, with basically the new mongrel in place of the old one, and DRS instead of noble hierarch to hate opponent grave strategies. The list need to play some suboptimal cards like Aquomeba, Trigon predator and waterfront bouncer to reach the needed blue count for FoW.


4 Aquamoeba
2 Basking Rootwalla
1 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
1 Wonder
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Memnite
4 Noose Constrictor
4 Deathrite Shaman

4 Survival of the Fittest
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Intuition
3 Brainstorm

2 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Gaea's Cradle

[Stevestamopz]

That is a minority opinion in the recent discussion of this card. It being an absolute diversity killer among fair decks is more the issue.

Depends on your opinion on what diversity means. Some people think that a tournament where the top 32 decks being a combination of purely UR Delver, UWR Delver, BUG Delver, RUG Delver and 4C Delver would represent a diverse meta with control, aggro, tempo and midrange all represented (somehow I might add, I don't agree with this at all). Do you think that basically every Green deck playing DRS is diverse?

The way I see it, there is a legitimately huge difference between Ooze-Combo Survival and what can essentially be described as Maverick Survival, which from my research were the top 2 Survival archetypes. They are far more diverse than the above example with 5 Delver decks. They also seem pretty mediocre against the current fair decks of Legacy and absolutely unplayable against the combo decks of today.

Anyway, I'm always on the hunt for a good Survival list but I'm definitely not a good brewer. Someone else take a Survival deck to a casual Legacy event and let me know how it goes.

[Zombie]

There was also this beauty by Josh Utter-Leyton:

14 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Eternal Witness
4 Fauna Shaman
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
3 Vengevine
2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Cloudstone Curio
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Primal Command
4 Survival of the Fittest


Sideboard

4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Viridian Shaman


One of the things I'd like about Survival in Elves is that most of Elves' card selection atm is to-battlefield tutoring which all manner of hate shuts down (without managing to hit SnT for some ungodly reason) and just generally has a bit of a rough time adjusting to metagames due to the strict requirements for cards to not dilute the deck too much. Survival would offer another card selection engine that fit the overall gameplan but dodges and is vulnerable to very different kinds of hate and extends card selection to nongreen creatures.

[Gheizen64]

Depends on your opinion on what diversity means. Some people think that a tournament where the top 32 decks being a combination of purely UR Delver, UWR Delver, BUG Delver, RUG Delver and 4C Delver would represent a diverse meta with control, aggro, tempo and midrange all represented (somehow I might add, I don't agree with this at all). Do you think that basically every Green deck playing DRS is diverse?

The way I see it, there is a legitimately huge difference between Ooze-Combo Survival and what can essentially be described as Maverick Survival, which from my research were the top 2 Survival archetypes. They are far more diverse than the above example with 5 Delver decks. They also seem pretty mediocre against the current fair decks of Legacy and absolutely unplayable against the combo decks of today.

Anyway, I'm always on the hunt for a good Survival list but I'm definitely not a good brewer. Someone else take a Survival deck to a casual Legacy event and let me know how it goes.

I honestly think the best vengevivals lists nowaday would be blue because of how good Shardless agent is in it, plus you can run FoW for added protection sorta like shardless. Maverick/Abzan isn't really playable right now, you need to go for prison or permission to cut it over many rounds.

[JamieW89]

Count me in!

(and for everyone else too)
Would you guys prefer a free tournament without prizes or a 10-15$ entry fee like the earlier Source tournaments?

A tournament like that, the more the better. The appeal is playing busted cards.

Power, given what it is, is understandable (same with shops), but then it becomes fairly arbitrary if you start picking what should and shouldn't be allowed.

I agree with the point on it being arbitrary, but I don't think it'd be beneficial for the tournament to include cards like Flash, Demonic Consultation, or Strip Mine either. Besides power and "problematic" cards (Shahrazad, Chaos Orb, Falling Star) the disallowed cards are: Balance, Bazaar, Channel, Demonic Consultation, Demonic Tutor, Fastbond, Flash, Gush, Mana Crypt, Workshop, Oath, Sol Ring, Strip Mine, Time Vault, Tinker, Academy, Vamp (possibly) and Will. If anyone feels that any of these cards warrant a spot in this tournament please tell me.

I dislike walls of cards like that. The best way to do this in my view, start with what is weakest and work up from there. Dragon was a joke on the list, Recruiter is too imo. Start there, work your way up.

While it might also be interesting to hunt for the strongest lists including just the easy unbans that isn't really my goal with this tournament. I would like to see a broader range of new cards. Hopefully some people do pick the clearly safe cards though, perhaps we could limit each card to one (or 2-3 if over 20 people sign up) player at a first come first serve basis? The alternative is just having a tournament where Earthcraft, Frantic Search, Goblin Recruiter, Imperial Seal, Memory Jar, Mind Twist, Survival, and Windfall are legal (probably the safest cards besides the recent bans? Perhaps Bargain too?).

Jamie, you can disallow the cards we know the effect of in the current metagame like TC or DTT and focus on cards which are not easy fits and plain more powerful iterations of existing cards. Stuff like bargain would replace Ad Nauseam and Will would do the same with PIF. Windfall and Wheel make sense to test due to the presence of all the counter in the format and us knowing that 4 mana Draw7 are already legal and no one cares for a reason. The tutors are ok to test, but there should be no surprises

I wanted to allow DTT and TC for completeness sake, although I don't expect many people would choose to submit a list with one of those. I wouldn't mind excluding them either. Cards like bargain open existing decks up to other directions as well (you could play FoW's in storm if you wanted, it doesn't care about CMC, you could opt to add SnT's as rituals or even build some kind of hybrid etc). Because of that I felt it would be worth including those too.

[Fox]

Depends on your opinion on what diversity means. Some people think that a tournament where the top 32 decks being a combination of purely UR Delver, UWR Delver, BUG Delver, RUG Delver and 4C Delver would represent a diverse meta with control, aggro, tempo and midrange all represented (somehow I might add, I don't agree with this at all). Do you think that basically every Green deck playing DRS is diverse?

The way I see it, there is a legitimately huge difference between Ooze-Combo Survival and what can essentially be described as Maverick Survival, which from my research were the top 2 Survival archetypes. They are far more diverse than the above example with 5 Delver decks. They also seem pretty mediocre against the current fair decks of Legacy and absolutely unplayable against the combo decks of today.

Deck diversity has more to do with how many slots are the same. If Survival is unbanned you can already say it has 4x DRS, 4x Decay, and 4x Survival...so without being unbanned we already know it's going to reinforce the Abrupt Decay problem of + played together disproportionately. To take a moment to address your comments about Delver of Secrets, sure it is a diversity killer; you could say the same thing about Mentor as a wincon in Vintage. That's a perfectly legitimate reason to ban something, but Delver itself only really means a deck will play 4x of it and FoW, Ponder, BS, and Daze. It's heavily blue but it's not dictating how a single dual land is played across an entire format. It's an unimaginative, powerful creature, but it at least keeps FoW numbers up policing the format.

As far as DRS/Decay with blue currently goes, there's at least huge differences between BUG Delver, Shardless, and Aluren/Food Chain; and this won't change b/c of a Survival unban. However, most any non-blue fair deck that was already B/G (so, not Elves!) is going to go in the same direction or just be playing a comparatively worse deck. These decks will then add in some amount of white for free wins (Teeg, Canonist, Thalia, CP), and now we're killing W/G diversity - because Survival's tutoring power (with DRS/Decay backup) is strictly more powerful than anything they were trying to do with GSZ or SFM or KotR.

You're talking about bad combo matchups, but DRS and Thoughtseize are so much more effective turn 1 plays in those matchups than Mother of Runes + StP. Survival just breaks down any (non-Vial, aka DnT) walls that had people playing reasonably heavy white committed fair decks. This brings us back to how B/G fair diversity dies; these decks stop doing novel things that made them unique b/c those slots turned into tutor then tap for silver bullet (without having to really go white)...and you just win games by virtue of being unable to lose anymore.

You can certainly build Survival as some janky graveyard dependent combo deck, but if you're really going to go that all-in on the most hated zone then there are more efficient options. These options also don't cost $60x4 to do; a cost that would probably at least double if unbanned. You're just going to win more games b/c you resolved the right hatebear rather than jumped through ~4 hoops to make a Griselbrand; that's just where legacy is today.

[nedleeds]

There was also this beauty by Josh Utter-Leyton:

14 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Eternal Witness
4 Fauna Shaman
3 Fyndhorn Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Quirion Ranger
1 Regal Force
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
3 Vengevine
2 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Cloudstone Curio
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Primal Command
4 Survival of the Fittest


Sideboard

4 Mindbreak Trap
4 Natural Order
1 Progenitus
2 Thorn of Amethyst
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Viridian Shaman

.

This deck is a piece of shit, why waste time with a Survival engine when GSZ and Natural Order just accomplish everything you are trying to cobble together with shitty fucking Vengevines ... they printed Hoof -- it's actually retarded. The only benefit SotF would have in elves is you could play around Priest / Cage better and be slower and shittier.

[Finn]

This deck is a piece of shit, why waste time with a Survival engine when GSZ and Natural Order just accomplish everything you are trying to cobble together with shitty fucking Vengevines ... they printed Hoof -- it's actually retarded. The only benefit SotF would have in elves is you could play around Priest / Cage better and be slower and shittier.

Why don't you tell us how you really feel?

I agree with me free-form, foul-mouthed mate here. Survival of the Fittest is only good because it can get ANY creature. Zenith and Order are stuck on green. Since green can kill on turn 3 ala Elves, you just aren't going to be better than that with any other engine. Survival takes all of turn 2 to lay down an enchantment that does zero until you untap. You have to build the rest of the deck to do something Elves can not or else you just have "slower and shittier" Elves.

[Lemnear]

4 Aquamoeba
2 Basking Rootwalla
1 Trygon Predator
4 Vengevine
1 Wonder
1 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Memnite
4 Noose Constrictor
4 Deathrite Shaman

4 Survival of the Fittest
2 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Intuition
3 Brainstorm

2 Forest
1 Island
4 Misty Rainforest
2 Scalding Tarn
4 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
3 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Gaea's Cradle

No idea how you can actually suggest a list with DRS and no black mana or how the fuck you manage to not even look at Thalia, Thoughtseize, GSZ, TNN, Shardless Agent, Abrupt Decay and more

[taconaut]

(and for everyone else too)
Would you guys prefer a free tournament without prizes or a 10-15$ entry fee like the earlier Source tournaments?

I'd play either, and if we're calling it now (and emidln didn't beat me to it ) I'd play Wheel, followed by any one of Frantic Search, Windfall, or Goblin Recruiter, whatever makes most people happy.

I wanted to allow DTT and TC for completeness sake, although I don't expect many people would choose to submit a list with one of those. I wouldn't mind excluding them either.

It'd be interesting if we played a bunch of the old busted cards and it just turned out that DTT or TC still came out on top. They are really powerful and flexible, after all.

[Whitefaces]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if UR Delver with Cruise comes out on top.

[Lemnear]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if UR Delver with Gush comes out on top.

Fixed

[taconaut]

Fixed

Is it actually though, in context? I feel like Treasure Cruise might actually be stronger, at least in Legacy UR delver. It gets you three cards instead of two, and it seems easier to Cruise back to back than Gush when you don't have sweet vintage things like fastbond.

[Lemnear]

Is it actually though, in context? I feel like Treasure Cruise might actually be stronger, at least in Legacy UR delver. It gets you three cards instead of two, and it seems easier to Cruise back to back than Gush when you don't have sweet vintage things like fastbond.

Gush is free, resets landdrops (you rarely want more than two lands in play anyways), counters Wasteland, does not care for DRS and has some other tricks.

[Gheizen64]

No idea how you can actually suggest a list with DRS and no black mana or how the fuck you manage to not even look at Thalia, Thoughtseize, GSZ, TNN, Shardless Agent, Abrupt Decay and more

For comparison, this is a slightly modernized Vengevival list, with basically the new mongrel in place of the old one, and DRS instead of noble hierarch to hate opponent grave strategies. The list need to play some suboptimal cards like Aquomeba, Trigon predator and waterfront bouncer to reach the needed blue count for FoW.

Just in case you didn't notice, this was my next post too.

I honestly think the best vengevivals lists nowaday would be blue because of how good Shardless agent is in it, plus you can run FoW for added protection sorta like shardless. Maverick/Abzan isn't really playable right now, you need to go for prison or permission to cut it over many rounds.

Can we be civil or do we really need to act like 12 years old edgelords ?

[rufus]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if UR Delver with Cruise comes out on top.

Thing is, why play delver with cruise if you can play delver with Necropotence?

[Lemnear]

Can we be civil or do we really need to act like 12 years old edgelords ?

Its still totally misleading to bring up UG Madness in the context of today if Elvish, BUG or GWB Survival are so much better variants and the card-/creaturepool has become so much better than it was at the time of UG madness. Its like discussing Necropotence in context of suicide black aka Black Knight, order of ebon hand and H.Spectre.

Why not looking at all the cards printed and ran in decks with creatures especially as Maverick and Co are successors to Survival? Why do you insist to run FoW if you can run Thoughtseize+Thalia as your disruption? Why no one mentions how Explorer+Therapy+GSZ+Survival is a shell which can go nutz with Ranger of Eos? There are so many damn possibilities to look at and consider and it baffle me that all what keeps popping up are 10-year-old decks with less than 8 cards replaced