[SCD] Survival of the fittest decklist challenge

[Stevestamopz]

Had a fun game of this vs JLX playing UR Delver. Survival did absolutely nothing, the Vengevine "combo" was pure win-more. I can't imagine this being better against Combo than DnT and I can guarantee that this shell would be worse against Shardless and decks of that nature. I would not bother trying to play a slow-graveyard combo list, especially in this current meta.

[btm10]

Maybe base it off of Modern Abzan Company (as in part midrange, part combo)? Even then it compares poorly to Food Chain combo ... wait, has anyone suggested running this in Food Chain combo? Seems like a great way to get and/or pitch Emrakul 1.0

I don't think it's really breakable. And adding Survivals to Food Chain would end up eating into the creature slots too much. You can't really cut Manipulate Fate or Food Chain, Brainstorm and Force are major reasons the deck is playable at all, etc.

[rubblekill]

What about some sort of jund shell with sneak attack?
But even if it worked somewhat decently, the real question would be: why bother with that jank instead of derping with the skill intensive show and chimp? I hate that card too much..

[Fox]

What about some sort of jund shell with sneak attack?

As a pseudo-serious suggestion (acknowledging that you can't run SotF without Decay), wouldn't you just stay on-color and have a 1x Elvish Piper, 1x Emmy? Fewer dead draws, and SotF corrects these two out of hand should you ever not want to go for the combo.

[dte]

Creatures (30)
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Mirror entity
1 Scavenging ooze
1 Fauna shaman
1 Tasigur, the golden fang
2 Birchlore Rangers
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Heritage Druid
2 Nettle Sentinel
2 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
1 coiling oracle
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
Spells (13)
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Natural order
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Survival of the Fittest
Lands (18)
2 Bayou
1 savannah
2 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Tropical Island
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
Sideboard (15)
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Shriekmaw
3 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Reclamation sage
1 stonefore mystic
1 Umezawa's jitte
1 gaddock teeg
1 Thalia, guardian of thraben
1 phyrexian revoker
1 faerie macabre
76 Cards Total


That would be my starting point. I do not see a lot of MUs that I would not confidently walk in with that.
There is assuredly room for a lot of improvment. But it can go infinite mana and draw the deck with tasigur pretty fast, while keeping elves main plan, and assemble hate or symbiote + visionnary real quick.

It is clearly much more powerful and resilient than the classic elves.

[Lemnear]

Maybe we could stop with the EDH lists of a dozen or more one-off silberbullets, as we have already outlined the consistency issues if you don't have drawn Survival.

Personally I can only see two paths atm:

- The one of elves with DRS + Zenith (Arbor) for early mana and SotF+Zenith to tutor soft-combo pieces and lategame Hoof

or

- The Junk variant with value focus, hatebears and Enlightend Tutor. I however can't see why we should pair a SFM-package with a SotF-package in a single deck

[Megadeus]

Creatures (30)
2 Dryad Arbor
1 Mirror entity
1 Scavenging ooze
1 Fauna shaman
1 Tasigur, the golden fang
2 Birchlore Rangers
4 Deathrite Shaman
2 Heritage Druid
2 Nettle Sentinel
2 Quirion Ranger
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Elvish Visionary
1 coiling oracle
1 Leovold, Emissary of Trest
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
Spells (13)
4 Glimpse of Nature
1 Natural order
4 Green Sun's Zenith
4 Survival of the Fittest
Lands (18)
2 Bayou
1 savannah
2 Forest
4 Gaea's Cradle
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Tropical Island
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
Sideboard (15)
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Shriekmaw
3 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Reclamation sage
1 stonefore mystic
1 Umezawa's jitte
1 gaddock teeg
1 Thalia, guardian of thraben
1 phyrexian revoker
1 faerie macabre
76 Cards Total


That would be my starting point. I do not see a lot of MUs that I would not confidently walk in with that.
There is assuredly room for a lot of improvment. But it can go infinite mana and draw the deck with tasigur pretty fast, while keeping elves main plan, and assemble hate or symbiote + visionnary real quick.

It is clearly much more powerful and resilient than the classic elves.

How is this clearly more powerful than classic elves? Have you found that via testing? If your hand relies on Survival and they decay it, you just lose? I don't understand in all of these elves lists how cutting Natural order for survival = more powerful deck.

[CptHaddock]

Maybe we could stop with the EDH lists of a dozen or more one-off silberbullets, as we have already outlined the consistency issues if you don't have drawn Survival.

Personally I can only see two paths atm:

- The one of elves with DRS + Zenith (Arbor) for early mana and SotF+Zenith to tutor soft-combo pieces and lategame Hoof

or

- The Junk variant with value focus, hatebears and Enlightend Tutor. I however can't see why we should pair a SFM-package with a SotF-package in a single deck

Will you be enlightening us with a list? Or are we going to have to wait a couple of years for survival to be unbanned and someone does well with it so that you can claim that is exactly how you would have built it?

[Lemnear]

Will you be enlightening us with a list? Or are we going to have to wait a couple of years for survival to be unbanned and someone does well with it so that you can claim that is exactly how you would have built it?

I am not quite bored enough in life to work/test out fantasy decks for hypothetical metagames (which would require analysis as we would need to consider Survival mirrors too) just because the actual format is so stale and boring.

Other dear users here have already pointed out, delivered testing results and sample hands, to show that the EDH like builds do not work, so I sure agree with Jona, that we probably need to look at the slick and redundant variants, IF the card would bet unbanned, simply on the base that the other directions fail to deliver a stable Performance at all

[nedleeds]

Will you be enlightening us with a list? Or are we going to have to wait a couple of years for survival to be unbanned and someone does well with it so that you can claim that is exactly how you would have built it?

Who even cares, neither are any more degenerate than Griselbrand? Even in elves, I'd welcome a revokable, decayable method for obtaining a Hoof they still need to cast instead of Tinker.

[Machinus]

The choice of card for this thread was misguided. I can recommend some much better choices.

[btm10]

I am not quite bored enough in life to work/test out fantasy decks for hypothetical metagames (which would require analysis as we would need to consider Survival mirrors too) just because the actual format is so stale and boring.

Other dear users here have already pointed out, delivered testing results and sample hands, to show that the EDH like builds do not work, so I sure agree with Jona, that we probably need to look at the slick and redundant variants, IF the card would bet unbanned, simply on the base that the other directions fail to deliver a stable Performance at all

You'd probably want to look at the Modern Collected Company/Chord of Calling toolbox decks for inspiration. That being said, I don't know if Vengevines are better than the combos those decks assemble, and the pool of utility creatures in Legacy is only slightly larger. This exercise has been useful if for no other reason than that it's convinced me that not only is Survival safe, it's basically just a more playable Chord of Calling that isn't even strictly better since you can't put the creature into play at instant speed.

[Lemnear]

You'd probably want to look at the Modern Collected Company/Chord of Calling toolbox decks for inspiration. That being said, I don't know if Vengevines are better than the combos those decks assemble, and the pool of utility creatures in Legacy is only slightly larger. This exercise has been useful if for no other reason than that it's convinced me that not only is Survival safe, it's basically just a more playable Chord of Calling that isn't even strictly better since you can't put the creature into play at instant speed.

I guess the most common misconception is that SotF "is broken" in the terms of being as stong as pure combo decks. The problem is that the card has a streamlining effect on creature decks and gets only more retarded the more WotC goes crazy with creature powercreep like seem with Griselbrand, vengevine, TNN, DRS, etc.. On top of that its a cardquality and combo engine which can be run alongside most of these decks

[btm10]

I guess the most common misconception is that SotF "is broken" in the terms of being as stong as pure combo decks. The problem is that the card has a streamlining effect on creature decks and gets only more retarded the more WotC goes crazy with creature powercreep like seem with Griselbrand, vengevine, TNN, DRS, etc.. On top of that its a cardquality and combo engine which can be run alongside most of these decks

I'm even skeptical of the streamlining effect at this point. There would be plenty of decks that simply wouldn't be built to maximize Survival and wouldn't run it as a result. Sure, maybe GWx (or GBx, x != u) dedicated creature decks get homogenized, but those decks are already pretty homogenous.

[dte]

How is this clearly more powerful than classic elves? Have you found that via testing? If your hand relies on Survival and they decay it, you just lose? I don't understand in all of these elves lists how cutting Natural order for survival = more powerful deck.

If you had played elf you would know.
Your comment on decay for instance is clearly misguided. It does have "uncounterable" written on it, but by no means "split second" coupled with "you can ast this card even when you do not have the priority". So you'll still be able to get the tutor effect for whatever you want, including several creatures if needed.
additionnaly, when you do not have surival, you still have the full power of an elf list.

NO is not the strong point of elves, it is a weak one. Compared to survival, in the very least.

[vintersorg]

All right, I cleaned the dust of my old account just to post here, I have a ¨legacy¨ survival for over a year and constantly playing with my friends (we kinda have a medium sized legacy group since our town scene is just t2 and modern which we hate since we are power-freak old school players) and since I didn´t see anyone talking about the basic approach I´m here to give my two cents:

I run a UG tempo build just like the 2011 one with a few tweaks here and there like 1 true nemesis and as far as I tested all these months with my friends I can say that it´s still damn powerful, the list uses 4 FOW + 4 DAZE so you can stop show and tell and whatever T1-T2 they throw at you except for decay but whatever because the deck does not die without a survival, I already hit like a fucking truck without it. Yeah I use 4 vengevines + 1 wonder to shit on goyf´s head and never had any problems, I also use 3-4 wild mongrel which is a good hitter when you have enough cards (2 cards to pump it and it is already a thing, also with 4 noble hiearchs the little dog can become very exalted) I think wild mongrel is a must have because you can discard what you need to be discarded when you don´t have survival on the battlefield, I won lots of games discarding wonder and hitting 5/5 because of two nobles on the battlefield.

3-4 stifle MD too, fucking with fetches and Deathrites all day long is still a thing with this build, 1 revoker MD for whatever you need and you have a strong deck, I tested a WG before the UG one and the UG madness is way stronger, you can protect yourself with FOW and Daze, you can fuck with them with Stifle while hitting with your creatures that are hitting at least 3-4 power.
Also in our meta we have miracles, uw blade, shardless bug, eldrazi, d&t, mud and aluren and this ug build can win against it all, of course there are games where I loose but this deck is at least as strong as all the others on our meta so I think at least for me UG madness is still a thing and it will be if survival gets back. The deck is not explosive but its too damn consistent and thats what I think its the great advantage of survival, make inconsistent things consistent.

For reference my deck:

Creatures
4 - Noble Hierarch
4 - Vengevine
4 - Aquamoeba
3 - Wild Mongrel
3 - Basking Rootwalla
1 - Wonder
1 - True Name
1 - Phyrexian Revoker
1 - Trygon Predator

Spells
4 - Survival of the Fittest
4 - Force of will
4 - Daze
4 - Brainstorm
3 - Stifle

Lands
4 - Misty Rainforest
4 - Windswept heath
4 - Tropical Island
3 - Wasteland
1 - Island
2 - Forest
1 - Gaeas Cradle

[morgan_coke]

With blue, I would work off the old Bant Survival lists that seemed to be dominating before the ban, these run less graveyard stuff to minimize hate.

4x Brainstorm
3x Ponder
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Force of Will
3x Daze
4x Survival of the Fittest

4x Noble Hierarch
3x Stoneforge Mystic
4x Tarmogoyf
2x Qasali Pridemage
1x Trygon Predator
1x Vendillion Clique
3x Spellstutter Sprite

1x Batterskull
1x Umezawa's Jitte

3x Flooded Strand
3x Windswept Heath
3x Misty Rainforest
4x Tropical Island
2x Savannah
1x Tundra
1x Island
1x Forest

Sideboard:
Stuff

With Black, I think you go in an Azban/Maverick direction:

4x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Survival of the Fittest
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Thoughtseize
4x Abrupt Decay
2x Sylvan Library

4x Deathrite Shaman
3x Stoneforge Mystic
3x Tarmogoyf
1x Qasali Pridemage
1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1x Kambal, Consul of Allocation

1x Batterskull
1x Umezawa's Jitte

1x Dryad Arbor
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Windswept Heath
4x Bayou
2x Savannah
1x Scrubland
1x Forest
1x Swamp
4x Wasteland

Sideboard:
Stuff

I think the blue version is a lot stronger, because countermagic is just better than discard in general, and the cantrips are incredibly strong.

EDIT: I also think there's too much emphasis in the lists posted here on some kind of "combo" that happens when you have Survival out. Really it's just a great way to get more Tarmogoyf's than your opponent, and to shuffle your library.

[Lemnear]

Why bother with SFM? Why drop survival to discard a creature to dig for SFM to dig for batterskull? Didn't the decline of SFM outside of D&T hint at the SFM package just not being good enough anymore?

[Zombie]

I'm even skeptical of the streamlining effect at this point. There would be plenty of decks that simply wouldn't be built to maximize Survival and wouldn't run it as a result. Sure, maybe GWx (or GBx, x != u) dedicated creature decks get homogenized, but those decks are already pretty homogenous.

People were top8ing with Team America even back when Vengevival was legal.

[nedleeds]

people are posting decks with 14 creatures and 4 survivals ... (gets popcorn)